Thinker, strategist, enterprise architect, keynote speaker, analyst, book author, futurist on IT, CIO, cloud, AI. @SDABocconi Heads research at @Frontier_Now
Washington, D.C.
Joined July 2006
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New Research: The CIO in 2030: Running the Enterprise Intelligence Economy
thisisfrontier.ai/research/c…
Fourteen operating imperatives for a strategic world where people, agents, software, compute, data, and trust are dynamically allocated to outcomes. #CIOChat
It what is probably a surprising turn of events for cybersecurity professionals, it turns out that zero-trust architectures with strict micro-segmentation are probably cheaper and easier than relentlessly hunting down and patching all possible security exploits…
There are two approaches to cybersecurity now that we’re in the vulnpolcalypse:
1. “patch the planet” by burning mountains of tokens, red teaming, and patching until you think there are no more exploitable bugs in the software
2. Shrink software components into their most minimal essence, tailor them to a particular system, and then formally verify it
Both approches are now enabled by LLMs. But only the second one can be done on a budget and without having access to frontier cyber models like mythos.
This is why I’m excited to see more legacy software get boiled down, hardened, and verified
This really blew up, and that’s good. It’s a vital conversation about AI that we must have now.
“Risk is our business.”
This is true if you’re using AI. And true if you’re not is the issue.
How do we compartmentalize the extremely powerful tech advances happening now?
Probably we can’t is the answer. But we must discuss it. A global debate.
My thoughts of late have returned to this amazing scene by @WilliamShatner, made decades ago.
As a young person, I found it tremendously inspiring. A code to live by.
But it didn’t play out quite like we expected.
The “fantastically advanced” life that we actually ended up encountering is right here, on Earth. All around us now.
The key issue of our time is becoming this:
Not everyone signed up for this mission, or the risk. And what we do about that, ultimately, is where the debate about AI will end up.
Dion Hinchcliffe retweeted
Absolutely. The risk of doing nothing, especially in exponential times, is often (much) higher than many people think.
And now, the issue is that we aren’t able to compartmentalize that risk very well either. Everyone is pulled along into the risk pool.
A call to action by Anthropic’s deputy CISO:
Things in cybersecurity will get worse before they get better.
Plan for this for the long haul.
CIOs must now go to their boards for long term resource increases, as difficult as that is right now. Get out ahead as far as you can.
Yes, focusing on the cost of tokens only is a fool’s errand.
But no, managing the cost of tokens with clear goals in mind is very much not and must be part of modern cloud FinOps.
AI will soon dramatically impact the workforce.
The majority of workers will go through meaningful to high levels of reinvention of what they do on a day-to-day + role basis.
Figuring out the best paths forward with AI must a top priority of org leaders.
Source: @McKinsey_MGI
Dion Hinchcliffe retweeted
Yes, I believe that ironically, AI will help us with this problem, as with so many others.
The real enemy, however, is complexity. The protocols of the Internet (IP) and Web (HTTP) are simple and designed to work even in very constrained environments.
The likelihood of trust tech working and being adopted is inversely proportion to its complexity.
I worry that unless the knife cuts very narrow, any improvements to address the current situation may do as much harm as good.
The fix is to adopt the mantra of a good doctor: First, do no harm!
Depreciation and amortization costs for the five big hyperscalers are projected to reach $590 billion in 2029.
The big question: Will their profits exceed the cost?
My take: They are certainly betting they are and I’m sure they have climb-down plans if not. The big money is on the token demand being there.
My thoughts of late have returned to this amazing scene by @WilliamShatner, made decades ago.
As a young person, I found it tremendously inspiring. A code to live by.
But it didn’t play out quite like we expected.
The “fantastically advanced” life that we actually ended up encountering is right here, on Earth. All around us now.
The key issue of our time is becoming this:
Not everyone signed up for this mission, or the risk. And what we do about that, ultimately, is where the debate about AI will end up.
Dion Hinchcliffe retweeted
I could not agree more, Dave. And when we fix it, we have to be very careful not to break it what makes it special. Here are my carefully considered thoughts on how we might do that:
dionhinchcliffe.com/2026/10/…
Dion Hinchcliffe retweeted
Great read from @dhinchcliffe! My POV (in addition to what I said in comments to Dion’s post), is that these are not new problems, these are existing problems which AI helped us discover. Solution to technology vulnerability is not no or less technology, it’s more and better technology. I liked what @JensenHuang said wrt to information security last month (to this effect)!
cc @furrier @jpatel41 @nikesharora
New Post: My thoughts on Black October, what we should do and what we should not do.
