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What

I Say

Ideas are meant to be shared, challenged, and put into motion.

Here I bring together my books, conversations and ideas on AI, cybersecurity, renewable energy, business, people and the world we are building. They are shaped by what I see, what I learn, and the conversations that challenge the way I think: these are the ideas I choose to put forward.

Books and Ideas
by Simone Massaro

THE FORMAT

People Behind
the Vision

People Behind the Vision is my curated video format: I invite creators, strategists and executives to share the unfiltered doubts and critical decisions made behind closed doors.

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Inside the Studio of Maestro Salvatore Russo | Simone Massaro

I stepped into the studio of Maestro Salvatore Russo, a space that began as an atelier and over the years became his home, where every inch tells the story of a life in painting. We talked about journeys and the longing to return, the weight of the word “maestro”, the fear of the blank canvas, and what art can still teach children growing up in front of a screen. His path was “very much uphill”, like everything that matters.

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PUBLICATIONS

Publications:
Books by Simone Massaro

Simone Massaro’s publications include three books co-authored with Dino Esposito on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and the digital management of renewable energy. Each volume opens with a summary, its key themes and key references, and can be read and downloaded as a PDF.

Cybersecurity digital version

Cybersecurity & Risk Management

Protecting digital infrastructure.

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Controlling the Uncontrollable

Monitoring, intelligence and control for renewable energy

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AI for Executives and Policy

 Strategic frameworks for AI governance

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Cybersecurity & Risk Management

Protecting digital infrastructure.

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Controlling the Uncontrollable

Monitoring, intelligence and control for renewable energy

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AI for Executives and Policy

Strategic frameworks for AI governance

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Frequently asked questions about
Simone Massaro's books and ideas

What books has Simone Massaro written?

Simone Massaro’s publications include three books co-authored with Dino Esposito. AI for Executives and Policy covers understanding and governing AI. Cybersecurity & Risk Management covers cyber risk and security culture. Controlling the Uncontrollable covers the digital control of renewable energy. All three can be read and downloaded as PDFs on the What I Say page of simonemassaro.com.

Who co-authored Simone Massaro's books?

Dino Esposito co-authored all three books by Simone Massaro presented on the What I Say page: AI for Executives and Policy, Cybersecurity & Risk Management and Controlling the Uncontrollable. Each volume is signed by both authors and focuses on one field: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity or the digital management of renewable energy.

Where can I read Simone Massaro's publications?

Simone Massaro’s publications can be read and downloaded as PDFs in the Publications section of the What I Say page of simonemassaro.com. Each book has a dedicated preview with a summary, key themes and key references, so readers can explore the ideas before opening the full volume.

What should executives and policymakers know about AI?

Executives and policymakers should understand AI beyond its technical surface, including its origins, evolution, possibilities and limitations. This is the argument of AI for Executives and Policy by Dino Esposito and Simone Massaro. The book traces AI from Leibniz and Turing to machine learning and offers a framework for deciding how AI should be adopted, governed and interpreted.

What is "Controlling the Uncontrollable" about?

Controlling the Uncontrollable: Inside the True Nature of Renewable Energy, by Dino Esposito and Simone Massaro, is about managing energy sources that cannot be controlled, such as wind and sunlight. The book explains how monitoring, remote control and data analytics turn their variability into predictable, manageable production across geographically distributed power plants.

How can the variability of renewable energy be managed?

The variability of renewable sources such as wind and sunlight can be managed through continuous monitoring, remote control, forecasting and data analytics, often combined with storage systems. Together, these tools turn intermittent generation into predictable, manageable production across distributed power plants. This is the subject of Controlling the Uncontrollable by Dino Esposito and Simone Massaro. BaxEnergy, the company Simone Massaro founded, supported over 120 GW of renewable energy operations in more than 40 countries as of June 2024.

Why is cybersecurity a leadership issue, not just an IT one?

Cybersecurity is a leadership issue because cyber risk affects business continuity, reputation and regulatory compliance, not only IT systems. Managing it requires decisions on priorities, investment and accountability that belong to top management. It also requires a security culture shared across the organization. Cybersecurity & Risk Management by Dino Esposito and Simone Massaro addresses these themes, focusing on cyber risk and security culture.

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ABOUT THIS BOOK

Cybersecurity & Risk Management

Original Italian title: Dietro le quinte della cybersecurity (2020)

Knowledge as a shield against fear marketing and real-world damage

Simone Massaro · Dino Esposito

This book explores cybersecurity beyond the technical dimension of attacks, vulnerabilities and defensive tools. It examines the mechanisms that make cyberattacks possible, the relationship between technological and human weaknesses, and the real consequences security failures can have on organizations. Written for executives, decision makers and business leaders, it provides a practical framework for understanding risk, strengthening organizational awareness and avoiding the fear-driven approach often associated with cybersecurity.

