The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source · Changelog Media

Werner Vogels predicts the future (Interview)

December 4, 2025·1 hr 31 min·5 clips

Amazon's engineers invented e-commerce tech because nothing existed when Jeff Bezos started the online bookshop.

Vogels comes ready with predictions. The hosts open on 2026 and beyond: consumer robots, quantum safety, and the chance that developers may be heading into a renaissance moment. They sound curious about why those ideas made the list. Then quantum pulls the room in. A future quantum machine could break parts of the encryption people rely on every day, but Vogels keeps the fear from getting mushy. Different encryption has different risks, and lattice-based work is one safer route. His point is timing. Do the work now, before old assumptions stop holding. Amazon becomes the practical example. Vogels says a very large general encryption library on front ends created a serious vulnerability, so Amazon narrowed the problem. The team implemented TLS with a limited set of encryption technologies and put it in front of S3 first. It cost less too, but the bigger win was code that could be open source, fast, inspectable, and built for automatic reasoning. Vogels cares about proof more than announcements. Amazon wants to know it is protecting customers, not just say it is. Brian Cook's long work on automatic reasoning gives the security story a human thread. The episode ends by asking listeners to disagree, make their own predictions, and keep talking in the show's community.

As heard by us

A grounded, security-heavy forecast on quantum risk, AI-shaped development, and the engineering work behind future-proof software.

Werner Vogels' Changelog interview is framed as a look at Amazon's technology predictions for 2026 and beyond, from AI-shaped development to consumer robots and quantum-safe security.

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Why you'd press play

Press play when you want Warner Vogels' 2026-and-beyond tech predictions with enough quantum-safe encryption detail to keep the future uncomfortable.

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