What The Fudge for April 19, 2026: Sovereignty, Qlik Connect, and Orbital Intelligence

Hey, and welcome to What the Fudge for April 19th, 2026, the not quite late edition. Last week I was taking some time to go to Florida for Qlik Connect, and it was my third year in a row as a delegate for Tech Field Day Experience to Qlik Connect. Great chance to catch up with folks. And I think of it as more than just a tie-in. It actually resonated on several levels that you see a progression over a 3-year period. And that relates, of course, to AI. It relates to governance and compliance, uh, the notion of sovereignty, regulatory frameworks. Uh, I think of this as everything evolving In terms of the enterprise tech stack and the roles for who will be involved in that evolving enterprise tech stack, this could mean that if you consider things like platform engineering or product engineering, the notion of what happens as you go from where product experiences, end user experiences, the delight, that you try to bring the end user of what your product would be. These all came together this week. It was a lot to take in, but again, I was surrounded by industry peers, other analysts, independent, as well as just some of the more forward-looking product people on the planet, arguably. As well as an entirely, or at least mostly passionate— I think of the best way to describe it as an enviable passionate community of practitioners that assembled for something like a Qlik Connect. These are folks that really do think about data products and delight their own internal customers. So with that in mind, a couple of the new news items that caught my eye were there's just a seemingly an avalanche of AI-related bills that have been taking place. So if you think of what's happening, you've had things related to the industry regulatory side, what that might mean. And then you look at the potential for a patchwork or a a heavily patched patchwork of different bills that may or may not come into being within the United States on a state-by-state basis. Well, what might happen federally? And then you think about the post-anthro— anthropic mythos model, all those things kind of starting to play out. And then along the lines of sovereignty, you begin to see things like a, I believe the UK government launching their own sovereign AI unit, um, with its own lessons around where it will invest. Um, anything related to the implicit association of AI being a sovereign endeavor. And then when you think of, again, tying this back into the notion of, uh, where the new operating model for AI will become part of our everyday lives. When we think of the product experience, this could mean the drastic simplification of whether or not you would need to know what a model context protocol server is, a so-called MCP server, whether or not you would need to be involved in the AI operations, the AI ops, to support and keep running these kinds of AI tools or features within existing tools. As well as the ability to think of what happens when you achieve a level of efficiency and democratization of the operational capabilities as part of the AI experience you're trying to create. It does really make you think differently about launch timelines. How long does it take not only to go from zero to a minimum viable product, but going from zero to a ready-for-production outcome. And so, last thing, I think everyone probably saw the touchdown of the Blue Origin booster. It, you know, these, these never— these, these landings never get old. We've clearly seen it with SpaceX and some of their rockets like the Heavy, Falcon Heavy, but now seeing Blue Origin kind of like in this tit-for-tat It does show that you're, you're going to see these, these two companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, probably being a part of— if there are going to be data centers for AI purposes or AI-capable satellites being launched, a good chance that it'll be on one of those two platforms, at least if it's related to the United States. And again, you're thinking about some of the areas where you may see some of the benefits coming from this. I think it will be interesting to see where telemetry and remote sensing, um, the, the economics of what's getting put into, uh, low Earth orbit, um, these stories around combined data analysis. Um, this just again thinking, um, fresh thoughts coming back from Qlik Connect, you know, amassing that data and, and applying it for If you did not know, there is something called Qlik.org, or Q-L-I-K dot O-R-G, and this is the, the nonprofit wing of Qlik. And so I'm just imagining what happens when you combine the data that would be available from the satellites, majors, as well as the low Earth orbits, as well as potentially even the ones that might be dirigible-based, balloon-based, moving down into what you would describe as the drone clarity level of remote sensing telemetry data sequestration analysis and presentation for so-called actionable intelligence. I just think there's going to be some interesting things that'll be available to us from a human standpoint, just solving problems that are only possible with the combination of these new techniques rapid synthesizing of data. And I'm still bullish on technology solving problems. And I know that AI can also be perceived as we're going to set fire to the planet and use up all the clean water. And, you know, it's just the dystopian point of view. I still view that as a period in time problem that we have right now. But I am very bullish on the future. I do think that this will become not just an effective way of doing things, but a far more efficient way of doing things. I just— it sometimes becomes challenging to think about what that next turn around the corner might look like once that takes place. So again, just an indication that even when you think of the companies like Qlik and the AI Council, they put together some really big thoughts. And I was also glad to see that, that audience at Qlik Connect got to hear from that AI Council, uh, once again. And so, uh, going a little long, so I'm gonna wrap this up. But that was the What the Fudge for Sunday, April 19th. Be safe, be well, take care.