Decoder with Nilay Patel
00:34:04 · Willy Shih, Nilay Patel
They said, we need to be good at all these things like information technology, biotechnology, you know, semiconductors, they still have a ways to go but you know, they identified civil aircraft, they identified all these different technologies, communications technology, software, you know, robotics. [00:34:23] S2: I would contrast that with the Trump administration here in in in Trump's second term where we already talked about Liberation Day. Howard Lutnick is on television saying, we're gonna move manufacturing back to The United States. This is the goal of the tariffs. And then three weeks later, there's 900 lawsuits about the tariffs and Howard Lutnick is back on TV saying, robots will do all the manufacturing now. This is the goal. We're gonna do heavy automation and then the tariffs get struck down. And they find a new law for different tariffs. And it does not seem like the same kind of long term planning that can be stuck to, or the same kind of environment where businesses understand the stability of the trading system such that they can compete ferociously. Every CEO who does manufacturing comes on the show, usually ends up talking to me about how they scramble to buy RAM at affordable prices to make their products, which has to keep them from doing anything else. How would you contrast that? Can we get out of this moment where it's a pure scramble or is this fully shaken everything up?
00:35:21 · Willy Shih, Nilay Patel
[00:35:21] S3: We're in a very transactional environment. You know, everything is everything is short term and these rapid changes that you see, like on the tariffs, if you look at a map of 2025 and 2026 and put a dot everywhere there was some tariff action, it looks like a shotgun hit the wall, right? You know, there's all these spots all over the place. Okay. And the problem with that is when you have that type of instability, it's very hard for a company to make any kind of long term plans, right? Before I build a factory, I want to know that I'm going to have stable demand for a couple of years, at least until I have a chance of earning return on that thing. Okay. I've talked to a couple of companies about, and these were overseas companies thinking about coming into The US market. And they said, well, you know, I can't do it because things keep changing. Okay. Do I go into Mexico? Do I go into The US? What part of The US do I go into? Especially things like semiconductor fab. It's like, you need to know that you're going be able to get ten, twenty years out of it, right? And it is like when things change every, every couple of weeks, what that does instead is say, I'm just going to hold off on investment, right? Because it's just too uncertain. Changes too often. [00:36:49] S2: Are you seeing that slowdown in investment? Are you seeing companies say we can't actually invest in manufacturing in The States?
00:36:54 · Willy Shih
[00:36:54] S3: It varies. You know, I see that for a lot of companies saying, you know, where do I want to put my production operations? Okay. Now, we see some things like car plants coming into The US and usually that's a function of the pain has just been too great. Okay. But, you know, the whole auto tariff thing is also a little bit crazy. Okay. Because if you look historically at production strategies in the auto industry, okay, typically when you build a plant, you size a typical plant to build about 200, 250,000 units of a model or a model family, right? Because that's sort of like the efficient scale for an auto plant. Okay. So then what you have is you have a company like BMW that says, great, I'm going to build all my X Series SUVs in South Carolina. Okay. I'll build, you know, three series somewhere else. I'll build five series somewhere else, you know, and I'll build seven series somewhere else. And then what I'll do is I'll exchange them, right? So BMW in South Carolina or Mercedes in Alabama, they build certain models in The US, export them to the world, and then import other models, you know, so that you have the whole product line. You know, Toyota does that. For example, they build more Camrys in The US than everywhere else and they were exporting some of those as well. Okay. But then when you start putting tariffs on imports, that screws up that whole strategy. Right. You know, and again, it's a decision that was made not understanding how the automakers had laid out that strategy. You need to understand how the supply chain is structured, why it's structured the way it is, and then you can be more thoughtful.
00:38:59 · S0, Nilay Patel
[00:38:59] S0: Support for this show comes from Outshift by Cisco, which is Cisco's incubation engine for frontier technology. Imagine a company where every department can talk, but none can work together. Decisions stall, people spend all day chasing updates, mistakes slip through the cracks. That's the challenge facing multi agent AI today. The fact is when AI agents work in isolation, more AI doesn't mean better AI. And if agents can't work together, you're just scaling the confusion. Outshift by Cisco is here to help. Outshift by Cisco knows communication doesn't equal collaboration, [00:39:33] S2: and
00:39:33 · Nilay Patel, S0
[00:39:33] S2: and [00:39:33] S0: in the age of AI, that difference changes everything. Outshift by Cisco is building the Internet of Cognition, an open source foundation for building multi agent systems. Agents share context, memory, and guardrails to get excellent results from design all the way to production. So instead of simply passing messages, agents can build on each other's work and move towards shared goals. Read the paper, experience the demo, and grab the code from outshift.com. That's outshift.com. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. On Framer, agents and humans work in tandem. Agents bring speed and scale, while people bring taste, judgment, and control. Agents solve the gap between AI generated ideas and production ready website work. The agent works in the same place where the real site is designed, managed, reviewed, and published. It lands on the canvas, stays editable, and can be published when the team is ready. Here's everything that can happen when your team and agents collaborate. You can build custom code components, optimize SEO settings, audit for issues, and ship everything all in one place. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/decoder for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/decoder. Rules and restrictions may apply.
00:41:12 · S5, S0
[00:41:12] S5: Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are all ready. [00:41:16] S0: How do [00:41:16] S5: we keep data secure? When do we actually see ROI? All this talk about AI, but talk doesn't transform businesses. AWS AI cuts through the noise, making AI easier to securely deploy and scale with ready to use agents and the broadest set of AI tools and services you can build, buy, or partner your way. Stop overthinking. Start building. AWS AI is how.