Right now the Categories include, in this order: Video Games, Television, Commercials, Current Events, Sports, Movies, Music.
Phi Beta Iota: Now imagine this in all languages, available on the cell phone, as an educational tool that also harnesses the cognitive surplus–the distributed intelligence–of the Whole Earth. Our view of YouTube is now such that we consider it more important than Google.
This year's survey places strong emphasis on the global nature of economic and financial vulernability, and on Afghanistan. Below is a quote in two sections from the official press statement releasing the survey to the public.
Strategic Survey 2010 does not seek to lay out a new comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. It does however argue that for Western states to be pinned down militarily and psychologically in Afghanistan will not be in the service of their wider political and security interests. The challenge of Afghanistan must be viewed and addressed in proportion to the other threats to international security and the other requirements for foreign-policy investment. With economic, financial and diplomatic activity moving at such a pace and with such varied outcomes internationally, military operations in general have to be all the more carefully considered. Precision and adaptability will be essential watchwords. For heavy, large, military deployment, the longue durée will be seen as an attitude for other times, other centuries.
The Afghan campaign has involved not just mission creep but mission multiplication; narrowing the political-military engagement to core goals as described will allow for proper attention to be paid to other areas posing international terrorist risks, and indeed to other matters affecting international security.
EXTRACT 1: An endless supply of data, probably unparalleled in its breadth and depth, flows from every continent to a cluster of buildings on the edge of the English Garden in Munich. An encyclopedia of life, its dangers, its injustices, its coincidences, is being assembled there. There is probably no other place on Earth where the risks of the modern world are being studied more intensively and comprehensively than at the headquarters of Munich Re, the world's risk center.
EXTRACT 2: Today Munich Re wins accolades for its restraint, while its shareholders are eagerly awaiting the results of a new project. The goal of the project under development in Oechslin's department, more comprehensive than any other project before it, is to redefine the limits of knowledge by developing a global risk model.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a superb article that ably documents how much can be known–and shared–that most governments and international organizations are simply not conscious of, or if conscious, exploiting microscopic bits of the data for nefarious purposes. These are the kind of people that could and should be at the heart of creating a World Brain and Global Game.
The ISB study notably dissected the “ticking time bomb” scenario that is often portrayed in television thrillers (and which has “captured the public imagination”). The authors patiently explained why that hypothetical scenario is not a sensible guide to interrogation policy or a justification for torture. Moral considerations aside, the ISB report said, coercive interrogation may produce unreliable results, foster increased resistance, and preclude the discovery of unsuspected intelligence information of value (pp. 40-42).
Rare earth elements — of which there are 17, including the 15 lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium — are needed in many industrial and national security applications, from flat panel displays to jet fighter engines. Yet there are foreseeable stresses on the national and global supply of these materials. “The United States was once self-reliant in domestically produced [rare earth elements], but over the past 15 years has become 100% reliant on imports, primarily from China,” a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service observes. “The dominance of China as a single or dominant supplier […] is a cause for concern because of China’s growing internal demand for its [own rare earth elements],” the report said.
I have a confession. I have an ambitious goal for the book: to meet today's needs in the way The Fifth Discipline did 20 years ago. And you can help make that happen.
China-North Korea: China offered to help North Korea control cross-border crime and build law-enforcement forces, according to a report by Agence France-Presse on 12 August. A spokesman also said China provided military equipment to North Korea's National Defense Commission during a visit by China's Deputy Public Security Minister Liu Jing on 8 August.
North Korea's Security Ministry staff and a Chinese public security delegation met on 12 August, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The reports are intermittent in the public media, but cumulatively they establish a pattern of China using economic and law enforcement linkages to tie North Korea more tightly. When North Korean leadership has been strong, it strongly and successfully has resisted Chinese initiatives. That does not appear to be the case at this time. China's admission of providing “military equipment” is unusual and rare. The actors mentioned in the report suggest the reference is to crowd control equipment.
Phi Beta Iota: Hybrid and M4IS2 (along with bottom-up self-governance) will be the defining attributes of local to global governance in the 21st Century. The USA has consistently made the mistake of selling arms and withholding information sharing and intelligence capacity building (providing stealable funds does not count). A mix of hybrid bi-lateral (such as Australian-Cambodian task forces on human trafficking) and hybrid multi-lateral (e.g. a regional intelligence centre for Central America) will flip the international relations and national security paradigms.
Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, Tuesday August 10, 2010
RICHMOND — Virginia officials reacted with bipartisan dismay on Monday to Defense Department budget shifts that will cost the state thousands of jobs in coming years and will dramatically impact the economies of the Norfolk area and Northern Virginia.
Most of the immediate reaction revolved around Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's proposal to close the U.S. Joint Forces Command. It is a major employer in Hampton Roads, including Norfolk and Virginia Beach, whose elimination could translate into the loss of 6,100 military, civilian and contractor jobs in the region.