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Latest Read: There Is Nothing for You Here

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill. Fiona holds History and Russian degrees from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. At Harvard University, she earned a Masters in Russian and modern history, and a Ph.D. in Russian history.

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Dr. Fiona Hill

Today Fiona is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at The Brookings Institution.

She served as deputy assistant to the President and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. In addition, from 2006 to 2009, Fiona served as the leading national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council.

Fiona is certainly delivering an immensely personal view of her life. If you approach this as an impeachment tell all, look elsewhere. This is a well told story regarding repeated bias Fiona has encountered from childhood to The White House.

This is an invaluable lesson that bias reaches far and wide and the impacts are indeed life changing. However it should not overshadow her role as an expert service our country. Her last service ran into a wall of bias and ignorance. Life in Bishop Auckland, England, her place of birth also mimics many post World War II industrial regions. All were hard hit by economic reforms in the 1980s.

From England to Russia to America

I found a very striking message: the failing economies of the UK and Russia now appear across the US. That is a growing concern indeed.

Her journey from a coal mining town to Harvard University, then to the White House is impressive. Better still is now Fiona shares how she overcame many biases to achieving success. This includes vulnerabilities to the slightest email bias.I am confident this resulted in policy written by less than the best qualified.

Bias begins in school

It is refreshing to learn how Fiona earned top marks in her middle school while taking her country’s standardized testing. This permitted her the luxury of entrance to a top tier school at St. Andrews University. Yet, bias in UK schools is not different from American schools in the lack of female students perusing STEM careers.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Plague Year

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright. He is a former reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1980, Wright became a staff writer for Texas Monthly and became a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. In 1992, he joined the staff of The New Yorker.

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

His previous book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 won the Pulitzer Prize is an amazing read and cannot believe it has been over 15 years since reading that book.

This book simply defines why Biden won. It is a certainly stunning read. The pandemic could not have been a slow motion fumbling any worse, and at certainly the most critical point. The months leading up to the discovery is staggering.

Lawrence clearly defines, regardless of political views how this contradicted G.W. Bush’s pandemic playbook for the country. So from the first intelligence indicators of the impact in China, he tripped over what should have been a clearly defining moment.

There is certainly little doubt the White House was downplaying the threat. Lawrence in fact reveals how policymaking was being established by insiders with little knowledge. However, Deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger lobbied the White House to take this threat more seriously. Nevertheless nothing came of his efforts. In addition, nothing was even reflected in White House press briefings.

Lawrence even stressed CDC delays in rolling out virus test kits including an initial batch that was faulty. In addition, reflecting back at the time, the lack of personal protective equipment for hospitals in major metropolitan regions led to fellow citizens producing masks for health care workers via their own personal 3D printers. The country rallied around our health care workers and first responders.

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Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: Permanent Record

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. Ed’s story moves from his early childhood to his military service post 9/11, to his role implementing technology surveillance for the CIA and NSA.

After sustaining stress fractures in both legs during special forces training he left the military. In fact, Edward then joined the NSA as a contractor in 2006. The following year he was stationed at the CIA office in Geneva Switzerland with diplomatic cover.

Yet, after six years of work within our country’s intelligence communities Edward became a whistleblower by leaking files revealing a global surveillance network was being conducted not only against America’s enemies in the new war on terror, but also against American citizen.

However, his real message is in fact, the most advanced technologies leveraged by the government are used against America’s enemies AND against our fellow citizens. Edward certainly documents how the United States government was able to collect every single phone call, text message, and email from every US Citizen. This results in a new, unprecedented (and certainly mind boggling) mass surveillance across the entire globe.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Stealing Fire

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler. Steven is an author and entrepreneur and I previously read his book The Future Is Faster Than You Think. He is addressing flow, yet like my previous read, he somewhat misses the mark.

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler

There is certainly some promise to the idea of “flow” the ability to drive performance. Steven is focusing on ecstatic: the “overwhelming happiness or joy” throughout the book. In addition, this contributes to his launch of the flow genome project.

However, for many readers the thought they can transfer their existing life into the high performance of Navy SEALS, Google programmers, and even at the extreme end, become an out of work Venezuelan suddenly bursting out to be an internet video “star” is even beyond perplexing.

In fact, the idea that any reader lacking the required years and years of dedication, education, and physical training to be a SEAL, a complete and through understanding of advanced computer programming — including the ability to navigate through Google’s notorious interviewing process is pretty far fetched. Yet, add on top of all of this the “luck of the draw” to become a 2011 internet video sensation? Yes, this alludes to the skillsets required to be able to ‘steal fire’ as the book seems to suggest. Yet, this is a metrics data mining issue. And it would not seem possible….unless you add drugs to the mix.

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Education Milwaukee Reading

Latest Read: Race for Profit

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Her 2013 PhD dissertation in African-American Studies from Northwestern is titled Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis in the 1970s which moreover serves as the core of this book.

As a result of reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond, Keeanga’s book offers very powerful insights to housing in society from the Housing and Urban Development Act (HUD) of 1968 under the Johnson Administration to the 1974 Ford Administration Housing and Community Development Act which created uneven block grants and shared revenue with federal oversight to social welfare.

However, in contrast to Evicted, Race for Profit reveals deep, historical racism within the housing market that continues today and certainly accelerated under COVID. These forces obviously created downstream impacts at state and local levels, along with private financial firms including banks and real estate.

Keeanga in fact documents those failings were simply accelerating via “public/private partnerships” by Real Estate and Banking firms. This provided another opportunity to fleece poor African American women.

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