I remember asking that question a long time ago. The internet underpins the modern world, but nobody around me could explain how it worked in a way that really made sense. So I went looking for answers.
I joined the U.S. Air Force as a network engineer. Over the years, I grew from learning the basics to designing and operating overseas hub-and-spoke networks and datacenters supporting special operations users across dozens of countries. I also lived and worked internationally in Germany, Turkey, and Iraq.
Datacenters in combat zones teach you to design for resiliency and uptime. Operating classified networks in unfriendly places teaches you how to defend against a determined adversary with deep pockets.
After my time in the Air Force, I moved to San Francisco to be at the epicenter of tech and cybersecurity innovation. I’m now a Solutions Engineer at Zscaler.
These days, my work is focused on:
AI Security
Zero Trust architectures
Security Service Edge (SSE) modernization
Reducing cyber risk
I use this blog to share what I’m building, testing, and learning along the way.
I set up OpenClaw in my lab to read email and maintain a local report, then used one attack email to make it upload confidential data. I traced the transfer and blocked the next upload while the useful automation continued.
I built a realistic enterprise AI app stack and wrapped it with least-privilege private access, model governance, AI guardrails, MCP tool use, and secure workload egress.
Want to learn about network automation? Step one is creating your own, personal, network automation lab environment that can be used as a platform for learning various automation tools and techniques.
