Episode 41: Technology Risk Executive and former NASA CISO and CIO Jerry Davis

Informing your decisions with intelligence analysis and insight brought to you by the team@ooda loop.com.

Hello, I'm Bob Gourley, the Chief Technology Officer of OODA llc. Today on the oodacast, Jerry Davis. Hello, Jerry. How you doing?

Hey, I'm great, Bob. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming on. I'm just so excited to talk to you. We've run into each other in the past, and I know for a fact you doing some of the most interesting stuff around today, and I'm just very excited to talk about that. And Jerry, I also want to talk about your past because I found out things about your past that I had no idea until I started digging a little deeper. But to give folks a little hint of some of the things that you're up to now, you are running a company that is helping to think through issues of resiliency and risk in some of the most critical systems humanity is building right now in space. Right?

That's true. That's very true. How do you build design? Resilient space systems architectures.

All right, let's get back to that in a minute. But I wanted to start with the early days. You see, when I first received ran into you, you were already at what most people would think is the pinnacle of success. You were a ciso, I think, with Department of Education. And then you moved on to even larger agencies where you continued to drive enterprise transformation. NASA, Veterans Affairs. And so I met you as you were already leading and changing and transforming. But I want to go further back.

You were, you were a Marine. That's true. Still am. Once a Marine, always Marine. Bob.

No, I was in the Navy, and it was just my extreme pleasure to get to meet and work with Marines. And just what a, what a group, what a cadre of folks. Good humor, smart people and just tremendous organization. Knows how to get things done.

Yeah, Abs, absolutely. And I definitely appreciate that, you know, particularly the smart people, because, you know how they, you know, Marines, you know, always joked about not being so smart and that we eat crayons and things like that. Nature. So when someone says smart, you know, I'm like, ah, you know, I appreciate that.

Yeah, yeah, there's a, there is a lot of, a lot of humor in the Marine Corps. And they'll call themselves knuckle draggers and all this, and then you ask the guy and they've got, oh, yeah, and I've got a master's in computer science in spare time. Well, you got your start in the Marine Corps, and that also gave you a Taste of intelligence. You were a counterintelligence professional with the Marines, right?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I started off in light armored infantry and did a combat tour in the first Gulf War and came back and thought to myself, wow, that's. You could really get killed doing this job in the Marine Corps and transition into the counterintelligence field. And did my training at, actually at Fort Huachuca. I went to the Army Counterintelligence Agent course. I think back then it was called like 97 Bravo or something like that, and did that course. And that's where I started learning the ins and outs of intelligence and counterintelligence work and absolutely loved it. Love, love the work that I was doing with the Marine Corps in the reserve system and the counterintelligence field.

Right, and then while you were a reserve, you also were working at the CIA, correct?

Yeah, I did. I was recruited by CIA out of Southern California after that lengthy two year process of getting me on board, moved out to northern Virginia in 94 and made my way into the counterintelligence center there. Counter Espionage Group Offensive Operations is what they called it at the time. That too was a phenomenal. I love the intelligence community and had a great time traveling around the world, meeting interesting people, doing really, really interesting, impactful, positive things on behalf of the country. I loved it.

Yeah. And your LinkedIn profile said something to the effect of you were able to work on five of the seven continents of the world during this period. So I didn't do much in Antarctica.

Yeah, yeah, five to seven continents. And as I always say, you know, I let people try to, you know, it's up to them to figure out which, which five. I'll keep that to myself. Yeah.

And it was, it's good hearing this foundational story because I did have an opportunity to work with a lot of folks in the field from the CIA. I was Navy, Navy Intelligence. And the people you run into out there are all extremely professional and they well trained and taught to keep their eyes and ears open and stay aware of their environment and their situation and know what to think about dynamic situations. And it just made me think. Those mental models and way of thinking and training, how did that help you as you transition to a cybersecurity professional?

