← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Turning data into decisions.
00:50:47
Parker Wishik from the Aerospace Corporation explores how experts are turning data into decisions in the space industry on the latest Nexus segment.
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- [00:02]
Jackie Barbieri
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:13]
Dave
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- [00:50]
Maria Varmazes
Welcome to T Minus Deep Space. Maria Vermazes here, host of T Minus Space Daily. And for today's show, I'm handing the host Mike over our partners at the Aerospace Corporation for the second installment of the Space Nexus.
- [01:27]
Parker Wyschek
You're in the Nexus, courtesy of the T Minus Space Daily podcast. I'm Parker Wyschek at the Aerospace Corporation. Today we're talking about turning data into decisions and we're joined by Jackie Barbieri, founder and CEO of WhiteSpace, which is based a quick jog from old town Alexandria, Virginia, and Dr. Steve Lewis joining from Colorado Springs today, who is the director of Aerospace's Spectrum Electromagnetic Interference Awareness and Response, or SPEAR team. More on that rather imposing sounding team in a bit, but first let's set the tone for this discussion, which apologies to the technology wonks, this is going to be more end user and data layer focused than hardware and comms. Jackie, you're a lifelong analyst and one of those end users now helping to empower other end users with tools that will quickly glean insights from existing data sets and at times even guiding the end users into what they want and need to analyze that they may or may not know. What is your philosophy and big picture observation on where we're at versus where we came from? Informed by two decades plus working in intelligence.
- [02:47]
Jackie Barbieri
Well Parker, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I think in some ways we are exactly where we were two decades ago in terms of the challenge we have ahead of us. And by that I mean two decades ago we were facing a crushing amount of data in terms of the pace, variety and just overall size of what we needed to get through in order to support decision and deliver decision advantage in the DoD and the intel community. And that is still true. In fact, I only think that problem is getting bigger and more challenging. Another challenge that is the same is we were faced with the challenge of figuring out how to encode and scale what are like expert processes and tacit knowledge about how to interpret that information and speed it up when it's an inherently thoughtful process and human driven process. So I think those two things are still the same. What is different is that technology in some ways has caught up almost enough for us to envision a future where we can invert that power dynamic or that curve that we've been on where data and need has been outpacing our ability to deliver. And, and I think that we're at a really interesting moment right now. Maybe a tipping point, I don't want to go too far, but almost at a tipping point where we might be able to wrap our arms around it for the first time and use it as leverage.
- [04:28]
Parker Wyschek
I definitely want to come back to this near the end of the segment because we're talking about philosophical change almost in how we look at and use data. You and I met in Austin at South by Southwest at Maxar's orbital edge of Benthis March, and you shared a little bit of your vision. Then you also had a fun demo. Really an enlightening demo is a better word. And your approach to arming analysts with deep insights from the right sources to make the right decision within a dramatically reduced time frame. I would love for you to share a little bit of that here.
