Category: Technology

Categories
Education Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest read: Who the Hell Are We Fighting?

Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars is the story Sam’s incomplete memoir War of Numbers could not deliver. Sam Adams died suddenly in 1988 at the age of 54. Sam was a gifted analyst at the CIA. Author C. Michael Hiam delivers a well written narrative of Sam’s life.
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence WarsSam displayed the uncommon trait of speaking truth to power. As history often suggests Sam was in the right place at the right time.

His truth revealed outcomes that pitted him against the White House, MACV and even senior leadership within the CIA.

What also made Sam unique was his inability to backdown to the highest offices in the government. Sam created a point of great turmoil by discovering and confronting repeated MACV intelligence failures. His analysis was not supported by CIA Director Richard Helms. Nobody wants to make their boss look bad.

Haim traces Sam’s life from Harvard to a rising star within the CIA to a disillusioned analyst. War of Numbers did not shed light on Sam’s death. Realizing Haim was going to discuss his passing at the close of the book I dreaded the last chapter to the life of Sam Adams.

Continue reading “Latest read: Who the Hell Are We Fighting?”
Categories
Education Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest read: None So Blind

Regarded as one of the CIA’s premiere Vietnam intelligence experts George W. Allen wrote a 2001 memoir None So Blind: A personal account of the intelligence failure in Vietnam that remains an alarming insight of intelligence failures that forecasted both France and America’s defeat in Vietnam. Allen’s contributions set the stage regrettably for the Pentagon and White House to also follow France’s misplaced goals for the next twenty-five years.
None So Blind: A personal account of the intelligence failure in VietnamMy interest in Allen’s memoir developed from reading a series of confidential reports by the US military and CIA from the 1950s.

Declassified in the late 1990s the documents address the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Many of those documents point to Allen’s intelligence reports and analysis. Naturally this peaked my wish to better understand the American intelligence analysis of the French defeat.

Allen holds a unique, deep understanding of the Indochina Wars (France 1945-1950) and the coming failure of America’s intervention on behalf of South Vietnam 1960-1974. The lessons in his book leave deep, haunting impressions today on the White House and Pentagon leaders who ignored our intelligence community.

Continue reading “Latest read: None So Blind”
Categories
Blockchain Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation IoT Network OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest Read: Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology

Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology by Siraj Raval is my follow up to three previous blockchain books. This kinda forks hard left after chapter two and drifts.
Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin's Blockchain TechnologyMy first book Don Tapscott’s The Blockchain Revolution was interesting in broad strokes. William Mougayar’s The Business Blockchain was better.

Melanie Swan wrote an even better overview to in her book Blockchain: A blueprint for a new economy. Melanie provides a great overview (looking back from 2015) to address decentralized apps (Dapps), decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs), decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs) and decentralized autonomous societies (DASs). There is such a deeper dive required to wrap your arms around decentralized autonomous blockchains.

Continue reading “Latest Read: Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology”
Categories
Cyberinfrastructure IoT Network Technology

Tesla Patch Wednesday

Microsoft and Adobe own Tuesdays. Tesla may take over the Wednesday rev cycle as Chinese hackers were able to turn on the model S wipers, open the car doors and even apply the brakes while in motion.
Hackers shut down a moving Tesla Model STencent’s Keen Security Lab posted a video that has gone viral on September 19. Tesla updated an over-the-air software update to their Model S. The Tesla Model S is now running v7.1 2.36.31.

This is not a new issue. Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller hacked a 2014 Jeep Cherokee while on a California highway.  Its a sign of thing to come as the Internet of Things continues.

Categories
Blockchain Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Globalization Innovation Network OpenSource Reading Technology

World Economic Forum: The Blockchain

The blockchain is the future of financial infrastructures. This is certainly an ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services. The World Economic Forum posted a PDF view of the Blockchain’s pragmatic impact upon global financial services and this is a very visual read addressing a great deal of research.
The future of financial infrastructure An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services

The key areas of focus are blockchain technologies that can push simplicity and efficiency:

  1. Blockchain has the potential to drive simplicity and efficiency by establishing new financial services infrastructure and processes
  2. Distributed ledger technology will form the foundation of next generation financial services infrastructure in conjunction with other existing and emerging technologies
  3. Similar to technological advances in the past, new financial services infrastructure will transform and question traditional orthodoxies in today’s business models
  4. The most impactful distributed ledger technology applications will require deep collaboration between incumbents, innovators, and regulators, adding complexity and delaying implementation

The opportunity to create new financial service infrastructure based upon high level information security. Therefore, the blockchain is looking to launch next generation financial services infrastructure. The report’s use case focus considers how blockchain technology can benefit multiple scenarios across future financial services.

In conclusion this report is a follow-up to a Deloitte/World Economic Forum report Disruptive Innovation in Financial Services. This report analyzes blockchain across nine sectors of financial services.