That a phenomenal question. You know, Bob, it really came down to I learned at Central Intelligence, especially being in counterintelligence, you learn to be a really, really good critical thinker. Right. You learn to be really good at critical thinking and traveling around and meeting with different people of different cultures. And different backgrounds, you kind of learn to start painting a picture about people and how they behave and what motivates them and how you engage with people of different backgrounds and skill sets and motivations. And that translated well for me into the. When I got into the cyber field, interesting enough, you know, I always tell people, when I talk about Central Intelligence Agency, I said, you know, it has very little to do, in my estimation, with the successes. That's very little to do with technology. I mean, technology is obviously a big part of intelligence and counterintelligence work. I said, but it really comes down to people. I go, the people that you get to work with, I said, are just brilliant. And what I tried to do was, was siphon off some of their brilliance and how they thought and how they looked at things to make it my own. And again, I brought that with me as I started transitioning into the, into the world of cyber and cybersecurity.

Fascinating. And then I think also you must have, in your work in the field, I mean, that's a dynamic environment where it changes quickly. And you always have to be thinking in cybersecurity, also extremely dynamic. Be ready, because the adversaries are going to surprise you and you have to respond appropriately and quickly.

Absolutely. At CIA, I spend obviously a lot of time in training. When you come on board, you spend your first year in training, you're just going from one training activity to the next, honing your skills and learning things. And one of the big aspects of learning that they try to ingrain in you is learning how to think on your feet. And when things happen, situations happen, how do you react to them quickly and making sure that you're doing the best decision to react to changing situations and changing environments. I think a big part of that is that they treat. It's all about planning and having a backup plan, but having a backup plan to the backup plan, because guaranteed things are going to go wrong. Every best laid plan is going to go wrong. And it's like they always say in the military, no plan survives first contact. So you learn to be quick on your feet and you learn to be agile. And again, those are things that were ingrained in me when I, when I started getting into cyber. When things switch and happen on you really quick, you learn to pivot, you learn to think through things very rapidly, you learn to think about risk and how you mitigate things and then pivot and hopefully you're pivoting into the right direction. And so, yeah, I learned a lot in the intelligence community, things that are helping me, whether it's personally or professionally in my life, that I'll carry with me, you know, for the rest of my days.

Right, well, and let me ask about another transition here, because people may not believe it today, but there was a time when these big agencies did not have CISOs. In fact, there was a time when they didn't have CIOs. But the Clinger Cohen act in the mid-90s said, okay, you need to professionally manage it. So most of them already had a CIO by the time you were pulled into Department of Education, and you were the first ciso, correct?

Yeah. The title at the time was Director of Information Assurance, but really it was their first Chief Information Security Officer at Department of Education.

Yes. It must have been very entrepreneurial, because I can only imagine an agency like that has built up resistance to any kind of change. And now here you are saying we need to care about security, so it must be an entrepreneurial kind of environment.

Yeah. You know, the interesting thing is that was 2004, and what had happened two years prior was, you know, fisma came out. Right. So you had a little bit of, you know, teeth and push, but it was still like anything else. Right. It's change, and change is extremely difficult. And organizations and agencies and Department of Education is a small entity, but it feels like a very big entity. Right. You know, they. They have a tremendous budget. I think back then it was, you know, more than $100 billion. And a lot of that is. Is student financial aid and grants and that sort of thing. And it is a highly politicized organization. So there was a lot of pushback and a lot of different areas as related to security. But over time, people start to get it. When you just keep your drumbeat and your tempo with the message, it starts to sink in. You start to build relationships and collaborations. It starts to sink in with folks over time. I enjoyed my time at Department of Education, my first time as a federal ciso, so I kind of got to learn a handful of things, skill sets on the job. And I've always been appreciative to the Department of Ed of letting me kind of learn on their time.

That's cool. That all must have been just incredibly relevant for your work at NASA.

