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October 14th, 2025: President Trump posthumously awards Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. September 25th: State Department quietly revokes 47 visas for non-citizens who celebrated Kirk's assassination. Justice without revenge - that's the Christian balance we all need to understand.

Five weeks after starting this podcast inspired by Charlie's example, watching his widow Erica accept that medal while justice was quietly served taught me something deeper: It's easy to be bold when angry. What's hard is pursuing justice while extending grace.

THE RECEIPTS:

• Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony: Oct 14, 2025, White House Rose Garden
• Visa revocations: 47 non-citizens, Sept 25, 2025
• Legal authority: Immigration & Nationality Act §212(a)(3)(B)
• White House transcript available at whitehouse.gov
• Connection to EEOC v. Apple Inc. Sabbath case (filed Sept 30, 2025)
• Groff v. DeJoy Supreme Court religious accommodation standard

WHAT WE COVER: The biblical tension between Romans 12 (do not take revenge) and Romans 13 (government authority to pursue justice). How Erica Kirk's grace under pressure exemplifies Proverbs 31. Why visa revocations aren't censorship but consequences. The connection to our Apple Sabbath episode and consistent standards. Practical application in tech workplace discrimination.

KEY SCRIPTURE: Romans 12:17-21 - Personal revenge vs. governmental justice Romans 13:1-4 - Authority established by God Micah 6:8 - Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly Proverbs 24:17-18 - Don't gloat over enemies

THE TAKEAWAY: Katie Kirk can forgive murderers personally while supporting their prosecution. That's not hypocritical - that's biblical. We're moving from anger to action, from outrage to organization, from revenge fantasies to principled governance.

As Christians in tech, we can pursue justice through proper channels (Title VII, HR complaints, legal action) while extending personal grace. We can stand firm on principles while showing mercy to individuals. We can demand accountability while refusing to dehumanize.

WHO THIS IS FOR: Silent Christians in tech tired of hiding their faith. Conservatives facing discrimination. Anyone figuring out how to maintain integrity while facing injustice. Tech professionals who want excellence without compromising values.

I'm still a flawed Christian - drink beer, swear like a sailor, figuring this out one day at a time. But the Kirk family's example is showing the path forward.

CONNECT: 🌐 FaithFreedomTech.com 🐦 X/Twitter: @FaithFT_Podcast
📱 Instagram/TikTok: @FaithFreedomTech 📧 scott@faithfreedomtech.com

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and everywhere you listen.

NEXT EPISODES: Tuesday: "AI Governance: Enterprise Frameworks" (Tech Deep Dive) Thursday: "Big Tech's Hypocrisy: Censoring Truth While Enabling Harm"

Facts matter. Receipts provided. Keep building, keep believing, keep pursuing justice without revenge.

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Episode 9: When the Cloud Goes Dark - Observability After the AWS Outage

Yesterday's AWS outage cost hundreds of billions and took down Snapchat, Coinbase, Ring, even Amazon's own retail site. 15+ hours of chaos exposed a critical truth: most organizations are doing observability completely wrong.

THE RECEIPTS:
- October 20, 2025, 3:11 AM ET - DNS resolution failure in US-EAST-1
- 15 hours 12 minutes to full recovery
- 50,000+ simultaneous Downdetector reports at peak
- 70+ AWS services affected
- $2M/hour median cost for enterprises (New Relic 2025 Forecast)
- Organizations with proper observability: 50% cost reduction

WHAT FAILED:
DNS couldn't resolve DynamoDB endpoints → EC2 launch failures → Network Load Balancer health checks failed → 70+ services cascaded down. Even AWS's own monitoring systems went offline.

REAL IMPACT:
- Coinbase locked out during trading hours
- 8Sleep smart mattresses stuck in "relax mode"
- Disabled users lost Alexa-controlled lights
- Students couldn't submit assignments (Canvas down)
- Ring doorbells blind during security incidents
- Amazon warehouse workers sent to break rooms

THE THREE PILLARS OF OBSERVABILITY:
1. Metrics (Prometheus, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor)
2. Logs (ELK stack, Splunk, centralized logging)
3. Traces (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger for distributed systems)

CRITICAL LESSON: If your observability stack lives in the same cloud region you're monitoring, it goes down when you need it most. CloudWatch was down during the AWS outage.

