The Dangers of Performative Leadership in Tech

In this episode of Unspoken Security, host AJ Nash sits down with Bob Fabien “BZ” Zinga, a cybersecurity executive and Naval Information Warfare Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve. They explore how performative leadership shows up in security teams, and why values on a wall fail when pressure hits.

BZ argues that optics without accountability kills trust. When leaders bend with politics or budgets, engaged employees go quiet. That silence hides risk. He shares how breaches often trace back to human choices, including a W-2 phishing scam that exposed employees’ data and changed his own life. He also pushes blameless postmortems and clear escalation paths.

From there, the conversation moves to AI. BZ warns that teams can automate bias and outsource judgment. He calls for guardrails, regulation, and human oversight, especially in high-stakes decisions. He closes with a simple standard: speak up for fairness, even when silence would feel safer.

Transcript

Unspoken Security Ep 55: The Dangers of Performative Leadership in Tech

[00:00:00] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: You have to be humble. You have to lead with humility because what's gonna happen is your ego is going to prevent you from learning, whereas humility is going to accelerate growth and. Learning. So for your own sake, you should be humble, right? In the military, I'm, I'm sure we stole that from the army, but the most you have army, it looks like we still have a bunch of ideas from the army, but the three Cs of leadership, right?​

[00:01:08] A.J. Nash: Hello, and welcome to another edition of Unspoken Security. I'm your host, AJ Nash. I spent 19 years in the intelligence community, mostly at NSA, been building on maturing intelligence programs in the private sector for, I don't know, 10, 11 years now, something like that. I'm passionate about intelligence, security, public speaking, mentoring, and teaching.

[00:01:24] A.J. Nash: I also have a master's degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University, go Zags. So I continue to be deeply committed to servant leadership and this podcast. It brings all these elements together with incredible guests to have authentic, unfiltered conversations on a wide range of challenging topics.

[00:01:38] A.J. Nash: It's not your typical, polished podcast. My dogs make occasional appearances. People argue and debate here, and they swear I've been known to, and that's all. Okay. please think of this podcast as a conversation that you might hear at a bar after a long day and one of the larger cybersecurity conferences that we all go to every year.

[00:01:53] A.J. Nash: These are the conversations we usually have when nobody's listening. Now, today, I'm really excited. I'm joined by Bob Fabien BZ Zinga. So he's a cybersecurity executive, naval, information warfare commander, host of the Leadership and Success Podcast. He's got over 28 years of experience and across the defense sector.

[00:02:10] A.J. Nash: He is got Silicon Valley startups, a higher education. He's been the CISO at Santa Clara University, virtual CISO for Fortune 500 companies. He's held senior security roles at Groupon Pivotal, software and, at the Defense Language Institute where I'm a graduate of, they're probably not very proud of that.

[00:02:25] A.J. Nash: I wasn't very good, in the Naval Reserve. Now, he serves as commanding officer of a 72 member unit supporting Naval Network Warfare Command. He's also a Forbes Technology Council member, EC-Council, certified CSO Hall of Fame inductee, and serves as a board advisor for the United Cybersecurity Alliance and the Arizona Cyber Initiative.

[00:02:42] A.J. Nash: So I don't know how I tricked him into coming on the show. Don't tell him he is too good to be here, but he definitely is. BZ is there anything you wanna add to that bio?

[00:02:49] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: No, not really, but in agreement. I was saying, I was really pleasantly surprised yesterday they selected me as the top 50 global thought leader and influencer for cybersecurity in 2026. That was by Thinkers360. So it's a great, great honor and privilege. So,

[00:03:03] A.J. Nash: That's awesome. Yeah, I, and I appreciate you being here. I mean, the resume speaks for itself, right? I mean, you've, you've been doing this a long time, and interestingly, you know, you've got the military background, the government space, you've also got the private sector. So those are different environments for those who haven't been in both spaces, it, it's unusual to find somebody with such a depth and breadth of knowledge and experience.

[00:03:22] A.J. Nash: and specifically not just in the tech side, but the leadership piece, right? You know, I mentioned in the opening that I have a master's in org leadership. I, and I like to get that in the show, but sometimes we don't have that, you know, some episodes are just tech this, and, and, and they're interesting stuff.

[00:03:32] A.J. Nash: Don't get me wrong. I shouldn't say just, but I really love having an opportunity to talk more about the people aspects. And, and so today we're gonna talk about the dangers of performative leadership, you know, particularly in tech. And I'm, I'm very excited about this. I, again, I really appreciate you being here because I couldn't think of a better expert to talk to on the subject, really.

[00:03:48] A.J. Nash: But as we jump in, when we talk about performative leadership, you know, to you, what does that mean? What are we talking about?

[00:03:57] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Well, so thanks again in the, intro. So really when you look at my career, it's really mainly right, the US Navy and the reserve component as an information warfare commander, but also Silicon Valley, especially the last, 12 years, right? So basically I went from the Navy cyber war room to the Silicon Valley boardroom.

[00:04:15] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So what I do care most about, especially in cybersecurity today, I think is leadership. Leadership that actually shows up for people, right? Not optics, not slogan, not quarterly talking points, but real leadership rooted in values. That don't shift when they become inconvenient. I think principal leadership is extremely important, especially now in the age of AI because AI might be able to do a lot of things that men, people, women can do, but AI absolutely cannot lead, right?

[00:04:47] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: We need people to, do that. So I know that leadership isn't easy, you know, when it's popular, it's revealing when it costs to you something, right? And that's where really performative leadership quietly does most damage, I think. So when you ask, when we talk about performative performative leadership, what are we really talking about?

[00:05:07] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So, in my mind, when I talk about performative leadership. I'm only talking about leadership that prioritizes appearance over accountability. Right? Two different things. So it's one leader say the right things publicly, but they make very, very different decision privately. Right? There is incongruence, there is absolutely no integrity.

[00:05:28] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So it's values on a website and Silicon Valley, almost every business I've worked for, they have those flyers, but the core values on the wall, but they never hardly live by those, you know, they don't hire a flyer by those. It's extremely rare. They usually, you know, would promote people who have high performances, you know, bring in the money regardless of, how they, you know, add or take away from the culture.

[00:05:52] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But in any, anyway, so what I, what I am saying is, It is really, for a lot of businesses, it's not values, in a, budget. I guess that's another way to say that. So for example, DEI right? Diversity, equity, inclusion, it was a really big, you know, after George Floyd in 2020, and now that we have a brand new administrations against it, all of those organization, most of them, they've changed their mind.

[00:06:15] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Like they never really believed in it, so it was just performative. So they, they didn't have any, stand what so whatsoever in his, in his skin in the game. They didn't mean what they said, but they said what they believed was the right thing to say in order to make a quick bug. That's, that's pretty, pretty much, if we have to be honest, that's, that's really what happened, right?

[00:06:35] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So I, I think it's not just, you know, di statement or mental health post or people first language that disappear the moment they become politically uncomfortable or financially inconvenient, you know, like it is right now in America. So to me, performative leadership is really, transactional. so it ask no what's popular right now, what protects me, what helps my brand right now and mean if it changes tomorrow, then it will just change know on a, on a dime.

[00:07:02] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But I think the real danger with that though, especially in cybersecurity, is, people, they really can sp you know, fancy instantly, right? When trust owed psychological safety disappears. And when people don't feel safe, they stop speaking up. That's really a big, big danger. I can remember who said this, but someone had said, you really have to be seriously worried when the people in your organization, those who are more engaged, stop talking.

[00:07:28] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: that is very, very, very dangerous because that's really how breaches happen. That's how risk are found silently, right? Insecurity, silence is never neutral. I believe it is dangerous, at least from my opinion. So if performative leadership is about optic optics, I believe the natural question become, in contrast to that, no.

[00:07:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: What are the indicators of genuine leadership?

[00:07:52] A.J. Nash: Yeah, no, I think you make a really good point. I think, by the way, and I have the advantage of Google, Tim McClure, I believe might be the first person who made that quote. Yeah. A few people have, again, I have the advantage of Google. I'm actually Googling it, as you asked. I knew the quote too.

[00:08:04] A.J. Nash: but it is, it is a famous quote, you know, when, when the people who, who were engaged, people most passionate when they stopped talking, you know, that doesn't mean things are great. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, silence is good. Nobody's really raising concerns. No, that's probably a really bad thing.

[00:08:15] A.J. Nash: When people stop raising concerns, they don't feel like they're safe to do so anymore, or they feel like leadership doesn't care. They've given up on trying to convince anybody. Quiet isn't necessarily a good thing. but I, I think it's great you mentioned that, you know, you're talking about performative, you know, you made a really good point.

[00:08:27] A.J. Nash: You know, that the, the, the winds of change with DEI, right, is a, is a good example of that. You know, some organizations went all in on it, and then when the winds of change came through on politics, they went all out on it, and you go, okay, well, they never cared. And some have stuck, you know, and said, no, this is who we are.