You know, it became, you know, very. Two different missions. But at the end of the day, a lot of it came down to data, data protection, NASA, there is, you know, and then there's the system sides in protecting data, because the Department of Education, you know, we were dealing with a lot of financial Student aid information, a lot of PII type information, and these massive systems. You know, Department of Education was the only, I believe it was the only federal agency that was allowed to disperse funds directly to the public. And so we had these systems, we did our own, you know, disbursements, collections and that sort of thing. So there was, you had to have a lot of security around that. And you get to NASA, there's obviously a lot of security around data, intellectual property, you know, when you're building next generation propulsion systems, things of that nature. And then when you get onto the mission side and mission assurance and, and making sure that systems are running, that they maintain their integrity and their availability is a huge thing at NASA as it relates to the mission that they perform. So there was a lot of things that were obviously translatable, but there were some new things that I had to learn and implement at NASA as well. NASA was actually a little bit, actually a harder push for security to ingrain it than it was at education. NASA is an organization of scientists, researchers and engineers. You know, you know, cybersecurity is not something that was core to them. So, you know, engineers build things for functionality. Yeah, right. And so it was, it was, it was, it was tough. It was a big push.

Then there's one other complexity I want to ask you about, because adding on top of that is the fact that NASA's organization is very different. I think a lot of people, you hear NASA, you see the logo, you think, oh, that's one organization, one boss. It must be just one group. And maybe it is on paper, but there's like all these centers and facilities and all of them are empowered to create because you want them to be innovative. So as a security professional, it must have made it even harder to, you know, how do you let a distant facility know what your guidance is in a way that they understand and why it's important for them to care about security. And it's, you know, all these major centers and facilities with strong leaders and important missions that must get done.

Yeah.

How do you lead security in that environment?

You know, the big thing for me was being collegial because it's a collegial environment. Right. Being collaborative, approaching the mission side. And the missions are run out of all the centers. Right. And understanding. One of the things I had to understand was that NASA as a whole has a culture, but every center has its own culture as well. And you know, within NASA they call it that, you know, there's, there's, they call the 10 villages or the 10 tribes, that's how they. That's how they kind of operate. And so you had to learn 10 different cultures and the ecosystem of each of those 10 tribes. And once you kind of learn that and you start to speak their language and what's important to them, then you have to kind. Then you start to weave in why security is important to them. The selling point that I believe that makes one successful at NASA is not to come at it from a compliance perspective. NASA, you had to come at it from a perspective of how does this make the mission better, how does this ensure mission success? How. How does it ensure mission assurance and keeping up with the principles of safety and things like that. So those were the things that you had to weave in. And that, again, gets around to learning the language of the different centers and learning the language of scientists, researchers and engineers. And I like to think I'm a pretty quick study. And so once I kind of understood that's where I needed to go. That's where what I studied, and that's how I kind of preach my message.

Cool. That makes a lot of sense. And it makes me wonder where you describe that. It's like, I want to learn that just because it must be fascinating. Is there any way a citizen can learn the culture of NASA without being immersed in it? Does anybody write about this stuff, for example, or is there a YouTube video I can look at that will teach you?

You know, there's. There's tons of videos and, you know, that just talks about NASA in general. NASA. If you don't know, they're a phenomenal marketing machine. NASA is a great marketing machine. NASA actually has a couple of Emmys, you know, for the work they've done in video production and things like that, you know. You know, I have one book that I reference from time to time, and it's. It's called. I believe it's called How NASA Builds Project Teams. And it's about a former. A NASA. Former NASA employee wrote it. I believe he was an engineer and worked on a lot of big projects. But a lot of it is. It talks about culture, you know, and how you kind of navigate the culture and that sort of thing. There's not a lot of materials in there the way you can, you know, the best way to get immersed is actually working at NASA or working around NASA. There's not a lot out there, but there's some things here and there. I always tell folks, I said, you know, when in doubt, you know, go on YouTube and someone's always posting something out there.

Yeah, well, if you can send me a link to that book, I'd appreciate it, and I will include it with the show notes when we post.

Absolutely, yeah.

