Cables2Clouds

Cables2Clouds
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Join Chris and Tim as they delve into the Cloud Networking world! The goal of this podcast is to help Network Engineers with their Cloud journey. Follow us on Twitter @Cables2Clouds | Co-Hosts Twitter Handles: Chris - @bgp_mane | Tim - @juangolbez 

  1. AutoCon5 and The State of Network Automation in 2026

    3 hr ago

    AutoCon5 and The State of Network Automation in 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Network automation doesn’t fail because engineers can’t code. It fails because teams can’t turn one-off wins into a repeatable way of operating. We sit down with Scott Robohn of Solutional, co-founder of the Network Automation Forum and one of the people behind Autocon, to unpack why Autocon keeps growing and why a “production-first” mindset changes the entire conversation. We talk about what makes the Autocon room feel different from traditional tech conferences: a grassroots vibe, a tough selection process that rewards what’s actually running, workshops that go deep, and a culture where it’s safe to share what broke. Scott also highlights a leadership track idea that hits home for working engineers: automation only scales when we can explain outcomes, costs, risk reduction, and why the business should tolerate early stumbles. Then we get real about AI in NetOps. LLMs can speed up scripting, summarize telemetry, and help teams prototype faster, but that doesn’t magically create maintainable enterprise automation. We dig into the gap between step one and step three, why workflow discipline matters, and how spec-driven development and test-driven development make AI-assisted work safer. We also connect the dots to security automation, SOC versus NOC adoption, and the emerging “security for AI” problem where policy alone is not a control. If you’re thinking about Autocon 6 in Tucson (November 16 to 20), Scott shares what to expect and how to plug into the community. Subscribe, share this with a teammate who owns change management, and leave a review with your biggest automation hurdle. Connect with our guest: Scott's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottrobohn/ Network Automation Forum https://networkautomation.forum/ Solutional https://solutional.com/ Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    48 min
  2. AI Got Export Controlled And Everyone Got Grounded - Monthly News Update

    17 Jun

    AI Got Export Controlled And Everyone Got Grounded - Monthly News Update

    Send us Fan Mail We react to the biggest stories from Cisco Live, focusing on why Cloud Control and Multi-Cloud Fabric could simplify how teams manage multi-domain infrastructure. We also unpack the Mythos export control shockwave and the growing backlash to AI data centers as efficiency claims collide with real community costs.  • Cloud Control as a manager of managers, bringing consoles, telemetry, and logs closer together  • Early-stage reality of “unified” platforms, plus the longer-term need for a shared policy engine  • AI Canvas and cross-product troubleshooting, pulling signals without console hopping  • Multi-Cloud Fabric as network as a service for branches, data centers, and multi-cloud connectivity  • Mythos 5 rollout frustrations for security workflows and why guardrails changed user experience  • Export controls and the fallout for foreign nationals, partners, and even internal teams  • Glasswing, vulnerability discovery, and the open question of how much better Mythos really is  • Bug bounty economics, including the reported cost per bug and what that means for incentives  • AWS water efficiency claims, plus why water and energy constraints still drive public resistance  • AI spend whiplash, cloud-era déjà vu, and why capacity keeps running into physics  Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    43 min
  3. We Doomscroll So You Don’t Have To - Monthly News Update

    20 May

    We Doomscroll So You Don’t Have To - Monthly News Update

    Send us Fan Mail A $435 million all-cash acquisition doesn’t happen just to add another logo to a portfolio. We break down why Lumen is buying Alkira to become the control plane for cloud connectivity, and what that signals about where multicloud networking is headed. Alkira’s POP-based backbone and marketplace approach made cloud interconnect feel like a service. Plug that into a telco-sized footprint and you can imagine faster turn-ups, better orchestration, and smarter last-mile connectivity. You can also imagine a lot of painful integration work and real uncertainty for current Alkira customers. Then we pivot to something every engineering leader should be thinking about: what happens when your team depends on AI coding tools and the quality quietly drops. Anthropic’s Claude Code post-mortem is refreshingly candid, but it raises the bigger question we can’t ignore anymore: what’s the service level agreement for model “reasoning,” coding intelligence, and reliability, and what recourse exists when the output isn’t what you paid for? We also cover a new wave of supply chain attacks, where compromised packages can ride trusted pipelines, hunt for AI and cloud credentials in local dev directories, and self-replicate fast. And we end with the physical side of the cloud: a data center water controversy that shows why communities are pushing back as AI infrastructure scales. If you found this useful, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review. What story should we dig into next month? Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    28 min
  4. Ethical Hacking Basics

