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M E S S I E R | YouTube Gm, everyone! ☕️ This week was absolute fire! 🔥 Our dev team keeps shipping new Web3 features and improvements, and we’re only getting started. Hard to believe how much we packed into just seven days. 🗓 This Week’s Highlights ▪️... show more
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![The most epic 13 minute AI rant I've heard in 2026 PS: My parent's heard this when I was playing it in the car and thought Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin went OFF like Stephen A Smith does on first take PPS: Full transcript below [17:00] Harry Stebbings: I I just wanted to ask Jason, if the people that we want are fundamentally different, the developers that we used to hire, we don't because AI writes the code for us. The marketers we don't want, the sales people we don't want—who who do we want genuinely? Like what is the attractive profile? Because your Anthropic’s and your OpenAIs are hiring, so so what are the people that we want in the companies of the future? [17:18] Jason Lemkin: Look, I know it sounds trite, but but the answer is simple. It's just the expression each year changes. We want folks that are genuinely AI fluent. It's pretty simple. Now you know, maybe last year we called them prompt engineers, right? That used to be a job. I don't know if you remember that actually used to be the hottest job on planet earth. Now no one needs a prompt engineer because it's pretty easy to prompt all these tools. That job died. Okay. Um and now we need go-to-market engineers. Um I think that job's going to die. We need—everyone needs so many forward deployed engineers. Like you can't hire enough forward deployed engineers. But uh you know um but Palantir just announced in whatever their their big their big event—they've gotten their deployment times down over 90% with forward deployed engineers. So that may become—so the this wave of disruption for the titles and the specificity, it's also exhaustingly accelerating. But it's really simple. You meet anyone for any role—sales, marketing, engineering, product, QA—they're they're either they're either they can't keep all of the ways they use AI to accelerate their job from spewing out of their mouth, or they're staring at you. It's there's nowhere in the middle. Like, and the person that comes in and says—it's it's it sounds Captain Obvious—but like, you know, you just had the whatever from Lovable, the the marketing head that was super popular on the show, right? She's just spewing AI-native insights into Lovable, right? It's not that complicated. You hire her, Elena, or whatever it is. You just hire her. It doesn't matter whether she's still in college or a junior or a senior or a middler, a left or right. And honestly, if you interview people, I would say of all even of the best startups I've invested in, maybe 30% of the management team meets this standard at best. 30%. Maybe less. And of the interviews I do in general, it's single-digit percents. It's just and in in that sense, it's the same as ever. Like you either lower the bar in hiring or you hire someone that's actually great. And someone that's actually great is so far ahead of you in how to apply to to employ the efficiencies of AI in their role, your jaw falls on the table. The difference is we used to need warm bodies. That's what's changing. We used to need warm bodies to answer the call, to do QA, to do code review, to to get the blue pixel to go from the upper left to the lower right. You laugh, but you need you literally needed to brute force this with humans. With AI, every day that goes by, the AI—you do not need brute force human beings on your team. And that's another reason they're shrinking. Why are all these new companies so efficient? They're just not brute forcing things with humans. They're just not. They're choosing not to. And so these team—all the brute forcers out there—everyone talks about how bloated teams got in 2021. I don't agree with that. I think they got as big as they needed to be when growth was high and you needed humans to do everything. All you look at these teams that that doubled—well if growth continued at 60% like the rate in early 2021 for 5 years or can help me do the math and every single thing a software company did required a human. You were understaffed by your 2021 headcount. You'd be sitting here in 2026. You every office in SoMa would be triple packed and you there wouldn't be enough humans to staff your company. It's just the world changed. [20:33] Harry Stebbings: Jason, you live on the bleeding edge. I think me and Rory see that and I think the world sees that when they hear you every week in terms of how you run SaaS. For all of the CEOs and execs who listen to the show, what would you advise them in terms of determining whether someone is AI fluent when they meet them for jobs, for talent? [20:51] Jason Lemkin: Here's I realized I was just asked this. I just did a review with a super fast startup growing just crossing 100 million and I was asked this question. And one of my favorite executives, I thought his answer was pretty dated and because he gave me an answer that was about 6 months old. The answer 6 months old is: "I look for folks in my team, I look for you know at what tools they play with." Okay, that was a great answer in like summer of 2025. Okay, I tried Lovable last week. Okay, the answer in 2026 is: "What commercial AI tool have you brought into your organization this month?" That's the test. Anyone that is on the bleeding edge that you would want to hire—now there are so many great products in the market. Okay, there is no excuse in any role to have not brought one tool a month into your organization. Okay, there—now there's going to be better and better tools and better and better products as the year goes on. What's the one you did? And you will see folks with their deer in the headlights to this question. What what sales tool? What marketing tool? What product tool? What engineering tool? What did you bring in? Why did you pick it? How does it working? Because if you're at remotely at the cutting edge, you're all over this. You're looking for the next agentic tools that will radically improve how you do business. This is—you think everyone thinks SaaS is at the bleeding edge, right? You know, you know, all we do is we're just looking for the tools and trying them. Okay? Okay, we're one year ahead of everybody else because we did the simplest thing in the world. Like we tried the tools early and we trained them. We trained them for a month. Okay, I'll give you—want hear a horrible example from this week? Super hot AI company valued at 6 billion. Okay, I'm not going to name it. Um, this week yesterday told us we had to quadruple what we spent on their product. Okay, their agent told us, right? And why did this happen? Okay. Well, at this $6 billion company, no one had trained the agent on its pricing properly. No one had tested it. They said, "Well, well, we've been in beta." And we said, "Well, when did the beta launch? A year ago." Okay, these are people asleep at at the wheel. You want somebody who the instant this comes up, they exactly know what the issue is. And "Hey, when I was at Lovable Replit, we trained the agent. This is how we did it. I brought in this tool. I brought in this tool that that Rory invested in last week. It solved all these issues." That's what you want to hear. And if they haven't brought in a tool in the last 30 days, at least deeply evaluated it. I don't really care whether they bought it, but gone so far down the funnel they can tell you—pick whatever tool: Fixie, Regie, GC, AIGC—I don't care how you went through it, you looked at it, you can tell me the eight ways it would improve the productivity of your business and three you didn't. Just don't hire that person because they're going to run your company to the ground. This is the job today. The job today is not to screw around on ChatGPT and to be a prompt engineer. The job today is to bring the best AI and agentic products into your organization and leverage all the hard work that the engineers have done building those products. That's your job. You don't have to screw around. You don't have to be a prompt engineer anymore. You have to be an agent deployment expert. A—this is the new job we're making up today. An Agentic Deployment Expert. That's your job from C-level to junior. Agentic Deployment Expert. Don't hire anybody else. You're going to regret it. They're going to stare at the camera. He's good. Stare at the camera. He's honorable. We could probably just I could slip away, get a coffee, and come back. No. And I I sound exasperated, Rory. And I—but the reason I am is I can just see I can see my best companies doing it. And I can see some companies I've invested in not doing it. And I want to cry. I just want to cry when they have no ADs on their team. I just—like you're flushing your years of your life down the toilet by not approaching your how you're building this company this way. [24:33] Rory: Yes. And at the risk of being positive, it's worth pointing out two things he didn't say. Well, something implicit why he said—Jason didn't do the only hire, you know, he didn't commit the um employment law, I think it's a civil penalty of saying only employ people below X who get the new new thing because he implicitly said anyone can do it provided you're willing to learn. And I think that's the big aha that's one of the positive statements to make here right? Look and I think it applies—I'm always wary of being "Hey, coming across, hey this this is the things that you all have to do." I think it applies to everyone including investors right? I mean I will say I have found that unless you're willing to invest the time learning these tools you actually shouldn't be investing in them. One of my partners Andy had this expression: "You know, if you decide you want to stop learning new things you probably should retire within 6 to 12 months and never write another check again." Maybe that's down to 3 to 6 months at this stage, right? And I think, you know, it's— [25:27] Harry Stebbings: Yeah, I actually I actually had a meeting with mine and Jason's biggest investor the other day and I—pretend he's not here—I said I think he's the most equipped investor for this generation of investing because I don't think anyone quite sits at the bleeding edge like he does on the investor side. [25:42] Harry Stebbings: Why in terms of using the equip stuff? Yeah. Yeah. In terms of using the stuff, understanding understanding bottlenecks, constraints. For sure. [25:51] Jason Lemkin: But can I just add one point? We can just cuz it's so important if it helps people. Okay, we are—and thank you Harry. We're going through these phases. Okay, and when AI started to blow up for real for us, uh call it early 2024, right? Maybe late '23, I wasn't equipped. It was too technical. I wasn't going to go in and figure out—I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to deal with a massively hallucinating LLM API and turn that and turn that into something magical. Kudos to investors and others that that got it in early '23, '22. I mean I remember I—I guess it was maybe SaaStr Annual '23. I was with David Sacks and I did a Q&A and I said, "How you thinking about AI at Craft?" He's like, "Well we're all in. We want 80% of '23 of investments to be AI." I'm like, "Great but like show me the show me the great ones in market." He's like, "They're all prototypes. We're all they're all they're all proof of concepts but we're all in anyway." That's where you kind of had to be in '23 if you weren't investing at like the LLM level. Okay, I wasn't smart enough. Then we went through this weird-ass prompt engineer era where like you you could torture these products to do something good, right? But you had to torture them. You had to like craft these crazy things that made no sense. Now we are in the era where mere ordinarily smart generalists can make these tools do magical things. And literally I go to these meetings and people be like, "I don't know how to like this is so scary. I don't know how to do this." And we show them our backends. Do you know how to do a workflow generator? Do you know how to do a a decision tree? Like we've been building these since software in the '90s. Okay, if you—I can show you all of our agents. The how they work is novel. They do have to be trained. You can't be lazy and have these agents work. But honestly, the the UI, the UX, the way we interact with them, it's just software. And so my point is: Pick yourself off the ground. This is your time now. If you felt lost in AI era, if you felt like you're behind, you don't understand what all these people are saying on X and Twitter and their Claude and and their and talking about all the 4.6 point Nano point and it's over—like you just it's not your world. This is your time. This is your time for the generalist that knows how to use software tools really really well. And I—this is my last point but it's so important. If ever in your recent life—and this is why you could be all you need to be is young at heart to Rory's point—if in the last three to five years you have successfully deployed a piece of enterprise software of any sort you yourself, not some agency you hired, but if you have deployed it, you can deploy any agentic tool. Any. And you can become the hero in your company and you can become the hero in your functional area. But I watch folks—I'm literally helping a company now that they're adding hundreds of sales folks this year with a new pre-IPO COO—he's not hasn't brought in a single tool, totally scared of it. Okay, it's not that hard. Did you use SalesLoft? Did you use Outreach? Did you use HubSpot? Do you know these tools? If you can deploy these tools, you can deploy a world-changing AI agent. And so this is the time for people like the folks that that were shut out of the AI revolution right now. The generalist folks that are not that know how to deploy software that don't even know how to build software. Like vibe coding for me was folks who knew how to build software, but you didn't have to be an engineer. Now, you just need to know how to deploy software to win with AI agents. That's all you need to know. So many people have these skills and they're petrified of AI. "How did you do that? How did you deploy an AI BDR?" Well, we bought a piece of software, we figured out how it worked for a day, we set it up in an afternoon, and then and then we did spend 30 months training it, which you didn't do with this old software because in the old days, we just had to manually upload all the data, right? And there was no training. The the only non-intuitive part is training these things. And it's it's it's just work. So that's why when I see folks on the management team not doing this, there's no excuse. You do not need to be technical to win with AI agents in Q2 of '26. You do not need to be even 1% technical. Not at all. So it's your time. Or you're going to get laid off. Or you're going to get laid off because you're not going to matter.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2036795243681423518/amplify_video_thumb/2036794127560613888/img/52_cdbzzL6_foTSI.jpg)
