The Journey to a New Industrial Evolution

We are in the midst of the most exciting technology evolution, greater than when the Internet changed our lives almost five decades ago. My excitement comes from seeing it as a journey to a world where humans and AI collaborate, developing outcomes that neither can create separately.

This living article looks out of the window on our AI journey as new ideas and landscapes come into view and speed by. It begins here and covers new developments and challenges live on my website at cybyr.com/aijourney. The first part of the article draws upon the Open Network User Group’s collaborative AI Networking Summit in May of this year (onug.net). The event brought together Enterprises and their providers as they explored their current state-of-AI-Networking-implementation and its challenges. Speaking with Nick Lippis, ONUG co-founder and co-chair, we agreed that the following are the main points arising from the conference that must be addressed.

The second part of the article covers other areas that the conference did not cover but are no less important. Together, it encompasses AI, networking and security in 2026 and beyond.

Part 1: AI is Coming, Ready or Not

Some of the many challenges discussed at the AI Networking Summit:

No matter how ready developers are, AI is coming very quickly, whether we are ready or not. The long-term future of IT and networking in general will be highly uncertain, perhaps for the next two years. Experimentation will remain the order of the day during that time.

As one of many findings of IDC’s survey, security concerns are rated number one, and are part of every AI conversation. Also, slow governance and compliance adoption are inhibitors to scaling AI. The issue of guardrails and preventative measures is very dynamic, with instances of threat actors using AI to exploit AI’s automation capabilities. This is creating new threats at lightning speed without the need for technical expertise.

There’s much more. The necessary migration to AI-architected networking has a way to go and will need to accommodate cloud or hybrid implementation over the next two years. Speaking of “hybrid,” the decision to build, buy or develop hybrid solutions is governed by cost, functionality and security. Even here, there is a split between platform and best-of-breed solutions.

This is my observation: only the largest organizations have developed AI implementation policies to accompany resilience and security policies. Clear implementation planning and policies are essential to prevent ongoing AI adoption from being abandoned.

This is the table of contents that will be tracked, with the plan being to check in with progress at the ONUG Fall Summit and on my website. Other topics are, of course, cost, agentic sprawl, Network Operating Centers, and much more.

Part 2: Other Critical Work in Progress

Can Next Generation AI Crush Ransomware?

• Anthropic’s Glasswing project found 10,000+ high-severity vulnerabilities across widely used software projects. There are thoughts that the next generation of AI could curtail cyber-attacks on software by 70-90% over time. It may help indirectly with all other attacks (phishing, social engineering, misconfiguration and supply chain issues that involve software) and change the game against the ransomware-as-a-service threats. Since the AI Summit, the United States government has taken a proactive role in evaluating the AI cybersecurity integrity of AI models in a voluntary initiative.

Agentic AI Identity and Authorization: Will AI Break Zero Trust?

• “How do we authenticate AI agents?” is more importantly stated as "How do we preserve Zero Trust when the actor is no longer a human, static software or a device?"
• This is critical because AI agents initiating transactions must have their identity and policy conformance approved. If not, then Zero Trust will be broken. Transient AI agents need to dynamically comply with policy as they do for IoTs, etc. This is a very high priority until the end of 2026.
• My initiative on using proxy or supervisory software to continually verify identity and policies so as to authorize all transactions is getting some traction. This becomes a crucial guardrail present for all interactions. Dynamically generated Agentic AI actors can be similarly policed with dynamic policy enforcement. Although written before the dynamic proliferation of Agentic began, the Cloud Security Alliance wrote a forward-looking paper on the issue, recognizing its importance. (https://bit.ly/4fwjauQ)

Bad News on the Doorstep

To mess with Don Maclean’s famous song, some want it to be the day that AI died or bye-bye Miss American AI. But the Luddites didn’t win the first industrial revolution, and I don’t think they will win this evolution.

However, there is no doubt that political and state-sponsored disruption is real and aimed at slowing progress. The reality is that the current data center build-out is not dealing with power and water shortfalls with a sense of urgency. In fact, the AI community appears to be ignoring these fears, not making friends or public statements that AI will lower power consumption as devices become efficient, that water recycling is beginning, as is new job creation—nor that all parties are considering partial public ownership of what are becoming monster AI companies.

Harmonizing Human and AI Strengths: A New Collaboration That Neither Can Create Separately

This topic is a continuation of my previous ISE article on Harmonizing Nine Human Strengths with AI, achieving collectively what cannot be achieved separately. The main point is to eliminate many user fears that AI will take us over. After it was published, I realized that I missed a strength more important than all others: Leadership. Humans can bring leadership qualities to inspire, empower and set transformative purpose for individuals, organizations and communities. Yes, AI does a good job of expanding these ideas, but it’s really not in the leadership business. I bring all this together in my Expert-Guided AI software.

AI-Driven Organizations

ExO's Salim Ismail’s new work on exponential organizations says, “Don’t try to fit AI into the organization—it doesn’t work! Instead, reimagine the organization with AI at its center.”

I would add: Start by appointing a Chief AI Officer and replacing antiquated structures. Job one would be the creation of a Secure AI implementation policy to remove the current chaos present in 90% of organizations, as we mentioned earlier.

Summary

This is the monster topic of our time. The topics listed must all be addressed so we can all benefit. Please see the expansion of many of the ideas and thoughts at cybyr.com/aijourney and contact me on LinkedIn.

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