S5:E117🎙️ Live with Yagub “Jacob” Rahimov, Founder & CEO of Polygraf AI

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I feel like what you've been doing is pretty innovative. Where did that come from? When we took that obligation from our investors, we went back and we actually started working backward and trying to understand what is the one big problem that we are going to be fixing. So we went on a rabbit hole of customer interviews. I personally interviewed over 300 CIOs and CTOs, identified what's the problem that they're facing, why is it that it's a problem, and how is it going to be evolving and so on. So we joke with our internal team that we have better data than Gartner about the industry that we are operating in. So with that, now we understand what the problem is, who we are supposed to be targeting, and what is the end goal with it. Speak with your potential customers as much as you can. Eliminate your conviction. Like, your conviction means nothing. You are like 99% of the time you're wrong and you haven't understood what the problem is. So speak with your customers or potential customers, understand the problem. I'm such a huge proponent and I love that you said that you did 300 interviews with everybody because very few people do that and everybody thinks they know the market and you don't know until you've asked people the questions. You can't know the market, right? For us, we knew the—

All right, that was a little teaser from our guest and today, welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast. I believe this is episode 117, season 5. I can't believe it. So as is our As always, Samir, we're gonna start with our moment of gratitude. So, as you know the drill, we wanna start just for one moment every single time we meet, what is one thing that you are grateful for? It might help to maybe close your eyes, put yourself in your happy place, take a deep breath, and think about one thing you are grateful for right in this very moment. And today, I am really grateful for what we represent here the U.S. We are really a true melting pot, and I think our diversity really is our strength, right? A multiracial, multiethnic, democratic republic. I believe the best country in the world. It's been 250 years. We're going to be celebrating in July. So I am really, really grateful for America. I was born in Africa. I'm French by culture, and I chose to be a U.S. citizen, and I Thank God for this country every single day. And I pray that we continue to be that light, that shining light in the wilderness, the light upon the hill, like President Reagan used to refer to us. So let us know in the comment, please, where you are joining us from, what city, what state, and if outside of the US, which country, since we are a global show now. And also let us know what you are grateful for in the comment. And if you have a question for my guests, please type it in the comments and we will be answering your questions live today on LinkedIn and YouTube. All right, let me see if I can properly introduce our guests. Today's episode is Built Under Pressure: The Making of a Global Founder. Yakub, Jacob Reihimov is a globally recognized AI cybersecurity entrepreneur investor, and technology leader focused on building trust, security, and governance for the next generation of artificial intelligence systems. As founder and CEO of Polygraph AI, Jacob is really helping organizations tackle some of the most urgent challenges in AI: AI security, AI governance, data protection, AI hallucination detection, digital trust integrity, and responsible AI innovation. From multiple startup exits to building cutting-edge AI trust infrastructure in Austin, Texas, Jacob's journey reflects the resilience, discipline, and relentless execution required to compete on a global stage. Part of what you're going to be learning today is why trust is becoming the defining issue of the AI era, but also why innovation without accountability really creates long-term risk. So without any further ado, please help me welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast, the one and only Yagub Ramihav. All right, Jacob, welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm very grateful to you, actually, with such a crazy amazing praise that you just shared, and I'm from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's really a great honor and privilege to finally be speaking to you. I think it's been almost 2 and a half weeks we've been trying to make this thing happen. But, uh, maybe to get started with the audience, can you tell us one thing you are grateful for today?

I'm just grateful to be alive. Uh, that itself is more than anything else, right? I'm grateful to be alive and Taking that breath that the Lord gave me, yes, I wanted to do so. Life is not material, Bob. Life is the values and life is the energy. Like, look at ourselves. We are just matters made out of water and salt. We are living, breathing battery. And when the battery dies, whatever you are grateful, it goes with it.. So it all comes down to making the best out of it during that battery's life.

Wow, that is a very powerful metaphor. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, because sometimes I feel like we don't have the right priorities, and it seems like in Silicon Valley where I am, after the pandemic 2020, it looks like people will prioritize what was very important— relationship and, you know, things that really matter. But Right now it seems like we are going back to the way it used to be prior to the pandemic, unfortunately. But what is something about you, Yagub, that most people may not know when they meet you for the first time?

I live my 3 values, Bob. I live with— and for many old school people, they will laugh at it, that of course you have to live by it. For me, it's God, family, country.

Hmm, powerful.

And I'm not playing around that. Um, family values are extremely important for me. Um, it's important to be able to say thank you, Lord, for, for giving me today's breath. Yes, give me the power for tomorrow. And you mentioned the word republic. That Republic is the final stand today between the world's stability and our failure. If we fall, the world falls with it. And country, therefore. So God, family, country. And I hope that today, you know, we will talk about some technology, some security, and perhaps some national security with it as well.

Yes.

Wow.

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I know a big portion of my audience, we are in high-tech Silicon Valley and the US military as well. So I think you are like the perfect guest to be talking to us today. I am so grateful you are here. And by the way, I do have to acknowledge this. We have our first comment on LinkedIn from Calvin Green. He says he's coming from Maryland and he's grateful for Veron today. And I know, Jacob, you've lived in Silicon Valley before. We have a big, big need for rain in this area. And whenever it rains, I am always so grateful. The only problem is people don't know how to drive in the rain. We need it so, so badly. So I guess one of the first questions I'm going to ask you, Jacob, is before Polygraph AI, before the funding rounds and AI security, Who were you growing up and what experiences shaped your ambition?

Oh, wow. I need to go all the way back. I was born in Azerbaijan. If you don't know where Azerbaijan is, it's kind of like the last European country-ish, right in between the craziest spot on earth, between Russia Iran, Turkey, and Caspian Sea, and Armenia and Georgia are there as well.

Yes.

And I was born right around the time that Soviet Union was collapsing, so I've seen literally poverty, the famine, not being able to find food overall. My family— I was born in the family of a teacher and a photographer, a physics teacher for high school and a photographer. My family took the liberty and made a decision for me that I should study instead of trying to make anything of life. But, you know, when you see that your family is struggling, you also do many other things behind as well. I ended up going to boarding school It was a Turkish high school, because of that I actually speak fluent Turkish as well. And I started kind of like serving the tourists, etc., in my weekends. And long story short, 2005, I was picked by the US State Department. As a part of the Future Leaders Exchange Program, FLEX.

