Cisco Chair/CEO Chuck Robbins Talks Tech Sovereignty

Albert (0:00)

Now, let's return to Bloomberg's New Economy Forum, where Haslinda Amin is standing by with a guest for us, Haslinda.

Haslinda Amin (0:07)

Well, not just a guest, but a very special guest, Albert. We're speaking about Cisco CIO, Chuck Robbins. Good to have you with us.

Chuck Robbins (0:14)

It's good to be here.

Haslinda Amin (0:14)

Chuck, I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about how we need to perhaps slow down AI development. I mean, you've had access to advanced models like Methos. How do you weigh on that?

Chuck Robbins (0:28)

Well, I don't think there's any slowing it down.

There's no pause button. It's an interesting philosophical discussion, but I don't think the reality is that it can be slowed down. I think what we have to do is speed up the other stuff. We have to speed up our defenses. We have to speed up our focus on cyber defenses in this new world, speed up how our customers are thinking about hardening their infrastructure. I think that's where we should spend our time. I think there's thoughtfulness we should use in how we release models, timeliness, distribution of the models, et cetera. But I don't think there's any slowing it down.

Haslinda Amin (1:00)

There are security and safety concerns. Are they valid?

Chuck Robbins (1:04)

They are valid. They're very valid.

You could say a few things. You're sort of democratizing the adversary's capability to some extent. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a computer scientist to be a very good hacker at this point.

But you still have the cost to compute, the cost of the underlying infrastructure attacks. You execute broad scale attacks, but people will figure that out. So it's a legitimate concern. But I think, look, we've had these over the years. They're moving faster now and they're more pervasive. But anytime it's a computer science problem, I have a lot of faith in our ability to solve it.

Haslinda Amin (1:46)

You've been in the business a very long time.

Chuck Robbins (1:48)

Hey, watch out. I understand the implication.

Haslinda Amin (1:52)

What would you like to see from labs, from partners like Cisco, from governments, so that these security and safety concerns can be addressed?

Chuck Robbins (2:00)

I think there's a couple of things. I think if you look at Mythos as an example, there was a very well thought out process for releasing that model to a group of companies that really know how to manage the models and know how to build harnesses and actually exercise those models to understand what are the capabilities, what are the risks, what are the new risks that are introduced, what are the things that we can put guardrails around to actually mitigate the risk in the future, and how concerned should we be, and where do we see vulnerabilities that are just going to be exposed if we release this model. And so, I think having some sort of short, very short analysis window by competent organizations, whatever those are, I think that's an important thing to run it through before we just release them. And then I think we need to have a well thought out and organized distribution strategy for how we release these models to our allies around the world in a timely fashion so that we can all be on the same page and moving at the same pace.

Haslinda Amin (3:05)

We're talking about vulnerabilities. I want to move on to opportunities. We're beaming into the Middle East. Horizons Middle East is the name of the show. You've been big in the Middle East for some time now. What opportunities do you see there?

Chuck Robbins (3:17)

Well, I think, you know, the Middle East is much like India. These are the two big areas that I see outside the US where there's real growth opportunity for us. And also just there's this fundamental desire to consume the technology and to use the technology for societal impact, for economic growth, for all the positive aspects of it. And you see that happening in major countries in the Middle East. So I think I've been there four times this year.

And that's in the midst of all the dynamics that are going on in the Middle East. So we have a lot of friends there. It's a great place to do business. And I think that they're very good at what they do.

Haslinda Amin (3:59)

Might deals be impacted by those attacks on Riyadh? Might that impact sentiment?

Chuck Robbins (4:05)

Well, of course. But I think right now they've shown great resilience. And I think that they know that despite what's going on, they have to continue to move into the future. And there's a lot of innovation and ingenuity in the region.