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Michael Earls
  • Leadership
    • Start Here
    • All Leadership
  • Strategy
    • Start Here
    • Enterprise Governance
    • Identity & Security
    • Platform Architecture
    • Multi-Cloud Strategy
    • Cloud Strategy Principles
    • AI & Agentic Systems
    • Cloud Cost Strategy
    • 7 Rs Modernization
    • Lift and Shift Isn’t Transformation
    • AI Agents + Cloud Spend
    • No One Owns – AI
    • Drinking the Future Water
    • The Quiet Trade Nobody Talks About in AI
  • Books
    • Start Here
    • Finding Direction in the Age of AI
    • Wired For Purpose
    • The Digital Compass
  • Topics
  • Insights
    • Start Here
    • All Essays
    • Topics
    • Wired for Purpose
    • Reflection
    • Change
    • Growth
  • About
    • Michael Earls
    • I want more of this
    • Press
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    • Contact

Posts Tagged ‘Be Human First’

We Defunded the Road, Then Blamed People for the Detour

By Michael Earls | September 25, 2026
cloud-vs-ai-spending-dark

Shadow AI isn’t a discipline problem. Companies cut IT modernization to fund AI, so the approved path got slower exactly as the workaround got better.

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The Three Laws Were Never Written for the Robots

By Michael Earls | September 18, 2026
AI agent guardrails illustrated as a network prefix filter — streams of light meet a boundary, most stop, a few pass through

AI agent guardrails aren’t about trusting the model. A BGP outage I caused taught me the real question: what can it reach, and who can drop the traffic?

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Leadership, technology, and the human side of change. Author of three books on finding direction in a world that won't slow down.

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