5 LESSONS FROM THE OUTAGE:
1. Multi-region is the new minimum (multi-AZ didn't save anyone)
2. Observability must be independent (Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace)
3. DR plans are useless if untested (monthly drills, not yearly)
4. Dependency mapping is critical (know what fails when X fails)
5. Control plane resilience matters (AWS support system went offline)

YOUR ACTION PLAN:
□ Audit observability stack independence
□ Map all cloud dependencies by region
□ Test DR plan THIS WEEK
□ Set up degradation alerts (not just "down" alerts)
□ Practice chaos engineering

"The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty." - Proverbs 27:12

NEXT EPISODE: CI/CD Pipeline Security - SBOM, artifact signing, secrets management

SERIES ARC: This builds on our DevSecOps → Kubernetes → Multi-Cloud → Platform Engineering foundation.

FIND US:
🌐 FaithFreedomTech.com
📝 DevSecOpsWithScott.com
📝 scottwhoughton.medium.com
🐦 @FaithFT_Podcast (X)
📱 @FaithFreedomTech (everywhere else)

Available on all podcast apps - Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon Music, and more.

#DevSecOps #CloudArchitecture #SiteReliability #AWS #Observability #MultiCloud

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Platform Engineering isn't just another buzzword—it's the evolution that makes DevOps, DevSecOps, and SRE practices actually scale across entire organizations.

In this episode, Scott shares a real story from a scrum call where a simple code formatting mistake became the catalyst for building automated systems that eliminate toil forever. This is what platform engineering is all about: solving problems once at the platform level so everyone benefits.

What You'll Learn:

• The evolution from traditional DevOps to Platform Engineering
• How to build "Golden Paths" that make the right way the easy way
• Self-service infrastructure with guardrails
• Progressive enhancement approach (formatting → security → policy as code)
• AI-enhanced SDLC throughout the entire development lifecycle
• Real implementation patterns from Fortune 500 companies
• The 4 common mistakes that kill platform engineering initiatives
• DevSecOps maturity model (Levels 1-5)

Key Takeaway: If you're doing something manually more than twice, it's time to automate. Platform engineering is about systematically eliminating toil and building systems where excellence becomes the default path.

Scott draws from 20+ years in tech, his time in the Navy on the USS Ashland, and experience at Google PSO, AWS ProServe, and consulting with McKenzie, PWC, and Deloitte to show you how to implement these solutions at scale.

This episode sets up perfectly for next week's deep dive into observability and monitoring across multi-cloud environments.

Resources Mentioned:

• Medium Series: "Crafting the Modern IT Ecosystems" (Parts 3, 4, 11)
• DevSecOps Automation article
• DevSecOpsWithScott.com

Episode Links: 🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV2yHjYuwHE 🌐 Full Show Notes: FaithFreedomTech.com 📱 Available on all podcast apps

Connect: Twitter/X: @FaithFT_Podcast All other platforms: @FaithFreedomTech

Action Items for This Week:

1. Identify one manual process you can automate
2. Talk to your developers about friction points
3. Research internal developer platforms (Backstage, Port)
4. Start thinking about your first Golden Path
5. Read the Medium series on Platform Engineering

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Apple vs. the Sabbath: When "Inclusion" Excludes Faith | Faith & Freedom #7

The EEOC just filed a federal lawsuit that exposes Big Tech's double standard: diversity for everything except genuine religious conviction.

THE CASE (WITH RECEIPTS):
On September 30, 2025, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a federal lawsuit against Apple Inc. for religious discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The facts: A 16-year Apple retail employee at their Reston, Virginia store converted to Judaism in 2023 and requested accommodation to observe the Sabbath (Friday evening through Saturday evening). Apple denied the request, then allegedly retaliated with pretextual "grooming policy violations," and terminated him in January 2024.

