Eric Mann

I spent several years working in defense AI. I joined for the cybersecurity mission. I left when the mission drifted somewhere I couldn't follow.

I've never written about this publicly. But watching Anthropic hold the line against the Pentagon this week, I recognized the pattern.

The gravity that pulls defense AI from defensive to offensive applications is structural. It
doesn't require bad intentions. I watched it operate from the inside.

Here's what I learned.

https://eric.mann.blog/the-gravity-problem-why-defense-ai-companies-drift-toward-offense/

Using one agent to decompose a project spec into milestones and tickets in Linear so other agents can autonomously build out project features.

This is the future :-)

#BuildInPublic

LinkedIn Recruiter: Would you be interested in a job as a "Software Engineer 5?"

Me: For who doing what paid how?

LIR: Heavy Golang and Python. Agentic integrations. Fortune 100 company. Contract, no benefits. Half of what you make now.

Me: You're kidding, right?

My Thelio made a friend ...

RE: @ericmann@tekton.network

I mean, they're both Linux ... but trying to dogfood the "heterogeneous infrastructure" paradigm I so often preach ...

Running 2x Ubuntu and 1x Pop!_OS on three different Beelink machines is ... interesting.

Finally got around to repurposing a discarded NUC and now have a 2-agent/1-controller k3s cluster rocking all of my stuff. Much more reliable.

Upgraded the systems (and k3s itself) across the board as well.

The fun (?) thing is the new agent is on Pop!_OS instead of Ubuntu...

My parents got a letter, addressed to me, claiming my data was breached from Columbia University.

Which ...

Why did they have my data at all? Never attended there. Never applied...

Passed some of my writing work through an "AI detector" and it came back with a "60-80% chance this is AI generated" and a note that "it's too polished, human writers make subtle mistakes. This prose has none."

High school me would appreciate the compliment. Since I wrote it nearly 30 years ago ...

But if this is the state of the art for AI detection, we have problems.

RE: @ericmann@tekton.network

Still looking for beta readers on this novella. Comments enabled. Eternal gratitude offered :-)

Anyone in my network use a Mac Studio for local inference? What's your experience? I might be interested in getting one ... But the cost is non-trivial.

I've been cooking some fiction stories - so far I now have a draft of a novella. It's a mix of action/adventure, horror, and loosely connected to the universe of sci fi stories I have pending.

~25k words.

Anyone interested in being a beta reader? All I ask is for honest feedback.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kx1ewG8nmIc7sl7VJFoQF_PSGncNiOeK/edit

Comments enabled ...

Well that was fun.

For those who didn't see the shenanigans on #birdsite - turns out my router was garbage. You know, the one the ISP said was _required_ to use their network? It was trash and killing my connection.

Pulled it and ran from the ONT straight to my Eero and had network just fine. But all of my NUCs are hardwired ... so needed a new TP-Link router in front of my 1GB switch before I could get k8s back online.

So glad to have things live again.

Well this is fun. Anywhere from 15-80% packet loss from my home network to some domains. Nothing critical. Just ... Google, Amazon, and GitHub.

ISP isn't being super useful. "Must be your hardware."

Thing is - it was only impacting me. Not my wife. It occurred to me she's on a VPN 100% of the time. Zero issues.

Routed my machines through Mullvad. Zero issues.

Totally not an issue on my end.

Awaiting Tier 2 technician call now ... Fun times.