New List, New Job, New Year

MIT’s world-famous economist Robert Solow died this month at 99, nearly seven decades after his earliest remarkable scholarship which won him the Nobel Prize in Economics. We owe him for much of our understanding of the underlying dynamics of our modern digital economy. Solow’s initial scholarship in the 1950s was radical and complex, but he summarized it neatly: “I discovered to my great surprise that the main source of growth was not capital investment but technological change.” As the Nobel Committee observed, “he developed a mathematical model illustrating how various factors can contribute to sustained national economic growth. From the 1960s on, Solow’s studies helped persuade governments to channel funds into technological research and development to spur economic growth.”

As 2023 closes we are still accelerating into the multi-decade technological propulsion of the U.S. economy, resulting in a seismic shift you may not have noticed. There’s a dramatic new look to the list of 10 Largest American Companies. They’re all tech companies! Sort of… and I’ve joined the newest member of the list.

If you didn’t notice, slipping in under the radar late this year was the completion of the largest IT corporate acquisition in history: Broadcom has finalized its acquisition of software giant VMware for $69 Billion. As an executive at VMware I have accepted an offer to join in the new combined company, to help lead “VMware by Broadcom” operations as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Public Sector, meaning our efforts for government, education, national security etc. That’s a substantial area of work in a large company, and to see just how large let’s take a look at how Broadcom has shaken up that Top-Ten U.S. companies list, which fluctuates daily based on market-cap (this data is from the last trading-day before Christmas):

Top Ten U.S. public companies by market capitalization as of 12/22/2023, source companiesmarketcap.com

Keep in mind that’s not a “Silicon Valley leaders” list, that’s the largest companies in the United States overall. From the three-trillion-dollar behemoth Apple on down to the half-trillion-dollar Broadcom, you see the dominance of tech firms. Eight of the ten are now straight-up hardware-software companies, including Tesla, an auto manufacturer of course but definitionally one marked by its unique technologies in energy, robotics, and digital engineering. Lilly is a pharmaceutical giant founded by Eli Lilly over a century ago which today invests billions in technological research advancement, as recently seen in its COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.

And what about Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, the seeming outlier? The “value-investing” conglomerate is broadly based, relying on Buffett’s mantra that “Diversification is a protection against ignorance,” but there’s no escaping that its full portfolio is indeed 53% in technology.

When Broadcom joined this Top Ten list by virtue of the VMware addition, it nudged down the finance giant Visa, which is remaking itself with a “fintech” focus and says it has been using machine-learning for thirty years as “the first AI-powered payments network.” More tech firms are sprinkled further down in the Top 50 Companies of course (Oracle, Cisco, Salesforce, Netflix, SAP, AMD). Other fast-growing tech companies will certainly rise, and many established giants continue to morph along Solow’s prescription toward tech-enabled growth.

Back to the Future

The technological shape of the future has been clear, even before Marc Andreesen wrote in 2011 in the Wall Street Journal that “Software is eating the world.” I have written and spoken often about the transformational history of Silicon Valley, stretching back to the first half of the twentieth century. That history is exemplified in VMware’s origin story, in a computer science classroom in 1998 on the campus of Stanford University, and now even more so in combination with Broadcom’s even deeper, more fascinating combinatorial technology roots. Not a flashy company, not a marketing megaphone, just a foundational inventor/manufacturer of tech infrastructure and mission-critical software underlying the digital era.

Broadcom’s roots stretch back through mergers and acquisitions to combine the legendary transistor or silicon or optical or networking or software divisions of AT&T’s famous Bell Labs, Hewlett-Packard‘s semiconductor business, digital engineering trailblazers LSI Logic, all added over the years to the pioneers of video streaming at “Classic” Broadcom, mainframe software at CA, cybersecurity software at Symantec, and now virtualization at VMware… all now joined in the same powerhouse Broadcom. It’s a striking lineage of technological audacity and strategic foresight.

Barreling into 2024 using Robert Solow’s growth equation, with VMware’s previous $3 Billion per year in R&D investment supplementing Broadcom’s existing $5 Billion a year in R&D – and with CEO Hock Tan’s plan to increase our R&D substantially – we intend to enable new advances in foundational infrastructure across the technological landscape (for example see my new colleague Clayton Donley‘s recent piece “Generative AI and the Reinvigoration of AIOps“).

