July 15, 2026

Presented By

Happy Hump Day! We hope you enjoy this newsletter from the comfort of your office desk or local coffee shop, if you’re one of the 35% of US employees who still works remotely in some capacity.

In today’s edition:

🚘 Driver’s ed

⏩ Higher Ed

📑 Policy shmolicy

—Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins, Brianna Monsanto

IT STRATEGY

CAIO means goodbye

Sebastian Wernicke

CAIOs—that’s chief AI officer, for those unfamiliar—are being set up to fail at many organizations, suggests Sebastian Wernicke, partner at finance and economic consultancy Oxera and author of the 2026 book Data Inspired.

Some CAIOs are set up to be drivers of change, while others are stuck as mere coordinators of change, Wernicke said, adding that the coordinators often have limited budgets, small teams, and no reporting line to important business leaders like the CEO.

Yet CAIO coordinators are still expected to be the “center of gravity” for companies’ major AI shifts.

“I think this is where you really see a conflict, because you’re expecting a lot more things out of the role than what it is actually set up to deliver,” Wernicke told IT Brew.

Q&A time!—BH

Sponsored By Console

Say ta-ta to ticket troubles

Handling tickets can eat up *a lot* of your time. Give yourself some time back with help from AI—just like Synthesia did.

Synthesia has a small but mighty seven-person IT team. But those seven people are supporting hundreds of employees. So they turned to Console for support. Tune in to the live fireside chat on July 21 at 9am PT to hear from Synthesia Head of IT Samuel Williams.

Save your seat for How Synthesia Rebuilt IT with AI to see how Synthesia used Console to:

Achieve 75% auto-resolution.
Reduce access request fulfillment from hours to minutes.
Shift their team from handling tickets to building systems that scale.

You’ll also get tips on automating Tier 1 and Tier 2 workflows, Okta lockout resolution, laptop refresh workflows, and time-bound access requests.

Ditch the ticket mayhem.

IT STRATEGY

Take it EZ

Ed Zitron

Ed Zitron has made a name for himself in recent years as an outspoken critic of the tech industry’s push on AI—specifically LLMs.

The CEO of EZ Primary Research, Zitron writes the “Where’s Your Ed At” newsletter and hosts the Better Offline podcast. In part 1, he discussed AI bubbles, government subsidies, and other topics; in this part, he talks about how Silicon Valley is approaching this moment, and why he’s skeptical of the potential of the technology to continue to drive the sector.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

One thing I have heard from people in the industry is that the ROI that they are expecting from all of this technology is not going to come until like 2030.

[Zitron laughs.]

The idea is that they’ll build out all of this infrastructure, lay all this groundwork, and then in four years the profits are going to come. I’m going to guess that you don’t agree that that’s realistic.

Yeah, that’s complete hogwash. It is based on nothing. They don’t actually have any foundation to that argument, beyond fairy dust and dreams and vibes.

Zitron’s predictions for the future of AI.—EH

CYBERSECURITY

Enforcement time

Photo collage of a robot hand controlling a computer mouse, and an engineer looking pensive while working at a computer.

Shannon May, Photos: Adobe Stock, Unsplash

When you know better, you do better…or do you? For some employees, that’s not the case when it comes to using AI responsibly in the workplace.

According to a June report by AI-native browser security platform Neon Cyber, almost half (48.3%) of US knowledge employees admit to knowingly breaching an AI policy within their company. The findings are based on a May survey of 227 US knowledge workers who use AI at work.

Employees also admitted to circumventing AI policies to use tools of their choice without restraint. About half (49.3%) said they would use a tool even if it wasn’t approved yet. Another 41.9% said they would copy work data into a personal, unapproved tool “just this once.”

What’s at risk when companies fail to enforce AI policies?—BM

Sponsored By JumpCloud

Mind the gap. Organizations are racing to adopt fully autonomous AI agents into the workforce. But along the way, a gap has emerged between C-suite leaders and IT practitioners over how to adopt this tech safely, securely, and at scale. Our article with JumpCloud explores how organizations can bridge the divide. Check it out.

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: $400 million. That’s approximately how much Starbucks spends on software per year. (Bloomberg)

Quote: “They have to learn. I can’t send them to university. There’s no course you can take in school anywhere. They have to be able to learn on their own.”—Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks CEO, on non-AI savvy employees (ITPro)

Read: You may want to put a little more thought into the quality of the next USB-C charger you buy for your phone. (the Wall Street Journal)

From hours to minutes: One little ticket can take up a lot of time. Go from reactive to proactive, like Synthesia did. Catch the live fireside chat to see how Synthesia used AI to rebuild IT.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Impacts of AI at the help desk

Getty Images

Sometimes the help desk could use a little help. Learn what happens to a help desk pro who has a lot more free time thanks to AI taking a whole tier of tasks off their to-do list?

Check it out

Share the Brew

Share the Brew, watch your referral count climb, and unlock brag-worthy swag.

Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win.

Your referral count: 0

Click to Share

Or copy & paste your referral link to others:
itbrew.com/r/?kid=71df84e8

Written by Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins, and Brianna Monsanto

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Get smarter in just 5 minutes

Tech & AI News: Tech Brew
Markets News: Brew Markets
Real Estate News: The Playbook
Money & Career: Bossy

Take The Brew to work

Interested in podcasts?

Check out ours here.

ADVERTISE//CAREERS//SHOP//FAQ

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here.
View our privacy policy here.

Copyright © 2026 Morning Brew Inc. All rights reserved.
22 W 19th St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011

☕ Riding shotgun