[00:08:41] A.J. Nash: This is who we believe in. Just as when the, when the sweep came in, some said no, and, and, and didn't. And so, you know, they're, that that's their values, right? They didn't, they didn't move with the wind. This is who they are and what they believe in. For better or worse, people can make their choices there, but this is who they are.

[00:08:54] A.J. Nash: I think those who move back and forth, you know, you recognize there's, there's like an ethical issue there. They're, they're doing what's convenient, right? What's, what's in their best interest, they believe what it's politically or economically. and it's unfortunate because in my opinion, you can't really walk a lot of that stuff back.

[00:09:08] A.J. Nash: Now that isn't to say people don't learn. You can change, that's fine. You can change once, I suppose. But if you keep changing back and forth, it's pretty clear. You're just going where, where the flow is and that you don't really have an ethos of your own. And so, you know, I'm curious when we talk about that, you know, what happens to an organization when the leaders abandon values, you know, when they're under pressure and they abandon those values.

[00:09:27] A.J. Nash: What are, what are the long-term pieces, you know, that become an issue with that?

[00:09:31] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And I believe from, your background, similar to mine, you were in the, military, you went to DLI and then you had experience at the NC two. So if I was going to ask you what were your core value as a service member, so many years after you've left the military, what would say your core values

[00:09:48] A.J. Nash: Integrity service before Self and Excellence in all we do. That's Air Force core

[00:09:52] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: me, us sailors are honor, courage, commitment. And it doesn't matter which sailor you wake up in the morning or late at night, they will tell you exactly something today. 20 years from now, or 20 years ago, it's really built into us, right? It is core to who we are. That's who I am as a sailor.

[00:10:10] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: It's not just something I am performing. It's really who I am at my core. And I speak about eight to 12 times or so every year. I go to sick security conferences and summits. Sometimes I'm a keynote speaker. And, I I love to ask this question, what, who knows who the core values of their organization is except for people in the military?

[00:10:31] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: 99% of people have absolutely no idea. Most, most of them may, may have. Yeah. I think there is something about caring. There is something about respecting the customer, but they don't know what those core

[00:10:41] A.J. Nash: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:43] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And, it is really, really sad because if you don't know what your core values are, how in the world are you making decision?

[00:10:47] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And, and here I'm talking to executive CISO, CIOC, CTOs, people in charge. If you don't even know what your core values are, how in the world do you make decisions every day? What are you working? What do you represent? What do you stand, stand for? So again, in the military, the air force, even though I think is a bit suburb, but not the navy, the army, although we have a bunches, we know exactly who we're, what we stand for.

[00:11:10] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: It's drilled into us day in and day. And I think that's really what we need because that's how we should be making all of our, decisions, especially when it's critical and especially when it's under pressure. Right. And I think the specific question, you asked, was,what happened, right?

[00:11:28] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: If, if, sorry, can you ask the,

[00:11:30] A.J. Nash: Yeah. What happens if, or if the leaders abandon those values, you know, when they're under pressure and they go ahead and, and give up those values. You know, what, what happens to the organization then?

[00:11:37] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Well, you really lose integrity, trust. And I think trust is probably one of the most difficult thing, you know, to really earn. You know, my mentor taught me rank. Is rented no matter what your position is right now, eventually, you know, not gonna be in that seat of power anymore, but trust is earned and leadership is really how people feel long after you have left your post.

[00:12:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Really the impact you've had on people,

[00:12:10] A.J. Nash: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:11] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: how you made them feel. That's really what leadership is all about. And that's based on trust. And if people cannot trust you, they cannot work for you. Now, of, of, of course. No. one of my primary mentors, Dr. John C. Maxwell, I've learned so much from him. One of the book, let's gonna make a quick plug

[00:12:25] A.J. Nash: Sure. Go

[00:12:26] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: five of leadership. Great, great book. He talks about level number one, which is positional leadership. Right? That's when people are going to obey you just because of your position. You have a CIO, the president, the CEO or whatever your title is, so they're gonna do whatever you say because they need a paycheck.

[00:12:42] A.J. Nash: they don't have a choice. It's not leadership, then it's just they're gonna do what they have to do. Or hierarchical.

[00:12:46] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: That's the lowest, lowest form of leadership. But when people trust you, when they like you, when they want to follow you, then you go from level one to level two. And that is so important because then they, see someone who is equitable, who is fair. You may have high, standard and many of my bosses I've had very, very high standard.

[00:13:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But you are fair and you are persistent and you treat absolutely everybody. The same. That really builds trust. 'cause your people should never wonder where do you stand? Is a boss on this side or that side? Which they should know exactly where you, where you stand on things that matter all the time. No exception.

[00:13:25] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: That builds trust. They trust you because they know they can rely on your world, not wishy-washy one way you are for diversity. And the next day you are not like, who are you? Right? So that is, that is why I think it's so very important to know exactly who you are, what you stand for, and really live your life by core value.

[00:13:45] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Live a life of congruency, right? Where what you say and what you do align. another way I've learned that in the Navy is when, they say that the audio doesn't match the video. So whatever you're saying and what I'm

[00:13:55] A.J. Nash: Yep.

[00:13:56] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: doesn't match. So there will be no trust. And, those people, again, they're gonna do what you say because you, you give them a paycheck.

[00:14:02] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But as soon as they can, they will find another boss because they cannot trust you.

[00:14:06] A.J. Nash: hundred percent. Well, and you made a a, a really good point. You talked about core values, right? And, and a lot of people don't know the core values of their organization. And as you said, from a leadership standpoint, why, what are you doing then? How are you making decisions? And what it comes down to, I think a lot of times is then you have leaders in different organizations.

[00:14:19] A.J. Nash: They're applying whatever their values are, and therefore you have this whole inconsistency across an organization, which people have seen you transfer from one, one part of the organization to another. And everything changes. Things that were fine aren't anymore. Things that were, we're off limits or things you do now.

[00:14:32] A.J. Nash: So you don't have a culture that's, that's corporate wide. You have one that's just business unit wide. But the other thing I've seen, is you know, that you have, obviously the leaders don't necessarily know what the, what the core values are. And, and neither, neither does the team. I've seen the opposite happen though, where I've seen people work against core values.

[00:14:49] A.J. Nash: And, you know, you may see a, a somebody who does know the core values, you know, and hey, this is, this is a direct violation of our core values, and they resist. Or perhaps it even becomes an HR issue depending on what kind of core values we're talking about. And have you seen some of this? And, and I'm gonna tell you my point first, just, just so I don't set you up, I've seen that not go very well.

[00:15:07] A.J. Nash: I've seen organizations that have these core values on the wall. and, and then you see a, a, a high ranking leader who clearly violates those core values, just so that's unethical. the, the person who is affected following proper protocol. You know, Hey, I believe in the core values. I study these, I believe in this company.

[00:15:22] A.J. Nash: I'm following the process. And lo and behold, that person's not there in a few months. You know, not ill, it's not officially, you know, retribution. But funny enough, the organization ends up valuing the person who they decide is more value to the org, which is this higher leader, which again, takes away all your credibility as an organization.

[00:15:38] A.J. Nash: I think I've seen it happen and every time it happens, I've seen people go, well, the core values in the company, and don't matter, as you said, most people I don't think really necessarily believe 'em anyway. They're just things you put on a wall, but it, it

[00:15:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: where your most engaged lead, employees. They go silent. They just quiet. Yeah.

[00:15:55] A.J. Nash: Yeah. It's, it's, it's unfortunate to see. And so the other thing is when we talk about silence, so this is a tough one. We're in a, there's always been difficult times, but I'd say we're in a difficult times right now, right? However you wanna look at it. Almost everything is political in some form or fashion now, you know, there used to be the old days, it was like, Hey, don't talk about politics or religion at work, right?

[00:16:12] A.J. Nash: And most people were, yeah, keep, it's almost impossible now. 'cause things that didn't weren't political are now, you know, you like Nike. So wait a minute, somebody's boycotting Nike now, although, you know, it's a really good, you know, cup of coffee, well, where'd you get it from? You know, you know, it, it's impossible to have conversations without something feeling political, right?

[00:16:28] A.J. Nash: But some things are, are, are happening in this country. And, and I have a question about neutrality, versus ethics, right? So. You know, we're dealing with,whether it's racial issues, whether it's Im the immigration issues, possible government overreach, some of these things that are happening. And I just saw a story the other day, you know, about corporations, CEOs that are finding themselves in a difficult position of you don't wanna lean too far out, you know, into the politics.

[00:16:52] A.J. Nash: You don't wanna do that. You don't wanna upset the government. You wanna be upset, you know, you wanna be able to sell to everybody, right? So people from all spectrum, you wanna be able to sell to 'em. So you don't wanna pick a side sometimes, but sometimes doing nothing is picking aside, right? Some things aren't about politics.

[00:17:04] A.J. Nash: They should be about human rights and ethics and things. So, I'm leading up to a question with a lot of talking, but is neutrality ever ethical for, for leaders and specifically for cybersecurity leaders or, or, you know, is it one of the things we have to take a stand and live with that stand?