    6 May

    Ethical Hacking Basics

    Send us Fan Mail If you still picture “hackers” as hoodie stereotypes and fast typing in a dark room, this conversation resets the story with real, practical detail. We sit down with Kyle Winters from Learn with Cisco to define ethical hacking and penetration testing the way security teams actually use it: as a sanctioned, scoped way to think like an attacker so you can fix weaknesses before a real threat actor finds them. The heart of the episode is simple: defence tools are not enough unless you test them with an offensive mindset. We dig into how red team, blue team, and purple team workflows differ, when black box testing beats white box testing, and why rules of engagement matter when a scan can lock accounts, crash fragile IoT devices, or disrupt business critical apps. Kyle also shares a hands on learning path through Cisco Networking Academy (NetAcad), including a free ethical hacking course with labs, a mock pen test flow, and Capture the Flag challenges on Cisco U that lead to a non expiring certificate. We also touch on Cisco Talos and why threat intelligence and community training help close the cybersecurity skills gap. Then we pivot to AI security and the uncomfortable truth: generative AI makes phishing, deepfakes, and voice impersonation more convincing, and agentic tooling can automate parts of exploitation faster than many teams expect. At the same time, AI adds a brand new attack surface, from prompt injection to unsafe chatbot connections into databases, which is why AI red teaming, OWASP style LLM risk thinking, zero trust, and least privilege are becoming core security skills. Subscribe for more practical cybersecurity conversations, share this with someone learning ethical hacking, and leave a review. What worries you most about AI in security right now? Connect with Our Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-m-winters/ Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    41 min
  5. Can You Fly With Glass Wings? - Monthly News Update (with a Surprise)

    22 Apr

    Can You Fly With Glass Wings? - Monthly News Update (with a Surprise)

    Send us Fan Mail “Too dangerous to release” is a bold claim in cybersecurity, so we treat it like any other security headline: we interrogate it. We kick off our monthly news round-up by welcoming Catherine McNamara as a permanent co-host, then dig into Anthropic’s Mythos preview model and Project Glasswing, positioned as an AI security and threat intelligence leap that can allegedly find zero-day vulnerabilities at a level the public shouldn’t have yet. We ask the uncomfortable questions: where’s the independent evidence, what does high-fidelity vulnerability discovery actually look like, and how do we avoid drowning in AI-generated noise? From there, the discussion gets messier in the way real security always is. We talk about tokens, paid code security reviews, and how incentives change when AI companies chase growth, IPO pressure, and government contracts. We also unpack why “ethical” restrictions are hard to enforce in practice and how rumors of source code leaks and fast rewrites complicate any promise of controlled access. If powerful agencies can use AI to speed up exploit discovery, even lower-severity bugs can become dangerous when chained into real attacks. Then we pivot to a concrete lesson every org can use: the Vercel breach. A supply chain compromise plus a single OAuth “Allow All” moment shows how identity and SaaS permissions failures can open the door to data exfiltration. We break down least privilege, blocking risky OAuth grants, shadow SaaS, and why a CASB can be the difference between a contained incident and a headline. We close by connecting AI layoffs to social and economic pressure, including CEO security fears, surprising UBI rhetoric, and Oracle laying off 30,000 people by email. If you care about AI, cloud security, appsec, and what these incentives are doing to the world, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review with your take: is the AI security boom helping defenders more than attackers? Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    43 min
  6. What is Spec-Driven Development?

    8 Apr

    What is Spec-Driven Development?

    Send us Fan Mail Your AI can write code fast, but it can also wander fast. That’s why we sat down with Jason Belk from Learning at Cisco to unpack spec-driven development, a simple idea with huge impact: write the rules and requirements first, then let your coding agent execute with far fewer surprises. We talk through what “agentic coding” looks like in practice with Claude Code, including the trust and permission model of a local AI agent that can create files, run bash commands, and iterate on a real project. Jason explains how GitHub Spec Kit turns plain markdown and scripts into a repeatable workflow: start with a constitution that defines governing principles, then cycle feature by feature through specify, plan, tasks, and implement. Along the way we cover common gotchas like initializing in the wrong directory so skills never load, plus practical tips like using voice-to-text to improve prompts and choosing the right model tier when implementation quality matters. We also zoom out to the bigger picture: why context windows break long builds, how keeping plans on disk helps the agent “re-ground” itself, and where the industry may be heading with small specialized models versus one giant general LLM. Jason shares learning resources too, including a Cisco U tutorial that frames spec-driven development for network engineers, and the Cisco AI Technical Practitioner course and certification, plus upcoming Cisco Live sessions. Subscribe for more real-world AI workflows, share this with a teammate who keeps fighting prompt drift, and leave a review with the one automation project you want an agent to build next. Connect with Jason: https://linktr.ee/renobelk https://github.com/jabelk/claude-speckit-template SDD Relevant Material mentioned in this episode: https://sdd.goecke.io/ https://substack.com/home/post/p-189415335 https://ondemandelearning.cisco.com/apollo-alpha/tc-ai-spec-driven-dev/pages/1 https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/aitech-exam-topics https://u.cisco.com/paths/cisco-ai-technical-practitioner-20806 https://u.cisco.com/tutorials/introduction-specdriven-development-build-project-without-writing-code-28016 Software Defined Talk episode referenced: https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/563 Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    39 min
  7. Please Don’t Dump Data Center Soup - Monthly News Update

