June 5, 2023 • 30 mins
Josh Lospinoso is the co-founder/CEO of Shift5. Josh is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in cybersecurity, data science, and system software engineering. Prior to Shift5, he co-founded RedOwl Analytics, an insider threat detection platform acquired by Raytheon/Forcepoint in 2017. Additionally, he served 10 years as a cyber officer leading teams to build dozens of elite hacking tools for the National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations, Army Cyber Command, and the Cyber National Mission Force.
Josh is also the author of C++ Crash Course (No Starch Press, 2019), dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles spanning multiple disciplines, and multiple patents. Josh earned a BS in Economics and Operations Research from the United States Military Academy and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Other than defending operational technology (OT) from cyberattack, Josh’s secret superpower is that he can read his own mind.
Josh is also the author of C++ Crash Course (No Starch Press, 2019), dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles spanning multiple disciplines, and multiple patents. Josh earned a BS in Economics and Operations Research from the United States Military Academy and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Other than defending operational technology (OT) from cyberattack, Josh’s secret superpower is that he can read his own mind.
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(00:00):
M and T Bank presents CEOs youshould Know, powered by Iheartadia. Let's
meet Josh los Pinoso. He isthe co founder and CEO for Shift five,
created by founding members of the USArmy Cyber Command who pioneered modern weapons
systems cyber assessments. Led by provenchangemakers, Shift five brings on board data
delight, helping defense, aviation,and rail build and maintain intelligent fleets.
(00:25):
Before we talk more about Josh's company, I first asked him to talk a
little bit about himself, where he'sfrom. Then his origin story. So,
I grew up in northern New Jerseyin a town called flarm Park,
and September eleventh happened when I wasa freshman in high school, which had
a pretty profound impact on you know, basically everyone you know in the country,
(00:49):
but specifically folks that lives you knowrounds Pennsylvania, DC and New York.
And I think a lot of usfelt a call to service in different
kinds of ways, whether that wasdirect public service or you know, more
more of an indirect way. Andyou know, when I was fourteen,
I kind of decided, Hey,I really want to join the military.
Um, you know, I feltlike the nation needed to defend itself,
(01:14):
and the military was was always somethingthat I had thought about. So I
actually enlisted in the Army when Iwas seventeen, so junior year of high
school, and did did summer campdown at Fort Benning, Georgia at the
Infantry School. Came back and finishedup my senior year, applied to go
to the United States Military Academy atWest Point, got in, and then
(01:38):
started my military journey really in twothousand and five. So I spent four
years at west Point, studied econand math. Was fortunate enough to win
a graduate scholarship, and I wentto Oxford for three years and did a
PhD in statistics, and um,yeah, when I got out of the
(02:01):
out of school, is it quitea long journey. That's kind of when
I started the whole march towards Shiftfive. You know. Happy to give
you a little bit of that storyif that's helpful too. Yeah, we're
going to talk a lot about Shiftfive, but I will tell you this.
It's not going to surprise you,Josh, but it's just so interesting
to me as a civilian. HowSeptember eleventh so profound lead for me?
(02:22):
I was on the air in Albuquerqueto Mexto at the time, which is
a military town as you know,with a Cerminal airbase, and it happened
all when I was on the air, and I've never forgotten it, and
I can see why I was acatalyst for you joining the army and you
put a decade in which is reallyjust absolutely amazing. Thank you for your
service. I'm always an people likeyou that have made such a big decision
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at such a young age, andit's really profound. And I also want
to talk in a little bit aboutthe transition from the military to what you
do now as a CEO, becauseyou learn so much leadership and structure in
the military as we know even ascivilians, and how that translates. So
we'll talk about that too. ButI always like to talk to our leaders
and our CEOs with you and theco founder Mike, about the epiphany of
(03:05):
the idea of Shift five, becauseyou know, I obviously coming out of
the military, and we'll talk aboutthe mission statement and all the different processes
and capabilities that you have, butI would like to hear about that idea
about you know, you saw ahole in the industry and coming out of
the military and twenty and eighteen andstarting the company in twenty nineteen about what
that was and why we came upfor that idea and here's how we can
(03:29):
make it work at least we think, So tell us about that story.
Yeah, happy to do it,Dennis. So, you know, picking
up the thread. I got backin uniform after grad school and right around
twenty thirteen, the military had startedthinking about the cyber domain. So you
(03:51):
know, digital things and how theyaffect military operations and there are you know,
some obvious ones, right like ourmilitary runs on computers now. Um,
you know, like every large organization, information technology has really changed the
way that it does business. Andso that's a pretty well understood you know
(04:15):
field, right it cybersecurity. Youcan't you know, swing a swing a
dead cat without you know, hearingabout somebody who'd been compromised from a phishing
attack or had their credential stolen orfraud or you know, we hear about
in the news now everything from theColonial pipeline hack to um to to water
treatment facilities getting compromised. So peopleare pretty aware nowadays that sort of thing.
(04:39):
Um where my co founder Mike wigandwho's another West Point guy and I
um started thinking about was less aboutthe computers that look like computers and more
about the computers that don't. Andin the military, that's everything from fighter
jets and cargo planes to tanks andtroop carriers, submarines and aircraft carriers and
(05:03):
even now space assets. And itkind of happened without us really thinking about
it. But over the past coupleof decades, these systems have accumulated so
many digital components that replaced the analogcomponents that you know, you think of
from like a World War Two tank. You sit in a tank today and
it's it's a supercomputer. There's justdozens and dozens and dozens of these computers
(05:27):
all over the place. Everything fromcontrolling the engines to the targeting, to
the commanders display, all the radios, all of these are digital assets.
And Mike and I joined the cyberbranch in the Army, and we have
this idea that we should take alook at our systems and ask the question
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how secure are they? So ifif an adversary wanted to manipulate these systems
from from a digital perspective like theydo to our computers, how easy is
that how could they get into thesesystems? Where are the you know what
we call access vectors. Once theygot access, what could happen to those
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systems? Are we talking about degradingthem? Destroying them? And so we
studied this problem for the majority ofour our ten year career, and I'll
tell you we went in thinking,Wow, these these things are probably pretty
secure. You know, these arethese are you know, critical infrastructure.