- Summary

The book opens with the story of the August 2003 blackout in the northeastern United States. A bug in a SCADA monitoring system, limited control-room training and poorly pruned trees near high-voltage lines combined to leave 50 million people without power. From this real-world infrastructure failure, the book draws a direct parallel with cybersecurity: software defects, poor preparation and operational negligence are the same factors that make cyberattacks possible. It then examines software and hardware vulnerabilities, the role of human error and the cultural flaws that shape how organizations manage processes and data. Throughout, the focus remains on what this means for companies and the people who lead them. Effective security depends not only on technological defenses, but on building and maintaining a culture of security.

- Key Themes

Lessons from the 2003 Blackout

How a software defect, limited training and operational negligence turned a single fault into a crisis for 50 million people.

The Anatomy of an Attack

How cyberattacks exploit the weaknesses of their targets, and why vulnerable targets that carry value are the first to be hit.

Software & Hardware Vulnerabilities

Why security flaws are usually fixed quickly by vendors, yet outdated versions stay installed for years.

The Human Factor

How mistakes, insufficient training and careless behavior can undo even the most sophisticated defenses.

Security Culture

Why every process and operation must be designed, taught and carried out with risk in mind.

Digitalization & Risk

How digital infrastructures gain efficiency while expanding their potential attack surface.

Risk & Business Impact


Why security failures must be measured in economic, operational and reputational consequences.

Defensive Strategy

Why effective protection combines technological tools, dedicated processes and organizational awareness.

- KEY REFERENCES

Robert Mueller
Former FBI Director, whose remark at the 2012 RSA Conference opens the book: every company has been hacked or will be.

Henry Ford
Security as a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability, the idea that frames the whole book.

PricewaterhouseCoopers
The forecast of cyber-insurance policies above ten billion dollars in 2020, with few claims actually paid.

2003 Northeast Blackout
The failure that cut 60 GW and left 50 million people in the dark, at an estimated cost of 8 billion dollars.

FirstEnergy, Eastlake (Ohio)
The control room where the chain of failures began, unnoticed for an hour because of a software bug.

SCADA Systems
Supervisory control software whose undetected bug kept the first alarm from going off.

NASA Earth Observatory
Satellite images of the New York area before and after the blackout.

NCBI
The estimate of around one hundred deaths linked to the blackout, from road accidents to shortages of life-saving drugs.

Blackout Investigation Commission
Three causes identified: a SCADA software bug, insufficient training and unpruned trees near the lines.

Smart Grid
The digitalization of power networks after 2003: more efficient, but exposed to cyberattacks as well as physical ones.

Piracy, from the Caribbean to Hormuz
The historical analogy: every form of piracy, armed or digital, lives on the weaknesses of its victims.

U-Boats in World War II
Attacks on nearly defenseless convoys, showing that weak targets carrying value are inevitably attacked.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
The father of nuclear naval propulsion, for whom the human factor counted more than any technical aspect.

Security Updates
Flaws are patched quickly, but installing updates is up to each company, and insecure versions often remain for years.

Cultural Flaws
Weaknesses in processes and behavior, more pervasive and harder to close than any technical flaw.

Attack Surface
The exposure that bug fixes reduce over time but can never bring to zero.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Cybersecurity is too often discussed through the language of fear: alarming statistics, worst-case scenarios and promises of definitive solutions. This book argues that understanding how attacks work, and why they succeed, is the most effective protection available to any organization. Many companies hit by an attack lacked even the most basic security measures, or could not prove they had them. Knowing where the real weaknesses lie allows executives and decision makers to invest where the risk is real, not where fear is loudest.

Simone Massaro · Dino Esposito
Cybersecurity & Risk Management

Explore the Book

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Controlling the Uncontrollable

Inside the True Nature of Renewable Energy

Simone Massaro · Dino Esposito

This book explores renewable energy beyond its environmental promise. It focuses on the challenge at the heart of the industry: how to monitor, manage and control energy sources that are uncontrollable by nature and geographically distributed by design. From the forces of wind and sunlight to the software that keeps the power grid in balance, it explains why producing clean energy is only the first step, and why controlling it is what makes the energy transition possible.

- Summary

The book opens with the paradox at the heart of renewable energy: the forces that make it possible, such as wind and sunlight, cannot themselves be controlled. It traces the history of energy production, from James Watt’s steam engine and the first electric utilities to nuclear power, the 1973 oil crisis and the Three Mile Island accident, which turned the world’s attention back to renewable sources. It then explains why their growth is a challenge for the grid. Conventional power plants produce at a steady rate, while wind and solar farms feed in variable amounts of energy that must be balanced against demand at all times. Throughout, the focus remains on the answers available to the industry: energy storage, power forecasting and remote control of production, all of which depend on smart software.

