Kent Nabors

Cybersecurity, resilience, and the habits that make organizations work.
Woodworker, small business owner, husband & dad.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

What is your organization’s competence margin?

Somewhere in the company there’s a critical process truly understood by one or two people.

If that knowledge walked out the door, how many millions—or billions—in revenue would wobble?

Now add AI. We can build systems of staggering complexity faster than ever.
But if complexity grows faster than understanding, the competence margin disappears.

Expertise is getting cheap.
Wisdom is getting precious.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

On p. 105 of @ericmetaxas Revolution he tells how Boston patriots sent two turtles as a gift to John Wilkes. They weighed 45 and 47 pounds. A symbol of Wilkes’ #45 and the 92 votes not to rescind. A statement against tyranny. #45 & 47. Hmm.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

@sarahsalviander Chesterton said the heretics were the timid and the orthodox is "equilibrium of man wildly rushing." Perhaps Sagan could only see through a mirror darkly.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

@AccessIPOs 28% at E*Trade. Exactly what your data shows.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary. Back then cyber was shifting from viruses on PCs to cloud accounts and mobile. Microsoft was pushing Skype, Google was pushing Android, LinkedIn was prepping an IPO, and Angry Birds had hit 200 million downloads.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

@levie There are probably a lot of people who learned Elon's 5-step approach to design who could totally rethink organizations with these tools. The limiting factors now are imagination and courage.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

This is why human writing still wins:

We had a tough tech puzzle at work—multiple teams, multiple vendors, nothing obvious. Got it figured out.

At the end, our lead engineer sent the summary email.

It looked something like this:

TECH SPEAK TECH SPEAK TECH SPEAK

Then, a surprise twist:
“At this point I assume about 42% of you are still reading this…”

More technical detail, and suddenly:
“Now we’re probably down to 20%…”

More detail, and then just before screen shots and charts:
“12%—this is the really nerdy part…”

And at the very end:
“If you made it this far—you’re amazing.
If you skipped to the end—you’re amazing too.
If you closed this email immediately—you’ll never know I said that.”

—

It was long. Dense. Technical…and completely readable.

Because it acknowledged the human on the other side.

The challenge isn’t just precision, it’s attention.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

Glasswing.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

I’ve spent most of my career watching threats cycles compress. Anthropic just leaked their internal warning - their new model “far outpaces the efforts of defenders.” The rules are about to change. Again.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

I used to think I never had enough free time.
That was dead wrong.
It’s all free time.
Every obligation is a choice I made. I don’t have to do anything — I get to.
Shift the frame and burdens turn into challenges.
The time was always yours.
What’s one obligation you’re ready to reframe this week? Drop it below 👇

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

We spent decades teaching people to think and speak like computers.

Precise. Literal. Structured.
The machines have always been better at that than we are.

But with AI, machines need us to think like humans.
Which, it turns out, has always been the harder problem.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

2/2: What if the answer isn’t to update your mental models faster — but to carry fewer of them? AI can hold complexity you used to have to simplify. The shortcuts were necessary when you were thinking alone. You’re not thinking alone anymore.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

1/2: Our brains do us a favor as we gain experience — they build shortcuts. Mental models that cut through complexity fast. They worked well in IT and security. Until the change cycle outran the model. Now the shortcut is the liability. It’s getting harder to stay young as we grow old.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

I used to think I never had enough free time. That was the wrong frame. It's all free time. Every obligation is a choice I made. I don't have to do anything — I get to. Change the frame and burdens become challenges. The time was always yours.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

7/7
The goal is health and growth. That requires both nourishment and challenge.
I’m still working out what this looks like in policy…
But the game has changed.
Maybe our role looks less like a general or a medic… and more like a coach helping the system stay healthy over time.
What do you think?

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

1/7
Cybersecurity used to be about control.
And honestly, it worked.
When I led teams in banking, we locked everything down. Data was known. Contained. Predictable.

[Kent Nabors @KentNabors]

6/7
Your body doesn’t try to block everything.
It allows what it needs, responds when something’s off, and adapts over time.
Not all exposure is bad—you get stronger from some of it.
Block everything → fragile
Allow everything → overwhelmed