![[Behavioral Scientist's Analysis] NewJeans, Now Even Stronger, HYBE in Trouble I’ll listen again. Danielle: “Naturally, we all want to continue working with Daepyonim. Even before debuting as NewJeans and through all of the time that we spent together with Min Hee-jin Daepyonim, all of us felt that the music we wanted to make and the kind of world we wanted to build together, our vision, was similar in so many ways. With Min Hee-jin Daepyonim, we were able to prepare each and every task with sincere hearts, and I believe it shows in our work. Putting our sincere effort into something is only possible because the people that we're working with have trust in each other and have that same vision. Min Hee-jin Daepyonim is not only the person that produces our music, but someone who makes NewJeans who we are. She discusses even the smallest details with us and explains them in ways that we can understand clearly. NewJeans has a distinct colour and tone, and this was created with Min Hee-jin Daepyonim. She is integral to NewJeans’ identity, and we all feel that she is irreplaceable.” Danielle clearly stated this and also expressed it in English. So, in terms of the NewJeans issue, international fans who don’t have much information may not have had a clear perception of Ms. Min Hee-jin or how to view this issue. If you look at the comments, it was very poorly organized. In Korea, we now have clear information, so NewJeans fans, Bunnies, are cheering for NewJeans and supporting Ms. Min Hee-jin. It has become clearly sorted out like this. However, internationally, it hasn’t been clearly explained. But with Danielle explaining it so well in English, I expect that from now on, the international atmosphere will shift towards attacking HYBE, criticizing Bang Si-hyuk, and supporting Ms. Min Hee-jin and NewJeans worldwide. So, now that the artist has clearly stated their position and made it clear that the identity and assets of the NewJeans brand come from Ms. Min Hee-jin, regardless of any legal disputes or lawsuits, in the minds of the fans, NewJeans equals Min Hee-jin. And as for the current management of ADOR and HYBE, they will be seen as the ones attacking NewJeans and the mysterious people with no clear motive, such as Bang Si-hyuk. I think this will now be clear. Considering the nature of the entertainment industry, like many creative industries and the cultural industry, this is not manufacturing. Many things can’t be determined through legal processes like patents for ideas or lawsuits. The B2C market, or the market for services and consumption of an artist's brand, is driven by sensitivity. People consume it because of the emotional connection and enjoy it because of that sensitivity. So, what’s the point of winning a legal case? Even if HYBE were to win any legal case, do you think consumers wouldn’t boycott NewJeans’ music or other products afterward? I believe HYBE will be punished in some way for its actions towards ADOR and its current management. The way they are handling risk management is shortsighted, as they fail to understand people’s emotions. They seem to only rely on the advice of legal professionals and accountants, and their entire approach to this issue is so narrow-minded and misguided. It feels incredibly foolish to me. So, to summarize: NewJeans’ branding was done by Ms. Min Hee-jin. The identity and assets of the NewJeans brand were created by her, and we did it together because of her. Haerin: “However, even after our debut, there have been many unfair and incomprehensible incidents that you might not know about, and these incidents have only increased over time. As some of you may know, recently, videos from our trainee days and private records, such as medical information, were leaked. When I first saw that, I was really shocked. It was hard to understand how our company, which is supposed to protect us, failed to manage and allowed such information to be leaked. Naturally, this situation has made us worry that other strange or false information about us might spread in the future. Although we, along with our parents and Min Hee-jin Daepyonim, have raised concerns about this to HYBE, they haven’t resolved the issue, nor have they taken any proactive measures. Then, in the midst of all this, our CEO was dismissed, and we’re left wondering whom we can trust and rely on. We’ve come to the conclusion that if we don’t speak out about this now, no one will know what we’re going through. After much discussion among ourselves, we finally decided to take this step.” The current situation is shocking, but this is not just about this one incident; they’ve been continuously receiving unfair treatment from HYBE. The fact that they are saying this publicly now is truly shocking. They’ve been discussing these unfair treatments with their parents and Ms. Min Hee-jin while continuing their activities as NewJeans. They are saying that the unfair treatment from HYBE has been ongoing. It’s hard to understand as an outsider, but now the artists themselves have confirmed that there have been instances where the company has mistreated them. This is no longer a matter of speculation or exaggeration. NewJeans has officially admitted that HYBE has been continuously mistreating them. Moving forward, this changes the entire perspective on the issue. It’s no longer just NewJeans vs. HYBE or Min Hee-jin vs. Bang Si-hyuk. It’s hard to even imagine the reality of this situation. Now that the NewJeans artists have come out and said that HYBE has mistreated them, regardless of how HYBE tries to communicate going forward, they will now be framed as the ones mistreating NewJeans. How can they possibly shake off this perception now? I don’t think they can. Hanni: “Something happened to me recently. The 4th floor of the HYBE building is where we get our hair and makeup done, so a lot of other artists and staff come and go there. One day, I was waiting alone in the hallway, and some staff from another team passed by. We greeted each other, but when they came back out a bit later, I heard one of their managers say, “Ignore her,” right in front of me. I could hear and see everything clearly. Even now, I still don’t understand why I had to go through that.” I still don’t understand why that happened, even now. When I think about it, I feel like it was really ridiculous. This story from Hanni was so frustrating and absurd. Wow, what Hanni just shared is really shocking. She mentioned meeting an artist, and that artist's manager told them to ignore her. If this happened in middle or high school, people would probably dismiss it as childish fighting, but this happened among adults, and it's becoming a huge issue. Honestly, the NewJeans members aren’t sharing these stories to stir things up. They’re probably just speaking truthfully about their experiences and trying to be genuine with their fans, saying, “It’s time we express our stance honestly.” The timing and approach they’ve taken are actually perfect. They started by clearly explaining their motivations and why they’re speaking out, then moved on to using English to express what NewJeans’ identity is and the members' feelings, as well as their history with their manager. They made it clear how they feel about these situations. Now, they've started sharing more detailed stories. The way they’ve structured everything is so good because people remember stories more than abstract thoughts or philosophies. When you say, “This happened to me,” people are much more likely to remember that than vague statements. Hanni shared her unfair experience in such an honest way, and I think it’s going to spread widely. I can already imagine netizens trying to figure out which manager it was, which artist, and so on. This story will likely go viral. People remember stories like this because they stick in their minds. For example, remember when Bang Si-hyuk didn’t return NewJeans’ greeting, and it became a huge thing about face blindness? People don’t remember the details, but they remember that someone important didn’t greet them. It became a memorable story. Minji: “When I heard about what Hanni experienced, I was really shocked. How could a manager from another team tell their members to ignore one of us, and say it so loudly that Hanni could hear it? Such unimaginable words and behavior were directed at us, yet there was no apology, nor did they even acknowledge their wrongdoing. Of course, I’m worried about how many more similar incidents might occur in the future and whether we’ll be subtly ostracized without anyone there to protect us.” Hanni: “I hope no one else has to go through something like that, but since it’s already happened once, I can’t help but feel scared that other members might experience the same thing. I spoke to the new CEO about it, but since I didn’t have evidence and it was considered too late, they seemed to brush it off, making me feel like there’s no one left to protect us. It really felt like the concern for us was gone, and even though I was being honest, it made me feel like I was suddenly being treated as a liar. Before, Min Heejin, our previous CEO, used to take care of us a lot. But now, while the new people say they’ll help, it’s just been months of excuses... excuses... excuses... They keep saying that it’s something they can’t resolve. But this is something that I personally went through and experienced, yet they are trying to dismiss it as if it’s my fault. I’m worried and scared about what might happen next.” I want to make two points here. First, this is clearly “invisibility.” It’s not physical violence, but it’s about not acknowledging someone’s greeting, deliberately ignoring them, and so on. While it may not seem like a big deal, it still deeply hurts someone’s feelings. There’s been a lot of research on how these kinds of actions negatively affect an organization, spreading like poison and making people feel bad. It’s something we should really work against. The second point is about third-party justice. Hanni raised a legitimate concern, and it wasn’t handled properly within the company. This made Hanni, Minji, and others realize that the new management isn’t on their side. When others witness this, they’ll also realize that this company doesn’t have their best interests at heart. This realization leads to a loss of trust. People will remember these events, and once this perception sticks, it’s hard to change. It affects not just NewJeans, but also other artists who will think, “Oh, this is how HYBE treats people.” And it even affects the employees who work there. Minji: “Of course, I’m worried about our future, but what’s most frightening is that the work we’ve already created is being compromised. Seeing the people who have poured their lives into creating our work being treated this way makes it hard to understand how this could be happening. The new management said they would separate producing and management, but we’ve always worked differently from other labels, and we thought that our way was a good one. Now, Daepyonim can no longer approve all matters, and we’re left wondering how we’re supposed to continue working as we did before. The recent statement from the new management also didn’t make sense to me. If they really didn’t intend to interfere with our production, then the recent incident with Director Shin