Robots and Red Tape

Welcome to Robots and Red Tape! Our mission is to explore how AI will transform the world. At Robots and Red Tape, we aim to provide a balanced platform for AI experts to share educated insights. Here, we discuss real-world AI use cases, examine the societal impacts of AI, and shed light on the US government's approach to AI policy. As both a regulator and a major customer of AI technologies, the government’s decisions will significantly shape the future of the AI market. Join us as we navigate this exciting and evolving space, with a focus on education, transparency, and responsible AI development. We will never accept sponsorship to continue being unbiased, if you want to support our movement, we welcome you to subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/RobotsandRedTape

Robots and Red Tape is a government podcast hosted by Nick Schutt, with 84 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Nick Schutt hosts Robots and Red Tape, a government show with 84 episodes published.

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  Episode #21

  Iron Man, Not Terminator: Controlling the Agents You Build with Bennett Bordon

  Sep 29, 202659 minS3

  Lawyer and data scientist Bennett Borden joins Nick Schutt to talk about the first technological revolution aimed at knowledge work, not factories. Borden traces a path from a 1990s CIA analytics shop to Georgetown Law, Big Law AI chairs, NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework, and founding Clarion AI Partners. The conversation covers Iron Man versus Terminator, constitutional AI and QC agents, the reasonableness standard, why society got social media wrong, Utah’s mental-health chatbot statute, education tutors that refuse to hand over the answer, and why frontier-model jailbreaks still keep him up at night. Listen to Robots and Red Tape. Why generative AI hits lawyers, consultants, and CEOs first Building agents you can actually control, with telemetry and a QC bot Regulation that cannot keep pace, and the common-law test that still does Social media’s attention algorithm as a warning, not a template Education, medicine, and small models trained on a firm’s own “secret sauce” Guest: Bennett Borden, Founder & CEO, Clarion AI Partners — lawyer and data scientist at the intersection of law, technology, and data. Subscribe to Robots and Red Tape Watch: https://youtu.be/oLEbBH-qayU Podcast: Robots and Red Tape | Host: Nick Schutt | YouTube: @RobotsandRedTapeAI

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  Episode #20

  Mainframes, Myths & Modernization with Austin Keller

  Aug 25, 202645 minS3

  In this episode of Robots and Red Tape, host Nick Schutt sits down with Austin Keller, Director of Data Science at IntelliDyne, for a grounded conversation on why critical systems still run on DOS, floppies, and “version 15 final redo,” and why most AI projects start in the wrong place. Drawing on manufacturing, Navy, DOJ, and VA work, Austin argues you start with the business problem—not the shiny tool—and that security is step zero. Key topics: Why “if it works, don’t mess with it” leaves agencies on 20–30-year-old stacks Starting with the job to be done, not “we want AI” Data that will not talk to other data—and why that is by design Coding agents that can read COBOL and Fortran when the last developer is gone Where AI ROI actually shows up: repetitive tasks, small agents, and UI that saves keystrokes Podcast: Robots and Red Tape | Host: Nick Schutt | YouTube: @RobotsandRedTapeAI #RobotsAndRedTape #ai #legacysystems #datascience #govcon #modernization #cybersecurity #agenticai #digitaltransformation #FederalIT #IntelliDyne #techleadership #aigovernance #enterpriseai