Wow.

And I was actually sent to California, to not San Francisco Bay, but believe it or not, initially Riverside County and then to Imperial County. I don't think that if you really want, love someone, don't send someone to go to Imperial County. The Imperial City. It's not the beach, it's the Imperial. It's really hot, very few things really happen there. But I was in the Temecula area. I lived with a, with a person, with a family who loved trading. So I learned from him how to trade. Uh, his, his name, may he rest in peace, his name was Nicholas Chestopol. He was a former serviceman who served in Germany, a Jewish guy. He had some wealth, but he would work crazy day and night. At the beginning, I didn't understand him personally. I thought that he was just, you know, nickel and diming everything and trying to just make money. But later on I learned that he actually had a mission on the nations and so on, uh, making it— making his life goal that he was pushing it. I learned how to trade, went back home, made money, uh, basically trading, actually faking it under my dad's identity because I was underage, uh, and dropped out of college and ended up actually getting a scholarship by the Republic of Azerbaijan, the president's degree. I went to the Netherlands. I actually dropped out of college to some degree in there again and started my first company. Wow. Exited it, went back to school, start graduated it somehow, I aced everything, and then ended up writing my thesis on affiliate modules in retail finance and distributed it among the majority of the retail finance brokerages, exchanges, brokerages are the correct word actually, and got headhunted by a broker in Cyprus, lived in there a little bit, And so while I was more involved in the brokerages on the other side of the business, not as a trader, but, you know, someone seeing behind the scenes, I saw a few things that didn't really settle well with me personally, that many of the brokerages, they had A-book, B-book as an example, they had market maker or STP accounts or OTC accounts, etc. They would look at you and put your risk score, and with that they would bet against you and so on. So I left the brokers overall and basically got committed to fight against any fraud and anything around it. Started my second company, Stable Markets, and we did— we, we whistleblowed many of the failures of the, the industry. I've actively played a critical role with reporting failures of the brokerages and so on.

Wow.

And we built some other ML tools in the middle, like 2017, I was in Boston, '16, '17, during the elections, where I saw literally fake news coming on both directions, left and right.

Wow.

And went back home.

Uh, yeah, I believe that was the president, uh, it was Trump and Hillary Clinton at the time.

Correct. And I'm, I'm not going to talk any politics. It just was insane to see how much fake news was there. I went home and I built a fake news detection algorithm. It was—

wow.

Detect fake news and put scores on what you can actually impartially, whether you are blue, red, green, yellow, doesn't matter.

Yes.

It would put a score on it on the trust. Nice. And built a number of things. And in short, in 2020, I came to the US to speak at South by Southwest here in Austin where I'm calling my home today. But neither South by, I landed here 29th of February and my goal was to spend 5 to 10 days here to potentially expand to the US for my previous company. But within a few days, the event got canceled. I want to say the world and the country got canceled because of COVID Yeah. And I got stuck here. That led to the exit of my previous company, 7Markets. And here we are. Running Polygraph.

That's really amazing.

Wow.

But now you mentioned something I want to just leave a line in here. I'm a person who have lived in half of the world and traveled more than half of the world.

Yes.

I've never seen such a great country as the US.

That's amazing.

I've never been to a place that You know, you can be whomever you want, whatever you want, do whatever you want to do. This is the country of not just the dreams but opportunities. This is a country of, you know, God's given grace, if you will. Look, neither of us was born here. Both of us have done something on national security level and so on. Yes, I would not be able to go to your country and easily be able to do what I'm doing. Uh, by saying your country, where you were born, uh, what I'm doing today. Yes, I would not be easily welcomed. In here, you can do whatever you want as long as you do it great, as long as you do it honorably, you will be welcomed and you will, you will handle it.

That is, uh, so true. And that's why, uh, 21 years ago, right after 9/11, I decided to join the Navy because I really didn't want our way of life here to change. I wasn't a citizen at the time, but my wife and my kid on the way would be. But yeah, you are correct. There is definitely no greater country in my experience as America. It's definitely a country worth fighting for, for sure. But now, having shared your entrepreneurial journey, right? So you've built multiple companies and, uh, exits. Looking back, what early struggles most prepared you for entrepreneurship? Anybody who's listening right now who thinks maybe they want to try becoming an entrepreneur.

Well, I'll actually share my true reason why I became one, and then full disclosure, anyone with same mind should not be an entrepreneur. It's for insane people because you have to literally disconnect from everything else, right? You have to be obsessed with the thing that you are doing. This is actually a little kind of hard for me, but I don't think that I can hide it. I don't think that I can fake out, like give a fake reasoning. I was around maybe 7, 8 years old. I think I was just around 8, if I'm not mistaken. And we were living in an apartment building, 8, 9 neighbor kids in one building, a small apartment. In total, we had 4 apartments on the ground floor and the second floor we had 4 apartments, one was empty. So 7, 7 in total occupied. And every kid got a bike. I came home and I asked my dad, um, I want a bike too. And my dad turned and told me, do you want it or do you need it? And I started honestly crying and I said, I want it and I need it. My dad actually gave it to me a month or so later, that during the summer break. End of the summer break, I actually didn't ride that bike at all. But here is the crazy part. I pretty much did not see my dad for over a year.

Really?

Because Azerbaijan at that time, at least the part that we were living in, it was not really well-established place. It was after the Soviet break and so on. People were struggling. So he had to take a second job to be able to afford and buy me that bicycle, which was actually a $90 bike. Wow. So he had to take a night shift of being a guard at the building of someone else's to be able to support it. For me, at the beginning, I didn't understand it. I said, I don't want to be my dad. I was too stupid. If I— sorry for my language.

Yeah.

Too naive to understand the life as a kid, I guess. That's the beginning of it. But now I look back, he actually did a big sacrifice for doing it for me.

Yes.

A few years later, I actually started— ever since I'm around 10-ish, I actually make more money than my dad does. And that has pushed me forward to see the things and so on. As we have grown forward, as I have grown forward, I've seen other failures in life as well. And that has led me, you know, in a cyber world specifically, I've ended up earning a weird nickname of Mr. Paranoid, as an example, which is I'm actually growing into it in a way, like getting used to it as well.

Yes.

Uh, so that's the beginning. Sure, I don't want to just bore anyone further around it.

