Category Archives: Finance

September 22, 2019 · 14:11

It was foretold

So as I went into a howling rage of laughter when Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif told the world that ‘it will destroy any aggressor‘, I almost called +98 2139931 to ask Mahmoud Alavi whether it was allowed for the Foreign Minister to pronounce National governmental acts of suicide. In all this Iran had been the greatest aggressor of all.

His response was due to the events we see in the BC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49781350), ‘Iran warns it will ‘Destroy aggressors’ after US troop announcement‘. Even Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said Iran was “ready for any scenario“, yet he too is mistaken, the issue is not merely the attacks on Saudi Oil (which finally has woken up the west to a larger degree), the idea that both the State of Israel as well as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is ready to take the battle to Tehran is not something Iran has foreseen, it would be a challenge to deal with either, dealing with both and optional support by American troops is something they have not seen coming. It is seen in other ways as well. Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has changed his tune, it is now all about “if Saudi and UAE stop their war on Yemen, they will not be in need of squandering more money to fund it and buying the costly defense systems against the drone attacks which, in turn, will inflict heavy losses upon both of them“, this person (read: tool) conveniently left out the part where Hezbollah members were part of the atrocities in Yemen themselves and we have not forgotten that, the forces will be overlooking whatever the state of Israel is about to give Hezbollah and its supporters, they can come cry and hide behind the UN skirt, but in the end, they created this mess themselves and now that Iran is pulling support more and more Hezbollah is suddenly in a place without the support they had 2 years ago, so Hezbollah is soon the crying child awaiting ammunition and whilst they await arrival crying for international help and offering talks, a game they have played for too long. I personally expect to see another flag for talks going up before the end of October, the sincerity of these talks are basically towards the timeline for fresh supplies and optionally until Iran backs them again with more. Yet the truth of the matter is that Iran is now engaging in a three pronged strategy that they cannot afford. Hezbollah, Houthi and Iranian attacks on Saudi interests is now striking back in almost every way, the Aramco hit made that possible. The spike was the rude wakeup call and even as the price has so far subsided by 1%, the engines of defence will require a lot of oil products soon enough, which could be another marker for increased fuel prices soon enough.

Yet it is the issue that we did not see that matters, it is the view on the precision of the attack that has intelligence analysts baffled to some degree. No matter how we slice the data, the numbers actually favour Iranian abilities, even as Iran remains in denial, the fact that this attack was more than merely successful leaves 5 players who could have done this: America, NATO, China, Russia and Iran.

It is perhaps the first time that Iran gets mentioned next to these other four on this scale. Iran cannot admit as this would be admitting to an act of war, yet this is centre stage in all this. I personally still believe that someone painted the targets, but beyond that, if that was not the case, it implies that an orchestrated drone missile attack is something that Iran has mastered to the degree that the other four have not shown ever. That is the baffling part, yet we know that the other 4 can do the same, yet that puts the Iranian drones on the same level as the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, which is a stretch on a few levels I might add, in addition, the drone operators that the US has are not to be underestimated, the fact that the attack was this successful grades Iranian pilots a scale higher than I ever have before. Let’s not forget, Iran is proud of its air force, and the fact that they delivered last week is rather unsettling. the truth is that there is no way that Houthi forces have anywhere near the skill, the materials and the setup to do this, that is what shows the Iranian forces to be the guilty ones and now they are calling the bluff of others to try and attack. I myself am all in favour to call out to them and merely ‘borrow’ a reaper to install free air-conditioning in that building using a GBU-12 Paveway II. Did you know that the GBU-12 Paveway II is awesome for immediate installation of air shafts and holes in buildings to facilitate for air conditioning? #JustSaying

A light situation?

Some people might think that I am making light of the situation, well, yes, but that has been the media for months, until Aramco was hit, over half a dozen attacks on Saudi Arabia, Saudi locations and its citizens was left unreported by the western media, only now, only when oil spikes, do we see action from those ignoring Iranian transgressions and acts of aggression, so in that, I am in full view of righteous when I laugh at the Iranian sentiment of ‘it will destroy any aggressor‘, as they have been the aggressor all along.

I agree with the BBC point of view giving us: “What seems clear is that this remains a game of brinkmanship, with all sides still hoping to be able to pull back from a direct military confrontation“, however on a personal note, I believe that it is too late for that, I believe that Iran will keep on playing this game for as long as they can wave the ‘nuclear deal’ carrot in front of the EU, delaying matters for as long as they can. I personally believe that it is a stage most overdue that a direct action against the Iranian military forces has become essential, they need to see direct and material damage in Iran (Tehran would be best) to show them that there is no more leeway for Iran. On other departments, I would happily offer my design to sink the Iranian fleet to SAMI, see if we can get it working, there is nothing like watching a minister of defence praising their new Sahand whilst it is appreciating the Horizon of Iran from the bottom of the Sea of Dammam (a reference to an earlier article), and to be honest, I want this design to work just so I can nose thumb DARPA, as stated before, I do have a sense of humour.