Woo-seok should never have happened, and it should have been handled differently. We are the ones directly involved with the copyrights and likeness rights of our content, yet they’re making decisions without our consent. In their statement, they kept saying they were acting to protect us and prevent our anxiety, but why do they keep insisting on this when they haven’t considered our wishes? We don’t want any more unnecessary issues to arise, and we want them to show respect and consideration for Daepyonim and all the directors who have worked with us. The things they’re doing right now are not in our best interest at all.” What’s worth discussing here is the perception of hypocrisy. People really dislike hypocrisy, and when you think about it, it makes sense. When humans are surviving, if there’s an enemy or a difficult environment, they overcome it as part of life. But the most dangerous situation is when you think someone is an ally, but they turn out to be an enemy. When you thought they were on your side but they stab you in the back — that’s when people are really upset. That’s why people hate it when there’s a discrepancy between outward appearances and inward intentions. It creates a near-hatred, especially when someone claims to be acting for your benefit but it’s clear that they’re not. This is what Minji is clearly pointing out — these people are hypocrites. New Jeans has already reached a conclusion internally: this new management team, in less than a month, has revealed themselves to be hypocrites. And they’ve shared this with the fans and everyone else. This isn’t just some interesting topic on a live broadcast; this will cause a huge impact, and I am certain of that. New Jeans has come to a solid realization — these people are not working for us. They are liars and hypocrites. Therefore, the new management can no longer properly lead the company. They will not be able to continue, and this system cannot be maintained. Why? Because the artist has called them out as hypocrites. The only way they can recover is by proving they aren’t hypocrites, but even then, that’s not effective — New Jeans would have to say it. But the chance of that happening is zero. In short, these people have been socially branded as hypocrites. The new management’s time is up. Less than a month, and their time is over. In the creative industry, especially in culture and the arts, content production — such as creating songs or music videos — cannot be separated from management. That’s how we’ve always worked, and it was good for us. Min Hee-jin was a remarkable creator and artist who understood all of this. The harmony between management and artistic decision-making brought about the incredible phenomenon of New Jeans. But now, they’ve created a system where that harmony can’t exist anymore. Moreover, the new management is culturally ignorant. They don’t understand art, music, or creativity. They have shown this clearly, especially with their mishandling of Director Shin Woo-seok’s music video and the associated fan content, like those on the Dolphiners YouTube channel. They’ve demanded to delete content without protecting the artists, or respecting the work of those who collaborated on it. Their management decisions show a complete lack of sensitivity or empathy. So once again, I say: "the new management’s time is over." Danielle: “As I mentioned earlier, our dream was to perform the music we want to make with Daepyonim, and we were working very hard toward that goal. But now, we can’t do that, and the plans we’ve made might not come to fruition. As Hanni unnie said earlier, just like that, the content that we released solely for our fans, for our bunnies, was instantly erased. And I truly can't understand why anyone would do this to a group, or just anyone in general. We were just working hard for the present, so what did we do wrong? A week after Daepyonim was dismissed, we found out that we could no longer work with the director we’ve been working with all this time, and we’re extremely anxious because we don’t know what will happen to the staff who have always worked hard for us. If they really care about us, they should stop saying that they prioritize the artists and instead let us do the music we love in an environment where we can be genuinely happy. Is that really so hard to do? It’s hard to fully express what’s in my heart, but in the end, the five of us just want to continue our activities with Min Hee-jin Daepyonim, as we have done so far.” Personally, they just want to be left alone—just "Leave us alone. Don't interfere; just leave us alone.” This is what they’re saying to both ADOR and HYBE. It's become clear now that HYBE and ADOR can no longer meddle with NewJeans, and I think things will flow that way from now on. The fans won’t stand still either. In entertainment, it’s not about titles like "I’m the CEO," or "I own shares." These are shallow understandings of what makes the entertainment business work. The real value created in this industry is the love and recognition from the fans. No amount of shares or CEO titles matter when that love disappears in an instant. NewJeans is asking to be left alone, and because of this, the new management of HYBE and ADOR can no longer act. I believe the future will unfold accordingly. One important thing I want to emphasize is that NewJeans is a unique group. They’re not just factory-produced idols. The distinctive nature of NewJeans’ music is felt by everyone who listens to them. For example, producer 250, who played a significant role in shaping the NewJeans sound, alongside other talented producers like those from the Banana Culture label, was brought in by CEO Min Hee-jin. This collaboration birthed the unique musical style of NewJeans, which many have come to appreciate. Their latest album, which incorporated elements like New Jack Swing, wasn’t just NewJeans making this music—it was 250's creative vision, drawing inspiration from 70s and 80s funk, R&B, and American black music, and reinterpreting them. If 250 no longer works with NewJeans, their music might become indistinguishable from other idol groups. The choreography, another element that set NewJeans apart, also contributed to their success. However, with the recent tensions, it's obvious that working with key figures like director Shin Woo-seok, who directed many of NewJeans' music videos, will become difficult moving forward. Director Shin wasn’t even interested in music videos before but was inspired to work with NewJeans after a conversation with Min Hee-jin. If Min Hee-jin and people like director Shin are ousted from ADOR, it’s inevitable that the core assets of NewJeans, including their distinctive musical and visual style, will vanish. This is not just a simple matter of one person being ousted—it’s about losing the core elements that made NewJeans what they are. WE STAND WITH NEWJEANS #버니즈_뉴진스와함께_준비갈완료 #방시혁_2주준다_민희진_복귀시켜라](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1836325806362235187/amplify_video_thumb/1836325301087072256/img/-KRorTRouoqNniiz.jpg)
![If you want to understand the Joe FlipperHead, Olivia Lamb, Karen Read and Aidan TurtleBoy Kearney chaos; FlipperHead (a guy named Nick from Philly) got confirmation Aidan recorded Karen Read. Then the recordings leaked. Basically, Olivia works for Aidan as a paralegal, now, but Olivia used to be close to Karen in the past (and Olivia and FlipperHead used to be close, as well, on a personal level). FlipperHead, for his part, is loyal to Olivia and Karen but FlipperHead doesn't like Aidan (much like other people close to Karen). Aidan, in turn, seems to be using Olivia to discredit Flipperhead (potentially without Olivia's permission). VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: [Opening remarks on social media and focus] Grant: [Lindsey Gaetani's] been talking about on social media, but let's get to that second. What I wanna start with—let me find the tab—I wanna start with the developments related to Aidan Kearney and Karen Read, okay? So we're gonna jump right into that, and what I have here is the actual discussion. Now, if you go on my X, you will be able to see the entire transcript. I'm gonna try to scroll with you as the video plays. It's a lot, okay? And then we're gonna do part two as well. So eventually, we're gonna hit part two of the transcript. I'm gonna pause, and we're gonna go to the second video. Now, this discussion—the reason why I wanna go over this—is I was listening to it, and I was like, "Wait a minute, I speak this language that they're all talking. I understand sort of the subtext of all of this, but they weren't really talking on the surface." It's a conversation between somebody named Chris, who Aidan Kearney calls a "koala," somebody named Joe Flipperhead—who's actually named Nick from Philadelphia, who was apparently close to a woman named Olivia Lamb, who is gonna come up in this as well. Now, Olivia Lamb did a lot of social media posts about the Karen Read and John O'Keefe trial on her profile on Twitter under Olivia. Now, then Olivia started—in a public announcement—saying that she started working for Aidan Kearney. And what you're gonna hear in this conversation is there's also a woman named—who else? There's a woman who's Australian that Aidan also knows named Lily. She introduces herself in the beginning, and then she's kind of the moderator-mediator. And then there's another woman that pops up in the middle named Erika Walsh. She only speaks two or three times. She's one of Turtle Boy's moderators. She interjects at two random times: one, when someone starts talking about Meredith; and two, when Aidan starts saying how bad the content of the conversation in question—that was allegedly recorded and sent to Karen Read, between Aidan and Karen—is for Karen. And then there's a third unknown voice that pops up at the end, who sounds like—it's a female, she's American. I don't know her voice, but it sounds like she's very close to Joe Flipperhead, this guy Nick. And she uses this phrase about Nick "leaving Olivia's ass" in a way that makes me think maybe this girl is close to Nick, and like, she got close to him after Olivia and Nick separated. Now you might say to yourself, "Oh dear God, why—first of all, Grant, why do you know all this?" These people post a lot; I don't know. Tracking this thing is something I've been doing for a while. So it's not like I went into it because I wanted to know who the hell Joe Flipperhead was, or Olivia Lamb was. They entered into a world that I knew a lot about because they were trying to cover this case. And so inevitably, I just had them on my radar, and when things pop up like this, I just connect the dots. [Background on Olivia Lamb] In terms of Olivia though—so she, I don't know. There was this weird situation, I think, at the end of trial one for Karen Read. So somewhere in—I don't know—late 2024, summer 2024 or so. Weird situation where Olivia kind of then, for a few months, wasn't around as much, or she was, but not as much. And then she came back around for Aidan and said she was working on his team or something. Now, Olivia—I don't think Olivia Lamb's necessarily a bad person. I think whoever she is, and whatever she's doing, is very intelligent. But if you kind of look into that family, her mom is named Christina Lamb, and her mom does boutique consulting for law firms. I think her mom might be a lawyer, but she doesn't really—I think the way that she does consulting is more like tactically how lawyers should think about how a case is presented in the public, et cetera, stuff like that. And you have to tie this into this Elizabeth Dombrowski person out of New York that runs this Good Counsel Legal Services that proclaimed that Jen Altman and whoever else were paralegals for Aidan. You see what I'm saying? And what I think Olivia's role is—I think she just does PR. She does some paralegal work clearly, but I think she's mostly like a PR specialist. But I think why there's so much obfuscation—and I'm giving you all this background, because the conversation you're about to hear makes no sense if you don't know all this background. The context there, I think, is that—I think Olivia is a person. Like, I think she is real. But I think the reason why there's so many smoke and mirrors is that she's a conduit for implausible deniability. In the world of public relations—especially this kind of public relations—is incredibly important. So I think she's like a conduit for more entrenched public relations interests, which—okay, fine. I don't see that as per se evil. I'm a critical theorist. So I study propaganda. So like, if you are doing anything that emerged from Edward Bernays's systemic weaponization of his uncle Sigmund Freud's study of the mass psychology of the mind—if you do any of that—you're inevitably gonna catch my attention. Not because I necessarily per se think it's evil, but because that's my wheelhouse. Like, I reconstruct public relations and then I figure out what's driving that. Okay. So she—Olivia—got on my radar because of that, not necessarily because she's evil. Same, because I never really saw it. Now maybe some of the witnesses in the trial would think differently, but that's not my role here. I am like—I'm an objective observer. And um, Olivia was never really