PPE Medpro While everyone from from organised criminals to Chinese government hackers were robbing governments blind during the COVID crisis, in the UK the scandal surrounding PPE Medpro seems particularly egregious. The tale of PPE Medpro goes back to the VIP programme that the UK government used to secure PPE through politically connected companies. PPE […]
Land Warrior programme The US Army’s Land Warrior programme was in development for some 33 years. The idea behind it is that better informed soldiers who are connected to support assets can do more with less and survive. Chris Capelluto put together a good accessible history of the programme. Burning chrome About a decade after […]
Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, legal theorist and political theorist. The common narrative around him is that he came up with the legal principles that justified most of Nazi Germany’s greatest excesses. His work has also been used to justify the Xi-era legal system in China with legal thinking leaning heavily on […]
My Ford Fiesta driving experience The Ford Fiesta will be forever linked to my early driving experience. I started learning to drive in the 1990s. Back then leasing agreements and car finance weren’t really a thing due to high interest rates. (There is a whole other blog post that I should write at some point […]
State capitalism State capitalism has been created in various forms in China since opening up. Some of the new forms have aspects that impacts the relative attractiveness of doing business in or with Chinese companies. Opening up Historically since opening up China has been a mixed market model. There were small private businesses including many […]