The DoD has thought really hard abouthow to build these systems, and generally
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speaking, they do a great job. Unfortunately, we did about a half
a dozen of these they called penetrationtests in the cybersecurity industry, and the
results that we found were extremely disconcerting. M And there were some other folks
in the Air Force and the Navydoing similar things on their platforms and they
found the same things. And intwenty eighteen, UH this auditing agency in
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the government called the Government Accountability OfficeUM caught wind of all of these penetration
tests that we were doing and readour results and they wrote this big hundred
page unclassified report called the Weapons SystemCybersecurity. And you read this thing,
you're like, my goodness, thisis one of the biggest national security crisis
(07:13):
of our time. If we evergot into a you know, if we
hope we don't, of course,but if we ever got into a fight
with what they call an europeer adversary, you know, someone who has a
sophisticated military and they were clued intosome of these problems, we might be
in a situation where our fighter jetsdon't take off, or we can't get
the logistics that we need to tothe folks that we deploy, or you
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know, you think about you know, ground combat vehicles stopping, you know,
in the middle of a field orsomething like that. Is it sounds
like science fiction, but it's not. You know, we were able to
demonstrate these kinds of things. Andso when that happened in twenty eighteen and
that big report came out, Mikeand I looked at each other and said,
you know, this is a hugeproblem, and it's not just the
(08:00):
military, right. These systems aredesigned in very similar ways to locomotives,
you know, in the civilian space, commercial air freight, and passenger all
of our you know, shipping vessels, space assets. I mean, my
gosh, our modern society depends onthese assets so much. And we decided
to take um, you know,not only the technical kind of exposure that
(08:22):
we had to these systems, butalso our leadership training in the military and
try to put a dent in thisbig problem that we're facing as as a
world. And so we got outin twenty nineteen to start Shift five.
Man, there's a lot to digestthere as a civilian, so I know
we're going to get into it.But I know that branding always is important,
(08:45):
always every leader and CEO. ButI'm intrigued by the Shift five title
company of the and the name.So what's the origin of Shift five?
Because I think it's pretty cool.I like it. It's it's pretty nerdy.
So so bear with me here.I'm going to request that you reserved
two h two memory registers in yourbrain for a second. We're gonna put
them together to come up with Shiftfive. All right, here's the first
(09:09):
one. So in uh, computersspeak zeros and ones, right, they're
they're they're digital, and humans speakin you know, written characters. Right.
So ever since the first computers,we had to make translations between those
zeros and ones and human language.So perhaps the most popular one and one
(09:31):
which we use still use today,is called the askey table. You may
have heard asky and all that isit takes a number and it refers to
a letter, right, so youyou go, you know, the hexadecimal
forty and that's the letter A rightkind of a thing, all right.
So that's that's the first memory register. The second one. Okay. When
we look at these these systems thatwe study, some military weapons systems,
(09:54):
they have um the equivalent to thinkof it like a Wi Fi network,
but it's it's kind of over wiresto connect all of these digital components on
the system so that when the pilot, you know, moves their moves,
their their their controls, that thecontrol surfaces will move as a result of
(10:15):
that, right, So they communicateover these data buses. One of the
most popular data buses in the militaryis called Military Standard fifteen fifty three.
Okay, all right, so we'regonna put these two things together mill Standard
fifteen fifty three. So if youtake fifteen and fifty three, you put
it in the asky charts, youget shift five. I got it.
I can be the first one thatasked Josh that, and he had a
(10:39):
nice prepared answer. I think that'spretty cool. But I was you know.
It caught my attention. I thinkit's cool when you got a cool
company name in the origin of it. So why do we do this?
When it comes to shift five,what's your mission statement? Yeah, we
want to defend the world's planes,trains, and tanks from cyber attack.
I love that and it's pretty simple. So let's also talk about now capabilities,
because I know they're a lot andwe have a lot of lame in
(11:00):
their listening to civilians like myself,and you do some very intricate stuff with
your clients, So let's talk aboutmaybe some of the capabilities and what you
do, what you actually do,and what you offer. Yeah, happy
to do it well for folks thatmaybe. I mean, cybersecurity has just
penetrated into so many different areas ofour life. I mean, I you
know, sit at Thanksgiving now andI've got my uncle asking me about phishing
(11:24):
attacks and clicking on links. Right, So it's it's changed a lot in
the past fifteen years. Well,one of the first things that we think
about doing to a system when we'retrying to increase its cybersecurity is to gain
visibility or observability into that system.Right. The idea is you can't defend
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something that you can't see, right, And there are lots of layers of
cybersecurity that you build up on topof that base observability. Right. So
one of the common things that you'llsee in enterprise networks, for example,
is you'll monitor the network traffic,so you know the Wi Fi and the
Ethernet and all of the Internet trafficthat's going into and out of your your
(12:09):
enterprise network. We call that networkintrusion detection, right, So we're looking
for bad behavior or evidence of badactors on those networks. And that's a
really well studied problem. There's someamazing companies that do do that really really
well on enterprise networks. No oneup until Shift five was found in twenty
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nineteen, was doing this for thetrillions of dollars of assets that don't look
like computers, right, so aircraft, maritime vessels, locomotives, ground systems.
So what we do as a firstlayer is to take hardware that we
make so it's about the size ofthe paperback book, and we can install
it onto those platforms and tap ontoall of those data networks that are communicating
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the traffic to and from all thelittle computers. You can think of it
kind of like a central nervous systemfor for an aircraft, for example,
and we will collect every bit ofdata that is going across those networks.
So that's kind of layer one.Layer two is you know, look,
we're a cybersecurity company. We've beenstudying cybersecurity for for for decades now,
and you know the founding team andthe folks that are on the team,
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and so we build cybersecurity products thatlook at that traffic and are able to
determine when there's bad traffic on thatnetwork. Um. And then the kind
of third layer on top of thisis, you know, the military and
most enterprises today have hired full timecybersecurity professionals. Right, So you might
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you might sell lumber, right,but you've got cybersecurity folks on your staff
that are looking at your networks.Well, the military is no different,
and they've actually hired thousands of peoplewith the mission of making sure that not
only the enterprise networks but also theweapon systems are secure. And for the
first time we're able to deliver themthat visibility layer and all of the data
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that's coming off of this trillion dollarasset class UH and incorporate that into into
their IT traffic as well, sonow they have a full view of every
digital component that's in their in theirworld, whereas when Mike and I were
in uniform, all we could seewas the IT side right right. So
it's it's a kind of a comprehensivething, and there's a lot of problems
that you got to solve in there. I mean, think about getting the
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trust and confidence and all the certificationsto install hardware on a on a fighter
jet. Um, you know,that's that's pretty significant. Um. You
know, there's a lot of challengeswith like making sure that there's a lot
of data there, how do youyou know, collect it and compress it.
How do you deal with like allthe different languages that these different different
kinds of systems are speaking. Sothere's there's a lot to it, but
(14:48):
the idea is actually pretty simple.You know, I was thinking with you
and Mike being cohert in the militaryand being as smart as you are,
you probably saw it coming. Butone of the things, once again as
a civilian, that I did seecoming as I, you know, pay
attention to the news because I'm anews junkie. Also the sports guy too.