cruel. Like she just does PR. So I wouldn't necessarily say like everything she did was like right. But if you look at her style, it's not polemical. It's not—it's mostly analytical. Okay. So that's not an aphoristic or manipulative or evil person really. That's a PR specialist. And this guy, Nick—very similar, Joe Flipperhead. Okay. If you look at his posts—like, I wouldn't exactly say he's a cruel human being, you know, like he memes and stuff. Okay. He's kind of like Dave Cullinane a little bit, but he's just like a human. And you can hear it in this conversation. Like Joe is the one who's really holding Aidan accountable. Joe Flipperhead—whose name is Nick—he's from Philly. And um, I noticed 'cause I watched the stream of them one time—I don't know—he seems all right. I don't have anything against him or Olivia. In fact, I think they did a damn good job, at least Joe. Because what you'll also see here is there's another subtext. What this conversation is about is an allegation that Aidan Kearney sent a recorded conversation to Karen Read—a conversation with her—and then someone—nobody knows who—sent the recording to Karen's lawyers, David Yannetti and Alan Jackson. Now, what's weird about this is that there's also—and I don't like, whatever, I guess it is what it is—but the host, one of the hosts, Chris, this Australian guy—he might be a New Zealander, I don't know. But anyway, he starts saying directly to Aidan, "Listen Aidan, you went to lunch with Meredith—this Turtle Boy's former girlfriend—but her name is Meredith O'Neill (Meredith O). She's a person; she has an existence outside of Aidan Kearney and whether—a lot of people, I think, rightfully so, will take issue with some of the things Meredith has posted. But that's for her soul to deal with. She has to reckon with it, reflect on it, whatever the fuck, okay? That's separate from; she exists outside of the fact that she used to date Aidan Kearney." And I just wanna make that as a blanket point that like Aidan Kearney does not own someone's soul because they had some connection to him at any point in time. These people are independent people who have their own lives. So Meredith O'Neill is her name. And Meredith—like, clearly something happened between Aidan and Meredith because over the past few weeks—like, first of all, there's some more subtext to this, which is Aidan's paralegal team before Olivia Lamb came on was Courtney Healy and this woman named Tina Murray. Tina Murray —I didn't even know THE NAME until two weeks ago—but I had seen her before because she had silver hair when she was in court one time. I had no idea who it was, but she was sitting next to Courtney Healy. Now, way back when Aidan Kearney was incarcerated in late 2023, early 2024—apparently these two women, Courtney Healy and Tina Murray, were very close to Aidan Kearney. Someone had his logins, allegedly. They were helping like post for him while he was in jail, et cetera. Now, there's time back to that as well. Jen Altman is a key figure in all of this. And the reason why is that Jen Altman was the reason that Aidan Kearney and Karen Read got hooked up initially through Natalie Wiweke-Bershneider or whatever her name is. Jen Altman was also among this weird group of people. It was Tina Murray, Courtney Healy, Jen Altman, I think, and maybe just them three, who had access to Aidan in jail on a paralegal list. And at one point, Tim Bradl, Aidan's lawyer, wrote down that Jen Altman was a lawyer. She got so mad that she messaged Bradl, and then those messages got leaked. So there's all this discontent brewing within Aidan Kearney's kind of like organization, if you wanna call it. I'd call it more like a—yeah, it's like a hierarchy. And like he's at the—it's like a politician almost, but he's not a politician. You have like a top person at the top, and then you have all these staffers, and you have to manage the staffers. That's what he's dealing with. And he's gotta keep everybody like in line because like at one person breaks—especially a key—all right, two things. One, there's a reason you compartmentalize information, and you're not gonna be able to get in these type of operations because nobody needs to know everything. If you did that, then everyone would be a weak link. The problem is though, in order to compartmentalize in a bureaucracy or a schema like this, you have to have some people who actually know what's going on. Those people are liabilities. They're weak links. If you have someone who is too close and they know how you compartmentalized information, they'll see the full picture. They're the weak link. That's Courtney Healy, Tina Murray, Jen Altman, Meredith, Lindsey a little bit. These people are the weak links for Aidan because they see the full picture, whether they are aligned with him, don't like him, etc. etc. It's just they're the biggest weaknesses for him because they see the full picture. That's why he tries to either control them—in my opinion—or destroy them. But Aidan's in a real tough spot here because you can't run that playbook on Karen Read. Clearly, these people are incredibly loyal to her. Flipperhead, Olivia, etc. They may have been helping Aidan, but they're incredibly loyal to Karen. Now, what I've always suspected is that the whole point of charging Aidan Kearney was—one, he did bad things to the witnesses in the retrial, Lindsey Gaetani. He did bad things allegedly. Okay, the grand jury indicted him. But I think Brian Tully and the MSP unit that investigated Aidan—they were more interested in two different goals. Okay, they had parallel objectives beyond just the criminal proceeding. One: get information about who the target of the federal probe was after August of 2023. And it was Tully's unit and Matthew Farwell related to the Sandra Birchmore murder coverup. Number two: I think Tully wanted—and Kate Peter and Marty Keach wanted—Aidan Kearney and Michael Morrissey wanted Aidan Kearney to flip on Karen Read. It was a pressure tactic. It was always just a pressure tactic. That's what I fully believe. Now, I'm not saying he didn't do bad things. I just believe in the mind of the DA—these people were using pressure tactics to get Aidan Kearney in a tactical position where he would flip. Why do I think this? Well, a few things. One: in the fall of 2023, between like August and November, Aidan Kearney didn't need an intermediary with Karen Read. Natalie was out of the picture, although I'm suspect, because there's this new text from Natalie from August saying that like she was still loyal to Karen Read—although ostensibly they had a falling out in June of 2023 because Natalie called Karen late at night and she was upset about it. I always thought that was BS. Now I know why it was BS because there's also a March 24 message about like Joe Warren and Natalie wanting to go to court. I just have this suspicion that Natalie was never really like against Karen. What Natalie was doing was using Turtle Boy as leverage with Karen's permission—using it's called a limited hangout. Limited information about Turtle Boy's culpability for witness intimidation to the MSP so that the MSP would trust Natalie—so that Natalie could relay information back to Karen about the ongoing investigation of Karen and Aidan for conspiracy under 2747 and witness intimidation under 26813B. Now they did try to eventually indict Karen on that in March of 2024 at No True Bill, but they can do it again. They got more evidence—the state in May of 2024 about Aidan saying in Facebook messages that one Karen told him not to go to Lindsey Gaetani's apartment on December 23rd, 2023, and then some other stuff—basically where Aidan was implying that someone told him to run Jen McCabe's license plates. Who would that be? Karen Read. He didn't say it but he implied it to Jenna Rocco and Amy D'Angelis and whoever else was in that internal chat that got leaked. So I really believe that the reason why Aidan Kearney was such a liability to Karen Read—and why she was saying it out loud—is that Karen Read always saw Aidan Kearney as vulnerable to flip. Why? Because Brian Tully did his homework—whatever his motives were—and he found a few things. And I think that him and Kate Peter profiled Aidan Kearney. That's why Kate Peter had some role in this—because they thought Kate Peter should really like Aidan in a lot of ways because he used to be colleagues. Two: I think the state police thought she saw his psyche—Aidan's psyche—and could help them profile him. Three: I think Kate Peter is very hard into the world, and Tully and those other people in the unit could say like, "Yeah, we're worried about Birchmore; we got to do damage control here. Nothing's really wrong with the O'Keefe death investigation," and just—they're going to find out about Birchmore—and Kate would go along with it. That's my opinion. But Tully gets this video of Aidan that he had sent to Lindsey—and it's out there on the internet. I don't want to play the content; it's sad. But this is why I think this is what was in the prosecutor's mind when they were going—and the MSP's mind—when they were going after Kearney. Yes, he did bad things—especially to people that knew the DA and Tully like McCabe, Jen McCabe, etc. But also Aidan was an Achilles heel for Karen. Think about MSP, right? And the way we're analyzing Aidan's weaknesses via weak links in the compartmentalization chain. Okay, flip it around and think about MSP thinking about Karen. What's a weak link in her compartmentalization chain? Aidan Kearney. Now, in that regard, Aidan Kearney—if he flips on Karen Read—guarantees a conviction for Karen Read for the state, even if they can't get her on John's death. It was a backup plan. Second to that, I think though—it's a dynamic situation—and that something must have fucking happened recently. Okay, and I've long thought—and we'll read Lindsey's post on this later because she was talking about it on Twitter overnight, and I was reading it this morning, and it made me think about this—I've long suspected that Kate Peter made a deal with Aidan Kearney in the past like 6-8 months. And the deal was involving the Norfolk DA and the people prosecuting Kearney, and the goal was to get Kearney to flip. And I also think Kate wants Kearney in the Netflix documentary that she's working on with Gretchen and Sandpaper—which, they don't really understand. Like, bro, you think you're getting my footage and me if you're going to enable Kate Peter and try to portray her as the Charlotte of the internet? What planet are you on? No. No, the answer is no. But anyway, I really believe that this deal was made because why else—and I think Karen found out about it—because why else would Karen—[we're going to—the conversation is going to clarify all this]—why else would Karen on Friday authorize Joe Flipperhead to release information that confirms that Aidan recorded Karen. Now, why Karen is not going to do this if she didn't hear the fucking recording? She's not a moron. She's a tactical genius. I'm telling you—I don't necessarily agree with all the things she's done. I personally think she's responsible for John's death, but like—she's a fucking tactical genius. And you have to understand in some sense—like she wouldn't do this unless it's real. Like someone sent her that recording, and I don't believe Aidan Kearney sent it to intermediaries because if Meredith is the closest person to him—or was—in the world, and he's going to lunch with her and will only play it for her allegedly—okay, there's no way in hell that he would just send it to people. I believe—whether through a fake account or otherwise—Aidan Kearney sent that to Karen's lawyers. That's just my opinion. I think there's strong reason for him to do it. It's a message. Okay. As a result, I think Karen Read doing this had to sense that this was the moment—like this was the moment where the decision was going to be made about whether or not he cooperated. And now is Aidan's kind of like signal flare that I'm thinking—from Karen Read's perspective—Aidan sending that recording to Jackson and Yannetti is a signal flare that if she doesn't act now, he's making the choice to flip on her. Okay, well, what did she just do? She in essence just put him in the worst position possible because he had to be able to—him and Kate Peter—had to sell the narrative in public that—and this is why I was on Lindsey's profile earlier. Let me see if I can bring that up—him and Kate Peter had to sell the narrative in public that Karen was worse than Aidan Kearney. All right, so let's take a look at Lindsey Gaetani's post here. Let's read this first and then let's look at the post from Kate Peter. So Kate Peter post last night: "Karen Read has killed a man before and to my knowledge, Aidan Kearney has yet to do anything like that. Take that as you will. Regardless, they're both giant DBAGs, but you can decide who is worse. My vote is Karen Read." That's Kate Peter—one of the closest people in the world right now to Brian Tully, Michael Morrissey, and the decision makers who were initially prosecuting Kearney—telling you in plain sight what's going on. So let's read Lindsey's post: "Yes, we already know a deal was made a long time ago. How cute of Kate trying to win over the turtle riders after she pretended she was still trying to put him in jail the past several months. Does anyone of the turtle riders know who Christine Gagne is? I have no idea who that is. Does anyone know who that is? That's the woman Kate Peter blamed for wiretapping charges with TB and the person she blamed when I asked her where her deleted Google Drive went with the state's evidence. Why would Kate blame this woman for deleting evidence when this woman's name was never mentioned during the grand jury or in a single email or police report? Interesting." Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So we know Kate Peter was providing evidence to the grand jury. We know that from the recently released court documents and discovery in the Kearney criminal case. Why was—why is Kate Peter blaming someone? Who is Christine Gagne, who—why is Kate blaming her when Kate was the one who was—there's evidence that Kate was directly providing this material to Tully, who was taking it to the grand jury. And by the way, I want people to understand: my anger here is not because Aidan Kearney was prosecuted. I think he should be held accountable. My anger here is because the people prosecuting him had ulterior motives. Lindsey Gaetani didn't have an ulterior motive. She was victimized. She was an unwitting pawn in this proxy war between Karen and the DOJ—Karen and the DOJ and Aidan on one side, and the Norfolk DA and the MSP unit on the other. But instead of trying to prosecute Aidan, it was all tactical. And nobody was told—that's the worst part. And that's why I'm so upset about all of this, because it was a disgrace. It was a disgrace to the process. If you're going to hold someone accountable, do it. You don't use it as leverage to get someone else. And if you're going to do that, be open with the people who are victimized. Otherwise, you are going to build resentment. Why would you ever want to be in a situation where you have to handle a victim? Because if they were made aware of what was actually going on, they would be upset. That is a very prime example—on its face example—that something is very wrong. Not because Aidan Kearney is absolved of liability or because I think he did nothing wrong. Absolutely not. No. Other way around. But because that kind of behavior—given impunity basically, because there's a larger fish—it's an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, not because the prosecution exists. In my opinion, a grand jury indicted him; he should be prosecuted. That's what happens when indictments get handed up. But because the aim of the prosecution was not to seek justice—it was to get—it was to pressure Kearney to flip on Karen Read. [Transition to the conversation] Now, to bring this all back—because we got to go—I want to look at this conversation here. I want to actually listen to this chat a minute. I'm going to explicate; I'm going to try to tell you what happens. "Hi, Bunny Towel. Hi, Christina. No haircut. But guess if you want to send donations—today's a good day for that. We got to get Towel to the end of the month. Towel's not going to be able to move very much for the next few days. So I could use some food if you want to send me some gift cards. I just need some help. All right. I'm a little towel. I got a lot going on. And anyway, so I'll—I'm sitting in my chair. That's as much as I can do right now. I can talk; my brain works. I can sit in my chair. I'm not doing anything else, but I should eat at some point. Anyway, so we're going to listen to this conversation because you have to think of all that background when you're analyzing. Why right now? Okay, why would Karen Read tactically right now burn Aidan Kearney? Aidan Kearney supporters are very loyal, but a lot of Aidan Kearney's base are becoming alienated because either they care more about Karen Read than Aidan Kearney or because Aidan Kearney's been on this weird tear recently where he like been attacking middle-aged women who are most of his fans. All right. Most of his fans are middle-aged women. And he goes after people's looks like whatever. So there's already this alienation happening. I believe the only reason Karen Read does this right now is because what it did—and what it's doing to Aidan Kearney—is it's decimating his support. Okay. Well, why are you decimating his support? Why are you forcing people to pick sides? Why would you do that right now? Either [he] cooperated or he's about to. All right. Now Karen Read—if she was—here's my read of this—if Karen Read was just going to cooperate, she wouldn't have done this this way. Okay. I'm sorry. It would have been completely different. I don't believe that she would have done it this way. I believe she would have done it a completely different way. And the reason why I believe that—we're going to read the text from Karen before we start listening to this. By the way, you can see I have the video here for you. What happened? By the way, just to give you a little more context. So this X Spaces that we're going to listen to—I have the full 37-minute X Space. This X Space, okay—it was before the text messages from Karen to Joe Flipperhead got released. So what you have to realize is these texts you're seeing on the screen got released because of this conversation. You're going to hear Joe Flipperhead say it.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1972809333571502470/amplify_video_thumb/1972808166204137472/img/XOOS2z0jZvC0WHzY.jpg)
![My fellow Kenyans, Many of you have seen my recent posts about the deadly cancer that is corruption in our country. In my last post, I tried to paint a picture of the disconnect between our potential as a country and the economic circumstances we find ourselves in today, and the connection between corruption and the incalculable pain and suffering and cruelty that is meted out every single day to the most vulnerable among us by thieves operating out of public office. And after covering the goings-on in Mandera County, I told you that in my honest opinion, our governments exist to cater for the filthy-rich lifestyles of the vilest and most corrupt among us, at the expense of everyone else. I received tremendous support from all of you, for speaking on behalf of so many struggling Kenyans who don’t have a voice, or the audience necessary to spark the much-needed discussion about where we are heading as a country. But even with all that support, I have received messages asking me to be careful. One compatriot told me: “prepare to be relentlessly pursued, threatened, enticed, guilt-tripped, and gas-lit”. This is from a someone who knows how our government operates, and how it uses violence and its monopoly on power to silence those who question why politicians are stealing so much. I am not naive about the dangers of speaking up and calling out thieves who control state machinery, and who possess the ability to shut me up in a few seconds. But I will tell you why we CAN NOT and MUST NOT keep quiet. In November of 2023, I stumbled upon the story of a young man from Turkana, Calvin Esekon Esewit , who, despite scoring an A-, and getting an acceptance into medical school, spent two years not knowing whether his dreams of becoming a doctor would ever come true. I was moved by that story in a way that I can never adequately explain. I could not understand how it is possible that, in our country, a young man who appears to be every parent’s dream child can spend two years in limbo while we as a country possess the ability to invest in our best and brightest. And so, I spent weeks trying to chase down Calvin to see how I could help him attend college. After a lot of searching, I finally found Calvin, and by this time he had managed to get some help and is now in college. While this story has a great ending, it did not to be this way. And we know that the number of cases that end like this, with some success, are a small fraction of those ones which end tragically, with broken dreams. This is what happens when corruption consumes anything and everything in a country. It destroys lives. See attached video to learn about Calvin's story. I tell you all this story because it provides context to today's topic. For one story like this one that you see on the news, there are millions that never make the news. But they are real situations, nonetheless. There are millions of your compatriots who are devastated by this killer cancer of corruption that is perpetuated by people that you and I have put into public office ostensibly to improve our lives. They go into these offices and abuse the trust you bestowed upon them and deny you and everyone else a decent opportunity in life. You see, Calvin and millions of other victims of this shameless level of corruption and plunder have no voice, and no real ability to look the thieves that are destroying lives and generations of Kenyans in eye and tell them to stop this unbearable pain and the cruelty. This is the reason I embarked on this journey to attempt to expose this shameful situation. Watch the attached video of Calvin’s situation, and I am sure that you will agree that the millions of Calvins in our country need a voice, NO MATTER THE RISK. The thieves that are destroying the futures of millions of children just so they can have beachside homes in Miami, Dubai and other places count on the idea that most people will fear for their lives, and therefore not speak up. They count on the growing apathy in the Kenyan psyche. But we cannot give in to that. We cannot cower to thieves. We must look them straight in the eye and tell them that they MUST STOP. If we don't, our children and their children are guaranteed the same level of cruelty. And so with that, today I want to talk about the utterly insane crime scene that is Turkana County. I don’t know any other way to describe it, other than, it is a “shit-show”. Just follow along, and let me know if you disagree. As I did in my previous commentary, I will ask you to indulge me a little bit, and allow me to use a couple of pictures, because pictures speak louder than a thousand words. The first picture shows the state-of-the art County Government offices, that the County Government of Turkana decided to invest an ungodly amount of money on. Close to a billion shillings. The second picture is a classroom in session. In Turkana County. These two realities are occurring in parallel in the same county, at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just tell you that I do not go out of my way to find bad news. I want stories that would help re-affirm our belief in the fundamental decency of human beings. When I find good news as I review these Counties’ decisions and how they behave with our resources, I will be the first one to report it to you. But I don’t have any good news today. I have bad news. If you read my commentary yesterday and were offended by what you saw, I am afraid you might not make it to the end of this article, because what you will hear will be quite shocking. The cancer of corruption, particularly at the County Government level, is worse than your wildest imagination. And so, as I like to do, I like to start off by putting some numbers on the table for us to use as reference points. Bear in my that all the information I put in this article is publicly available. Nothing came to me through a whistle blower. The first number is KSH 100 Billion. With a B. In the last decade or so, you and I, through the National Government, has sent over KSH 100 billion to Turkana County. To support recurrent expenditure, and development. For example, in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, we sent KSH 12.6 billion. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, we sent KSH 11.4 billion. And on and on and on. The second number is 1 million. This is the population of Turkana County. The third number is KSH 18.4 billion. This was Turkana County’s budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The fourth number is KSH 190 million. This was the amount of money that Turkana County was able to generate on its own accord within the county, from all its investments and other activities in the period in question. This number is an important proxy, in my view, for the value of the county’s economic prospects for the foreseeable future, and to people that are not driven by greed and corruption, would be an important consideration when they are thinking about how and where to deploy your money as taxpayers. If you are doing the math, Turkana County, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, was only able to raise 1% of the funds needed to keep the lights on. 99% came from you and I, and a tiny amount from grants. The next number is KSH 129, 040. This is the average ANNUAL [emphasis added] income of a resident of Turkana County ( Keep that number in mind when we are discussing the massive theft of public funds by Turkana County leaders. The next number is 80%. 80% of the residents of Turkana County live below the poverty line. They have a really difficult time putting food on the table. ( The next number is KSH 12 Million. This is the basic salary of the Governor of Turkana County before other benefits that, as I explained yesterday, can often double the salary. Remember the “housing allowance”, the “hardship allowance”, the “commuter allowance”, the “risk allowance”, the “extraneous allowance”, etc.? Remember that? I still cannot figure out, for the life of me, what “extraneous” means in the context of County business, but we don’t time to dwell on this. The next number is 93. The Governor of Turkana County makes 93 times the average Turkana County resident’s annual income. 