[00:17:18] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So when it comes to new, I, I do wanna be careful because I do believe that you should focus on your mission, the mission of your organization and, what your thing is. Not everybody is working on something else, you know, to kinda stay swim in your online. I think that's definitely a thing. However, I think, I think said that as a leader. I think it goes back to your core value, what you stand for. No, Martin Luther King is probably one of the best person who says that one. When he says that,for those who are scientist, he said something like, you know, in, in injustice or what, what, what, what he say? America said something about,

[00:17:55] A.J. Nash: I believe it said injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Something,

[00:17:58] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Everywhere. Yes. That's it. That is, that, that is exactly, because when you see injustice and you don't say anything, by you being neutral, basically you've made a decision. You know, when arm is foreseeable and you stay silent in the face of non-risk, that is a decision and often the most dangerous one. So what I would say really fall back to your core values.

[00:18:21] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: As you know, in the military, we always, you know, train, The way we fight or we fight the way we trend. So whenever we are under extreme pressure, we always fall back to our level of training. Right? So, I guess what I am saying, as a leader, you need to know exactly who you are, what your core values are, and if something is just unjust and doesn't align with those core values within your organization as little, you do have to speak up.

[00:18:47] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: You cannot just ignore it, act as, act as if that didn't happen. Right. Another thing that one of my skippers, mentor told me was especially when I became a commanding officer, he says, as the CEO, if you see something that is misaligned with your standard, right? And when you don't say anything and you just let it, go by, that becomes your

[00:19:11] A.J. Nash: the standard, right? Yep.

[00:19:13] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So, that's why you, no, but, but I think it, it really comes down to caring about your, your people, right? And maybe we say mission first. People always, but you really cannot accomplish your mission without your people, and you really, truly have to care for your people. I think there is no way around that.

[00:19:30] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: so that's, that's kind of where, where I would stand

[00:19:33] A.J. Nash: Well, I absolutely agree. You know, and, and this is, I mean, violent agreement, right? This is part of the reason I was, I was very excited, you know, again, my, my, you know, background and leadership, you know, was organizational leadership, was servant leadership, you know, at Gonzaga. So I'm a, I'm a big believer in people.

[00:19:46] A.J. Nash: I've always said, you know, if you take care of the people, people take care of the mission. You know, I was drawn to that line of education from my military service because I worked with some really good leaders. I also worked for a lot of people that I thought were just managers. and you can see the difference, right?

[00:20:00] A.J. Nash: you know, for anybody in the Air Force, I don't know if, I don't know if the Navy does the same thing, but the Air Force, there are chiefs and there are e nines. Chief is is an EI rank, but if you're called an E nine, it's about as big an insult as it gets, and people won't call it chief E nine to their face.

[00:20:11] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: thing in the movie. Although VI would say 99.99, nine 9% of E nine actually chief. But yeah, from time to time you would find someone's like, I don't know, what did you make chi? I have no idea.

[00:20:23] A.J. Nash: exactly. Exactly. And I, and I learned from that and said, you know, I, I want to get better this, I wanna be more knowledgeable. And, and I was lucky enough, you know, to, I was practicing servant leadership before I knew the, the term when I was in the Air Force. And I was lucky enough to, because I modeled after some really good leaders.

[00:20:36] A.J. Nash: but it does make it difficult 'cause you do have to take these ethical stands. if you, if you want to, if, if you wanna be a leader, first of all, people won't trust people. If they, again, if they don't believe you're gonna be standing up for anybody or anything, then there's no point in following you.

[00:20:47] A.J. Nash: But it's, I, I just found it to be hard to stomach when I saw people who shifted too much. You like, oh, they don't really have an ethos. They're, they're just self-serving. You know, it,

[00:20:55] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And also from what you're saying, aj, I mean, I completely agree. If I can plug, another

[00:20:59] A.J. Nash: sure. Plug away

[00:21:01] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Steven Pressfield.

[00:21:02] A.J. Nash: gets a fire.

[00:21:03] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Page four 12 is one of the best, best definition of leadership I have ever, ever read. so this is, the servant talking about is, is king who, died during this great power.

[00:21:16] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So, the conquering army is like, okay, what's up with your king? I, I, I've never seen this because they were way, way out, out number, basically, they fought to death. It was a suicide mission, but still is. People follow him there. So, and then, the conquering king ask, the servant. So, and then his answer, I will tell his majesty what a king is.

[00:21:37] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: No, he's talking a about his king who just passed, passed away mentally fighting for, for his people with his man. He says, A king does not abide within his stand while his man bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his man go hungry. Nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not commend this man's loyalty for fear, nor purchase it with gold.

[00:22:05] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: He earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden. A king lift first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those leads, but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him. If you are that kind of leader, I'm telling you, your people will follow you to the gates of hell.

[00:22:32] A.J. Nash: A hundred percent. Yeah, it, it couldn't, I mean, obviously I couldn't say it better. It's, it's a fantastic quote and it's a, it's a fantastic message that I absolutely believe, you know, take care of people. I've, I've worked with folks and said, listen, you don't work for me. Like, I know how the org chart is now, it's fine, but you don't work for me.

[00:22:47] A.J. Nash: Lemme be clear. I work for you, right, because of two things. I mean, well, I have to believe in it. I, I've always told people I'm the iron umbrella. I'm, everything's gonna fall on me. I'm gonna keep you safe. All I ask of you is please tell me if you think things are coming. So I get ahead of it. I don't wanna catch bullets in the back, but my job is to give you what you need to be successful and then get every outta the way and get everybody else outta the way so that you can do that.

[00:23:08] A.J. Nash: I believe in that, but the other thing I've told teams is, listen, you guys can get me fired a lot faster than I get you fired. I don't wanna fire anybody anyway, but just understand, if all of you decide I'm an asshole, I'm getting fired. Like that's how it's going to work in, in healthy orgs. You all start saying, you don't want me here.

[00:23:20] A.J. Nash: I won't be here. So, you know, you get to decide who runs this place. My job is to. Like I said, serve the people and give you what you need. My role and my title, all that does is give me more opportunity to, to help other people. Right. You know, and that's, that's the goal and that's the objective. And I've worked in some organizations where, you know, people, and that's, that's more my opening line when I come in and you can see the room full people and they, you know.

[00:23:42] A.J. Nash: Because they've been in corporate worldwide. They go, yeah, whatever. It's, you know, it's like the core values. And you're like, and I've told people, I don't expect you to believe a word I'm saying right now. I'm not worried about that at all. You'll see it. You gotta live the experience. I gotta live my words and then you'll see it.

[00:23:55] A.J. Nash: And the first time I end up getting in the way of a bullet or something, you'll go, geez, I guess the guy's serious. And that's totally fine. You gotta prove it right. but I'm a big believer in, in, like you said, if you do that, people will listen. And, and you know, to me, leadership isn't about power. It's not control, you know, it's, it's just about trying to help people.

[00:24:10] A.J. Nash: You know? I don't, that's all I wanna do is, is make the world a better place. And, and there's so many poisonous and toxic work environments, and self-serving people. And, and I just like, I don't want that. I just wanna be in a position where people go, okay, here's a place where I can go and I cannot.

[00:24:23] A.J. Nash: Hate every day. Every minute of every day. I just wanna go in and do good work and I can trust, you know, when things go wrong, it'll happen. Like, don't worry, just tell me so we can get in front of it. It's not, nobody's gonna, it's not a big deal, you know? It's not, unless it was malicious and, you know, it's fine.

[00:24:34] A.J. Nash: Accidents happen, let's just get in front of it. That's a healthy thing. Otherwise, you have organizations where people just hide everything 'cause they're afraid, you know, toxic organizations where, where people rule by fear, then, you know, you end up with like a Saddam Hussein to get the, to the, you know, the biggest part.

[00:24:46] A.J. Nash: Saddam Hussein, you know. Picked a fight, went to war basically. 'cause he thought he had technologies he didn't have. 'cause none of his people told him he didn't have it. 'cause the last people that told him he didn't have it, he killed after that. Nobody gives him bad news. How he, so he thinks he's got this whole burgeoning weapons program.

[00:24:58] A.J. Nash: It doesn't exist because the last people he said couldn't do it. He killed them. Well next people kept telling him he had progress. That's how it works and that's how it work. In any environment. If, if leaders, you know, were rule by fear, people won't tell them, as you said, it'll stay silent. So I'm curious now transitioning a little bit, same topic, but when we talk about Intel or we're talking about leadership specifically in in tech, I've heard you say before that you think the biggest cybersecurity risk isn't technology, it's not endpoints and malware and it's people.

[00:25:26] A.J. Nash: So, you know, I, I'd like to get your thoughts on this. Why do you think the biggest security risk today is actually people?

[00:25:32] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Well, as you know, when we talk about, technology, especially cybersecurity, we kind of have free pillar, right? it's, the, people, which I think is the most important one. But there is technology and then the governance. Policies and so forth. I think we are only already as strong as our weakest link, right?

[00:25:49] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: That is why,

[00:25:50] A.J. Nash: No, it's a good, it's true though. It's very true.

