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Strategic Inflection Points

Tech is Global, Right? Not Exactly!

1964 was a harbinger of the future we now inhabit, but no one knew it at the time. It was the year of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California Berkeley, the first stirrings of the cultural revolution to come. FSM epitomized the fear of a world dehumanized by mainframe computers controlled by corporations. Yet that same year Marshall McLuhan also first articulated his famous concepts of “the medium is the message,” and his vision of a “global village.”

French Tech

Huawei Telecom Gear Much More Vulnerable to Hackers Than Rivals' Equipment – WSJ

A detailed report, prepared by Finite State, a Columbus, Ohio-based cybersecurity firm, concludes that Huawei telecom switching gear is far more vulnerable to hacking than other vendors’ hardware due to firmware flaws and inadvertent “back doors” that were discovered. The report has been circulated widely among cybersecurity experts in the U.S. and UK, and it is considered credible.

Virtual Reality

Integration of AI, IoT and Big Data: The Intelligent Assistant

Five years ago, I wrote a post on this blog disparaging the state of the Internet of Things/home automation market as a “Tower of Proprietary Babble.” Vendors of many different home and industrial product offerings were literally speaking different languages, making their products inoperable with other complementary products from other vendors.  The market was being constrained by its immaturity and a failure to grasp the importance of open standards. A 2017 Verizon report concluded that “an absence of industry-wide standards…represented greater than 50% of executives concerns about IoT. Today I can report that finally, the solutions and technologies are beginning to come together, albeit still slowly. 

China

Updating My Smartphone Market Analysis: The Market Is At A Strategic Inflection Point

NOTE: My original post, originally published in January 2013, continues to be one of the most viewed on the site.  Android and Apple have enjoyed an estimated 98% market share between the two, and many of my earlier projections regarding this market appear to have been borne out. However, the smartphone market has now matured to the point that it is at a strategic inflection point which has major implications for the future of this market and the major competitors. The rapid maturation of the smartphone market should have been foreseen: the rise of domestic Chinese competition combined with the predictable end of the Western consumer fascination with “the next smartphone”

Global Populism

Trump’s radical new foreign policy portends much worse to come

As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out this week in the Washington Post and on CNN GPS, we now have a Trump foreign policy doctrine, and it is not reassuring for the World. Obviously heavily influenced by Bannon, who many had thought had been relegated to backseat status by McMaster, we have been fooled again. As Trump demonstrates his RealPolitik admiration for authoritarians like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, and Duterte, more sinister scenarios begin to crystallize.  Trump’s speech justifying the withdrawal of the United States from the COP21 Paris Climate Change Agreement is a frightening exposition of this new Trump Doctrine. It is Trump thumbing his nose at the World. It is the United States against the World, led by a coterie of plutocrats and their money.  The reality is that the evidence points to an ongoing seizure of executive power by Trump that destroys our Constitution in the name of our national security.  The question is what we can do about it. 

Vancouver

Rich, Young "Fuerdai" Chinese Are Buying Overseas Properties on Their Smartphones – WSJ

The truth is that for all of the tough talk from Li Xinping about stopping the massive outflows of capital from China, some of it probably dark money obtained from dubious enterprises and kickbacks, nothing has changed in China or in the Western cities eager to share in the wealth. Rich, Young “Fuerdai” Chinese Are Buying Overseas Properties on Their Smartphones. Millennials acquire real estate in other countries as hedge against a weakening currency, homes for their own children when they study abroad

Vancouver

Canada’s Open Door to Tax Fraud, Money Laundering

How many shell companies exist in Canada? How many legal trusts? Who are the beneficial owners protected by such unnecessary veils of secrecy? No one knows because in most cases there is no legal requirement to disclose actual ownership even to regulators. In fact, more information is required to get a library card than to set up a company in most jurisdictions in Canada. What we do know is that Canada ranks near the bottom among our OECD partners in terms of corporate disclosure requirements to fight money laundering and tax evasion. A recent report from Transparency International detailed the dismal situation and why our country has become a haven for dubious offshore property speculation.

Financial markets

China's Problems Grow: Shanghai Billionaire Guo Guangchang Caught Up in Scandal

In the Autumn of 1999, I joined a Hong Kong friend for the amazing “K98” train trip from Hong Kong north through the heart of China to Beijing, just in time for the 50th Anniversary celebration of the People’s Republic of China. It was my version of Paul Theroux’s “Riding the Iron Rooster,” and the images of China at that time still stick in my head. Since then China has changed so dramatically that those images no longer exist. Since Deng Xiaoping declared that “getting rich is glorious,” and China’s growth has skyrocketed, China’s domestic and international problems have also multiplied.

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