And back to your career. So then you were with Veterans Affairs. So as the ciso.

Yeah.

And another. This is another tough job because here you're protecting information on our veterans community, their personal information, their medical information. You're also protecting the organization itself from those who would attack it. So another extremely tough position.

Yeah, that was Veterans affairs was probably, to date, you know, Bob, the toughest job I ever had. You know, I go in, I'm the deputy assistant Secretary for cyber and privacy. A monstrous size organization. You know, 400,000 employees. When you get into the season of where you're bringing in, you know, doctors and nurses that are interns and things like that, and they're doing their residency work, the ranks swell by another, you know, 150,000. And so you're talking about, you know, well, more than a million, million and a half, maybe 2 million devices on the network, you know, and so a really tough organization because, as you said, when I got to Veterans affairs, one thing about veterans is that they had gotten their. Their religion from security, from the 2006 breach that they had had when they had a laptop that was stolen with 20 plus million instances of PII of veteran data. And I don't know if you were, but I was one of the individuals that got the letter that said, hey, sorry this happened. And they also had a lot from that, a lot of congressional oversight. So when you're looking at protecting veteran data, that's one aspect of it. But then, Bob, one of the areas that I started moving VA into an area they were kind of focused on when I got there, but I pushed harder, was about medical device security, safety and security around medical devices. Because at the end of the day, the way I look at everything, everything is basically a computer at the end of the day. Whether today it's a car, it's an airplane, it's a medical device. It's just a computer with wheels or wings or it does X rays or it's a gamma knife or something like that. And these things, they get infected with malware. And so I started looking at medical device security and started doing some work with FDA on medical devices security and started doing some work with manufacturers like the ges of the world and all that and bring them into a fold. And we created a medical device security consortium. Kaiser Permanente was a part of it. I think it's still running today. You have manufacturers Getting involved and fda, where they started looking at security of medical devices. So it was a really tough job because it's so big. A lot of moving parts, 120 medical centers, over 2,000 facilities across the United States, and a lot of people. It was a really, really tough job. But it was one that I love the mission of supporting veterans. Really love that mission.

That's good. It is a key mission. And I gotta tell you, I don't know how you did it. I really don't. But I can only imagine you got good at creating a vision and helping people understand that vision. So they're all moving forward together because.

It'S a. Yeah, you know, Bob, it's a leadership thing. Right? It's, I think, a hallmark of good leadership is getting people to buy into your vision and your strategy. And you're the player coach, as I like to say, and get people riled up and get behind you. Because obviously, I can't do all that on my own. It takes people and resources. So my job is simply to lay out the strategy and the vision and get people motivated and get them going on it. And I was able to do that with, I think, a pretty good level of success. And I appreciate all the folks that I work with. I always say, no one works for me. We all work together. And I work with some really, really great, dedicated people at Veterans affairs who were there well before I got there and who are still there today.

All right, so back to your career. It was time for a change, and you felt the call of space again. So back to NASA as a CIO of one of their crown jewels, the Ames facility.

Yeah, that was great. Yeah. So, you know, I'm sitting at Veterans affairs, and I had been in the Washington, D.C. area at that point for about 20 years. I'm originally from Southern California, and I get the call from the NASA CIO lady named Linda Cureton, who absolutely loved. Is a great mentor to me as well. And she said, hey, we got the opening at Ames Research center. Looking for cio. Are you interested in that? And I was, frankly, really, really just burned out on Washington, D.C. i was like, yes, I need a break. I think I'm going to go back home to California. That's where all my family is located in Southern California. And so I came out to Ames, and Ames is a crown jewel not just for NASA, but nationally and internationally. A lot of people don't know or don't realize that Ames was one of the first nodes of the Internet. Before it was the Internet, it was like Node seven and I think it was even before it was called Arpanet. And this is in the 70s. So Ames had a huge hand in developing what is we know as the Internet today. Ames has a real long background in information technology. Ames developed some of the Internet protocols like Border Gateway Protocol BGP. Since then, Ames has developed OpenStack OpenStack software for cloud computing that is used all over the world. That was 2009 when I was the agency CISO. I remember working on a team that was developing that. Ames runs eRoot for the global Internet. One of the root servers Ames runs eRoot and that came under my responsibility while I was there. And a lot of work on aircraft. Every single modern aircraft today that is flying in the world or has flown went through Amherst Search center because they have the largest wind tunnels in the world.

