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.
Signal has become a popular messaging clients among my contacts for privacy orientated messaging. I’ve shared this guide a number of times, so I thought I would share it here. More on Signal messaging here. I use Signal on my phone and my desktop computer, both of which are an integrated experience.
Innovation
FISCAL YEAR 2020 a great report by the UD Department of Defence – a U.S. business climate that has favored short-term shareholder earnings (versus long- term capital investment), deindustrialization, and an abstract, radical vision of “free trade,” without fair trade enforcement, have severely damaged America’s ability to arm itself today and in the future. Our national responses – off-shoring and out-sourcing – have been inadequate and ultimately self-defeating – punchy, but I don’t see much attention being paid to it (PDF)
Quad’ nations sign up for meta think-tank to advance ‘Techno-Democratic Statecraft’ • The Register – Universities and think tanks from Australia, the USA, Japan, and India have come together in a new group that together hopes to advance discussions on the intersection of information technology, regional security, and internet freedom. Dubbed the “Quad Tech Network”, the group is managed by the National Security College at The Australian National University, an organisation backed by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
China Blocks Clubhouse App After Brief Flowering of Debate – The New York Times – At times, the conversation went off the rails, as when one man who identified as Taiwanese chimed in to curse out mainland Chinese people, before quickly signing off. But for the most part, users said that the app’s use of moderators and real-time voice sharing promoted a civility and intimacy lacking on other popular social media platforms like Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. – interesting given its reputation for racism and sexism
PRWeek poll: A third of PR businesses predict Brexit revenue hit | PR Week – “First, whereas previously the UK would always be the gateway for new entrants to the European market, we’re now seeing Germany emerge on par as the primary entry point. Historically, Germany would almost always be the secondary priority after the UK, then followed by France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. “Second, we’ve seen clients proactively ask to have multinational teams lead their account in Europe, as opposed to the traditional approach of having a UK-led European approach. In our mind, this is because the UK no longer has the same authority to lead. “This is one of the softer impacts of Brexit in terms of the UK’s perceived influence and leadership in the region.” Mark Pinsent, managing director of The Hoffman Agency Europe, has also noticed a trend for UK-based clients to “explicitly tell us that they’re keen to be positioned as European companies rather than UK”. “That can be tricky if they’re headquartered in the UK [or] don’t have a significant presence on mainland Europe,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see whether, over time, the UK becomes less of a priority market for international businesses looking to market in Europe… certainly for UK-founded start-ups, I could see it accelerating their need to have EU-based businesses.” – the psychology of the UK’s diminished image is fascinating
New Balance wins $3.9m in damages from China logo copycats | Financial Times – The two defendants, Fujian-based footwear maker New Barlun and its distributor Shanghai Shiyi Trade, have expanded quickly in China’s smaller cities and sold knock off shoes at below half the price of New Balance. – Damages are still pretty low, only 2.5m pounds or so
I haven’t driven a BMW in well over 20 years, so Doug DeMuro’ update on the BMW brand was fascinating.
BMW Twitter account
The BMW brand issue hadn’t been on my radar until Doug DeMuro talked about it. A number of things seem to be happening with BMW.
The company’s customer base is predominantly gen-x and baby boomers; because their cars are expensive. For decade these people have been told that the BMW brand represents the ultimate driving machine.
An important part of the visual BMW brand: the design language that it is implementing on is problematic. In particular the ugly ‘beaver teeth grill. This is ironic given that an electric car doesn’t need a grill for its engine.
It didn’t help things that from a certain angle the rear of the BMW iX has a resemblance to the Nissan Juke.
Nissan Juke 1.6 Advance 2017 by RLGNZLZ
It has at least an internal perception that it has lost its BMW brand mojo as there is a slow steady move away from the internal combustion engine.
If you look at other YouTube automotive channels, BMW seems to be having reliability issues with its current cars and the repairs are expensive to do. Back in the early 1970s the BMW brand was tarnished with negative perceptions about the cars being rust buckets and the company managed to lick that. The current engineering problems sound more complex.
All of this makes the BMW brand sound more difficult to fix than being on the socials and being up to date with their yoofspeak.
Canada concerned as Hong Kong starts to force dual citizens to choose status – The Globe and Mail – individuals who declare themselves Canadian could now lose their residency rights to live in Hong Kong.“It’s the beginning of the end for people in Hong Kong with Canadian status,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland. The policy on dual citizenship stems from a 1980 law in mainland China that was then applied to Hong Kong when the United Kingdom handed over the city to Beijing in 1997. “The law was on the books for years but it wasn’t always enforced,” Mr. Kurland said. – interesting move
The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy – Atlantic Council – single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping. China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. This is a dereliction of national responsibility – interesting read. Right on with its diagnostics, but off base with its proposed solution. The west thought that Xi was a moderate when he came into power. He has extended his loyalists in every aspect of the party. The Jiang Zemin faction of the party, which would be an alternative aren’t liberal; they used the army to put down student protests in 1989.
