Walter Haydock has spent his career helping data and security leaders deploy AI without fear. A former U.S. Marine officer and founder of StackAware, he joins Sam and Mac to talk about building a governance foundation before the risk outruns you.

Topics covered:

• The biggest mistake in starting AI governance: policies that are unrealistic and unenforceable
• Why your industry’s risk appetite should drive your AI decisions
• Quantitative risk: comparing the cost of a risk with the cost of the control
• People, then process, then tools, and why it applies to companies of every size
• Why risk avoidance is the simplest and cheapest control
• The Marine Corps model: one accountable leader, advised but not vetoed by security, privacy, and legal
• Who owns AI governance: five patterns, and the trade-offs of each
• The EU AI Act delay vs. the U.S. patchwork of state laws
• How NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001 work together
• “AI canaries” and indirect prompt injection against agents
• Three human-in-the-loop models: default deny, default allow, and post hoc review
• Where a security leader should spend this quarter’s AI budget
• Why running AI on your own hardware isn’t automatically more secure

Guest Bio: Walter Haydock is the founder of StackAware and author of the Deploy Securely newsletter. A former U.S. Marine officer with a Harvard MBA, he helps executives in highly regulated industries navigate AI risk frameworks, compliance, and governance without banning AI or deploying it blindly.

Connect: Find Walter on LinkedIn. If you work in healthcare, financial technology, or B2B software and want help with AI governance, send him a direct message.

Be Brave.

Subscribe to Inside AsembleAI on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Podbean.