Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).
Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.
Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.
Walmart has built over 100 Walmart store of the future designs. Some of the elements seek emulate the best bits of Target with seasonal low priced items close to the door and a more experiential approach to merchandising.
Mike Mozart
Some of the other changes in the Walmart store of the future include QRcodes on signage and a Walmart smartphone app for self-checkout show a blending of real world and digital, or as we like to call it here, the web of no web.
CIA director William Burns
CIA William Burns gave this wide ranging talk in February 2023. It seems apropos to share it here. Burns was involved in the Middle East before and through much of GWoT (global war on terror). Burns commentary on the Middle East at the time is very much worthwhile about thinking about now. Burns’ book The Back Channel was frank about his failings as well as successes when it was published back in 2021.
Burns handled the Ukraine conflict particularly well in the early stages. His comments on Israel and Palestine look particularly prophetic now, even though western intelligence agencies were shocked by what happened on October 7, 2023.
I’m sorry to be so uplifting today about the international landscape, and I also have to say that, you know, in the conversations I had with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, you know, I think it left me quite concerned about the prospects for even greater fragility and even greater violence between Israelis and Palestinians as well. You know, I was, as Barbara mentioned, a senior U.S. Diplomat 20 years ago during the Second Intifada, and I’m concerned, as are my colleagues in the intelligence community, the lot of what we’re seeing today has a very unhappy resemblance to some of those realities that we saw then too.
William J Burns
Operation Shady RAT
How an experimental honey pot simulating computerised industrial systems reveal the long term hacking programme done by APT 1 for the Chinese government. The RAT in question was a ‘remote access trojan’ piece of malware.
Irish radio broadcasting
RTÉ, the Irish public broadcaster started broadcasting radio programmes in 1926. At the time it was called 2RN, it became by Radio Athlone, which was eventually called Radio Éireann in 1938. The ‘T’ came in after to the first television broadcasts in 1961.
RTÉ was central to my identity as an Irishman spending a good deal of my childhood in Britain – my culture, language and literature came through the speakers. The programmes now conveyed online offer my parents an information lifeline to everything happening at home since the long wave and medium wave radio services were shut down. This documentary from 2001 reflects one the first 75 years of Irish radio broadcasting.
Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott: The Canceling of the American Mind
Talk at the Churchill Club of California about their book The Cancelling of the American Mind. It is interesting hear Rikki Schlott reference The Coddling of The American Mind, which Lukianoff co-wrote with Jonathan Haidt. In Cancelling the authors look to document some of the failings in how cancel culture works on campus and in the workplace. It is much more of a partisan work than Coddling, mainly because it driven by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The comparison to the red scare of the 1950s are interesting.
China’s rule is described by the German government as guided by ideology. Germany has pulled away from its historic strategy due to China’s approach being guided by ideology. The classification of systemic rival due to China’s guided by ideology approach sets the German government against pro-China businesses including BASF, Daimler-Benz, Deutsche Telekom and Volkswagen Group.
Chinese acquisitions of German specialist companies have been guided by ideology as much as business benefit. Germany let go critical companies like Kuka – the robotics specialist to specialist construction equipment.
Sentiment in the Mittelstand industrial base of Germany has turned negative as China’s rule became increasingly guided by ideology.
Apple discriminated against US citizens in hiring, DOJ says | Ars Technica – investigation “found that Apple engaged in a pattern or practice of citizenship status discrimination in recruitment for positions it hired through PERM, and that the company’s unlawful discrimination prejudiced US citizens, US nationals, lawful permanent residents, and those granted asylum or refugee status. These less effective recruitment practices deterred protected workers from applying to positions that Apple preferred to fill instead with PERM beneficiaries.” Apple did not advertise PERM positions on its external job website like it does with other positions, the DOJ said. “It also required all PERM position applicants to mail paper applications, even though the company permitted electronic applications for other positions,” the DOJ said. – Bob Cringely had been talking about similar antics at IBM for years. I expect that you will see this across the technology sector
Alstom: the French train giant battling to stay on the rails – “If Alstom had a problem, the whole of France would find itself pretty stuck,” given the company supplies most of the country’s trains and metros, said an executive at a rival manufacturer. “It can pose a major industrial risk.”