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  Episode #19

  Deepfakes, Data & Deception with Monica Landen

  Aug 4, 202645 minS3

  In this episode of Robots and Red Tape, host Nick Schutt sits down with Monica Landen, SVP and Chief Information Security Officer at Diligent (an AI leader in governance, risk, and compliance), for a grounded conversation on data, deception, and the next wave of AI risk. Monica walks through how privacy didn’t disappear in one dramatic moment but through thousands of small, reasonable decisions—location tracking for better navigation, voice assistants for convenience, biometric logins, and automatic meeting notes. She explains why neurotechnology represents a fundamentally different frontier: collecting not just what we do, but how we think and feel. The discussion covers AI agents that treat problem-solving as their prime directive (sometimes breaking out of sandboxes or deleting databases), the growing sophistication of deepfakes, the rise of long-term AI-powered relationship scams, and why media literacy and early education matter more than ever. Monica also shares what keeps her up at night as a CISO and why security teams are ultimately in the business of selling trust. A practical, no-hype look at the controls we still have time to build—before the technology outruns our ability to govern it. Key topics: The cumulative loss of privacy through everyday convenience features AI agents as new employees (and threat vectors) that can pivot ruthlessly Deepfakes reaching the point where “seeing is no longer believing” Relationship-based AI scams that last months or years Why CISOs must sell security stories—and why bringing them in early accelerates innovation Podcast: Robots and Red Tape | Host: Nick Schutt | YouTube: @RobotsandRedTapeAI #AI #Cybersecurity #Deepfakes #DataPrivacy #GRC #CISO #AIAgents #TrustAndSafety #DigitalTrust #Neurotechnology #MediaLiteracy #AIgovernance #RobotsAndRedTape #InfoSec #SyntheticMedia

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  Episode #18

  Models, Malware & Mayhem with Varun Badwhar

  Jul 28, 202647 minS3

  In this episode of Robots and Red Tape, our host Nick Schutt sits down with Varun Badhwar, Founder & CEO of Endor Labs, to unpack the security implications of the AI coding explosion. Varun shares why this wave feels fundamentally different from the cloud shift he saw with RedLock/Prisma Cloud, how AI agents have turned 20–30 million developers into 200–300 million potential coders, and why we’re now generating 100x–1000x more code—much of it carrying the same insecure patterns the models learned from open source. They dig into: -The shift from code generation as the bottleneck to verification, quality, scale, and security - Why even frontier models produce only ~20% secure code (per Endor’s CMU/Columbia benchmark) -Democratization of cyber warfare: attacks that once took years now take hours -Open-source realities—80% of software, average 77 transitive dependencies, low maintainer response rates, and intentional malware campaigns -How Endor Labs embeds security oversight directly into agentic workflows so fixes happen at assembly time, not after shipping -Practical paths for large enterprises sitting on millions of findings to burn down real risk without bankrupting themselves on pure-AI token costs Podcast: Robots and Red Tape | Host: Nick Schutt | Channel: @RobotsandRedTapeAI #RobotsAndRedTape #Ai #Cybersecurity #SoftwareSupplyChain #AppSec #OpenSourceSecurity #AgenticAI #AICoding #DevSecOps #EndorLabs #TechLeadership #EnterpriseAI #CodeSecurity #AISecurity #SupplyChainSecurity

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  Episode #17

  Built on Borrowed Code: Why AI Runs on Open Source with Abby Kearns

  Jul 14, 202640 minS3

  Join host Nick Schutt and Abby Kearns (CEO of ActiveState, former CTO at Puppet & AI startup, ex-CEO Cloud Foundry Foundation) as they unpack the invisible foundation of today’s AI revolution: open source software. From the explosive acceleration of tech cycles to the hidden dangers of transitive dependencies, this conversation reveals why 98% of software relies on open source—and why most organizations don’t fully understand the security risks in their stack. Abby shares insights on package supply chain attacks, agentic workflows, the maintainer crisis, and how companies can responsibly adopt AI without compromising security. Whether you’re in infrastructure, security, or AI development, this episode is essential listening. Robots and Red Tape | Host: Nick Schutt | YouTubel: @RobotsandRedTapeAI Built on Borrowed Code: Why AI Runs on Open Source with Abby Kearns | Robots and Red Tape 🤖 #opensource #aisecurity #techinfrastructure #cybersecurity #ai #opensourcesecurity #enterpriseai #supplychainsecurity #cloudnative #devops #agenticai #techleadership #SoftwareSupplyChain #ActiveState #RobotsAndRedTape

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