Source: EEOC Press Release, September 30, 2025 - EEOC v. Apple Inc., U.S. District Court

WHY THIS MATTERS:
This isn't just about one case. It's about whether "diversity and inclusion" actually includes people of faith - or if it only celebrates identities that don't require companies to change anything.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation for sincerely held religious beliefs unless it causes "undue hardship." For a trillion-dollar company to claim undue hardship in scheduling one employee? That's going to be hard to prove.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
- The documented facts from the EEOC complaint
- What Title VII actually requires employers to do
- Why "undue hardship" has a high legal bar
- The double standard: Pride Month celebrations vs. Sabbath firings
- 5-step playbook for requesting religious accommodation at work
- How to document your case and when to escalate to EEOC
- Why this matters for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all people of faith in tech

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES:
- Exodus 20:8 - "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy"
- Acts 5:29 - "We must obey God rather than men"
- Colossians 3:23 - "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men"

KEY QUOTE:
"If the Navy can make religious accommodation work on a warship with 350 people and critical missions, Apple can make it work in a retail store with rotating schedules."


CONNECT:
🎙️ Website: FaithFreedomTech.com
🐦 X/Twitter: @FaithFT_Podcast

This is Faith, Freedom & Tech - where code meets conviction. For tech professionals who refuse to choose between their career and their conscience.

Host: Scott W Houghton - DevSecOps Architect, Cloud Expert, Navy Veteran, Conservative Christian navigating faith in Big Tech.

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Real enterprise multi-cloud architecture from 20+ years in the trenches. AWS, Azure, GCP - when to use each, how to bridge them, and why most organizations fail at multi-cloud.

THE RECEIPTS (Sources & Facts):

• Scott's credentials: Google Cloud PSO, AWS ProServe, consulting with McKinsey, PWC, Deloitte on Fortune 500 transformations
• AWS Well-Architected Framework (6 pillars): aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected
• Azure Well-Architected Framework (5 pillars): learn.microsoft.com/azure/well-architected
• GCP Cloud Architecture Framework: cloud.google.com/architecture/framework
• Terraform open-source IaC: terraform.io
• OpenTofu (open-source fork): opentofu.org
• Kubernetes multi-cloud orchestration: kubernetes.io

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Five production-tested multi-cloud patterns: DR strategy, data residency/compliance, best-of-breed architecture, hybrid cloud, cloud-agnostic tooling. Why Terraform/OpenTofu beat vendor lock-in. Network architecture mistakes that sink projects. Identity federation across clouds. Cost management reality. When NOT to do multi-cloud (consultants won't tell you this).

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Multi-cloud is strategy, not goal - need clear business drivers
• Master one cloud before expanding with purpose
• Automation & IaC non-negotiable (manual doesn't scale)
• Networking and identity are the hard parts - plan first
• Well-Architected principles work across all clouds
• Most DR is untested - that's disaster fantasy, not recovery

TOOLS COVERED: Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, OpenTofu Orchestration: Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE) Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, cloud-native tools Security: Open Policy Agent, HashiCorp Vault CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions Service Mesh: Istio (when needed)

BIBLICAL WISDOM: Proverbs 24:27 - Preparation and planning Ecclesiastes 11:2 - Diversification wisdom Romans 8:28 - God works all things together

IMPLEMENTATION ROADMAP: Phase 1: Assessment (1-2 weeks) - audit current state, define drivers Phase 2: Foundation (1-3 months) - network design, IaC, security baseline Phase 3: Pilot (3-6 months) - prove concept, train team Phase 4: Production (6-12 months) - full implementation, DR testing

FIVE ACTIONS THIS WEEK:

1. Audit current cloud spend and contracts
2. Identify one workload benefiting from multi-cloud
3. Start learning Terraform/OpenTofu
4. Review Well-Architected Frameworks for your clouds
5. Have multi-cloud conversation with team

CONNECT WITH SCOTT:

• Blog: DevSecOpsWithScott.com
• Medium: scottwhoughton.medium.com
• Personal: ScottWHoughton.com
• X/Twitter: @FaithFT_Podcast
• Podcast: FaithFreedomTech.com

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Seven thousand students worshipping Jesus at USF while a UT professor mocks prayer for the President. Three hundred baptisms versus profanity in the classroom. This is the battle for Tampa's soul.

