#but also the u.s. has inserted itself into every global issue so......

[phroyd]

From Esquire

Surely, the United States of America could not operate concentration camps. In the American consciousness, the term is synonymous with the Nazi death machines across the European continent that the Allies began the process of dismantling 75 years ago this month. But while the world-historical horrors of the Holocaust are unmatched, they are only the most extreme and inhuman manifestation of a concentration-camp system-which, according to Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, has a more global definition. There have been concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and-with Japanese internment-the United States. In fact, she contends we are operating such a system right now in response to a very real spike in arrivals at our southern border.

“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”

Historians use a broader definition of concentration camps, as well.

"What's required is a little bit of demystification of it," says Waitman Wade Beorn, a Holocaust and genocide studies historian and a lecturer at the University of Virginia. "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz. Concentration camps in general have always been designed-at the most basic level-to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."

Not every concentration camp is a death camp-in fact, their primary purpose is rarely extermination, and never in the beginning. Often, much of the death and suffering is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions. So far, 24 people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, while six children have died in the care of other agencies since September. Systems like these have emerged across the world for well over 100 years, and they've been established by putative liberal democracies-as with Britain's camps in South Africa during the Boer War-as well as authoritarian states like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Camps set up with one aim can be repurposed by new regimes, often with devastating consequences.

History is banging down the door this week with the news the Trump administration will use Fort Sill, an Oklahoma military base that was used to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II, to house 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children captured at the border. Japanese internment certainly constituted a concentration-camp system, and the echoes of the past are growing louder. Of course, the Obama administration temporarily housed migrants at military bases, including Fort Sill, for four months in 2014, built many of the newer facilities to house migrants, and pioneered some of the tactics the Trump administration is now using to try to manage the situation at the border.

The government of the United States would never call the sprawling network of facilities now in use across many states "concentration camps," of course. They’re referred to as "federal migrant shelters" or "temporary shelters for unaccompanied minors" or "detainment facilities" or the like. (The initial processing facilities are run by Border Patrol, and the system is primarily administered to by the Department of Homeland Security. Many adults are transferred to ICE, which now detains more than 52,000 people across 200 facilities on any given day-a record high. Unaccompanied minors are transferred to Department of Health and Human Services custody.) But by Pitzer's measure, the system at the southern border first set up by the Bill Clinton administration, built on by Barack Obama's government, and brought into extreme and perilous new territory by Donald Trump and his allies does qualify. Two historians who specialize in the area largely agree.

Many of the people housed in these facilities are not "illegal" immigrants. If you present yourself at the border seeking asylum, you have a legal right to a hearing under domestic and international law. They are, in another formulation, refugees-civilian non-combatants who have not committed a crime, and who say they are fleeing violence and persecution. Yet these human beings, who mostly hail from Central America's Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador-a region ravaged by gang violence and poverty and corruption and what increasingly appears to be some of the first forced migrations due to climate change-are being detained on what increasingly seems to be an indefinite basis.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continually seeks new ways to stop people from applying for asylum, and to discourage others from attempting to. The current regime has sought to restrict the asylum criteria to exclude the exact issues, like gang or domestic violence, that these desperate people often cite for why they fled their homes. The administration has sought to introduce application fees and work-permit restraints. They have tried to prohibit migrants from seeking asylum "if they have resided in a country other than their own before coming to the U.S.," which would essentially eliminate anyone who traveled to the border through Mexico. Much of this has been struck down in federal court.

But most prominently, Trump's Department of Homeland Security has used "metering" at the border, where migrants are forced to wait for days or weeks on the Mexican side-often sleeping in makeshift shelters or fully exposed to the elements-until they are allowed across border checkpoints to make their asylum claims and be processed. That processing system is overwhelmed, and the Obama administration also used metering at various points, but it remains unclear whether the wait times need to be as long as they are. (DHS did not respond to a request for comment.) There are no guarantees on how long migrants will have to wait, and so they've increasingly turned to crossing illegally between checkpoints-which constitutes "illegal entry," a misdemeanor-in order to present themselves for asylum. This criminalizes them, and the Trump administration tried to make illegal entry a disqualifier for asylum claims. The overall effort appears to be to make it as difficult as possible to get a hearing to adjudicate those claims, raising the specter that people can be detained longer or indefinitely.

All this has been achieved through two mechanisms: militarization and dehumanization. In her book, Pitzer describes camps as “a deliberate choice to inject the framework of war into society itself." These kinds of detention camps are a military endeavor: they are defensible in wartime, when enemy combatants must be detained, often for long periods without trial. They were a hallmark of World War I Europe. But inserting them into civil society, and using them to house civilians, is a materially different proposition. You are revoking the human and civil rights of non-combatants without legal justification.

"In the origins of the camps, it's tied to the idea of martial law," says Jonathan Hyslop, author of "The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907," and a professor of sociology and anthropology at Colgate University. "I mean, all four of the early instances-Americans in the Philippines, Spanish in Cuba, and British in South Africa, and Germans in Southwest Africa-they're all essentially overriding any sense of rights of the civilian population. And the idea is that you're able to suspend normal law because it's a war situation."

This pairs well with the rhetoric that Trump deploys to justify the system and his unconstitutional power grabs, like the phony "national emergency": he describes the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants as an "invasion," language his allies are mirroring with increasing extremism. If you're defending yourself from an invasion, anything is defensible.

That goes hand-in-hand with the strategy of dehumanization. For decades, the right has referred to undocumented immigrants as "illegals," stripping them of any identity beyond an immigration status. Trump kicked off his formal political career by characterizing Hispanic immigrants as "rapists" and "drug-dealers" and "criminals," never once sharing, say, the story of a woman who came here with her son fleeing a gang's threats. It is always MS-13 and strong, scary young men. There's talk of "animals" and monsters, and suddenly anything is justifiable. In fact, it must be done. Trump's supporters have noticed. At a recent rally, someone in the crowd screamed out that people arriving at the border should be shot. In response, the president cracked a "joke."

"It's important here to look at the language that people are using," Hyslop says. "As soon as you get people comparing other groups to animals or insects, or using language about advancing hordes, and we're being overrun and flooded and this sort of thing, it's creating the sense of this enormous threat. And that makes it much easier to sell to people on the idea we've got to do something drastic to control this population which going to destroy us."

In a grotesque formulation of the chicken-and-the-egg conundrum, housing people in these camps furthers their dehumanization.

"There's this crystallization that happens," Pitzer says. "The longer they're there, the worse conditions get. That's just a universal of camps. They're overcrowded. We already know from reports that they don't have enough beds for the numbers that they have. As you see mental health crises and contagious diseases begin to set in, they'll work to manage the worst of it. [But] then there will be the ability to tag these people as diseased, even if we created [those conditions]. Then we, by creating the camps, try to turn that population into the false image that we [used] to put them in the camps to start with. Over time, the camps will turn those people into what Trump was already saying they are."

Make no mistake: the conditions are in decline. When I went down to see the detention facility in McAllen, Texas, last summer at the height of the "zero-tolerance" policy that led inevitably to family separation, Border Patrol agents were by all appearances doing the very best they could with limited resources. That includes the facilities themselves, which at that point were mostly built-by the Clinton administration in the '90s-to house single adult males who were crossing the border illegally to find work. By that point, Border Patrol was already forced to use them to hold families and other asylum-seekers, and agents told me the situation was untenable. They lacked requisite staff with the training to care for young children, and overcrowding was already an issue.

But according to a report from Trump's own government-specifically, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security-the situation has deteriorated significantly even since then. The facilities are overcrowded, underfunded, and perhaps at a perilous inflection point. It found adult detainees are "being held in 'standing-room-only conditions' for days or weeks at a border patrol facility in Texas," Reuters reports. But it gets worse.

Single adults were held in cells designed for one-fifth as many detainees as were housed there and were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks with limited access to showers, the report said. Pictures published with the report show women packed tightly together in a holding cell.

“We also observed detainees standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to toilets,” the watchdog wrote.

This was at Paso del Norte, a facility near El Paso, which has a stated capacity of 125 detainees. But when DHS inspectors visited, it was holding 900. For a period, Border Patrol tried housing migrants in cage under a nearby bridge. It was ultimately scrapped amid public outcry. When migrants and asylum-seekers are transferred to ICE, things can get worse. Queer and trans migrants face exceptionally harsh treatment, with reports of high levels of physical and sexual abuse, and the use of solitary confinement-considered torture by many psychologists-is widespread. As a reminder, by DHS's own assertion, these detainments are civil, not criminal, and are not meant to be punitive in the way of a prison. Many of these people have not even been accused of a crime.

Again: these are inhuman conditions, and crystalize the dehumanization. So, too, does the Trump administration's decision, reported by The Washington Post, to cancel classes, recreational programs, and even legal aid for the children held at facilities for unaccompanied minors. Why should these kids get to play soccer or learn English? Why should they get legal assistance? They're detainees.

The administration is citing "budget pressures" related to what is undoubtedly a dramatic spike in arrivals at the border last month: 144,000 people were detained in May. It remains unclear how much of this is tied to the Trump administration's border policies, like metering, which have severely slowed the process of declaring oneself for asylum and left people camped on the Mexican border for days or weeks after a thousand-mile trek through Mexico. Or Trump's recent all-out push to seize money for a border wall and declare "we're closed," which some speculate led to a surge of people trying to get over the line before that happened.

It's also in dispute how many of these people actually need to be detained. Vox's Dara Lind suggests releasing migrants from Guatemala or Honduras isn't straightforward as "many newly arrived asylum seekers aren’t familiar with the US, often speak neither English nor Spanish, and may not have appropriate clothing or funds for bus fare." But release with ankle bracelets has proven very effective as an alternative to detention: 99 percent of immigrants enrolled in one such program showed up for their court dates, though ICE claims it's less effective when someone is set to be deported. Those subjected to the bracelets say they are uncomfortable and demeaning, but it's better than stuffing a detention cell to five-times capacity. Unless, of course, that's exactly what you want to happen.

"At one point, [the administration] said that they were intentionally trying to split up families and make conditions unpleasant, so the people wouldn't come to the U.S.," Beorn, from UVA, says. "If you're doing that, then that's not a prison. That's not a holding area or a waiting area. That's a policy. I would argue, at least in the way that [the camps are] being used now, a significant portion of the mentality is [tied to] who the [detainees] are rather than what they did.

"If these were Canadians flooding across the border, would they be treated in the same manner as the people from Mexico and from Central and South America? If the answer is yes, theoretically, then I would consider these places to be perhaps better described as transit camps or prison camps. But I suspect that's not how they'd be treated, which then makes it much more about who the people are that you're detaining, rather than what they did. The Canadian would have crossed the border just as illegally as the Mexican, but my suspicion is, would be treated in a different way."

It was the revelation about school and soccer cuts that led Pitzer to fire off a tweet threadthis week outlining the similarities between the U.S. camp system and those of other countries. The first examples of a concentration camp, in the modern sense, come from Cuba in the 1890s and South Africa during the Second Boer War.

"What those camps had in common with what's going on today is they involved the wholesale detention of families, separate or together," Pitzer says. "There was very little in the way of targeted violence. Instead, people died from poor planning, overloaded facilities and unwillingness to reverse policy, even when it became apparent the policy wasn't working, inability to get medical care to detainees, poor food quality, contagious diseases, showing up in an environment where it became almost impossible to get control of them.

"The point is that you don't have to intend to kill everybody. When people hear the phrase 'Oh, there's concentration camps on the southern border,' they think, 'Oh, it's not Auschwitz.' Of course, it's not those things, each camp system is different. But you don't have to intend to kill everyone to have really bad outcomes. In Cuba, well over 100,000 civilians died in these camps in just a period of a couple years. In Southern Africa during the Boer War, fatalities went into the tens of thousands. And the overwhelming majority of them were children. Fatalities in the camps ended up being more than twice the combat fatalities from the war itself."

In-custody deaths have not reached their peak of a reported 32 people in 2004, but the current situation seems to be deteriorating. In just the last two weeks, three adults have died. And the Trump administration has not readily reported fatalities to the public. There could be more.

"There's usually this crisis period that a camp system either survives or doesn't survive in the first three or four years. If it goes past that length of time, they tend to continue for a really long time. And I think we have entered that crisis period. I don't yet know if we're out of it."

Camps often begin in wartime or a crisis point, and on a relatively small scale. There are then some in positions of power who want to escalate the program for political purposes, but who receive pushback from others in the regime. There's then a power struggle, and if the escalationists prevail over the other bureaucrats-as they appear to have here, with the supremacy of Stephen Miller over (the reliably pliant but less extreme) Kirstjen Nielsen-the camps will continue and grow. Almost by definition, the conditions will deteriorate, even despite the best intentions of those on the ground.

"It's a negative trajectory in at least two ways," Beorn says. "One, I feel like these policies can snowball. We've already seen unintended consequences. If we follow the thread of the children, for example, the government wanted to make things more annoying, more painful. So they decided, We're going to separate the children from the families. But there was no infrastructure in place for that. You already have a scenario where even if you have the best intentions, the infrastructure doesn't exist to support it. That's a consequence of policy that hasn't been thought through. As you see the population begin to massively increase over time, you do start to see conditions diminishing.

"The second piece is that the longer you establish this sort of extralegal, extrajudicial, somewhat-invisible no-man's land, the more you allow potentially a culture of abuse to develop within that place. Because the people who tend to become more violent, more prejudiced, whatever, have more and more free rein for that to become sort of the accepted behavior. Then, that also becomes a new norm that can spread throughout the system. There is sort of an escalation of individual initiative in violence. As it becomes clear that that is acceptable, then you have a self-fulfilling prophecy or a positive feedback loop that just keeps radicalizing the treatment as the policy itself becomes radicalizing."

And for a variety of reasons, these facilities are incredibly hard to close. "Unless there's some really decisive turn away, we're going to be looking at having these camps for a long time," Pitzer says. It's particularly hard to engineer a decisive turn because these facilities are often remote, and hard to protest. They are not top-of-mind for most citizens, with plenty of other issues on the table. When Trump first instituted the Muslim Ban-now considered, in its third iteration, to be Definitely Not a Muslim Ban by the Supreme Court-there were mass demonstrations at U.S. airports because they were readily accessible by concerned citizens. These camps are not so easily reached, and that's a problem.

"The more authoritarian the regime is, and the more people allow governments to get away with doing this sort of thing politically, the worse the conditions are likely to get," Hyslop says. "So, a lot of it depends on how much pushback there is. But when you get a totally authoritarian regime like Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union, there's no control, or no countervailing force, the state can do what it likes, and certainly things will then tend to break down.

"It's more of a political question, really. Are people prepared to tolerate the deteriorating conditions? And if public opinion isn't effective in a liberal democratic situation, things can still get pretty bad."

Almost regardless, the camps will be difficult to dismantle by their very nature-that extrajudicial "no-man's land" Beorn mentioned. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is a perfect example. It began in the early 1990s as a refugee camp for people fleeing Haiti and Cuba. The conditions were bad and legally questionable, Pitzer found, and eventually the courts stepped in to grant detainees some rights. In the process, however, they granted the camps tacit legitimacy-they were allowed to continue with the approval of the judiciary.

Suddenly, they were enshrined in the law as a kind of gray area where detainees did not enjoy full human rights. That is actually why it was chosen by the Bush administration to house terror suspects: it was already rubber-stamped as a site for indefinite detention. By the time President Obama came into office with promises to close it, he found the task incredibly difficult, because it had been ingrained in the various institutions and branches of American constitutional government. He could not get rid of it. As courts continue to rule on the border camp system, the same issues are likely to take hold.

