Who I Am

I’m Noah, a security engineer at Amazon living in Chicago. I love all things security, spent over five years doing Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) consulting, and am now running cross-company security initiatives at Amazon.

I also love observing and discussing how humans organize, communicate, and make decisions. Those interests led me to major in Policy Analysis (and technically Management but not really), and conduct neuroscience-based decision making research, in college, and spark my continued interest in geopolitics among other topics.

What This Blog Is (And Isn’t)

I’m a deeply private person (ask anyone that knows me well), and the thought of posting my thoughts online is viscerally disturbing. Amazon’s writing culture has taught me though that, whether I like it or not, writing my thoughts down is a useful mechanism for developing better-constructed opinions.

I’ve also observed that finding people with opposing views willing to engage in earnest debate has been difficult for me. My intention is for posts on this blog to serve as a forum to develop and express my views about current events and related topics, and is an open invitation for others to tell me where I’m wrong.

I don’t care about political affiliations, will not attempt to convince anyone to change their own, and expect the same in return. This is not an invitation to be a dick to me (although if you feel the need have at it) or other readers for the lolz or Internet clout. Save that nonsense for social media. This is not a technical blog, though I may post about relevant technical topics from time to time.

Tenets

  1. Take Them At Their Word (you know, the name of this blog). Words matter. I strongly believe in taking people at their word, and good leaders take care to mean what they say. Humans can say the wrong thing, and that’s okay, but good leaders own and correct those mistakes.
  2. Cite Your Source. All quotes, statements of fact, timelines, etc will be backed by first (preferred) and secondhand sources with citations. I will use a wide variety of sources and best judgement on source quality and trustworthiness.
  3. Don’t Be Boring. Geopolitics shmolitics. My goal is to avoid making this blog an absolute snoozefest. Fingers crossed 🤞.

Engage With Me

Social links available on the side or menu if you’re on mobile. Note that I do not use Twitter but do have a Bluesky account. To engage with a post I encourage using the integrated comment functionality, but that does require a GitHub account (you can sign up here). If that’s not for you, or you have a vendetta against Microsoft, feel free to send a message or post on Bluesky or LinkedIn (also owned by Microsoft, sorry).