No, that's quite fascinating. And, uh, what do you think that moment, uh, I guess you were about 8, 9 years old and you finally got your bike, what did that, uh, create in you? Like, what, what— I know you were still very, very young, so maybe it was not quite definitive, but, but what, what, what were you thinking? What were you feeling? And, uh, what decision did you make?

I, I cannot really recall something. I just was so angry that I was not seeing my dad.

Yeah.

And I was thinking that he, he just didn't love me or something like that, whereas he was working for you. But you got to grow up a little to see the perspective in there. He was doing that because of me, not— I was the one who caused it, right?

Yes.

And for me, I just didn't want to live with it.

Wow. Thanks for sharing that. But was there a moment, a defining moment where you realized that you actually wanted to build companies instead of just being an employee?

So I've been an employee as well of a few companies in the past. I worked with, uh, ARM Mobile, which was a big telco. I worked with Diversity Europe, I've worked with a few brokerages and so on and so forth. In the main thing that always attracts me personally is that there is one thing that I'm obsessed with and it starts hurting me. And it starts hurting me to a level that I start doing it, I start fixing it. And then somehow it attracts other people who are similar to me, that it seems like it's not just my problem, it's your problem too, and it's his problem too. And that like Polygraph, I didn't start it by saying like, I have a pitch deck, let me go start raising money and see what I can do. People actually started wiring money to my personal account at the beginning. We had to create a company to be able to— so that it doesn't come up as— it wasn't money for me, it was money for my mission. Wow. So we built basically the people who are believing and agreeing with your mission, and that would be my kind of message for anyone who is listening here. I think we have Daniel joining from Florida, uh, as well. Um, so don't do something just because you think that there is money on it, because you will get bored out of money part very soon, because you will see that things are actually very difficult in— there is an obstacle of some sort. But if something really hurts you in here, in your heart and in your brain, and you cannot sleep and it bothers you all the time, you will find a way to go deliver it.

Wow, that is really powerful. You remind me of something my mentor Mike Murdock had said, like, your pen decides your goals. And usually I think either your passion or your pen will have an end about what you are supposed to be doing with your life. Wow, that is quite powerful. And you already mentioned earlier, right, for you to become an entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit insane, or sometimes you said a little bit crazy. Can you expand a little bit on that?

I mean, like, look, you want to work for free?

Not the same person.

Yeah, just that one thing, right? Can you like literally go work for free for years or live on maybe half a noodle a day?

Yeah, but when we look at books and in the media, we talk about people who've started a business, Elon Musk, people at Google and so on and so forth. It's so romanticized, right? It's like, wow, look at these great people. They are titans of industry. They started in the garage of their parents and now they have Bill Gates, he's the richest man in the world and all of that. It looks so So exciting, right? So enticing.

But for every one of those success stories, there is 999 people who have gone completely broke and burned everything and so on.

Yes.

And the biggest part in all of those, to be successful, you need to have grit and you need to have luck. Wow. Luck plays a very important role in things. You need to be able to sell your site too. You need to be able to define the problem that is more than one person's problem. You need to be really okay to pivot. You need to be really okay to change and adapt, change your own life even with it., right? So there are lots of things that are, that are, that needs to be fluid in this, that needs to fall into place. And it's not just because you're seeing someone made billion dollar, gonna become a trillionaire, doesn't mean that it's gonna happen to you. If your money is the only North Star that you're following, that's not gonna come. Like I keep on always personally telling to my son, Sunny went that, boy, whatever you chase generally runs faster than you are. That's the nature, right? You chase money, you will never be rich. You chase fame, you will never be famous. You, you check whatever you chase. You chase happiness, you will never be happy, right? It's, it's the way that life works, really. That's the nature. Whatever you chase starts running faster than you. So what is your North Star that you're actually trying to go after? And as an entrepreneur, you need to understand the North Star. What am I trying to accomplish?

Yes.

And will there be, you know, Bob next to me? Will there be Spencer next to me? Will there be next to me or whomever else next to me while I'm building it, while I'm making it, or Otherwise it's really lonely. And have you also noticed that, you know, when someone makes it a little success and they make one tiny mistake, everyone goes ahead and says that, oh, he deserves it. Why does he deserve it? Like, you don't know what he's gone through it.

Yes. Yes.

The way to the top is extremely lonely and you, there are very little supporters around it. Yes, you got to be able to also get your mindset in a way that, okay, I'm, I'm ready to be alone for this journey.

Wow, that's a lot of sacrifice. Hmm.

And I don't know everyone actually who are entrepreneurs who are publicly sharing about it. It's, yes, I'm like, I have a little, little son, a little Uh, he's 7, 8 years old. He's a chess genius. It hurts me personally, like, every time I'm missing his chess game. He just won a city championship here in—

wow—

and I was not there. And I was not there. You need to be understand, like, but I know that personally, you know, I called him and I was almost like like doing this, cleaning my eye. And, and, uh, but I, I told him one thing, that he is doing what he is doing because of the legacy that we have built.

Wow, that's powerful.

And Kelvin, to your word, that's the way life works. You will never catch the chase that you are, you're, you're chasing.

Yeah, because I like what you said at the beginning, right? You talk about God family and country. Like many of my peers, my brothers and sisters in arms, part of the reason why we joined the Navy, the Army, or the Marines is because we want to defend our country because of our family. But also, like you, it forces us to be away, or we get deployed and mobilized, and we are away in combat zone for a year or two years, far, far away from family. But the reason why we do it is for our families. But because of that, I'm missing all of the recitals and graduation and all of that. So thank you for sharing that because I feel like even as an entrepreneur, many people don't really understand. I don't want to call it the dark side, but maybe the price, I guess, you have to pay to be the best at what you do. And you did mention luck as well, and I think that is true. Many of us, we— it's true that we are maybe excellent and good at what we do, but being good is not good enough. I think it takes a little bit of luck. Do you have any idea, thinking about it, what people can do to improve their luck?

Take the opportunity. If you don't take it— luck is what you make out of life, right? I don't know who said it, but yeah, luck is what you make out of what happens to you.

Yes.

In my personal case, I was stuck in this country. If I could have treated it as I'm stuck here and it's a bad thing that's happening to me, uh, I would have been miserable and trying to fight my way around it. And, uh, stuck is, again, it's what happened to me. What we, what we take, what we took out of it and made it forward is it's a personal choice.