93 times! The next number is 82%. This was the percentage of people that were illiterate in Turkana County in 2013 ( Could not read or write. A point to note about the above literacy figure. Ten years later, and despite over KSH 100 billion is spent in Turkana County, including many billions for education, that literacy rate HAS NOT CHANGED ONE BIT. Only 20% of the population can read or write today. ( KSH 829 million. This is how much it cost to build the County Government offices. Yes, the ones shown in the first picture. KSH 120 million. The County Government decided that it was prudent to pay a contractor KSH 120 million to construct the Governor’s personal residence. Get this, even after this payment, no construction took place. The money was stolen. All of it. KSH 90 Million. This is the amount that the County Government paid to another contractor, to build the Governor a mansion, having previously lost KSH 120 million. So, the tally for the Governor’s residence now stands at KSH 210 million. Never mind that the limit allowed by law is KSH 45 million. KSH 5 billion. In the last days of his term in office, an outgoing Governor of Turkana, Koli Nanok, EGH. , sought to inflate pending bills by adding KSH 5 billion so that it can be paid to his criminal cartel. KSH 5 billion. We have our key numbers, ladies and gentlemen, so let us discuss. So, we have a county that is dead last in literacy, and in the top 2 of the poorest counties in the republic. Only 20% of the population can read. The Governor earns 92 times the average citizen. The Governor lives in a house that cost over KSH 200 million. When he leaves his house in the morning, he goes to his office that cost KSH 829 million. And this is all happening when 80% of the County residents struggle to put food on the table. Those are the facts, and they are not in dispute. During the same time, the County Government geniuses decide to build the Speaker of the County Assembly a house. And a home office, and a garage. The house was initially estimated to cost KSH 75 million. But due to circumstances that not a soul in the government could explain to auditors, the contract expired before the house was completed, and the County Government found a new contractor to complete the job for an additional KSH 29 million. But this palace in the jungle worth apparently worth over KSH 100 million in Turkana County was not enough. The County proceeded to build the Speaker a guest house for another KSH 19 million, and a few other amenities, and so the whole cost went to KSH 276 million! The legal limit for a Speaker’s house is KSH 35 million, and they spent close to KSH 130 million just for one residence. By this time, I am sure you are getting tired of these obscene numbers. You and I work, and pay taxes. Nobody pays you 92 times the income your average neighbor is making. And for sure nobody will drop KSH 100 million to build you a house. These are the perks of working in government in a poor country. Go figure. And so, as a country, we need to answer for ourselves the question I posed yesterday, which is, what is the point of government? What is its role in our lives. If this level of criminality and pillaging can occur in our country in the midst of so much poverty, questioning the need for government is a totally valid question. I said in my last post that, when the average citizen looks at the thug on the street and the government, and is unable to discern any meaningful difference between them, that society from that point on is on its journey to becoming a failed state. A journey to anarchy. Over the last two months or so, Kenyans have been shouting at the top of their lungs, begging for their government to listen. To hear them out. Kenyans have asked that their government stop this unbelievable level of plunder. Dozens of Kenyans have died, thousands injured, and many more are missing today. To this day, the people that govern us continue to use the power of the gun to subdue Kenyans, until they can take everything in their sight. And so, as a society, we all have to ask whether today there is any difference between the thug on the street and our governments. Every Kenyan will have to answer this question for themselves. And before answering this question, everyone needs to remember the many Calvins in our society. Smart, upright children whose only crime is to be born in an unforgiving, lawless, and corrupt purgatory that is Kenya today. For myself, I have concluded that there is no difference between the thug on the street and our governments, county and national alike. If you can see any meaningful difference, let me know. I am willing to listen. So despite over KSH 100 billion in money sent to Turkana County, there is almost no measurable improvement in people’s life today. None. And it makes sense, when you look at how that money is spent. I want you to forget for a second the obscene obsession by the County Government with spending ungodly amounts of money on themselves. The houses, etc. If you step back and look at how the government is actually spending the hard-earned money on other things, you will be depressed. I am telling you that I wept three times in the middle of the night trying to make sense of this crazy situation in Turkana County. Three times. I have never imagined that human beings can be so greedy and cold-blooded. Think about this: In the couple of years I reviewed, the County spent around KSH 400 million annually in “tourism” initiatives, including marketing, and apparently upgrading certain facilities. KSH 400 million for tourism. In Turkana County. In 1 year. KSH 400 million per year in marketing and other money pits. The government’s own website says that the county gets around 3000 visitors per month. Around 36,000 per year. That’s them saying that, on their website. Are you curious to know the return on that KSH 400 million investment? I have an answer for you. Remember that I told you that the County has never raised more than KSH 200 million in a year within the county, despite its KSH 18.4 billion budget? Let me walk you through the breakdown of the absolutely embarrassing shit-show that is the County Government’s “own source revenue” operations. In 2022-2023, the County Government collected KSH 190 million locally against their KSH 18.4 billion budget. 1% of the budget. Remember, there is absolutely no requirement on the County to cut costs, or achieve certain local revenue targets today. So they raised KSH 45 million in single business permits, KSH 72 million in CESS, KSH 8 million in market fee, KSH 9 million in “slaughter fees”. And then finally, there is the return on the tourism investment that you were looking for. A whopping KSH 209, 000 in “park fees”. KSH 209,000 in fees, after investing KSH 400 million. And so, take this as an example and extrapolate it across the entire budget, and you can see how one can spend KSH 100 billion and get NOTHING in return. You don’t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of this situation. Let me explain using an example that should illustrate the utter dimwittedness of this situation. Remember the KSH 100 billion sent to Turkana by you and me? Part of this amount is supposed to be for “service delivery”, or “recurrent expenditure”. Usually about 70% of the budget. The balance, 30%, is designed to go to development projects. With that in mind, from KSH 100 billion, the County apparently has made KSH 30 billion worth of investments, right? 30% of the KSH 100 billion. Now, if you employed someone to run a business for you, and they asked you to invest KSH 30 billion, which is no small fortune, at some point you would have to start seeing returns, right? That’s common sense, isn’t it? So, when we look at the revenues streams that make up this paltry sum of KSH 190 million, and see things like “slaughter fees’ and “market fees”, what does it tell you? It tells me there is no real “development” happening in that county. Trust me, if you had real development totaling KSH 30 billion, you would have corporate taxes in the hundreds of millions or billions, a booming real estate market, rising wages and standards of living, etc., low unemployment, etc. You would not have 80% of the people living hand-to mouth, and a County Government that can not afford to support itself for 5 days out of the year that has 365 days! We do not have enough time, trust me, to deal with the shit-show that is Turkana County. Dealing with that mess would require a forensic team. I will just highlight a few of other “in your-face” type of theft of public funds, and then conclude my submission. A government that has a budget of KSH 18.4 billion annually, and which has never raised more than 1% of its budget had the wisdom to do the following with your money: · Spend KSH 222 million on a project building something that NOBODY uses. You got that right. They spent KSH 222 million on a facility that NOBODY uses. KSH 222 million gone to waste, in a county that is dead last in pretty much all measures of human progress. · Remember the County Government offices that cost KSH 829 million? The County spent KSH 82 million on “air-conditioning” for that building. · Despite the County Spending hundreds of millions for the top three officers of the County, the Governor and his Deputy, in the 2022-2023 year, illegally charged the county (you and I) KSH 2.2 million in housing allowance! · Built two facilities for KSH 16 million, that were completed, but NOBODY uses them. · Entered into a contract for the construction of a plastic use facility for KSH 13 million in 2021. The contractor gets paid KSH 4.9 million, and has never been seen since. · Paid out KSH 62 million in salaries that were not supportable in just one year. They could not point to anybody and say, that is who we paid. · Paid out KSH 27 million in legal fees that nobody could say what they related to. And the County’s Legal Advisor, who, in 2022-2023, had a budget of KSH 123 million, apparently did not know anything about it! · Had an outstanding bill at Kenya Revenue Authority in the amount of KSH 486 million, that did not show up on the County Government’s financial statements. Think about that. KSH 486 million owned to the Kenya Revenue Authority, and that liability is not on the financial statements! This only means that someone took those funds for themselves, which is why the liability would be missing from the county’s books. · Could not account for KSH 367 million in expenditures for 2022-2023. KSH 367 million, in unexplained expenses. · Awarded a contract worth over KSH 200 million to a bidder with no bank statement, against the law. This contract was entered into and approved before the statutory time after the bidding process lapsed. Someone was in a hurry to get paid. KSH 200 million, illegally awarded to a bidder who did not have a 6-month bank statement. · Apparently purchased KSH 1.5 billion in assets in 2022-2023, but kept no records of the said assets. For this reason, NOBODY can verify where these assets are located. KSH 1.5 billion. Let me just say this. In my last article, the most common critique was that it was too long. Too many words. I did not intend to make another long article. Trust me when I tell you this, we do not have the time to detail half of the problems in Turkana County. For just 1 year! We do not. Now, you recall my point about how societies descend to madness and anarchy. In our country today, our leaders are accusing those of us who are agitating for honest and transparent governance of being traitors to the country. They call us anarchists, criminals, and merchants of chaos. They are questioning our patriotism. You have all seen the government and its horde of propagandists threatening the Ford Foundation and others because they may have helped civil society keep the lights on, and investigative journalists to have the capacity to continue to do the Lord’s work of investigating criminality in government. As though citizens are so dumb and ignorant, that they cannot see what is going on. The reason why millions of Calvins in this country will never graduate from college and earn a decent living is not because of the Ford Foundation. No. It is because of the thieves we have in office today, like the ones in Turkana County. In this post, I copy our leaders, the President and his deputy. I copy them because I want them to help Kenyans understand the following conundrum, about crime and criminals. There is nothing so special or peculiar about criminals or where they pop up. There are criminals in the US, Canada, France, and other places. Just like we have criminals in Kenya. The difference between banana republics and failed states, and civilized societies, is WHAT we do to and about criminals. In civilized societies, criminals are prosecuted and punished heavily. They are shunned. In some places, those charged with serious crimes such as corruption are executed. These are societies that are committed to sending the message that corruption, which robs citizens of their rights, is not acceptable. And they demonstrate this commitment by heavily punishing those who steal from the most vulnerable in society. In Kenya, we see the opposite. Criminals are exalted. They are promoted and embraced in government. It was just last week that the president unveiled his nominees for his Cabinet. Among them, are the likes of Hassan Ali Joho, EGH. , @GovWOparanya , and Davis Chirchir, ALL people who have been accused or charged with massive corruption against Kenyans. And am sure you remember that I mentioned Koli Nanok, EGH. , the man who tried to steal KSH 5 billion in his last days in office. Would you believe it if I told you that he works in government, at State House? He plunded billions of your money, got no measurable improvement in the lives of his subjects, and now has a government job in State House. Let that sink in. And so, the question is, how is it that in a country of 55 million people, with thousands of highly qualified people who have never ever stolen from Kenyans, he ends up with the criminals and thieves in the government, despite the fact that their crimes are in the public domain? How is this possible? Is it possible that these thieves possess a certain unique ability to run government, save Kenyans billions, and solve problems in a way that the president performs a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefits outweigh the costs of their theft? If not, what message does it send to Kenyans, when their own president puts into office known thieves? I think that is a fair question, don’t you? Dr. Ekuru Aukot Rigathi Gachagua William Samoei Ruto, PhD Okiya Omtatah Okoiti Citizen TV Kenya Nation Breaking News TI-Kenya CNN County Government of Turkana](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1818840969066037558/ext_tw_video_thumb/1818834432502951936/pu/img/ab9du2ECDO-A_5N7.jpg)