- [05:04]
Jackie Barbieri
Yes, sure. So let me rewind a little bit those challenges that I pointed out that we're still faced with today in terms of getting expert knowledge encoded or scaled via software. This is a process that Whitespace has been involved in for over a decade. So we actually started out facing and trying to help the intelligence community address the challenge of training people in new methods for applying data and maybe non traditional ways from non traditional sources to get at really hard problems and to provide decision advantage at a speed that actually met operational need. And so we were trying to scale initially through training in different scenarios, getting people upskilled. And about five years ago, we expanded our capabilities as a company and started investing in developing tools that could augment individuals, intelligence analysts and operators as they're trying to get at key information to drive the decisions that they have to make every day. And so that demo that you saw, Parker, was really about how far can we push the envelope? Can we build a credible, reliable, trustworthy tech stack that can enable an operator end user to self serve information? To me, that's like the hardest challenge. There's so much baked into that. If you're an expert in this industry, you might be shaking your head at what I'm saying. It's not lost on me how hard it is to deliver, but the truth is our team has been chipping away at this problem for a really long time. And I'll explain a little bit about how we've been doing that. So first and foremost, you gotta have good quality data. That's like table stakes. So we've gone out into market and we've identified some of the best sources of commercially available non pixel information that's really important for me to state here that can be leveraged to understand and reveal hidden connections between individuals, groups, locations, events, so on and so forth. So data is the foundational layer. The next layer here is a set of deterministic algorithms or tools that automate and speed up those workflow modules that we've been training analysts to do for almost the last decade. And so it takes a process that would require an analyst, an engineer, a data scientist. It may be several hours to get to a result. And now that's an API call and the results are provided in seconds, maybe minutes, depending on the job size. So that's exciting. Right? So now we're going across sources, we're able to chain together these complex workflows really quickly. We're approximating human expert capability all in doing this. But where it gets really exciting is when you layer on top of that state of the art reasoning models and you apply on top of that an LLM layer that acts as the translation between the, the end user and the analytic decomposition of the task at hand. And then that reasoning model has access to all those tools and all that data and can provide and surface new opportunities, new discoveries that maybe the end user didn't even know to ask about in the first place. So that's when we really get into, we get beyond automating or speeding up the work that we already know needs to be done and we get into that space of opportunity and discovery, which is sort of, I think what drives a lot of some of the best analysts I've met is like that hunt, that hunger for the discovery.
- [08:58]
Parker Wyschek
So I got to play with Iris earlier and you're showing us Iris. Who is it named after?
- [09:04]
Jackie Barbieri
Or I love that you asked this question. It's actually named after the Greek goddess Iris, who was the messenger from the gods down to earth.
- [09:15]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Love it.
- [09:15]
Jackie Barbieri
It also happens.
- [09:16]
Parker Wyschek
Perfect.
- [09:16]
Jackie Barbieri
Conveniently happens to be related to vision. Right. So yet another reason to choose the name.
- [09:23]
Parker Wyschek
And you said LLM earlier for our listeners. That is large language model.
- [09:28]
Jackie Barbieri
Yeah. So Claude is actually Anthropic's flagship large language model and reasoning model. So we're using Claude Pour, which was just released a couple of weeks ago. And this example and use case is really centered on illegal resource extraction. So if we were looking into maybe illegal mining activities or similar in, say, the Amazon, we took a look at different ports that had been known to be related to this type of activity in that region. And so if we wanted to go on a discovery path like the one we were describing earlier, we just start with a location of interest. So news reporting cued us into the fact that there was a raid at a port named Manaus in. In Brazil a couple of years ago. And so I wanted to check in and see what vessel activity looks like in that port these days. So first and foremost, we take a look at what port facilities are in that region. So IRIS is able to tell us that quickly. And then I find, okay, this one here is a commercial port, and if I were shipping illegal goods, I'd probably want a commercial vessel to do that on a cargo vessel or something similar. So IRIS can show us and buffer that location readily for us. Let's take a look at whether or not there are any Chinese vessels that have entered or exited that port in the last 30 days or so. And interestingly, IRIS comes back and says, really, there haven't been. And that's interesting because the news report said that there were Chinese vessels implicated in that raid that I mentioned from a couple of years ago. All right, let's open up the aperture a little bit. Let's look at all commercial vessel activity in this location. Let's look at it in March 2025. So Iris runs a query for commercial vessel activity. And this is a heat map showing where those vessels were most active in and around the port. And you can see there's metadata associated with each of these regions. All right, well, let's drill a little deeper. What types of commercial vessels were active? And we're seeing these vessel types here, some of which could be used for moving around illegal goods in large quantities. But what's most interesting are the flags of these vessels. So folks that work in maritime and deal with sanctions evasion, they're very familiar with things called flags of convenience. Certain countries make it very easy to flag your vessel and have very low, very low bar in terms of the requirements to do so. And some of those countries are listed here. So this is getting interesting. All right, now I've asked IRIS to tell me for all vessels that were located in that port during the month of March, tell me where they went in April. What's really interesting to me are these vessels that are going around the Southern tip of Africa and up towards China. And see where this track ends is actually the temporal limitation on my query, it's not the spatial limitation on the data. And so I did a subsequent query because as I zoomed in here, this is actually data for just one unique vessel. And what stuck out to me is that this vessel is, ooh, it's actually a pilot vessel. Why would a pilot vessel that's meant to bring the captain or a pilot to a larger vessel when it's arriving in port be traveling this long distance?
