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***SNS*** Security vs. Technology: The Aspen Experience
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Security vs. Technology: The Aspen Experience
I have just returned from attending two back-to-back conferences at the Aspen Institute. On the face of it, they had little in common: the Aspen Security Forum tends to include leaders from the US and the EU in defense and intelligence, while Fortune Brainstorm:Tech tends to include technology headliners likely to appear in the magazine.
Although these people live in the same world, one would never know it (with a single exception), gauging by my experience last week.
And while there were great leaders and fascinating people at both affairs, one had the distinct feeling of a certain kind of dislocatedness from reality. The Security Forum's agenda and speaker list were heavily leveraged toward fighting "the last war" i.e., terrorism. Ant Brainstorm, the lack of understanding for the need for increased security was not only palpable, but it was also almost discouraged.
Other than that, both were great shows.
I thought I might best serve our members this week by doing a quick review of the high (and low) points of these meetings, each of which tends to define its own category by world reputation.
Who attended the Forum? Well, the speaker list is posted on its website. But what if one wants to know who one's fellow participants are? Sorry. After all, this is a Security forum, right?
Did I mention Terror? Our security apparatus has it down, from drones to computers, intel to TSA lines. It isn't cheap, but it seems to work.
And given all that, what was the high point of this three-day focus on the subject of terror? Not TSA administrator John Pistole's stated wish that 50% of all airline travelers end up in the fee-based, fast-pass-through lane at the airport.
Neither was it the talk that most folks who draw their salaries in DC appeared to find most riveting: a description by Dr. Ashton Carter, deputy secretary of the US Department of Defense, on whether the "sequester" on spending would continue, and, if so, what its effects would be. ("This will not affect our military preparedness.")
No, the most refreshing and surprising comment of the meeting may have come from Phillip Mudd, currently director of Global Risk at SouthernSun Asset Management so he has an economic, as well as a military, perspective. But his real chops come from the latter, serving as former deputy director of National Security, FBI; former deputy director, Counterterrorist Center, CIA; and senior research fellow, Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, New America Foundation.
In a panel entitled "The Threat Matrix: How is the Terrorism Threat Evolving in the Post-Bin Laden Era?" Mudd had the chutzpah to compare the three deaths at the Boston Marathon bombing, and the total number of terror deaths in US history, to the deaths per year caused by childhood obesity, or by street gangs. Maybe, Mudd reflected, we are working on the wrong threats?
You could see the whole bench move away from him onstage.
You don't take a Super Size Coke to a gunfight.
If there was a real high point to the ASF, it was likely the evening talk given by Gen. Keith Alexander, focused on the Snowden leaks and the question of whether the NSA is acting appropriately in collecting and storing years of communications metadata. Alexander was calm and eloquent, and several times made the point that the NSA was not reading contents of communications, just looking for network effects tied to known terror suspects.
He also explained that the Agency had approached telephone companies in 2009 to do this collection and storage themselves, and make the data available to the NSA on request but the telecoms declined, based on cost. The current arrangement, it would seem, is a direct result of that decline, as the Agency needs the ability to data mine records once it has a real suspect, and a FISA warrant.
Those who are interested in seeing Gen. Alexander's interview with NBC's Pete Williams can do so here, at the ASF website:
http://aspensecurityforum.org/
As disclosure, I should also note that Gen. Alexander has been very helpful to the members of the SNS INVNT/IP group in getting launched and in networking with global leaders involved in preventing Nation-sponsored theft of crown jewel commercial intellectual property. (See www.invntip.com for more information.)
There were quite a few individuals who stood out for the clarity and sincerity of their messages, including John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for National Security at the US Department of Justice, who discussed "Law Enforcement and National Security" in a manner that both in public and, later, in our conversation linked economics, law, and security. How refreshing.
Another standout: Gen. Michael Hayden, who always seems to speak his mind in a direct and transparent way. Gen. Hayden's CV includes, but is not limited to: former director, CIA; former director, NSA; and principal, The Chertoff Group.