The open Internet is one of the biggest civilizational advances in human history. Let’s fix it, not break it. I summarize where we are and our best options:
thisisfrontier.ai/blog/black…
@sarbjeetjohal @DavidLinthicum @timoreilly @itlinchpin
A key insight from @sama at @Stanford this week about the current global cyber situation:
“I no longer think we can just patch all the bugs. I think we’re going to have to completely switch the defense model.”
New Post: My thoughts on Black October, what we should do and what we should not do.
The open Internet is one of the biggest civilizational advances in human history. Let’s fix it, not break it. I summarize where we are and our best options:
thisisfrontier.ai/blog/black…
@sarbjeetjohal @DavidLinthicum @timoreilly @itlinchpin
Dion Hinchcliffe retweeted
Black October Broke the Internet's Social Contract. Now We Must Decide What Replaces It buff.ly/clip1qP @dhinchcliffe
New Post - A Trusted Network: The Internet I Want My Children to Inherit
dionhinchcliffe.com/2026/10/…
The safety of our open, global network is at risk like never before. My broad take on what we must to do preserve it. Building on my earlier analysis for enterprises.
What may end up becoming the biggest Black October issue:
Unfixable bugs in chips that are exploitable by AI models.
They can’t easily be patched. If a serious enough one is found, those systems are permanently vulnerable without physical remediation.
Yes, but as David has also just pointed out (and I did as well last week), their capacity is sold out of years for those needing lots of capacity.
AWS has become a victim of both its own success and an AI bubble that has outrun its supply chain.
Prediction: Inventive solutions to increase capacity are coming! Not the least are new AI models (super quantized and other techniques) that don’t require such compute.
I finally answered the cloud question I usually hate answering: who has the best cloud?
My answer: AWS — narrowly, conditionally, and with a lot of caveats.
I built a generic scoring model across 20 criteria and applied it to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. The criteria are an abstraction of what I see every day when I walk clients through cloud provider selection: security, compliance, cost, reliability, compute, storage, databases, networking, AI readiness, hybrid cloud, migration, support, observability, governance, vendor viability, innovation, and the operational realities that show up after the purchase order is signed.
The result was close. AWS came out on top at 84.7, Azure followed at 82.7, and Google Cloud landed at 78.9.
AWS wins overall because it performs well where the weighting matters most: security, compute, storage, reliability, ecosystem depth, and maturity. Azure is the best answer for many Microsoft-centric enterprises, especially those dealing with compliance, hybrid cloud, identity, and existing enterprise agreements. Google Cloud is the strongest fit for AI-native, data-heavy, and cost-sensitive workloads, and it continues to show real momentum.
But the real answer is still the one architects and consultants give whether people like it or not: it depends.
In the real world, the answer is almost never one public cloud. It is usually a heterogeneous mix of public cloud providers, private clouds, owned infrastructure, edge computing, SaaS platforms, legacy systems, and whatever else the business has accumulated over the last 20 years. The job is not to crown a vendor and move on. The job is to design the right configuration for the business, the workloads, the compliance model, the skills available, the cost structure, and the future direction of the company.
That is why I usually avoid the “best cloud” debate. It oversimplifies a decision that is rarely simple.
Still, it was fun to finally put a stake in the ground.
If forced to answer the question using broad enterprise criteria, AWS is the best overall public cloud today. Azure may be the better answer for Microsoft-heavy enterprises. Google Cloud may be the better answer for AI, analytics, and data-driven platforms.
Same market. Different strengths. One narrow winner.
That is my answer, and I am sticking to it.
I think this is an accurate analysis, especially this:
“The base becomes humans working with agents, but accountability stays human.”
So, the pyramid likely becomes very squat indeed. The more successful orgs will have effective ways of fielding high numbers of agents per worker.
Although that “success” is in the eye of the beholder. I would not rule out AI labor regulation even in the short term as both an employment shock absorber and as systemic risk avoidance.
Practically every CXO I know have asked me this question - what is the future of #talent #Pyramid ?
Here is what I think
andvijaysays.com/2026/10/24/…
New Post: My thoughts on Black October, what we should do and what we should not do.
The open Internet is one of the biggest civilizational advances in human history. Let’s fix it, not break it. I summarize where we are and our best options:
thisisfrontier.ai/blog/black…
@sarbjeetjohal @DavidLinthicum @timoreilly @itlinchpin
Mixed-Nvidia AI Clusters By @HPE Shifts CIO Focus to Scheduling
thisisfrontier.ai/news/hpe-a…
My take: If HPE Private Cloud AI can demonstrate discipline in a customer's environment, its mixed-cluster support becomes an architectural advantage.