- [13:12]
Parker Wyschek
You know that. Does Iris know that? Does Iris know and how does she.
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Jackie Barbieri
Know that Iris knows that that's a pilot vessel? Because that is reported in the data. Even if I didn't know that it was suspicious that a pilot vessel would be transiting this long distance, I would be interested in this track. And it's what looks like is going to be a terminus somewhere near China.
- [13:34]
Parker Wyschek
So would you call this human machine teaming because you're bringing your own personal expertise to the query that you're generating and expounding?
- [13:45]
Jackie Barbieri
Yes. So this is definitely human machine teaming. So this vessel actually made multiple stops at different Chinese ports in the subsequent month. And I'm going to just jump ahead to the bottom of where my exploration took me. I made all kinds of different queries. I asked about device location data and if there were any devices correlated with that vessel, where they went. But this was the most interesting thing at the very end of my exploration. I said, okay, well tell me where this vessel was on June 4, which happened to be the day before I did this exploration. And it was located in two places. One was that port in Manaus, and the other was the Taiwan Straits. And that defies physics. So that indicates possibly that this vessel might be worth further investigation and interrogation. And that's something I was able to accomplish aided by iris. Again, that human machine team is so key because I would learn something from Iris and that would prompt a new question, and that new question would provide an answer that would prompt yet another question. And I was able to do this in minutes rather than hours or days of painstaking work, combing through data and maybe crossing across multiple databases. IRIS is able also to surface for me other cross reference data like imagery, radio frequency data, mobile device location data, so on and so forth. So that's just a quick look at some of the work that IRIS is able to take off my plate as well as push me to be able to accomplish on my own in a much more efficient manner.
- [15:33]
Parker Wyschek
Excellent. So thanks for that dive in on iris, it's guiding the user through.
- [15:43]
Jackie Barbieri
How.
- [15:43]
Parker Wyschek
To progress the prompt. It's acting like an analyst. So I want to come back to that. And the question coming your way, Jackie, is who taught IRIS what she knows? But I want to segue to Steve now and his SPIR team that again, at Aerospace, stands for Spectrum Electromagnetic Interference Awareness and Response. Some similarities in how this team is using data in unconventional ways. And, Steve, I want you to just kind of tell us a little bit about what is Sphere doing. If there's anything you want to build on from what Jackie's provided to date, please go for it.
- [16:25]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Yeah, absolutely. And I recognize that acronym is quite long, hence the SPEAR team. So there's another piece of this that I think is related to the conversation. And that's something we call massless payloads. So massless payloads, it's software, very similar. We looked at IRIS as an example of, you know, a software tool that can be used to process data, to extract insights. And so the SPEAR team actually kind of pioneered this idea of massless payloads to process commercial data sets. Our initial endeavor was looking at data sets, unfortunately, that were not ideal. It was what data is available from existing hardware as it is on commercial systems, without asking a commercial data provider to make any changes. Just give us the data that is available. And we applied software, massless payloads, to process that, to look for insights. The data was often data that's dumped on the floor and not even used. It just happens to be available. The first example was observables or measurements from radios on commercial spacecraft and more specifically, GPS or GNSS radios. So the Global Positioning System, global navigation satellite systems. And so we took those observables, a mix of more exquisite, if you will, to some that are just. They are what they are not as many decimal places, you know, that we would. We would like to have. And we created a Pathfinder prototype to just explore that area, to process the data, to detect and characterize manufactured interference. That was the goal. The great thing about the SPEAR team is, you know, as we talk about the big problem to solve, software's great. Data is great. But there's. There's another piece to this. How do I advance this technology, these techniques, these tools, and transition them to operations? And we saw an opportunity, in this case for aerospace, the SPEAR team, to pioneer a Pathfinder prototype, demonstrate it, identify who might be transition agents and show that Pathfinder prototype and the opportunity, and then look for a transition path. And what it's turned out to be is prototyping opportunities for commercial companies to come in and then build prototypes to process, you know, these types of data sets to solve problems with a transition, transition agent or an end user following along the whole way. And the SPEAR team's role becomes, you know, we want success. So help out the prototyping activity, help out with transition. And part of that is using these tools to explore what do the tools do best in solving these problems, you know, what are areas maybe for improvement. And so that's kind of what the SPEAR team is about. It has evolved, it's expanded quite a bit. And the spirit team now is kind of the engineering back shop for an organization called the Joint Commercial Ops and also supporting some other government organizations as well.