His own comments on the Threat Matrix panel seemed low-key, smart, and measured, which is about where one would want someone with that much experience to be. In our conversation later, he was enthusiastic about INVNT/IP's work, and more than helpful.
Perhaps the most interesting panel at least to the technology community was a panel discussion on "Mission Accomplished? Has the Intelligence Community Connected All the Dots?" This somewhat adversarial conversation was moderated by Barton Gellman, TIME contributing editor at large, who did a yeoman's job of challenging the intel community on issues around the Snowden leaks. Did I mention that nearly every panel successfully evaded their given subject in order to immediately delve into the Snowden Affair? It was fascinating, and ultimately became an onstage self-criticism.
Adm. Dennis Blair, former director of National Intelligence, was the perfect subject for the "Mission Accomplished?" conversation: he did his best to answer Gellman's questions and challenges, without getting ruffled, and still seemed to be working to provide real (non-classified) answers about what the intelligence community gathers and what it does with that data.
The general consensus seemed to be that yes, the US blew the Boston Marathon bombing, particularly given the two Russian alerts on the bombers beforehand; but that the number of incidents that are getting through is small because of the considerable successes of the intel services.
SNS members will recall that Adm. Blair is also the co-author (with Ambassador Jon Huntsman) of the IP Commission Report we highlighted a couple of weeks ago the best description I have seen of the economic and security threats posed by the theft of US crown jewel IP. I was able to meet with Adm. Blair later, and his passion for this subject matched my own. I think members will see his name again through our INVNT/IP work, and we have invited the Commission to write an SNS Special Letter.
The meeting I was most looking forward to involved a talk with Kevin Mandia, founder and CEO of Mandiant, just prior to his taking the stage to discuss "Industry's Role in Cybersecurity." (See "SNS: What Mandiant Brings," 3/7/13.)
In just a few minutes, I was able to explain INVNT/IP's charter and global view of the connection between national business models and IP theft, and Kevin joined our merry band on the spot. (We were able to talk several more times before his subsequent appearance at Brainstorm, all of which confirmed my original views of his focus and courage on these subjects.)
This industry panel was fascinating, for all of the things that it did, and did not, address. Some members seemed sharp-on and on-topic; others were a bit fuzzy, and appeared almost uncomfortable a having to address this issue. I wondered, as I often did at ASF, how much of what was being said was focused on future funding hopes vs. the real lay of the land.
Kevin Mandia seems to be a rather quiet and undemonstrative person, confident in what he knows about the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks he works on daily and careful not to let moderators misstate problems and issues. In short, he is exactly the kind of technology leader one would want to be the public face in our discussions with other nations, as they pilfer corporate secrets and we catch them doing it.
All in all, it was a meeting showing the world of defense in pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific, and the world of intel in pivot from drone attacks to cyber defense and, most likely, offense as well.
It was a rather fascinating snapshot experience of these two very large shifts in security.
I may even have convinced founder Clark Ervin that next year he should include economic attacks within the security threat matrix.
I have been to all but one of these conferences since they began 12 years ago, and they are universally professionally run, full of A-list nametags, and great networking events.
But the question always arises: did I learn anything, at least from the onstage portion of the affair?
I am certainly not the typical attendee, nor do I want to put Brainstorm to any test different from what I would expect from other shows. Even so, the short answer to this question is, No an answer not solely reserved for Brainstorm.
The agenda was good, the timing relentless, the names shiny, the demographics just right. I think the real value lay in the networking, and not no doubt despite best efforts onstage.
And here, I want to raise a point that I hope my fellow conference organizers will find useful. There is a default condition, natural to Brainstorm owned by Fortune and Time Inc. that all moderators (with one exception) are reporters. After all, that's the whole point, for those who do not know the history of this conference: stories in the magazine, people in the magazine, sponsors for the magazine.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this and at FiRe, we also schedule journalists to interview onstage occasionally, and based upon their specialties.
So, here is the big question: is it possible, in an era when journos now interview one another as though they are the experts, that they are not the best people to interview fascinating subjects?