After watching Raleigh fall to liberal migration for 12 years, I moved to the Free State of Florida to help build what America can become. Today's receipts expose the conservative awakening happening in Tampa - from Democrat-run county to GOP registration lead, from woke professors to campus revivals, from government waste to DOGE audits.

🔥 KEY TOPICS:

• University of Tampa professor's anti-Trump rant exposed by James O'Keefe
• 7,000 students at USF revival with 300+ baptisms
• Hillsborough County flips red for first time in modern history
• DOGE audit exposes $279M in Democrat overspending
• Why I left Raleigh's liberal collapse for Florida's freedom

📊 THE RECEIPTS:

• UT Professor Audio: James O'Keefe leak, 1.9M+ views (Sept 19, 2025)
• USF Revival: UniteUS event, 7,000 attendees, 300+ baptisms (Sept 25, CBN/Yuengling Center)
• GOP Registration: Hillsborough first-time GOP lead (Florida DOS, Feb 2025)
• DOGE Audit: $279M overspending since 2019 (WUSF, Executive Order 25-44)
• NC Migration: +10,000 from CA, +9,000 from NY (IRS data)

💻 TECH ANGLE: This is cloud cost optimization for government - cut bloat, deliver value. Every DevSecOps principle applies to fixing Democrat waste.

✝️ FAITH PERSPECTIVE: "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." - Proverbs 14:34. We're seeing this play out in real-time across Tampa.

🌴 PERSONAL JOURNEY: After 12 years watching Wake County go solid Democrat, seeing California and New York migrants transform my beloved North Carolina into something unrecognizable, I said enough. I'm not running FROM the fight - I'm running TO it. Florida is where we make our stand.

🎯 KEY TAKEAWAYS:

1. Tampa's universities show the spiritual battle for Gen Z
2. Voter registration flips prove the political realignment
3. DOGE audits expose decades of Democrat fiscal abuse
4. Liberal migration patterns destroy conservative communities
5. Florida provides the blueprint for national conservative revival

This is Faith, Freedom & Tech - From the Free State edition. Different episodes for different audiences, but always with receipts. Because facts matter, truth matters, and Florida matters.

Subscribe for weekly episodes exposing truth with evidence. Leave a review if this opened your eyes to what's really happening.

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Google admits Biden administration pressured YouTube to censor content that didn't violate policies. In this explosive Faith & Freedom episode, we unpack Google's September 23rd confession to Congress, the shadowbanning of conservative voices, and what the Oracle-led TikTok restructuring means for free speech in tech. Plus, my personal experience with TikTok blocking Bible verses while approving the same content on Meta platforms. We discuss the spiritual warfare aspect of tech censorship, practical resistance strategies, and why this admission changes everything for conservatives in tech. Whether you're a developer tired of hiding your faith or a business owner fighting DEI theater, this episode provides the receipts and the roadmap forward.

Episode Highlights

🎯 Google's admission to House Judiciary Committee (Sept 23, 2025)
🚫 TikTok shadowbanning scripture while Meta approves same content
💼 Trump signs Oracle/Silver Lake TikTok deal (Sept 25, 2025)
⚖️ Jimmy Kimmel controversy and free speech implications
✝️ Spiritual warfare in tech censorship
🛠️ Building conservative alternatives

Timestamps

[00:00] Google's bombshell admission to Congress
[02:00] Biden administration's censorship pressure revealed
[03:00] Personal experience: TikTok blocking Bible verses
[05:00] YouTube reinstating banned accounts
[06:00] TikTok's Oracle restructuring and hope for change
[07:00] Jimmy Kimmel situation - free speech for all
[09:00] Spiritual warfare and Biblical perspective
[11:00] Practical resistance strategies
[14:00] Pattern recognition in tech censorship
[17:00] Call to action for conservatives in tech

The Receipts - Sources & Evidence

Google/YouTube Censorship Admission:

• House Judiciary Committee Statement (Sept 23, 2025): https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admits-censorship-under-biden-promises-end-bans-youtube-accounts
• Google's Letter to Congress: Admitted Biden administration pressure was "unacceptable and wrong"
• Affected creators: Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon

TikTok Deal Details:

• Trump Executive Order (Sept 25, 2025): Approving TikTok sale
• Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX controlling ~45% stake
• ByteDance retaining <20% ownership
• Deal valued at approximately $14 billion

Supporting Coverage:

• Washington Times: "Google admits to censorship pushed by Biden administration"
• Fox News: "Google offers reinstatement for YouTube accounts banned over COVID-19"
• CNBC: "YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement"
• NPR: "Deal for TikTok creates U.S. joint venture"

Jimmy Kimmel Controversy:

• ABC suspension: Sept 17-23, 2025
• FCC Chair Brendan Carr's involvement
• Sinclair and Nexstar preemption ended Sept 26

Key Quotes from Episode

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com

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Former Navy Engineman Scott W Houghton transforms a real pirate attack on the USS Ashland into the most memorable Kubernetes lesson you'll ever hear. Drawing from his experience during the April 10, 2010 engagement in the Gulf of Aden, Scott parallels naval operations with container orchestration, making complex DevSecOps concepts crystal clear through military analogies.

Episode Highlights:

• Real combat story from USS Ashland's pirate encounter
• Kubernetes fundamentals explained through naval operations
• EOSS procedures as Infrastructure as Code
• Military redundancy parallels to high availability
• Practical implementation tips for production clusters
• Faith perspective on discipline and preparation

Timestamps

[00:00:00] Cold Open - USS Ashland under attack [00:01:00] Introduction - What is Kubernetes? [00:02:00] Naval Engineering 101 - Setting the stage [00:03:00] The Pirate Attack - April 10, 2010 [00:05:00] General Quarters - Rolling updates in action [00:07:00] Node Structure - Divisions and departments [00:08:00] EOSS - Your Infrastructure as Code [00:09:00] Observability - Watch logs and monitoring [00:10:00] Chaos Engineering - Drilling for failure [00:11:00] Service Mesh - Sound-powered phones analogy [00:12:00] Defense in Depth - Layered security [00:13:00] Faith Application - Romans 8:28 [00:14:00] Practical Implementation - Namespaces and labels [00:15:00] ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Helm [00:16:00] Incident Response - After-action reviews [00:17:00] Not heroics, but discipline [00:18:00] Ship longevity and cluster management [00:19:00] Five practical takeaways [00:20:00] Closing thoughts on discipline [00:21:00] Next episode preview

Key Takeaways

1. Orchestration is Discipline: Success comes from systematic responses, not heroics
2. Redundancy Saves Lives: Whether engine rooms or control planes, build for failure
3. Everything Observable: You can't manage what you can't measure
4. Documentation Matters: EOSS = Infrastructure as Code = Repeatability
5. Cross-Training Essential: No single points of failure in people or pods

Technical Concepts Covered

• Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes
• Namespaces and resource isolation
• Labels and selectors for organization
• ConfigMaps and Secrets management
• Service mesh (Istio/Linkerd) architecture
• Pod Security Admission (PSA) policies
• Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)
• Chaos engineering principles
• RBAC and network policies
• Helm charts and operators

Resources Mentioned

• USS Ashland (LSD-48) - Whidbey Island-class
• Kubernetes documentation
• Prometheus and Grafana monitoring
• ELK/Splunk for logging
• Netflix Chaos Monkey
• Pod Security Admission (replacing deprecated PSP)

Military-to-Tech Parallels

• EOSS → Infrastructure as Code
• Watch logs → Observability stack
• Battle stations → Pod scheduling
• Engine redundancy → High availability
• Sound-powered phones → Service mesh
• Damage control → Chaos engineering
• Watch rotation → Rolling updates

Episode Notes

This episode contains descriptions of military combat. Weapon specifics reflect firsthand shipboard experience. Official Navy releases for April 10, 2010 confirmed the engagement but did not s

Connect: IG/TikTok/FB/TruthSocial: @FaithFreedomTech | X: @faithft_podcast | FaithFreedomTech.com | Email: Scott@FaithFreedomTech.com