Member Contribution • Weekly CISO Podcast Pick

This Week’s Pick by David Cross (CISO, Atlassian)

Series curated by the CISO Platform community. Spotlighting practical listens for security leaders and their teams.

Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America

David’s take: “A strategic pulse check — how compute, data and national strategy shape AI risk, what China’s approach means for defenders, and why CISOs must add resilience and tech-sovereignty to their playbook.”

 
Recommended by: David Cross, CISO, Atlassian
Why this pick: strategic technology lessons mapped to operational security and resilience.
⏱ ~29 min Focus: AI strategy • China tech race • National security • Resilience • AGI realism

Why this episode matters

  • AI is a national strategic asset. Compute, data and model strategy now influence geopolitical leverage and supply-chain risk.
  • China’s approach changes attacker economics. Open weights and broad model proliferation shift how adversaries access and adapt AI capabilities.
  • Security leaders must adopt a sovereignty lens. Think beyond confidentiality — availability of compute and data jurisdictions matter.
  • Resilience outranks perfection. Prepare to operate through compute/data outages and systemic tech shocks, not just point incidents.
  • AGI remains a technical question. For now, AI is supercharging middle-of-workflow tasks; CISOs should defend those choke points.

Copy-paste takeaways for your team

  • Start an AI supply-chain map: inventory models, training data sources, compute providers and export-control exposure.
  • Add "compute availability" to incident runbooks: can we route, degrade, or run on alternative regions/providers?
  • Assess open-model risk: treat third-party model weights as potential threat vectors—test and sandbox before adoption.
  • Elevate cross-functional drills: include legal and government affairs in tabletop scenarios tied to export controls or national policy shifts.
  • Invest in AI observability: logging, provenance and model lineage to detect misuse and accelerate forensics.

Standout ideas discussed

  • AI is "middle-to-middle." Humans set objectives and validate outcomes; models accelerate the middle work but require governance.
  • Open vs closed models matter geopolitically. The more open-weight proliferation, the greater the downstream risks for enterprises.
  • Compute is a strategic chokepoint. Access to large-scale compute determines who can iterate fast — and who is resilient.
  • Military tech & AI converge. Drone automation and RL planning reshape deterrence; security leaders should watch dual-use tech trends.
  • Culture and speed are competitive advantages. Metrics on innovation velocity and workforce readiness affect defensive posture.

Try this in the next 7 days

  1. AI supply-chain workshop: pick 2 AI/ML components (model, dataset, compute provider) and map risk & mitigation for each.
  2. Compute availability drill: test failover to an alternate cloud/region for a critical model inference path.
  3. Model provenance check: ensure lineage and logging exist for one high-impact model; add provenance to your SIEM feed.
 

About David Cross

David is CISO at Atlassian and a long-time community member at CISO Platform. His weekly picks are short-listed for practical signal—conversations that sharpen how we lead, not just what we deploy.

 

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