But noticing that when it comes tointernational cybersecurity, that's been a big
deal for a while. But Ididn't see domestic coming and I know you
(15:11):
probably have. And that's also partabout what you do too, and keeping
an eye on the homeland and worryingabout Americans turning on Americans and it's just
hard to believe, but it ishappening right now. So that leads me
to my next question, because Ialways like to talk about success stories that
we're going to put a pin inin just a second, because I bet
you got a great one with aclient. But the challenge that you face
(15:31):
now are worldwide. But what specificchallenges are you having to deal with you
and Mike right now? Yeah,there are a lot, you know.
I mean, I think the themain one is in this world we live
in, right, so planes,trains and tanks, we are thirty years
(15:52):
three zero, thirty years behind whereit cybersecurity is. I know that that's
kind of that's a statement. Yeah, that's a exprobordinary, you know.
But you think about where the Internetcame from, right It was a bunch
of academics sharing papers back and forth, and there was a trusted universe and
when we designed all of these protocols, we designed the Internet. We didn't
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think about cybersecurity at first, andnow cybersecurity is a multibillion dollar industry,
and so much of that it's thinkingabout ways that we reverse engineer cybersecurity onto
these systems that we're not designed forthe way we're using them. Right.
So, nowadays you probably pay yourmortgage on your Internet. You know,
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banks transfer billions of dollars to eachother over this infrastructure, and we trust
that more or less. I mean, there's there's definitely, you know,
examples of where that security fails.But we're in a prettymature place, you
know now with it cybersecurity. Andone of the biggest challenges that Mike and
I have is basically rewinding the clockthirty years. I'm thinking about, okay,
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great, we talk about all thisreally advanced cybersecurity stuff now two factor
authentication and zero trust and all thiskind of you know, the buzzwords and
all this kind of thing. Weneed to be going back to the nineties
and thinking about how do we putthe base layer in right. So one
of the challenges is just frankly,managing expectations about what is possible because you
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know, you look at something likean aircraft. These things are in service
for decades and decades and decades,and we can't redesign those systems from first
print. It would be more expensivethan just designing a new aircraft, for
example. So the biggest challenge wehave is really in that reverse engineering of
security onto these platforms. We're notdesigned for it, and where they are
safety critical systems and we can't reallyyou know, for safety reasons, we
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can't really mess with the way thatit works, right, they have to
stay the way that they are,and then we have to think about smart
ways of putting security onto the sideof them. If that makes sense.
It does challenge, Yeah, itdoes make sense. Well about a success
story. You don't have to nameanybody specific, but I imagine with what
you and Mike do, there's someextraordinary six stories about it. So you
know what, today we knocked thatone out of the park. Do you
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have one for us? I do, yeah. So obviously, the given
the sensitive nature, especially on themilitary side of what we do, it's
hard for me to you know,say, you know, hey, we
caught these bad guys doing this thingon this platform. But I do have
maybe one interesting unanticipated success. Okay, that has emerged. So you know,
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Shift five is found that as acybersecurity company, I mean, that's
where we come from. We're reallypassionate about it. The stakes couldn't be
higher, right, But take astep back for a second and think about
what we're doing. Right. Weare essentially shining a light into these systems,
the digital landscape of these systems whereit's been dark for decades. So
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where before Shift five the traffic,the data that these systems were generating kind
of you know, it hits itsrecipient and then it evaporates sensitive ether,
right, you know, once it'sonce it's gone, it's gone with us.
Because we're collecting everything, every everydata packet that that's generated on these
platforms, we're able to pull thatback and we're talking about terabytes or petabytes
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of data on these fleets and needs, such a tremendous amount of data.
And while it's super important for cybersecurity, right for the reasons we've talked about,
there are other use cases for thatdata that have opened up that we
maybe didn't even anticipate when we startat the company. And I'll give you
two then, and we've got liketons of examples of how customers have been
able to use this data for allkinds of really interesting things. One is
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maintenance, Right, So these systemsare expensive. I mean, you know,
you look at something like an Fthirty five. I think that total
average costs per hour or something likethirty thousand dollars an hour to operate this
thing. I mean it's just likea kind of mind boggling amount of money.
So if you're able to, forexample, predict failure of components on
that system, or gain or createmore confidence around uh, it's it's that
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it's operating in a nominal way.You can push maintenance out. You can
increase the amount of systems that areout you know, mission capable of what
they call in the military, becauseyou have the data now to start analyzing,
Oh, you know what, wethink that maybe we need to do
maintenance on this engine, or wehave evidence, you know, based on
these variables that this this seal mightbe breaking, so let's go ahead and
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fix that ahead of time before itfails. Kind of a deal. And
that has been a tremendous unanticipated,um you know, benefit of what we've
been able to do for customers.And the second one which is really exciting
is you know, you hear alot today about artificial intelligence. You know,
we actually, uh so Shift fivetestified to the Center Armed Services Committee
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a couple of weeks ago about thisvery topic of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and
weapon systems for the DoD and M. Artificial intelligence is all about the data,
you know, and I don't knowif you've messed with chat GPT else,
it's it's an amazing technology. Andwhen you think about why it's so
amazing, Sure, the algorithms andthe compute is really um, you know,
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impressive for sure, But the reasonthat it's able to do what it
does is because of the data.It's the fact that it's got you know
how many petabytes of data from everythingfrom blog posts to articles to you know,
to to to everything in between.And we trained these algorithms on that
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data set, right, And that'sreally where the power comes from. When
you type in a prompt and itgives you like a surprisingly good, you
know, like five paragraph essay onthe Civil War whatever it is, the
reason is because the data. Youknow that it read all these books and
it's able to kind of synthesize allthat for you and so um for our
customers having the data off of thesesystems. You can imagine the world of
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possibilities that opens up with things likeartificial intelligence and being able to operate your
systems in a more optimal way,whether that you're a freight locomotive operator or
you're the United States Air Force.That data is just so amazingly valuable.
