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Interview a ceiling. The sectors that improved fastest this year – Switzerland jumped 16 percent in overall cyber maturity, for instance – did so right after new regulatory deadlines came into force, not because they simply spent more money. The practical lesson for supply chain-adjacent industries is not to wait for a mandate. Start building the same kind of AI inventory, vendor risk criteria, and monitoring that regulation eventually forces on financial services, before a deadline, or an incident, forces the issue instead.
9. What should supply chain executives be asking their partners and suppliers about AI risk? First: how does the vendor ensure the accuracy, safety, and robustness of their AI systems? What metrics and monitoring are they using to make sure their AI doesn’ t run wild or create risk? Beyond the vendor’ s own safeguards, organizations need to start protecting themselves from AI interactions even with trustworthy vendors. Right now, when one agent talks to another, or you consume an MCP, the result that comes back is usually just trusted outright.
There’ s rarely a middle layer inspecting it before it’ s acted on. I’ d strongly encourage organizations to start adding that layer, because ultimately this is AI-generated content, and you need to protect yourself from it accordingly. It’ s an emerging risk I think we’ re going to hear a lot more about.
10. How do you see AI reshaping supply chain security over the next five years? Honestly, I’ m about as optimistic or concerned as I was before AI came along. Like any new technology, it has the potential to do damage and the potential to do good. For every piece of malicious AI-generated content, there can be an agent on the other side defending it. The status quo holds; it just moves a lot faster now. I remember when the AI revolution started, everyone assumed software development would be unrecognizable – much faster, better, and with far fewer bugs. That’ s not really what happened. It is faster, but the same challenges are still there, and arguably there are more bugs simply because more code is being written. There’ s no silver bullet. Even with AI, you can’ t hand a nontechnical person the keys to a productiongrade system and expect it to hold up, the complexity of managing that is still real.
11. What is one thing you wish people would ask about you, your career, or AI in general – and why? I’ d want people to ask how I make sure the things I build are actually aligned, accurate, and correct, given how fast AI development moves right now. That’ s the question that matters most to me: keeping AI in check and making sure everything stays correct as the pace accelerates. ■
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