Would it not be much more interesting to have others in the appropriate field doing this job, knowing enough to ask the right questions the deeper questions about a subject that a journalist has almost no chance of asking?
I think so.
Fortune went halfway in this direction with a smart and new format that put "buddies" onstage together, talking about each other. Of course, nothing challenging or difficult came up, but it was cute, and led to a lot of love-in stuff one does not normally see in tech interviews. Perhaps the most successful of these was between John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, and Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb.
John is one of Brian's mentors, and the two have evolved a really interesting business and personal relationship which appears to benefit both partners, giving eBay an inside view on the innovative techniques of a smaller startup, and Airbnb the systems and operations know-how that Donahue has acquired over his career.
The best takeaway from this dialog, other than unusual warm fuzzies, was the direct statement by both, underlined by Chesky, that mentors are required for success. Pay heed, young Jedi knights.
One of my favorite sessions was an interview by Jessi Hempel of Chet Kanojia, CEO of Aereo. (See "SNS: Redesigning Television: Part I," 7/12/13.) Having just researched and written about Chet and Aereo the prior week, and then having had the pleasure of watching Kanojia in a one-hour C-SPAN interview the afternoon before, I was more than familiar with the terrain.
But what continued to strike me during his onstage discussion was something special: his calmness in the face of attack, his engineer-like focus on the legal and technical points that provide Aereo traction against the network giants around him, and his cheerful confidence. We'll see how this David meets Goliath over the long term, but I am betting on Chet.
While there wasn't a lot to write home about from the onstage discussions, there were some standout moments. Here are a few:
Michael Schrage did a great job moderating, laying the foundation for a Big Data conversation by positioning companies as having to invest in either collecting more data or analyzing it. The first panelist seemed baffled by the question. "I'm not worried that there is going to be enough data," the CEO pointed out. "That just never even occurred to me." End of opening question.
Another standout, and something I had been seeing develop for several years now, but had not been able to capture publicly: Cisco has transitioned from global leader to spineless bully-victim.
Did I say that right?
Cisco was the poster-child victim of IP theft when Huawei stole its IOS, even shipping counterfeit routers with Cisco-named tech manuals inside. It brought suit, and barred Huawei from selling them in the US in the settlement. The court found four distinct cases of theft.
Today, Cisco won't stand up on the issue. In fact, its current director of security went so far as to publicly minimize the IP theft issue, reminding conference participants that there were poor people in Asia who, well, needed money. (Can you see Apple making this speech about South Koreans during its Samsung court case?)
Let's review: Huawei now has 60% of global share in telecoms equipment, once Cisco's chosen strategic market. Huawei is rich, and has kicked Cisco right out of its prior markets.
Oh yeah, I forgot something: Cisco now makes some of its equipment in China, and, I am told, Huawei co-sells Cisco equipment, here and there. Co-opted. Or, as CEO John Chambers probably tells himself, coopetition.
Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome?
Meanwhile, Cisco moves daily deeper into the security world, spending a couple billion dollars just this week on a new security-related acquisition.
If someone said to you, "I'm dating the jewel thief, and I'm here to put new locks on your doors"
No, thanks.
John, do yourself a favor, and take a page from Symantec, which dissolved its JV with Huawei just before the whole world found out what a security risk the Chinese firm was. By doing so, it narrowly missed committing commercial hara-kiri.
For me, this is a more-than-compelling sell signal.
On the same panel, people such as Jeff Moss, chief security officer of ICANN (and past founder of Defcon); and Lookout CEO John Hering seemed to have an excellent grasp of the problem. They clearly live in a more threatening, real, and transparent world than fellow panelist Cisco Security SVP Chris Young.
It's un-funny how money can appear to affect one's view of global security.
__
Among the more exciting and refreshing conversations at Brainstorm was one with my longtime friend Karen Cator, who has moved from her role as director of the Office of Education Technology for the US Department of Education (see "SNS: Five Major Trends," 6/10/13) to found a new nonprofit called Digital Promise. This firm is intended to provide many of the missing pieces in data, funding, and strategy that K12 schools will need to move into the future we have long envisioned at SNS Project Inkwell. I've offered Karen our complete support, and look forward to her joining us at next year's FiRe.