So those are two examples that I'mhappy to talk about kind of in a
public way, of unanticipated side benefitsof liberating all of this data off of
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these systems. Well, thank youfor sharing all that. I want to
circle back to leadership, and wehave a lot of CEOs, as you
can imagine, listen to this seriesand enjoy the different perspectives about how somebody
runs a company after they found itin their success stories over the decades of
putting it together. And then wehave a lot of people that weren't in
the military that want to be abudding CEO and a leader, and I'd
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love to hear your perspective. Youknow, you came out from structure of
a decade of the military into beinga civilian and running a very important high
tech company, and I'd like toknow and I'm sure a listener will be
really intrigued about the transferring of beingin the military and then running your own
company and what was good about themilitary that help you make the transition and
(23:00):
how you run your company today withMike. Yeah, it's it's an interesting
question. It's one that I likereflect on a lot. Um. I
would say, there are things thatare profoundly different, and then there are
things that are I think military veteransreally have a leg up. So maybe
I'll talk about the things that aredifferent. Well, you know, when
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you're in the military, um,you know, you you kind of jump
into a role, you know,especially if you're an officer and you're kind
of running, but even non commissionedofficers. Uh, it's a very well
defined role. Right. So youhave, um, you're a platoon leader,
right, here are your responsibilities,here's your equipment. Here are the
people that we've given you. Uh, you know, the the the utmost
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responsibility and privilege to lead, rightand um, So in a lot of
ways, your role is defined,right, and you don't have to worry
so much about things like um,recruiting, you don't have to worry about
things like payroll. Those are thoseare things that are pretty foreign I think
for for folks that are in themilitary. So you're really focused on the
(24:06):
mission and you're focused on the leadershipaspect. So that's that's different. Where
I would say I've drawn a lotof strength though, is particularly in the
army. We have this um wayof running the military which is really unique,
and you know, you compare thatto I mean, you've heard about
Warren Ukraine and some of the failuresthat the Russian military has had. We
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have something we call mission command,and the idea is that as a leader,
you don't micromanage. What you dois you say, here's the mission,
this is what we're trying to achievetogether, here's my intent for kind
of how we achieve that mission.But what you're doing is you're empowering your
subordinates to achieve that mission based onthe developing situation, right. And the
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idea is that maybe you know,if we were in infantry battalion and we're
out in the field, you knowwe're in communication, but you might be
out on your own for some timeand you've got to make decisions and you
need to feel empowered that as longas that decision you're making is nested within
what we're trying to achieve together thatyou're empowered to do that, and you're
going to be you know, youknow, forgiven for for some mistakes,
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because that's just the nature of thegame, but you're going to be you
know, rewarded with the ability todo what makes the most sense because you're
closest to the problem. And Idon't know that there's a right or wrong
way to run a startup, butI found that training has really profoundly impacted
the way that I think about leadership, and so I tend to on the
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spectrum of management versus coaching. Itend to be much more on the coaching
side, right, So I viewmy responsibility really as again setting that mission,
being very very clear about the visionfor what we're trying to achieve,
enabling and empowering my folks, soyou know, creating resource magnetism, whether
that is getting out there and recruitingamazingly talented folks and giving them a shot,
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or it's going out and raising capitalm so that we have the fuel
and the tank to go and buildour company. And then it's really about
listening to the problems that folks arefacing, being a partner rather than you
know, telling them what to do, talking through the problem with them,
giving them you know, my view, but saying hey, ultimately like this
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is your this is your team.If you're if you're the head of marketing
or you're running sales, or you'rerunning the product engineering team, you know,
it's your decision. You're going tofield the team based on you being
closest to the problem. We're goingto talk through problems that you have,
you have resource requests, and thenmy job is to kind of make all
that hang together. And so Ithink that there's there's a really close relationship
(26:41):
between that way of thinking about therole of a CEO and mission command in
the military. Well, it makesa lot of sense, and I appreciate
you sharing all that. There's acommon thread that a lot of things that
you talked about about micromanaging and youknow, hiring a players. You know,
Jack Welch wrote a book about it. You know, get rid of
your bees and season just hire theas and pay them well and they'll have
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to have a good life work balance. You're all locked and loaded because we're
living in a different world now too, where nobody's at the office anymore.
So there are a lot of thingsthat make a lot of sense that a
lot of our CEOs have talked aboutwhen it comes to a leadership and just
empowering really good, smart, talentedpeople. So I really appreciate you sharing
all that. We're going to wrapup our conversation. You're pretty soon,
Josh and h a man, Icould talk to you for hours about what
(27:23):
you do, even though we can'tget deep into what you do because we
know there's a lot of super secretstuff. But with all that said,
with our listeners that you know,just if you want to maybe give them
one last takeaway when it comes toshow five, what would that be?
Yeah, I would say, youknow, for folks, look, I've
been at this for five years,right, and so you know, having
(27:45):
having a little bit of circumspection aboutyou know, what I'm what I'm able
to say. Um, you know, I do think that if you are
thinking about starting your own thing andyou know, striking out on your own,
Um, I've I've known a lotof folks that talk to a lot
of folks about whether to join abig company, or stay in the military,
(28:07):
or go out and kind of takethe risk and and and and strike
it out on my own. Iwould say that that it is never going
to go away. M you know, if you've got that drive that you
want to, Um, you havea vision for something and you really want
to want to want to see itcome to fruition. UM. My advice
is to take the plunge. Youknow. UM, life is short and
UM you know, I know alot of the listeners are listeners are in
(28:30):
the United States. UM, thisis the greatest country on the planet.
Uh. There is no better place, uh, whether in time, you
know, in the history of humankindor or in location for you to strike
it out on your own and buildsomething meaningful that's gonna you know, positively
impact people's lives. And uh,you know you owe it to yourself if
you if you have that kind ofinclination to do it. Uh, you
(28:53):
know, you owe it to societybecause we've got a real amazing opportunity in
in history to to build amazing companies. And you ought to, you know,
you ought to get off the offthe fence and give it a go.
I love what you just said there. And there's also another common thread,
if if I may read between thelines, because this is a reoccurring
(29:15):
theme. Take a leap of faitheverybody, could you have to you just
have to take a chance when you'regoing to build your own business, and
we've heard that for many of ourCEOs and leaders out there, So Josh,
thank you for sharing that all right, as we wrap up everything,
and I can't thank you enough foryour time and your service to our country.
Were very appreciative of everything. Joshwebsite address, and also we want
to make sure that I imagine you'relooking for very good, smart, specific
(29:38):
talented people for a new career whenit comes to Shift five. So I
imagine that all the information is onthe website and they could probably contact you
or can you give us a websiteaddress and anything else our listeners need to
know. That's right. Yeah,our website is Shift Shift number five dot
io and we are we are absolutelyhiring and looking for folks that are trying
(30:03):
to help make the world a saferplace. Outstanding. Once again, Josh,
thank you for taking care of allAmericans for what you Mike and your
team do. Thank you for yourservice and continue success. It just sounds
like an amazing business that you continueto grow and taking care of Americans worldwide.