Right.

So it is a crown jewel for a lot of reasons. And I think most notably also is that is where NASA Security Operations center sits at Ames Research Center. It was environmental that I was charged to build when I was the agency CISO in 2007 and 2010. We built it, we built it out at Ames and it still sits there today and it monitors NASA's global network from cyber threats and helping to maintain a security posture. So Ames is near and dear to my heart as well and has a very, very deep, deep history in information technology, including one of the world's fastest supercomputers. And at the time, you know, a few years ago, one of the only quantum computers sits at Ames Research center as well.

Fascinating. You know, it's so interesting thinking of the history of that base, used to be a Moffett Airfield. Yeah, they fly the dirigibles out of got those huge hangars. Are the hangers still there? I haven't been to California.

Yeah, Hangar one is what most people recognize when they drive by. But they've got the other hangers on the other side of the airfield that they're using. Hanger one is under, supposedly going under some reconstruction. They've de skinned it and at some point they're going to be putting new skin on. But they're still out there. They're, they're, it's. You're driving down one on one or driving up one on one, going to San Francisco and you'll see off to the side, you'll see Hangar 1 out there.

It's interesting sometimes to think about the connections to the old world when folks were just trying to figure out is this aviation stuff going to be relevant to the military or not. And bring it all the way to today. When you're talking about aircraft, wind tunnels, quantum computing support to the space program, it's just fascinating.

Yeah, absolutely. It was a fascinating place. And like all the jobs I had, you know, it was a real pleasure to get up in the morning. And, you know, I'm an early riser, and I'd get to work pretty early in the morning, and I got to the point where I go in early, and I would just walk around the campus for about 45 minutes, and I'd go by the airfield, I'd walk by the airfields, and I'd walk by aircraft that we had out there, old aircraft, decommissioned aircraft, and. And just look at some of the experiments that they were doing with some of the old aircrafts that are out there. Just a phenomenon. I was like, you know, this is a pretty darn good job that I have out here, Jerry.

That just about brings us up to today. When you left Ames, you're doing a lot of work still in the community, helping organizations think through their security and risk and helping them mitigate problems and create action plans to get better. And now you've taken all that into your current company, Gryphon X. Is that how you say that?

Griffin? Griffin, yeah. I get Griffin. I get Gryphon. Everybody looks at her like, what is this? You know, and, you know, Griffin X, you know, the history of it. It started at NASA Ames. It was an idea that I had, a concept that I had to build an environment where NASA could do research, development, test and evaluation, education on cybersecurity, cybersecurity and applied cybersecurity, where we would look at security technology, look at the guts of security technology. You have a lot of technology out today. Everybody likes to use a buzzwords like, well, our technology has AI in it, you know, and. And I wanted to look at these things, you know, because at NASA Ames, we had an organization that was called Intelligence and Adaptive Systems, right? And they build a lot of autonomous vehicles, drones and things of that nature, and built software for flight vehicles, autonomous software. And so I said, well, why can't I use those folks to look at security technology? And tell me, is this really AI that's in here, you know, or is this just some automation that's in there? And so I had this idea about building an environment and socialized it at NASA, started getting some traction. It was really tough and really hard to get it going, but it got some, you know, a lot of looks, a lot of good looks at it. And NASA started kind of getting with Understanding the program and moving it forward. But I ended up leaving the government, you know, a year and a half later. And here I am now. I started the program Griffin X, my llc, which is called, you know, Griffin X as well. And you know, my focus continues to be the same around supporting organizations in cybersecurity, looking at what I call intractable problems in cybersecurity. And I have a, you know, the space environment is still near and dear to my heart. So I'm looking a little bit, I look across multiple industries. But space is another area that I'm looking at in detail as well and trying to build and help influence the building of resilient space systems architectures and space vehicles and things of that nature. So yeah, I'm having a lot of fun doing that. I'm extremely busy.

