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.
AT and T True Experience sprang out of the the mid-1990s. At that time AT&T was thinking about how they could own the customer as the internet superhighway became a reality.
David Hoffman
David Hoffman worked on promotional videos for AT&T at the time including a video showing a service based on General Magic internet appliances for business, personal use and telecommuting.
AT and T True Experience outlined in this video looked to be:
Customers relationship with the nascent web would be mediated through AT&T
AT&T also wanted to build an e-commerce shopping mall similar to what AOL later set up
AT and T True Experience went on to join similar services like Apple’s eWorld, CompuServe and AOL in irelevance as the first generation walled gardens fell away.
The tech ‘nepo babies’ are coming | Financial Times – SEC research found that seven or more years after listing, companies with perpetual dual-class shares underperformed. Still, founders continue to push for them
Refreshing our approach? Updating the Integrated Review – Foreign Affairs Committee – China ‘a significant threat to the UK on many different levels’ and dependency should be curbed, MPs warn. While supporting a potentially risky shift in using stronger language towards the economic and military giant, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) argues it must be backed up by action rather than “empty rhetoric”.
COMAC’s challenge to Airbus and Boeing and the perils of forced technology transfer.
Wall Street Journal on how financial companies are now buying up YouTuber back catalogue content in the same way that they have previously bought up music back catalogues
The buzz in part of our office about Midjourney has subsided to be replaced by buzz about ChatGPT, rather than Christmas. ChatGPT is is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text. ChatGPT was considered to be a superior example of a chatbot down to the power of machine learning used in creating the content.
I was curious about how good ChatGPT actually was given the following commentary from The Verge:
The primary problem is that while the answers which ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good and the answers are very easy to produce
Vincent, J. (2 December, 2022) AI-generated answers temporarily banned on coding Q&A site Stack Overflow | The Verge
The Verge article was interesting. Most of the places where chatbots might be needed: providing customer services, regulated industries like finance would suffer from confident, but incorrect answers being provided to customers.
Secondly, media outlets decided that ChatGPT was a potential Google challenger, with outlets like CNBC comparing the two and equity analysts at Morgan Stanley feeling the need to come out and say that ChatGPT was not likely to replace Google.
https://flic.kr/p/2o6a6PD
Sample of conversation
Google’s innovators dilemma
What became quickly apparent Google’s narrative about being an innovator full stop, has been threatened by ChatGPT. Google as an incumbent is now stymied by Clayton Christiansen’s Innovator’s Dilemma. Google is no longer cool, its conversation related products are seen to be behind the curve and the company is seen as being too big to out-innovate itself easily.
So what’s ChatGPT like to use?
I have shared a picture of some of the better responses I had from the service. I started off with a certain amount of ambition. I asked it about who it felt might win the current war in Ukraine. I found that the training set of data used to power it was finished in 2021. This was obviously done to filter out the worst of the internet from the content, getting around rather than solving problems that previous chatbots have suffered from like Microsoft’s Tay project.
Eventually I managed to get on to safer ground for ChatGPT. It answered questions about what an AI winter was, whether fuzzy logic is a form of artificial intelligence (it is), whether Baye’s Theorem was a form of AI (it isn’t per se, but it is employed to solve some AI problems there similar to the kind of uncertainty challenges fuzzy logic solves.
ChatGPT said that AI (like Bayes Theorem) could be used to provide a solution to buffer bloat – which massively increases the latency on data networks.
I found out quantum computers could make an optimised AI more power efficient and the business expert systems popularised in large companies during the 1980s and 1990s were analogous to modern day AI systems.
It reminded me a lot of content I had read on Summly, the mobile news app that mashed up an AI service API with news sources to summarise articles. This start-up was bought by Yahoo! a decade ago.
In this respect, I do wonder whether ChatGPT is truly the quantum leap forward that many seem to think, or is it merely a reminder of how well understood technology can be applied in different ways?
Can India build a military strong enough to deter China? | Financial Times – I think that this is down to the lead China has in manufacturing capability and innovation as much as anything else. There is a substantial risk that India could lose many of its northern provinces in theory. In theory being the operative phrase here. Ukraine has show what’s possible with people fighting for their homes. It makes more sense for India to think about assymmetric and grey zone tactics at scale to bleed China’s financial and human lifeblood. From hacking well in advance of a conflict, to militias trained and equipped for guerrilla actions allowing for attack in depth once China crosses the threshold.