    25 Mar

    Please Don’t Dump Data Center Soup - Monthly News Update

    Send us Fan Mail AI is everywhere right now, but the numbers and the real-world trade-offs don’t always match the hype. We dig into a headline that AI added basically nothing to US GDP growth last year, even after billions in spending from the biggest names in tech. That launches a bigger question we can’t ignore: is the AI boom creating durable productivity, or mostly moving money around the same handful of companies that sell GPUs, cloud capacity, and data center hardware? From there, we get into the messy incentive layer of AI safety and AI regulation. We talk about Anthropic’s shifting safety stance and why “we meant well but competition changed” is becoming a familiar pattern across the AI industry. If guardrails depend on goodwill, what happens when the market punishes anyone who slows down? And if we keep pushing responsibility onto “developers,” are vendors dodging accountability for the defaults they ship? We also zoom out to the physical footprint of AI infrastructure: energy demand, strained grids, and the environmental impact questions that show up when states consider options like data center wastewater discharge. Then we hit the human side of “AI efficiency,” including layoffs framed as automation wins, and we end with privacy concerns around Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses and footage that may capture far more than people expect. What headline worries you most right now: jobs, safety, the environment, or privacy? Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    32 min
  8. An Honest Conversation About AI Security

    11 Mar

    An Honest Conversation About AI Security

    Send us Fan Mail Ready for a reality check on AI security? We invited Cisco cybersecurity expert Katherine McNamara to dig into where large language models actually break: from prompt injection and over-permissioned plugins to reckless “vibe-coded” apps that leak IDs, photos, and entire backends. The stories are real, the stakes are high, and the fixes are concrete. We trace how AI sprawl mirrors the worst of early IoT—weak defaults, poor isolation, and a stampede to integrate models into billing, HR, and support without guardrails—only this time the blast radius includes your customer data and your legal exposure. We talk through the human factor first. Written policies won’t stop someone from pasting a pen test report into a public chatbot. DLP helps, but hybrid work and BYOD stretch defenses thin. Then we move to the core threat model: public and private models are targets; datasets can be poisoned; plugins often ship with admin-level scopes; and a clever prompt can trick an LLM into disclosing chat histories, creating new accounts, or modifying orders. Courts have already treated chatbots as company representatives, binding businesses to their outputs—another reason to treat every integration like an untrusted user with strict least privilege. It’s not all doom. Used well, AI gives security operations superpowers: correlating signals across dozens of tools, reducing alert fatigue, and surfacing lateral movement. The path forward is discipline, not denial. Fence models on the network. Prefer read-only to write. Gate plugins behind narrowly scoped APIs. Vet datasets for backdoors. Red-team prompts as seriously as you pen test code. And educate stakeholders with live demos so they see why these controls matter. We also unpack the shaky economics—GPU costs, rising consumer fatigue, hype-fueled projects with little ROI—and why that pressure can erode privacy if teams aren’t vigilant. If you’re building with LLMs or trying to rein them in, this conversation gives you a practical map: what to allow, what to block, and how to make AI useful without turning your stack into an attack surface. Subscribe, share with a teammate who ships integrations, and drop a review with the one guardrail you’ll implement this quarter. Connect with our Guest: https://x.com/kmcnam1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinermcnamara/ Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/ Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/ Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.com Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/ Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2clouds Merch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/ Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

    52 min
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About

Join Chris and Tim as they delve into the Cloud Networking world! The goal of this podcast is to help Network Engineers with their Cloud journey. Follow us on Twitter @Cables2Clouds | Co-Hosts Twitter Handles: Chris - @bgp_mane | Tim - @juangolbez 

Information

  • Creator
    Cables2Clouds
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    127
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Cables2Clouds
  • Show Website
    Cables2Clouds

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