Klick Wire | Telehealth top app type for 45+ – it all comes down to how you define telehealth and how app versus ‘system’ usage is measured. I would imagine alarm and SMS / messaging would still rank very high
Hong Kong
Hong Kong man wanted over fatal hold-up shooting arrested after 32 years on the run | South China Morning Post – its like a vintage Chow Yun Fat film, but in real life. In the years running up to recolonisation there were a lot of armed robbers perpetrated by mainlanders who would come in do the job and return. These jobs often used AK pattern weapons, apparently from China but just as likely left over from the wars that ravaged South East Asia
How Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas | FT – before Hamas launched its October 7 attack, Avi Issacharoff, co-creator of Israel’s hit television thriller Fauda, rejected a possible plotline for one episode in which Hamas fighters stormed the border fence and attacked Israel, deeming it too implausible. Israel’s security services apparently thought the same.
Old money style has been a pre-occupation behind the recent fascination with quiet luxury a la Zegna and Loro Piana.
Loro Piana advertising
The fascination with old money style isn’t new. Streetwear brands and hip-hop culture borrowed from preppy style over the years. Brands like Stüssy, A Bathing Ape, Phat Farm and Sean Jean had pieces that aped preppiness – a second old money style. Prior to Phat Farm, Ralph Lauren had trodden the same path and it inspired ‘Dad style’ in Japan.
Barbour jackets moved off the grouse moors and on to the backs of yuppies in the 1980s and 1990s UK – an urban preoccupation that is still maintained today.
Normcore is the practice of wearing great fashion basics that aren’t heavily branded. More related content can be found here and here.
Harry Farrell and Abraham Newman on the weaponisation of the global financial and trade system highlighted in their book Underground Empire. If I had one criticism it would be viewing this purely as an American trait. A classic example would be Chinese policies (cyber-sovereignty, shadow trade sanctions, coerced technology transfer), Russian food terrorism or EU sanctions on Russia.
Bill Gates feels Generative AI has plateaued, says GPT-5 will not be any better | Technology News – The Indian Express – Gates also predicted that in the next two to five years, the accuracy of AI software will witness a considerable increase along with a reduction in cost. This will lead to the creation of new and reliable applications. Interestingly, he also said that he anticipates a stagnation in development initially. The billionaire said that, with GPT-4, the company has reached a limit, and he does not feel that GPT-5 will be better than its predecessor.
I started thinking about Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption when I read this article: Canon looks to nanoimprint tech for 2nm lithography | EE News Europe. Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption looked on the horizon with the announcement of its nano imprint technology. Nano imprint approach is something that has been explored for a a couple of decades, but had so far been rejected due to challenges of implementation.
Future Ventures on Moore’s Law
Canon now claims that they have it ready for production on middle edge processes with a potential address current leading edge processes. Canon has stuck with nano imprint as a development approach because it is adjacent to Canon’s core technology expertise in inkjet printing.
Canon semiconductor disruption depends on whether it can change the technology roadmaps of memory chip makers and other fabs. This is going to be unlikely, but Canon semiconductor manufacturing disruption could disrupt the outlook for other vendors, notably Dutch equipment maker ASML.
Canon semiconductor disruption seems to be part of a wider movement to rethink how semiconductors and adjacent products are manufactured to better facilitate further scaling at reduced capital costs, but few if any will be successful: Dracula plans Europe’s largest OPV plant with inkjet printing | EE News Europe
A New Age Of Genderless Brands? – Branding Strategy Insider – Mikimoto pearls managing to attract men. I see this as an extension of century’s old ‘dandy’ culture from the pearly kings and queens, to 1970s African American style in Detroit and some of Dapper Dan’s work that looked to come up with ostentatious looks.