China boosts military aid to Africa as concerns over Russia grow – Nikkei Asia – China has kept its forces from direct engagement in crises in Africa as part of its noninterference policy, it has also taken an increasingly high profile in United Nations peacekeeping missions. It has sent more than 1,000 troops, police and specialists to oil-rich South Sudan, for example. “When Chinese interests were threatened by insurgencies in Nigeria, China issued a statement, as it still lacks the military commitment. This can, however, change in the future,” Ali said. Experts say China is more focused on economic and national security interests than on peacebuilding. Beijing prefers strategies centered on development that help to alleviate poverty and provide stable governance, but do not necessarily advance protection of individual rights and free markets. But this growth-first attitude may be counterproductive over the long term. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, China has a very close relationship with the government, but attacks in the resource-rich east of the country by a number of rebel groups pose threats to its mining interests. “Insurgencies happen as the product of social exclusion,” Nte said. “There must be a stable political climate to address economic degradation caused by the wrong policies.”
UK economy rebounds by more than expected in October | Financial Times – the second largest contributor to growth in October was performance of the health sector in administration of vaccine boosters and flu shots, the biggest sector was construction. But construction has started to slow since then with sites halting work in November
How Putin’s technocrats saved the economy to fight a war they opposed | Financial Times – tough moral questions to be asked. However, Central Bank governor Nabiullina’s moral calculus reminds me a good deal of convicted German war criminal Albert Speer, in particular the “Speer Myth”: the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionising the German war machine. The close alliance with Iran should allow both countries to pool expertise in sanctions busting.
Meanwhile air travel is going great guns according to airlines like Lufthansa who are bringing back their Airbus A380 jumbo jet airliners.
Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai’s sentence casts chill over relaunch, analysts say — Radio Free Asia – “If you can’t say anything anyway, then you might as well locate [your office] in mainland China,” Chow said. “Using Hong Kong as a jumping-off point to the mainland is a waste of money, because rents are much more expensive than in mainland China.” – there is also the tax aspect (expats pay much more tax in Mainland China) and a transferrable currency, but otherwise the point is pretty valid
A Vibe Shift Is Coming. Will Any of Us Survive It? – In the culture, sometimes things change, and a once-dominant social wavelength starts to feel dated. Monahan, who is 35, breaks down the three vibe shifts he has survived and observed: Hipster/Indie Music (ca. 2003–9), or peak Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, high-waisted Cheap Mondays, Williamsburg, bespoke-cocktail bars; Post-Internet/Techno Revival (ca. 2010–16), or the Blood Orange era, normcore, dressing like The Matrix, Kinfolk the club, not Kinfolk the magazine; and Hypebeast/Woke (ca. 2016–20), or Drake at his Drakest, the Nike SNKRS app, sneaker flipping, virtue signaling, Donald Trump, protests not brunch
Amazon’s heroic phase is over | Amazon Chronicles – My first theory is that capitalism doesn’t stop evolving. The evolution of the microprocessor, digital computing, the internet, the personal computer, the World Wide Web, and the tech giants that have emerged in their wake are all transforming capitalism as we experience it and the culture produced by it in ways we don’t even fully understand. These are the biggest companies in the world and the ones with the greatest impact on how we think, work, shop, and communicate. You can’t understand capitalism in the twenty-first century without understanding how technology is changing it. I think this theory is pretty uncontroversial. It’s certainly not new. My second theory is that the arc of capitalism traced by Marx and Lukács and others writing in their tradition can also be retraced on a smaller scale. Like those early modern bourgeoisie, big tech has moved from its initial chaotic and subterranean strivings, to a heroic universalist phase where it championed political and economic liberation. Now these companies are consolidating their dominance by reducing or eliminating their workforce, shifting away from consumer goods, and brokering compromises with state power.
IEDM: DTCO & More than Moore – by Doug O’Laughlin – The future is about Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO), and Backside Power Deliever Networks (BSPDN) is a huge part of the roadmaps forward post-gate-all-around. A good place to start on what exactly Backside Power Delivery Networks (BSPDN) is is my post I wrote a few months ago about the bold bets Intel is making there. The big takeaway is that BSPDN is clearly going to be inserted in the design processes, and there is a small roadmap of improvements afforded by BSPDN. But after that, BSPDN will change the design process to allow adding more features, like moving functions on to the backside of the chip. By splitting the signal and power layers, there’s a whole new set of ideas of how to design chips with the space afforded from the power layers. This is Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO) and System Technology Co-optimization (STCO) at it’s best. BSPDN looks like it has several years of obvious scaling potential, so it will be a huge part of the incremental semiconductor process from here until 2030. It will not only improve the energy delivered to the chip, but actually shrink the cell size. Think about it like a new way to organize the room, and now we can fit more in less even though its the same room filled with the same objects. Next, the roadmap in the long term after we have fully achieved backside power contact networks means we could open up the wafer on the other side of the chip. If we are opening up the other side to be a functional signal layer, there’s a potential we can start adding backside devices to the chip! This blew my mind, and the options for stacking layer, memory, and other devices (like energy capacitors) is endless! This is huge! – BSPDN is a key part of Intel’s technology roadmap. BSPDN is a mix of process lithography and logic technology to decouple the power grid from the design.
