Commercial Intelligence – Page 180 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/06/13

DOT&E Documents and Tony Capaccio Story

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Standards, Technologies

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

There are a set of documents at the DOT&E website which offer DOT&E insights into the reason for why about 40 programs have experienced delays — and costs. These documents relate to a Tony Capaccio story in today's Bloomberg News (below).

The document titled “Updated DOT&E Input on Program Delays” (at the DOT&E link shown above) identifies various specific reasons for the problems programs experience — different from most of the explanations from contractors and other system advocates in and out of the Pentagon. (Eg. for the F-35: Fly rates per month lowered to more realistic projections (from 12 max for all variants and venues to 10 max for CTOL/CV flight sciences, 9 max for STOVL flight sciences, 8 max for all mission systems); increased planning factors for re-fly and regression (up 15% for flight science, 10% for mission systems); more time required for software development and incremental builds.”)

Beyond the F-35, the various systems described in the analysis are typically more obscure programs (eg. AIM-9X 8.212 Software Upgrade) but there are also a few better known ones, such as LCS, which is described in “fly before buy,” Congress and the Navy want to rush ahead of testing to buy 4 LCS in the 2012 HASC DOD Authorization bill for $1.8 billion in production costs.

Availability of complete mission packages will be delayed until at least 2015.

Instead of withholding production of untested systems with clear and obvious development problems, Congress and the Pentagon are intent on business as usual. The LCS is a good example: instead of “fly before buy,” Congress and the Navy want to rush ahead of testing to buy 4 LCS in the 2012 HASC DOD Authorization bill for $1.8 billion in production costs.

Some will think the DOT&E analysis and documents to be obscure and too “in the weeds” to pay much attention to. Instead, they offer a major part of the explanation for why hardware costs and delays are so out of control, and they offer a stunning view into how little is being done about that.

BloombergNews.com, June 13, 2011

Weapons Testers Found Not to Blame for Procurement Delay

2011/06/12

Howard Rheingold’s Pick: Information Curation

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

My top pick today:

Maria Popova: In a new world of informational abundance, content curation is a new kind of authorship

NiemanJournalismLab,10 June 2011

EXTRACT: The point is that new tools in general, and Twitter in particular, greatly challenge the binary dichotomy of attention as something that is either given or taken away, distracted. Instead, these tools allow us to direct attention to destinations where it can be sustained with more concentration and immersion.

2011/06/112011/06/11

TED: Deliberate Food Poisoning in America

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, TED Videos

In 1990 new proteins were engineered into the American food supply. Other countries don't allow it. Walmart, Kraft and Pepsi actually formulate different food for export. America has highest cancer rates in the world.

Robyn O'Brien gives us information and patterns she has assembled and synthesized about how our food “industry” makes us sick (allergies, cancer, etc., etc.), raises our health care costs, weakens our global competitiveness, etc. and what we can do about it.

Robyn O'Bryan at TED (2nd Time: Patriotism on a Plate)

Phi Beta Iota: Industry–which operates on public incorporation commissions–lacks integrity because the government lacks integrity, as does the media in a corporate state. We have had a failure of integrity across the entire US system of systems (see Paradigms of Failure).

Review (Guest): The Unhealthy Truth–How Our Food Is Making Us Sick – And What We Can Do About It

Food Industry’s Erin Brockovich–Unhealthy Truth

2011/06/06

Open Source Anonymous Banking….Here Now!

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Technologies, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Reform, Tools

What Happens When Anonymous Gets a Bank?

Dominic Basulto on May 18, 2011

bigthink

The same people who brought you Wikileaks are back, and this time, they've created a virtual currency called Bitcoin that could destabilize the entire global financial system. Bitcoin is an open-source virtual currency generated by a computer algorithm that is completely beyond the reach of financial intermediaries, central banks and national tax collectors. Bitcoins could be used to purchase anything, at any time, from anyone in the world, in a transaction process that it is almost completely frictionless. Yes, that's right, the hacktivists now have a virtual currency that's untraceable, unhackable, and completely Anonymous.

And that's where things start to get interesting. Veteran tech guru Jason Calacanis recently called Bitcoin the most dangerous open source project he's ever seen. TIME suggested that Bitcoin might be able to bring national governments and global financial institutions to their knees. You see, Bitcoin is as much a political statement as it is a virtual currency. If you think there's a shadow banking system now, wait a few more months. The political part is that, unlike other virtual currencies like Facebook Credits (used to buy virtual sock puppets for your friends), Bitcoins are globally transferrable across borders, making them the perfect instrument to finance any cause or any activity — even if it's banned by a sovereign government.

You don't need a banking or trading account to buy and trade Bitcoins – all you need is a laptop. They're like bearer bonds combined with the uber-privacy of a Swiss bank account, mixed together with a hacker secret sauce that stores them as 1's and 0's on your computer. They're “regulated” (to use the term lightly) by distributed computers around the world. Most significantly, Bitcoins can not be frozen or blocked or taxed or seized.

Read full article….

See Also:

Open Money

2011/06/042011/06/04

Financial Rape of Libya — Assassination vs Invasion

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Gaddafi's Stolen Billions: Max Keiser Explains ‘Financial Terrorism' RT – 18 hours ago Watch video

Phi Beta Iota: China and Russia both appear to have explained to Goldman Sachs executives that they will be assassinated if they do not make good on their financial rapes against those two countries. Libya appears to have adopted the same response. Tony Blair appears to have been the key political proponent of the financial rape of Libya. Russian Television offers a useful glimpse into the reality behind the “get Guaddafi” invasion now occurring at our expense–an invasion that is illegal by both US Constitutional law and international law. Meanwhile, Wall Street seeks to force a rise is the US debt limit. Assassination of bankers is now on the table.

2011/06/012011/06/01

Louis D. Brandeis on Banks Against the People

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

In 1912, Woodrow Wilson campaigned for President using many Progressive ideas about strengthening the economy: banking reform, tariff reduction and the elimination of monopolies and trusts. The consolidation of these ideas became known as the New Freedom.

After Wilson's election, Louis Brandeis (who was responsible for many of Wilson's ideas in the first place) wrote a series of articles for Harper's Weekly which outlined why the New Freedom was necessary and how best to implement it. In 1914, the articles were collected in book form and published under the title Other People's Money–and How the Bankers Use It.

Brandeis' central thesis was that the large banking houses were colluding with businessmen to create trusts in America's major industries. Brandeis felt that not only did trusts stifle competition, but also they became so large that they became unable to operate efficiently.

Brandeis backed up his arguments with facts–copious facts gleaned from his battles against J. P. Morgan and Charles Mellen in the New Haven Railroad merger battle and from the Pujo Committee–a House committee report that investigated the abuses of the “Money Trust.”

Wilson was able to push through a number of laws regarding the regulation of business and trusts, but in many ways, due to mergers and stock manipulation, conditions in the business world today remain the same. Many of the details in Other People's Money may be dated, but its central ideas remain relevant–so much so that is still in print almost 90 years after it was first published. The chapters here are free online.

Chapter I: Our Financial Oligarchy