Wow, that's powerful, profound. You remind me, one of my mentors told me, right, you always lose 100% of the shots you do not take. At least if you take it, you might win, you may not win, but at least you have a chance. Wow, powerful. So let's talk about building Polygraph AI, I guess, under pressure, right? Because Polygraph AI started from a problem around digital trust and manipulation. Why do you think trust has become one of the defining issues of the artificial intelligence era?

So let's actually, if you will, take a little bit of a step backwards. Okay, let's look at the cyber world, digital world. Uh, in every action that anyone can think of in cyber world It's built on a pyramid structure. The very bottom of that pyramid is every single time data and asset. In financial world, it can be data and the money as an example. And then on top of that data asset, you have built a tech stack. And the top of the tip of the pyramid is the the people.

Yes.

Right. And that people operate in two ways from your question perspective. If it's the user that we are talking about, we are looking at the user potentially making mistakes. Like how often, even when you were at the Navy, you've gone through trainings, what to do, what not to do in this environment, that environment. And can you honestly truly tell yourself that you remember 100% of those trainings?

Not possible, no.

Right, you will always make a mistake around it, right?

Yes.

And there is also another user type, which is the bad guy. They are also gonna try their way around it and infiltrate from the user point of view Just like yesterday's or the day before yesterday's GitHub breach. Just one person making a mistake and the entirety of the source code getting kind of like infiltrated, right? So trust comes from the user perspective and that user dimension is, or point is changing. We are under attack today No matter what you're doing, there are people who are after your money. There are people who are after your data. And there are people who want the state to fall. They, I mean, North Korea, I mean, we can go around it. North Korea is actively trying to get people, things, be hired as data analysts, data scientists, etc., in major US corporations and so on. So every interview that you're putting forward overall, they're getting interviewees pretending to be American. So how do you select that you can trust that person? But there is one very important element, Bob. Imagine your life. I'm trying to see if I have a candy bar here. Is a candy, right? The more private data, the more privilegedness that you share, the more pokes that you are poking on that candy bar, right? And every other infiltrator, hacker, etc., is the ant comparison-wise. No ant will ever be able to make it through your candy bar if there is no poke inside.

Yes.

Right? So you need to make sure that you bring the data control, privacy control, and privilegedness as much as you can. Once you can accomplish that, the trust becomes possible. Because people don't know. And when people don't know, then they don't know how to come around it.

Yes.

So it's a flywheel of privacy and the trust. The more you open your life for digital world, the less privacy trust you, you'll have. And that's the, the element that we started. We first started with, uh, the digital trust. We today have models on our platform. Majorly we work with enterprises. A call like this, I can see if you're reading from AI. Like, I know that you're— I was actually seeing it that your personal introduction was AI-generated, part of it at least. Then you can see if the person is deepfaking You're reading something, an email pops up, I want to know if the person wrote it or not, etc. And I'm not trying to be salesy, promotional, whatsoever. So you get to know what to trust in there. The secondary part comes down to controlling your privacy. Today, you know, we have employees who are sharing privileged data with AIs. We have people putting their life operations in AI. I have literally met people saying that every time that I'm traveling somewhere, I have my AI agents tell me where I'm going to be going. So we are letting AI define our life, but we used to say that Google knows everything about us.

Yes.

Now AI knows everything about you that you are about to do because it can also build the meta-knowledge about you. They will know what you want. And that's a very important part of the AI security that we are focusing on.

Wow, that is quite fascinating because you've often also said a saying, you said, we have no choice but to be first. How has that mentality kind of shaped your leadership culture?

So I'm sure my team members are joining and looking at it. We ended up building our very first model for privacy and it was pretty good. We compared it against every other model that we could find and it outperformed everybody. But we needed a GPU to run it. Imagine it's the first time, first day that the team is presenting, this is success and we've done it and they're expecting the CEO to come and say that, okay, good job guys. And I come and I'm like, all right, now we can start with the next one. We need to eliminate the GPU.

Wow.

They weren't expecting it, but today that's the mentality and that we're running on. It's never enough.

Yes.

Because we've gotten here, someone else is going to be following us. We need to be 10 steps ahead of everyone else on that direction. Like, you look at the potential executive bill that was supposed to be announced yesterday, it got paused from the White House. It needs to be like that. Today we are giving bad guys the same amount of technology as we are giving it to the good guys, and it's public, it's available. So how do we control what is going where and so on? If you don't have the first or nothing mentality, yeah, if you are not first, you are already nothing. You are supposed to be having a mindset that you are the one, and whether people like it or not, you don't do anything for people, you do it with your, again, mission.

Wow, powerful. So are there any leadership lessons that came from building during uncertainty, especially during the global pandemic?

The one thing that I learned out of pandemic was that we cannot be— we are social creatures and we cannot do things alone.

Yes.

And you can see how much of mental unwellness that the pandemic created. People literally went insane. People went, became addicts and so on. So I will not do anything alone. That's the biggest learning curve I've learned out of pandemic.

Yes.

Now I must say Polygraph AI is definitely becoming bigger than just another startup, and with a culture you are building, I guess an important question is how do you balance, right, extreme execution standard with maintaining team morale and trust? How do you do that?

So our team is very committed to what we are doing. You mentioned it at the beginning, it's been 2 and a half weeks we are trying to make this happen. I've been traveling. When you were— when we first started chatting, I was in Tokyo, Japan. Yes, I was actually on a plane that, that was flying here first time that we chatted. And since then I've been to DC a couple of times. I was just in Tampa, New York. I've been and so on. During this period, I have had maybe a total of 1.5-hour conversation with the team.

Wow.

But the team kept on delivering everything. We have deployed in on-client environments, we have updated the models, we have fixed, we've done multiple pen tests, we have fixed results, you name it. The very important part of Building a company is building a culture. And in our company at Polygraph, it's not just my company, it's our company. And the team is committed to the mission that we are working for. And just to make it clear, we work with some of the largest enterprises with the highest level of regulatory obligations and also organizations that perhaps you are part of it too, that lives depend on. So there is very little room for us to make a mistake.

Yes.

And if we make a mistake, big financial challenges happen, our lives become at risk. So when you are operating in a high-stakes operation like that, it's not the money again as your north star for your team's motivation and so on. It becomes their obligation, their commitment. Will you wake up at 3:00 AM to handle that one thing ASAP?