The proposed technique delivers power from the backside of a thinned device wafer, which allows for greater wafer sizes in terms of the amount of logic in a chip
Business
Jeep-Maker Stellantis Is Laying Off 1,350 Workers, Blaming EVs | Business Insider – interesting and complex picture being painted. In general, electric cars have less parts for assembly than their internal combustion engine powered equivalent cars. The costs must be coming in component costs and or research and development
China
Fashion factory: Mango brings production closer to home in rethink on China | Financial Times – “In this debate about whether 30 years of globalisation will continue or go backwards, the most important thing for us to follow in detail is the China issue,” he said. Asked if Mango would reduce the proportion it buys from the country, Ruiz replied: “I would say yes, but we’ll be very alert to how things evolve.” Mango gains some freedom from the fact it has only six stores in mainland China and consumers there contribute little to total sales, which it predicts will this year surpass its 2019 record of €2.4bn. Other brands have already moved more decisively. The US jeans maker Levi’s and UK bootmaker Dr Martens have been reducing their sourcing from China since before the pandemic.
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 Medpro was one of the companies who benefited from £10 billion squandered on these PPE purchases.
https://flic.kr/p/4TtSuS
Michelle Mone with former Spice Girls singer Mel B
PPE Medpro got contracts through the VIP programme after a Michelle Mone, a member of the House of Lords lobbied on their behalf. Mone had previously set up a successful clothing brand with her first husband, then moved into diet pills, fake tanning products and even an aborted cryptocurrency launch.
In return PPE Medpro is alleged to have paid Mone £29 million, the subsequent investigation led HSBC to freeze her bank accounts.
China
China risks 1mn Covid deaths in ‘winter wave’, modelling shows | Financial Times – China is easing restrictions after the Chinese COVID protests. 1 million is on the low end of numbers I have heard quoted. However, it is also politically evocative. The Chinese people have been constantly reminded that 1 million people lost their lives to COVID in the United States and the communist party ensured that just 5,000 people have died in their country.
Germany confronts a broken business model | Financial Times – Chief executive Martin Brudermüller announced that BASF would downsize in Europe “as quickly as possible, and also permanently”. Most of the cuts are expected to be made at the Ludwigshafen site. BASF is not alone. Since the summer, companies across Germany have been scrambling to adjust to the near disappearance of Russian gas. They have dimmed the lights, switched to oil — and, as a last resort cut production. Some are even thinking about moving operations to countries where energy is cheaper. That is triggering deep concern about the future of German industry and the sustainability of the country’s business model, which has long been predicated on the cheap energy guaranteed by a plentiful supply of Russian gas. Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution, has said Germany is a case study of a western state that made a “strategic bet” on globalisation and interdependence – based on this experience why would you want to ‘bet’ on China or any other authoritarian country? Once the basic industries like BASF go, the higher end industries will follow
Auction sales slide in Hong Kong | Financial Times – Six-monthly auction sales in Hong Kong have had their worst results since 2018, with this season marking the third consecutive drop, according to ArtTactic. Its analysis finds that the October-to-December evening sales made a total of HK$1.7bn ($220mn, before fees), a fall of 34 per cent since the equivalent sales last year and more than 50 per cent down from their peak in spring 2021 – this is interesting given how much has been invested in the past couple of years by the major auction houses into Hong Kong
How Do Korea’s 1% Get Rich? – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition) – The wealthy prefer deposit and savings accounts as the best short-term investments over the next year now that interest rates are high. But they pointed to real estate, both to let and for use as their own homes, as the best investment over the longer term. Their hopes for gold and jewelry or bonds also increased.
Being a creator and relying on YouTube ad revenue sounds like rather like being a musician and relying on Spotify. For reference £1 is worth about ₩1611 at the time of writing, which means they make less than £50/month. This anecdotal evidence fits right in with an analysis piece in the FT – The Lex Newsletter: the cratering creator economy | Financial Times
Chinese COVID protests have been held in major cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing and Chengdu. Why did the Chinese COVID protests happened and what does it mean?
https://flic.kr/p/7x7uBN
One panel of a SARS triptych that I photographed back in 2010 at a Chinese Communist Party exhibition at the Guan Shanyue Art Museum in Shenzhen, China.