- [20:06]
Parker Wyschek
So to go back to massless payloads and frankly for me it's taken a while for me to kind of grasp that. You know, the first time you hear massless payloads you wonder how, how is that possible? But what you're essentially doing is you're taking onboard hardware and you're not changing how it operates, but you're changing what you get out of it. You're not changing the data, you're changing how you're using the data, how you're applying it. Am I correct on that?
- [20:37]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Absolutely.
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Parker Wyschek
And you're. So you talked about data sets that are left on the cutting room floor. Essentially what you're doing is you're doing the restaurants chef special, you're serving ingredients the next day that weren't needed in the main entree. But what you've actually done in some of these use cases is you've created an award winning entree that is now something people are going to your restaurant for. Can you tell me the anecdote you told me a couple weeks ago about your work with a commercial company asking for access to their data set and how you brought that to the government, essentially creating a new tool overnight that then has translated into actual commercial work with the US government.
- [21:29]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Yes. And that Pathfinder prototype was called Deep PNT Data Exploitation and enhanced processing for positioning, navigation and timing. So dpnt, and you're right, this actually came out of my schoolwork and where it really came, to be honest with you, is I don't want to call it desperation, but as I was working on my degree program, I was told we need to really see this experiment in a real world environment. Well, for me it was detecting jammers and spoofers, you know, for GPS for school. And I didn't have access to that, so I had access to public GPS receivers that were near GPS test events that I at the time couldn't afford to go to. So I looked at data from that GPS receiver and discovered, oh wait, I don't have to go to that event. I can just use data from this device and I can see what's going on at least enough. I can't know everything, I can't comprehensively solve the entire problem, but I can provide an element of it and something that was good enough. And so taking that much further, I was able to work with a commercial company that had data from systems that were already deployed and they shared that data with me. And I wrote some basic software code just to do an initial proof of concept. And I was able to demonstrate with that data set we could provide something valuable. Global persistent awareness of manufactured interference, or I should say possible or probable manufactured interference. And then with that success, the key was then finding a way to transition that to industry. And that's really where the success came. Right from FFRDC to industry and ultimately to operations, where it is now commercial capability, where it's providing value to real world users.
- [23:45]
Parker Wyschek
And it sounded like when you were telling me this, the initial company that you worked with was part of an award, but beyond that, there were other companies part of that award. So from a minimal investment on the part of one commercial company and some collaboration, there was an actual use case, a value proposition that emerged, and it was a force multiplier for engaging these commercial companies to support the United States.
- [24:16]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Absolutely. And even better than that, that was one prototype. We've actually done five other prototypes across multiple mission areas and each of those have led to commercial opportunities. So it has been an exciting ride working with commercial, working with the government and end users as well.
- [24:47]
Maria Varmazes
We'll be right back with more from the Space Nexus.
- [24:54]
Dave
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- [26:03]
Jackie Barbieri
Foreign.
- [26:09]
Dave
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- [26:52]
Maria Varmazes
Welcome back. Here are our partners at the Aerospace Corporation, now with more of the space nexus.