And we're very appreciative of that.Thank you so much for joining us
on CEOs. As you know,Thank you so much, Dennis, It
(30:25):
is great to talk to you.Our community partner, M ANDT Bank supports
CEOs, you should know, aspart of their ongoing commitment to building strong
communities, and that starts by backingthe businesses within them. As a Bank
for communities, M and T believesin dedicating time, talent, and resources
to help local businesses thrive because whenbusinesses succeed, our communities succeed.
M and T Bank presents CEOs youshould Know, powered by Iheartadia. Let's
meet Josh los Pinoso. He isthe co founder and CEO for Shift five,
created by founding members of the USArmy Cyber Command who pioneered modern weapons
systems cyber assessments. Led by provenchangemakers, Shift five brings on board data
delight, helping defense, aviation,and rail build and maintain intelligent fleets.
(00:25):
Before we talk more about Josh's company, I first asked him to talk a
little bit about himself, where he'sfrom. Then his origin story. So,
I grew up in northern New Jerseyin a town called flarm Park,
and September eleventh happened when I wasa freshman in high school, which had
a pretty profound impact on you know, basically everyone you know in the country,
(00:49):
but specifically folks that lives you knowrounds Pennsylvania, DC and New York.
And I think a lot of usfelt a call to service in different
kinds of ways, whether that wasdirect public service or you know, more
more of an indirect way. Andyou know, when I was fourteen,
I kind of decided, Hey,I really want to join the military.
Um, you know, I feltlike the nation needed to defend itself,
(01:14):
and the military was was always somethingthat I had thought about. So I
actually enlisted in the Army when Iwas seventeen, so junior year of high
school, and did did summer campdown at Fort Benning, Georgia at the
Infantry School. Came back and finishedup my senior year, applied to go
to the United States Military Academy atWest Point, got in, and then
(01:38):
started my military journey really in twothousand and five. So I spent four
years at west Point, studied econand math. Was fortunate enough to win
a graduate scholarship, and I wentto Oxford for three years and did a
PhD in statistics, and um,yeah, when I got out of the
(02:01):
out of school, is it quitea long journey. That's kind of when
I started the whole march towards Shiftfive. You know. Happy to give
you a little bit of that storyif that's helpful too. Yeah, we're
going to talk a lot about Shiftfive, but I will tell you this.
It's not going to surprise you,Josh, but it's just so interesting
to me as a civilian. HowSeptember eleventh so profound lead for me?
(02:22):
I was on the air in Albuquerqueto Mexto at the time, which is
a military town as you know,with a Cerminal airbase, and it happened
all when I was on the air, and I've never forgotten it, and
I can see why I was acatalyst for you joining the army and you
put a decade in which is reallyjust absolutely amazing. Thank you for your
service. I'm always an people likeyou that have made such a big decision
(02:42):
at such a young age, andit's really profound. And I also want
to talk in a little bit aboutthe transition from the military to what you
do now as a CEO, becauseyou learn so much leadership and structure in
the military as we know even ascivilians, and how that translates. So
we'll talk about that too. ButI always like to talk to our leaders
and our CEOs with you and theco founder Mike, about the epiphany of
(03:05):
the idea of Shift five, becauseyou know, I obviously coming out of
the military, and we'll talk aboutthe mission statement and all the different processes
and capabilities that you have, butI would like to hear about that idea
about you know, you saw ahole in the industry and coming out of
the military and twenty and eighteen andstarting the company in twenty nineteen about what
that was and why we came upfor that idea and here's how we can
(03:29):
make it work at least we think, So tell us about that story.
Yeah, happy to do it,Dennis. So, you know, picking
up the thread. I got backin uniform after grad school and right around
twenty thirteen, the military had startedthinking about the cyber domain. So you
(03:51):
know, digital things and how theyaffect military operations and there are you know,
some obvious ones, right like ourmilitary runs on computers now. Um,
you know, like every large organization, information technology has really changed the
way that it does business. Andso that's a pretty well understood you know
(04:15):
field, right it cybersecurity. Youcan't you know, swing a swing a
dead cat without you know, hearingabout somebody who'd been compromised from a phishing
attack or had their credential stolen orfraud or you know, we hear about
in the news now everything from theColonial pipeline hack to um to to water
treatment facilities getting compromised. So peopleare pretty aware nowadays that sort of thing.
(04:39):
Um where my co founder Mike wigandwho's another West Point guy and I
um started thinking about was less aboutthe computers that look like computers and more
about the computers that don't. Andin the military, that's everything from fighter
jets and cargo planes to tanks andtroop carriers, submarines and aircraft carriers and
(05:03):
even now space assets. And itkind of happened without us really thinking about
it. But over the past coupleof decades, these systems have accumulated so
many digital components that replaced the analogcomponents that you know, you think of
from like a World War Two tank. You sit in a tank today and
it's it's a supercomputer. There's justdozens and dozens and dozens of these computers
(05:27):
all over the place. Everything fromcontrolling the engines to the targeting, to
the commanders display, all the radios, all of these are digital assets.
And Mike and I joined the cyberbranch in the Army, and we have
this idea that we should take alook at our systems and ask the question
(05:48):
how secure are they? So ifif an adversary wanted to manipulate these systems
from from a digital perspective like theydo to our computers, how easy is
that how could they get into thesesystems? Where are the you know what
we call access vectors. Once theygot access, what could happen to those
(06:08):
systems? Are we talking about degradingthem? Destroying them? And so we
studied this problem for the majority ofour our ten year career, and I'll
tell you we went in thinking,Wow, these these things are probably pretty
secure. You know, these arethese are you know, critical infrastructure.
The DoD has thought really hard abouthow to build these systems, and generally
(06:28):
speaking, they do a great job. Unfortunately, we did about a half
a dozen of these they called penetrationtests in the cybersecurity industry, and the
results that we found were extremely disconcerting. M And there were some other folks
in the Air Force and the Navydoing similar things on their platforms and they
found the same things. And intwenty eighteen, UH this auditing agency in
(06:53):
the government called the Government Accountability OfficeUM caught wind of all of these penetration
tests that we were doing and readour results and they wrote this big hundred
page unclassified report called the Weapons SystemCybersecurity. And you read this thing,
you're like, my goodness, thisis one of the biggest national security crisis
(07:13):
of our time. If we evergot into a you know, if we
hope we don't, of course,but if we ever got into a fight
with what they call an europeer adversary, you know, someone who has a
sophisticated military and they were clued intosome of these problems, we might be
in a situation where our fighter jetsdon't take off, or we can't get
the logistics that we need to tothe folks that we deploy, or you
(07:36):
know, you think about you know, ground combat vehicles stopping, you know,
in the middle of a field orsomething like that. Is it sounds
like science fiction, but it's not. You know, we were able to
demonstrate these kinds of things. Andso when that happened in twenty eighteen and
that big report came out, Mikeand I looked at each other and said,
you know, this is a hugeproblem, and it's not just the
(08:00):
military, right. These systems aredesigned in very similar ways to locomotives,
you know, in the civilian space, commercial air freight, and passenger all
of our you know, shipping vessels, space assets. I mean, my
gosh, our modern society depends onthese assets so much. And we decided
to take um, you know,not only the technical kind of exposure that
(08:22):
we had to these systems, butalso our leadership training in the military and
try to put a dent in thisbig problem that we're facing as as a
world. And so we got outin twenty nineteen to start Shift five.