TL;DR (too long, didn’t read)
The Chinese COVID protests aren’t comparable to events like the 1989 protests or Hong Kong in 2019.
https://flic.kr/p/2goLRKP
The Third Hong Kong’s anti-extradition law protest 第三次反送中遊行
Secondly, there are clear parallels for behaviours in other markets. However, when viewed through the lens of Chinese communist party, the restlessness of their population will further feel their paranoia. Part of this paranoia will be down them knowing that they the current administration has let down the population in a long-standing promise on epidemics, initially made by Mao Zedong.
This betrayal of the people may be emblematic of deep-rooted flaws in the senior party leadership team. To paraphrase Sir James Porter; a party rots from the head down.
Why did it happen?
After a shaky start, that mirrored the early Chinese government response to SARS[i]. China managed its first wave COVID-19 experience successfully using lockdowns to control the spread of the virus. It pursued what was called a Zero COVID policy. They managed to keep the virus largely contained in Wuhan and the local province of Hubei. By the summer the government held it largely under control.[ii]
There was Chinese government censorship internally[iii] and misinformation[iv] externally[v]. By the summer of 2020, COVID was largely under control within China. By August 2020, Wuhan was able to host a giant pool party of unmasked attendees dancing along to a DJ playing EDM, like it was Ibiza on the Yangtze.
China managed to hold COVID down through strict lockdowns through 2021. But by the spring of 2022, there was an infection peak again and further lockdowns have ensued.
Over time, China has attempted to be more granular in its approach to lockdowns over time and called this ‘dynamic zero COVID’. However, lockdowns themselves have implicit risks[vi], for instance research found that a rise in depression and anxiety could see a rise of premature death of 134%[vii]. Research has shown that these factors are particularly acute in medical staff involved in treating COVID-19[viii]. Chinese companies and the government tried to address mental health through digital channels, these responses outstripped existing regulations[ix].
The pressure of COVID lockdowns together with mistakes seems to have produced an environment for the protests to grow.
The BBC coverage paraphrased some of the protestors that they interviewed talking about feeling angry, sad, helpless – in a state of purgatory[x]. One can understand the sense of frustration portrayed and the likelihood of how this can lead to protest in those desperate enough.
Vaccinations with Chinese socialist characteristics
As of July 2022, China had apparently given out over 3 billion vaccines, or enough to have vaccinated the population at least twice and then some[xi]. But the vaccination rate amongst the elderly was significantly lower than other comparable countries by 2022[xii]. This has meant that China is worried about a massive amount of COVID fatalities occurring, if it altered course.
The lower vaccination rates were attributed to a number of factors including misinformation on social media influencing elderly Chinese to self-quarantine instead. Secondly, immune-compromised people in China were sometimes advised by doctors to not take the vaccine. And the Chinese government chose to vaccinate younger working age people first, as they were more likely to come in contact with the virus[xiii].
What happened to drive the Chinese COVID protests?
A series of insights into the world outside China from Xi Jinping at the G20[xiv] to the World Cup Finals in Qatar showed life going on without face masks[xv]. So Chinese COVID protestors would have a good idea that COVID outside China is much less restrictive in nature. This is the reverse of the reaction that happened during the Wuhan pool party, which fuelled debate and more than a bit of envy in some westerners.
Inciting incidents
Then a succession of horrific mistakes by the Chinese government and big business fuelled consumer frustration and anger in the months leading up to the protest:
A bus transporting people to a quarantine facility in Guizhou province killed 27 people and injured another 20[xvi].
Foxconn delayed bonus payments[xvii] to workers locked down on their factory and provided insufficient food for the quarantined workers[xviii]
An apartment block fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang caught fire[xix]. The fire was covered on state television. The ten deaths that occurred were blamed by protestors on COVID lockdown conditions. I want to add that this doesn’t mean that Han Chinese have put aside long-standing prejudice and suddenly feel brotherly solidarity with Uighur citizen[xx]; but they could see the same thing happening to themselves if they got caught in a lockdown. This distinction is important as Han-Uighur solidarity would represent many bigger problems for the Chinese government
The common thread amongst all the inciting events is that Chinese protestors could easily see themselves in the place of victims of these disasters. You can combine this with frustration and a perfect storm for the Chinese COVID protests in major cities. Western coverage has given some weight to those voices who shouted for Xi Jinping to resign[xxi], this doesn’t signify a colour revolution in motion. Instead, these are likely more a measure of frustration with COVID restrictions. But they could be personally and politically embarrassing for Xi Jinping and reinforce existing internal Chinese communist party fears.
