BIO

Dr. Fernando De La Peña Llaca reverse-engineered the impossible: beaming a real-time hologram into orbit using consumer devices and custom AI. As CEO of Aexa Aerospace, he led the first off-planet holoportation and is now bringing that tech back to Earth to disrupt how we interact with machines. NASA award-winner, space technologist, and long-time builder, Dr. De La Peña fuses aerospace-grade security with street-smart AI. His current mission? Build a hologram smart enough to help—and locked down enough not to kill. DEFCON is the perfect place to stress-test that logic.

ABSTRACT

Imagine a hologram that talks, thinks, and operates offline—no cloud, no internet, no mercy. Born on the ISS and battle-tested in zero-gravity, HoloConnect AI is now aiming at Earth’s most vulnerable systems: medical devices. This talk reveals how we’re embedding vision- and voice-aware AI inside air-gapped holographic agents that run locally, assist in surgery, and diagnose without ever phoning home. We'll unpack how we cracked the interface between hardware, holography, and healthcare, and why offline is the new secure. Expect deep insights on sandboxed AI logic, secure embedded stacks, voice spoofing defense, and real-world risks when you give a glowing face to machine intelligence. Bonus: live demo of a medical-grade hologram running without Wi-Fi—because in space and in surgery, there is no Ctrl+Z.