- Key Themes

The Nature of Renewable Energy

Why energy from sources that constantly regenerate, such as water, wind and sunshine, is virtually unlimited but cannot be controlled at the source.

A Brief History of Energy

From the steam engine and the first power plants to nuclear energy and the return to renewable sources in the 1980s.

Using Nature vs Producing Energy

Why running a local windmill is very different from producing energy and sharing it through a national grid.

The Power Grid & Its Balance

How the grid matches production to demand, and why it must prevent both surplus and shortage at any time.

Uncontrollable Sources

Why variable output from wind and solar farms puts the grid at risk as renewables approach 20% of the world’s energy.

Energy Storage

How pumped hydro and batteries can store surplus energy for later, and the limits each one still faces.

Power Forecasting

How historical data, weather forecasts and maintenance plans help predict production, balance the grid and support energy trading.

Software & Digital Control

Why only smart software and the remote control of power plants can turn variable production into a manageable system.

- KEY REFERENCES

Stephen Hawking
His hope for nuclear fusion as an inexhaustible energy source without pollution, quoted in the introduction.

Lehman Brothers, 2008
The September 2008 meeting at the Federal Reserve in New York, where the book’s journey begins.

“New Energy for America”, 2008
The plan by Barack Obama and Joe Biden to modernize the national grid with smart metering and distributed storage.

James Watt
The instrument maker who around 1781 turned Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine into a usable product, powering the industrial revolution.

Thomas Edison
Founder of the Edison Electric Light Company, the parent of modern electric utilities.

Urs Hölzle
Google’s Senior VP of Technical Infrastructure, on Google as the largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with 2.6 GW committed.

Appleton, Wisconsin, 1882
The world’s first hydroelectric power plant, on the Fox River.

Larderello, Tuscany
Until the late 1950s, the only place in the world producing geothermal electricity on an industrial scale.

1973 Oil Crisis
The shock that slowed energy demand and led Jimmy Carter to a nationwide conservation plan.

Three Mile Island, 1979
The partial meltdown, rated 5 on the 7-point international scale, that turned public opinion against nuclear power.

Mae Jemison
Physician and NASA astronaut, on ideas as potential energy that only action can release.

U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Its 2017 report, projecting that energy from renewables will double by 2040, faster than any other source.

Eurostat
Data on renewable energy consumption in the European Union in 2016: 17% on average, with Sweden at 53.8%.

Pumped Hydroelectric Storage (PHS)
The most proven form of energy storage, in use for over a century, but with a deep social and environmental impact.

Pellion Technologies
The Massachusetts startup that in 2018 announced lithium-metal batteries with twice the capacity of conventional ones.

Transmission System Operators (TSO)
The operators that can start, stop or reduce wind and solar farms to keep the grid balanced.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Renewable energy is too often discussed only through its benefits: cleaner air, a healthier planet, energy independence. This book argues that its real challenge lies elsewhere, in managing sources that are variable by nature and distributed by design. As the share of renewables grows, keeping the grid balanced becomes a problem that only data, forecasting and software can solve. Understanding this is essential for anyone making decisions about energy infrastructure. The transition will not succeed by controlling nature, but by controlling the technology around it.

Simone Massaro · Dino Esposito
Controlling the Uncontrollable

Explore the Book

ABOUT THIS BOOK

AI for Executives and Policy
Makers

Vision and tools to predict the unpredictable

Simone Massaro · Dino Esposito

 

AI for Executives and Policy, by Dino Esposito and Simone Massaro, explains what executives, decision makers and policy makers need to know about Artificial Intelligence. AI is treated not as a purely technological subject, but as a phenomenon to understand from its origins, evolution, possibilities and limitations. The book provides the intellectual framework to decide how AI should be adopted, governed and interpreted.

- Summary

AI for Executives and Policy traces the intellectual journey from the earliest philosophical attempts to formalize human reasoning, through Leibniz, Boole and Hilbert, to the mathematical breakthroughs of Gödel, Church and Turing that defined the boundaries of computation. It follows the emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a formal discipline at Dartmouth in 1956, the development of Machine Learning and neural approaches, and the ongoing questions about what machines can and cannot actually do. Throughout, the focus remains on what this trajectory means for organizations and the people who lead them.

- Key Themes

Origins of AI

How ideas about artificial intelligence emerged from centuries of philosophical, mathematical and scientific inquiry.

Logic & Formalization

The role of formal logic and the historic attempt to reduce all human reasoning to mechanical operations.

