Build a Strategy
September 17, 2019
“In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy.”
“If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.”
– Clayton M. Christensen
Cyber Drama: Down Under
According to anonymous sources, Australia’s cyber intelligence agency has identified China as the entity behind a large cyber-attack on Australia’s parliament and major political parties. The Australian government revealed in March that unidentified hackers had breached the security of the country’s parliament in a February attack. The attack also hit Australia’s three main political parties: the ruling Liberal party and coalition partner National party both had their networks breached, as did the opposition Labor party.
While the five anonymous sources informed Reuters of their direct knowledge of an Australian report classified report on the attack, the Australian government has not spoken out on the attack. Two of the sources cited Chinese trade relations as the main reason for the government’s silence on the issue; China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and consumes one third of their exports every year.
Following the attack, Australian legislators and their staffers were urged to change their passwords. Attackers also accessed policy papers of the major parties, as well as private email correspondences of party members.
Additional read: I Work for N.S.A. We Cannot Afford to Lose the Digital Revolution. Technology is about to upend our entire national security infrastructure. (NYT, $)
A Migration U-Turn
- Migrants from the Ivory Coast in Africa are often times finding themselves being forced to return to their country of origin when attempting to travel to Europe.
- There is the potential for migrants to end up sick, dehydrated, raped, detained in detention facilities or even killed violently in the course of their travels.
- The International Organization for Migration is aiding in migrants returning to 13 countries in West and Central Africa. Often times when migrants return they are offered temporary shelter, a small amount of money to get them on their feet, job training and therapy for any kind of trauma they may have endured during their attempt at traveling to Europe. (NYT $)
The Great British Face-Scanning Face-Off
- Regulation within using facial recognition technology in Britain is becoming a serious issue. While utilizing this technology has the potential to identify individuals on watch lists who are wanted for various crimes, there is also the debate over the public’s right to privacy.
- The use of invasive technology in the name of safety is spurred on by terrorist attacks. The tightening of surveillance is at an all time high within Britain, more so than any other Western democracy.
- While technology has been used in the past to monitor the public in the name of security, new facial recognition software is under scrutiny. This technology allows real-time identity checks and people are concerned for their privacy as well as basic human rights.
- While the debate is not necessarily about scrapping the usage of this technology as a whole; there is a concern about false apprehensions, people being arrested for crimes that have been previously resolved and the accuracy of this technology to identify faces. (NYT $)
- Don’t Just Delete Facebook, Poison Your Data First
Great News For The Titanic, Bad News For Us
- Khawa Karpo, a Mingyong glacier in Tibet is one of the world’s quickest diminishing glaciers. A quarter of its ice has depleted since 1970.
- While individuals outside of their area may not be directly impacted, Khawa Karpo is the source of 10 of the world’s largest rivers. These rivers assist at least 1.6 billion people directly and many more indirectly.
- Satellites are being used to monitor glacier depletion but it cannot prevent the destruction of whole villages, which is now a regular occurence.
- In the long run, the future of Khawa Karpo and the people who live in the area that directly benefits from it, are depending on the rest of the world to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful pollutants. (Guardian)
Additional World News
- Trump says US response to oil attack depends on Saudi Arabia’s assessment: US secretaries of state and energy both explicitly blamed Iran for the attack but Trump suggests US did not have definitive evidence (Guardian)
- Outside Experts See Iran’s Hand In Attack On Saudi Oil Facility (NPR)
- Isis leader purportedly urges members to free detainees from camps (Guardian)
- Hong Kong leader says public dialogue aimed at easing tensions to begin next week (Reuters)
Breaking Down The Walls Of Those Who Want Walls
- In an increasingly difficult and strenuous environment, Border Patrol agents are being scrutinized for their role in the treatment of the steady influx of migrants from Mexico. Many agents insist that due to their lack of resources and aid when encountering immigrants, they had no other choice but to place families within the confines of fenced facilities.
- Border Patrol agents are frustrated at the lack of help, appreciation and success at securing the United State’s borders. (NYT $)
Now Is The Winter Of Her Dissent
- After successfully voting to block a Court order that would ban almost all Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States, Justice Sonia Sotomayor detailed her thoughts on the Trump administration’s use/abuse of the Supreme Court in a dissent on Wednesday.
- In Sotomayor’s dissent, she references an article by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, who claims that Trump’s team has been more aggressive in asking the Court to intervene at early stages of litigation. Vladeck wrote:
- To take one especially eye-opening statistic, in less than three years, the Solicitor General has filed at least 20 applications for stays in the Supreme Court (including 10 during the October 2018 Term alone)
- During the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, the Solicitor General filed a total of eight such applications — averaging one every other Term.
- Some like Sotomayor believe that certain members of the Supreme Court are throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to expedite Trump’s proposed policies. (Vox)
- Exclusive: How John Roberts killed the census citizenship question (CNN)
- New Calls To Impeach Justice Kavanaugh: How It Would Work And Why It Likely Won’t (NPR)
Corporate Breaking Bad
- Drug companies have been weakening the federal government’s ability to interfere in the recent public health crisis referred to as the opioid epidemic through newly documented tactics and strategies for the past few decades.
- In 2016, drug companies convinced members of Congress and the Obama administration to rein in the Drug Enforcement Agency and force the agency to treat them as “partners” in efforts to solve the opioid crisis, which soon lead to the “Marino Bill” which essentially curbed the DEA’s ability to suspend the operations of drug companies which were found to have broken the law.
- A ploy which began in the mid-2000s, the alliance of major drug companies has been manipulating and pulling the strings to find loopholes in drug laws, heightening the impact of the opioid crisis and causing it to last as long as it did. The Marino Bill remains the law today. (WaPo $)
- Sacklers Reject Demand That They Surrender Personal Wealth To Settle Opioid Claims (NPR)
- The U.S. Health-Care System Found a Way to Make Peanuts Cost $4,200 A new, billion-dollar pharmaceutical to treat peanut allergies is up for approval. It’s simply peanut flour. (Atlantic)
- A Daily Baby Aspirin Could Help Many Pregnancies And Save Lives (NPR)
- Share of Americans With Health Insurance Declined in 2018: The drop, despite a strong economy, was the first since 2009 and at least partly caused by efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act. (NYT, $)
Additional Reads
- You’ve stopped working. Now go out and make money. (WaPo, $)
- Please get your digital affairs in order (TechCrunch)
- Wasps: If you can’t love them, at least admire them (BBC)
- Vice’s Next Pivot (NY Mag)
- A Radical Guide to Spending Less Time on Your Phone When I used these strategies, I finally took back my life (Medium)
- Barcelona’s car-free ‘superblocks’ could save hundreds of lives: Report predicts radical scheme could cut air pollution by a quarter as other cities including Seattle prepare to follow suit (Guardian)
- Research: Being Nice in a Negotiation Can Backfire (Harvard Business Review)
LAST MORSELS
“Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.” – Clayton M. Christensen