Karen has also agreed to write a piece for our members on the future of digital education.
__
A particular high point for me took place during a breakfast conversation with Fortune's Jessi Hempel, IBM's Katherine Frase, and Hummer Winblad's Mark Gorenberg. Katherine was able to discuss the scientific aspects of IBM's Watson compute efforts, from Jeopardy! to modern medicine, in clear and careful terms that helped express the real promise of Cognitive Computing. Mark, as a VC focused on this area, was able to support this vision with multiple examples from startups and academe on state-of-the-art work.
This was worth waking up for.
__
The best event of the conference was, paradoxically, also the worst, embodying the earlier question of who should interview. The reporter who had penned the cover story on Kevin Mandia interviewed him on his recent work.
Holding up the cover photo, which has a kind of Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged black-and-white starkness to it, she asked: "Doesn't he remind you of Keanu Reeves?" Perhaps if her written piece had not also referred to Mandia, a past Air Force Intelligence officer, by his handsome physical attributes, this would have been a bit less People Magazine-like ---
Nah. It was just reallyyy embarrassing. [Disclosure: I was interviewed by the same journalist for two hours on the Mandia story; China and IP economics never made it in.]
Kevin Mandia is perhaps the most important person in the non-classified world addressing cyber attacks, with the courage of a lion and a mind like a trap, taking on the Chinese People's Liberation Army and changing the ability of nations to prove their cases in the courts. Despite this fawning intro, he did a great job onstage, describing some of the methods he has used to discover exactly who was taking the world's commercial secrets via cyber theft.
At the end, I asked Kevin: Given his success in identifying PLA Unit 61398 in Shanghai as the Chinese military stole IP from something like 147 Western companies, did he foresee a time when he and others would have a strong-enough set of patterns for all nation-sponsored theft teams that we could directly identify thieves in a much larger number of events?
Without hesitation he answered, Yes.
This may be the best news Inventing Companies and Nations could have heard.
__
This week, the real mix of white and black hats, of technology and security, is happening in Las Vegas, with the annual Defcon and Black Hat conferences. But for those in the mainstream, it continues to feel as though the security folks need more exposure to economic warfare and cyber threats, and the technology people need more exposure to the security issues that ultimately will dictate their own global success, and that of their customers.
Overall, attending these events was time well spent, and FiRe 2014 participants and INVNT/IP members will benefit from my time there. I hope, with this issue, other SNS members will, too.
Your comments are always welcome.
Sincerely, Mark R. Anderson
CEO
To arrange for a speech or consultation by Mark Anderson on subjects in technology and economics, or to schedule a strategic review of your company, email mark@stratnews.com.
For inquiries about Partnership or Sponsorship Opportunities and/or SNS Events, please contact Sharon Anderson-Morris ("SAM"), SNS Programs Director, at sam@stratnews.com or 435-649-3645.
If SNS is a competitive weapon, shouldn't all of your employees have it? Email David Morris at david@stratnews.com for details on SNS Site Licenses.
"Today, people of virtually any skill level can use visual analytics software to see and understand data. Doctors, school teachers, game developers and cybersecurity professionals are making better decisions because they can see the facts." Christian Chabot, CEO of Tableau Software; quoted in USAToday.
"There's a lot of sensationalism of what's going on. There is no solution that is more secure than a BlackBerry. We've been doing it longer and better than anyone else in the industry." Scott Totzke, SVP Security at BlackBerry; quoted in the Seattle Times.
"The folks that will be successful from an enterprise perspective aren't just the ones that have the most secure devices. You have to have a healthy mix." Tim Wagner, VP and GM of Samsung Mobile's enterprise business unit who used to work for, er, BlackBerry; ibid.
Well, Tim, it may be true, but Samsung's Android system now appears to be among the least secure in the world. That doesn't sound quite as good as "healthy mix," does it? CEOs letting Androids into their enterprise systems ought to be turned in to the SEC for putting corporate assets at unnecessarily high risk of theft.
