About

I write about what's actually happening in Canadian tech, with a focus on applied AI, cybersecurity, and autonomous systems.

Twenty years of applied work across data, security, and AI. Doctoral research in cybersecurity at the University of Ottawa, currently in the writing-up stage. Master's in management with a focus on organizational psychology before that. Senior data scientist by day.

The applied side is where I spend most of my attention. Frontier model training is a fascinating race, but it's not the race Canadian companies are best positioned to win. Where things actually get deployed, in real operational conditions, with real customers, on hardware that has to work when the cloud doesn't, that's where most of the value gets created, and that's where Canada has more strength than it gets credit for.

I live in rural eastern Ontario. The closest tech meetup is a two-hour drive. Most of the work happens at a desk facing a window with a lot of trees in front of it, which turns out to be a fine environment for thinking about distributed systems.

What I write about

Canadian tech news through a practitioner's lens. The funding rounds, government programs, university research, and company announcements that move the Canadian AI and applied-tech ecosystem, with the "here's what this actually means" overlay that most coverage skips.

Edge AI, applied deployment, and the unglamorous infrastructure layer underneath the hype.

Cybersecurity and its convergence with AI. Adversarial machine learning, model security, AI for defense and AI for defenders.

Canadian defense and autonomy innovation, framed at the ecosystem and policy level. Sovereign capability, dual-use technology, the procurement reforms that actually matter.

The book I'm working on, Quiet Country, is about why Canada should stop apologizing and start building the future of applied AI. Most of the writing here is research for it.

How to reach me

Email: brad@bradconlin.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradconlinphd

Open to: podcast interviews, speaking engagements, advisory conversations, and writing collaborations within the topic areas above. I read everything and reply within a couple of days for substantive inquiries.