I can imagine, yeah. So this leads me to want to. I'll ask you some questions about space if that's okay. Because the stuff you're trying to make more resilient is even more critical to us all. We've been writing at OODA Loop about the threats to space.

Now.

Now, fortunately, Defense Intelligence Agency has published some unclassified information about threats to space. We took that and then we kind of added on top of it like so here's what business leaders need to know about threats to space. Because I believe every business executive needs to understand their dependency on space. And if they haven't put thought into it, it can be very surprising how dependent they are. And they need to think through what happens if a high end adversary attacks these space capabilities. How do you build in resiliency on your own? But then also we've been writing about NASA and the incredible NASA programs underway today. Like I was mentioning when I was a kid, I was 10 years old, the Apollo program landed humans on the moon and then for years would bring moon samples back. And since then we all knew the moon was nothing but a big rock all the way through my adulthood. And then all of a sudden it's discovered that it's not just a big rock. There's actually ore, there's pockets of ore and other minerals on the moon and there's also ice, so there's water on the moon. This is really exciting stuff. And now to read about what NASA is doing with Project Artemis. Get humans back to the moon to stay. It's just really exciting. But let me tell you what makes me nervous and try a thesis out on you and get your response to this. I believe that NASA Project Artemis is going to be a huge target for adversaries in cyberspace, it will be attacked and it will be attacked by a variety of different players. I mean, at the very lowest in, there's the hacker who wants to get some kind of glory by doing something and marking something up or getting some other kind of recognition from the community. Also at the low end, there's perhaps criminal groups that want to steal some intellectual property and do it for financial gain. But as you get to higher and higher end, there's very serious threats from nation states that would want to destroy the program because it represents the best of humanity and the best, best of western world. And so this is a very big target and it's one that I worry is not being taken seriously enough. And I want you to push back on that thesis, please. But I actually have heard from a very senior person at NASA something to the effect of why would anyone want to attack Artemis? This is humanity's program, not just NASA's program. Would you tell me your thoughts on that whole thesis?

Yeah, so, so let me start with your ending. You know, when I, when I got to NASA and I was, you know, when I was the agency ciso, that's exactly what I would get. What I got, Bob, was well, why would anybody want to attack us? We're, we're Internet, we're for, we're for all mankind, for humankind, you know, we're for all humankind. Why would anybody want to disrupt or degrade our mission? And you know, my attitude was, well one, because, you know, when you talk about the lower level attackers, I'm like, because they can, you know, and then when you start looking at it from an international nation, state sponsored, I'm like, it's all about, you know, competition. And as you said, Bob, there is, you know, this is a national treasure, right? And NASA is leading the way. Other countries, you know, particularly adversarial countries don't want NASA to lead the way. They want to lead the way. They want to, you know, put their, you know, flag in the ground and lead things. So there's an incentive to disrupt or degrade space programs like NASA. I think also when you think about going to the moon, as you said, whoever gets to the moon first again and starts to mine, whether it's the moon or asteroids and things of that nature, that is going to be, you're going to see a biggest transfer of wealth, right? Because there are all these precious materials that can be mined, whether it's from the moon or from asteroids and things of that nature. So countries want to be the first there to get mining rights. So if I can disrupt my competition from getting there before me, by all means I'm going to do that. So, you know, I think your thesis is correct that some of the thinking that people say, like, well, you know, why would anybody want to attack us? But what I know from some senior folks in NASA at NASA is that NASA has a program called Enterprise Protection Program. And Enterprise Protection looks at how do they integrate security, physical security, cybersecurity across their programs and facilities and things of that nature. NASA now has a senior executive, a senior cyber advisor embedded in the Artemis program. That individual is helping them to design security into the Artemis program, into the engineering discipline, in the engineering process and what he calls phase zero cyber engineering it into your engineering processes from day one. So I'm very hopeful from that position that they recognize that we need to do more around cyber on the mission side, especially as it relates to, to Artemis and the landing system that they're developing now. So yeah, there is a school of thought on one side or a lack of awareness, but there's another school of thought that is aware and they have taken what I would consider very good measures in terms of understanding that, you know, what we need to be more understanding and practicing the implementation of cybersecurity into the Artemis program. I have more faith and confidence that they're doing the right things. Even more so. When I was there, when I was there and I left, I was like, look, you really need to get on top of the cybersecurity activities, whether it was in commercial space, but also our new programs and projects that were coming up at the time that we really take that serious. And NASA has pivoted and they started to take it serious a couple years ago. So I can push back a little bit from that perspective. I know the individual who's a close friend of mine that is the lead person on Artemis and he spends his life working with human exploration side of the house, making sure that cyber requirements are met and engineered into the process.

