Recorded live at #AppWorld2026 in Las Vegas, this episode of Pop Goes the Stack puts #F5 Field CISO, Chuck Herrin, in the hot seat for a fast-moving conversation on what security leaders are really dealing with right now. Joel Moses kicks things off with the agentic #AI debate: if teams bypass structured tool interfaces and let agents “just use the CLI,” what happens to authentication, observability, and predictability when autonomy accelerates faster than humans can keep up? From there, Chuck makes the case that fear is a poor long-term strategy for running a business, even when the threats are real. He unpacks the tension he’s seeing across organizations, where executives are driven by FOMO while employees wrestle with FOBO (fear of becoming obsolete), and argues that companies get results when they redesign how they operate rather than bolting AI onto old structures. The conversation shifts to post-quantum cryptography and why it still isn’t getting the attention it deserves. Chuck explains how “future tech” framing, short CISO tenures, and the pressure of today’s fires keep PQC from becoming a priority, even as harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks make it a present-day risk. His advice is practical: assign clear ownership, treat the effort like business continuity planning, and include your supply chain in the readiness scope. Finally, they touch on a new class of concern for CISOs: kinetic targeting of data center infrastructure, and how sovereignty requirements can constrain options when physical risk rises. If you’re navigating AI adoption, cryptographic transition, or resilience planning, tune in for a grounded perspective from the show floor. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to Pop Goes the Stack 01:04 MCP vs CLI for agentic AI security 02:31 Fear vs strategy: Avoid vendor dependency traps 03:30 AI FOMO vs FOBO: Exec panic vs employee obsolescence 04:53 Post-quantum cryptography: Why executives still ignore it 06:16 Why it’s “the next CISO’s problem” (and why it shouldn’t be) 07:29 Harvest-now, decrypt-later: Q-day becomes a today problem 08:47 Where to start: Assign an owner + treat it like BCP/DR 11:14 Supply chain reality: IoT/OT devices with no upgrade path 11:55 New threat: Kinetic attacks on data center infrastructure 13:03 Is data sovereignty putting you at risk? 14:10 Practical CISO move: Use AI to kill tech debt + shrink surface Learn how you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your stack whole with additional insights on app security, multicloud, AI, and emerging tech: https://go.f5.net/m0w17cb3 More about F5: https://go.f5.net/h6hujw7g Read our blog: https://go.f5.net/091u00om Follow us on LinkedIn: https://go.f5.net/qnm5wjbb

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