[00:25:52] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: yeah, because people use white, social engineering, and that's how you can have the best technology in the world. If I cannot hack your system, I can't hack your firewall, but I can hack your people, then I will have access. They're just gonna give me the keys to the kingdom, right?

[00:26:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And there are many, many ways, you, you could do that if you are a good,if you are good with human relationship and even manipulation, you can pretty much and get people to do exactly, what you want

[00:26:20] A.J. Nash: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:21] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: to do. So really, if you even look for out, our history, really every major breach. You can think of at least everyone that I have trace really goes back to human decision.

[00:26:31] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I believe it was IBM, that was maybe in 20 21, 22. They used to have an annual report. I if, if they still do that, whoever say that 99% of all of the breaches that you're, were due to some type of human error,

[00:26:45] A.J. Nash: Oh, sure.

[00:26:46] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: right? Ignore warning, engineers go silent. They don't speak up when they should. Misalign incentives or leaders prioritizing speed image or cost over risk.

[00:26:59] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And, also even here in Silicon Valley, for the most part, when I was a CISO, I usually reported to engineering the

[00:27:05] A.J. Nash: Hmm.

[00:27:06] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Of engineering of the chief technology officer, and, okay, he's my boss. So I'm telling him, Hey, we have this critical vulnerability. I believe we need to focus on it and fix it. It's like, no, I have another priority, maybe later.

[00:27:20] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So what, do you do? Right? Because leadership will determine whether these failures are anticipated, mitigated, or ignored. So that's why I believe that, people, leave biggest risk far above technology.

[00:27:34] A.J. Nash: Well, exactly. And, and then, I'll give you one more example and then I, I wanna a follow up, but I've talked about business email compromise, right? The world talks a lot about ransomware, right? It gets all the headlines, all the news. But business email compromise causes, you know, exponentially more damage 10 times, 50 times.

[00:27:47] A.J. Nash: I can't remember what the numbers are these days, but they're much, much larger and doesn't get talked about much. And my personal opinion has, has always been, and I've told people business email compromise. And by the way, for anybody who's listening or watching who doesn't know what I'm saying, business email compromise is a phishing attack that eventually tricks somebody, into giving away money, either paying a bill that doesn't exist, or, you know, it's only something to that effect.

[00:28:06] A.J. Nash: but the reason it happens is

[00:28:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: the link. Download attachment.

[00:28:10] A.J. Nash: exactly. And the reason it happens is because of a cultural issue. A lot of times, a lot of, you know, the, the stereotypical is somebody leaning into, you know, accounts payable and saying, you know, I'm the CEO and I need you to, to pay this right now, send this money to this place, whatever.

[00:28:20] A.J. Nash: And, and, and you know, that person's nervous and, but they try to say no. And the CEO O

[00:28:25] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: have a

[00:28:25] A.J. Nash: on em.

[00:28:26] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: for you on, on that. I have a very good story

[00:28:28] A.J. Nash: Oh yeah.

[00:28:29] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: that, yeah.

[00:28:30] A.J. Nash: Well, lemme, lemme finish this real quick 'cause I, they may relate, but I, I've told people, I said the challenge there is in that moment, the person in accounts payable has to decide their own personal risk.

[00:28:39] A.J. Nash: What am I more likely to get fired for saying no to the CEO or sending money where it shouldn't go? 'cause this guy's yelling in my ear. And, and I think a lot of these happen 'cause it's culture. Because the answer is, Hey, I'm better off just send the money. It's not my money. They probably won't blame me.

[00:28:52] A.J. Nash: They probably won't fire me if I say no to the CEO E and it's him, I'm getting fired. Whereas I've said, listen, if you have a culture that says, here's two things. One, in order for any money to move, somebody has to give the daily code, whatever it could be. The most simple thing, it doesn't matter. It could be rudimentary.

[00:29:04] A.J. Nash: It's enough to, to slow these down. And two, I don't care who's the one asking, I don't care how loud and aggressive they get. Every person in the organization has the authority and is protected from any harm. For saying no, and that's it in the CEO e and maybe this, it really is the CEO and maybe it really is urgent.

[00:29:19] A.J. Nash: Well, you should have had the code. That's how it works. You know, now you have accountability as a, as a leader to do your part. If that happened, business email compromise would almost be evaporated because that person wouldn't have any of the pressure. When the, when the threat actors come in and they scream and they yell, whatever, the person would just chuck on and go, well, I know you're not the cso, the CEO, I know you're not that person.

[00:29:36] A.J. Nash: 'cause you'd have the code and you also wouldn't be getting more and more mad at me 'cause you know, I can't do anything about it and I'm protected. So it would end this. But the culture, I think is a bigger issue than the technology. So I'm curious about your story that relates to it though.

[00:29:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: You, you are absolutely right. But also now it might be even more difficult now because of AI and deep fake, some people can really, make you believe things that are absolutely not, not true. But, but what happened to me, a company is Silicon Valley Show, we nameless, but what happened is the person was reporting directly to the, we, we call them, head of people, basically Chief Human Resources officer.

[00:30:11] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And the CHRO was only like a three feet, no. down from where their desk was. As you know, it's the company usually have open floor plan and, and everything. And anyway, this person gets an email, supposedly from the CEO asking them to send the CEO the entire W2 form.

[00:30:27] A.J. Nash: Oh, sure. The tax. The tax scams you get every year. Yep. Yep. The entire

[00:30:30] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And then, okay.

[00:30:32] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Without thinking, she just went ahead, sent. So that means my tax information, including my full social security number.

[00:30:39] A.J. Nash: Mm-hmm. Gone.

[00:30:40] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: to this hack. And what I didn't understand is, you know, your boss is only two, three feet

[00:30:46] A.J. Nash: You could walk over and confirm it.

[00:30:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Exactly. So sometimes I guess you can't really help. Stupid, but, but, but the, the consequences were what happened for all of us employees, for the company they tried to pay for two or three years for,

[00:31:00] A.J. Nash: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:01] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: very much after the fact because that, that year I was actually on orders.

[00:31:05] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I went, I was in Japan, I was in Kuka, Japan. April comes around, I'm okay, I need to go quickly, do my taxes first, first week of April before the 15th. And for the first time in my life, I say submit and the hours comes back and says, Bob Zinga, you've already done your taxes. What are you talking about?

[00:31:21] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I'm like, no, I didn't. Basically, yeah, they use my social security number and then they, they try to steal money from the government since that day. Every single time I do my taxes, now the IRS has to send me a very special PIN number and I have to use that pin number every single time, whether I do it, by hand or electronically, so they know it is me and they know to send me my, money back.

[00:31:41] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So my life is affected for the rest of my life

[00:31:43] A.J. Nash: Yep.

[00:31:44] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: currently, because of that. So I guess more and more people see the impact, right, of, data breaches, and I can see why it is important, why security and privacy is actually important at the personal level, not just for the organization and not just for the customer, but for each individual too.

[00:32:00] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But yeah, you, you really need to build that culture where people don't feel afraid to ask questions and they don't feel afraid to speak up.

[00:32:09] A.J. Nash: Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and I've seen a lot of those scams and, and they're, the people, like I said, they get affected and, and it could be years later, you know, there's, these data dumps are everywhere. but it can, it can happen at any time. And, and that's exactly the point. That payroll scam comes up every year in tax season.

[00:32:22] A.J. Nash: Every, and normally we've written something about it or talk to somebody and said, this is gonna happen. Your accounts, you know, now your account's payable, in this case, this will be your HR groups, your payroll group. Somebody's gonna in person at a C level and say, I need, I need all the, all the W twos or I nines, or whatever, you know, whatever they want.

[00:32:34] A.J. Nash: The answer's always no. you know, at least it's go check why you, why would the CEO need that? But, but putting that aside, again, it's just, you gotta have a check in there. You gotta have a, a secondary system to that. And, and then a culture that goes with it right after that security culture where both the, the safety culture of, people, safety of, Hey, you're allowed to challenge people.

[00:32:52] A.J. Nash: We, we, we appreciate that. We want that. It's in the betterment of everybody, but also the security culture of thinking security first, and, hold on a second. Does this make sense? What's the risk with this? Maybe I should double check on it, but I'm curious in, in that way. You know, we talked a little bit, that's a security failure obviously.

[00:33:07] A.J. Nash: You know, and I, I talked a little bit already about the psychological safety, and how that increases, you know, cyber risk. But what does trust actually look like operationally in a cyber, you know, in a security team, not just culturally, but operationally. What does trust look like to you?

[00:33:21] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Well, A couple of things. I already believe trust is really the foundation of, leadership. You cannot do anything unless there is trust. I mean, it's just ammer. There is nothing beyond that. So your people, they do need to trust you. That is one. But, they also need to trust one another. Now, I guess psychological safety is part of that too, that you trust that, when you speak up, nobody's going to make fun of you.

[00:33:52] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: When you speak up. People are going to listen to what you have to say and they are going to consider that you're an important member of vtm. Right. And usually, usually, especially now in, in the military, like you and I, we've, we've served in uniform, we have now a chain of command and it's, it's pretty, pretty strong.