Awesome. I feel much better hearing you say that. I feel much better. And I also had another thought. You know, the day will come when humans are back on the moon to stay and humans are exploring asteroids and humans are on Mars and coming back, back and forth. So we will be a solar system wide group of humanity and that group is going to need a ciso. And the first CISO in space. I think it's going to be you, Jerry. You'll be great up there.

You know, it's interesting. Years ago, when I First got to NASA, my lovely mother, you know, who doesn't really follow this up all the well, and she, you know, when I told her I was working at NASA, she, she said, so what will you have to go into space very often? Actually, I'm not going to be going to space at all. Maybe in my mind, in my heart. And the work that I do, it piece up me when, you know, shuttle was still flying, I go, we'll go into space. But physically now, I'm not going.

All right, Jerry, let me transition and ask another question. And that is I, I know you stay current with stuff because you're so busy and you're interacting with people, and so you're deeply networked into the community, but how else do you stay current? Like, do you read. What books are you reading now that you'd recommend to us?

You know, I read quite a bit, you know, so from the, from the business side, you know, one of the great books that actually someone sent to me, the same gentleman that works on the Artemis program, a book by Ben Horowitz from, you know, the fame, Andreessen Horowitz. He has a book called the Hard Things about hard things, and it's about, you know, business and how, you know, he was developing the company and that sort of thing and just the tough decisions that you have to make. And that is a really, really good book. A lot of the other books, you know, you know, Bob, I don't read a lot of fiction, but I read a lot of technical books around satellite, satellite design and space and things that are going on in the space community. So that's kind of how I, I stay current. I'm on, obviously, a member of OODA Loop. I read a lot of what comes out on OODA Loop and pretty much anything, reputable sources online, you know, but books mostly on the technical side and a few business books here and there. But the Ben Horowitz book is a great one. It's a really good one.

I love that, too. I really do. He talks about the wartime CEO, and he also makes it clear that success in that environment is a struggle. And I feel sometimes that way about what I'm doing. It's a struggle, but I love this struggle. It's never ending, but I just love this stuff. And his book is very inspirational when it comes to that and lots of lessons learned by someone who's created his own companies and has grown hundreds of others.

Yes, yes, absolutely. I agree 100%. Yeah, very. His book, his book is very inspirational. I loved it. I loved it. Yeah.

Well, Jerry, I really appreciate the time today and all these many lessons learned and best practices. It's been great hearing more about your background and great hearing what you're doing today. And I just look forward to staying in touch. And so, so thanks again for this time and any final thoughts for us.

You know, for my sizzle community out there, just, you know, keep beating a drum, you know, stay on point and, you know, keep your integrity. I always tell folks, keep your integrity and your ethics in check, and things will work out for you at the end of the day. Great.

Well, thanks very much, Jerry.

Thanks, Bob. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

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