Don’t expect hype. Broadcom’s formula focuses quietly on sustained strategic growth. As we were finalizing the merging of our two organizations I learned quite a bit reading a deeply-researched piece by a semiconductor-industry analyst: “the fact is that in 2023, no one besides NVIDIA will generate even $1B revenue from chips that run large language models. Scratch that, there is one other player. Often overlooked is that Broadcom is the second largest AI chip company in the world in terms of revenue behind NVIDIA, with multiple billions of dollars of accelerator sales… Broadcom, the Silent Giant in the AI Chip Revolution.”

As a CTO in this new software/hardware dynamo I couldn’t be more excited about the future fun. Maybe we can climb that Top Ten list even higher by this time next year – stay tuned.

#newjob #TopTen #SiliconValley #technology #AI #research #government #future

What’s Next in Nat-Sec Tech

For nearly a decade, AFCEA and INSA have jointly hosted a large conference in the nation’s capitaI, and the 2022 Intelligence & National Security Summit takes place on September 15/16 at DC’s Gaylord National Conference Center. I’m involved in both of these fine organizations and we’re very pleased with the line-up of speakers and participants, and with the post-pandemic full return to in-person activity for the Summit. With a little over two weeks to go before the event, we have over 1,100 attendees registered and 70+ exhibitors. Full agenda is here.

From the main keynote by Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks, through thoughtfully composed panels on a wide variety of topics, there are great opportunities to learn from experts and discuss with peers and colleagues across the spectrum of defense, homeland security, intelligence, and technology disciplines. I’m delighted to be moderating the panel on “Technology Futures for National Security,” with a dream-team of top leaders from DoD, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector.

It’s rare to have the Directors of both DARPA and IARPA on the same stage, the esteemed Stefanie Tompkins and Catherine Marsh, but we have them. Rounding out the panel is a private-sector leader who has earlier held one of those jobs and overseen the other; today Lisa Porter is co-founder of leading management, scientific, and technical consulting firm LogiQ Inc., and former president of Teledyne Scientific & Imaging, but she was earlier the founding director of IARPA, and more recently was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering overseeing DARPA and the rest of DoD’s $70+billion R&D efforts.

Should be an outstanding discussion. Feel free to suggest questions to me beforehand whether you’re attending or not; if you’re attending I might even ask them 😉 We have a lot to talk about; here’s the summary blurb:

Technology Futures: Who’s investing how much in what, and when might it pay off? These panelists define the answers to those questions. It has now become a truism that the IC and DoD confront a world where the U.S. no longer monopolizes science and technology advances – yet the government still has the obligation to fund and create breakthrough technologies for advantage in national security. Commercial R&D drives tech advance broadly, but new mission-advantageous breakthroughs will come largely from the nation’s two leading national-security innovation lighthouses, DARPA and IARPA. This session will hear from those who have been charged with leading the government’s efforts to provide innovative future technologies necessary for our security – and with incisive observations from the private-sector. We’ll look at current work on revolutionary opportunities for advantage, but beyond just a buzzword glance across the litany of investment areas (“AI,” “quantum,” “cybersecurity,” “metaverse”) there’ll be a focus on the system-of-systems challenges in bringing radical new capabilities to real operational life across the siloed halls of DoD and the IC.

Our morning-of-Day-Two panel is just one of the many great sessions, which include:

• Chinese Threats to U.S. Supply Chains
• Leading Change: A Look at the CIO, CDO, CTO, and CDAO Roles
• Public Data and IC Analysis: Improving Integration of Public-Private Capabilities
• Commercial Space-Based Intelligence for National Security
• Intelligence Priorities of the U.S. Military Services
• Russia/Ukraine Conflict: Implications for U.S. National Security
• Midterms 2022: Election Security
• Strategic Intelligence Challenges / IC Leaders Panel

We’ve lined up many leading government, industry, academic and media figures for the 2022 Summit, and I hope you are able to participate as well! More information at intelsummit.org.

MSR gets wired, WIRED gets MSR

MSR natural-user-interaction immersive technologies

WIRED Magazine’s online site ran a great long profile of Microsoft Research late yesterday, with interviews and project features: “How Microsoft Researchers Might Invent a Holodeck.”

I have written about or mentioned all of the individual projects or technologies on my blog before, but the writing at WIRED is so much better than my own – and the photographs so cool – that I thought I should post a link to the story.