![Just in $AMD Anush "Speed is the moat"|ROCm🎙️ In the race to define the future of AI, what's the one advantage that truly lasts? It's not proprietary tech, argues Anush Elangovan Elangovan, VP of AI Software at AMD , but the sustainable speed of innovation. He explains why AMD is rejecting the "walled garden" model for its open source ROCm stack, betting that an open community flywheel is the key to victory. Listen to understand how this open strategy is designed to out-innovate closed systems by empowering developers to solve everything from frontier-model challenges to the mundane, everyday problems that define the "last mile" of AI. AMD ROCm Software: Part 1 Transcript [00:00:00] Andrew Zigler: Joining me is Anush Elangovan, VP of AI software at AMD. And when people talk about AI compute, the conversation often stops at hardware specs, but it's more than just physical chips that win the game. It's also the software ecosystems supporting them. [00:00:18] Andrew Zigler: The prevailing strategy in the industry has been to build something like a walled garden. You know, something closed, proprietary locks, developers in. But AMD is betting on an entirely different play, open source acceleration, and with rock, their open source AI software stack. AMD is building not just hardware parity, but an innovation flywheel that's powered by the community with interoperability and the freedom to scale without all of that pesky lockin. [00:00:48] Andrew Zigler: And in this world, speed is your moat and how fast you can innovate while your platform remains open, flexible, and standardize across all of its applications. That's what we're gonna explore [00:01:00] today. So Anush, I'm really excited to have you here. Welcome to Dev Interrupted. [00:01:04] Anush Elangovan: Thanks for having me. Uh, super excited to chat about it. [00:01:07] Andrew Zigler: Amazing. Well, let's go ahead and dive right in with kind of what I laid it out with in the beginning, the idea of the moat and it being about speed. I wanna unpack that a bit because that came from you when you and I first spoke. And I, and I want to know, you know, how do you define speed inside of AMD beyond just things like hardware, benchmarks. [00:01:27] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, that's a very good question. So when we typically talk about speed, everyone's like, Hey, hardware benchmark specs, right? Like, uh, memory bandwidth or, or flops. And that is one important part of it, uh, AMD does very well. With that, we do have, a, a very good history of executing on that axis. [00:01:47] Anush Elangovan: But when I say speed is the moat, it is about, uh, how we prepare, how we build the muscle to run the race for a long time and run it fast. And it is [00:02:00] not about a single point in time that you've, you've beat some you know, benchmark and, and you declare victory. It's about building the ability to consistently develop and deliver. [00:02:13] Anush Elangovan: Both hardware and software innovation at scale and do it fast, right? Like, you know, we we're increasingly getting to a point where models come out and they're, uh, you know, a year or two ago it was like, Hey, they work on AMD on day zero, which is great, but now they are performing on AMD the day it releases, right? [00:02:32] Anush Elangovan: So, what does it take to Prefetch where the industry is going? Be prepared to intercept. At that point is what you know, I, I refer to as you know, the, the speed factor in, in creating this mode, right? And the mode is just shed all things that hold you back and run as fast as you can. [00:02:53] Anush Elangovan: Uh, because the pace of innovation that is, uh, being seen in, in AI [00:03:00] industries is just. Amazing. Right? And it's like, it's transformational at at how you generate electricity. It's transformational as at how you build data centers. It's transformational at how you deploy compute, networking. It's transformational at what kind of use cases you, you know, uh, use AI for. [00:03:17] Anush Elangovan: Uh, and for that, you need to be prepared to, see what comes tomorrow and be prepared to run the race tomorrow. [00:03:23] Andrew Zigler: Yeah, it's a really great perspective because it highlights that it's not just like a checkpoint that you run through. I like how you called out, like it's not just hitting that benchmark or being the best in class at that moment, in that snapshot, it's about having a. The throughput and about having that dedication to the idea and continuing to deliver on it. [00:03:43] Andrew Zigler: It's not just crossing the threshold, but it's also being the engine. And that's what, that's what protects a business. That is the moat, because the moat is that innovation layer, the faster and more, uh, future forward. That you can work and think, [00:04:00] you know, the better. Uh, we, we talk a lot about like future forward work styles. [00:04:04] Andrew Zigler: Like what are the things I could be doing right now today that are gonna be like, way more useful tomorrow? Let, let's abandon those, workflows that are older and that kind of like, that translates into. An advantage when you work that way. You know, what kind of things have you learned working with, uh, like across all spectrums of people who would use ROCm, right? [00:04:23] Andrew Zigler: You have like the developers, but then you also have the enterprises and you have this large span of adoptees, right? So what is the, what does that look like that you learn? [00:04:32] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, so, so the way I look at it is there are gonna be pockets of different, uh, you know, cadences, right? Like, so people who are deploying in enterprises, for example, right? The validation and how long it takes for them to deploy an LLM that's secure. It's, with guardrails, et cetera, maybe longer. [00:04:52] Anush Elangovan: but you still have to go through the process and you have to be prepared to like, walk that walk to deploy an enterprises. That doesn't mean it's [00:05:00] not fast, that's as fast as you can do for that industry, right? And if you are deploying AI in healthcare, right, it's, it's got its own, uh, cycle. [00:05:07] Anush Elangovan: but in each one of these, you want to see how, like, go down to the essence of what is it that you actually have to do. And, you know, I, I, I like how you framed it. It's like it's, you shed your prior assumptions of how things are done, right. And, and you kind of build up from a, uh, first principles, uh, approach to say, this is how I could use AI to unlock, whatever I'm doing. [00:05:33] Anush Elangovan: And, and, some of it, you know, it's good to really step back and look at. Just question every part of it, right? Like right now you're getting chat GPT and, Gemini competing for like, math, olympiads and, and, uh, college, uh, reasoning, uh, tests. Right? And, and those are like that, that is amazing and increasingly like complex tasks that they're trying to do. [00:05:58] Anush Elangovan: But there may also be like. [00:06:00] More mundane things that AI could, could get applied to. Right? And, and so when we think about shedding old ways, you wanna shed it not just in like the tip of the spear. It's like, you know, I'm gonna see what's the frontier model. It's also, it could be something as simple as. [00:06:18] Anush Elangovan: How do you choose a, a movie, uh, you know, like a recommendation system, right? Or, or, uh, an automated, uh, flight, uh, rebooking system. So the moment, you know, your flight is late, uh, right now it's a notification, right? It's like, oh, you got a text message saying your flight's late. And I got that like three times this week. [00:06:38] Anush Elangovan: But anyway, uh, and, and, and, and, I was just like, okay, so if I were to rethink this. All this MCPs that we have that should be hooked up into an MCP that says, your flight's delayed. Here are your options. If you want, you know, these are the paid options. Yeah. Here are the free options. This will get you back into your you know, Toronto airport [00:07:00] tonight. [00:07:00] Anush Elangovan: Or if you stay, here's a hotel plus this, plus this, plus. It's just like, go ahead is all I should say. Versus now I'm like, okay, can someone, you know, can I call a travel agent? Can I do this? Can I go online and log into And you know, so we gotta fundamentally rethink even those like small, nuances of, things that we do that can be automated out and AI is really, really good at doing something like this, right? Maybe I just explained an AI startup idea right now. Somebody should just start that. [00:07:29] Andrew Zigler: I think you did. Yeah, you definitely did. Someone, one of our listeners is definitely going to lift that off of you. I, I, I, you know, I hate being on the receiving end of those. You feel a little helpless and then you have to like, follow the whole flow. So I know what you mean. Like I, I like how you called out that the build and this like. [00:07:45] Andrew Zigler: Where speed is your moat and the innovation layer is protecting you, is what makes you better than your competitors. How you scale that and you bring that to market. So by understanding the problems that you're solving, uh, throwing away those older assumptions, but also [00:08:00] recognizing that like. We're building every single day, new things and new ways of using stuff that we're still figuring out the implications of. [00:08:08] Andrew Zigler: And so when you have a lot of velocity and you're introducing a lot of new ideas, and maybe you have that workflow now that automatically rebook your flight off of your late flight text message, and uh, I know I would certainly use it, but you know, what kind of philosophies guide the way that y'all think about building this ecosystem to manage that stability while letting folks. [00:08:29] Andrew Zigler: Play with the speed and the assumptions and the airplane re bookings. [00:08:34] Anush Elangovan: so, so I think, you know, we need to peel one layer down, right? and the philosophy is, Hey, we, we just discovered electricity, right? And you know what we're gonna do? We are gonna make motors, uh, or dynamos, right? Like engines. Uh, sure. We don't know if it's gonna be a Ferrari that you're gonna make, or it's a a a a dump truck. [00:08:57] Anush Elangovan: That's good for doing this. But let's [00:09:00] let, which is also required, right? You need a dump truck. You need a garbage truck. And, [00:09:04] Andrew Zigler: Yeah. You need the [00:09:04] Anush Elangovan: course you need, uh, a Ferrari for a midlife crisis, right? So, [00:09:09] Andrew Zigler: precisely. [00:09:10] Anush Elangovan: But, but my, uh, point is what do we build next? And, uh, and this is what I meant by like, okay, let's, let's take those baby steps to build the. [00:09:20] Anush Elangovan: Infrastructure that's required that we know we'll have to use, right? So, so if I just discovered electricity, okay, great. Now one, how do I save this electricity and how do I use it? So there's battery technology, so you need to do something like that, right? Like so. But then you also want to make it into an actionable thing. [00:09:37] Anush Elangovan: You want to make it for like automobiles, or you wanna use it for, you know, powering, uh, entire cities. So it is that transformational. So, uh, AI is that transformational. So, if you distill down, it'll, it'll