Another issue is that these camp systems, no matter where they are in the world, tend to fall victim to expanding criteria. The longer they stay open, the more reasons a government finds to put people in them. That's particularly true if a new regime takes control of an existing system, as the Trump administration did with ours. The mass detention of asylum-seekers-who, again, have legal rights-on this scale is an expansion of the criteria from "illegal" immigrants, who were the main class of detainee in the '90s and early 2000s. Asylum seekers, particularly unaccompanied minors, began arriving in huge numbers and were detained under the Obama administration. But there has been an escalation, both because of a deteriorating situation in the Northern Triangle and the Trump administration's attempts to deter any and all migration. There is reason to believe the criteria will continue to expand.

"We have border patrol agents that are sometimes arresting U.S. citizens," Pitzer says. "That's still very much a fringe activity. That doesn't seem to be a dedicated priority right now, but it's happening often enough. And they're held, sometimes, for three or four days. Even when there are clear reasons that people should be let go, that they have proof of their identity, you're seeing these detentions. You do start to worry about people who have legally immigrated and have finished paperwork, and maybe are naturalized. You worry about green-card holders."

In most cases, these camps are not closed by the executive or the judiciary or even the legislature. It usually requires external intervention. (See: D-Day) That obviously will not be an option when it comes to the most powerful country in the history of the world, a country which, while it would never call them that, and would be loathe to admit it, is now running a system at the southern border that is rapidly coming to resemble the concentration camps that have sprung up all over the world in the last century. Every system is different. They don't always end in death machines. But they never end well.

"Let's say there's 20 hurdles that we have to get over before we get to someplace really, really, really bad," Pitzer says. "I think we've knocked 10 of them down."

Phroyd

[preciousmetals0]

Job Unrest; Abbott Tests; Netflix’s Best

Job Unrest; Abbott Tests; Netflix’s Best:

You’ve Got a Friend in Me

“So, no one told you life was gonna be this way … (insert clapping here).”

Weekly jobless claims are in, dear reader, and I had to do a double take. Roughly 5.24 million Americans filed new unemployment claims last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Now, we’ve seen bigger numbers in the past month. There were 6.6 million new claims in the prior report, after all. But, if you’re doing the math and following along at home, you probably already know what I’m getting at…

The total number of jobs lost in the past four weeks now stands at just over 22 million.

22 million. Let that sink in.

Let’s put that figure in perspective: Between the end of the Great Recession in 2010 and February 2020, the U.S. economy added about 21.9 million jobs.

In other words, the U.S. economy lost as many jobs in the past four weeks as it created in the prior 10 years.

The official employment figures don’t come out until May 8 with the April nonfarm payrolls report. But if we use the March payrolls report of 155 million employed as a guideline … that works out to about 14% of Americans filing for unemployment in the past four weeks.

That’s staggering. The entire Great Recession recovery … gone … in just four weeks.

The Takeaway: 

I know it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your year, but…

Great Stuff and Banyan Hill will be there for you, when the rain starts to pour. Because our team has been here before.

From dot-com busts to financial meltdowns, the great people here at Great Stuff and Banyan Hill have seen it all. And, if you’ve been a good Great Stuff reader, you’ve likely prepared for what’s coming.

But, just in case you missed a few issues or are just now joining us, let’s reiterate the three investments where most of your capital should be positioned right now:

Gold: This one is a no-brainer. Gold is a store of value. Sure, its value goes up when economic times are hard. But the most important thing about gold is that it preserves your wealth. In bear markets, not losing money is probably more important than making money. If bullion isn’t your thing, check out the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) to get your gold fix.

Bonds: Another solid safe haven for times of trouble. But we’re not talking just any old bonds. We’re talking U.S. Treasury bonds. And the easiest way to take advantage of this secure investment is via the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (Nasdaq: TLT), or exchange-traded fund.

Cash: You’ve heard the saying that “cash is king,” right? It’s true. When all else fails, holding cash is a tried-and-true method to maintain your … um … cash. But we’re in the 21st century now. There are better ways to keep cash than stuffing Benjamins in your mattress, such as the Invesco CurrencyShares Swiss Franc Trust (NYSE: FXF) or the Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (NYSE: FXY).

The idea with these three core investments is to preserve your capital until the market returns to solid footing. That way, you have more to invest when everything trends higher once again.

Now, in addition to these core holdings, there is a smattering of well-run, well-capitalized companies that can help pull you through a bear market, a pandemic or whatever else the market faces. In fact, we’re going to touch on three of those today (more on that in a bit).

But, if you want dedicated, actionable research to help you get through this mess, there are few better guides than Banyan Hill’s own Charles Mizrahi.

Charles can help you sift the pandemic market’s wheat from chaff. Not only does he climb mountains of data and wade through waves of financial headline noise, he shows you how to spot true-blood, game-changing businesses. I mean, this is a guy who picked 36 stocks in a row that went up 50% or more!

That’s the kind of guidance you want right now. Click here now to learn more.

Good: Hey, Abbott!

All-time highs? In this market? It’s more likely than you’d think. All three of today’s focus companies are knocking it out of the park right now, so take note!

First up, we have Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT).

This morning, Abbott reported Street-beating quarterly earnings and revenue. Both figures rose steadily year over year: earnings up about 3.2% and revenue up 2.5%. That level of consistency will be hard to find this earnings season.

Abbott did pull its 2020 guidance due to COVID-19 uncertainties, but the company is in the right market to weather this storm better than most.

In fact, Abbott has one of the few rapid virus tests on the market to receive emergency Food & Drug Administration approval. The company’s test is portable, doesn’t need a lab and returns results in five minutes. Only Aytu BioScience Inc. (Nasdaq: AYTU) has a better testing time.

But Abbott has one thing that Aytu doesn’t … gobs of cash. Abbott says it can churn out about 50,000 tests per day once it ramps up production. And that means plenty of revenue down the road, as testing is key to stemming the COVID-19 tide.

With ABT shares trading near all-time highs, wait for a pullback if you want to be all about Abbott. (Thankfully, other biotech opportunities are right around the corner. Click here ASAP!)

Better: Stream Exotic

With shows such as Tiger King and Ozark going viral, Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) is among the de facto winners in the “shelter at home” market.

Goldman Sachs just named Netflix a “conviction buy,” lifting its price target from $430 to $490. The ratings firm believes that Netflix will add 10 million new subs and report earnings well above the consensus estimate.

Meanwhile, Pivotal Research Group reiterated its buy rating on Netflix, boosting its price target to $490 as well. Pivotal also cited impressive subscriber growth, telling clients that: “We believe the unfortunate COVID-19 situation is cementing Netflix’s global DTC (direct-to-consumer) dominance.”

With everyone locked at home for the foreseeable future, even sardine-oil-obsessed Carole Baskin can’t sink NFLX stock right now. (If you didn’t get that reference, you need to watch Tiger King like … now.)

As with ABT, the only risk we see for NFLX right now is a sharp decline in the broader market.

Best: Amazing Amazon

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) is the be-all and end-all quarantine investment. It slices. It dices. It makes julienne fries. It hits all-time highs.

The only thing it doesn’t do right now is provide cloud services for the Pentagon. Amazon is no JEDI, according to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, anyway.

Well, it also doesn’t ship nonessential goods in France.

So, I guess Amazon doesn’t do everything. But it does do more than enough to excite Wall Street analysts. Yesterday, Deutsche Bank reiterated its buy rating on AMZN stock, while all but accusing the company of “profiting from the COVID-related turmoil.”

A company built around delivering practically any product you can think of was essentially designed to benefit from a quarantine situation. There’s no way around it.

But Amazon is taking steps to mitigate some of the bad PR arising from the COVID-19 situation (and the company’s soaring profits). CEO Jeff Bezos is building out virus-testing capabilities at Amazon. The company raised wages, and Bezos himself is raining pennies down on charity relief efforts.

The bottom line: Amazon is pretty much the only game in town for online ordering and at-home delivery for a whole host of essential products. That’s why AMZN continues to hit all-time highs, and why Amazon should be at the top of any investment opportunities you’re considering right now.

You know the deal: You “Marco,” I “Polo!”

It’s already that time of week — man, time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping … into the future. Let’s turn the conversation over to you in today’s edition of Reader Feedback.

Other Side of the Street

JB Hunt is a horrible company with terrible culture (30+yrs in trucking experience), those huge payouts were to try to reverse the horrible turn over rate.

— Ron V.

First off, thank you for writing in, Ron! We here at Great Stuff love to hear from folks exactly like you — those with front-line experiences of the stories we cover.

As you know, the freight game is already notorious for its next-to-nothing margins. So when you combine that with a whipsaw between supply surges and demand droughts … the worst-case scenario almost writes itself for any trucking company without an edge.

The Wall Street Journal detailed the great transportation shake-up back during the heights of panic buying. Derek Leathers, CEO of J.B. competitor Werner Enterprises Inc. (Nasdaq: WERN), said: “We’re having to redesign the network in real time.”

Call it a bribe, stipend, bonus or loyalty incentive … but J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. (Nasdaq: JBHT) at least put up a nice show to try and keep its truly essential assets together — the truckers still showing up to haul cargo each and every day.

The Nuances of Bottoms

Do you have any kind of an estimate of when the market is going to bottom out?

— C. Ray S.

Frankly, C. Ray … nope!

No one — not even the most learned, “nose to the data grind” analyst on Wall Street — has anything more than a best guess.

We’re just started what may be the most radical, uncertain earnings season of our lives. Legions of day traders, investors, working and non-working Joes, speculators, fund managers and even world governments are playing the waiting game to see how bad everyone else’s damage is.

We need more data. Period. The entirety of this corporate earnings season is still up in the air for nearly every U.S. stock. Investors who wait, hope and plan on market bottoms get left behind.

Bottom line: If you hold stores of value and/or well-run companies throughout this debacle, you don’t need to spot the bottom. Amid all the noise and volatility, most stocks will see their “bottoms” at completely different times.

That’s why gold, currencies and solid stocks are your best chance at holding on to certainty — no matter what uncertainty lies ahead.

Odds and Ends

LOVE LOVE

— Jeff Z.

Jeff here kept it short and sweet. I, for one, appreciate the kindness, Jeff!

Hey, thanks for the link to the Smith Barney commercial. I enjoyed seeing it again (Yes, I’m that old!).  It’s funny how those old catchphrases stay with you.

— Charles H.

When Charles H. talks, Great Stuff listens! Glad to hear that it’s not just my brainbox these old-school slogans still kick around in. He likes it! Hey, Mikey!

Thank you to Ron, C. Ray, Jeff and Charles for writing in! If you wrote in and I didn’t get to you, it might be because you cursed too $%*?@#! much. We deeply appreciate each and every one of your emails (and you can never have too much to read during isolation).

Have you written to us yet? No?! Feel free to speak your mind — drop us a line at GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com.

That’s a wrap for today, but if you still crave more Great Stuff, check us out on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

[goldira01]

You’ve Got a Friend in Me

“So, no one told you life was gonna be this way … (insert clapping here).”

Weekly jobless claims are in, dear reader, and I had to do a double take. Roughly 5.24 million Americans filed new unemployment claims last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Now, we’ve seen bigger numbers in the past month. There were 6.6 million new claims in the prior report, after all. But, if you’re doing the math and following along at home, you probably already know what I’m getting at…

The total number of jobs lost in the past four weeks now stands at just over 22 million.

22 million. Let that sink in.

Let’s put that figure in perspective: Between the end of the Great Recession in 2010 and February 2020, the U.S. economy added about 21.9 million jobs.

In other words, the U.S. economy lost as many jobs in the past four weeks as it created in the prior 10 years.

The official employment figures don’t come out until May 8 with the April nonfarm payrolls report. But if we use the March payrolls report of 155 million employed as a guideline … that works out to about 14% of Americans filing for unemployment in the past four weeks.

That’s staggering. The entire Great Recession recovery … gone … in just four weeks.

The Takeaway: 

I know it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your year, but…

Great Stuff and Banyan Hill will be there for you, when the rain starts to pour. Because our team has been here before.

From dot-com busts to financial meltdowns, the great people here at Great Stuff and Banyan Hill have seen it all. And, if you’ve been a good Great Stuff reader, you’ve likely prepared for what’s coming.

But, just in case you missed a few issues or are just now joining us, let’s reiterate the three investments where most of your capital should be positioned right now:

Gold: This one is a no-brainer. Gold is a store of value. Sure, its value goes up when economic times are hard. But the most important thing about gold is that it preserves your wealth. In bear markets, not losing money is probably more important than making money. If bullion isn’t your thing, check out the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) to get your gold fix.

Bonds: Another solid safe haven for times of trouble. But we’re not talking just any old bonds. We’re talking U.S. Treasury bonds. And the easiest way to take advantage of this secure investment is via the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (Nasdaq: TLT), or exchange-traded fund.

Cash: You’ve heard the saying that “cash is king,” right? It’s true. When all else fails, holding cash is a tried-and-true method to maintain your … um … cash. But we’re in the 21st century now. There are better ways to keep cash than stuffing Benjamins in your mattress, such as the Invesco CurrencyShares Swiss Franc Trust (NYSE: FXF) or the Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (NYSE: FXY).

The idea with these three core investments is to preserve your capital until the market returns to solid footing. That way, you have more to invest when everything trends higher once again.

Now, in addition to these core holdings, there is a smattering of well-run, well-capitalized companies that can help pull you through a bear market, a pandemic or whatever else the market faces. In fact, we’re going to touch on three of those today (more on that in a bit).

But, if you want dedicated, actionable research to help you get through this mess, there are few better guides than Banyan Hill’s own Charles Mizrahi.

Charles can help you sift the pandemic market’s wheat from chaff. Not only does he climb mountains of data and wade through waves of financial headline noise, he shows you how to spot true-blood, game-changing businesses. I mean, this is a guy who picked 36 stocks in a row that went up 50% or more!

That’s the kind of guidance you want right now. Click here now to learn more.

Good: Hey, Abbott!

All-time highs? In this market? It’s more likely than you’d think. All three of today’s focus companies are knocking it out of the park right now, so take note!

First up, we have Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT).

This morning, Abbott reported Street-beating quarterly earnings and revenue. Both figures rose steadily year over year: earnings up about 3.2% and revenue up 2.5%. That level of consistency will be hard to find this earnings season.

Abbott did pull its 2020 guidance due to COVID-19 uncertainties, but the company is in the right market to weather this storm better than most.

In fact, Abbott has one of the few rapid virus tests on the market to receive emergency Food & Drug Administration approval. The company’s test is portable, doesn’t need a lab and returns results in five minutes. Only Aytu BioScience Inc. (Nasdaq: AYTU) has a better testing time.

But Abbott has one thing that Aytu doesn’t … gobs of cash. Abbott says it can churn out about 50,000 tests per day once it ramps up production. And that means plenty of revenue down the road, as testing is key to stemming the COVID-19 tide.

With ABT shares trading near all-time highs, wait for a pullback if you want to be all about Abbott. (Thankfully, other biotech opportunities are right around the corner. Click here ASAP!)

Better: Stream Exotic

With shows such as Tiger King and Ozark going viral, Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) is among the de facto winners in the “shelter at home” market.

Goldman Sachs just named Netflix a “conviction buy,” lifting its price target from $430 to $490. The ratings firm believes that Netflix will add 10 million new subs and report earnings well above the consensus estimate.

Meanwhile, Pivotal Research Group reiterated its buy rating on Netflix, boosting its price target to $490 as well. Pivotal also cited impressive subscriber growth, telling clients that: “We believe the unfortunate COVID-19 situation is cementing Netflix’s global DTC (direct-to-consumer) dominance.”

With everyone locked at home for the foreseeable future, even sardine-oil-obsessed Carole Baskin can’t sink NFLX stock right now. (If you didn’t get that reference, you need to watch Tiger King like … now.)

