October 21, 2026

Presented By

Wow, Wednesday! Steel yourself: not all US companies are suffering from tariffs. Some, like Cleveland-Cliffs, are benefitting.

In today’s edition:

💸 Cash out

🗝 Key up

🔊 Quiet down

—Brianna Monsanto, Caroline Nihill

IT STRATEGY

Budget up

Francis Scialabba

It’s Monday morning. You’ve just waltzed into work, but instead of business as usual, you find your company’s website has been down for the past hour, making it an all-hands-on-deck type of day.

After several gruelling hours of troubleshooting, you restore the website. But instead of celebrating the feat, all you can think about is how you can use the opportunity to advocate for a larger IT budget to prevent future blips, especially if the blips in question resulted from a lack of investment in infrastructure or staffing.

Is now a good time? After the chaos of repairing infrastructure, you might be wondering if now is the right time to pop the budget question. But Ben Bernstein, manager of cybersecurity advisors at Huntress, told IT Brew that a disaster is often a prime time to reevaluate IT resources and spending with business leaders.

“I wish it wasn’t the case, but unfortunately, after a crisis is typically when folks are much more willing to break open the piggy bank,” Bernstein said.

Cash in.—BM

Sponsored By PwC

AI’s fast, government’s…not

So how do the two come together to create effective policy?

On this episode of The Intelligence Shift, Dr. Alondra Nelson joins host Dan Priest to discuss how she approached crafting the AI Bill of Rights for the Biden administration and what solid policy goals can look like when it comes to AI.

On the flip side, tech policy expert and innovation advocate Jessica Melugin joins to make the case for caution when it comes to setting new precedents. AI’s kind of in its Wild West phase, and it’d do us well to be mindful of its parameters, especially as laws take longer to enact.

And if you’re wondering what on-the-street sentiment sounds like, Dan’s going after it. He speaks with New Yorkers about their priorities for AI ahead of the midterms.

Listen here.

IT STRATEGY

Move slow, break nothing?

Getty Images

Pennsylvania has been known to embrace new forms of government…and government AI.

Back in 2023, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order calling for state agencies to begin using generative, deep-learning generative AI models. That resulted in a year-long pilot program for the enterprise version of ChatGPT, which concluded in spring 2025.

This past April, the Keystone State’s AI rollout expanded to include 3,000 employees using generative AI, with 6,500 more employees training to utilize the technology safely.

Run the numbers.—CN

CYBERSECURITY

Noise reduction

Amelia Kinsinger

Over the past several months, AI tools have uncovered a tide of vulnerabilities within IT infrastructure. While that has alerted organizations to lurking zero-day exploits and other issues, it presents an issue for cybersecurity teams: What’s the best way to handle this deluge of problems to address, especially with limited staff?

In September, the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reported that AI is “measurably changing not just the pace of vulnerability discovery and exploitation, but also the types and typical risk profiles of vulnerabilities that are being discovered.” According to the report, vulnerability disclosures doubled between January and July 2026.

When it comes to this increase in vulnerabilities, experts like CDW CISO Aaron McCray also caution about false positives and alert fatigue.

“False positives are generating more alerts that a human could actually review and take a look at,” McCray said. “The thing about AI, it’s really going to be determined on the provider of that solution now.”

Fix it.—CN

Sponsored By JumpCloud

A new actor is on your company’s stage. AI is quickly moving from observing to taking action within organizations. What does that mean for IT teams? Our recent article with JumpCloud digs into that question. Check it out to learn what IT teams need to consider as AI autonomy progresses.

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 3. That’s the number of endgames OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sees for AI. (The Information)

Quote: “CEOs increasingly need technology to create strategic freedom: the ability to enter markets, reshape offerings, reconfigure operations, and respond to disruption faster than competitors.”—David Furlonger, Gartner VP analyst, on how tech is changing the enterprise (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: The alleged OpenAI spy remains in custody. (Wired)

AI’s rulebook? Yeah, it needs one. On this episode of The Intelligence Shift, host Dan Priest speaks to experts about AI policy, setting new precedents, and what New Yorkers think about AI ahead of the midterms.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

AI Robots Arrive

AI-powered robots are smarter and faster to deploy, reshaping industries from warehousing to mining. Here’s what to know about the $60.7B future of robotics.

Check it out

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Written by Brianna Monsanto and Caroline Nihill

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