Commission chief tells charities not to be ‘captured’ for politics | Charities | The Guardian – Charities that support politically or culturally contentious causes should expect their charitable status to come under regulatory scrutiny even if they are acting within the law, according to the outgoing chair of the Charity Commission. The Tory peer Tina Stowell, who is stepping down after three years in the post, warned charities against being “captured” by unnamed people who wish to push a partial view of the world and use charity platforms to wage war on “political enemies”. – this is going to be interesting
Looking downstream – Tortoise – as a long time netizen I am less certain that regulating platforms for content will work and worry about the precedent it would set for authoritarian regimes. Should OTT platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime carry news? Here my first question is how do you define news? Should they do real time news reporting, probably not even if they could. Should they do current affairs analysis – they already do if you look at the kind of documentaries that they have. I think that there should be real questions about those documentaries in terms of quality and bias? While we’re on about documentary making, surely the BBC could be doing more work with Adam Curtis or Bellingcat and have those people training the documentary film makers of tomorrow
Liu Yifei Announced as Face of Louis Vuitton China | Radii China – LVMH betting on woke western liberals not being their customer base and choosing polarising star. It also shows how far Fan Bingbing’s star has fallen since her tax troubles. Crystal Liu was the protagonist in the car crash live action version of Mulan. She’s also not as beautiful as Fan Bingbing
How Europe Became a Model for the 21st Century – DER SPIEGEL – Despite its long list of crises in recent years – including the most recent vaccine snafu – the European Union has become a global pacesetter. Its laws and regulations have established global norms. This has made the bloc a 21st century model. – I agree with the direction of this article, even if some of the examples could be debated
Silicon Valley’s iron grip on venture capital is slipping — Quartz – the shift to smaller tech hubs that’s been going on for years is set to move even faster, according to Stanford. “The pandemic has thrust the VC ecosystem into new territory where Zoom meetings and alternative deal sourcing methods reign supreme,” he wrote in an analyst note. “This shift has, at least somewhat, leveled the playing field for investor attention…Over Zoom, it doesn’t matter if the company is in the same building, city, state, or country.” – no credit given for the dissipation technology start-ups to places like Singapore and Shenzhen. For instance, social darling Clubhouse is based on Chinese voice technology. But there’s also a bigger issue about the decline in hard innovation which is easier to do in a tight cluster. Since its no longer happening, the cluster makes less sense. More on innovation here.
Bases for Trust in a Supply Chain – Lawfare – With a supply chain attack, there is a potentially long delay between the introduction of a vulnerability and its exploitation. In addition, infiltrating a supplier generally requires a well-resourced adversary and interaction with that supplier. So compared to the alternatives, preparations for a supply chain attack take longer and have a higher risk of discovery. The risks of discovery can be reduced, however, if inserted vulnerabilities resemble ordinary flaws and, thus, the malicious intent is disguised. The digital systems on which individuals and nations increasingly depend are large and complex, so today they are likely to be rife with vulnerabilities. Many of those vulnerabilities will be known, some unpatched, and others easily discovered by analysis. In short, such systems are easy to compromise.
Russian hack brings changes, uncertainty to US court system – new rules for filing sensitive documents are one of the clearest ways the hack has affected the court system. But the full impact remains unknown. Hackers probably gained access to the vast trove of confidential information hidden in sealed documents, including trade secrets, espionage targets, whistleblower reports and arrest warrants. It could take years to learn what information was obtained and what hackers are doing with it – you can’t hack paper
Massive Brazilian Data Breach – Schneier on Security – some 220 million people affected in the Brazilian data breach. So it is one of the biggest data breaches to date. I do wonder why the Brazilian data breach has not a lot of coverage outside of Portuguese language media? More related content here.
Why Ericsson took on its own government to defend rival Huawei | Financial Times – China’s support of Huawei, through cheap funding and much else, is well known, and has led to a commercial advantage that Ericsson and Nokia can find hard to counter on their own. Will Europe, for which 5G is a rare technological sector where it enjoys a clear lead over the US, stand up for its homegrown talent?