- [26:59]
Parker Wyschek
So this question's for both of you, both white spaces solutions, Iris specifically, but I know you have other offerings. Jackie and Spier's work, they strike at the notion that we are not confined to what we have today, to what we know today, that there's some value in the unknown. There's always another lens to look through or ways to use the tools that we have at our disposal. And, and both of you have proven it doesn't take decades to transition to that, you know, that operational state. It doesn't take months for an RFI to be issued and fulfilled and responded to. I would love to hear about your response to how the space community is receptive to this idea. Jackie.
- [27:53]
Jackie Barbieri
I really can't say enough about how receptive the space community has been to new unknown efforts, capabilities, solutions and the pursuit of that.
- [28:08]
Parker Wyschek
And really, it's not just the space community. I kind of put you in a box there.
- [28:14]
Jackie Barbieri
Well, I'd say it's most front and center culturally with them. You're right. It's not. It's not just the space community. But I think it takes a lot of courage on the part of a government end user, regardless of what organization or agency they're a part of, to say, hey, I have a problem and I'm open to creative solutions to that problem. I'm not going to prescribe the template that it needs to follow. I'm just going to tell you the outcome that I'm looking for. And I think that at least we've had the honor and the privilege to be part of a cell called the Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking Cell, TAC srt, that very much has that ethos. And in their engagement with every vendor on every effort. And I think that's yielded some really incredible breakthroughs. In particular, direct support to operational end users at a pace and of a quality that most people just assumed wasn't possible before they tried. So I think that it's been really productive. It makes it really fun actually also to work with them. And I think it's been a good outcome overall for the DoD end users and that's the most important thing.
- [29:38]
Dr. Steve Lewis
I would completely agree with you. You know, I mentioned before the organization, one of the organizations I support, the US Space Force's joint commercial operations. It's been exciting and I totally view my role as to help stimulate some of that creative energy and exploring these data sets. The environment is getting, you know, it's complex already. It's getting more complex. The data sets that we're looking at today, AIs is one example, you know, that you shared with us. Is AIs going to look the same tomorrow? Is there going to be a, you know, maybe a different data provider or we need to pivot to a different data provider for some reason and there's probably going to be nuances and we've got to be ready for those nuances, you know, with software that can adapt to it. Hard problem, complex problem. And I think the community is open to finding some creative, resourceful, rigorous solutions to try to solve those complex problems with the amount of data that we're dealing with. You mentioned earlier, Jackie and I really appreciated your comment about making good use of operators time. I used to be a space operator. We're busy, we only have so much time and we can only train on so many things. We need help to maximize our time. So we focus on what is the most important problem at any given moment in operations. And so we need help with that. And I think the community is really open to finding ways of helping with that complex problem with the amount of data that we're dealing with.
- [31:29]
Jackie Barbieri
Well, Steve, kind of building on that, one of the main reasons that drove me to start the company in the first place was my appreciation very early on in my career of the gap that could exist between the operator need and what could be provided to them in terms of decision support on a given timeline, given certain resource constraints. And it felt like it took a Herculean effort to try to even close that 1cm closer. And I think that with the right combination of culture and requirements, I want to say in the big R way, but expression of needs from the customer perspective and a vibrant commercial ecosystem that is eager to help solve those problems, we're Getting closer and closer every day. The rate at which I see those two things coming together is really exciting and inspiring and just I think that we have so much farther we can go.
- [32:40]
Parker Wyschek
I'm going to flip flop my last two questions because that segues perfectly into the technology aside. This cannot be an easy transition from a mindset, from an ethos perspective. So Jackie, I think you're, you're kind of in there. Well, both of you really, you're in these movement spaces. You have stakeholders working with you who are willing to move what has to change for any stakeholder to be ready to operate, analyze and act effectively in this agile way.
