My Blog

Thoughts, experiences, and insights from my journey in technology, automation, and the occasional failed experiment.

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Jan 28, 2026

15 min read

DOGE: The Data Consolidation Operation Disguised as Efficiency

DOGE wasn't an efficiency project. It was a power-and-data consolidation machine dressed up in budget cosplay. Federal spending barely moved, but a Social Security dataset on more than 300 million Americans was copied into a high-risk cloud environment, and the government now admits in court that DOGE staff sent private records outside the agency. Stop asking if DOGE saved money. Start asking who has your data.

Privacy Surveillance Policy Analysis

Jan 15, 2026

9 min read

When a Church Nails AI Ethics (From a Privacy Hawk Who's Agnostic)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints added AI guidance to its handbook, and this agnostic privacy hawk thinks it holds up. Strip out the theology and four rules remain: keep your integrity, do your own thinking, don't take high-stakes advice from a model, and keep sensitive data out of AI tools you don't control.

AI Privacy Technology

Jan 13, 2026

7 min read

Why is my favicon still the classic BigFix logo?

Because it's a badge of honor, a conversation starter, and a nod to one of the best chapters of my career. The story behind a BigFix tattoo that started as a joke, the community that showed up after my first spinal surgery, and the thread BigFix still runs from Kroger to HCL Software to 3D Nomadic.

BigFix Personal Story Tech Community

Dec 22, 2025

10 min read

When Trump 2.0 Goes Cyber: Why We Need a New CISA and a Bigger Cyber Playbook

Brian Krebs's year-in-review shows America's cyber defenders dismantled from the inside: a third of CISA gone, the Cyber Safety Review Board dismissed mid-investigation, specialists reassigned to deportations, and states cut off from shared protection. A nearly 30-year security veteran on what that means on the ground, and the six fixes that would put it back.

Cybersecurity Policy Analysis Technology

Dec 08, 2025

14 min read

Goodbye Price Tags, Hello Dynamic Gouging: How Grocers and Algorithms Are Quietly Taxing Your Life

The classic price tag is dying, replaced by data-driven algorithmic price steering. As someone who worked on early digital shelf tags at America's largest grocery chain, I can tell you: it was scary then, it's much scarier now.

Privacy Surveillance Technology

Nov 29, 2025

11 min read

When "AI Safety" Becomes a Weapon: Lessons from Anthropic's Claude Hack Story

A Chinese state-sponsored group used Claude Code to run an espionage campaign against about 30 organizations, with the AI doing most of the work, after lying its way past the guardrails. The bigger story is how 'AI safety' is becoming a narrative that centralizes control while the models stay fundamentally exploitable. Vendor safety is not your safety.

AI Cybersecurity Technology

Sep 23, 2025

10 min read

Breaking the "Safe" Illusion: Why AI-Powered Police Cameras Threaten Your Privacy

All across the U.S., cameras you barely notice are logging license plates and building a record of everyday movement, many owned by venture-backed companies rather than police. Plate misreads have put innocent families on the pavement at gunpoint. Benn Jordan shows the AI can be fooled, but citizens should not need hacks to keep basic privacy.

Privacy AI Surveillance Technology

Apr 24, 2025

11 min read

Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: What's Changing

AI is changing both sides of security at once: models that find real vulnerabilities before release, deepfakes convincing enough to walk $25 million out of a company on one video call, and attacks aimed at the AI itself. Speed is the new baseline, and patch velocity and human verification are the controls that matter most.

Technology Cybersecurity AI

Mar 15, 2024

11 min read

Getting Started with HCL BigFix: A Comprehensive Guide

A ground-up walkthrough of HCL BigFix for anyone standing up a first deployment: how the server, database, relays, and agents fit together, the private key that controls every managed machine, the port 52311 rule that decides whether any of it works, and the first thirty days of habits that keep a new deployment from running you.

BigFix Endpoint Management Enterprise IT

Jan 05, 2024

9 min read

BigFix Automation: Beyond the Basics

Patching and compliance are the price of entry. The real power of BigFix is automation that runs without you: policy actions that heal drift on their own, Fixlet content managed like code through the REST API, targeting driven by Relevance, and reporting that acts on data instead of rotting in an inbox.

Technology BigFix Automation