As with ABT, the only risk we see for NFLX right now is a sharp decline in the broader market.

Best: Amazing Amazon

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) is the be-all and end-all quarantine investment. It slices. It dices. It makes julienne fries. It hits all-time highs.

The only thing it doesn’t do right now is provide cloud services for the Pentagon. Amazon is no JEDI, according to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, anyway.

Well, it also doesn’t ship nonessential goods in France.

So, I guess Amazon doesn’t do everything. But it does do more than enough to excite Wall Street analysts. Yesterday, Deutsche Bank reiterated its buy rating on AMZN stock, while all but accusing the company of “profiting from the COVID-related turmoil.”

A company built around delivering practically any product you can think of was essentially designed to benefit from a quarantine situation. There’s no way around it.

But Amazon is taking steps to mitigate some of the bad PR arising from the COVID-19 situation (and the company’s soaring profits). CEO Jeff Bezos is building out virus-testing capabilities at Amazon. The company raised wages, and Bezos himself is raining pennies down on charity relief efforts.

The bottom line: Amazon is pretty much the only game in town for online ordering and at-home delivery for a whole host of essential products. That’s why AMZN continues to hit all-time highs, and why Amazon should be at the top of any investment opportunities you’re considering right now.

You know the deal: You “Marco,” I “Polo!”

It’s already that time of week — man, time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping … into the future. Let’s turn the conversation over to you in today’s edition of Reader Feedback.

Other Side of the Street

JB Hunt is a horrible company with terrible culture (30+yrs in trucking experience), those huge payouts were to try to reverse the horrible turn over rate.

— Ron V.

First off, thank you for writing in, Ron! We here at Great Stuff love to hear from folks exactly like you — those with front-line experiences of the stories we cover.

As you know, the freight game is already notorious for its next-to-nothing margins. So when you combine that with a whipsaw between supply surges and demand droughts … the worst-case scenario almost writes itself for any trucking company without an edge.

The Wall Street Journal detailed the great transportation shake-up back during the heights of panic buying. Derek Leathers, CEO of J.B. competitor Werner Enterprises Inc. (Nasdaq: WERN), said: “We’re having to redesign the network in real time.”

Call it a bribe, stipend, bonus or loyalty incentive … but J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. (Nasdaq: JBHT) at least put up a nice show to try and keep its truly essential assets together — the truckers still showing up to haul cargo each and every day.

The Nuances of Bottoms

Do you have any kind of an estimate of when the market is going to bottom out?

— C. Ray S.

Frankly, C. Ray … nope!

No one — not even the most learned, “nose to the data grind” analyst on Wall Street — has anything more than a best guess.

We’re just started what may be the most radical, uncertain earnings season of our lives. Legions of day traders, investors, working and non-working Joes, speculators, fund managers and even world governments are playing the waiting game to see how bad everyone else’s damage is.

We need more data. Period. The entirety of this corporate earnings season is still up in the air for nearly every U.S. stock. Investors who wait, hope and plan on market bottoms get left behind.

Bottom line: If you hold stores of value and/or well-run companies throughout this debacle, you don’t need to spot the bottom. Amid all the noise and volatility, most stocks will see their “bottoms” at completely different times.

That’s why gold, currencies and solid stocks are your best chance at holding on to certainty — no matter what uncertainty lies ahead.

Odds and Ends

LOVE LOVE

— Jeff Z.

Jeff here kept it short and sweet. I, for one, appreciate the kindness, Jeff!

Hey, thanks for the link to the Smith Barney commercial. I enjoyed seeing it again (Yes, I’m that old!).  It’s funny how those old catchphrases stay with you.

— Charles H.

When Charles H. talks, Great Stuff listens! Glad to hear that it’s not just my brainbox these old-school slogans still kick around in. He likes it! Hey, Mikey!

Thank you to Ron, C. Ray, Jeff and Charles for writing in! If you wrote in and I didn’t get to you, it might be because you cursed too $%*?@#! much. We deeply appreciate each and every one of your emails (and you can never have too much to read during isolation).

Have you written to us yet? No?! Feel free to speak your mind — drop us a line at GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com.

That’s a wrap for today, but if you still crave more Great Stuff, check us out on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

[nedsvallesny]

Supply Chain Security is the Whole Enchilada, But Who’s Willing to Pay for It?

From time to time, there emerge cybersecurity stories of such potential impact that they have the effect of making all other security concerns seem minuscule and trifling by comparison. Yesterday was one of those times. Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday published a bombshell investigation alleging that Chinese cyber spies had used a U.S.-based tech firm to secretly embed tiny computer chips into electronic devices purchased and used by almost 30 different companies. There aren’t any corroborating accounts of this scoop so far, but it is both fascinating and terrifying to look at why threats to the global technology supply chain can be so difficult to detect, verify and counter.

In the context of computer and Internet security, supply chain security refers to the challenge of validating that a given piece of electronics — and by extension the software that powers those computing parts — does not include any extraneous or fraudulent components beyond what was specified by the company that paid for the production of said item.

In a nutshell, the Bloomberg story claims that San Jose, Calif. based tech giant Supermicro was somehow caught up in a plan to quietly insert a rice-sized computer chip on the circuit boards that get put into a variety of servers and electronic components purchased by major vendors, allegedly including Amazon and Apple. The chips were alleged to have spied on users of the devices and sent unspecified data back to the Chinese military.

It’s critical to note up top that Amazon, Apple and Supermicro have categorically denied most of the claims in the Bloomberg piece. That is, their positions refuting core components of the story would appear to leave little wiggle room for future backtracking on those statements. Amazon also penned a blog post that more emphatically stated their objections to the Bloomberg piece.

Nevertheless, Bloomberg reporters write that “the companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation.”

The story continues:

Today, Supermicro sells more server motherboards than almost anyone else. It also dominates the $1 billion market for boards used in special-purpose computers, from MRI machines to weapons systems. Its motherboards can be found in made-to-order server setups at banks, hedge funds, cloud computing providers, and web-hosting services, among other places. Supermicro has assembly facilities in California, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, but its motherboards—its core product—are nearly all manufactured by contractors in China.

Many readers have asked for my take on this piece. I heard similar allegations earlier this year about Supermicro and tried mightily to verify them but could not. That in itself should be zero gauge of the story’s potential merit. After all, I am just one guy, whereas this is the type of scoop that usually takes entire portions of a newsroom to research, report and vet. By Bloomberg’s own account, the story took more than a year to report and write, and cites 17 anonymous sources as confirming the activity.

Most of what I have to share here is based on conversations with some clueful people over the years who would probably find themselves confined to a tiny, windowless room for an extended period if their names or quotes ever showed up in a story like this, so I will tread carefully around this subject.

The U.S. Government isn’t eager to admit it, but there has long been an unofficial inventory of tech components and vendors that are forbidden to buy from if you’re in charge of procuring products or services on behalf of the U.S. Government. Call it the “brown list, “black list,” “entity list” or what have you, but it’s basically an indelible index of companies that are on the permanent Shit List of Uncle Sam for having been caught pulling some kind of supply chain shenanigans.

More than a decade ago when I was a reporter with The Washington Post, I heard from an extremely well-placed source that one Chinese tech company had made it onto Uncle Sam’s entity list because they sold a custom hardware component for many Internet-enabled printers that secretly made a copy of every document or image sent to the printer and forwarded that to a server allegedly controlled by hackers aligned with the Chinese government.

That example gives a whole new meaning to the term “supply chain,” doesn’t it? If Bloomberg’s reporting is accurate, that’s more or less what we’re dealing with here in Supermicro as well.

But here’s the thing: Even if you identify which technology vendors are guilty of supply-chain hacks, it can be difficult to enforce their banishment from the procurement chain. One reason is that it is often tough to tell from the brand name of a given gizmo who actually makes all the multifarious components that go into any one electronic device sold today.

Take, for instance, the problem right now with insecure Internet of Things (IoT) devices — cheapo security cameras, Internet routers and digital video recorders — sold at places like Amazon and Walmart. Many of these IoT devices have become a major security problem because they are massively insecure by default and difficult if not also impractical to secure after they are sold and put into use.

For every company in China that produces these IoT devices, there are dozens of “white label” firms that market and/or sell the core electronic components as their own. So while security researchers might identify a set of security holes in IoT products made by one company whose products are white labeled by others, actually informing consumers about which third-party products include those vulnerabilities can be extremely challenging. In some cases, a technology vendor responsible for some part of this mess may simply go out of business or close its doors and re-emerge under different names and managers.

Mind you, there is no indication anyone is purposefully engineering so many of these IoT products to be insecure; a more likely explanation is that building in more security tends to make devices considerably more expensive and slower to market. In many cases, their insecurity stems from a combination of factors: They ship with every imaginable feature turned on by default; they bundle outdated software and firmware components; and their default settings are difficult or impossible for users to change.

We don’t often hear about intentional efforts to subvert the security of the technology supply chain simply because these incidents tend to get quickly classified by the military when they are discovered. But the U.S. Congress has held multiple hearings about supply chain security challenges, and the U.S. government has taken steps on several occasions to block Chinese tech companies from doing business with the federal government and/or U.S.-based firms.

Most recently, the Pentagon banned the sale of Chinese-made ZTE and Huawei phones on military bases, according to a Defense Department directive that cites security risks posed by the devices. The U.S. Department of Commerce also has instituted a seven-year export restriction for ZTE, resulting in a ban on U.S. component makers selling to ZTE.

Still, the issue here isn’t that we can’t trust technology products made in China. Indeed there are numerous examples of other countries — including the United States and its allies — slipping their own “backdoors” into hardware and software products.

Like it or not, the vast majority of electronics are made in China, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. The central issue is that we don’t have any other choice right now. The reason is that by nearly all accounts it would be punishingly expensive to replicate that manufacturing process here in the United States.

Even if the U.S. government and Silicon Valley somehow mustered the funding and political will to do that, insisting that products sold to U.S. consumers or the U.S. government be made only with components made here in the U.S.A. would massively drive up the cost of all forms of technology. Consumers would almost certainly balk at buying these way more expensive devices. Years of experience has shown that consumers aren’t interested in paying a huge premium for security when a comparable product with the features they want is available much more cheaply.

Indeed, noted security expert Bruce Schneier calls supply-chain security “an insurmountably hard problem.”

“Our IT industry is inexorably international, and anyone involved in the process can subvert the security of the end product,” Schneier wrote in an opinion piece published earlier this year in The Washington Post. “No one wants to even think about a US-only anything; prices would multiply many times over. We cannot trust anyone, yet we have no choice but to trust everyone. No one is ready for the costs that solving this would entail.”

The Bloomberg piece also addresses this elephant in the room:

“The problem under discussion wasn’t just technological. It spoke to decisions made decades ago to send advanced production work to Southeast Asia. In the intervening years, low-cost Chinese manufacturing had come to underpin the business models of many of America’s largest technology companies. Early on, Apple, for instance, made many of its most sophisticated electronics domestically. Then in 1992, it closed a state-of-the-art plant for motherboard and computer assembly in Fremont, Calif., and sent much of that work overseas.

Over the decades, the security of the supply chain became an article of faith despite repeated warnings by Western officials. A belief formed that China was unlikely to jeopardize its position as workshop to the world by letting its spies meddle in its factories. That left the decision about where to build commercial systems resting largely on where capacity was greatest and cheapest. “You end up with a classic Satan’s bargain,” one former U.S. official says. “You can have less supply than you want and guarantee it’s secure, or you can have the supply you need, but there will be risk. Every organization has accepted the second proposition.”

Another huge challenge of securing the technology supply chain is that it’s quite time consuming and expensive to detect when products may have been intentionally compromised during some part of the manufacturing process. Your typical motherboard of the kind produced by a company like Supermicro can include hundreds of chips, but it only takes one hinky chip to subvert the security of the entire product.

Also, most of the U.S. government’s efforts to police the global technology supply chain seem to be focused on preventing counterfeits — not finding secretly added spying components.

Finally, it’s not clear that private industry is up to the job, either. At least not yet.

“In the three years since the briefing in McLean, no commercially viable way to detect attacks like the one on Supermicro’s motherboards has emerged—or has looked likely to emerge,” the Bloomberg story concludes. “Few companies have the resources of Apple and Amazon, and it took some luck even for them to spot the problem. ‘This stuff is at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, and there is no easy technological solution,’ one of the people present in McLean says. ‘You have to invest in things that the world wants. You cannot invest in things that the world is not ready to accept yet.'”

For my part, I try not to spin my wheels worrying about things I can’t change, and the supply chain challenges definitely fit into that category. I’ll have some more thoughts on the supply chain problem and what we can do about it in an interview to be published next week.

But for the time being, there are some things worth thinking about that can help mitigate the threat from stealthy supply chain hacks. Writing for this week’s newsletter put out by the SANS Institute, a security training company based in Bethesda, Md., editorial board member William Hugh Murray has a few provocative thoughts:

Abandon the password for all but trivial applications. Steve Jobs and the ubiquitous mobile computer have lowered the cost and improved the convenience of strong authentication enough to overcome all arguments against it.

Abandon the flat network. Secure and trusted communication now trump ease of any-to-any communication.

Move traffic monitoring from encouraged to essential.

Establish and maintain end-to-end encryption for all applications. Think TLS, VPNs, VLANs and physically segmented networks. Software Defined Networks put this within the budget of most enterprises.

Abandon the convenient but dangerously permissive default access control rule of “read/write/execute” in favor of restrictive “read/execute-only” or even better, “Least privilege.” Least privilege is expensive to administer but it is effective. Our current strategy of “ship low-quality early/patch late” is proving to be ineffective and more expensive in maintenance and breaches than we could ever have imagined.

from Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/supply-chain-security-is-the-whole-enchilada-but-whos-willing-to-pay-for-it/

[jennifersnyderca90]

Supply Chain Security is the Whole Enchilada, But Who’s Willing to Pay for It?

From time to time, there emerge cybersecurity stories of such potential impact that they have the effect of making all other security concerns seem minuscule and trifling by comparison. Yesterday was one of those times. Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday published a bombshell investigation alleging that Chinese cyber spies had used a U.S.-based tech firm to secretly embed tiny computer chips into electronic devices purchased and used by almost 30 different companies. There aren’t any corroborating accounts of this scoop so far, but it is both fascinating and terrifying to look at why threats to the global technology supply chain can be so difficult to detect, verify and counter.

In the context of computer and Internet security, supply chain security refers to the challenge of validating that a given piece of electronics — and by extension the software that powers those computing parts — does not include any extraneous or fraudulent components beyond what was specified by the company that paid for the production of said item.

In a nutshell, the Bloomberg story claims that San Jose, Calif. based tech giant Supermicro was somehow caught up in a plan to quietly insert a rice-sized computer chip on the circuit boards that get put into a variety of servers and electronic components purchased by major vendors, allegedly including Amazon and Apple. The chips were alleged to have spied on users of the devices and sent unspecified data back to the Chinese military.

It’s critical to note up top that Amazon, Apple and Supermicro have categorically denied most of the claims in the Bloomberg piece. That is, their positions refuting core components of the story would appear to leave little wiggle room for future backtracking on those statements. Amazon also penned a blog post that more emphatically stated their objections to the Bloomberg piece.

Nevertheless, Bloomberg reporters write that “the companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation.”

The story continues:

Today, Supermicro sells more server motherboards than almost anyone else. It also dominates the $1 billion market for boards used in special-purpose computers, from MRI machines to weapons systems. Its motherboards can be found in made-to-order server setups at banks, hedge funds, cloud computing providers, and web-hosting services, among other places. Supermicro has assembly facilities in California, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, but its motherboards—its core product—are nearly all manufactured by contractors in China.

