The CTO Podcast · Insights & Strategies for Chief Technology Officers Navigating the C-Suite while Balancing Technical Strategy, Team Management, & Innovation

Exploring RF Communication, Encryption, and AI with Dell Kronewitter

·44 min·2 clips

Dell says a process can override him when an engineering manager cites the rule back to him.

1. The CTO Podcast episode centers on Del Kronenwitter and Fuse Integration’s work on RF communication, encryption, satellite links, and AI. 2. Etienne de Bruin hosts Del Kronenwitter, the Director of Technology at Fuse Integration, and Del matters because he built engineering rigor after joining as employee number five. 3. The episode asks how Fuse handles encrypted airborne networking in a hybrid, highly regulated defense environment. 4. Del says Fuse is a defense tech company that does airborne communication and data dissemination in tactical settings. 5. He names Sunder Lee, a naval aviator who founded Fuse about 12 years ago after doing design thinking work. 6. Del explains the Core product, which has red side processing and black side processing inside a multifunction network controller. 7. He says the company holds a patent on removable computers and uses commercial technology on the black side alongside military technology on the red side. 8. Del defines Alice, Bob, and Eve by comparing secure communication to a message that an eavesdropper cannot read. 9. He uses the red side and black side vocabulary to separate plain text from ciphertext and to explain why secure information is treated differently. 10. He says the core box must be Tempest certified so Eve cannot hear electromagnetic leakage from red-side information. 11. Del adds that the encryptor is called the HAPI encryptor and that it is certified by the NSA. 12. He describes an SKL device that holds keys and is used at a Navy base to load keys into the encryptor. 13. Del explains that Fuse wants to see both red radios and black radios in one holistic picture, so it built UNAM to pass meta information around crypto. 14. He gives a use case where a handheld military radio can encrypt traffic, a plane can carry it over commercial satcom, and decryption happens later under rules for the path. 15. Del says Fuse monitors jamming and other RF issues with a cross-layer data store that spans radio behavior, network behavior, and application behavior. 16. He contrasts that approach with narrower layer-three or layer-seven networking views and lists OSI layers while discussing the limits of older standards. 17. The tone is technical and conversational, with Etienne repeatedly pushing for plain-language explanations and Del using whiteboard-style analogies. 18. Del also describes demonstrations, field interviews with pilots and ground support, and test readiness reviews and critical design reviews as part of the work. 19. People interested in defense networking, encryption, RF systems, and satellite communications would likely value this episode. 20. People looking for light banter, celebrity stories, or nontechnical discussion would probably skip it.

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