"[Google Now is] kind of blowing my mind right now. I mean, I'm pretty jaded, right? I've seen all types of things that were supposed to revolutionize search, but pretty much they haven't. Google Now is doing that." Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land; quoted in the NYTimes.
"It's good for China's neighbors and the United States because we know who is responsible and who we can hold responsible. As they develop a sense of professionalism in accordance with international law, it should make for lower risk of accidents." Susan L. Shirk, former deputy assistant secretary of state, and organizer of a conference on maritime safety; last week in Beijing.
So, ah, Susan: when exactly, in the past decade, did you last notice China caring in any way about international law? I just love diplomats; they're so predictably optimistic.
"As long as we will not be able to have an amendment to the treaty, we have to stick to the legal basis we have. Otherwise, we will fail and we will create new uncertainty in markets. Whoever wants more must engage with the German government about treaty change." Wolfgang Schauble, German finance minister; on the struggle with Brussels over who runs banking in the EU.
"Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most." Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in his recent letter to employees describing the reasons behind the latest reorg.
Two thoughts leap to mind: 1) MS is now a hardware company, copying Apple's model; and 2) Is there any passion or magic anywhere in that quote? Steve is doing his best to drive MS into the consumer world, and he gets 80 points for effort.
"We stand by that decision because, if you look at the market today, you can see two big competitors. We used to talk about Android as a competitor. We now talk about a hardware company (Samsung) as a competitor." Steven Elop, CEO of Nokia, on realizing what Google is just starting to understand; on GeekWire.com.
We've been asking this for years: What hath Google wrought? Now Google is asking, too. The Triceratops is out of the bag ---
"For whales and dolphins, listening is as important as seeing is for humans they communicate, locate food, and navigate using sound. Noise pollution threatens vulnerable populations, driving them away from areas important to their survival, and at worst injuring or even causing the deaths of some whales and dolphins." Sarah Dolman, for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation group; quoted in the Guardian.
New evidence is showing damage and harm from Navy sonar not only in beaked whales, but also in other baleen whales, as well as toothed whales. Soon we'll understand: this is true for all whales and dolphins.
» Graphene Just Gets Better
Those of us who are following the discovery process of what graphene is and what it can do will be fascinated to learn that one of the largest question marks hovering over this all-carbon sheet has now been erased.
SNS members will know that we proposed graphene as part of the solution to two of the world's largest problems, through our Twinning proposal: that all CO2 from energy plants be re-used, onsite, in the manufacture of graphene. The result: a waste product becomes a commercial good, energy-plant owners make a profit and stop CO2 emissions, and the world moves from a resource-exhaustion materials cycle to one of infinitely sustainable materials use.
It doesn't hurt that our choice for the core product behind this sustainable cycle, graphene, is the strongest material per weight in the world.
Soon after we published this Proposal, both the UK and EU announced major graphene initiatives, for the purpose of increasing R & D into both chemistry and markets.
We also introduced, as a FiReStarter Company this year, Graphene Technologies Inc., of Novato, California, which had developed a proprietary catalyzed procedure for making large numbers of nano-scale graphene flakes.
And here is the problem. Graphene, in its simplest form, is a sheet of carbon one atom thick. Therefore, it is very difficult to make the size of sheets one might want to serve Boeing, Airbus, BMW, or even Prince tennis rackets. And studies indicated until now that amalgams of flakes into larger sheets did not have the same strength that a pure crystalline sheet would have.
OK, that's changed.
A new study, just published in Science, indicates the opposite to be true: graphene, even when made of many small crystalline grains, is 90% as strong as the material in its purest crystalline form.
But wait, there's more ---
When the research team used large grains instead of small, the resulting stitched-together larger sheets were identical in strength to exfoliated, pure crystalline graphene.
The confusion came from the most common form of production, Chemical Vapor Deposition; apparently a step in this process used a re-agent that weakened the inter-grain boundaries. James Hone and Jeffrey Kysar were able to substitute a different chemical etchant and move the needle from "quite weak" in the final material to near-crystalline strength.
