#272 September 3, 2026

Agent Substrate, with Tim Hockin and Brandon Royal

Hosts: Abdel Sghiouar, Kaslin Fields

Tim Hockin is a long term software engineer with Google Cloud and I would argue one of the fathers of Kubernetes. Brandon Royal is a product manager on GKE and has been behind the launch of multiple OSS projects like the Ray Operator for k8s, Agent Sandbox and our topic for today - Agent Substrate.

Do you have something cool to share? Some questions? Let us know:

• web: kubernetespodcast.com

• mail: kubernetespodcast@google.com

• twitter: @kubernetespod

• bluesky: @kubernetespodcast.com

News of the week

• Kubernetes 1.37: Garhwal
• Kubernetes Podcast: Kubernetes 1.37 with Dipesh Rawat
• Kubernetes release & maintenance information: https://kubernetes.io/releases/
• BOMHort
• Google Open Source Blog: Adapting open source practices to an AI-first world: A retrospective on 2025
• Kubernetes-security-announce Google Group
• Kubernetes CVE RSS Feed

Links from the interview

• Agent Substrate on GitHub
• Agent Sandbox
• Kubernetes Checkpoint & Restore Working Group
• spiffe.io
• HashiCorp Blog: SPIFFE: Securing the identity of agentic AI and non-human actors

Links from the post-interview chat

• Kubernetes Podcast: Agent Sandbox and Lovable, with Jonathan Grahl