Man, there's a lot to digestthere as a civilian, so I know
we're going to get into it.But I know that branding always is important,
(08:45):
always every leader and CEO. ButI'm intrigued by the Shift five title
company of the and the name.So what's the origin of Shift five?
Because I think it's pretty cool.I like it. It's it's pretty nerdy.
So so bear with me here.I'm going to request that you reserved
two h two memory registers in yourbrain for a second. We're gonna put
them together to come up with Shiftfive. All right, here's the first
(09:09):
one. So in uh, computersspeak zeros and ones, right, they're
they're they're digital, and humans speakin you know, written characters. Right.
So ever since the first computers,we had to make translations between those
zeros and ones and human language.So perhaps the most popular one and one
(09:31):
which we use still use today,is called the askey table. You may
have heard asky and all that isit takes a number and it refers to
a letter, right, so youyou go, you know, the hexadecimal
forty and that's the letter A rightkind of a thing, all right.
So that's that's the first memory register. The second one. Okay. When
we look at these these systems thatwe study, some military weapons systems,
(09:54):
they have um the equivalent to thinkof it like a Wi Fi network,
but it's it's kind of over wiresto connect all of these digital components on
the system so that when the pilot, you know, moves their moves,
their their their controls, that thecontrol surfaces will move as a result of
(10:15):
that, right, So they communicateover these data buses. One of the
most popular data buses in the militaryis called Military Standard fifteen fifty three.
Okay, all right, so we'regonna put these two things together mill Standard
fifteen fifty three. So if youtake fifteen and fifty three, you put
it in the asky charts, youget shift five. I got it.
I can be the first one thatasked Josh that, and he had a
(10:39):
nice prepared answer. I think that'spretty cool. But I was you know.
It caught my attention. I thinkit's cool when you got a cool
company name in the origin of it. So why do we do this?
When it comes to shift five,what's your mission statement? Yeah, we
want to defend the world's planes,trains, and tanks from cyber attack.
I love that and it's pretty simple. So let's also talk about now capabilities,
because I know they're a lot andwe have a lot of lame in
(11:00):
their listening to civilians like myself,and you do some very intricate stuff with
your clients, So let's talk aboutmaybe some of the capabilities and what you
do, what you actually do,and what you offer. Yeah, happy
to do it well for folks thatmaybe. I mean, cybersecurity has just
penetrated into so many different areas ofour life. I mean, I you
know, sit at Thanksgiving now andI've got my uncle asking me about phishing
(11:24):
attacks and clicking on links. Right, So it's it's changed a lot in
the past fifteen years. Well,one of the first things that we think
about doing to a system when we'retrying to increase its cybersecurity is to gain
visibility or observability into that system.Right. The idea is you can't defend
(11:46):
something that you can't see, right, And there are lots of layers of
cybersecurity that you build up on topof that base observability. Right. So
one of the common things that you'llsee in enterprise networks, for example,
is you'll monitor the network traffic,so you know the Wi Fi and the
Ethernet and all of the Internet trafficthat's going into and out of your your
(12:09):
enterprise network. We call that networkintrusion detection, right, So we're looking
for bad behavior or evidence of badactors on those networks. And that's a
really well studied problem. There's someamazing companies that do do that really really
well on enterprise networks. No oneup until Shift five was found in twenty
(12:30):
nineteen, was doing this for thetrillions of dollars of assets that don't look
like computers, right, so aircraft, maritime vessels, locomotives, ground systems.
So what we do as a firstlayer is to take hardware that we
make so it's about the size ofthe paperback book, and we can install
it onto those platforms and tap ontoall of those data networks that are communicating
(12:56):
the traffic to and from all thelittle computers. You can think of it
kind of like a central nervous systemfor for an aircraft, for example,
and we will collect every bit ofdata that is going across those networks.
So that's kind of layer one.Layer two is you know, look,
we're a cybersecurity company. We've beenstudying cybersecurity for for for decades now,
and you know the founding team andthe folks that are on the team,
(13:20):
and so we build cybersecurity products thatlook at that traffic and are able to
determine when there's bad traffic on thatnetwork. Um. And then the kind
of third layer on top of thisis, you know, the military and
most enterprises today have hired full timecybersecurity professionals. Right, So you might
(13:41):
you might sell lumber, right,but you've got cybersecurity folks on your staff
that are looking at your networks.Well, the military is no different,
and they've actually hired thousands of peoplewith the mission of making sure that not
only the enterprise networks but also theweapon systems are secure. And for the
first time we're able to deliver themthat visibility layer and all of the data
(14:03):
that's coming off of this trillion dollarasset class UH and incorporate that into into
their IT traffic as well, sonow they have a full view of every
digital component that's in their in theirworld, whereas when Mike and I were
in uniform, all we could seewas the IT side right right. So
it's it's a kind of a comprehensivething, and there's a lot of problems
that you got to solve in there. I mean, think about getting the
(14:26):
trust and confidence and all the certificationsto install hardware on a on a fighter
jet. Um, you know,that's that's pretty significant. Um. You
know, there's a lot of challengeswith like making sure that there's a lot
of data there, how do youyou know, collect it and compress it.
How do you deal with like allthe different languages that these different different
kinds of systems are speaking. Sothere's there's a lot to it, but
(14:48):
the idea is actually pretty simple.You know, I was thinking with you
and Mike being cohert in the militaryand being as smart as you are,
you probably saw it coming. Butone of the things, once again as
a civilian, that I did seecoming as I, you know, pay
attention to the news because I'm anews junkie. Also the sports guy too.
But noticing that when it comes tointernational cybersecurity, that's been a big
deal for a while. But Ididn't see domestic coming and I know you
(15:11):
probably have. And that's also partabout what you do too, and keeping
an eye on the homeland and worryingabout Americans turning on Americans and it's just
hard to believe, but it ishappening right now. So that leads me
to my next question, because Ialways like to talk about success stories that
we're going to put a pin inin just a second, because I bet
you got a great one with aclient. But the challenge that you face
(15:31):
now are worldwide. But what specificchallenges are you having to deal with you
and Mike right now? Yeah,there are a lot, you know.