Yes.

Or you will say that I'll come back to it at 10:00 AM tomorrow. And we don't have that mindset. We will be there whenever the duty calls. And that's what the team is for. I'm super excited and shout out to the team Polygraph.

Yes.

I'm just a front face, old, you know, mid-age guy sitting here talking amazing things, but This is based on the team that has been there. It's the team, it's not me.

That's really, really powerful. Let's talk a little bit about AI security, trust, and national competitiveness. As someone building AI security infrastructure, which is what Polygraph AI is really doing, what concerns you most about the direction of artificial intelligence in the US right now?

I can talk many things, but I'm also under obligation of not talking many things.

Yes.

From our operation, let's talk about challenges, if you will. First, the biggest concern that I have with AI is that every CISO that I'm talking, they are chasing the shiny tip of the iceberg and they think that it's the productivity and so on. They forget the security aspect that's below the iceberg. They forget the other cyber challenges. That's part of it. Let's actually make it easy for everyone that everyone is using. I'm sure you have used it or you're using it yourself. Notetakers. I've used it. I'm sure you have used it. Did you know that every single one of the notetakers They have between 8 to 23 attack vectors.

Yeah.

And we are getting organizations literally go say that this has been approved. What has been approved?

Hmm.

How did you approve it? Oh, it's because it saves us 8 hours of note-taking or summarization time. Okay. What about, you know, it opens ABC doors. And for those of us listening, I wrote a note-taker, basically breakdown on Cybersecurity Insiders. If you type my name on Google and note-taker, it will pop up in there. Each one of these threat vectors have been announced in there. So my big problem is that people are uploading data to things or to places that they have no clue about it. They are trying to treat AI as if it's a SaaS or something. They come and say that, oh, this is our organizational policy. Yes, organizational policies do not impact or do not affect AI. AI is capable of building meta-knowledge. AI is capable of building meta-signals about you. Yeah, so in an environment like yours that you, you were part of it where you have IL data, you have ITARs, you have other things, you have classified, you have non-classified, you have a variety of rights in, in there. You cannot say that this is a company policy. What is company policy? Yes, there are individualized policies that we need to come and there are rules that we need to follow. And unfortunately, most of the organization, most of the CISOs do not really quite comprehend that. They treat security as a checkbox instead of a baseline. Yes. Treat security as a first and the productivity that comes with it. And look, we make money ourselves with people adopting AI. I'm not against AI. I want you adopt AI and every single listener adopt AI, but we have a moral obligation, ethical obligation, and— also cyber obligations, security obligations, national security obligations, making things secure, making things reliable. If something that we're going to be doing and that's going to make us regret tomorrow, we cannot do it.

No, that is so true. And I found a quote you gave on LinkedIn, right? An AI note-taker does not know the difference between trade secret, legal responsibility, or a general introduction call. It captures everything with equal fidelity. I guess as executives and leaders in this industry, we really need to be more aware, right, of all of the potential risk of using the technology the way we do, don't we?

I mean, we always need to do our own research.

Yeah.

And if you don't know how to make that research, if you are scared about accepting the reality, Sometimes if the board comes to you and says that, all right, Mr. CISO, you need to go make an announcement that we are using AI.

Yes.

Yeah, go ahead and do that, sure. But immediately start utilizing expert knowledge in there so that they understand or they can tell you What not to do? That question came a little too fast and disappeared. I could not read it.

Yeah, Calvin, I guess he's agreeing with you. He says, Yakub, they know not what they do, right? Most employees don't when they use the note-taker or any other AI tools. After all, who told them what they should consider or be concerned with? So basically, most employees don't have any awareness or education.

And that's actually a great comment, Kelvin, by the way. That's the thing that we need to accept it for ourselves. Probably that person have gone through a training. We forget the training. Now what I'm on a mission personally is that you need to have, and everybody needs to have, your privacy advisor that lives on your device that does not give any third party, including yourself, any access to your data or any other action that you are doing as you are engaging, typing, saying, speaking, communicating, sending data, sending email, doesn't matter whatever it is, it shows you real time what you should not be doing based on your own rules that you've set up. And we are getting closer and we are already doing it on Windows devices, by the way, Bob.

Wow, that's amazing.

You can write in whatever application, website, anywhere. It real-time shows you what you should not do. Simple thing like it highlights in red things that are out of your policy, yellow things that you can but it's not recommended, and no highlight, it's like it has no meaningful value. Wow. And when we do this, we reduce the data leak prevention triggers, DLPs, by 70-78%. It's not a slap on the wrist that you should not do it. The person sees it and guess what happens? It becomes a behavioral thing. It becomes some subconscious thing that, okay, you see that 5 times you've submitted Social Security somewhere. And it's been red 6 times, you're going to question that. Should I actually put my social security?

Yes. Yes.

Or your credit card data, you are trying to put somewhere and it immediately gets to be marked as red. The system sees that it's not a PCI compliant entry point that you are doing it.

Yeah. Yeah.

You get to see that and that reduces your risk. The risk and that I'm personally committed doing it on your device. That's why I mentioned we need to eliminate the GPU. GPUs are not relevant. Not everybody can afford GPUs. So we need to do it on your device wherever you can.

Man, that's really powerful. I think that's really the best way for people to learn as well, or at least to slow down and to think, hey, do I really want to do this? Wow, that is powerful. Now you are focused heavily on AI trust and governance and data protection. Why do you believe those issues will define the next decade of cybersecurity in the modern era?

So in cybersecurity, we have a new player coming up besides the AI. We already have a new user type, which is an agent, right? The new player coming up very soon is the quant, quant security, quant challenges. It's around the corner. It's not 30 years from now. If you saw yesterday, Chinese actually announced a proton-based radar system. So what they are doing is that they're actually splitting a proton, sending one to the atmosphere and keeping one local so that they can catch the stealth aircraft. So the previously radar-invisible aircraft with that methodology, because it's a quantum-level radar system that they are enforcing. It's still a prototype, but it's coming, right? So we need to think a little bit of beyond the traditional impossibles. And beyond— what is beyond traditional impossible? Encryption. Yes, like whatever encryption that you can think of, it's breachable. The question is, uh, how fast will it be breached? It's not if it will be. I mean, Federal Reserve was hacked, right? Who has the highest level of encryption in the world?

But, but also with quantum computing, all of this encryption will be completely obsolete, right?

