Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reminds us why it still matters. This year was no exception — but the emphasis has unmistakably shifted.

The AI programming in particular was sophisticated, practical, and refreshingly honest. The conversation has moved beyond spectacle. Executives from some of the world’s largest brands openly acknowledged what many organizations are quietly confronting: we are still experimenting, still dabbling, and that’s not a weakness. It’s the reality of this moment.

Technology has always followed a familiar cycle: wow, how, now. What stood out at CES is how quickly we’re moving from how to now — and how uneven that transition still is.

Across industries — entertainment, healthcare, government, finance, logistics, and more — the incorporation of AI agents into workflow is no longer hypothetical. It’s real. It’s operational. And it’s forcing hard questions that many organizations are not yet asking out loud.

Too many conversations still center on how to bolt AI onto existing processes.

That’s the wrong conversation.

From Tools to Truth

“AI isn’t most powerful as a productivity hack. It’s powerful when it forces organizations to re-examine what they actually make, provide, or service — and why.”

The more consequential shift is happening at a deeper level: organizations are beginning — sometimes reluctantly — to use AI to re-examine the very core of what they make, provide, or service. AI is not at its most powerful as a productivity layer. It’s powerful when it challenges assumptions about value creation, decision rights, organizational structure, and even which parts of the work should exist at all.

One COO captured it best during a panel discussion. They weren’t adopting tools, he said — they were finding their future.

That framing stayed with me.

The AI Race

“AI doesn’t scale without power. Infrastructure is now a strategic limiter — and the race is national, not theoretical.

There were other quiet signals worth noting. I saw no ties and very few suits. The C-suite leaders on panels skewed mid-to-late 40s, and most had worked across multiple industries. That cross-pollination matters. It shows up in how leaders talk about risk, iteration, and uncertainty. This wasn’t performative futurism. It was grounded leadership navigating change in real time.

I also avoided the “household of the future” entirely this year. No smart kitchens, no speculative living rooms. Instead, I focused on how organizations are operationalizing uncertainty — how they are testing, iterating, and staying relevant without pretending they have it all figured out.

That theme extended well beyond AI.

An undercurrent that surfaced repeatedly — often off stage — was trade and tariffs. What’s changing isn’t simply the policy environment; it’s where compliance now sits inside companies. In some cases, it belongs at the drawing table.

Compliance Has Moved

“Trade, tarriffs, and compliance are no longer downstream functions. In leading organizations, they now show up at the drawing table — embedded in the same war rooms as product, operations, and competition.”

Forward-leaning companies are moving trade and tariff considerations upstream in the development process. CEOs increasingly understand that these are not back-office issues. They shape what can be built, how fast it can scale, and where competitive advantage is possible. As a result, compliance leaders are being embedded in cross-vertical teams and pulled into the same war rooms where competition, sourcing, and production decisions are being made.

That war-room mentality, in fact, is now widespread.

Companies across nearly every industry are reeling from uncertainty in the business environment. Policy actions — often inspired, divined, or imposed by political actors (elected and unelected) with limited understanding of business realities — are landing faster than organizations can fully digest them. The response is not resistance. It’s adaptation.

Most leaders I spoke with were simply doing what they have to do to stay in the conversation.

The learning point is both familiar and sobering: business will metabolize whatever policy environment it is given in order to survive. And it is doing so actively, across every vertical.

The unspoken question is how long this can continue.

The Quiet Reality

“Business will metabolize whatever policy environment it is given in order to survive. The open question is how long that adaptive cycle can continue.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in AI technology companies driving the current transformation. These companies are not waiting for clarity. They are redesigning products, workflows, sourcing strategies, and organizational structures around uncertainty itself. That adaptability is impressive. It is also costly — and not infinitely sustainable.

Layered on top of all of this is a constraint that received far less attention than it deserves: power.

The energy requirements and shifts in electrical generation and distribution needed to support AI at scale are vast. Data centers, edge computing, redundancy, resilience — none of this exists without infrastructure that cannot be stood up overnight. Here, the stakes are unmistakably national. We are not just competing company to company. We are in a race — and the pace of technological ambition is already testing the limits of our physical systems. AI companies are eager to continue to move as fast as possible while the regulatory environment remains nearly non-existent. 

CES has always been about previewing technology. This year felt different.

What we’re really looking at now is a menu of options rather than a fixed roadmap — technologies that support endless iteration instead of a single grand reveal. Advantage will not come from picking the “right” tool. It will come from building organizations capable of learning, adapting, and restructuring faster than their competitors.

CES 2026 wasn’t just a showcase of what’s possible. It was a snapshot of organizations actively reshaping themselves around uncertainty — because standing still is no longer an option.

Where Will I See You?

I likely missed you at CES last week. Few leaders make time to invest in practical education beyond the day-to-day. You’ll also miss me at SNA this year; it’s more important than ever to get outside the echo chamber and more deeply evaluate the opportunities. 

Travel tip: Anyone presented with an opportunity to visit the Sphere in Las Vegas for any concert or cultural event should jump at it. My wife and I saw Zac Brown Band, and it was an incredible full sensory experience: great sound, unique and customized 3-D visual effects, unexpected seat vibrations and screen movements enhance the feeling of moving through a concert and story.

I’m at the home office working with clients on sharpening their FY27 stories over the next two weeks. 

Next week, a brief stop in Tampa for the Marine Machinery Association meeting as well as supporting the local Navy League council’s (Sarasota-Manatee and Tampa) adoption of USCG Air Station Clearwater.

Shout Out to the USCGC Resolute

Under the command of CDR Ian Starr, USCG, the cutter Resolute was awarded the Coast Guard’s Hopley Yeaton Cutter Excellence award, one of the most prestigious and competitive awards in the afloat community. What makes this especially unique is that Resolute is one of, if not the, oldest cutters in service at 60 years young!  You read that correctly, a sixty-year-old ship. Congratulations!