Should Universities Try to Capture More Value from Their Research? – Knowledge@Wharton – university research has produced pathbreaking innovations across many disciplines, many of which have been commercialized successfully. Yet, on average, universities capture 16% of the value they help create through licensing revenues or equity stakes in the startups their research spawns. Furthermore, some researchers and universities are much better able to commercialize their discoveries compared to others, even holding constant the discovery itself
How China’s delivery apps are putting riders at risk | Financial Times – in legal disputes, a high level of management by the platform can be taken as evidence that it has a labour relationship with the driver. In 2018, a Shansong courier who had been injured while driving won a court ruling on this basis. One might place some of the responsibility on the engineers who maintain the apps. But they too are victims of labour exploitation, working the infamous “996” shift of 9am-9pm, six days a week. Like delivery drivers, they have decided such an occupation is, so far, their best option. But a country that prides itself on its tech innovation and its booming economy should be able to provide better choices
Collapse OS — Bootstrap post-collapse technology – a vision of dystopian technology that fits right in with William Gibson’s more recent views of the future with the Jackpot. A slow moving systemic collapse due to global warming, flooding, pollution, global conflict, terrorism and pandemics
The battle inside Signal – Platformer – Casey Newton has pulled together an interesting portrait of Signal and how its developing as its user base scales
Online retailers are playing a risky game with the UK high street | Financial Times – like Arcadia and countless rivals, Debenhams had underlying conditions stemming from over-enthusiastic cash extraction. CVC, Texas Pacific and Merrill Lynch acquired Debenhams in 2003 in a £1.8bn leveraged buyout that needed just £600m of equity. The trio then extracted more than £1bn via property sale and leaseback agreements and floated it again for almost the same price in 2006 – the Times makes a really good case with regards private equity excesses. Other examples outside the retail sector include TWA and Eircom
Jim Slater and the warning from the 1970s that we ignored – BBC News – a very brief piece in the BBC Online reflecting on the legacy of Slater Walker. The reality is that there needs to be a far deeper reflection on the effect of his asset stripping model had lighting a touch paper that led directly to deindustrialisation, populism and Brexit.
“Marketing is what you do when you have a sh#tty product.” – Christopher Lochhead – not particularly smart viewpoint, though great product and service design really helps marketing and helps reduce the amount that needs to be spent due to word of mouth. A second thought occurred to me, people with this mindset are building the entire martech stack….
Apple’s first VR headset will reportedly be powerful and pricey – CNET – its a rumour so take with a pinch of salt, the approach outlined reminded me of being rather similar the way Oculus was in their early model VR headset devices. It is also interesting how they consider a VR headset as a stepping stone to AR glasses. Will Apple be enough to mainstream the VR headset? More related content here.
Next drops bid to buy Topshop after Arcadia’s breakup | Philip Green | The Guardian – The Next consortium was pitted against Shein, a Chinese online fashion retailer and Authentic Brands, the US owner of the Barneys department store, which has been linked to a joint bid with JD Sports. The online retailers Asos and Boohoo are also thought to be involved in the mix. Shein tabled an offer worth in excess of £300m for Topshop and Topman, according to Sky News which first reported the development. It added that a separate process was being run for other Arcadia brands such as Burton and Dorothy Perkins
‘Absolute carnage’: EU hauliers reject UK jobs over Brexit rules | Brexit | The Guardian – data showed that an increasing number of freight groups rejected contracts to move goods from France to Britain in the second week of January. Transporeon, a German software company that works with 100,000 logistics service providers, said freight forwarders had rejected jobs to move goods from Germany, Italy and Poland into Britain. In the second week of January the rejection rate for transport to the UK was up 168% on the third quarter of 2020 and had doubled in the first calendar week of the year
Battle of the Robots Still Favors Japan and Europe—For Now – WSJ – Covid-19 has accelerated automation in factories, especially in manufacturing powerhouse China. Foreign companies have long dominated the market for industrial robots and automation tools there—but there are signs that dominance is fraying around the edges. As the factory for the world, China is unsurprisingly far and away the largest market for industrial robots. Before the pandemic, however, the U.S.-China trade war was slowing growth. New installations of industrial robots amounted to 140,500 in 2019, a 9% decline from the previous year, but still almost three times the number for second-place Japan, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Last year was likely much better: Credit Suisse estimates that China’s industrial-robotics market grew 9.5% in 2020.
Audi and BMW shut down car subscription programs | Engadget – When Mercedes-Benz shuttered Collection, however, it cited mediocre demand and complaints about the hassles of switching personal items between vehicles. While it wasn’t mentioned at the time, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped matters. People are commuting less if at all, and may be more interested in saving money than the flexibility of swapping cars.Subscription ervices like Volvo Care are still going, although it’s not certain how well they’re faring.There may be a slight revival. Automotive News claims Cadillac is testing a resurrected Book service with dealers, although it would arrive a year after the brand’s hoped-for early 2020 revival. However, the overall market appears to be contracting
Majority of Europeans fear Biden unable to fix ‘broken’ US | World news | The Guardian – “Europeans like Biden, but they don’t think America will come back as a global leader,” said the thinktank’s director, Mark Leonard. “When George W Bush was president, they were divided about how America should use its power. With Biden entering the White House, they are divided about whether America has power at all.” The survey of 15,000 people in 11 European countries, conducted at the end of last year, found that the shift in European sentiment towards the US in the wake of the Trump presidency had led to a corresponding unwillingness to support Washington in potential international disputes
Exclusive: City of London Corp boss says ‘not our place’ to criticise China : CityAM – Nathan Law, one of the leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests in the territory and now in exile in London, told City A.M.’s City View podcast yesterday that UK firms’ “compliance and collusion” with the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda threatened the West’s “democratic values”. The pointed criticism comes after firms including HSBC and Standard Chartered, headquartered in London but who see significant revenues in Asia, backed the imposition of a draconian National Security Law in Hong Kong