The almighty ampersand linking R and D

According to Wikipedia, the lowly ampersand or “&” is a logogram representing the conjunction word “and” using “a ligature of the letters in et,” which is of course the Latin word for “and.”

In my line of work I most frequently encounter the ampersand in the common phrase “R&D” for research and development, although I notice that with texting and short-form social media the ampersand is making something of a comeback in frequency of use anyway.

Playing with virtual data in spatial reality

For the past few months, when I’ve had visitors to Microsoft Research on the Redmond campus one of the things I’ve enjoyed demonstrating is the technology behind the new system for Xbox 360 – the controller-free gaming and immersive entertainment system that Microsoft is releasing for the holiday market in a month or so. In particular, I’ve enjoyed having Andy Wilson of MSR talk with visitors about some of the future implications in non-gaming scenarios, including general information work, and how immersive augmented-reality (AR) could transform our capabilities for working with information, virtual objects, and how we all share and use knowledge among ourselves.

We’re further along in this area than I thought we’d be five years ago, and I suspect we’ll be similarly surprised by 2015.

In particular, there is great interest (both in and out of the government circles I travel in) in the “device-less” or environmental potential of new AR technologies. Not everyone will have a fancy smartphone on them at all times, or want to stare at a wall-monitor while also wearing glasses or holding a cellphone in front of them in order to access other planes of information. The really exciting premise of these new approaches is the fully immersive aspect of  “spatial AR,” and the promise of controlling a live 3D environment of realtime data.

Contributing to Intelligence Innovation

Below are two ways to contribute to innovation in government, and specifically in intelligence matters. One is for you to consider, the other is a fun new path for me.

Four Score and Seven Years Ago

Today, August 5, has a number of interesting anniversaries in the world of technology and government. In 1858 the first transatlantic telegraph cable was completed, allowing President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria to share congratulatory messages the following week. (Unfortunately within a month the cable had broken down for good.)  The first quasar (“quasi-stellar astronomical radio object”) was discovered on Aug. 5, 1962. And exactly one year later the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed on August 5, 1963, between the U.S., U.S.S.R., and Great Britain.

But one important date I’d like to commemorate was a bit different: eighty-seven years ago today, on August 5, 1923, my father was born, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Happy Birthday, Dad!

There’s a shorthand way of telling my father’s life-history which fits with the theme of technological advance: he graduated from college (his beloved N.C. State) as an early recipient of a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering; he worked for decades for a growing company interested in adopting new technologies to drive its business; and he capped his career as Corporate Vice President for Research and Development at a Fortune 300 company.

But that misses the fun he had along the way, and the close-up view he had of innovation. He was an early adopter, even before college. (I like to think I get that from him.)  So I thought I’d illustrate a couple of vignettes I’ve heard over the years of his interaction with computers along the way, simply to portray the thrust of radical change that has paced along during the course of one man’s life.

DARPA crowd guru gets a new lab

It’s been a little over two years since I came back to the tech private sector from my government service, and it’s great when we have other folks take the same path, for it improves the knowledge of each side about the other. Today we’re announcing that Peter Lee, currently the leader of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Activity’s innovative Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO), is joining Microsoft to run the mighty flagship Redmond labs of Microsoft Research.

Using the body in new virtual ways

This is CHI 2010 week, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta. Top researchers in human-computer-interaction (HCI) are together April 10-15 for presentations, panels, exhibits, and discussions. Partly because of our intense interest in using new levels of computational power to develop great new Natural User Interfaces (NUI), Microsoft Research is well represented at CHI 2010 as pointed out in an MSR note on the conference:

This year, 38 technical papers submitted by Microsoft Research were accepted by the conference, representing 10 percent of the papers accepted. Three of the Microsoft Research papers, covering vastly different topics, won Best Paper awards, and seven others received Best Paper nominations.

Simon Moves On

Jim Simon at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt

One indulgent use of a personal blog is to drop a nod in the direction of a salutary individual, and I’d like to do so for my departing boss, Jim Simon.

Jim has been the founding Director of the Microsoft Institute since 2004, when Bill Gates and Craig Mundie personally decided to establish a small outfit to use the benefits of Microsoft’s advanced research and development activities against intractable problems for the global public sector. They had been talking with Jim for several years, back when he was a senior executive at the Central Intelligence Agency and after, to understand how to improve government’s adoption of modern technologies.