It began with the simple act of disconnecting my iPhone from corporate email, a tap that instantly blanked a calendar that had dictated my life for years. Before heading out, I opened one last email to fill out a form—where to send the plaque for my latest patent approval, a final, tangible reminder of the chapter that was closing. The finality then came in physical pieces: a push cart with two workstations wheeled across campus in the 115-degree Arizona heat, and the final handshake as I returned my trusty Thinkpad. In that moment, my last connection to a 20-year career was severed. It wasn't a funeral, nor was it purely a celebration. It was a stark reminder that the world had changed, and it was time to find a new rudder for the coming storm. I was just one of tens of thousands facing this transition, a stark reminder of the larger forces at play. My job separation wasn't an isolated event; it was a microcosm of a trend now visible in layoffs across industry giants from Intel to Google. In 2023 alone, the U.S. tech sector saw more than 260,000 job cuts, a clear signal that companies are pivoting their strategies and workforces to align with an AI-driven future. My first act of freedom was turning off my alarm. In those initial days, I reconnected with a rich network of colleagues and discovered a surprising new intellectual partner: the very AI tools I was using to template my resume. Their interactive, agentic nature sparked a deeper question: why was this technology so transformative? This question led me to MindStudio's intensive AI Agent bootcamp, where I was selected from thousands of applicants. That experience pushed me to my limits. I wasn't just building agents; I was beginning to see how these tools wouldn't displace us, but instead prepare us for jobs and problems that didn’t exist a year ago. The Agentic Era is here, and I refuse to be a spectator.

To be a participant, not a spectator, requires a specific mindset: the ability to be comfortable while being uncomfortable. For years at Intel, my job was to live in the gray, on the uncharted sections of the map, making the impossible mainstream. When asked to cut a product's development time in half, we couldn't just build risk matrices; we had to throw out the playbook. We let the live product cut in front of our test vehicles, trusting our partners and our ability to fix problems as we learned.

We were the first in the world to attach a new kind of memory to a new kind of base, and when it failed, it did so in ways that seemed to defy known physics. We had to sharpen our pencils and learn that even physics isn't a constant; our models were hugely temperature-dependent. We didn't cut corners; we refactored the equation. This is a perfect segue into AI. We are facing a world where industry-shaking milestones arrive weekly, forcing us to relearn and see the world in new ways. This is a tectonic reset, on par with the birth of high-speed internet or the smartphone. It's a new reality, and the old playbooks no longer apply. That experience taught me the most important lesson: my strengths were only as good as the trust I placed in others. Being vulnerable to the risks and uncertainties is precisely why we must not run away, but lash together. It's the only way to find solutions that no single person could have envisioned alone.

That mindset is needed now more than ever, because the AI revolution is currently like a rocket that has exited the atmosphere with a seemingly limitless supply of fuel. Demand is insatiable, limited not by traditional economic drag, but only by the number of leading-node wafers and advanced memory chips that can be produced. My research confirms this. In the U.S. alone, projections show data centers could consume up to 12% of the nation's total electricity by 2030—a nearly threefold increase in their share of the grid this decade.

This unchecked acceleration is a shot across the bow, revealing the dangerous mismatch between the time constants of the digital and physical worlds. AI innovation happens in weeks; building a power plant takes years. As a result, we see the consequences emerging: deep geographic concentrations of power demand in places like Virginia, a reversal of decarbonization trends as coal plants are fired up to feed the grid, and the centralization of influence into a handful of corporations at the bleeding edge.

This is not a fault of these visionaries, nor should we slow down. But as leaders, we must recognize that this progress still needs to lead us to a world we want to live in fifty years from now. The challenge is clear: how do we steer this rocket, while building it in mid-flight, to ensure it takes us to a sustainable and equitable destination?

But this is not a story of doom; it's a story of opportunity. This challenge doesn't require us to slam on the brakes; it demands that we get smarter. The solution to the hardware burden will come as models become more optimized—smaller, purposeful, and pruned for efficiency. The load will shift from the hyperscaler to the next-level edge: the powerful, paid-for, and perpetually available hardware in everyone's pocket.

The access and the cost will become universal. The most monotonous tasks that consume our lives will be 'agentified' into seamless, behind-the-scenes workflows. Imagine an agent managing your calendar, triaging your inbox, and summarizing PhD-level research the moment it's published. This is the same leap in productivity and connectivity that smartphones and their app stores brought to our world.

We can ignore this new reality, we can fight it, or we can embrace it now. I believe we must try to take the reins, to tame this wild bronco and steer it where we want to go.

This brings us to the essential question: in a world where the uncertainty bar is unbounded, how do we prepare for a future where a 20-year career is unknowable? How do we shape the near-term without losing sight of the horizon?

We do it by mastering the new fundamentals. The first is to adopt the engineer's mindset: build first, learn fast, and get comfortable in the uncharted gray. The second is to understand, as NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang recently argued, that the future will be made from the physical sciences.

But the most critical skill is learning to collaborate in this new paradigm. This is where Agentic AI becomes more than a technology; it becomes the answer. Building with and orchestrating these systems isn't just learning a new tool; it's preparing for roles that don't exist yet.

This is not a solo race or a a zero-sum game. The only way to navigate this tectonic reset is to seek deep partnerships, to leverage our collective strengths, and to embrace the inevitable momentum of this change.

This newsletter is my first step in building that partnership. It's an open invitation to learn and build in public, together. My goal is to explore these grand challenges, find the signal in the noise, and blaze a trail toward the optimistic future I know is possible. This is the beginning of the beginning, and there is room for all of us. Let's find our rudder in the storm, together.

And one last thing: challenge me. This newsletter is my first step in building a community of thinkers. My arguments are a starting point. If you see a flaw in my logic or a thread I've missed, tell me. Every time I've been wrong, I've learned something new.

The Right Questions are better than Right Answers.