Many readers have asked for my take on this piece. I heard similar allegations earlier this year about Supermicro and tried mightily to verify them but could not. That in itself should be zero gauge of the story’s potential merit. After all, I am just one guy, whereas this is the type of scoop that usually takes entire portions of a newsroom to research, report and vet. By Bloomberg’s own account, the story took more than a year to report and write, and cites 17 anonymous sources as confirming the activity.

Most of what I have to share here is based on conversations with some clueful people over the years who would probably find themselves confined to a tiny, windowless room for an extended period if their names or quotes ever showed up in a story like this, so I will tread carefully around this subject.

The U.S. Government isn’t eager to admit it, but there has long been an unofficial inventory of tech components and vendors that are forbidden to buy from if you’re in charge of procuring products or services on behalf of the U.S. Government. Call it the “brown list, “black list,” “entity list” or what have you, but it’s basically an indelible index of companies that are on the permanent Shit List of Uncle Sam for having been caught pulling some kind of supply chain shenanigans.

More than a decade ago when I was a reporter with The Washington Post, I heard from an extremely well-placed source that one Chinese tech company had made it onto Uncle Sam’s entity list because they sold a custom hardware component for many Internet-enabled printers that secretly made a copy of every document or image sent to the printer and forwarded that to a server allegedly controlled by hackers aligned with the Chinese government.

That example gives a whole new meaning to the term “supply chain,” doesn’t it? If Bloomberg’s reporting is accurate, that’s more or less what we’re dealing with here in Supermicro as well.

But here’s the thing: Even if you identify which technology vendors are guilty of supply-chain hacks, it can be difficult to enforce their banishment from the procurement chain. One reason is that it is often tough to tell from the brand name of a given gizmo who actually makes all the multifarious components that go into any one electronic device sold today.

Take, for instance, the problem right now with insecure Internet of Things (IoT) devices — cheapo security cameras, Internet routers and digital video recorders — sold at places like Amazon and Walmart. Many of these IoT devices have become a major security problem because they are massively insecure by default and difficult if not also impractical to secure after they are sold and put into use.

For every company in China that produces these IoT devices, there are dozens of “white label” firms that market and/or sell the core electronic components as their own. So while security researchers might identify a set of security holes in IoT products made by one company whose products are white labeled by others, actually informing consumers about which third-party products include those vulnerabilities can be extremely challenging. In some cases, a technology vendor responsible for some part of this mess may simply go out of business or close its doors and re-emerge under different names and managers.

Mind you, there is no indication anyone is purposefully engineering so many of these IoT products to be insecure; a more likely explanation is that building in more security tends to make devices considerably more expensive and slower to market. In many cases, their insecurity stems from a combination of factors: They ship with every imaginable feature turned on by default; they bundle outdated software and firmware components; and their default settings are difficult or impossible for users to change.

We don’t often hear about intentional efforts to subvert the security of the technology supply chain simply because these incidents tend to get quickly classified by the military when they are discovered. But the U.S. Congress has held multiple hearings about supply chain security challenges, and the U.S. government has taken steps on several occasions to block Chinese tech companies from doing business with the federal government and/or U.S.-based firms.

Most recently, the Pentagon banned the sale of Chinese-made ZTE and Huawei phones on military bases, according to a Defense Department directive that cites security risks posed by the devices. The U.S. Department of Commerce also has instituted a seven-year export restriction for ZTE, resulting in a ban on U.S. component makers selling to ZTE.

Still, the issue here isn’t that we can’t trust technology products made in China. Indeed there are numerous examples of other countries — including the United States and its allies — slipping their own “backdoors” into hardware and software products.

Like it or not, the vast majority of electronics are made in China, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. The central issue is that we don’t have any other choice right now. The reason is that by nearly all accounts it would be punishingly expensive to replicate that manufacturing process here in the United States.

Even if the U.S. government and Silicon Valley somehow mustered the funding and political will to do that, insisting that products sold to U.S. consumers or the U.S. government be made only with components made here in the U.S.A. would massively drive up the cost of all forms of technology. Consumers would almost certainly balk at buying these way more expensive devices. Years of experience has shown that consumers aren’t interested in paying a huge premium for security when a comparable product with the features they want is available much more cheaply.

Indeed, noted security expert Bruce Schneier calls supply-chain security “an insurmountably hard problem.”

“Our IT industry is inexorably international, and anyone involved in the process can subvert the security of the end product,” Schneier wrote in an opinion piece published earlier this year in The Washington Post. “No one wants to even think about a US-only anything; prices would multiply many times over. We cannot trust anyone, yet we have no choice but to trust everyone. No one is ready for the costs that solving this would entail.”

The Bloomberg piece also addresses this elephant in the room:

“The problem under discussion wasn’t just technological. It spoke to decisions made decades ago to send advanced production work to Southeast Asia. In the intervening years, low-cost Chinese manufacturing had come to underpin the business models of many of America’s largest technology companies. Early on, Apple, for instance, made many of its most sophisticated electronics domestically. Then in 1992, it closed a state-of-the-art plant for motherboard and computer assembly in Fremont, Calif., and sent much of that work overseas.

Over the decades, the security of the supply chain became an article of faith despite repeated warnings by Western officials. A belief formed that China was unlikely to jeopardize its position as workshop to the world by letting its spies meddle in its factories. That left the decision about where to build commercial systems resting largely on where capacity was greatest and cheapest. “You end up with a classic Satan’s bargain,” one former U.S. official says. “You can have less supply than you want and guarantee it’s secure, or you can have the supply you need, but there will be risk. Every organization has accepted the second proposition.”

Another huge challenge of securing the technology supply chain is that it’s quite time consuming and expensive to detect when products may have been intentionally compromised during some part of the manufacturing process. Your typical motherboard of the kind produced by a company like Supermicro can include hundreds of chips, but it only takes one hinky chip to subvert the security of the entire product.

Also, most of the U.S. government’s efforts to police the global technology supply chain seem to be focused on preventing counterfeits — not finding secretly added spying components.

Finally, it’s not clear that private industry is up to the job, either. At least not yet.

“In the three years since the briefing in McLean, no commercially viable way to detect attacks like the one on Supermicro’s motherboards has emerged—or has looked likely to emerge,” the Bloomberg story concludes. “Few companies have the resources of Apple and Amazon, and it took some luck even for them to spot the problem. ‘This stuff is at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, and there is no easy technological solution,’ one of the people present in McLean says. ‘You have to invest in things that the world wants. You cannot invest in things that the world is not ready to accept yet.'”

For my part, I try not to spin my wheels worrying about things I can’t change, and the supply chain challenges definitely fit into that category. I’ll have some more thoughts on the supply chain problem and what we can do about it in an interview to be published next week.

But for the time being, there are some things worth thinking about that can help mitigate the threat from stealthy supply chain hacks. Writing for this week’s newsletter put out by the SANS Institute, a security training company based in Bethesda, Md., editorial board member William Hugh Murray has a few provocative thoughts:

Abandon the password for all but trivial applications. Steve Jobs and the ubiquitous mobile computer have lowered the cost and improved the convenience of strong authentication enough to overcome all arguments against it.

Abandon the flat network. Secure and trusted communication now trump ease of any-to-any communication.

Move traffic monitoring from encouraged to essential.

Establish and maintain end-to-end encryption for all applications. Think TLS, VPNs, VLANs and physically segmented networks. Software Defined Networks put this within the budget of most enterprises.

Abandon the convenient but dangerously permissive default access control rule of “read/write/execute” in favor of restrictive “read/execute-only” or even better, “Least privilege.” Least privilege is expensive to administer but it is effective. Our current strategy of “ship low-quality early/patch late” is proving to be ineffective and more expensive in maintenance and breaches than we could ever have imagined.

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/supply-chain-security-is-the-whole-enchilada-but-whos-willing-to-pay-for-it/

[amberdscott2]

Supply Chain Security is the Whole Enchilada, But Who’s Willing to Pay for It?

From time to time, there emerge cybersecurity stories of such potential impact that they have the effect of making all other security concerns seem minuscule and trifling by comparison. Yesterday was one of those times. Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday published a bombshell investigation alleging that Chinese cyber spies had used a U.S.-based tech firm to secretly embed tiny computer chips into electronic devices purchased and used by almost 30 different companies. There aren’t any corroborating accounts of this scoop so far, but it is both fascinating and terrifying to look at why threats to the global technology supply chain can be so difficult to detect, verify and counter.

In the context of computer and Internet security, supply chain security refers to the challenge of validating that a given piece of electronics — and by extension the software that powers those computing parts — does not include any extraneous or fraudulent components beyond what was specified by the company that paid for the production of said item.

In a nutshell, the Bloomberg story claims that San Jose, Calif. based tech giant Supermicro was somehow caught up in a plan to quietly insert a rice-sized computer chip on the circuit boards that get put into a variety of servers and electronic components purchased by major vendors, allegedly including Amazon and Apple. The chips were alleged to have spied on users of the devices and sent unspecified data back to the Chinese military.

It’s critical to note up top that Amazon, Apple and Supermicro have categorically denied most of the claims in the Bloomberg piece. That is, their positions refuting core components of the story would appear to leave little wiggle room for future backtracking on those statements. Amazon also penned a blog post that more emphatically stated their objections to the Bloomberg piece.

Nevertheless, Bloomberg reporters write that “the companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation.”

The story continues:

Today, Supermicro sells more server motherboards than almost anyone else. It also dominates the $1 billion market for boards used in special-purpose computers, from MRI machines to weapons systems. Its motherboards can be found in made-to-order server setups at banks, hedge funds, cloud computing providers, and web-hosting services, among other places. Supermicro has assembly facilities in California, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, but its motherboards—its core product—are nearly all manufactured by contractors in China.

Many readers have asked for my take on this piece. I heard similar allegations earlier this year about Supermicro and tried mightily to verify them but could not. That in itself should be zero gauge of the story’s potential merit. After all, I am just one guy, whereas this is the type of scoop that usually takes entire portions of a newsroom to research, report and vet. By Bloomberg’s own account, the story took more than a year to report and write, and cites 17 anonymous sources as confirming the activity.

Most of what I have to share here is based on conversations with some clueful people over the years who would probably find themselves confined to a tiny, windowless room for an extended period if their names or quotes ever showed up in a story like this, so I will tread carefully around this subject.

The U.S. Government isn’t eager to admit it, but there has long been an unofficial inventory of tech components and vendors that are forbidden to buy from if you’re in charge of procuring products or services on behalf of the U.S. Government. Call it the “brown list, “black list,” “entity list” or what have you, but it’s basically an indelible index of companies that are on the permanent Shit List of Uncle Sam for having been caught pulling some kind of supply chain shenanigans.

More than a decade ago when I was a reporter with The Washington Post, I heard from an extremely well-placed source that one Chinese tech company had made it onto Uncle Sam’s entity list because they sold a custom hardware component for many Internet-enabled printers that secretly made a copy of every document or image sent to the printer and forwarded that to a server allegedly controlled by hackers aligned with the Chinese government.

That example gives a whole new meaning to the term “supply chain,” doesn’t it? If Bloomberg’s reporting is accurate, that’s more or less what we’re dealing with here in Supermicro as well.

But here’s the thing: Even if you identify which technology vendors are guilty of supply-chain hacks, it can be difficult to enforce their banishment from the procurement chain. One reason is that it is often tough to tell from the brand name of a given gizmo who actually makes all the multifarious components that go into any one electronic device sold today.

Take, for instance, the problem right now with insecure Internet of Things (IoT) devices — cheapo security cameras, Internet routers and digital video recorders — sold at places like Amazon and Walmart. Many of these IoT devices have become a major security problem because they are massively insecure by default and difficult if not also impractical to secure after they are sold and put into use.

For every company in China that produces these IoT devices, there are dozens of “white label” firms that market and/or sell the core electronic components as their own. So while security researchers might identify a set of security holes in IoT products made by one company whose products are white labeled by others, actually informing consumers about which third-party products include those vulnerabilities can be extremely challenging. In some cases, a technology vendor responsible for some part of this mess may simply go out of business or close its doors and re-emerge under different names and managers.

Mind you, there is no indication anyone is purposefully engineering so many of these IoT products to be insecure; a more likely explanation is that building in more security tends to make devices considerably more expensive and slower to market. In many cases, their insecurity stems from a combination of factors: They ship with every imaginable feature turned on by default; they bundle outdated software and firmware components; and their default settings are difficult or impossible for users to change.

We don’t often hear about intentional efforts to subvert the security of the technology supply chain simply because these incidents tend to get quickly classified by the military when they are discovered. But the U.S. Congress has held multiple hearings about supply chain security challenges, and the U.S. government has taken steps on several occasions to block Chinese tech companies from doing business with the federal government and/or U.S.-based firms.

Most recently, the Pentagon banned the sale of Chinese-made ZTE and Huawei phones on military bases, according to a Defense Department directive that cites security risks posed by the devices. The U.S. Department of Commerce also has instituted a seven-year export restriction for ZTE, resulting in a ban on U.S. component makers selling to ZTE.

Still, the issue here isn’t that we can’t trust technology products made in China. Indeed there are numerous examples of other countries — including the United States and its allies — slipping their own “backdoors” into hardware and software products.

Like it or not, the vast majority of electronics are made in China, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. The central issue is that we don’t have any other choice right now. The reason is that by nearly all accounts it would be punishingly expensive to replicate that manufacturing process here in the United States.

Even if the U.S. government and Silicon Valley somehow mustered the funding and political will to do that, insisting that products sold to U.S. consumers or the U.S. government be made only with components made here in the U.S.A. would massively drive up the cost of all forms of technology. Consumers would almost certainly balk at buying these way more expensive devices. Years of experience has shown that consumers aren’t interested in paying a huge premium for security when a comparable product with the features they want is available much more cheaply.

Indeed, noted security expert Bruce Schneier calls supply-chain security “an insurmountably hard problem.”

“Our IT industry is inexorably international, and anyone involved in the process can subvert the security of the end product,” Schneier wrote in an opinion piece published earlier this year in The Washington Post. “No one wants to even think about a US-only anything; prices would multiply many times over. We cannot trust anyone, yet we have no choice but to trust everyone. No one is ready for the costs that solving this would entail.”

The Bloomberg piece also addresses this elephant in the room:

“The problem under discussion wasn’t just technological. It spoke to decisions made decades ago to send advanced production work to Southeast Asia. In the intervening years, low-cost Chinese manufacturing had come to underpin the business models of many of America’s largest technology companies. Early on, Apple, for instance, made many of its most sophisticated electronics domestically. Then in 1992, it closed a state-of-the-art plant for motherboard and computer assembly in Fremont, Calif., and sent much of that work overseas.

Over the decades, the security of the supply chain became an article of faith despite repeated warnings by Western officials. A belief formed that China was unlikely to jeopardize its position as workshop to the world by letting its spies meddle in its factories. That left the decision about where to build commercial systems resting largely on where capacity was greatest and cheapest. “You end up with a classic Satan’s bargain,” one former U.S. official says. “You can have less supply than you want and guarantee it’s secure, or you can have the supply you need, but there will be risk. Every organization has accepted the second proposition.”

Another huge challenge of securing the technology supply chain is that it’s quite time consuming and expensive to detect when products may have been intentionally compromised during some part of the manufacturing process. Your typical motherboard of the kind produced by a company like Supermicro can include hundreds of chips, but it only takes one hinky chip to subvert the security of the entire product.

Also, most of the U.S. government’s efforts to police the global technology supply chain seem to be focused on preventing counterfeits — not finding secretly added spying components.

Finally, it’s not clear that private industry is up to the job, either. At least not yet.