[00:34:09] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But even when I was a commanding officer for example. I remember because when I joined the Navy 21 years ago, I wasn't the commander. I was a semen recruit, E one lowest rank in the entire military. Even though as a civilian at the time I was an IT director, I had about 12 people reporting to me.

[00:34:27] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I already had a bachelor degree. So I did have maybe no zero military experience that did have a lot of industry experience at least it was quite considerable. But because my rank was E one, everybody completely ignored me. Right? So I told myself I would never, never do that if I had the chance or an opportunity to be in charge.

[00:34:43] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And that was my opportunity. So basically I was trying to create a culture in my command to make sure that Siemens Zinga would be proud to be a member of the team, where Siemens Zinga would have the opportunity to speak up when he or she had something to say. So I want to create an environment where my people would want to come there, and once they got there, they would do the very, very best work they could.

[00:35:07] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Right? So you really have, again, it's not performative. You have to. The, was the, the, the, rubber meets world. You have to be real and people have to feel it. Building trust, modeling integrity, right? Creating belonging, right, taking moral responsibility. I think people can really feel that and, you cannot fake it, right?

[00:35:28] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So I really think trust in, cybersecurity is so important because every major breach, no trust is back to human decision, like I mentioned, earlier. So you can patch a system, but you cannot patch human. I guess the best thing we can do is really training and trying to build that culture where it's inclusive and people really feel like they can right, participate and they have kind of skin in the game.

[00:35:55] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So to me it also has to do with clear es escalation path, right? Leaders who back their people publicly. Blameless postmortem with, I don't want to astand blame. I just wanna know what is the problem and how do we fix it? Because as a leader, if one of your people makes a mistake, you

[00:36:13] A.J. Nash: It's your fault. Yeah. It's your responsibility as a leader. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:36:16] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: now when the team does the right thing, then you share the glory with everybody on the team publicly, right Decision that prove that security voices really, really do matter.

[00:36:26] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Not just during incident, but during planning and budgeting as well. So that's, that's what I think trust is like

[00:36:32] A.J. Nash: I agree. I had, I had one commander, and that was, very early in my career. And that was exactly how he led, you know, all failures are mine, all successes are, are yours. and I've, I've always tried to model that, because I, I really believe in it. 'cause again, yes, if you're, if you're in leadership, ultimately it's all yours.

[00:36:47] A.J. Nash: Like, it has to be, if you're, if you're an ethical leader, maybe I don't understand that particular technology or that job. You know, I don't do everything everybody in the team does. But ultimately it's, it's on me. You know, I, I didn't provide them enough training, enough guidance, enough mentorship, you know, a, a a, a technical mentor, obviously it wouldn't be me.

[00:37:02] A.J. Nash: but it's, it's ultimately gotta be my responsibility. If things go well, yeah, you, it's everybody's, you know, you pass it to the people that did the most and make sure they get the credit because they're the ones in the front lines doing the hard work. I'm, I'm a big believer in that, you know, I think that's something that, that we really have to, you know, continue to work on, you know, and you talk about, you know, that trust, right?

[00:37:19] A.J. Nash: And that ability to, to build that trust and to, to make sure that, you live that way all the time. Right? And, and that's, you know, that's. Organizations don't have that aren't particularly secure organizations, usually people end up hiding more and more things. that's how you get people to try to pay ransomware on their own on the side.

[00:37:35] A.J. Nash: 'cause they don't want somebody to know they got hit, 'cause they're embarrassed or ashamed, or they're worried about what happened. And you end up with, you know, that's how you end up with,

[00:37:41] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: you need to build

[00:37:42] A.J. Nash: that's not covered.

[00:37:43] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: resilience. Yeah. Because another thing you, you said sometimes when I hire people, I don't really care much about technical skill because I can teach you that, especially the way it is done in my organ organization, the character, I cannot, right. If you got it or you don't.

[00:37:59] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So I would say hire for character and then train for skills. because I'd rather, I guess it's probably how I got my first chance into it. No, back in 1997 or over 28 years ago. Because it is like the catch 22, right? It's like, Hey, I want this, this job. I wanna do this, this works. He's like, do you have any experience?

[00:38:19] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: No, I don't have any experience. Well, how can I get experience unless you give me the job first. then you, you kind of have no, no, you are hungry. you are a good person. You have integrity. I can trust you and I can teach you. And then, you know, all of this technical stuff you can learn. But anyway, I, I,

[00:38:36] A.J. Nash: No, I, I agree. It's, it's, yeah, I, I hire people for the people, you know, within reason, obviously you have to have some basics. We all know that. I'm not saying you can hire anybody to do anything, but I, I'm a big believer in that. You know, I've, I've talked to people like, I only wanna hire rock stars.

[00:38:48] A.J. Nash: I'm like, well, first of all, I'm not building a rock band. So that's a weird way to hire people. But, but at the same time, I don't know if that's a great idea. You know, we've seen that, hey, we've sat in sports. You get a whole team full of stars and they can't work together. you know, if you hire all stars, everybody's A players, then everybody expects to be at the top, and you're gonna have a really competitive environment.

[00:39:02] A.J. Nash: I coached high school football and I, you know, I used to say to people, you know, do your job right. I want people in the right spots. It is not a more or less valuable, but if everybody wanted to be the quarterback, we wouldn't have much of a football team. You know, do your job, let's get people in the right places.

[00:39:15] A.J. Nash: and you know, if somebody's really good at what they do, but hey, they don't wanna work extra hours, they don't, they're not big on overtime. They're doing their thing and they're leaving. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. You know, they, they're probably not gonna advance a lot necessarily. I mean, they might technically, but they might not, but they're fine with that.

[00:39:28] A.J. Nash: And I'm fine with that. I don't wanna vilify that person. They're part of the team. They're doing their piece, you know, and you mentioned like rank in the military. It's a great point. You know, that, and, and the same thing happens in the civilian world. And I've always said to people, the right answer is the right answer.

[00:39:41] A.J. Nash: I don't wear, don't care where it comes from. It often won't come from me. If I'm in the room and I say something and it's stupid, tell me it's stupid, and tell me in front of people, I don't mind. I got the skin for that. You don't have to do it with everybody. But I'm not right just because I'm, I'm the person in the role or in the seat, you know?

[00:39:54] A.J. Nash: And I was lucky enough, I was in the Air Force, as you mentioned, you know, air Force a little different from some services. We're kind of the corporate military, depending on who you ask. they

[00:40:00] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Yeah. You, you guys always build the on golf

[00:40:02] A.J. Nash: Build a golf force first and then the, and then the base around it. Exactly. and then on top of that, I was Intel, but one of the things I was lucky enough is it's one of the few areas I think in the military where rank, I mean, you have to be respectful, but you can disagree as far up as you want, if you're right in Intel, because Intel is Intel And I, early in my days, I was a linguist.

[00:40:19] A.J. Nash: I wasn't a particularly good

[00:40:20] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: could die. Absolutely.

[00:40:22] A.J. Nash: Yeah. But I was having an argument. I will tell you, I was a, I was an EI was an E three at the time, so Airman first class. And I'm having an argument with, a disagreement, I guess with a captain, a major as a captain, I believe Air Force Major. So oh three and, and he's basically telling me to shut up in color and I can't, 'cause I know he is, I know he is wrong.

[00:40:39] A.J. Nash: In this case, I don't have a choice. And it ends up going to the commander, which I didn't really want it to. And ultimately.

[00:40:43] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Permission to speak free.

[00:40:44] A.J. Nash: Yeah, well that, that wasn't going very well. But ultimately what it came down to is the command, the captain and opinion. I had an opinion and the commander asked me my thoughts and I said, well, you've invested, you know, a quarter million dollars or half a million dollars to teach me the language and the culture and all the things about this country.

[00:40:56] A.J. Nash: 'cause I was a linguist and I'm pretty confident the captain doesn't have all that information. So, yes, I believe I'm correct on this. And he told the captain to shut up and sit down. And that was sort of the end of the captain and I never really got along, but, that was sort of, that's okay. His career ended poorly.

[00:41:08] A.J. Nash: it's a whole different story. But, but that was the point was if you're right and you can support it, right, don't just come in and say, I think I'm right. But if you can support it, the right answer's gotta be the right answer. And that that particular captain who didn't last long in the military and wasn't much of a leader.

[00:41:19] A.J. Nash: Was wrong, but didn't wanna admit that. And I have the rank, I'm telling you what to do. Just do it. Didn't have any of the requisite knowledge to have the disagreement. This, you know, this was a discussion about a foreign language in, in information, in a foreign language related to a culture that this person knew neither of those things.

[00:41:34] A.J. Nash: And even as a poor linguist, I, I knew these things well enough to know he was wrong. So having a culture to say, listen, the right answer is the right answer. I work in tech a lot. I don't write code. I'm not a, I'm not, I'm not technical in those ways. I have different skill sets. Tell me what the right answers are and you know, I'm not gonna lean in and tell you you're wrong.