- [33:15]
Jackie Barbieri
Well, I think we have to be willing to look at our standard processes with a critical eye. And I'll say that even we have to do it inside of our company too. Right. So when you have experts building technology that would augment or in some cases replace tasks that experts currently have to do, it can be very challenging. So you have to stay and you have to be willing and able to stay in that place of tension between. We have a very high bar for how well this needs to function, but we're also willing to try really hard to see how far we can push it and how close we can get to that expert level performance. And so that is a special set of cultural characteristics that need to exist, I think both on the provider side and on the end user side where they have to be open. I think need and being overwhelmed and the pace of operations and the growing complexity you tapped into, Steve, I couldn't agree with that more. Sort of being overwhelmed by the sheer nature of your job will also maybe make you more open and willing to try new things. Um, I, I hate to say that, but I do think that's, it creates a conducive situation and makes people more open minded about different options to explore.
- [34:47]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Yes, change, change is difficult, especially when you're dealing with, with humans. So something that, that comes to mind on this topic specifically and having seen, you know, many different tools out there and actually having seen something on a popular platform that a lot of us use. Comments about some of these type of tools, data mining tools, I think it's important to be very objective, very honest about what a tool can do and what it cannot do. And it is okay. If it cannot comprehensively solve everything, it probably won't and that's okay. Communicating what value that it does have and what scope of the problem that it's solving is better because then you can integrate it into operations. A lot of the capabilities that I work with is exploiting imperfect data sets. There are equipment artifacts that we have to try to filter, and we don't ever have full knowledge of all of them. There are known unknowns, and they're probably unknown unknowns. And so as we try to transform.
- [36:07]
Parker Wyschek
You know, there are unknown unknowns, we know there are unknown unknowns.
- [36:12]
Dr. Steve Lewis
But to get that in an operator's hands, I got one shot often, right. I don't want to hand them something, promise it does, you know, lots of things. And then they discover that it doesn't have the value they thought it did, and they won't come back. So it's very important to communicate, probably more important, to communicate what a tool cannot do, or at least some level of confidence at what it can do or cannot do. I think that is very important as we explore this, you know, data science, AI ML and these technologies to mine data and provide meaningful insights.
- [36:57]
Jackie Barbieri
Steve, I have to jump in because what you just said is one of the fundamental lessons that an analyst has to learn. I don't know, sir. And they have to. It takes a lot of courage to do that and to not tap dance. But that is the crux of how you build trust and how you participate as a team player. And I think when people flip that switch and they lean into that, their credibility only goes up. So I could not agree with you more on the human level that's so important. I think it's equally, if not more important from a technology perspective.
- [37:33]
Parker Wyschek
And I think that brings me back to my question that I put a pin in Jackie, who taught IRIS what she knows.
- [37:40]
Jackie Barbieri
So IRIS is. Has been developed by experts who have been involved not only in actually doing this type of analysis in an operational environment, but also training others to do it. So the guardrails, the heuristics, the tacit knowledge is actively being transferred every day by those experts to iris. I'm saying that conceptually I'm kind of hand waving, but in terms of the prompting, the directions that she's given, the guidelines that she's supposed to operate within, that's all crafted by SMEs.
- [38:24]
Parker Wyschek
And you're one of those SMEs. You have two decades in intelligence plus, and you've taught this tool, and you and your team have taught this tool using courses, how to act as an analyst in guiding the end user through the analysis process to be a crutch for them to lean on or a trusted advisor in their ear.
- [38:47]
Jackie Barbieri
That's exactly where we're headed. I wouldn't say she's fully trained yet, but she's pretty capable. Think of her like an eager recent college undergrad. Right. She has a little bit of training under her belt, she's capable, she's got a lot of tools at her disposal, but she's becoming more and more expert every day. And that's partially because she's being used to support real operational requests every day from end users in the combatant commands. And so every time a new requirement comes up, IRIS gets a new tool and Iris gets new instructions on how to use that tool and how, most importantly, not to use it. So again, that's, yes, that's coming from experts, instructors, practitioners, all working together with the engineering team and as part of the engineering team to make IRIS a reliable and trustworthy companion.