I mean, I think the themain one is in this world we live
in, right, so planes,trains and tanks, we are thirty years
(15:52):
three zero, thirty years behind whereit cybersecurity is. I know that that's
kind of that's a statement. Yeah, that's a exprobordinary, you know.
But you think about where the Internetcame from, right It was a bunch
of academics sharing papers back and forth, and there was a trusted universe and
when we designed all of these protocols, we designed the Internet. We didn't
(16:15):
think about cybersecurity at first, andnow cybersecurity is a multibillion dollar industry,
and so much of that it's thinkingabout ways that we reverse engineer cybersecurity onto
these systems that we're not designed forthe way we're using them. Right.
So, nowadays you probably pay yourmortgage on your Internet. You know,
(16:36):
banks transfer billions of dollars to eachother over this infrastructure, and we trust
that more or less. I mean, there's there's definitely, you know,
examples of where that security fails.But we're in a prettymature place, you
know now with it cybersecurity. Andone of the biggest challenges that Mike and
I have is basically rewinding the clockthirty years. I'm thinking about, okay,
(16:59):
great, we talk about all thisreally advanced cybersecurity stuff now two factor
authentication and zero trust and all thiskind of you know, the buzzwords and
all this kind of thing. Weneed to be going back to the nineties
and thinking about how do we putthe base layer in right. So one
of the challenges is just frankly,managing expectations about what is possible because you
(17:21):
know, you look at something likean aircraft. These things are in service
for decades and decades and decades,and we can't redesign those systems from first
print. It would be more expensivethan just designing a new aircraft, for
example. So the biggest challenge wehave is really in that reverse engineering of
security onto these platforms. We're notdesigned for it, and where they are
safety critical systems and we can't reallyyou know, for safety reasons, we
(17:45):
can't really mess with the way thatit works, right, they have to
stay the way that they are,and then we have to think about smart
ways of putting security onto the sideof them. If that makes sense.
It does challenge, Yeah, itdoes make sense. Well about a success
story. You don't have to nameanybody specific, but I imagine with what
you and Mike do, there's someextraordinary six stories about it. So you
know what, today we knocked thatone out of the park. Do you
(18:07):
have one for us? I do, yeah. So obviously, the given
the sensitive nature, especially on themilitary side of what we do, it's
hard for me to you know,say, you know, hey, we
caught these bad guys doing this thingon this platform. But I do have
maybe one interesting unanticipated success. Okay, that has emerged. So you know,
(18:30):
Shift five is found that as acybersecurity company, I mean, that's
where we come from. We're reallypassionate about it. The stakes couldn't be
higher, right, But take astep back for a second and think about
what we're doing. Right. Weare essentially shining a light into these systems,
the digital landscape of these systems whereit's been dark for decades. So
(18:51):
where before Shift five the traffic,the data that these systems were generating kind
of you know, it hits itsrecipient and then it evaporates sensitive ether,
right, you know, once it'sonce it's gone, it's gone with us.
Because we're collecting everything, every everydata packet that that's generated on these
platforms, we're able to pull thatback and we're talking about terabytes or petabytes
(19:15):
of data on these fleets and needs, such a tremendous amount of data.
And while it's super important for cybersecurity, right for the reasons we've talked about,
there are other use cases for thatdata that have opened up that we
maybe didn't even anticipate when we startat the company. And I'll give you
two then, and we've got liketons of examples of how customers have been
able to use this data for allkinds of really interesting things. One is
(19:37):
maintenance, Right, So these systemsare expensive. I mean, you know,
you look at something like an Fthirty five. I think that total
average costs per hour or something likethirty thousand dollars an hour to operate this
thing. I mean it's just likea kind of mind boggling amount of money.
So if you're able to, forexample, predict failure of components on
that system, or gain or createmore confidence around uh, it's it's that
(20:02):
it's operating in a nominal way.You can push maintenance out. You can
increase the amount of systems that areout you know, mission capable of what
they call in the military, becauseyou have the data now to start analyzing,
Oh, you know what, wethink that maybe we need to do
maintenance on this engine, or wehave evidence, you know, based on
these variables that this this seal mightbe breaking, so let's go ahead and
(20:26):
fix that ahead of time before itfails. Kind of a deal. And
that has been a tremendous unanticipated,um you know, benefit of what we've
been able to do for customers.And the second one which is really exciting
is you know, you hear alot today about artificial intelligence. You know,
we actually, uh so Shift fivetestified to the Center Armed Services Committee
(20:48):
a couple of weeks ago about thisvery topic of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and
weapon systems for the DoD and M. Artificial intelligence is all about the data,
you know, and I don't knowif you've messed with chat GPT else,
it's it's an amazing technology. Andwhen you think about why it's so
amazing, Sure, the algorithms andthe compute is really um, you know,
(21:12):
impressive for sure, But the reasonthat it's able to do what it
does is because of the data.It's the fact that it's got you know
how many petabytes of data from everythingfrom blog posts to articles to you know,
to to to everything in between.And we trained these algorithms on that
(21:32):
data set, right, And that'sreally where the power comes from. When
you type in a prompt and itgives you like a surprisingly good, you
know, like five paragraph essay onthe Civil War whatever it is, the
reason is because the data. Youknow that it read all these books and
it's able to kind of synthesize allthat for you and so um for our
customers having the data off of thesesystems. You can imagine the world of
(21:55):
possibilities that opens up with things likeartificial intelligence and being able to operate your
systems in a more optimal way,whether that you're a freight locomotive operator or
you're the United States Air Force.That data is just so amazingly valuable.