Who cares? What does it mean?
It means, at least theoretically, that this team has removed the greatest obstacle to using graphene in large-scale commercial applications. In one move, we have just gone from micro/nano applications such as paints, chemicals, and transistors to macro application markets: airplanes, cars, buildings, clothing, and almost everything else we manufacture today.
As Hone states in the article: "This is an exciting result for the future of graphene, because it provides experimental evidence that the exceptional strength it possesses at the atomic scale can persist all the way up to samples inches or more in size. This strength will be invaluable as scientists continue to develop new flexible electronics and ultrastrong composite materials."
Wow.
» An Exciting New Leader for Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance (ORCA)
SNS members have been the primary source of financial support for protecting the world's most endangered (sub)species of killer whale, or orca: the Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound.
Thanks to a very generous recent donation from a well-known technology leader, we have been able to take what I hope are the final steps in arranging for the long-term survival of this group. And, as the first step in that process, I am very happy to announce that we have brought Bruce Stedman on board as Executive Director.
Bruce is exactly the right person for the task, as you will see below. I hope that all SNS Members will consider helping Bruce and Orca Relief as we move to put this final piece of protection into place.
Here is the announcement in full:
NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR APPOINTED TO ORCA RELIEF CITIZENS' ALLIANCE
FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington July 16, 2013
Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance (ORCA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Bruce Stedman as its new Executive Director.
"Recovery of the endangered Puget Sound Orca is one of the most important environmental goals for the coming decade, and I am truly eager to bring my ideas and energy to this task. I appreciate the support I have already received from Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance members, and I look forward to working with many other people of the Pacific Northwest who care about this iconic species," said Bruce Stedman of his new position with Orca Relief.
Bruce Stedman has 32 years of experience in marine conservation and health issues, whale conservation, nuclear/toxic site cleanups, and freshwater resources. The first curator of the Whale Museum, his work has involved community groups, non-governmental organizations, private companies, and local, state, federal & Native American governments. He has worked with senior officials, leaders, and executives throughout the US and in 11 countries. Trained at MIT, he has directed 5 other organizations and taught environmental courses at Harvard, Tufts and Western Washington Universities.
"We are absolutely delighted that Bruce has agreed to lead our group at this critical time. With the whales again in decline, the work of taking pressure off this population has never been more important. I have no doubt that Bruce's remarkable background will serve us, and the whales, well," said Mark Anderson, Founder & Chairman of Orca Relief.
Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance is committed to creating the West Side Whale Protection Zone. It is the missing piece of regulatory protection that would give us the best chance of saving this population from extinction the outcome no one in Washington, or anywhere else, wants. For more information about the Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance visit the website: www.orcarelief.org.
________________________________________________________________
Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. Orca Relief was the first organization to predict the decline in the Southern Resident Whale population, and the first to conduct scientific research its causes. The organization's charter is to discover and reduce death rates among the local killer whales of Puget Sound.
» Redesigning Television: More Data
The following charts expand on the data sets offered in our last two issues on Redesigning Television.
This first shows the inverse relationship between watching standard TV and video streaming:
And this second shows the remarkable drop between five quintiles of television watchers. The top quintile is almost 20x larger than the bottom, a sure predictor of "Zero TV" folks at the bottom.
Last, but not least: the rates of change for the same quintiles, year-to-year. While viewing is slowly going up in the top group, it is dropping like a rock in the bottom fifth.
My thanks to Duncan Stewart, of Deloitte, for the above PPT slides on this issue. mra.
Re: "SNS: Redesigning Television: Part II"
Mark,
In catching up on my reading, I read this report immediately after reading this week's issue of SNS. The McKinsey numbers seems to be more representative of the US population that I understand well as compared to the Nielsen numbers. After working at Nielsen, I'd put more faith in the McKinsey data....