[00:41:50] A.J. Nash: You know, the, the point is to get the talent in the right places. It doesn't matter what sleeves, what you have on your sleeve or on your collar, or you know, what your title says on your business card. The right answer has to be the right answer.

[00:42:01] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Yes, actually from, from what you say, I have an, an another, story. It really humbled me. I think for the entire time I was really privileged and honored to be a commanding officer. The number one leadership lesson I've learned is you have to lead with humility because in my life over and over again, I usually start at the very, very bottom.

[00:42:20] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: From E one to oh five, no, from junior, most junior, enlisted to now is senior officer in the most powerful navy. I started as a tech assistant, pretty much an intern. And now I am a Chief information security officer in Silicon Valley. But the thing is, as you achieve more and more and you get more and more responsibilities, sometimes your head tends to get big and you are so proud and your ego kind of gets out of check.

[00:42:42] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And you absolutely do not. You have to be humble. You have to lead with humility because what's gonna happen is your ego is going to prevent you from learning, whereas humility is going to accelerate growth and. Learning. So for your own sake, you should be humble, right? In the military, I'm, I'm sure we stole that from the army, but the more you have the army, it looks like we still have a, a, a bunch of ideas from the army, but the three Cs of leadership, right?

[00:43:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Confidence, which is good. You do have to be confidence as a leader. But for some people, their confidence is just way out of pound, right? Then in addition to confidence, you need to have the second C, which is competence. You have to be good. You need to know what you're doing. You have to, perform, right?

[00:43:22] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: You, you, you have to, actually win. And then the third C, which I think is probably the most important, is connection. Connection with the people and caring for them. But once we, I wanted to share, I had a very important issue. I couldn't solve myself, so I reached out first to my senior team, my executive officer, and my senior analyst leader.

[00:43:41] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: We tried to figure it out, nothing. And then, okay. I, included all of my department heads. So that's my entire leader leadership team. Probably about, I don't know, 12, 15 of us. We couldn't figure this, this thing out. It's been like two months. I'm like, okay, I have to come up with a solution. So I decided to open it up to the entire troop, to the entire command, and then an E five junior enlisted person in less than five minutes came up with the solution.

[00:44:04] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So wisdom doesn't respect Ryan. Anybody anywhere can tell you what the solution is if you are open to it, if you are open for feedback, right? And again, that's why you do have to be humble, because from what that person said, in that meeting, we were able to solve a very important problem to me. He really made my day and help us achieve a very important portion of our mission that quarter.

[00:44:29] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So you have to lead humbly. You just have to.

[00:44:32] A.J. Nash: No, you make a really good point. You know, when I was young I was, for anybody knows me though, I know I was pretty cocky, I guess is when I was young. I've always had confidence. Let's go with that. and maybe, maybe a bit cocky, maybe more than maybe. as I've gotten older, I feel like I've gotten. again, to say I've gotten humble.

[00:44:46] A.J. Nash: Sounds horrible, right? Humble people. Don't say it, but I, I, I feel like I've toned some of that down, I think

[00:44:50] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Yeah, the ministry say you involved, you're no longer

[00:44:52] A.J. Nash: Exactly. I, I think what happened is I got old enough to figure out all the things I didn't know. Right. It's just I had, the more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know, and you're like, oh, my, I thought I knew a lot, but it turns out I didn't know anything.

[00:45:02] A.J. Nash: Right. And, and the more I go through life, the more I realize how much I don't know. And it's like, okay, I, I gotta really kind of pull it back. I'm not perfect by any means of this, and I'm, I'm still, you know, I, I have my fair amount of confidence with it, but I like to think now it's more of a, there's a lot.

[00:45:15] A.J. Nash: To this world. I know a sliver, even if I'm good at that sliver, it's so very little comparatively. And there's so much more to learn and there isn't enough time. and so it, it does become more of a, Hey, how do we all gonna get things done together? Because you're gonna bring skills I don't have, and you're gonna bring skills I don't have, and you're gonna bring a point of view.

[00:45:30] A.J. Nash: I don't have an experience I don't have. And it's better to just say, Hey, let's get the right group together of all these things. And it's not a better or worse, or a more or less, as you know, you know this and I don't. So you're smarter than me. Well, you are in that area. And it might be the same in reverse and that's fine,

[00:45:44] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: keep your ego in check. You are gonna be so successful if you don't care who gets the credit,

[00:45:49] A.J. Nash: That's right. Just, just get it done. Now listen, I wanna move on to another topic. What's that?

[00:45:53] A.J. Nash: in the edge of ai. Yeah, that's where I'm heading is the next one. Yeah. The H of

[00:45:57] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: it's, knowledge is really exponential. It's impossible to know everything there is. For example, when I, when I was a PhD student, now I am what they called a b, d, all but the dissertation.

[00:46:05] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: That was, what, 26 years ago? year 2000, 2001. I, I was a candidate for PhD in microbiology, university of Alabama. My primary mentor, he had his PhD back in the late seventies, early eighties. He told me 20 years ago, I knew absolutely everything there was to know about microbiology, everything

[00:46:25] A.J. Nash: Not anymore.

[00:46:25] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: as But today, 20 years later, he is like, no, it's just impossible. So really one of the master skills I have is the ability to ask question and find answer. I may not know all of the answers, but I kind of know where I should be, seeking to get those, solution. But, but I guess I'm saying all of this to say in the edge of ai, we really need each other.

[00:46:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And sometimes you'll be surprised where the solution would be coming from. It has nothing to do with rank, it has nothing to do with age. It has nothing to do with gender or race, but you have to be open for the answer. And I think it'll eventually come to you if you are humble enough to listen. Because you're right.

[00:47:03] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I think psyches, I believe is the first one to say it right. The more I know, the more, the more I know that I don't know anything

[00:47:08] A.J. Nash: Yeah. It's, you become aware, right?

[00:47:11] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Yvonne.

[00:47:12] A.J. Nash: Yeah. And, and as you said it, it's knowledge is exponential, right? It's, it's, you can't know everything. The person who gets the doctorate and is the top of their field today, if they never studied another thing in 10 years, everything they know will be baseline.

[00:47:23] A.J. Nash: And it might, some of it might still exist, some might be erased by other science even, but they definitely won't know what's going on today. Right. So it's that constant learning. But in terms of ai, I'm, I'm curious, as we're moving into this whole age of ai, what worries you the most about AI adoption?

[00:47:37] A.J. Nash: That leaders aren't actually talking about enough publicly right now. I mean, we got, everybody's jumped in. That's no problem hearing about ai. It's gonna do this, it's gonna do that. It's amazing. And, and it's gonna change the world forever, and we're all gonna be super humans and all that. But what, what, to you, what are the things people, leaders aren't talking about enough that, that concerns you in this move?

[00:47:53] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I think in the age of ai, no, we just said knowledge is really exponential. It's impossible to know everything. I kind of envy my, grandparents, right? Because back then they didn't even need to have a high school degree. And when they did, that's really all they needed. And they were set for life. Never have to open or have a book in their life.

[00:48:09] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But in our generations, that's just not the case. You can have a PhD to doctorate, it doesn't matter. You're gonna keep on learning because that's just the kind of world we live in. Where I am in Silicon Valley, pretty much what, every six months or so there is new innovation, new technology. So basically I'm gonna be a student for life.

[00:48:23] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: That's, that is a given. So what worries me most about AI adoption? Well. One thing that worries me is, we might be automating bias, right?

[00:48:35] A.J. Nash: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:36] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: decision without reflection and really confusing efficiency with wisdom. I think that's something that worries me more and more, because in this edge of, ai, another thing that's very important, I believe really is ethics, right?

[00:48:54] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Ethical responsibility, especially when it comes to cyber, security. because there's gotta be some type of accountability, right? Because that doesn't disappear just because the system made the decision for you. So, and especially in the military, to me, human oversight is crucial. It's absolutely critical.

[00:49:13] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: We cannot be adding those machine making decision and then shooting missile all over the place. No, no. There's gotta be some human, oversight. Now, I know AI is gonna help you be more efficient, but do things faster. But you still need to have the, control with the,human touch because I believe leaders are responsible for outcomes, not for excuses.

[00:49:32] A.J. Nash: Yeah. Well, and, and you bring up a good point in there, accountability. So, years ago now, when I was still in, in the government space, I, I worked on a project At one point I was hired to work with this team that was building, a capability that was called cyber intelligence preparation of the environment.

[00:49:45] A.J. Nash: Originally it was cyber intelligence

[00:49:47] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:47] A.J. Nash: a battle space, but. Sec Def didn't like, in, cyber being called the battlespace then, but then it became the environment and, and, and eventually it became kill chain. But the concept at the time, a lot of it had automation. And, and the idea was, you know, we had a lot of, operations researchers and, and scientists and brilliant people.

[00:50:00] A.J. Nash: And the idea was to create, you know, a map paths and patterns. And really, originally it was kind of gonna be a magic box where you put information in and it would tell you the answer. And, and I remember when they first hired me, I was like, I don't know why you hired me. I'm an Intel guy. I don't, I don't know the math you're talking about.