come down to how do we think about, what we can do with this this fundamental technology that, We may not be aware of what it [00:10:00] is gonna unlock next, but at least you know the next step is clear, right? It's like a dense fog, you know, it's gonna be like, it, it's the right path. You see the light, but it's kind of like out there and, and the steps you're taking are concrete and you're like, okay, this is good. [00:10:16] Anush Elangovan: I, this is better than where I was or where we were. So we are moving forward. So you can build with the. Intuition from what you see in the short term and a tactical view, but towards what you think the future is gonna be. [00:10:28] Andrew Zigler: Right. You almost like we're all in this like fog of war, right? And like you said, you're reaching out and you're trying to step through it. You could think of it too, as like you're in the dark and your hands are up in front of you and you know that. You're, you're not gonna run your face into a wall because your hands are out in front of you, but you're not gonna maybe do much better than that. [00:10:45] Andrew Zigler: So that's kind of like, I think the eco, the, the industry, the world that we find ourselves in, uh, and we all have to, then this becomes the power of an ecosystem, of a group of people working together to create that layer of, [00:11:00] uh, of establishing the [00:11:01] Anush Elangovan: exactly. And I, I, I just, instead of, you know, saying fog of war I describe it as like, you're in this. Beautiful valley with like a morning, uh, fog that's in. You can smell the flowers. You, you hear the birds. You are like, okay, it's, we are in like, uh, utopian paradise and yes, I just need to like, continue the walk, right? [00:11:24] Anush Elangovan: and then move forward with that, conviction that you're in the right spot. [00:11:27] Andrew Zigler: Yeah. So let's talk about that ecosystem world. This nice, I love how you describe it, this grassy side of a hill in the morning that's covered in some mist and maybe we can't see 30 feet in one direction, but it sure is a beautiful hill and it smells nice. And so we're all here. And why is, in that world, why is. [00:11:44] Andrew Zigler: You know, open source, their strategic advantage that y'all are going for in the AI hardware market. And, and then how does like ROCm turn that into wins for people within that ecosystem? [00:11:56] Anush Elangovan: you know, the, the way we look at it is this, is kind of like how I view [00:12:00] AI and the ecosystem, right? But, but it is for everyone to enjoy. Uh, and so we do want to make sure that. You know, it is, uh, beneficial for everyone. [00:12:09] Anush Elangovan: The ecosystem can come in and, and innovate. It's an open innovation engine. and uh, it is very different from, you know, having a walled garden with, Hey, only I know how to do this and I'm gonna do it and throw it over the fence and you can use it or keep walking, right? So we'd like to be good citizens that way, but also. [00:12:30] Anush Elangovan: Uh, it is self-fulfilling in a way, right? Like it, the, the pace at which we innovate with open source is unmatched. Like, you know, our serving engines are like VLLM and, and sg l. Those things, uh, those frameworks are like super, super aggressive in terms of how fast they come out with features and how fast they can you know, get performant models out. [00:12:52] Anush Elangovan: And that compared with what, uh, you'd get from, you know, the likes of like T-R-T-L-L-M or something is always lagging, right? Because you [00:13:00] just can't keep up with you know, 200 commits a week just on one particular model to get that model really performant [00:13:06] Andrew Zigler: And, and, and in that world where, you know, everyone can enjoy the winds of this, what kind of customer stories or innovation stories have really stood out to you and excite you about building and creating this place for developers? [00:13:19] Anush Elangovan: Yeah. So I think the parts that are super exciting for me are when when we get to see a customer that is first skeptical. Then they start a little like, okay, fine, we'll give you a chance. Uh, we do a simple, uh, POC and then they're like, huh, this seems to work. Yeah, we told you it works. [00:13:42] Anush Elangovan: You don't have to change one line of code. Really? Yes, no need to change one line of code. Okay, let's try a production workload. So then they try it. Oh, you're more performant than the competition. Yes. We're more performant than, than the competition. So how much does it cost? And we're like, oh, it's your TCO is better with, uh, [00:14:00] AMD. [00:14:00] Anush Elangovan: So again, they're like, wow, okay, good. So now how do we deploy at scale? And then we go deploy it at scale. And when they give a thumbs up on that and they say, this is good, right? That's when you know, you, you see it go full circle from like, oh, we, we've never heard about AMD to like actually deploy to tens of thousands of GPUs In the order of a few months, right? It, it, it really is fascinating to see and very exciting and invigorating to [00:14:28] Andrew Zigler: Yeah. At like a great exposure to a lot of interesting problems. And, and then people using the infrastructure, the, the technology available to solve those problems. Really specific problems by the way, that's often why they're bringing their data and AI to it, uh, is because it is really specific and important for them. [00:14:45] Andrew Zigler: And there's a, a lot I think that other engineering orgs can learn and even emulate from AMD's success and, and having this open source ecosystem and it causing this acceleration within. You [00:15:00] know, uh, customers and enterprises that use and adopt the tools and, and, and that creates an advantage. And that goes back to why we're talking and like the real thesis of our conversation today. [00:15:10] Andrew Zigler: So how do you think engineering leaders that are listening to this and obviously tapping into this great success AMD has from an open source flywheel, how do you think other, other folks building in the same space can foster that open, first, that open source oriented culture in order to, you know, accelerate their innovation goals? [00:15:29] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, that's a very good question. So the startup that um, was acquired by AMD we, we built, I mean, we started off doing iot stuff and you know, smart ring and all that, right? But in the, the end of like, uh, and not the end, the last six years of the company was building ML compilers. [00:15:47] Anush Elangovan: And ml, ML compilers are like super, uh, complicated, sophisticated, advanced algorithms, dah, dah, dah. but it was all open source, right? So our VCs were like, wait, what do you mean your core [00:16:00] IP is open source? And um, the speed is the moat applied even then, right? It was just like, yes, if you have an idea that. [00:16:08] Anush Elangovan: Because someone saw this idea that you are, they're gonna be able to catch up, then you probably have the wrong idea anyway. But if they are, you know, you execute and they're gonna catch up, that you should assume they're gonna catch up. Right? So you gotta move forward. So keeping it open source is super important. [00:16:25] Anush Elangovan: But also to your question on like, you know, the learnings from an AMD standpoint, right? If there are, hard problems, I'd say dig in and work through it, right? Like there's no way but through it, right? That should be the simple mentality. And more, uh, frequently than not. you'll see that you'll just make it through in a, in, in good form. [00:16:52] Anush Elangovan: But if you doubt it and you're like, oh, I don't know if I should commit, if I'm, I, you know, what should just commit to do the right thing [00:17:00] every step, right? Every step, and just keep taking one step in front of the other. And in no time you'll see that you'll be running. Right. And, and yes, the first few steps will be like, yeah, everyone's complaining about your software quality. [00:17:15] Anush Elangovan: Everyone's complaining about this and that, and it doesn't work. And, and a few steps in, you know, you get, you get the hang of all the complaints that are coming in. You get the feedback loop. You're like, okay, what, what are you prioritizing again? One step in front of the other, right? You just keep knocking that out and then you get to a point where you're, it just becomes second nature, right? To do the, to do the right thing. And, and then yes, if someone gives you two options, you'll be like, fine. This is, uh, you know, there's always the resource trade off. There's always a human capital trade off, but what's the right thing to do? of course, I, I'm pragmatic about what we choose, but, but if the right thing for your long-term success is dig in, go first, principles, make it [00:18:00] happen. [00:18:00] Anush Elangovan: Well. Then just go for that. There's, there is no shortcut to [00:18:04] Andrew Zigler: acknowledging, you know, how it aligns with your mission, your core company goals, and what you're looking to achieve. And, and I, I love how you rightfully called out that in the open source world and you know, you have your technology that you've built, what you think is your moat upon, right? [00:18:22] Andrew Zigler: It's your code and, and to open source that, or to just make it where anyone could peer in is, you know. Scary in one regard, but two, it just kind of feels like you're handing away your throne room in some kind of sense, a very direct feeling sense. But the ultimately, you were really right to call out, and this is something I think about all the time, that the real power there is still the speed This the speed. [00:18:42] Andrew Zigler: That was the moat at the beginning of our conversation. It's the speed in combination with your. Very specific domain understanding of what you're building and what you're creating, and your new role as the steward of that world and how people plug into it, which [00:19:00] has frankly, a lot more influence and power than lording over a closed. [00:19:04] Andrew Zigler: You know, repository or an ecosystem, and like you said, like throwing things over the wall. Sure. There, there might be people always on the other side of that wall, but you're not gonna have a great connection with them. You're not gonna be able to really clearly understand them. I, I like your metaphor of the side of the field of the mountain a lot more. [00:19:23] Andrew Zigler: But, but in the, in this world, you know, where. That speed is, is the power and, and open source is just one way that you can harness that speed to get really far ahead and to innovate. , There's other parts of this equation that you can be experimenting with too, and I'd love to pick your brain about them as a software leader and, and, and one of them is about looking forward and kind of understanding that future that we're all building towards and beyond today's models and hardware. [00:19:48] Andrew Zigler: You know, what do you see as the next major bottleneck or opportunity in the AI compute space? As, as you know, enterprises and folks start to get a little more mature about what's available to [00:20:00] them. [00:20:00] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, I think, the bottleneck and opportunity is, uh, what I'd call, call walking the last mile of ai. Right. Uh, and like I I, I gave you an example, uh, previously, but, but it's similar to that. It's like there are cases where Humans have so many, uh, things to do in your day. You know, like the, if we sit down and actually had a customer focus like, okay, these customers lives, I'm gonna save four hours of this customer's life. And if you actually sit down and look at all of that, it'll be. Easily automatable, easily you know, uh, applicable, uh, for ai, right? [00:20:39] Anush Elangovan: Like, but then making it happen is gonna take a little bit, right? It's like maybe it's, uh, paying your utility bill, right? Or something like that, right? Or, or, your healthcare explanation of benefits. Uh, like, I'm sure you get an explanation of benefits, and I'm like, I, I don't even know what that thing is. [00:20:55] Anush Elangovan: It's just like EOB and like. [00:20:57] Andrew Zigler: it's a big, a big old PDF. Yeah, [00:21:00] exactly. [00:21:01] Anush Elangovan: Like, like, I'm like great straight to the, uh, shredder, right? And but that could be, you know, automated with the ai, right? It, it, it'd be like, Hey, the summary of this thing is you went and visited this day. Everything is okay. Everything is paid for, so don't worry, it's not a bill. [00:21:17] Anush Elangovan: That again, the same, uh, thing, but the sense of what that information overload is could be. Digested by ai, uh, accumulated over time and retrieved when you need it. Like, I don't, I actually don't even need to know this EOB right now, unless of course, whenever I need to know it, that maybe, you know, like for some benefits I need to figure out what do, what did I do over the past year and how do I apply it? Source:](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1994972575768727743/amplify_video_thumb/1994972220930621440/img/_5CCZJyz89oDfqQJ.jpg)