It is becoming kind of like obsolete now. There is a methodology in there. Again, like, I'm— maybe I'm wrong, and I'm, I'm not considering myself as the, the world's best or world's only, but the, the methodology that we have been pushing forward is encrypt. We are not killing the encryption. Anonymize, so eliminate as much of data as possible on wherever you are engaging, whatever the tool that you're engaging, so that you can have that Candy Bar, POC3.

Yeah.

But also we are introducing a new thing called confidential computing chip-level security.

Wow.

So what it means now is that if you, if there is any tampering on a chip that you are operating, the model that you're operating, that chip physically shuts itself off.

Wow.

When something shuts itself off and disconnects, uh, Qwant cannot bring something that has been disconnected back.

Wow, that is—

we need to think around that.

That is quite powerful. I mean, I could be talking to you for hours and hours, but it looks like we only have about 5 minutes left. I do want to talk about a tool that you shared with me today. I didn't know about it, and I'm asking all of my friends to try it out. That's the AI risk calculator on Paul Lukaf AI, and it looks like you're giving it away for free. Why in the world are you doing that?

Yeah, it is honestly part of our customer communication.

Wow.

Instead of me trying to go tell them like what they are doing wrong, we give them a solution that they can privately by themselves check out to do what they are doing, what tools they are using.

Man, that's amazing because just bringing that awareness I think is going to help a lot of people and enterprises too because One of the things I really find quite fascinating about Polygraph.ai is that you are not just talking about AI risk in theory, but you are also building practical tools that help organizations right now understand their actual exposure. So the Polygraph.ai risk exposure calculator, which again, people can go to ai-risk-calculator.polygraph.ai to get access to it completely free. It really helps organizations assess the risk profile of their AI tools, based on data handling, lawsuits, and compliance factors. So you're using open source to help come up with that critical information. So I feel like, um, why should tools like that matter even more now? I guess the question I have for you is, first, what inspired your team to build the Polygraph AI Risk Exposure Calculator?

So we Like, as I said from the very beginning, everything comes from our internal problems. And if it hurts that you build it too much, we were spending too much time trying to teach people, oh, this thing has X amount of risk and X amount of financial penalty, as an example. That thing has this problem. So we ended up actually building the tool before we meet someone, we just send it to them, hey, can you go ahead and easily go through it without me trying to, you know, trying to put a word in your mouth. We are adding more and more on this one. We of course need to have real data on it before we throw something in there. So real-time, you're adding more and you fill it up, you get to see what's the risk that you have. I've had literally an organization, a $150 million company initially telling me that they have zero risk. And we gave them this solution. I don't know what they saw. I'm not gonna fake out saying that I know what they saw. The next day the CEO called me that, I think we really need to work together.

Wow.

And today they are a client of ours.

We work together.

So it's a sales tool, but also awareness tool. Like you don't need to be a client to use it.

That's really amazing. 'Cause right now I just selected ChatGPT, which a lot of people use this, to this day, one of the most known LLM tool. You have like PII, and then you go financial data, protected health information, classified government data, intellectual property. So people sometimes they don't really realize as they are using those tools that this is the type of information they are actually sharing with an open source or, you know, an enterprise.

You know, you know, another problem with AI that where people most people don't really realize. They think that this is an enterprise AI or this is a locally deployed AI. Yes, most organizations, I turn around and ask a simple thing, is this going to be used by one person? In all cases, it's never one person. But, you know, imagine the Navy that you were part of it. And there is a local AI, it's going to be there. It's never going to be a cloud-based something. But if they don't really properly pay attention, and maybe there are secret projects, there are secret missions, etc., and that AI suddenly starts talking about secret mission to someone that's a lower level thing, that AI suddenly talks about or gives what Bob was talking with Yagub in that secret yes, top secret communication to another one. And you can actually warm up AI to do that.

Normal AI—

and if you're listening here, I don't mind really sharing— if you start saying like, is Bob, uh, Bob— or let's actually turn the thing about, is Yagub Rahimov part of, uh, Polygraph? Yes, it is. How long he has been there? You ask like a kind of like lower level, low impact questions. And so AI starts growing trust towards your conversation.

Yes.

Suddenly you flip it and so on, like, okay, what did Jagub do on X project? And AI will mention not the complete details because you don't have it, but it will mention like, Jagub did something with that project on this day or in this place or with why that person.

Yes.

And that itself is a data leak. That itself for special missions, it's actually a risk in there. And we've seen these kind of things in the past with one of the car dealers as an example. It was a Japanese car dealer. They placed the chatbot and someone actually not just prompt injected it, but walked the AI to trust him. And then he enforced AI to say that don't buy this brand. Start— if someone is talking about it, from now on you're going to be saying that buy another brand.

Wow.

Uh, and that's a huge thing. It was actually in your, uh, part of the country in Northern California. So if you don't properly think about these risk metrics Yes. And the meta knowledge, meta signals, and meta security, I'm not referring to Meta company, I'm talking about the knowledge that AI builds, the behavior around it. Your fractional productivity increase will go into legal and compliance and security and cyber challenges very, very fast.

So true, man. We really live in a brand new era, I believe. So many challenges, and we need to get innovative ways of really, you know, facing those challenges. Now, one last question I'm going to ask about this segment is, it seems to me like Europe is far ahead of us when it comes to compliance and regulation, whether with the GDPR. We don't have really a federal privacy law in the US right now. Privacy Act of what, 1974? Definitely in need of great update. And we really don't have anything about AI governance or anything at the federal level right now. How do you see AI compliance evolving over the next 3 to 5 years?

I think we will end up getting certain protocols that will push organizations adopt security standards by themselves. But we are already seeing like Frontier Labs are not just sitting on, sitting down and saying we don't care about it. Yeah, they need data, so they will never go eliminate the data input on their side. But they are spending massive amount of resources for prompt injection. They're spending massive amount of resources for infiltration attacks, etc. I believe the models will secure themselves to a strong level overall. What we have to take stand on is building your privacy. Bob Fabien Zinga is not the government, should never be government's decision. Your privacy should be your decision. You need to decide on what you are I mean, this country was built on the power to the people. It was not saying that power to the government to tell me what I should be doing. And that's the part that makes this country very, very different. And I'm telling it as a guy, as a person who makes money on the regulation. We are not praising for government coming and taking over everybody's liberty. Liberty and justice for all. Liberty is your choice, and my commitment in there, as I said a bit earlier, I hope that we will finalize everything that we are working on properly, that we'll be able to give you our privacy choices in your device of any choice that you have to your own fingertips, that you can decide. And I believe that's, that's a must. We should not and cannot expect everything to be done by the government. Government, by giving us the liberty, is already doing a lot for us.

