Welcome to As the AI World Turns — the new Shimmy Says series treating the AI industry as what it has actually become: the most expensive soap opera ever produced. Today, Anthropic. The company founded to be the principled alternative to OpenAI is facing a Silicon Valley backlash. Anthropic quiet...

For decades, America criticized China for walling off its digital economy. When it comes to AI, the roles may be starting to reverse — and the wall America is building may end up trapping us, not them. Chinese labs are releasing capable open-weight models like Kimi, Qwen and DeepSeek. American AI...

Google just got fined $1 billion by the EU for violating the Digital Markets Act. Regulators say AI Overviews and AI Mode may be next. Alan Shimel argues this is only the beginning of a reckoning that's been coming for years. Old Google indexed the open web and sent people to publishers. New Goog...

Support for building a data center nearby collapsed from 43% to 21% in nine months. Opposition hit 71%. That's not a shift in public opinion — it's a revolt.

In this extended episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel argues the American data center backlash isn't anti-AI. It's anti-deal. And he trave...

For years, the AI narrative seemed simple: American companies built the frontier while Chinese labs responded with increasingly capable open-source alternatives. Most people read that as an ideological commitment to openness.Alan Shimel isn't so sure. In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan connects...

As America approaches its 250th birthday, Alan Shimel reflects on the next great infrastructure build already underway: the Intelligence Grid.

In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan looks at America’s history of railroads, electrification, highways, telecom, the internet and cloud, and argues that...

The real AI race may not be about models. It may be about infrastructure.

In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel looks at how underwater AI data centers and early plans for orbital compute point to a much larger shift in the AI market.

As demand for AI grows, the industry will need more th...

Cisco’s AI strategy came into sharper focus at Cisco Live.
In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks down how Silicon One, Splunk, AI networking, security, Cloud Control and AgenticOps are beginning to look like pieces of a larger platform strategy.
The bigger story is not just AI infras...

Everyone wants the autonomous enterprise. Very few people can explain what it actually means.
In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks down a practical framework built on three ideas: automate 80% of enterprise work, 3x every employee and rethink the SaaS economics consuming IT budgets....

In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks down what it means to live inside the “AI minute” — a world where agentic AI, security risks, infrastructure pressure and governance challenges are evolving faster than traditional business cycles can keep up. As AI accelerates everything from so...

You ever watch Olympic downhill skiing? Not the highlight reel. The full run. These athletes are flying down ice at nearly 90 miles an hour, right on the edge of control. And when they get ahead of their skis, there is a moment when they are still upright, still moving, but no longer really in co...

We went to the Moon with just 4 kilobytes of RAM. That fact alone tells you something important about Apollo. It was never just a space program. It was a demonstration of what a civilization can do when it decides to do something extraordinary. In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks d...

This may be the week artificial intelligence stopped feeling theoretical and started becoming undeniable. In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks down two major developments that reveal the true scale of AI disruption now underway. One points to a future where AI can dramatically accel...

Why does the world feel so unstable right now? In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks down the collision of forces reshaping the global economy in real time: the AI arms race, mass infrastructure spending, tech layoffs, power-hungry data centers, rising debt and the growing pressure o...

What happens when a company stops talking about AI and starts running on it? In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan “Shimmy” Shimel shares a firsthand look at how Techstrong is deploying agentic AI across real business operations. What started as cautious experimentation has quickly evolved into a ...

What if the biggest technology races today aren’t separate — but mirror images? In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan “Shimmy” Shimel explores humanity’s twin obsessions: creating intelligence in our own image and escaping mortality through technology. From AI consciousness and superintelligence t...

The leadership situation at CISA continues to raise questions. In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan “Shimmy” Shimel looks at the latest controversy surrounding the nominee to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and what it says about the state of America’s cyber defense lead...

Are algorithms shaping what you believe? Or are you shaping the algorithm? In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel breaks down algorithmic influence, bot amplification, and the growing power of engagement-driven social media feeds. From reporting on automated accounts boosting political messa...

Do AI agents actually need to be intelligent? Or do they just need to get the job done? We’ve spent months arguing about whether AI truly “understands” anything. Whether it has a mind. Whether it’s just autocomplete dressed up in confidence. Meanwhile, inside real companies, AI agents are draftin...

🪞 Blaming the internet for what’s wrong with society is like blaming the mirror because you don’t like what you see. Platforms optimize for engagement. Engagement rewards outrage. Incentives drift toward shareholders. Cory Doctorow calls it enshittification. The uncomfortable truth is this. The i...

This week on Shimmy Says, we’re talking about the scarlet letter we’ve stamped on AI-generated work. The funny part? It has almost nothing to do with quality and everything to do with fear. What that hesitation means for DevOps teams, engineering culture, and how work gets done is at the center o...

AI is growing up fast — faster than our institutions, norms, and guardrails. In this episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel explores AI’s “adolescent” phase through two powerful cultural lenses: the unchecked power and volatility of The Twilight Zone, and the rules-driven optimism of Asimov’s roboti...