From: McKinsey & Company Subject: Developing a fine-grained look at how digital consumers behave
MCKINSEY & COMPANY
View in browser
<http://email.mckinsey.com/1abf0caf0layfousubv3desiaaaaabzdeatzs4k6dvqyaaaaa>
DEVELOPING A FINE-GRAINED LOOK AT HOW DIGITAL CONSUMERS BEHAVE
"Consumers are changing the ways they use digital platforms at lightning speed. To benefit, companies must take a refined look below the surface to understand who is doing what. "
Best,
John K. Thompson [CEO Marketing Sciences Chicago]
John,
Thank you for sharing this. The basic findings seem to me consistent with the Nielsen reports we cited, but the organization is much crisper.
For readers without Net connections at the moment: the top trends cited include:
I do think we covered all of this in the SNS issues on the subject, but I would strongly recommend that anyone seriously interested in the subject also take a look at this McKinsey treatment; it's first class.
As I said earlier (and again on National Public Radio this week), the real stories here are very simple, in terms of what is driving all this change: the Internet, and the audience.
Compared with free-air broadcast infrastructure and top-down network decisions, that is a real revolution.
Mark Anderson
Subject: China farmland contamination
Mark,
If this is anywhere near true, China will have a major political crisis while becoming dependent on American wheat and Japanese rice to feed itself. The article doesn't even mention development related water shortages.
THE SATURDAY ESSAY (Wall St. Journal) July 26, 2013, 6:33 p.m. ET China's Bad EarthIndustrialization has turned much of the Chinese countryside into an environmental disaster zone, threatening not only the food supply but the legitimacy of the regime itself
In Dapu, a rain-drenched rural outpost in the heart of China's grain basket, a farmer grows crops that she wouldn't dare to eat.
A state-backed chemicals factory next to her farm dumps wastewater directly into the local irrigation pond, she says, and turns it a florescent blue reminiscent of antifreeze. After walking around in the rice paddies, some farmers here have developed unexplained blisters on their feet.
Josh Chin/The Wall Street Journal
"Nothing comes from these plants," says the farmer, pointing past the irrigation pond to a handful of stunted rice shoots. She grows the rice, which can't be sold because of its low quality, only in order to qualify for payments made by the factory owners to compensate for polluting the area. But the amount is only a fraction of what she used to earn when the land was healthy, she says. The plants look alive, "but they're actually dead inside." ---
Scott Foster [SNS Ambassador, Asia Research; and Advisor, TAP Japan Tokyo]
From: John Petote Startling article, and sounds quite credible. The only thing I take with a grain of salt are just about all so-called statistics associated with China, since there is an enormous lack of transparency. The article does drive home the downside of growing much too fast.
The Chinese Communist government can only 'control & suppress' for so long every challenge presented as a result of torrid growth with 1.4 billion people; akin to running out of fingers to plug the rapidly expanding holes in the dike.
I would expect an eventual mass exodus of wealthy residents to occur soon, rather than just the steady stream that is happening now. Many other problematic trends will follow.
John Petote [SNS Ambassador/Angel Investing; and CEO, CIO Solutions Santa Barbara]
P.s.
Subject: Solar tariffs: EU vs. China You were right, Mark (unfortunately): the EU caved well, mostly:
After a series of "arduous" and meticulous" negotiations, the EU and Chinese solar panel makers have settled their long-running trade dispute. Under the terms of the deal, Chinese companies can export up to seven gigawatts each year as long as the price doesn't fall below 0.56/ watt. Exports in excess of the annual limit or sold below the minimum price will be subject to duties averaging 47% beginning in August. It appears the Chinese come out ahead given that, according to FT, the minimum price "is in line with recent averages [but] well below the <0.80 EU companies 'deemed reasonable.'"
John Petote
Scott and John,
What happens when an export-driven economy finds itself so polluted that the things it exports are toxic?
We continue to get reports of toxic clothing, such as cotton fabric made in water laden with organic pollutants and heavy metals; or rice so full of toxins that it can't be eaten. A recent story suggested that 25% of the domestic rice crop was poisoned.