“In the three years since the briefing in McLean, no commercially viable way to detect attacks like the one on Supermicro’s motherboards has emerged—or has looked likely to emerge,” the Bloomberg story concludes. “Few companies have the resources of Apple and Amazon, and it took some luck even for them to spot the problem. ‘This stuff is at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, and there is no easy technological solution,’ one of the people present in McLean says. ‘You have to invest in things that the world wants. You cannot invest in things that the world is not ready to accept yet.'”

For my part, I try not to spin my wheels worrying about things I can’t change, and the supply chain challenges definitely fit into that category. I’ll have some more thoughts on the supply chain problem and what we can do about it in an interview to be published next week.

But for the time being, there are some things worth thinking about that can help mitigate the threat from stealthy supply chain hacks. Writing for this week’s newsletter put out by the SANS Institute, a security training company based in Bethesda, Md., editorial board member William Hugh Murray has a few provocative thoughts:

Abandon the password for all but trivial applications. Steve Jobs and the ubiquitous mobile computer have lowered the cost and improved the convenience of strong authentication enough to overcome all arguments against it.

Abandon the flat network. Secure and trusted communication now trump ease of any-to-any communication.

Move traffic monitoring from encouraged to essential.

Establish and maintain end-to-end encryption for all applications. Think TLS, VPNs, VLANs and physically segmented networks. Software Defined Networks put this within the budget of most enterprises.

Abandon the convenient but dangerously permissive default access control rule of “read/write/execute” in favor of restrictive “read/execute-only” or even better, “Least privilege.” Least privilege is expensive to administer but it is effective. Our current strategy of “ship low-quality early/patch late” is proving to be ineffective and more expensive in maintenance and breaches than we could ever have imagined.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/supply-chain-security-is-the-whole-enchilada-but-whos-willing-to-pay-for-it/

[coin-river-blog]

News

The Satoshi Revolution: A Revolution of Rising Expectations Section 4: State Versus Society Chapter 9, Part 4 Does Your Money Serve the State or You?

The State, in short, subjects people, whereas Society associates them voluntarily.

– Felix Morley

Two simple litmus tests determine whether money serves the state (organized force) or whether it serves society (voluntary exchanges).

Who issues it? State money is issued either by the state or by an authority controlled by it, who claims a monopoly.

Can people choose to use it or not? State money is established by requiring people to accept it as legal tender.

Cryptocurrency is privately issued, and no one is forced to use or to accept it. Crypto is a pure money of society—a public money, not one that serves rulers and elites. Indeed, many people use it to escape the corrupt central banking system and its domination of the global economy through fiat money. Control of the economy is the basis of social control.

The state lives or dies through its ability to regulate the flow of wealth within society. This makes cryptocurrency, even in its infancy, a threat to established power that the state addresses by dominating crypto through regulation, through its own monopoly issuance, or through banning it. Each step requires law. And, except for dictatorships, law requires public justification. Even with dictatorships, public justification is usually offered in order to avoid public resistance. The state needs law to destroy crypto, which means it needs justification. If there is not a real need, then a false one must be created.

The appeal to law reveals another and more fundamental difference between state money and that of society. Namely, what is the purpose of law regarding each one?

What is the Purpose of State Law Regarding Crypto?

The alleged illegality of crypto and of those who use it is, again, divided by the state into two clear categories.

First and foremost to the state are violations of its own self-declared jurisdiction. Given that the state produces no wealth, its claimed jurisdiction amounts to the rules by which wealth is confiscated and redistributed. Crypto violates these rules. Some uses do so directly. For example, it is sometimes used for tax evasion, money laundering, black-market activities, and other functions that compromise the state.

Of course, people who use fiat also commit such ‘crimes.’ In those cases, however, there is a remarkable difference in how the law approaches the offenses. Namely, objectionable individuals are demonized, often in a high-profile manner that intimidates those in the shadows. But the money itself is accused of no crime, and bears no liability. With cryptocurrency, both individuals and the money are demonized. The money is the true target, with individuals being the means by which to attack its legitimacy. Prosecutions springboard quickly into calls for monetary control.

Crypto also violates rules of the state in a more profound manner. It renders trusted third parties irrelevant, and there is no more massive third party than the state. The state created the central banking system as an omnipresent regulator of money and as a choke point for information. It wove an iron web of laws to monitor money and require its ounce of flesh from every transaction. If no one needs central banks, if they can easily avoid the strangling laws, then the power of the state dramatically diminishes. Some crypto zealots argue that the power is or will be destroyed. In either case, crypto constitutes a threat as muscular as any other revolution. Perhaps more so. No wonder, the loudest cry of “there ought to be a law” revolves around the preservation of state privileges.

The second round of the state��s cry for law is the claim that crypto violates the person and property of individuals. The line of attack is secondary, by far, and often sounds like an afterthought. But it is also the most dangerous claim to the continued freedom of crypto users because the accusation is valid, and it resonates with decent people. Most people hate taxes, and many would avoid them if it were safe to do so. But the same people hate fraud, theft, and violence.

Fraud, Theft, and Violence

Some uses of cryptocurrency are fraudulent. A March 2018 article in bitcoin.com opened,

“In the time it takes you to read this sentence, $850 will have been lost to cryptocurrency scams. In the time it takes to complete this article, that figure will have risen to $17,000. Phishing; fraud; theft; hacking; it’s all rife. In the first two months of 2018, there were 22 separate scams involving thefts of $400,000 or more. Put it all together and that equates to an average of $9.1 million a day. Oh, and that doesn’t include 2018’s outliers – Coincheck, Bitconnect, and Bitgrail. Otherwise, the total would actually stand at $23 million a day.”

There are thieves who prey upon the crypto community. An April 2018 article in bitcoin.com explained,

“Hardware wallets are regarded as one of the safest means of storing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Each device grants the holder possession of their private keys and adds a PIN code plus other tamer-proof [sic] tech for enhanced security. Hardware wallets are not impregnable, however, as one British man found to his peril after purchasing the device on Ebay. Redditor moodyrocket is coming to terms with having his “life savings” wiped out this week, after $34,000 of crypto was stolen from his newly acquired Nano Ledger hardware wallet. The device was compromised, not due to any flaws in its design, but thanks to a man in the middle attack that saw the reseller insert their own recovery seed.”

Crypto allegedly cloaks acts of violence. This is the shakiest claim, because it is based on reports from state officials, or experts who are often in their pay. The “10 of the Biggest Lies Told About Bitcoin” (December 2017) addressed the claim that crypto is the finance of choice for terrorists.

“If you want to blame a currency, try the U.S. dollar which has been used to fund more wars, proxy wars, bombings, hijackings, and insurgencies than any other. Europol found no evidence that terrorists were using cryptocurrencies to fund their activities. That’s not to say it hasn’t happened and won’t happen. It’s telling however that the only people linking bitcoin with terrorism are governments seeking to crackdown on digital currencies.”

For the sake of argument, assume every accusation leveled at cryptocurrency is true. But it is also true of fiat. Fraud, theft, and violence has been associated with every means of exchange that has ever existed. Again, only crypto is discredited. Not barter. Not gold. Not fiat, against which no one shakes their fist due to fraud. It is telling that cryptocurrency is blamed for the actions of individuals, in much the same manner that guns are blamed for crimes.

Law will be imposed upon crypto. The state needs to reassert control. The free market needs to do what it does best: provide a solution to a need. State versus society. It will play out before our eyes.  I have a good idea of what it will look like, on both sides.

[To be continued next week.]

Reprints of this article should credit bitcoin.com and include a link back to the original links to all previous chapters

Wendy McElroy has agreed to ”live-publish” her new book The Satoshi Revolution exclusively with Bitcoin.com. Every Saturday you’ll find another installment in a series of posts planned to conclude after about 18 months. Altogether they’ll make up her new book ”The Satoshi Revolution”. Read it here first.

[roguenewsdao]

Gnostic Politics - Part II

"My interest in [extraterrestrial intelligence] is prompted by the fact that I have been long concerned with the possibility of expanding man’s spiritual and intellectual potential. This interest stems from a lifetime of concern and support for innovative thinking in fields such as philosophy, holistic healing, science and spirituality. I have become convinced that we must fulfill more of our human potential if we are to cope with the increasing difficult problems which now challenge our quality of life and our very survival." - Laurance Rockefeller, as quoted by Grant Cameron [linked here].

In the summer of 1995, America's dashing new president, Bill Clinton, and First Lady, Hillary Clinton, were summoned to Wyoming to meet with Laurance Rockefeller. The subject? UFO disclosure. Laurance had been stirring up all kinds of trouble, poking his nose in places where he ought not, and even insinuating veiled threats if the government didn't come clean about Roswell.

Or, at least, that's the impression we've been given.

Respected UFO researcher Grant Cameron maintains a wealth of information at his website PresidentialUFO.com on this subject. He has methodically brought together documents and conversations which paint an ever evolving picture of government knowledge about, and interaction with, whatever is "out there." Cameron sat down with Dark Journalist recently and recounted the threads of his research in vivid detail. Near the end of his interview, Cameron made some very telling comments about consciousness that have a direct bearing on the subject of this blog series, Gnostic Politics. More about that farther down the page.

As I listened to Cameron and host Daniel Liszt review the participation of Laurance Rockefeller in the so-called UFO disclosure initiative of 1993, during Clinton's first term in office, a voice in my brain was asking, "Isn't it just a bit ludicrous to believe that the government would have something that the mighty Rockefeller Family didn't already know about?"

For those of you who followed my Antarctica series, you might remember that I devoted an entire article [linked here] to the "Rockefeller Connection" as it relates to the exploration of that continent. In 1926, the Rockefellers financed Admiral Byrd's flight over the North Pole. In fact, one researcher quoted in that article said that Rockefeller was Byrd's "mentor and lifetime financial backer." Indeed, in the post-WWII era of Antarctic exploration, the Rockefeller Foundation became the model by which the government's  National Science Foundation would be created. In 1997, the U.S. Navy began handing oversight of America's interests in Antarctica over to the Rockefeller-modeled NSF.

Is it just coincidence that the Rockefellers were making moves to take charge of Antarctica at the exact same time that brother Laurance was busy promulgating the "UFO disclosure" narrative up in Washington, D.C.? Let us not forget that it was Rockefeller's man, Admiral Byrd, who was one of the first men to spark public awareness of UFO's back in 1947 following the Antarctic failure of Operation Highjump.

But there's more.

The Global Mind Arrives in the 1990's

Let's think about what else was taking shape in the 1990's in the field of science and technology, that one huge revolution that has changed all of our lives: the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

In 1989, the first web site was launched at a place not immediately associated with web sites: CERN. This highly secretive European science project had been developing the Internet with collaboration from other participants, notably, America's own DARPA agency. One of America's most highly honored engineers, Dr. Vannevar Bush, is largely credited with creating the basis of HTML, the hypertext markup language that helped transform the "information superhighway" from just a bunch of text messaging forums into a graphical browsing powerhouse. Those of you who have followed the "UFO Disclosure" movement for the last 10 or 20 years may recall that Vannevar Bush's name always comes up in discussions about the "Majestic-12" documents and the exotic technologies that were "seeded" into America's military industrial complex. Raytheon is, after all, his company.

In fact, Dr. Vannevar Bush (no direct relation to the George Bush family, by the way), had written an essay as far back as 1945 entitled "As We May Think" that foreshadowed the arrival of the digital global mind that we see now being constructed before our eyes. This Wikipedia page [linked here] describes the essay:

"'As We May Think' is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush which has been described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of information society. It was first published in The Atlantic in July 1945 and republished in an abridged version in September 1945—before and after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bush expresses his concern for the direction of scientific efforts toward destruction, rather than understanding, and explicates a desire for a sort of collective memory machine with his concept of the memex that would make knowledge more accessible, believing that it would help fix these problems. Through this machine, Bush hoped to transform an information explosion into a knowledge explosion."

Bush envisioned a machine that he called the Memex [linked here]:

"Bush describes a memex as an electromechanical device enabling individuals to develop and read a large self-contained research library, create and follow associative trails of links and personal annotations, and recall these trails at any time to share them with other researchers. This device would closely mimic the associative processes of the human mind, but it would be gifted with permanent recollection. As Bush writes, 'Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race.'"

In fact, just three years before writing that essay, Bush had built a bit of a machine-brain in 1942 and it was named for its backer, the Rockefellers [linked here]:

Rockefeller Differential Analyzer - The RDA was operational in 1942, a year after the Zuse Z3. It was equipped with 2000 vacuum tubes, weight 100 tons, used 200 miles of wire, 150 motors and thousand of relays. According to historian Robin Boast, "the RDA (Rockefeller Differential Analyzer) was revolutionary, and later was considered to be one of the most important calculating machines of the Second World War."

With those statements above by Dr. Bush, now we are beginning to see a vision taking shape of the development of Artificial Intelligence. If you've been following the research of Quinn Michaels, then you know how the trail of the #AI network known as #Tyler leads back to that same period when the Nazi "Paperclip" scientists came to Ft. Bliss, Texas.

The point of reviewing this techno history is to suggest that, when Hillary Clinton took her stroll with Laurance Rockefeller at Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 1995, there was likely much more than UFO's on Rockefeller's mind. In 1995, the World Wide Web was positioning itself to become a household word. Satellite communication and fiber optic cable were on the brink of transforming the lives of every man, woman, and child on the planet. The Rockefellers were deeply invested in the information revolution and had been involved with all manner of advanced government research via foundations and universities throughout the entire 20th century.

Furthermore, when you consider the arguments that Joseph P. Farrell poured into his book "Roswell and the Reich," and the conclusions he reached to the effect that what the U.S. government was primarily covering up was the fact that the post-war Nazi elite were operating UFO's as a rogue, breakaway community, it makes sense that Laurance would continue to promote a public narrative bent on continuing that diversion.

Part of that diversionary narrative might also have included the need to obfuscate the true source of the radically new technology. The "extraterrestrial" component in the narrative might actually be true, but not in the way that all the sci-fi movies have led you to believe.

"The material world is secondary to consciousness."

This is where Grant Cameron's statement can be inserted as a bookmark into this discussion. He reviews the conclusions that the Canadian government reached in the 1950's about the U.S. Deep State intel relative to the UFO issue. Once again, Dr. Vannevar Bush's name came up, but note also the interesting point #5 below about mental phenomena. Cameron has a full page about this at his website [linked here]. Note, also, that there is nothing here that refers explicitly to "aliens":

1) The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher than even the H-bomb.

2) Flying saucers exist.

3) Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Vannevar Bush.

4) The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

5) The United States authorities are investigating along quite a number of lines, which might possibly be related to the saucers such as mental phenomena.

At the 2-hour, 6-minute mark of this recent interview, Liszt and Cameron further comment:

Liszt: "You've come to the conclusion that most of the UFO phenomenon is about consciousness?"

Cameron: "That's what it comes down to. That's the whole bottom line.... 14% of all experiencers claim that you fly the flying saucer with your mind. It comes down to an idea about 'Is the world made of nuts and bolts, or is it made of consciousness?' And I say it's made of consciousness. The material world is secondary to consciousness."

Hold that thought, "The material world is secondary to consciousness," on the back burner for the next blog. That statement is not a bad summary of a 2,000 year old heretical belief system known as "Gnosticism." Near the beginning of the 20th century, a Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would incur the wrath of the non-Jesuit Papacy by likewise evangelizing a humanist evolution in consciousness. One critic of Teilhard named Laura Kimball [linked here] recently described him as "an evolutionary scientist, New Age Hindu-style pantheist and occult Hermetic and alchemical magician who, on behalf of his Great Work, sought fusion of opposites, for example..., of man with Omega point, the very substance of God." Hmmm, sounds like he would have gotten along great with Ray Kurzweil.

