Shortcut for final draft 2.5 is www.tinyurl.com/SteeleDK5
2009 The Ultimate Hack: Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth (Denmark 27-28 October 2009)
About the Idea, Briefings & LecturesJournal: USNI/AFCEA Feature Stephen Carmel of Mersck Line Limited on Global Connectivity, Risk, Trade, and Security
02 China, 05 Energy, 10 Security, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence
Stephen Carmel is a world-class speaker with a truly compelling story to tell, and after learning about him from his appearance at the USNI/AFCEA Joint War Fighting Conference, we were deeply impressed.
Below we summarize the highlights from his speech, which we have put into a proper document with emphasis added throughout. This is one of the most useful intelligent commercial presentations to government we have every seen.
Highlights of his “prime” or most recent speech are below–although delivered in May, it did not hit critical mass in our circles until just now. Whatever “challenging tone” might be detected below is from Phi Beta Ioto–the speaker is a diplomat.
1) Complexity is the prime challenge. US Government is not trained, equipped, or organized to deal with complexity.
2) Global trade web has zero slack capacity and both the maritime and air webs depend in internal train and truck webs to keep going. US is $20 billion behind in the latter infrastructure.
3) Global trade web runs on computers and with the dependence on just in time inventory handling, has zero slack in the event of disruption, and the easiest as well as the most damaging disruptioin lies with computers and data that can be contaminated, manipulated, or simply destroyed.
4) USG completely missed China's deal with Russia to lock up the Siberian oil supply that is now bonded at the hip with the Chinese refining capacity that was part of the deal–this is a supply not subject to maritime interdiction.
Review: Intelligence for Peace–The Role of Intelligence in Times of Peace
1 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, United Nations & NGOs
Grotesquely overpriced, August 1, 2007
Hesi Carmel
Edit of 5 Jul 09: At 288 pages, the paperback should be no more than $30.00 instead of $49.00. Authors are encouraged to publish their own books via reliable online “as needed” publishers.
I publish books and know they cost a penny a page to produce in lots of 2500 or more.
The title and the content are superb.
The pricing is despicable and I will ignore this book for that reason.
I urge the authors to approach me, I can publish this book for sale at no more than $34.94 (it costs about $10,000 to print, Amazon pays 45% of the list price to publishers).
This is outrageous in every sense of the word. No author should allow their work to be handled in this fashion. The individual chapters should be available directly from Amazon for micro-cash, and this publisher should be put out of business.
