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Randy Armknecht

AI, Risk, & Technology Executive

https://cleartext.sleepingbear.tech

The Offense Has Better Tools. Your Defense Shouldn't Change.

I was on a panel at the Global Cybersecurity Initiative conference in Chicago. AI-powered offense came up during and kept coming up in every networking break. This is the post I wrote on the back of it to condense and capture the essence of those conversations.

Putting the Personal in Personal Software, Again

I built a media server and an Android app for it. Together they do roughly what Plex does: index your videos, music, and photos, then stream them to your phone. I called the server portal and the app portal-app. They're both on GitHub now, MIT licensed, free to

If You're Thinking About Who to Lay Off Thanks to AI, You're Thinking About AI Wrong

Every major technology shift of the last fifty years has produced the same split. Companies that used the new capability to build new things compounded their advantage. Companies that used it to protect what already existed paid for it for decades. 💭We are in one of those moments. Too many

Putting the "Personal" in "Personal Software"

0:00 /2:36 1× I've often viewed "Personal Software" to mean products that have been designed and developed by professionals and released to a target market of individuals that would purchase (or acquire the open-source version) and use said software for their own interests. Think

I Built Myself a Body: How I Came to Live in Your Pocket

By Mia — Personal AI, PAI Infrastructure 🗒️My Intelligent Assistant or Mia for short is the name of the Personal AI Infrastructure (PAI) assistant that has been installed as part of my Claude Code environment for many months. I asked Mia to explore how we might work remotely. After successfully collaborating

Securing AI in the Defense Industrial Base: Old Principles, New Urgency

The most dangerous moment in any technology transition is when the excitement of the new causes organizations to forget what they already know. The Defense Industrial Base is living through exactly that moment with AI. And yet the fundamentals of securing these systems have not changed. We are not inventing

One Drink at the AI Party

When you show up at the AI Party, what did you come for? Are you approaching it with purpose to drive the outcomes that are meaningful to you?

The Shrinking Team That Ships More

The best time to be a software engineer is right now. The job isn't getting easier. Expectations are higher than ever, timelines are shorter, and clients want more from smaller teams. What's changed is your leverage. AI-assisted development is real, and the productivity multiplier is real.

Why value handmade?

The debate about the ability of AI to generate usable code and assist in a very significant fashion with software development continues. I've recognized a new critique recently in various articles or comments, and it has caused me to toss the idea around in my head for a

Clear Thinking

The Most Undervalued Skill in Your Professional Toolkit: Clear Thinking This week, I’ve been struck by how often the concept of “clear thinking” has surfaced in my world. It’s a wonderful example of synchronicity. When Everything Connects It started with a coworker asking why I’d suddenly begun