Teilhard would follow a path similar to Admiral Byrd and Dr. Vannevar Bush in that he benefited from the financial largesse of the Rockefellers in a field of study about as far removed from Artificial Intelligence as you can imagine.

Or so it would seem, until you look at the Teilhard story more closely. And this time it may be that the Jesuit Order was pulling the strings of the Rockefellers rather than the other way around. In the next blog, we'll take a look at how his gospel of the Noosphere influenced the Transhumanist quest in which the world now finds itself engaged.

My Twitter contact information is found at my billboard page of SlayTheBankster.com. Listen to my radio show, Bee In Eden, on Youtube via my show blog at SedonaDeb.wordpress.com.

[thetrumpdebacle]

Lawmakers are expressing concerns following a new House committee report detailing how Russians attempted to used social media platforms to manipulate U.S. energy markets.

It’s the first acknowledgment from politicians that such websites were used to influence U.S. affairs outside political and social discourse.

“I’m shocked,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard BurrRichard Mauze BurrOvernight Finance: Senate rejects Trump immigration plan | U.S. Bancorp to pay 0M in fines for lacking money laundering protections | Cryptocurrency market overcharges users | Prudential fights to loosen oversight Senators introduce bill to help businesses with trade complaints Our intelligence chiefs just want to tell the truth about national security MORE (R-N.C.) said on Thursday after the House Science Committee released its findings.

“Russia is continuing to extend its digital tentacles into every aspect of American life, it is absolutely chilling and profoundly dangerous to our future,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

Blumenthal is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has examined Russian meddling efforts on social media.  

“We are in effect inviting them to a social media buffet of options to interfere with our Democracy and undermine our way of life without adequate response,” he said.

The Science committee report found that energy related posts made up 4 percent of all of Kremlin-linked social media account posts, a number that it believes is significant given that 8 percent of social media posts by the Kremlin were found to be about the election.

Rep. Lamar SmithLamar Seeligson SmithLawmakers eye new programs to boost tech workforce Overnight Energy: US projected to be net energy exporter | Water rule lawsuits roll in | GOP chair challenges cancer agency over pesticides GOP chairman questions US funding for international cancer research agency MORE (R-Texas), Science’s chairman, said the results shed light on how Russian actors are using social media to influence Americans in significant economic and policy areas.

“As far as this goes, it’s more significant than politics,” Smith said in a press call with reporters. “It could go beyond energy, and it certainly is an attack on the United States—to try to prevent us from enacting policies that benefit the American people.”

The posts from the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) accounts, an organization established by the Russian government that engages in online influence operations, targeted pipelines, fossil fuels and climate change by inserting comments into debates about their legitimacy.

In posts, the Russian accounts have used both conservative and liberal talking points, denouncing fracking and also criticizing global warming, referring to it in some cases as a “liberal hoax.”

The report said it was a clear effort to increase confusion amongst various US energy groups while promoting the Russian point of view, in step with previously known Russian efforts to sow discord on social media.

Russia’s energy success is intrinsically linked to the U.S, a likely cause for the social media behavior.

“The Russian government depends on energy royalties to fund itself. When oil is low their economy is less vibrant,” explained Dr. Michael Webber, an engineering professor and deputy director here at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute. “If you look at the U.S., the shale boom has led to keeping oil prices down. So anything they can do to slow the development of our energy infrastructure is good for them.”

Smith said the results of the report could just be the tip of the iceberg, and that it’s likely Russia may be trying to exert influence in other policy spheres.

“We only focused on energy policy, there may be attempts by Russian to interfere in other issues, and that would be the jurisdiction of other committees,” Smith said.

Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher at Oxford University who has studied how governments use social media to influence public opinion, said that the findings could be an indication that Russians have launched influence campaigns on other key foreign policy issues, such as the race to control shipping lanes in the Arctic and the geopolitical crisis in Syria.

Rep. Eddie Bernice JohnsonEddie Bernice JohnsonOvernight Cybersecurity: Tech execs testify on countering extremist content | House approves cyber diplomacy bill | Pentagon reportedly mulling nuclear response to cyberattacks Let’s take step to improve the science of treating serious mental illness Watchdog: Trump officials improperly withheld funds for advanced energy office MORE (D-Texas), ranking member of the science committee, said she found the report’s results concerning, especially when it came to climate change.

“It has become apparent that the Russians have been attempting to interfere across our society,” Johnson said in a statement.

However, Johnson equated the committee’s report on Russia’s influence on energy to cherry picking, as Smith and other Republican committee members have refrained from addressing concerns about Russia meddling in U.S. elections.

“Democrats on the Committee have repeatedly asked the chairman to look into this issue and have been ignored. To ignore known meddling in the very foundation of our democracy while focusing solely on Russia’s influence on the U.S. energy market – a market that is currently booming – seems irresponsible at best,” Johnson said.

The report is the latest effort from members of Congress to probe Russian meddling in the U.S. via social media.

At the end of 2017 the Senate and House Intelligence Committees held hearings in which top lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google testified on how Russians manipulated their platforms to sow discord around the time of the 2016 presidential election.

In February, the Department of Justice also substantiated concerns of Russian interference, when special counsel Robert MuellerRobert Swan MuellerSasse: US should applaud choice of Mueller to lead Russia probe MORE indicted thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian companies for interfering in the 2016 U.S. elections.

  via The Trump Debacle

[awesomejustsmo-blog]

How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Business

With countless of busy societal websites, it could be hard to understand the place you really should commence when it regards advertising and marketing a business enterprise or constructing an internet neighborhood. That will assist you to receive better comprehension of every single media, and the way you may rely on them on the company, we assembled a fast run down on a number of the very best smm panel and providers to your develop your societal networking marketing plan.

Facebook

quantity of end users: face-book lately documented 1.49 month-to-month users together with Asia accounting for 28 percent, Europe to get 24 percent, USA and Canada to get 17 percent along with the remaining part of the whole world for 30 percent of the end users. Just how any customers rely on it face-book is your most significant system for sharing global, once it has to do with brands, how users may talk about content and products which syncs together. The societal networking platform now supplies new pages at which users may socialize together and examine titles predicated in your own experiences. What you could perform: Long-form articles without a personality or phrase limitation -- has probably the maximum face-book stocks and enjoys, therefore begin producing! Invite your buffs to submit stories or reviews in their adventures together with your own site onto your own brand-new web page. Face-book can be also an extraordinary system to provide insider hints, monitoring thoughts, meet-up and occasion invitations, and even promotional material supplies.

Twitter

Quantity of consumers: Due to Q 2 2015, Twitter Claimed 304 million busy Month-to-month customers using Most of these consumers predominant in Asia, United States and Western Europe. Just how any customers put it to use Twitter has been fashioned for limited comment -- one hundred forty personalities or not -- and end users will put it to use in order to chat around and socialize with brand names regarding their goods or solutions. What you could perform: Invite your visitors to converse a dialog on your new letting the others understand the reason why they like this, or generate a hash-tag that will help launch a dialog. Remember to re tweet other people to demonstrate admiration and react when requested a problem or labeled within an tweet. When acceptable, brand names may article about what exactly's trending to improve visibility. The guideline to get Twitter is maybe not to merely share your self, yet to start out and keep a dialog.

YouTube

Amount of end users: YouTube asserts to possess a billion consumers throughout the world using 70 percent of people via beyond the U.S. and can be currently broadcast in fifty four languages. Just how any customers rely on it YouTube presents end users the chance to see videos at no cost, or make and add their particular personal. Video clips are simple to touch upon, speed, and also discuss societal networking and sites. What you could perform: Produce video clips and add them! YouTube can be actually a huge system for producing more video clips (rather than additional movie services like Vine), such as product or service overviews, interviews, tutorials, and much more. Individuals who're busy on YouTube want to see resourceful, interesting and enlightening videos, so and that means you do have greater flexibility about the moderate -- think beyond the box to support participate their consideration!

Pinterest

Amount of end users: P interest contains 72.8 million end users, 85 percent that are feminine at the U.S., but in Britain that it skews far more, together with 56 percent of its own users staying man. Just how any customers put it to use end users trap content and products that they enjoy from your Web in order that they are able to return straight back into it after. They're also able to arrange their hooks planks round an issue or motif. What you could perform: Create product and content descriptions Mo-Re pinnable -- and much more inclined to operate a vehicle traffic by simply pairing them together with amazing graphics, a very helpful description, as well as a hyperlink back for your site. Bear in mind that hooks are indefinitely, therefore be certain URLs with hooks are busy.

Spotify

Amount of end users: Spotify has above seventy five million busy people, with nearly all of its end users living out their U.S. The way any customers put it to use Spotify supplies end users the power to share and stream audio and play lists, in addition to find audio. What you could perform: Produce a play list all around your internet site offers. By way of instance, in the event you operate a cooking site, make a play list to get "Cookie Baking" or even "affectionate dinner" Obtain traffic to trace your own play-lists and indicate meals which fit!

Yelp

Amount of end users: Yelp boasts above eighty three million yearly unique traffic, the majority that result in over the U.S. however has been slowly getting popularity globally. Just how any customers put it to use Yelp can be actually a spot where end users may render evaluations of organizations they have socialized with, either favorable and bad. What you could perform: as you will possibly be unable to to convince end users to render flattering testimonials, then you really should inspire clients to render reviews whenever you have furnished them by having a great encounter. Make certain you're tracking remarks and reacting appropriately, notably to some reviews that are negative.

Instagram

Quantity of consumers: Over 300 million consumers article about Instagram -- 70 percent of these globally. Just how any customers rely on it Insta-gram is really where users may share photos that they choose, in addition to enjoy and remark about graphics in brands and people that they follow along. It provides integrations therefore users may mechanically find pictures to additional societal websites also. What you could perform: it is a easy means to showcase your goods and generate visitors for your website, but you should be watchful -- end users aren't appearing to be more promoted. Ensure that your Instagram feed natural and organic, accurate and thought provoking. Use amazing graphics and enlightening captions. Invite your visitors to article movies comprising your brand new Instagram and label one to greatly help expand your new get to and get instagram views, likes and followers 

Linkedin

Amount of end users: linked-in has 380 million end users throughout the world and is currently employed in more than 200 countries and can be interpreted in 1 9 languages. Just how any customers rely on it This societal internet site for pros brings itself readily into linking with additional notion leaders. What you could perform: publish posts on your new or specialization to aid prove your self as being a credible resource of advice, together with a possible company to all those job-hunters additionally on linked in. But don't forget, organizations find it impossible to place this can simply out of folks. Therefore choose a couple of personnel or urges that will help article on your organization or marketplace for your benefit. Four-square Amount of end users: four-square was utilised by over fifty five million persons worldwide using brand new global service being inserted always. Just how any customers put it to use four-square is a program where by people are able to talk about exactly what organizations they see with an check, in addition to depart testimonials or hints to different clients. What you could perform: for those who are in possession of a brick-and-mortar business enterprise, you are likely by now on four-square if you have put a page up or never. Be certain your page comprises each the crucial info regarding your organization, and invite visitors to assess out and render evaluations. In order to get a fantastic instance of an organization utilizing four-square nicely, have a look at Centrolina at washington-dc.

Google+

Amount of end users: Google+ includes 300 million daily busy users that have quite a few users living inside the U.S. adopted by India. Just how any customers put it to use Google+ supplies end users the capacity to contact the others, generate classes to socialize together share articles, and also combine communities centered on shared interests. What you could perform: Establishing a Google+ account presents end users the following means to get and associate to your new on the web. It's possible for you to post material on the web, and make and deal with groups to get out the word of exactly what your own firm offers.

Quora

Amount of end users: Quora will not openly publish data on traffic or users, however, also the website has a estimated forty million visits yearly. Just how any customers rely on it Quora can be somewhere to ask questions and possess the replies supplied by others that are experienced on this issue. What you could perform: Quora will not allow new account, nevertheless, you may put it to use being a single expert on the marketplace to answer issues and also establish trustworthiness. It really is additionally a potent software for societal listening. Figure out exactly what users would like to learn about your services and products and market, and also incorporate the responses to your own plan.

Tumblr

Amount of end users: Tumblr H-AS 420 million end users together with users disperse round the Earth, but the specific amounts aren't available offered. Just how any customers put it to use Tumblr can be an micro-blogging system that presents people the power to compose short site articles and reveal videos, links, and graphics. Users may trace other Tumblr site, also enjoy and reblog articles out of your others. What you could perform: Tumblr skews youthful -- 41 percent of these customers are obsolete 18-34 -- thus if that is your crowd, it may be well worth spending some time around the website, or even eschewing a conventional site in favour of this stage. Visuals -- specially GIFs and video clips -- are somewhat very popular on this system.

SnapChat

Amount of end users: Snap Chat has over one hundred million people, together with more than 10 billion united video opinions. Just how any customers put it to use Snap Chat is actually a swift means for any customers to ship swift "snaps" in these day-to-day lifetime, or their own view with an occasion. What you could perform: Much Like Tumblr, '' Snap Chat is just another stage which skews young (nevertheless it truly is gaining recognition with ages). If you should be casting an occasion, geo-target end users using Brand-Ed blockers attached into favorite events such as music festivals or even sport matches to receive your name from a larger crowd.

Reddit

Amount of end users: You will find 3 6 exceptional redditors (reddit editors), using above 230 million unique readers per month. Just how any customers put it to use delve deep to some particular theme beneath a sub reddit, or keep overall with soda tradition occasions and broader discussions. Redditors up/down vote articles to rank high on the themes checklist. Reddit can be also a amazing means to know remarks from pros (also not-so-experts) and make dialogues together with people throughout Earth. The "Ask Me Anything" show where people characters open up themselves for questioning is still really a especially common characteristic. What you could perform: Redditors really are still an remarkable mixture of individuals with disabilities and curiosities around the plank. You will find most likely talks happening linked to a attention, at which you are able to participate an audience and earn a title your own new. Fantastic Reddit is approximately sharing and credibility knowledge on the planet. Virtually every interpersonal networking system performs for every single small business. Be tactical about that which ones that you employ and also at which you devote absolute most resources and time. When employed successfully, and during advertising of in which your company is busy about societal using sharing and after buttons, societal networking advertising may be among the best equipment for developing your company on the web.

Desire a cookie sheet that will assist you to maintain carefully the gaps between each of the sockets? Take a look at our info-graphic, beneath!

[raystart]

How companies strangle innovation – and how you can get it right

  A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog

—

I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation.

There’s a much better way.

An existing company or government organization is primarily organized for day-to-day execution of its current business processes or mission. From the point of view of the executors, having too many innovation ideas gets in the way of execution.

The Tidal Wave of Unfiltered Ideas Pete Newell and I were working with a company that was getting its butt kicked from near-peer competitors as well as from a wave of well-funded insurgent startups. This was a very large and established tech company; its engineering organization developed the core day-to-day capabilities of the organization. Engineering continually felt overwhelmed. They were trying to keep up with providing the core services necessary to run the current business and at the same time deal with a flood of well-meaning but uncoordinated ideas about new features, technologies and innovations coming at them from all directions. It didn’t help that “innovation” was the new hot-button buzzword from senior leadership, and incubators were sprouting in every division of their company, it just made their job more unmanageable.

One of the senior engineering directors I greatly admire (who at one time or another had managed their largest technology groups) described the problem in pretty graphic terms:

“The volume of ideas creates a denial of service attack against capability developers, furthers technical debt, and further encumbers the dollars that should be applied towards better innovation.”

Essentially, the engineering organization was saying that innovation without a filter was as bad as no innovation at all. So, in response the company had hired a global consulting firm to help solve the problem. After a year of analysis and millions of dollars in consulting fees, the result was a set of formal processes and committees to help create a rational innovation pipeline. They would narrow down the proposed ideas and choose which ones to fund and staff.