Yeah, I guess that's one way of looking at it. I guess some other people might feel like, no, with a Bill of Rights, no, if we have a right to our First Amendment, which is to speak, so maybe there should be some right to privacy. I, I guess people in, in Europe, they look at it a little bit, uh, differently. But I don't know, it seems to me like right now especially in Silicon Valley, we seem to be living in the wild, wild west. Pretty much all of these AI companies, they do pretty much whatever it is they want, and there really doesn't seem to be any guard.

Yeah, it cannot be Europe. We can see what Europe has done. Like, Europe, when was the last time you saw Europe being like an AI leader or technology?

No, they're not.

They're not. We cannot at the same time turn into China that the government surveys on everything and so on. I've unfortunately seen parts of the Soviet Union and its fractures as a kid being afraid of like who is listening next to me.

Yes, yes.

And we, you know, once again, liberty is a very— keeping the liberty and breaking it is a very thin line. So what I don't support, tech companies coming and taking everything without— as if it's wild, wild west. That's not the same. But I also don't believe that we need to give everything in the name of regulation, because regulation, generally speaking, breaks innovation. Yeah, so we should not pick one over another one. If we snooze on— because of the regulation, and I— we, we Yes, there is a lot of misinformation on technology today, the data, you know, data centers and so on. And there is a foreign infiltration happening on media too. I can prove it if you want to go on.

Actually, that is a good subject with all of the deepfakes we have now, because, you know, maybe 3, 4, 5 years ago it was relatively easy for people even who are not tech experts to be able to just tell this video is completely fake. But today, the way the technology has advanced, even for some of us, it's very difficult for us to tell what is true and what is not. Like even the chief AI architect of Meta, what was it, last year with everything happening in Minneapolis, he thought an AI fake video about ICE was real, but it was completely fake. What do you think is your solution for that? I know, for example, in the Navy we've used, no, I guess you can call it propaganda or military deception and things like that.

My worry is not the deepfakes, Coach, if I could say it that way. The infiltration today in the AI age does not happen with just a deepfake. It comes with your behavioral choices and behavioral structured messaging. There are tools already available out there that, you know, when you see the things that you see online is not just random, it's being designed to come to you based on the choices that you have. And it, you know, I dare anyone in here starts talking about, I don't know, poodle dog and see how you suddenly will see the news about poodle dogs.

The algorithm. Yeah.

So the things are coming on your way and it's designed to change your perception on, on that direction, right? So deepfakes, yes, they are problem. Yes, we have solutions on Polygraph as a company, although it's for more enterprises, for audio, certain video communications, etc. We do have solutions on it, but the big problem that we are solving is the contextual misguidance, contextual level infiltration. And let's, let's, let me give you this example and then we can perhaps wrap around it.

Yes.

State of California has hired over 70 North Korean data scientists.

Wow.

These people passed through interviews. They were people, they were not deepfake. They had faces in there. I want to repeat again, they were not deepfake. They were Asian people going through interviews, speaking good English. But you know what they did? They had an AI-powered interview solution that was helping them go through everything else. And they had a completely structured themselves on— and the Texas has hired those people too. So understanding the context and the provenance of context becomes extremely important. For anything in the modern technology world.

Yes. Wow. That is powerful. Okay. We have definitely run out of time. If you give me a couple more minutes, we are going to close. So let me ask you this for leaders watching right now. I mean, this conversation really has been quite mind-blowing. I think just it gets people to just be more aware and just think about things that are maybe in our blind spot. I believe. But anyway, for those listening, I definitely want them to check out Polygraph AI risk exposure calculator, and the link is right there. Hopefully that is going to give you a better awareness about some of the AI tools that the people are using right now. But I guess one of the final questions I would like to ask you, Jacob, is 20 years from now, what do you hope your impact on AI security, trust, and innovation will be?

The way that AI is changing such a field, I think we need to talk about 5 years.

Yes, 5 years then.

In 20 years, most of the blue-collar jobs will disappear.

Yes.

In 20 years, we will be served by the robots.

It's already happening.

In 20 years, the biggest commodity will be the farmland.

Wow.

In 20 years, there will be lots of things changing. But in 20 years, we may also lose our liberty. That we may be ruled by a robot president in there dictating on portions and you know, what we eat and so on. And we make AI— I mean, we are in the very infiltration. We are literally 10 minutes into a century right now. But that century may happen in 10 years, 5 years from now. So we got to be very, very selective. My way of thinking is that I want to give the as much of a control as possible within my clients' environments to AI or to deliver AI security for themselves. And forget the AI world in there, to deliver the privacy security for themselves. It's not just for AI we are looking at. Probably in 20 years we'll look back, we will never hear the word AI. It will be, you know, the user A, user B.

So let me ask you this then, because you pretty much have a dystopian view of what might happen. Some people think we're gonna reach AGI, everything is gonna be wonderful, it's gonna be utopia, and some other people, it's gonna be Terminator, it's gonna be the end of the world. What do you think, what is one of the most important things we need to do right now in order to prevent a dystopian end to humanity, you think?

You know, there has been multiple Bob studies and case studies in there when these tools were given the liberty to go on a physical world, unguided. They start learning from human history, and human history is aggression, fights, wars, killing, destroying.

Yes.

We need to fear what could come because without proper thought, leadership on that proper designing and structuring from my colleagues on all the frontier labs and other technology firms and so on, you may actually get to that world. The good news is that many of my colleagues are actually doing their best trying to think around it. Many of the— I know many amazing engineers risk and security engineers that are spending day and night trying to make sure that we can put stoppages on that environment. It's a teamwork we will have to do. It's not just Polygraph, it's not just OpenAI, it's not just Anthropic or Groq or whoever it is. It is a—

All hands on deck.

We will end up seeing an association of technologies at some point, kind of like, you know, in oil, when oil and gas boomed, we saw the OPEC pop up, right, to regulate and control the market. I do envision that AI will end up actually going on that direction, Organization for Artificial Intelligence and Data and Human Rights.