I think John is right about the exodus: people who can afford to, with children or loved ones, will ultimately vote with their feet.
Although the Standing Committee is now trying to address some of these problems, it will be decades before the current mess can be cleaned up if ever. That's the sad thing about polluting the land.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
I saw this pop up this morning and thought of a conversation we had back on the island. Sure you've seen it but in case you missed it:
<www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23452097>
With gratitude and hope you're well,
Colin Megill [Web Developer Seattle]
Colin,
First, let's set the table, in general, and for those not Net-connected at the moment.
UK PM David Cameron has just announced a national "filtering" system, intended to avoid exposure of children to pornography, which will be in effect throughout the country. Those Americans who recall a similar, very flawed "protect America" act now thoroughly rejected by the federal courts will wonder why Britain's leader would bother.
Here is an excerpt from the story Colin is referring to, "Chinese firm Huawei controls net filter praised by PM":
The pornography filtering system praised by David Cameron is controlled by the controversial Chinese company Huawei, the BBC has learned.
UK-based employees at the firm are able to decide which sites TalkTalk's net filtering service blocks.
Politicians in both the UK and US have raised concerns about alleged close ties between Huawei and the Chinese government.
The company says the worries are without foundation and prejudiced.
On Monday the Prime Minister said TalkTalk had shown "great leadership" in setting up its system, Homesafe, which it has offered to customers since 2011.
This brings up two other embarrassing UK points:
I understand that the UK is under terrific pressure to figure out its economic model in the 21st century. But selling out to the Chinese has got to be the most pathetic idea of all time.
So we come to this latest problem. Do we really want China censoring the British Internet? Realllllllllllllllllly?
I think Cameron is undermining British security, and now the British social fabric, in return for Chinese cash.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
You need to publish a correction we do NOT have any money from Qualcomm in Qiming. 0. Never have.
Qualcomm invested in the original Ignition Fund in 2000 and never any funds since then.
Gary E. Rieschel Founding Managing Partner Qiming Venture Partners Shanghai, China www.qimingventures.com
Gary,
Since you initially referred me to a New York Times article which claimed Qualcomm was indeed an investor, perhaps the NYT is the proper target for this complaint. But, as long as it is the case, I am happy to make sure our members understand the truth of the matter.
Thank you for providing this; and I trust by its brevity that the other four or five points we raised in contention have now been resolved in our favor.
Mark Anderson
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SNS is the most accurate predictive letter covering the computer and telecom industries. It is personally read by the top managers at companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, Oracle, Google, Ericsson, Telstra, and China Mobile, as well as by leading financial analysts at the world's top investment banks and venture capital funds, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Kleiner Perkins, Venrock, Warburg Pincus, and Polaris. It is regularly quoted in top industry publications such as Bloomberg Businessweek, WIRED, Barron's, Fortune, ZDNet, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, strategy+business, Forbes, and elsewhere.
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Mark Anderson is CEO of the Strategic News Service. He is the founder of two software companies and of the Washington Technology Industry Association "Fast Pitch" Forum, Washington's premier software investment conference; and has participated in the launch of many software startups. He regularly appears on the CNN World News, CNBC and CNBC Europe, Reuters TV, the BBC, Bloomberg TV, the Daily Beast television, and has a regular National Public Radio program. He is an Advisory Board member of Calit2 and the Qualcomm Institutes, the Graphene Stakeholders Association, and provides advice to or has invested in Ignition Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, the Global Advisory Council of the mPedigree Network (Ghana), SwedeTrade, The Family Circle (Europe), the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, the NSA, the White House, GCHQ, MI5, the Cabinet Minister's Office; and industry-leading firms including Dell, Microsoft, Symantec, Nuance Communications, and others.
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In between times, he will be at the annual Virgin Party down in the lower orchard, now in the hands of the next generation. Everything is ready: a brand-new stage, bands signed up from around the state, things to eat and drink, lights up in the trees, power and water to the site, portable loo what could be left? Oh yeah, invitations.
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Recent Issuesscott2022-09-20T16:01:24-07:00
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