Build the Wall I took one look at the process they came up with and could have sworn that it was invented by the company’s competitors to throttle innovation.

The new innovation process had lots of paperwork – committees, application forms and presentations, and pitches. People with ideas, technology or problems pitched in front of the evaluation committee. It seemed to make sense to have have all the parties represented at the committee, so lots of people attended – program managers who controlled the budget, the developers responsible for maintaining and enhancing the current product and building new ones, and representatives from the operating divisions who needed and would use these products. Someone with an idea would fill out the paperwork justifying the need for this innovation, it would go to the needs committee, and then to an overall needs assessment board to see if the idea was worth assigning people and budget to. And oh, since the innovation wasn’t in this year’s budget, it would only get started in the next year.

Seriously.

As you can guess in the nine months this process has been in place the company has approved no new innovation initiatives. But new unbudgeted and unplanned threats kept emerging at a speed their organization couldn’t respond to.

At least it succeeded in not distracting the developers.

This was done by smart, well-intentioned adults thinking they were doing the right thing for their company and consultants who thought this was great innovation advice.

What went wrong here? Three common mistakes.

First, this company (and most others) viewed innovation as unconstrained activities with no discipline. In reality for innovation to contribute to a company or government agency, it needs to be designed a process from start to deployment.

Second, the company had not factored in that their technology advantage attrited every year, and new threats would appear faster than their current systems could handle. Ironically, by standing still, they were falling behind.

Third, this company had no formal innovation pipeline process before proposals went to the committee. Approvals tended to be based on who had the best demo and/or slides or lobbied the hardest. There was no burden on those who proposed a new idea or technology to talk to customers, build minimal viable products, test hypotheses or understand the barriers to deployment. The company had a series of uncoordinated tools and methodologies as activities, but nothing to generate evidence to refine the ideas, technology or problems as an integrated innovation process (though they did have a great incubator with wonderful coffee cups). There were no requirements for the innovator. Instead the process dumped all of these “innovations” onto well-intentioned, smart people sitting in a committee who thought they could precompute whether these innovation ideas were worth pursuing.

An Innovation Process and Pipeline What the company needed was a self-regulating, evidence-based innovation pipeline. Instead of having a committee vet ideas, they needed a process that operated with speed and urgency, and innovators and stakeholders who curated and prioritized their own problems/idea/technology.

All of this would occur before any new idea, tech or problem hit engineering. This way, the innovations that reached engineering would already have substantial evidence – about validated customer needs, processes, legal, security and integration issues identified — and most importantly, minimal viable products and working prototypes already tested. A canonical Lean Innovation process inside a company or government agency would look something like this:

Curation As the head of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, Pete Newell built a battle-tested process to get technology solutions deployed rapidly. This process, called Curation, gets innovators to work through a formal process of getting out of their offices and understanding:

Internal and External Survey

Other places the problem might exist in a slightly different form

Internal projects already in existence

Commercially available solutions

Legal issues

Security issues

Support issues

Use Cases/Concept of Operations

Who are the customers? Stakeholders? Other players?

How did they interact? Pains/Gains/Jobs to be done?

How does the proposed solution work from the viewpoint of the users?

What would the initial minimal viable products (MVPs) – incremental and iterative solutions – look like?

In the meantime, the innovators would begin to build initial minimal viable products (MVPs) – incremental and iterative tests of key hypotheses. Some ideas will drop out when the team itself recognizes that they may be technically, financially or legally unfeasible or they may discover that other groups have already built a similar product.

Prioritization One of the quickest ways to sort innovation ideas is to use the McKinsey Three Horizons Model. Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities. Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets or targets. Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or disruption. And we added a new category, Horizon 0, which defers or graveyards ideas that are not viable or feasible.

At the end of this prioritization step, the teams meet another milestone: is this project worth pursing for another few months full time? A key concept of prioritization across all horizons is that this ranking is not done by a remote committee, but by the innovation teams themselves as an early step in their discovery process.

Solution Exploration/Hypotheses Testing The ideas that pass through the prioritization filter enter an I-Corps incubation process. I-Corps was adopted by all U.S. government federal research agencies to turn ideas into products. Over a 1,000 teams of our country’s best scientists have gone through the program taught in over 50 universities. (Segments of the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence community have also adopted this model as the Hacking for Defense process.)

This six- to ten-week process delivers evidence for defensible, data-based decisions. It tests the initial idea against all the hypotheses in a business model (or for the government, the mission model) canvas. This not only includes the obvious — is there product/market (solution/mission) fit? — but the other “gotchas” that innovators always seem to forget. The framework has the team talking not just to potential customers but also with regulators, and people responsible for legal, policy, finance, support. It also requires that they think through compatibility, scalability and deployment long before this gets presented to engineering. There is now another major milestone for the team: to show compelling evidence that this project deserves to be a new mainstream capability and inserted into engineering. Or does it create a new capability that could be spun into its own organization? Or does the team think it should be killed?

Incubation Once hypothesis testing is complete, many projects will still need a period of incubation as the teams championing the projects need to gather additional data about the application as well as may need to mature as a team before they are ready to integrate with a horizon 1 engineering organization or product division. Incubation requires dedicated leadership oversight from the horizon 1 organization to insure the fledgling project does not die of malnutrition (a lack of access to resources) or become an orphan (no parent to guide them).

Integration/Refactoring Trying to integrate new, unbudgeted and unscheduled Horizon 1 and 2 innovation projects into an engineering organization that has line item budgets for people and resources results in chaos and frustration. In addition, innovation projects not only carry technical debt, but also organizational debt.

Technical debt describes what happens when software or hardware is built quickly to validate hypotheses and find early customers. This quick and dirty development results in software that can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. Organizational debt is all the people/culture compromises made to “just get it done” in the early stages of an innovation project. You clean up technical debt through refactoring, by going into the existing code and restructuring it to make the code stable and understandable. You fix organizational debt by refactoring the team, realizing that most of the team who built and validated a prototype may not be the right team to take it to scale but is more valuable starting the next innovation initiative.

Often when an innovation pipeline runs head-on into a process-driven execution organization, chaos and finger-pointing ensues and adoption of new projects stall. To solve this problem we acknowledge that innovation projects will need to refactor both technical and organizational debt to become a mainstream product/service. To do so, the innovation pipeline has engineering set up a small refactoring organization to move these validated prototypes into production. In addition, to solve the problem that innovation is always unscheduled and unbudgeted, this group has a dedicated annual budget.

Disruptive Products Some products and services going through the pipeline create new capabilities or open new markets. These Horizon 3 disruptive innovations need to separate from the existing development organizations and be allowed to grow and develop in physically separate spaces. They need the support and oversight of the CEO.

—

Fast forward a year, and slowly, like turning a supertanker, the innovation pipeline we proposed is taking shape. The company has adopted Lean language and process: curation, prioritization, three horizons, I-Corps – business/mission model canvas, customer development and agile engineering.

Lessons Learned

Every large company and government agency is dealing with disruption

Most have concluded that “business as usual” can’t go on

Yet while the top of the organization gets it, and the innovators on the bottom get it, there has been no relief for the engineering groups trying to keep the lights on

Innovation isn’t a single activity; it is a process from start to deployment

In “execution engines,” committees and broad stakeholder involvement make sense because experience, knowledge, and data from the past allow better decision-making

In “innovation engines” there isn’t the data to decide between competing ideas/projects (since nobody’s been in the future), so the teams need to gather facts outside their cubicle or building quickly

A self-regulating, evidence-based Lean Innovation process will deliver continuous innovation and disruptive breakthroughs with speed and urgency

Filed under: Corporate Innovation

[mredwinsmith]

How companies strangle innovation – and how you can get it right

  A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog

—

I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation.

There’s a much better way.

An existing company or government organization is primarily organized for day-to-day execution of its current business processes or mission. From the point of view of the executors, having too many innovation ideas gets in the way of execution.

The Tidal Wave of Unfiltered Ideas Pete Newell and I were working with a company that was getting its butt kicked from near-peer competitors as well as from a wave of well-funded insurgent startups. This was a very large and established tech company; its engineering organization developed the core day-to-day capabilities of the organization. Engineering continually felt overwhelmed. They were trying to keep up with providing the core services necessary to run the current business and at the same time deal with a flood of well-meaning but uncoordinated ideas about new features, technologies and innovations coming at them from all directions. It didn’t help that “innovation” was the new hot-button buzzword from senior leadership, and incubators were sprouting in every division of their company, it just made their job more unmanageable.

One of the senior engineering directors I greatly admire (who at one time or another had managed their largest technology groups) described the problem in pretty graphic terms:

“The volume of ideas creates a denial of service attack against capability developers, furthers technical debt, and further encumbers the dollars that should be applied towards better innovation.”

Essentially, the engineering organization was saying that innovation without a filter was as bad as no innovation at all. So, in response the company had hired a global consulting firm to help solve the problem. After a year of analysis and millions of dollars in consulting fees, the result was a set of formal processes and committees to help create a rational innovation pipeline. They would narrow down the proposed ideas and choose which ones to fund and staff.

Build the Wall I took one look at the process they came up with and could have sworn that it was invented by the company’s competitors to throttle innovation.

The new innovation process had lots of paperwork – committees, application forms and presentations, and pitches. People with ideas, technology or problems pitched in front of the evaluation committee. It seemed to make sense to have have all the parties represented at the committee, so lots of people attended – program managers who controlled the budget, the developers responsible for maintaining and enhancing the current product and building new ones, and representatives from the operating divisions who needed and would use these products. Someone with an idea would fill out the paperwork justifying the need for this innovation, it would go to the needs committee, and then to an overall needs assessment board to see if the idea was worth assigning people and budget to. And oh, since the innovation wasn’t in this year’s budget, it would only get started in the next year.

Seriously.

As you can guess in the nine months this process has been in place the company has approved no new innovation initiatives. But new unbudgeted and unplanned threats kept emerging at a speed their organization couldn’t respond to.

At least it succeeded in not distracting the developers.

This was done by smart, well-intentioned adults thinking they were doing the right thing for their company and consultants who thought this was great innovation advice.

What went wrong here? Three common mistakes.

First, this company (and most others) viewed innovation as unconstrained activities with no discipline. In reality for innovation to contribute to a company or government agency, it needs to be designed a process from start to deployment.

Second, the company had not factored in that their technology advantage attrited every year, and new threats would appear faster than their current systems could handle. Ironically, by standing still, they were falling behind.

Third, this company had no formal innovation pipeline process before proposals went to the committee. Approvals tended to be based on who had the best demo and/or slides or lobbied the hardest. There was no burden on those who proposed a new idea or technology to talk to customers, build minimal viable products, test hypotheses or understand the barriers to deployment. The company had a series of uncoordinated tools and methodologies as activities, but nothing to generate evidence to refine the ideas, technology or problems as an integrated innovation process (though they did have a great incubator with wonderful coffee cups). There were no requirements for the innovator. Instead the process dumped all of these “innovations” onto well-intentioned, smart people sitting in a committee who thought they could precompute whether these innovation ideas were worth pursuing.

An Innovation Process and Pipeline What the company needed was a self-regulating, evidence-based innovation pipeline. Instead of having a committee vet ideas, they needed a process that operated with speed and urgency, and innovators and stakeholders who curated and prioritized their own problems/idea/technology.

All of this would occur before any new idea, tech or problem hit engineering. This way, the innovations that reached engineering would already have substantial evidence – about validated customer needs, processes, legal, security and integration issues identified — and most importantly, minimal viable products and working prototypes already tested. A canonical Lean Innovation process inside a company or government agency would look something like this:

Curation As the head of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, Pete Newell built a battle-tested process to get technology solutions deployed rapidly. This process, called Curation, gets innovators to work through a formal process of getting out of their offices and understanding:

Internal and External Survey

Other places the problem might exist in a slightly different form

Internal projects already in existence

Commercially available solutions

Legal issues

Security issues

Support issues

Use Cases/Concept of Operations

Who are the customers? Stakeholders? Other players?

How did they interact? Pains/Gains/Jobs to be done?

How does the proposed solution work from the viewpoint of the users?

What would the initial minimal viable products (MVPs) – incremental and iterative solutions – look like?

In the meantime, the innovators would begin to build initial minimal viable products (MVPs) – incremental and iterative tests of key hypotheses. Some ideas will drop out when the team itself recognizes that they may be technically, financially or legally unfeasible or they may discover that other groups have already built a similar product.

Prioritization One of the quickest ways to sort innovation ideas is to use the McKinsey Three Horizons Model. Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities. Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets or targets. Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or disruption. And we added a new category, Horizon 0, which defers or graveyards ideas that are not viable or feasible.

At the end of this prioritization step, the teams meet another milestone: is this project worth pursing for another few months full time? A key concept of prioritization across all horizons is that this ranking is not done by a remote committee, but by the innovation teams themselves as an early step in their discovery process.

Solution Exploration/Hypotheses Testing The ideas that pass through the prioritization filter enter an I-Corps incubation process. I-Corps was adopted by all U.S. government federal research agencies to turn ideas into products. Over a 1,000 teams of our country’s best scientists have gone through the program taught in over 50 universities. (Segments of the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence community have also adopted this model as the Hacking for Defense process.)

This six- to ten-week process delivers evidence for defensible, data-based decisions. It tests the initial idea against all the hypotheses in a business model (or for the government, the mission model) canvas. This not only includes the obvious — is there product/market (solution/mission) fit? — but the other “gotchas” that innovators always seem to forget. The framework has the team talking not just to potential customers but also with regulators, and people responsible for legal, policy, finance, support. It also requires that they think through compatibility, scalability and deployment long before this gets presented to engineering. There is now another major milestone for the team: to show compelling evidence that this project deserves to be a new mainstream capability and inserted into engineering. Or does it create a new capability that could be spun into its own organization? Or does the team think it should be killed?

Incubation Once hypothesis testing is complete, many projects will still need a period of incubation as the teams championing the projects need to gather additional data about the application as well as may need to mature as a team before they are ready to integrate with a horizon 1 engineering organization or product division. Incubation requires dedicated leadership oversight from the horizon 1 organization to insure the fledgling project does not die of malnutrition (a lack of access to resources) or become an orphan (no parent to guide them).

Integration/Refactoring Trying to integrate new, unbudgeted and unscheduled Horizon 1 and 2 innovation projects into an engineering organization that has line item budgets for people and resources results in chaos and frustration. In addition, innovation projects not only carry technical debt, but also organizational debt.

Technical debt describes what happens when software or hardware is built quickly to validate hypotheses and find early customers. This quick and dirty development results in software that can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. Organizational debt is all the people/culture compromises made to “just get it done” in the early stages of an innovation project. You clean up technical debt through refactoring, by going into the existing code and restructuring it to make the code stable and understandable. You fix organizational debt by refactoring the team, realizing that most of the team who built and validated a prototype may not be the right team to take it to scale but is more valuable starting the next innovation initiative.

Often when an innovation pipeline runs head-on into a process-driven execution organization, chaos and finger-pointing ensues and adoption of new projects stall. To solve this problem we acknowledge that innovation projects will need to refactor both technical and organizational debt to become a mainstream product/service. To do so, the innovation pipeline has engineering set up a small refactoring organization to move these validated prototypes into production. In addition, to solve the problem that innovation is always unscheduled and unbudgeted, this group has a dedicated annual budget.

Disruptive Products Some products and services going through the pipeline create new capabilities or open new markets. These Horizon 3 disruptive innovations need to separate from the existing development organizations and be allowed to grow and develop in physically separate spaces. They need the support and oversight of the CEO.