[00:50:12] A.J. Nash: I'm not an operations researcher. I don't, I, am I in the wrong interview room? And they said, no, no, we have the people for all these things. We need some intel people. We need to validate if this will actually happen, if it'll work, et cetera. I was like, okay, great. And we started and I said, this will never, this will never work.

[00:50:25] A.J. Nash: And they're like, what do you mean? I said, no intelligence person worth their salt. Will take the machine's, answer the magic box, said so, and then go do something with it. I gotta put bombs on targets or I gotta, I gotta do things kinetically. I said, unless you can show me the working. So if you can show me the backend and how it all works and I can trust it, then that's fine.

[00:50:43] A.J. Nash: It's really, really fast. It can be faster for me, et cetera. But without that, I'm gonna take your answer. I'm gonna go back and re-engineer the whole thing. I'm gonna reverse engineer the whole thing, go back to the beginning to prove it anyway. I've gotta validate it all. 'cause eventually my name goes on it.

[00:50:52] A.J. Nash: And if it goes out and the bond goes on a target and people die, I can't say, you know, it turns out it wasn't the right target. I can't say, well, the box said so, and now it's, it's, I look ahead now, you know, I look where we are now, you know, 10 years later or whatever, and I go. Apparently now we're just gonna do that.

[00:51:05] A.J. Nash: Apparently now that's where we are. AI just tells us we're just gonna make these decisions and nobody's, you know, asking what's under the hood. you know, and we couldn't understand it if they showed it to us half the time. And people are just saying, yeah, this alright, the box said so, and we're gonna do it.

[00:51:16] A.J. Nash: And I worry about where that, where that accountability is gonna be. You know, our, our leader's just gonna hide behind it and say, well, the box said to do it, you know, we, we brought this technology in. Blame the vendor who's gonna say, well, you know, hey, we got a little thing at the bottom that says it's not always right.

[00:51:28] A.J. Nash: You're supposed to double check this stuff. well how am I gonna double check, you know, the million lines that you just handed me, on the short term that I have to work with? And it was very convincing. You know, where are we gonna land? Do you think, in terms of, you know, ethics and accountability? You know, and, and again, you also talked about, you know, bias.

[00:51:44] A.J. Nash: I worry about, you know, when I was in Intel world, if you had one analyst who didn't properly apply standards, some people knew that and be like, all right, don't talk to him. 'cause every time you talk to him, he's gonna tell you it's Russia. It doesn't matter what it is. He'll always say that, or it's always China or whatever.

[00:51:55] A.J. Nash: You're like that, that person's so biased, save it until we think it might actually be there and let him go down that path. And that was fine. But now if you get that stuff poured into an ai, the entire organization has that same bias, right? Especially if you're eliminating Intel people just saying the AI be your Intel team now.

[00:52:10] A.J. Nash: Now one bias became everybody's bias, and it's not that hard to poison some of these technologies and poison some of these inputs. So, you know, where do you think we're gonna land in terms of accountability and ethics and, you know, oversight on these things. Humans are, are designed to just go fast and easy and, and we're being pressured for all this, you know, volume.

[00:52:29] A.J. Nash: Are we just gonna end up succumbing to it and tell terrible, terrible things happen repeatedly and we recognize it's a mistake? Or do you think we're gonna be able to get ahead of this and, and understand the importance of oversight and ethics and human involvement in these things still?

[00:52:42] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Yes. And, actually, I am writing an article now. it should be published today, or I'm, I'm thinking deeply about, you know, AI and how we get to trust them. I, I've already written one where, you know, people feel like AI is alive, you

[00:52:56] A.J. Nash: Hmm. Right.

[00:52:57] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: absolutely. But, that's the impression some, people have and also various, psych psychosis

[00:53:04] A.J. Nash: AI psychosis. Sure. I wrote something on that a while back. Yeah.

[00:53:07] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Yeah. Actually, I think, just very recently, it was actually a University of San Francisco for the first time somebody was diagnosed by,what they called I think AI aided, psychosis. Basically. Some people are already losing their mind because AI tend to,please. Right. And I think they can become delusion accelerator.

[00:53:25] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So we, we, we really have to be careful about that, that, you know, psycho fancy always being the yes man and, and trying to,please. And then, you know, mistaking a simulation for, you know, thinking there that they are alive, I guess is also called in anthropomorphism, right? Mm-hmm. And also there is also the, you know, being isolated, you know, sometimes sleep.

[00:53:46] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: De deprived and trying to feel like you are developing an actual relationship with a machine. And, it's kind of like a perfect storm for, mental health. But again, the very first clinically described AI associated psychosis was done here at, uc, SF, and, it was a, 26-year-old, woman who, who was convinced that she could bring back the, AI twin of her dead brother.

[00:54:09] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: and, it's, it's, it's, it is, it is just crazy, but it really could happen to, anyone. Of course, we've heard the, also of the case of the 14-year-old right in, Florida, fell in love with, AI chatbot and decided to commit suicide so they could meet, in AI Haven and have kids or whatever. So it, it, it really can be very dangerous and already some lives have have been lost.

[00:54:31] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So you, that's why you really need ethics and, you really need not just to think about profit and. Capability, but not, but not only what are we doing, but are we doing the right thing? And then how to do it, because I think, safety,privacy, security and ethics are very crucial. Very important.

[00:54:49] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Actually, it was, today, Eric Smith, I'm, I'm, I'm sure you, you know, I've, I've never met him, but is my mentor from, afar. I really appreciate everything he's done and the work he's doing with AI Now, he had the post today and I mostly agree with what he says. This is Eric Smith after all. But, but basically he was saying that, you know, America is on the right path.

[00:55:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: You know, we are moving forward with AI and, and China is doing the thing, but Europe is kind of paralyzed. They have just too many regulation and, and things, and they don't have any infrastructure. So what I, what I told him, I don't know if he's gonna, re reply, but I, I mostly, agree with everything he was saying, but the nuance.

[00:55:24] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I wanted to tell him again. No, he's a legend. He's a living legend. No, who am I to talk to him? But no, but based on everything I have, I have learned what I'm studied because I think about these things pretty deeply. I, I told Eric that,the nuance for me is that in Europe, no, they don't just need to get in the game, which I, I think they do, but on AI infrastructure, however, they also need to get it in to get in the right game, right?

[00:55:50] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Doing it the right way, because a massive investment in compute energy and open model is non-negotiable. If, Europe wants that technological, sovereignty, but talent without, you know, silicon power and scale will always migrate to, where execution is possible. So I think we are aligned on that, but, but I do believe the bottom line is infrastructure without trust.

[00:56:12] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: No, we were talking about trust about. Leadership that will not win the long game. Maybe temporarily, but not the long game. So I think we, we need both. We need to have those guard rails. That's kind of the way I look at security, right? DevSecOps or tech sec DevOps. Yeah. You, you wanna move fast at the speed of, of light of fault, that's fine.

[00:56:30] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But we need to have those guard rails. As long as you're within these guard rails, you can move as fast as you need to. Where security doesn't stop innovation, right? It's not the department of No, but we do have some guard rails and you have to move within those anyway.

[00:56:44] A.J. Nash: it makes sense. And, and, and because AI showed up. You know, it apparently to the outside world, at least. I know it's been developed for a while, but, you know, commercially it just felt like it just arrived, right? And everybody just get handed all these tools and not lot, not much, much training, not much oversight.

[00:56:57] A.J. Nash: A lot of it was free at first, so it just, just handed people all this stuff. I, I fear. And because that raised so much money and the valuation so quickly that, that, we're gonna view this in reverse, like the har the, the card is ahead of the horse route and we're gonna have to turn around and get out in front of this.

[00:57:09] A.J. Nash: I, I think the, the audits, you know, the AI accountability, AI audit, AI oversight, you know, LLM management, you know, some of these things, these are gonna be growth areas, you know, for, for work, because somebody's got to be the gatekeepers of these semis, then somebody's got to be a neutral, a gatekeeper.

[00:57:24] A.J. Nash: You can't have the company that invented, the technology also be the ones to tell you, no, no, it's safe. Don't worry it. That's a bad idea. You know, we don't have car manufacturers rate their own cars for safety. We have somebody else that does that, because otherwise I promise they would all give themselves very high marks, on their safety.

[00:57:40] A.J. Nash: There's a reason we have agencies to do that. We're gonna need the same thing for these things, you know, nuclear regulatory agency, things like that. We don't, we don't let people who manufacture potentially dangerous things and not inherently, but potentially, to also tell us they're safe, right? And right now it feels like that's where we're at, is they're going, no, no, trust us.

[00:57:54] A.J. Nash: And here's some policies. And most people, including power users, in some cases ha really don't know how a lot of this stuff works behind the scenes. They're figure, we're figuring out as we go along, we're prompt engineering. And, and oh my goodness, that shouldn't have been the right answer we got for that.