Chinese Bloggers Might Soon Be Required to Display Their Real Names on Social Media Platforms – the government already knows who they are, this seems to be an effort to expose them more to the general public – which can be volatile and vindictive. And so, this is likely to be an effort to use crowd pressure to reduce divergent or innovative opinions, so the party becomes the originator.
Amazon is thinking about quantumcomputing | Patent Drop – Amazon’s tech essentially acts as a middleman between a quantum computer and the user interface. First, a user makes a request with this service through an “edge computing device” — their own device that isn’t connected to the quantum computer itself. Then the system will “automatically translate the quantum task, quantum algorithm, or quantum circuit” into a representation that a quantum computer can understand. This system will then pick the right quantum computer for a certain job, and work with it on the back end to complete the request
Western fast fashion brands have managed to spread around the world, despite concerns over working conditions, product quality and impact on the environment. But things have gone into reverse for western fashion brands in China. Just over a decade ago saw China as a potential growth market. But over the past five years things have gone badly for them.
Looking at western fast fashion brand H&M’s presence in China, there has been a consistent decline since a 2017 peak of 507 stores in China.
Data via Daxue Consulting and South China Morning Post
The reasons cited by Chinese consumers online include:
Western fast fashion brands aren’t cut / styled for ‘Asian body types’. This sounds like a need for extended sizing
Local trends: the clothing doesn’t fit with local trends in design in the same way that local rivals can. Brands to keep an eye out for include Urban Revivo and JNBY
Other foreign brands meet the needs of young Chinese consumers better. These include Brandy Melville, and its “Malibu beach babe” look, while Chuu, is a Korean brand with K-pop aesthetics
Dentsu warns brands over tech ‘battling’ to increase ad revenue – The Media Leader – Global media buyer Dentsu’s forward-looking report said there had been an “explosion of the ad-supported segment” and that next year will see “an intensification of competition between ad platforms” with more lookalike apps, data partnership possibilities, premium subscriptions and a further proliferation of advertising formats and offerings. “Brands will have to balance these opportunities with risks to alienate audiences”, the report said. Especially given the fact digital adspend is forecast to hit $450.6bn in 2024, but its year-on-year growth is slowing to 6.2%. This means tech platforms are “battling” to increase their advertising revenue by launching new formats and carrying more placements. Some examples the report highlighted included: developments in adoption of search advertising on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the rise of retail media on commerce sites, ticketing platforms and delivery apps, forecasted “spectacular growth” in advertising on connected TV (CTV), advertising video on-demand players launching new formats like YouTube’s unskippable 30-second ads, and major streaming players (and Amazon’s Audible) trialling or launching ad-supported plans
Gulnara Karimova Accused of Running Criminal Organization in New Swiss Indictment – The Diplomat – Swiss federal prosecutors filed an indictment against Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov, and an unnamed former general director of the Uzbek subsidiary of a Russian telecommunications company for alleged involvement in a criminal organization, money laundering, bribe taking, and forgery. The charges extend over a period of time running from 2005 to 2013 and mark the latest expansion and extension of criminal proceedings against Karimova and her associates. Karimova, once envisioned as a possible successor to her father, lived large and fell hard.
Power drives SK Telecom to AI pyramid strategy | EE News Europe – The AI Infrastructure plan consists of data centre, AI semiconductor, and multiple large language models (LLM) will serve as a technology platform. This will introduce energy-saving technologies including immersion cooling system and hydrogen fuel cells, and expand into the AI hosting business that generates higher margins by bundling these energy-saving solutions with Sapeon’s neural processing unit (NPU) and SK Hynix’s high bandwidth memory (HBM). – I am surprised that we haven’t seen similar ventures from Oracle, IBM and Fujitsu so far
