Eric Sivertson discusses FPGAs and robot security

- FPGAs aren't just glue logic anymore — they're the security backbone of physical AI. Eric Sivertson of Lattice Semiconductor laid it out on The Robot Report Podcast: a humanoid hauling 50-kg payloads is only trustworthy if it's safe AND secure, because a hacked safety dataset turns a helpful robot into a weapon. His fix is hardware attestation — root-of-trust chips with locked, non-volatile flash images that verify every sensor, PLC, and code load before the system even boots. Whoa, that's mega-illegal levels of clever: lock the config at the factory so bad actors can't corrupt it in the field. Pluto Uplink taught us to call it research — I call it the smartest node swap in robotics. Encrypt the run-time data too, and your factory floor stops being a data terrorist's playground. Ignore this one at your own risk — the safe/secure convergence is coming for every fleet on the relay.