So those are two examples that I'mhappy to talk about kind of in a
public way, of unanticipated side benefitsof liberating all of this data off of
(22:18):
these systems. Well, thank youfor sharing all that. I want to
circle back to leadership, and wehave a lot of CEOs, as you
can imagine, listen to this seriesand enjoy the different perspectives about how somebody
runs a company after they found itin their success stories over the decades of
putting it together. And then wehave a lot of people that weren't in
the military that want to be abudding CEO and a leader, and I'd
(22:40):
love to hear your perspective. Youknow, you came out from structure of
a decade of the military into beinga civilian and running a very important high
tech company, and I'd like toknow and I'm sure a listener will be
really intrigued about the transferring of beingin the military and then running your own
company and what was good about themilitary that help you make the transition and
(23:00):
how you run your company today withMike. Yeah, it's it's an interesting
question. It's one that I likereflect on a lot. Um. I
would say, there are things thatare profoundly different, and then there are
things that are I think military veteransreally have a leg up. So maybe
I'll talk about the things that aredifferent. Well, you know, when
(23:22):
you're in the military, um,you know, you you kind of jump
into a role, you know,especially if you're an officer and you're kind
of running, but even non commissionedofficers. Uh, it's a very well
defined role. Right. So youhave, um, you're a platoon leader,
right, here are your responsibilities,here's your equipment. Here are the
people that we've given you. Uh, you know, the the the utmost
(23:45):
responsibility and privilege to lead, rightand um, So in a lot of
ways, your role is defined,right, and you don't have to worry
so much about things like um,recruiting, you don't have to worry about
things like payroll. Those are thoseare things that are pretty foreign I think
for for folks that are in themilitary. So you're really focused on the
(24:06):
mission and you're focused on the leadershipaspect. So that's that's different. Where
I would say I've drawn a lotof strength though, is particularly in the
army. We have this um wayof running the military which is really unique,
and you know, you compare thatto I mean, you've heard about
Warren Ukraine and some of the failuresthat the Russian military has had. We
(24:26):
have something we call mission command,and the idea is that as a leader,
you don't micromanage. What you dois you say, here's the mission,
this is what we're trying to achievetogether, here's my intent for kind
of how we achieve that mission.But what you're doing is you're empowering your
subordinates to achieve that mission based onthe developing situation, right. And the
(24:51):
idea is that maybe you know,if we were in infantry battalion and we're
out in the field, you knowwe're in communication, but you might be
out on your own for some timeand you've got to make decisions and you
need to feel empowered that as longas that decision you're making is nested within
what we're trying to achieve together thatyou're empowered to do that, and you're
going to be you know, youknow, forgiven for for some mistakes,
(25:14):
because that's just the nature of thegame, but you're going to be you
know, rewarded with the ability todo what makes the most sense because you're
closest to the problem. And Idon't know that there's a right or wrong
way to run a startup, butI found that training has really profoundly impacted
the way that I think about leadership, and so I tend to on the
(25:36):
spectrum of management versus coaching. Itend to be much more on the coaching
side, right, So I viewmy responsibility really as again setting that mission,
being very very clear about the visionfor what we're trying to achieve,
enabling and empowering my folks, soyou know, creating resource magnetism, whether
that is getting out there and recruitingamazingly talented folks and giving them a shot,
(25:59):
or it's going out and raising capitalm so that we have the fuel
and the tank to go and buildour company. And then it's really about
listening to the problems that folks arefacing, being a partner rather than you
know, telling them what to do, talking through the problem with them,
giving them you know, my view, but saying hey, ultimately like this
(26:21):
is your this is your team.If you're if you're the head of marketing
or you're running sales, or you'rerunning the product engineering team, you know,
it's your decision. You're going tofield the team based on you being
closest to the problem. We're goingto talk through problems that you have,
you have resource requests, and thenmy job is to kind of make all
that hang together. And so Ithink that there's there's a really close relationship
(26:41):
between that way of thinking about therole of a CEO and mission command in
the military. Well, it makesa lot of sense, and I appreciate
you sharing all that. There's acommon thread that a lot of things that
you talked about about micromanaging and youknow, hiring a players. You know,
Jack Welch wrote a book about it. You know, get rid of
your bees and season just hire theas and pay them well and they'll have
(27:02):
to have a good life work balance. You're all locked and loaded because we're
living in a different world now too, where nobody's at the office anymore.
So there are a lot of thingsthat make a lot of sense that a
lot of our CEOs have talked aboutwhen it comes to a leadership and just
empowering really good, smart, talentedpeople. So I really appreciate you sharing
all that. We're going to wrapup our conversation. You're pretty soon,
Josh and h a man, Icould talk to you for hours about what
(27:23):
you do, even though we can'tget deep into what you do because we
know there's a lot of super secretstuff. But with all that said,
with our listeners that you know,just if you want to maybe give them
one last takeaway when it comes toshow five, what would that be?
Yeah, I would say, youknow, for folks, look, I've
been at this for five years,right, and so you know, having
(27:45):
having a little bit of circumspection aboutyou know, what I'm what I'm able
to say. Um, you know, I do think that if you are
thinking about starting your own thing andyou know, striking out on your own,
Um, I've I've known a lotof folks that talk to a lot
of folks about whether to join abig company, or stay in the military,
(28:07):
or go out and kind of takethe risk and and and and strike
it out on my own. Iwould say that that it is never going
to go away. M you know, if you've got that drive that you
want to, Um, you havea vision for something and you really want
to want to want to see itcome to fruition. UM. My advice
is to take the plunge. Youknow. UM, life is short and
UM you know, I know alot of the listeners are listeners are in
(28:30):
the United States. UM, thisis the greatest country on the planet.
Uh. There is no better place, uh, whether in time, you
know, in the history of humankindor or in location for you to strike
it out on your own and buildsomething meaningful that's gonna you know, positively
impact people's lives. And uh,you know you owe it to yourself if
you if you have that kind ofinclination to do it. Uh, you
(28:53):
know, you owe it to societybecause we've got a real amazing opportunity in
in history to to build amazing companies. And you ought to, you know,
you ought to get off the offthe fence and give it a go.
I love what you just said there. And there's also another common thread,
if if I may read between thelines, because this is a reoccurring
(29:15):
theme. Take a leap of faitheverybody, could you have to you just
have to take a chance when you'regoing to build your own business, and
we've heard that for many of ourCEOs and leaders out there, So Josh,
thank you for sharing that all right, as we wrap up everything,
and I can't thank you enough foryour time and your service to our country.
Were very appreciative of everything. Joshwebsite address, and also we want
to make sure that I imagine you'relooking for very good, smart, specific
(29:38):
talented people for a new career whenit comes to Shift five. So I
imagine that all the information is onthe website and they could probably contact you
or can you give us a websiteaddress and anything else our listeners need to
know. That's right. Yeah,our website is Shift Shift number five dot
io and we are we are absolutelyhiring and looking for folks that are trying
(30:03):
to help make the world a saferplace. Outstanding. Once again, Josh,
thank you for taking care of allAmericans for what you Mike and your
team do. Thank you for yourservice and continue success. It just sounds
like an amazing business that you continueto grow and taking care of Americans worldwide.
And we're very appreciative of that.Thank you so much for joining us
on CEOs. As you know,Thank you so much, Dennis, It
(30:25):
is great to talk to you.Our community partner, M ANDT Bank supports
CEOs, you should know, aspart of their ongoing commitment to building strong
communities, and that starts by backingthe businesses within them. As a Bank
for communities, M and T believesin dedicating time, talent, and resources
to help local businesses thrive because whenbusinesses succeed, our communities succeed.
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