- [39:40]
Parker Wyschek
And so we'll bring that back to the end, to the trust component. How can end users, how can acquirers trust that these. Let's say what we're selling here right now, and I use lowercase selling, is we're selling a quicker path from data to decision and much more rapid decision making in real time where you have real high stakes for the end user. Steve, how do we build trust in this approach? And then back to Jackie for closing.
- [40:14]
Dr. Steve Lewis
Yeah, and I think that's what the SPEAR team has evolved to, is working across industry, working with data providers, commercial service providers, the government, FFRDCs, Yorks as well, to help do additional data curation. You know, and I'll back up during the prototyping to help identify what's the scope, what, what might this tool, this approach or technology, where might it have the most value, what is it? You know, is there one thing that it does really well or maybe a few things, where might it need more work and what areas can it just not do? Identify that early on so that we can find that best path. And then later in the process, once it's transitioning and transitioned, providing independent data curation. And it's a mixed bag of data curation from the raw data that's fed into these tools to maybe it's processed data that's coming out of the tools, but helping to provide some independent data curation for further enhancement, future enhancement, looking for data corruption, whether intentional or unintentional. And then the second function that our team does is mission assurance, again having some other domain experts, data science experts, to join the fun, you know, we're not there to look for problems. We're there to ensure success, you know, across the board, successful adoption, successful continued development and enhancement, you know, to further refine and Improve. So I think, you know, as far as that trust piece, our role is to help facilitate that trust not alone but with that broader group.
- [42:21]
Jackie Barbieri
This is such a hard question, Parker. I think that because it depends on the end user, it depends on the acquirer's context. I personally believe that the best way to gain trust and when we've seen it grow like almost instantaneous, go from skepticism to eager interest is when an end user sees IRIS in our case achieve a result or find a thing that they knew was relevant but there was no way for us to know or IRIS to know a priori was relevant. So results I think, you know, reps, you know, using it to maybe try to replicate or benchmark against known knowns. Steve, to your point, and at least then they know and they have some confidence that those that can be covered down on and maybe that's all they feel comfortable using it for. And that might be enough to get a lot of work off the plate so that the experts can work on the harder things which are those unknown unknowns. And so I really think it is benchmarking comparison and the opportunity to take it for a test drive that really drives that trust.
- [43:44]
Dr. Steve Lewis
And just an extension of what you said, another role we facilitate live testing. Some of the examples are turning on cooperative emitters and having a truth source emit and you know, working, working with the data provider, working with the tool developer, you know, to, to understand any adjustments that may need made and you know, the performance of it as well. And when I say live, I mean real world live, unscripted, but sometimes with some extra knowledge.
- [44:23]
Parker Wyschek
That's the timeline we're working on here. That's the timeline we are using artificial intelligence and human machine teaming from an operational standpoint. It is right now, it is two seconds ago. So just a fun, maybe not so fun question to close on. Are your tools and this technology going to put smart critical thinkers like me and other analysts out of business? And what's the timeframe on that?
- [44:53]
Jackie Barbieri
Oh man, I don't think so. I firmly believe we are entering into the golden age of the critical thinker. We're going to be super empowered in a way that has never been the case in the whole history of humanity. I think that I've asked new types of questions that I didn't even realize were I would just discount them or completely avoid them, try to work my way around them because it would require too much processing time or too much manual effort. So I don't think so. I just think that as an expert critical thinker Parker. You're gonna have the opportunity to pursue and conceive of new questions and develop new answers, and that's really exciting to me.
- [45:43]
Parker Wyschek
We can't beat that ending, so we'll leave it there. Jackie Barbieri, Founder and CEO of White Space thank you so much for coming on the program. Dr. Steve Lewis, director of the Aerospace Corporation's spear team, thank you for coming to talk to thank you to the T Minus and NTK team for having us. Thank you for joining us here in the Nexus. Until next time.
- [46:18]
Maria Varmazes
That'S T Deep Space brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. You could also fill out the survey in the show notes or even send an email to space2k.com we're privileged that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, technology and ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com our senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Lucky Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our Executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpi is our publisher and I'm your host Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
- [48:05]
Dave
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