Writing
Long-form essays on the work I care about. Published infrequently. Each piece is something I am willing to defend in person.
01 — Essays
Notes from inside the markets I work in: meant to clear the fog, call the hype honestly, and point to where AI actually helps — and to leave you a little clearer than you came.
Featured · Energy & AI
The renewable industry has spent twenty years building assets and almost no time building the software to operate them. The existing players are dashboards. The next layer is agentic. Why this matters now, what changes for asset operators, and the three-year window before category consolidation closes.
Read essay →· 13 min read
Trust is the binding constraint on AI adoption in renewable operations, not capability. Asset operators have been burned by analytics vendors promising self-healing and delivering CSV exports. The unlock is edge-deployed agents that act locally and explain themselves.
Energy & AI
6 min →
Every utility-scale operator owns inverters from four to seven OEMs across a portfolio. Each speaks its own protocol, portal, and alarm taxonomy. The integration layer is where AI earns its keep — not in prediction, in translation.
Energy & AI
6 min →
In barely a decade, cameras stopped recording and started reasoning. Real-time crime centers grew from a handful to 130-plus, police drone programs multiplied, and license-plate readers now scan billions of vehicles a month — a build-out as fast as it is unexamined. The scene-setter: the scale, the technology, and why the inflection is happening now.
Public Safety
10 min →
The honest case for AI in public safety is a balance sheet, not a sales pitch. One side: abducted children recovered through plate-reader hits, trafficking victims found faster, missing people located in hours. The other: at least six Americans wrongfully arrested on bad facial-recognition matches, and “97% accurate” claims that collapse under NIST testing showing error rates swinging 10–100x across demographics and thresholds. This essay puts both columns on one page, separates verified outcomes from vendor marketing, and argues the strongest defense of the technology is the one that admits its failures and fixes them — a match is a lead, not probable cause.
Public Safety
11 min →
U.S. law on AI surveillance is a two-altitude story. Overhead, the Constitution: from Carpenter to the 2026 Norfolk license-plate-reader ruling, courts strain to fit persistent AI tracking into doctrine built for physical trespass, while Congress stalls and the executive branch reversed course between 2023 and 2025. On the ground, a patchwork: San Francisco bans what other cities expand; Illinois lets residents sue over their faceprints while most states can't. Out of the conflict, a workable middle has emerged — warrants for persistent tracking, community-approval ordinances, retention limits, audits. This maps both layers and the alignment models that actually hold.
Public Safety
10 min →
MSP roll-ups under-deliver because acquirers buy revenue and inherit chaos. The 25% EBITDA target requires four specific gates — tooling consolidation, ticket taxonomy, automation layer, and incentive realignment — executed in a specific order. Most operators do them out of order or skip one. The playbook, with the order that matters.
Private Equity
Soon
Every PE deck claims they'll "pay down technical debt." Almost nobody quantifies what it costs. How to measure technical debt in dollars — engineering hours diverted, defect carrying cost, delivery latency penalty, customer churn attribution — using AuthenticID and Ford as case studies.
Private Equity
Soon
Post-funding cleanup, post-acquisition integration, and post-founder transition are different problems with different playbooks — but most operators run the same generic plan on all three. The three sequences distinguished, with the inflection points that mark when one becomes another.
Private Equity
Soon
The Inflation Reduction Act's transferability provisions created a liquid market for energy tax credits. This fundamentally changes how renewable infrastructure platforms should be capitalized — what changes about JV economics, anchor customer terms, and exit timing. Walk through the new structure operators should be using by now and most aren't.
Capital & Structure
Soon
AI infrastructure companies in regulated industries have three distinct risk-and-reward profiles inside them — IP, operations, and project finance. Stuffing them into one C-corp creates tax inefficiency, exit friction, and investor confusion. The entity stack that actually works, and why most founders structure into ineligibility on day one.
Capital & Structure
Soon
02 — Elsewhere
Forthcoming as new appearances are confirmed.
Forthcoming as coverage publishes.
Forthcoming as the speaking slate develops.
03 — Stay With It
I publish when a piece is finished, not on a schedule. If you'd like the next essay in your inbox when it goes live, leave your email below. No newsletter, no marketing — just the essay link when it publishes.