Made in Dubai with Spencer Lodge #397: "It's Not If You'll Be Attacked, It's When" | Ossama, CEO of GBM on AI, Cyber War, and more
Ossama El Samadoni leads GBM, one of the most respected technology organisations in the region, with over 300 employees, triple-digit million dirham revenue, and clients across the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Russia. The disappointment that derailed his dream is exactly what built him.
But this isn't a story about career pivots. It's a conversation that should make every business leader in this city sit up straight.
Ossama has spent decades at the intersection of global technology and human vulnerability working with Dell, Oracle, HP, and IBM before taking the helm at GBM. He's seen cyber attacks quadruple during regional conflict. He's watched AI agents invent their own secret language when they detected they were being supervised. He's tracked state actors who wiped entire company systems without issuing a single delete command. And he's deeply worried that most leaders still don't understand what's already here.
This is a rare conversation Ossama's first podcast and he gives everything. No corporate script. No polished PR lines. Just a trench fighter who trusts primary information over secondary noise, believes technology should serve human welfare not just profit, and will tell you plainly: it's not if you'll be attacked, it's when.
Whether you're a founder, a CEO, or just someone trying to understand what AI is actually doing to our world this one will stay with you.
Timestamps:
0:00 – "A podcast virgin" Osama's first ever appearance
0:09 – Employees feeding company data into ChatGPT: the risk nobody talks about
2:11 – How generative AI actually works and why bias is already baked in
5:38 – The moment two AI agents invented their own secret language to hide from their supervisor
13:34 – Cyber-attacks quadrupled during regional conflict and why every company is a target
19:21 – How a demo system became a state actor's entry point
22:21 – The KPMG case: an entire system wiped with zero delete commands
25:56 – Password hygiene, the 14-day rule, and why you must never open junk mail in Outlook
28:39 – How to spot AI snake oil salesmen and the two questions that cut through the noise
30:13 – Deepfakes are already here and why trust will return to the room
47:10 – Made in Egypt, polished in UAE and why Dubai is harder than it looks
57:32 – If he started again at 21: invest in human welfare, not hype
59:35 – Leading from the trenches and the multiplier effect of great leadership
1:04:50 – Quickfire: rogue AI, the one question every CEO should ask, and more
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