Government response to Chinese COVID protests
The communist party looked to censor online channels of the protests[xxii], but netizens kept reposting the content. Since China has a real ID policy for mobile phone numbers and digital accounts these posters knew the risk of being traced by the security apparatus.
Government influenced media and online personalities promoted a narrative that the protests had been instigated by external influence. This immediate leap to speculate on foreign influence is in keeping with Xi Jinping’s vision of constant vigilance and paranoia on internal national security.
The allegations of foreign influence were used to mobilise patriots[xxiii] to try and intimidate foreign journalists during previous crisis, but failed to achieve the same goal this time.
This narrative was anticipated and ridiculed by the protagonists in the Chinese COVID protests[xxiv].
Which foreign forces do you talk about? Karl Marx or Friedrick Engels?
Attributed to a protestor in Beijing
A heavy police presence managed to restrict protestors gathering on subsequent evenings[xxv]. University students have been sent home early from the end of the semester, to prevent further student activism on campus[xxvi]. Chinese authorities immediately set out to track down those who participated in, or supported the protests.
But in Guangzhou, the heavier police presence resulted in a violent clash with protestors. The scene has a ridiculous aspect to it with riot police wearing Tyvek bunny suits to protect themselves against COVID infection[xxvii].
Quiet moves
Some cities in China like Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have started to ease off from their COVID testing regime in the face of Chinese COVID protests; yet the infection numbers are reaching record rates in the country[xxviii].
China is justifying this, by claiming that Omicron infections were less likely to result in death. Scientific experts disagree[xxix] and point to Hong Kong’s COVID-19 wave during the spring[xxx] as an indicator of what we’re likely to expect in China.
What’s less apparent is how China will improve vaccination rates. China’s inability to force older citizens to vaccinate belies the countries authoritarian nature.
This inability to vaccinate is particularly curious, as it chips away at the Chinese communist party’s legitimacy. It is over 64 years since the founder of modern China Mao Zedong wrote ‘Farewell to the God of Plagues’[xxxi], yet the party under Xi Jinping is still struggling to vanquish COVID-19 after almost three years.
While western media speculates about the reasons why China won’t use more effective foreign vaccines[xxxii], I find the inability to vaccinate the elderly a bigger mystery.
China engaged in foreign interference, by attempting to spam foreign social media platforms to try and crowd out and conceal genuine posts covering the Chinese COVID protests[xxxiii].
What can we learn from other countries experiences with regards the Chinese COVID protests?
China managed to avoid the number of deaths that occurred in other countries so far as we know through lockdowns, quarantine and controlled access to public spaces based on regular testing.
But it isn’t the only country to experience a youth-based resistance to COVID lockdown style restrictions. Kings College London conducted research throughout the COVID pandemic.
As locked down was eased they found that about 24 percent of the population were likely to think that the restrictions should be lifted faster and saw the risks of COVID-19 as being lower than the rest of the population[xxxiv]. During lockdown King’s College London research identified a group called ‘the resisting’[xxxv].
The resisting were about 9 percent of the population. They skewed young and male with a mean age of 29. They were outliers in terms of belief in rumours and have a high usage on social media usage.
A hypothetical Chinese technocrat looking for comfort in these numbers would see a silent majority that is compliant or supportive of COVID prevention measures and that the Chinese COVID protests were done by a young minority. This would also mirror the experience during the 2002 – 2003 SARS outbreak, when people in Zhejiang province protested over the inability of the Chinese government to control the epidemic[xxxvi].
Toronto editions of Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily and Taiwan’s World Journal from June 5-7, 1989. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan enjoyed Western-style freedom including freedom of the press, which explains why such newspaper records exist. In China, the event of June 4 1989 is not mentioned anywhere.
The headlines read:
“Bodies pile up in Beijing Massacre. A Hudred Thousand Dead or Wounded” ***
“Fierce fighting continues in Beijing’s east side, troops leave Tiananmen Square”
“U.S., Soviet Union, other countries evacuate their citizens from Beijing”
*** Because of the news blockade and dangerous conditions in Beijing, the very first reports initially said as many as 100,000 were killed or wounded, this was later corrected to as many as 20,000. The most credible estimates suggest between 2,000 and 8,000 casualties.
They would be slightly more alarmed by the calls for Xi Jinping to stand down, and the fact that protestors weren’t just from the middle-class student body but also involved worker protests as well[xxxvii]. However, one could argue that this is a coincidence rather than the cross-class unity[xxxviii] that underpinned a succession of protests across China in 1989[xxxix] culminating in the June 4 massacre.