[00:58:05] A.J. Nash: Should it. you know, early on I knew people who could, oh, they say you can't do these dangerous things with it. Ah, with the right prompting, you can get AI to tell you a lot of things. You can tell it, it'll tell you how to build a bomb step by step. It just doesn't know it's telling you that. And of course, then they go and they fix that, and then you find a new way to trick it into telling you dangerous things and, and doing things that are supposedly against the rules.

[00:58:23] A.J. Nash: So I, I suspect

[00:58:24] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: we definitely need, regulation for sure. One of the latest article I I, I wrote, I think it was last week, it was about no surveillance security and really the leaders dilemma, I, besides I was specifically focusing on ice. No. How they have so much technology now and they can get so much information, not just on non, illegal immigrant, but on US citizen as well.

[00:58:46] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So how do you balance that? Because the, the truth is our laws are way outdated. Technology, you know, is far ahead. we are, no was the Privacy Act of 1974. We are in 2026 now.

[00:58:57] A.J. Nash: Yeah. Fax

[00:58:59] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: need an upgrade. Right. And, we, we need those laws to kind of keep up with. Technology and, the modern

[00:59:06] A.J. Nash: Yeah. No, you're exactly right. one last bit and then I'm, I'm gonna get us closed outta here. Just chip, just to touch on the AI psychosis you mentioned. So I,about a year ago, a little less maybe, I'd have to go look up the dates, but, some friends of mine and I were talking about some of this stuff and, and, a good, a good friend, a bright guy, wrote a really interesting piece on, on LinkedIn about this.

[00:59:22] A.J. Nash: he was ahead of me, I was in the process of writing something. He beat me to it. He didn't steal my ideas or anything. He wrote his own thing. so I made some, some slight changes, but I wrote something that actually was, you know, here's a selfish plug. It's on the unspoken security blog, security whispers.

[00:59:32] A.J. Nash: I wrote a piece on this, did a bunch of research on it. I actually tied it to, insider threat. So I, I, I took a lot of what we knew, but said, Hey, this is how insider threats can be forever changed because a lot of things we believe and plan on, well, they're also based on a rational actor. When you have somebody who's gone down this, this AI psychosis path, everything changes.

[00:59:48] A.J. Nash: They, it's, it's a very different thing. Yeah.

[00:59:51] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: for for sure.

[00:59:52] A.J. Nash: Yeah, a hundred percent. And then right behind that, the New York Times wrote an interesting article on this piece as well. So AI psychosis, you know, is, is a problem that people should look into. I think, it, it's more likely to affect people who already have, preexisting, mental health issues, maybe under the surface.

[01:00:04] A.J. Nash: but it could affect others. And, and as you said, you can go way down the path. You can, you can believe things that are, just very dangerous. and, and all fictitious, you know, well beyond just falling in love

[01:00:13] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: I believe was it, the founder of Uber at one point 40? I discovered the secret of the universe.

[01:00:18] A.J. Nash: Yes, exactly.

[01:00:20] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: It's,

[01:00:21] A.J. Nash: Yeah, it's, it's, you can, you can go very, very, very dangerous and scary places with this. And again, the guardrails, you know, I know of somebody who went down this path and I, you know, I've, I've gone through and officially these platforms have rules that, oh no, if they see this kinda behavior, they're supposed to shut you off.

[01:00:34] A.J. Nash: and I've got reams and reams of printouts that say, well, this should have violated, the policy's gotta shut off. But they didn't. well, the platforms, first of all, they're very big. They may not have all the oversight they need yet, even internally. and they're not necessarily motivated to shut people off who are paying, not saying that was all intentional or anything.

[01:00:48] A.J. Nash: That's why I'm not naming platforms, not pointing figures, but there's a lot to ask there to task the platform to, to self-manage these things. and don't count on the policies to be those solutions. But listen, we're, we're gonna wrap up here. We're running out of time. We could do this for hours, and I, I absolutely would.

[01:01:02] A.J. Nash: I, you're fascinating. I could talk to you about ai, I could talk to you about tech, I could talk about leadership. It's, it's amazing. And I, it's been a fantastic conversation. But as we're drawing to a close now, the name of the show's Unspoken Security. And, and as you know, everybody gets asked the same question to close out.

[01:01:15] A.J. Nash: So with that in mind, tell me something you've never told anyone before. Something that till now has been unspoken.

[01:01:22] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Hmm. Well, that is something I don't say often. I guess the moment in my careers, both in uniform and in tech, were staying silent would've probably made my life easier.

[01:01:35] A.J. Nash: yeah. That's a good one.

[01:01:36] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: we're speaking up for people for inclusion, for fairness. Might, cost me, political capital, but sometimes as a little of a, it's not about politics, but it is about doing the right thing.

[01:01:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: And back to what your core values are, who are you as a, human being? What are your core values? What do you stand on? I am an immigrant. I come from another country. I wanted to be American. Right now, it seems like we are losing a lot of the freedom we've taken for granted for a very, very long time, which is very sad.

[01:02:07] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But again, you know, white is white. It doesn't matter. Like I, I, I only love, I think it was John McCann. Again, I'm not Democrat or Republican

[01:02:14] A.J. Nash: Sure that matter. Yeah.

[01:02:15] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: one thing said, and I know he was a naval officer, so good for him. He is like no country before party. I think we need to go back. To that place where we are, US citizen, first and foremost, so much in common.

[01:02:29] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: What, whether you are black, white, a one man, gay, straight, it doesn't matter. We have this one thing in common on being one nation under God. That should mean something to each and every one of us, regardless of your party affiliation or your, belief. So I think, every time the temptation was in fear, right?

[01:02:48] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: Might be it's fatigue, right? But really what I, what I, what I've learned is silence doesn't keep you safe. You know, it just delays accountability. We've been talking about trust and accountability for quite a while. So what's in spoken for many leaders, I think is they know what is right, but they are afraid of being alone when they do it.

[01:03:08] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: So leadership isn't about being fearless because I think everybody feels the fear, but the courage, just why my core value is under courage. You have to have that courage because yes, I am afraid just like everybody else. But I will act in spite of my fear, right? It's about deciding what you are willing to stand for, even if you stand alone.

[01:03:29] A.J. Nash: Hmm.

[01:03:30] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: That's very powerful. So especially in cybersecurity, where trust, I think is everything. Your people are working what you protect and what you are willing to sacrifice. So that's

[01:03:40] A.J. Nash: No, I, I mean, you're right. It's incredibly powerful. It's, and, and pervasive. I've certainly seen that, it, you know, it's, as you said, it's, it's not all being fearless. If somebody who's fearless, they're probably, they, they're, they're psychotic then, like we're, we're supposed to have fear. It's part of us.

[01:03:54] A.J. Nash: Courage isn't being fearless. Courage is the strength to overcome that fear and still do what needs to be done. you know, whether that's physical, whether that's, you know, doing the right thing as, as you pointed out here, you know, and obviously, for those who haven't paid attention, I got, you know, if you're watching the show, I've got my Minnesota, a Minnesota show down.

[01:04:08] A.J. Nash: I have several, I'm from Minnesota and I live in Minnesota. so with all the things that are going on, yeah, we're, there's a lot of people being tested right now on doing the right thing, doing the ethical thing. You know, whether it's the politically correct thing, whether it's the safe and secure thing, there are some

[01:04:24] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: what I would say is do do the human thing. Do the human thing, because I think courage is contagious. 'cause sometimes everybody's paralyzed by, fear because you know, usually what people do, they will use somebody as an example and just not chastise them and, and anybody, oh, I am afraid. What if it happened to me?

[01:04:38] Bob Fabien "BZ" Zinga: But if you have a courage to speak, guess what? You're gonna give permission to everybody else to have the courage to speak as well. Because I think leadership is unproven by what you post. It is proven by what you preserve, your values, your people, your integrity. When it would be easier to let them go, that's leadership.

[01:04:57] A.J. Nash: A hundred percent. I couldn't say it better. Not gonna say anything after that other than thank you. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for being you. I, I thank you for, for being such a great leader. I think we need more, the Navy I'm sure could use more. Everybody could, so could Silicon Valley.

[01:05:10] A.J. Nash: So I'm glad you're there doing these great things, and thank you for taking the time to be here, and to share your wisdom. I really appreciate you, and this, this has been a fantastic conversation. you know, for anybody out there who's listening or watching, I, I hope you've enjoyed the show.

[01:05:22] A.J. Nash: Feel free to, to let us know, you know, send feedback, please, you know, like, and subscribe and all the good things. If you don't like the show, don't tell anybody. I don't need any bad press. Just keep that to yourself. but you could at least privately let me know why you didn't. And I'll work, try to make things better.

[01:05:34] A.J. Nash: The show isn't about me. it's about the guests and it's about, it's about who has, you know, the time and energy to, to sit and listen and watch, you know, to try to hopefully put out. Content that matters. It's meaningful and it's entertaining and it's interesting and it's educational. So, you know, thank you everybody for taking the time to do that.

[01:05:47] A.J. Nash: thank you again, BZ for being on the show. Really appreciate it. and with that I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up. So for everybody out there, this has been another episode of Unspoken Security.

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