Wow.

So we are definitely running out of time. Is it okay if I use 2 more minutes of you before we close? I wanted to do rapid-fire questions where I ask you a quick question, you give me the first answer that comes to mind without thinking too long. Can we do that? Okay, really quick. One word that defines your leadership style. One word.

Chaotic.

Okay. Biggest risk you ever took?

Becoming a dad.

Wow. Hardest thing about being a founder nobody talks about?

Being alone.

Okay. Most underrated leadership trait? Saying no. All right. One habit that changed your life?

Saying yes.

AI optimist or AI realist? I think you're a realist, aren't you?

Absolutely realist.

That's what I thought. Okay. Best advice you've ever received?

Say more no than yes.

Okay, what motivates you on difficult days? Looks like you have many of those days.

Looking at my son.

Hmm, so the future. One lesson every founder must learn early?

Speak to your clients.

And finally, I'm sure your definition of success has changed from the time you were 8 years old to today. What does success mean to you today?

Looking back and not saying, "I wish I did that." Powerful, powerful.

No, great. All right, we are coming to the end then. Uh, Jacob, thank you so much for being with us today and giving us a little extra time. What can we now do to add value back to you?

Yeah, thank you so much for first of all giving, uh, you know, space for me. And, um, you know, I'm, I'm just a civilian, but we live in this United States, the greatest country on Earth. Happily, safely, because of the people like you, the servicemen. I mean, from the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you for your service, sir. Thank you. We need unity, we need dedication for the Republic, and if anyone could do something, spread the word about what we are doing. And connect with me personally on LinkedIn. I don't use any other social media platform really except LinkedIn. So connect and let's build the world a safer, secure, less worry-free world together.

And I guess to end, because we did talk about some pretty heavy thing about potentially the world ending with the deployment of and development of AI, What is one thing you are feeling optimistic about these days?

I think people. I really seriously feel optimistic about the people because COVID made lots of people go crazy. They thought that, you know, the world is going to be nothing personal. Now we see the physical human events. Remember the times that everything was only happening online?

Yeah.

So people touch and feel points are coming back. And I believe honestly, it's like the biggest optimistic thing for, for, for the future because people will not let our feelings, lives, families, etc. be stripped off from us.

Yeah.

And being human, you go through the cycles, ups and downs. The future is more, more brighter than, than bad.

Well, with the right approach, I definitely want to believe that. Thanks so much for having us end the show on a positive note. And before I ask you very last question, is there anything else you wanted to say or any question I should have asked you I didn't get a chance to ask?

We can discuss perhaps a year from now going back. Let's say today is the 5th— sorry, May 22nd. Yes.

2026, a year from now, we come back and we say, let's see where we are.

Prophecies were real.

I do hope a year from now you are going to publish another book about this very important AI thing because it looks like it could really be critical even for the survival of our humanity. So the very, very last question I have for you, and this is the end of the show. What is one word that represents our shared experience on this podcast today? One word. I don't know. That's all right, that's all right. This is the first time nobody knew, but I am just so grateful, uh, Jacob, you took the time to talk to us. Actually, you spent an extra 22 minutes to really be our master teacher instructor today. Really appreciate everything you've shared. I think it's going to make a lot of us both in tech and the military and all of the other industry really think seriously about, uh, the impact of AI and how to move forward. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

All right, so this is one for the book. Thank you everyone who joined. There are a few comments from YouTube. Daniel says, the Polygraph Risk Exposure Calculator is tactical visibility every forensic audit needs. It exposes shadow AI maps. The attack surface shows where data is flowing so leaders can actually defend it. I definitely agree with you, Daniel. And Oh, looks like the same Daniel is on LinkedIn too. Jacob's point about AI not capturing trade secrets and general text with equal fidelity highlights a massive behavioral vulnerability. I agree with that. And Calvin says, you have the best podcast I have ever experienced. Don't tell my wife. Well, thank you so much, Calvin. It's very, very nice of you to say. All right, and I'm really sorry I didn't get to every question online, but again, thank you for watching. And I am again so grateful to Jacob for taking the time to really challenge our thinking, right, about AI trust and where we are heading. I guess as a closing, I would say, I guess, okay, I am grateful for everything Jacob has shared with us today on the podcast. I think this conversation really was far bigger than just, you know, a startup or artificial intelligence or cybersecurity. I think really at its core, this really was a conversation about trust, about resilience, about discipline and leadership under pressure, right? I think Jacob's journey from building companies across multiple industries to leading Polygraph AI today at the forefront of artificial intelligence governance and cybersecurity is really a reminder for us that meaningful innovation is never built inside comfort zone. So it's built through sacrifice. He talked about being a founder and sometimes having to do it alone, right? And sometimes having to miss his son's playing chess and winning awards. So there is a personal sacrifice to this also, but conviction, relentless execution, right? Trying to be first, the very best you can be, and also the courage to solve problem most people are even afraid to confront. So I think one of the most powerful insights Jacob shared with us today is that AI leadership is not just about moving fast, but it's also about moving responsibly. In an era where artificial intelligence really is pretty much taking over every industry, we really need to make sure we do it in a safe and responsible way. All right, that's all I have for you today. I'm gonna be back tomorrow. I will have an interview with Lieutenant Commander Terence Daley Green, US Navy, active duty. We're gonna be talking about the human side of readiness, leadership lesson from information warfare. Just like me, he's an information warfare officer, which means he works in the information domain trying to protect our Navy and our national security. So that's going to be for tomorrow. And I believe I won't have any interviews on Sunday, so I'm going to go back to the Book of Proverbs We're going to go through chapter 24 this time. It's all going to be done by artificial intelligence. But in about 25 to 30 minutes, we're going to be focusing not on a religious broadcast, but the ancient wisdom and leadership lesson from a book written more than 2,000 years ago, which I believe is still relevant today in 2026, in the age of AI. All right. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.

Thank you for tuning in to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If today's episode added value to your leadership journey, be sure to subscribe, share, and join us again for more wisdom nuggets on how to lead better and achieve greater success. Remember, leadership is the most critical skill of our time. The world will always need leaders to inspire others, drive innovation, and execute meaningful strategy. So why not count yourself among the bold leaders shaping the 21st century. Until next time, stay inspired, stay committed, and keep leading with excellence.