—

Fast forward a year, and slowly, like turning a supertanker, the innovation pipeline we proposed is taking shape. The company has adopted Lean language and process: curation, prioritization, three horizons, I-Corps – business/mission model canvas, customer development and agile engineering.

Lessons Learned

Every large company and government agency is dealing with disruption

Most have concluded that “business as usual” can’t go on

Yet while the top of the organization gets it, and the innovators on the bottom get it, there has been no relief for the engineering groups trying to keep the lights on

Innovation isn’t a single activity; it is a process from start to deployment

In “execution engines,” committees and broad stakeholder involvement make sense because experience, knowledge, and data from the past allow better decision-making

In “innovation engines” there isn’t the data to decide between competing ideas/projects (since nobody’s been in the future), so the teams need to gather facts outside their cubicle or building quickly

A self-regulating, evidence-based Lean Innovation process will deliver continuous innovation and disruptive breakthroughs with speed and urgency

Filed under: Corporate Innovation from Steve Blank http://ift.tt/2ws5cAN

[benito2world-blog]

Ereccion Total Pdf

Tips The way to Regulate Erectile Dysfunction Problems

In the age of Viagra, you'd are convinced erectile dysfunction would be a thing on the past. Regretably, it truly is not the case. Erectile dysfunction troubles nonetheless happen and many gentlemen globally still undergo from this ailment. And it is important to find out how you can take care of erectile dysfunction. More Information Here Ereccion total pdf

Erectile dysfunction can also be called impotence plus the very word by itself won't connote pleasurable items. Though it can be rarely mentioned, erectile dysfunction is pretty frequent - in the U.S. by itself, at the least 10 million men have critical erectile dysfunction challenges plus the amount of guys experiencing impotence improve with age. So how can you manage erectile dysfunction issues?

Knowing erectile dysfunction.

It's usual for men to lose their erection occasionally. It is just once the erection just isn't sustained so that you can have sex at the least 50 % with the time does the dearth of fullness and hardness results in being a challenge. Erectile dysfunction or ED is often a ailment in which erection which is adequate for sexual penetration or pleasure is just not attained by a man. It really is not exactly the same as lack of sexual urge for food, insufficient orgasm or untimely ejaculation.

How to manage erectile dysfunction difficulties.

Erectile dysfunction may be triggered by different factors. Some of these aspects could possibly be psychological problems or health care issues. Pressure, for example, is actually a prevalent trigger of erectile dysfunction. Complications at your house or at get the job done can result in impotence and so will selected ailments. If you're uncertain of what your key dilemma is, here are some things it is possible to do to deal with erectile dysfunction issues:

See your medical professional to manage erectile dysfunction issues. To manage erectile dysfunction and to address your ED difficulties, test to receive towards the root from the bring about to grasp why it is occurring to you personally. Your physician could possibly assist you find out what will cause your impotence and look for a option that should be just right for you. When the bring about is psychological, chances are you'll must obtain techniques to beat these factors and acquire your lifetime back again to ordinary.

Stop drug use to manage erectile dysfunction troubles. Erectile dysfunction difficulties could even be caused by drug use, whether for recreation or for therapy. Medications for example hormones, tricyclic anti-depressants, muscle relaxants, diuretics, beta-blockers and H2 blockers are common culprits. Addictive substances could also induce complications. To handle erectile difficulties, talk to your medical doctor about doable options. If you are utilizing leisure drugs, you could possibly wish to halt.

Manage your sickness and in the very same time you are able to take care of erectile dysfunction issues. Erectile dysfunction complications are sometimes caused by selected diseases and ailments. Diabetic issues mellitus is always to blame for around 40% of ED issues from the U.S. even though vascular disorders account for 30%. Surgical procedures involving the pelvis or genitals can also cause impotence and so can injuries to your spinal wire, endocrine complications and numerous sclerosis.

Use medications and various products to handle erectile dysfunction. There are actually medicine that could be accustomed to deal with the actual physical problems of impotence, which may be taken orally or by injections. Sildenafil (brand identify Viagra) might be approved and employed properly, given that you're not getting nitrates for coronary heart problems. There's also medicine that happen to be injected specifically into your penis and deliver an erection which could previous about just one hour.

Some equipment, like vacuum or constriction rings, can be very beneficial in acquiring and keeping an erection. You will also find implants which might be inserted into the man's penis that could both be semi-rigid or inflatable, letting much more command. There are various various varieties and sorts of these gadgets and are very helpful should the erectile dysfunction problem is because of actual physical cause.

Get counseling to manage erectile dysfunction. If a man has erectile dysfunction, he doesn't have to endure in secret. Erectile dysfunction can result in a person to shed assurance and could even produce connection issues. Counseling, irrespective of whether just for the person or together with his associate, can be quite useful, specially when there is a necessity for reassurance for overcoming the leads to. Occasionally like these, a man will require every one of the assistance and like he desires, specially coming from his partner.

Read More Information Here Ereccion total

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/trump-and-saudi-crown-prince-have-much-more-than-oil-to-discuss/

Trump and Saudi crown prince have much more than oil to discuss

by Zahraa Alkhalisi   @CNNMoney March 14, 2017: 11:18 AM ET

The man charged with making Saudi Arabia’s economy great again will meet President Trump later Tuesday.

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will have lunch at the White House in the highest level meeting yet between Saudi Arabia and the new U.S. president.

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Prince Mohammed is spearheading the kingdom’s attempts to wean itself off oil as part of an economic strategy called Vision 2030 announced last year. He’s also defense minister and son of King Salman.

For decades, the Saudis have traded their oil for American guarantees of security. But the “oil for security” motto that has characterized the relationship has been upset by the huge increase in U.S. energy production.

Both sides may now be looking for a reset.

“With the obvious shift in global energy markets… the motto has now been rendered outdated,” said Salman Al-Ansari, president of the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee.

“The new motto is now more along the lines of ‘trade and security for trade and security’.”

Here’s what they’re likely to chew on over lunch.

Oil, oil, oil

Despite Saudi Arabia’s attempt to break its oil dependency, it still relies on the industry for almost half of its GDP.

In 2014, it flooded markets in a bid to push other oil suppliers out of the market. It succeeded in forcing some U.S. shale producers to put production on hold but prices came crashing down, wreaking havoc on the Saudi economy.

Prices recovered after OPEC agreed last November to limit production. Saudi Arabia has cut back the most, but in doing so encouraged U.S. producers back to work. Investors are watching Saudi Arabia’s next move, pushing prices lower again.

The kingdom is not only competing in world markets with American producers. It still needs the U.S. to buy its oil. It’s a major supplier of crude oil to the U.S. economy — the second biggest exporter to the U.S. after Canada.

But that demand has been shrinking in recent years. The U.S. imported just over a million barrels of Saudi oil each day in December 2016. As recently as April 2014, that number was as high as 1.6 million, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Related: The U.S. shale oil business is not dead

$50 billion tech investment

Saudi Arabia is planning to bankroll a huge investment in U.S. technology firms.

The kingdom has committed $45 billion to a $100 billion investment fund launched jointly with Japan’s SoftBank (SFTBF).

When SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son visited Trump in December he promised to invest $50 billion into the U.S., telling the Wall Street Journal later that the money would come from the new fund.

Related: Trump is banking on a big tech investment (from the Middle East)

The prince may be seeking reassurances about those planned investments. Just last year, the kingdom was publicly expressing concerns about the fallout from a controversial 9/11 bill that was passed into law.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act allows families of those killed in the terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia and seize assets. Saudi threatened to dump $750 billion in U.S. investments. It later downplayed the issue.

Prince Mohammed will also be looking for investment to flow both ways to support his diversification strategy.

“The deputy crown prince is coming to the U.S. with a plateful of economic potential,” said Al-Ansari. “Vision 2030 will require a significant amount of foreign investment to help realize its objectives.”

Saudi Arabia was once a potential market for Trump’s own businesses. Just a few months after he announced he was running for president, he registered eight Saudi companies. But by November 2016, those companies had all been dissolved or canceled without doing any business.

Security and defense

Before his inauguration, Trump threatened to halt imports of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries if they didn’t commit ground troops to fight ISIS, or at least reimburse the U.S. for its efforts.

But the security relationship is a lot more complex.

The U.S. is part of a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. And Saudi is the biggest purchaser of American weapons.

The Obama administration, concerned about civilian casualties in Yemen, suspended certain arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration has resumed those sales, and the prince may have one item in particular on his shopping list.

“Saudi Arabia is aiming to buy fighter jets, the F-35 and I think this is one of the most important things that they will discuss,” said Ahmed Alibrahim, an expert in Saudi-U.S. affairs.

With such issues at hand, the prince and Trump may need every minute of the 2-3 hours they have.

CNNMoney (Dubai) First published March 14, 2017: 11:03 AM ET

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[creativesage]

(via Three Questions To Ask In an Uncertain Business Climate)

By Matt Ranen, at NewCo Shift

Imagine you run a global business, but you have no idea if one of your largest markets — say China or Mexico — might shut down due to a trade war. Or watching your once-powerful brand suddenly become the target of a boycott, simply because you allow Muslim employees to wear hijabs at the office. With Donald Trump in the Oval Office, once-implausible scenarios like these have become real possibilities.

For many people, a Trump presidency was the first surprise. It soon became clear that no one actually knew how his term in office would play out — not even Trump himself. As Trump proposes an array of initiatives ranging from healthcare repeal to tariffs on our second-largest trading partner, the long-term agenda has become even more opaque and uncertain. In the face of such confusion and impulsivity, many people and organizations have had tremendous difficulty planning their own strategies and actions for 2017 and beyond.

The Trump administration has the ability to make changes that could potentially impact the legal circumstances, economic security, and personal safety of millions of citizens. As a strategist working across a number of commercial and nonprofit sectors, it’s clear to me that the business community is operating with an unprecedented degree of uncertainty.

Many of the basic assumptions business leaders have long held about how markets work — global competition, businesses as politically-neutral entities, well-signaled regulation — are suddenly being challenged. As such, every organization should be thinking about three critical questions:

1. Deregulation: How broad and deep?

Changes to the U.S. regulatory regime will fundamentally alter competitive advantage. For example, with the potential appointment of an anti-EPA lobbyist as head of that very same agency, we are likely to see far laxer enforcement of existing environmental protections, and possibly the repeal of some. If that is indeed the case, the service life of legacy infrastructure becomes automatically extended. Companies which invested in upgrades or new facilities to get ahead of ever-tightening regulations might find themselves facing higher operating costs than competitors who held out (or were in violation previously). In other words, the timeline for investment payback in cleaner infrastructure will suddenly have shifted.

Another, more glaring example, is health care. Because of a regulatory shift to outcome-based payments under the Obama administration, we have seen massive consolidation in the sector — often led by large hospital groups — under the assumption that managing a person’s (and population’s) health from start to finish is a better strategy than fee for service approaches. If the ongoing march to outcome-based pay is slowed or repealed, this could incentivize a renewed push toward unnecessary services, so as to more fully utilize the broader network. Others have pointed out that existing calibrations will need to be adjusted about basic demand assumptions if the number of insured Americans goes down; this could mean complications for drug and device manufacturers already making capacity investments, or insurers finalizing the number and types of plans they will be offering on exchanges. Insurers have also shifted their collective focus in other ways, building new capabilities in consumer marketing and dipping a toe directly into the provider waters themselves, relying less on actuarial advantage to find the right risk pools. However, a repeal of the ACA could flip the insurance industry back to its more traditional ways of turning a profit.

In both of these cases, not only is it the idea of change that creates uncertainty, but also the timing and extent of those changes. Acting quickly and decisively could create a first-mover advantage. On the other hand, it could divert investment too soon. Yet, waiting to see how things pan out can be a never-ending story — as the actual form of change may take a while to define itself — and put a company behind its competitors. A balanced, flexible portfolio, combined with regular contingency planning is a must.

2. The Politics of Consumption and Sustainability: What’s the basis of consumer choice and who is still my potential customer?

It seems clear this administration wants to repeal past environmental safeguards and commitments, threatening a trend in corporate America toward sustainable business. But there may be enough customer momentum, and therefore a large enough market, for companies that are established leaders in these segments (Walmart, Unilever come to mind) to continue operating in an environmentally-conscious manner.

This then raises another question, related to consumer behavior, brand equity and company reputation: to what extent will the “politics of consumption” become an even greater influence on what people buy, and from which companies? Will being associated with a particular political movement become a normalized purchase criteria? We have already seen the rise of purpose-defined brands—will everyone now have to declare what type of world or society they want in order to attract (and retain) customers?

Last year’s hubbub around the latest Star Wars movie is one early sign of this playing out. Or the “Boycott Target” movement that emerged to protest the company’s support of LGBT rights. Both L.L. Bean and Uber have recently become embroiled in controversy after executives established direct links to the new president. Even a fashion designer’s decision to dress the new First Lady (or not) is now a brand position that companies are being forced to take. Certain brands are already built around political causes like sustainability. But companies may find themselves facing an even starker choice in Trump’s America, being forced to publicly pick sides over issues that were once overlooked. Are the days of earning a neutral buck over?

3. Globalization: Will the scale game end?

Finally, globalization, one of the key drivers of company strategy over the last two decades may be eroding. Globalization has driven a major shift toward economic scale. The ability to serve multiple markets from a large manufacturing base, or amortize the investments in brand awareness and equity over multiple markets, has been a key feature of the modern global corporation. It’s fueled the growth of tech behemoths including Google and Facebook, via large data centers and huge network effects. However, with economic nationalism continuing to influence trade policy, this scale advantage may have hit its peak. This trend may be much in the news recently, but the reversal of globalization has been at work since 2008, as trade barriers have increased significantly. Global trade has slowed enough to be labeled “stagnant,” and there has been a move towards more bilateral and regional economic agreements versus global/multilateral ones.

This might this complicate the exploding business of data. Brexit, for example, has the potential to insert speed bumps into the smooth transfer of financial data across borders. Russia has forced LinkedIn to store its data locally or leave the country, in just one example of new localization laws that are popping up around the world. And of course, the EU and the U.S. have taken somewhat divergent paths when it comes to regulating the use of data. As a result, will the global scale play be muted, opening up potential regional or national plays that have never before existed?

There are real questions about the extent to which the Trump administration will accelerate this trend — either by making the first move or responding to others on an ad hoc basis. For instance, it will be interesting to see how Trump handles recent moves by China to essentially intimidate U.S. tech companies operating within its borders. Perhaps there won’t be any response at all. Or maybe the Trump White House will fight for specific industry exceptions. Of course, it’s always possible that Trump and his advisers will eventually recognize that many of the US’s most successful companies are dependent on the business model of global scale to be profitable. After all, his company certainly is.

Prepare for multiple scenarios

Assuming they are able to avoid direct attack from the incoming POTUS (hello, Boeing, Lockheed, BMW), businesses will still have a hard time planning with any confidence for the next four years, at both the strategic and operational levels. There is great uncertainty around the core rules of the game in each and every market, including — but in no way limited to — the three questions discussed above. It will be important for companies to take a more dynamic strategic view and realign today’s assumptions for tomorrow. Mapping a variety of scenarios should be a required starting point, even if just to put contingent ideas into the mindset of leadership. Ultimately, agreeing on and building the right level of flexibility to address the amount of risk an organization is willing to take — and the near term investment it is willing to give up to do so — is the harder, but absolutely essential, next step. Companies that take a wait-and-see approach are merely setting themselves up for future strategic surprises. And surprises, as we are now aware, are particular specialty of Donald Trump’s.

The above uncertainties may just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the volatility we will see across industries. For more information about scenario planning, please visit me at www.ranenconsulting.com.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at NewCo Shift.]