Machines & Computation

The theoretical foundations that made intelligent machines conceivable – from the Turing Machine to modern computing.

The Birth of Artificial Intelligence

The emergence of AI as a defined scientific discipline and the ambitions of its founders.

Machine Learning & Neural Networks

The shift from explicitly programmed systems toward machines capable of learning from data.

Human vs Machine Intelligence

The enduring questions about reasoning, consciousness and the limits of machine capabilities.

AI & Decision Making

Why executives and policy makers need to understand AI beyond its technical surface.

- KEY REFERENCES

Alan Turing
Computation, machine intelligence and the question of whether machines can think.

John McCarthy
Coined the term Artificial Intelligence and organized the Dartmouth conference.

Gottfried Leibniz
The vision of a universal calculus of reasoning, anticipating symbolic AI by 300 years.

John von Neumann
Pioneered the stored-program computer architecture fundamental to modern AI.

George Boole
The algebra of logic - translating the rules of thought into mathematical notation.

Alonzo Church
Developed lambda calculus, proving foundational results in computability theory.

David Hilbert
The challenge to derive all mathematics from finite axioms through mechanical procedures.

Bertrand Russell
Pursued the logical foundations of mathematics, influencing the formalization of reasoning.

Kurt Gödel
The incompleteness theorems that revealed fundamental limits of formal systems..

Dartmouth - 1956
The meeting that formally established Artificial Intelligence as a research discipline.

Turing Machine
The abstract mathematical model defining the boundaries of what can be computed.

Bletchley Park
Where wartime codebreaking accelerated the development of computing and machine reasoning.

Lambda Calculus
Alonzo Church's formal system for expressing computation through function abstraction.

Church-Turing Thesis
The foundational claim linking effective procedures to Turing-computable functions.

Machine Learning
The paradigm shift from rule-based programming to systems that learn from experience.

Artificial Neural Networks
Computational models inspired by biological neural structures, enabling pattern recognition.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Artificial Intelligence is too often discussed through the lens of what it can do today. This book argues that understanding what AI is - its origins, its evolution, its foundational ideas and its inherent limitations - is essential for anyone responsible for decisions about its adoption and governance. The intellectual journey from Leibniz to modern neural networks is not a history lesson. It is the framework through which executives and policy makers can distinguish between genuine capability and inflated expectation.

Simone Massaro · Dino Esposito
Artificial Intelligence for Executives and Policy Makers

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Rotonda Fontanarossa:
the story of
Captain Giovanni Massaro's Fiat G.91T

The Fiat G.91T at the center of the Via Fontanarossa roundabout in Catania is the aircraft once flown by Captain Giovanni Massaro, Simone Massaro's father. Its story runs from the 41st Wing at Fontanarossa to a monument for the whole city.

1965

1965 – The 41st Wing in Catania

On 1 October 1965 the 41st Wing (41° Stormo) of the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare) was re-formed as an anti-submarine wing, with its 88th Group based at Catania Fontanarossa; in 1971 the group moved to nearby Sigonella. During the Cold War the wing carried out surveillance and patrol activities across the Mediterranean, and the Sicilian bases played a strategic role in controlling the air and maritime space of the area.

1965 – The 41st Wing in Catania

Bright Start:
building opportunities that last

For me, Bright Start is a way to give philanthropic work continuity, structure and accountability. The objective is not simply to fund an activity. It is to help create opportunities that can open new paths for people and communities, while building the conditions for those opportunities to continue over time.

-cit. Ing. Simone Massaro

The individual projects may differ, but they share the same principle: an initial contribution should create value that can continue beyond the moment in which it is made.

Bright Start is the foundation through which I am developing a long-term approach to philanthropy. My aim is to transform resources into opportunities, inclusion and better places for the communities around me, starting from Catania and Sicily. I do not see philanthropy as a series of isolated contributions, but as a way to create the conditions in which people, organisations and communities can grow.

Oratorio Contemporaneo

Oratorio Contemporaneo is a cultural project in development, promoted by Simone Massaro: a living, constantly evolving space where gesture, community and language intersect to generate something new. It is conceived not simply as a physical place but as a cultural ecosystem that transcends the traditional boundaries of art and gathering, connecting urban expression, creativity and collective growth. Every action will become part of a broader system: an open dialogue between individuals, ideas and territories, capable of building authentic and lasting relationships.

Oratorio Contemporaneo is designed with new generations in mind, yet it speaks to anyone who feels the urgency to actively engage in change, offering tools, spaces and visions to transform talent into impact. Its communities will not merely exist. They will be built, cross-pollinated and strengthened, giving rise to a new shared language that connects culture, identity and future.