Beyond “We Use AI”: Trust Is the New Competitive Advantage

Entrepreneurship. It has such a romantic ring, doesn’t it? When we hear the word, we think of incredibly successful people who must lead a charmed life. But the truth of the matter is often far from that. Just ask Melissa Rogozinski whose recent book, Becoming Phoenix, tells a much different story.

Agentic AI introduces risks that are novel and complex, but the most effective response is a familiar one. Zero Trust answers the problem of when an AI agent misfires on its own by constraining what an agent can do rather than betting on how it will behave.

California is betting that it can accelerate AI adoption by acting as a demanding, trusted buyer, and that the governance evidence it extracts through procurement can become infrastructure the rest of the market reuses.