There is however another side, Iran is losing its ability to get things done soon enough (sooner would be better), even as their economic picture shifts, the Financial Tribune offered less than a day ago ‘Iran-EU Trade Tumbles 75%‘, whilst the quote “Iran exported €452.65 million worth of commodities to the European Union, indicating a 93.67% fall, and imported €2.55 billion in return to register a 52.13% year-on-year decline“, offers that Iran will have other setbacks in several fields, however the largest issue is not Iran, these numbers give out that Iran needs to focus all resources on Iran in a few fields, leaving nothing to Hezbollah and whatever they get now will be short term and would optionally deny them long term help. That is unless Iran finds a replacement supplier, it will have larger national resource problems soon enough.

There was more in the Arab News a few hours ago. As they give us ‘Only a united front will thwart Iran’s war games‘ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1557771), where we see: “Israeli sources continue to make it clear that they regard Iran’s proliferation of advanced missile technology to their allies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq as a red line“, as well as “I largely believe Zarif when he says Iran doesn’t want war, but with one small addition — “on someone else’s terms.” If war comes, Iran would be happy to fight in a way that plays to its own strengths; asymmetrical, grey zone, widely dispersed, damaging to global energy flows, seeking to spread conflict uncontrollably and in particular dragging in Israel” and there we see the crux of the entire matter: ‘on someone else’s terms‘, when we take that away and make a direct statement against buildings and refineries, the hit and run tactics will no longer work and whilst Iran sets up for a massive defence the winds of support will be removed from the Houthi and Hezbollah sails to the largest degree, possibly completely removed for the long term. That was the largest need in Yemen for three years and now that this stage has arrived, actual progress will be possible in Yemen. The part here I do not agree with the writer Sir John Jenkins is the part where he gives us “We don’t have to play that game. But to impose our own, we need strategic patience, an enhanced defensive capacity against Iranian provocations, a much better communications strategy and, if necessary, a willingness to respond ourselves“, he makes a really good point and he does not shy away from ‘a willingness to respond‘. The problem I see is that the operative word is ‘willingness‘ and actual response is an essential part at present.

We cannot afford to let Iran keep on playing their hit and run guerrilla games whilst letting others take the credit/blame. this has worked for them as others need to set the stage of expenses, when a direct attack comes they lose the initiative and accept open war if needed, at that point Tehran will lose a lot more, infrastructure gone, essential needs cannot be met and international help would be their only option, allowing for the people to take a different position against their army and clergy control. there is the added need that their clergy has not seen actual losses for the longest of times and that keeps them in the delusional state that nothing bad can happen to Iran, that delusion needs to be popped like a balloon, and soon.

The issue is not merely Iran and Saudi Arabia, at some point someone (most likely Iran) will do something really stupid and get the UAE involved because of that, at that point there will be less chance of talks and less options for short term actions with a diplomatic solution at the end, it would turn into a long term event with no diplomatic options for the foreseeable future, that is a stage no one really wants, yet it would be an unavoidable danger for as long as Iran is playing the game it currently is.

Their guilt was foretold through evidence, their denial was a given by media inaction for the longest of times, now that the two meet, we see several options, but until any direct action is undertaken, I fear that the long and harsh theatre of war is the one we are in danger of staring at for now and that is a path we need to avoid, or as the American often state: ‘the best defence is a good offense‘, I would speculate that this is exactly what we need to do in this case, if only to wake Iran up to the notion that ‘on someone else’s terms‘ is no longer an acceptable strategy.

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Tagged as America, Arab News, Aramco, BBC, China, Eu, Financial Tribune, GBU-12 Paveway II, General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, Hezbollah, Hossein Salami, Houthi, Iran, Javad Zarif, Mahmoud Alavi, NATO, Russia, SAMI, Saudi Arabia, Saudi oil, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Sea of Dammam, Sir John Jenkins, the Guardian, UAE, US, Yemen

September 21, 2019 · 11:50

The first changes

We have arrived at the point of the first changes; the next 12 months will give a much larger view of the consumers and the changes that they are willing to accept. The Huawei P30 Pro is the beginning of this; at $1249 this choice is a lot cheaper than its competitor Samsung $1849 (a difference of 32.5%, whilst the Apple at $1999 will set you back an additional 37.5%, this adds up to a lot! Yet the price is not the issue, the fact that the Huawei now comes without YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail among other software, it also does not feature Google’s Play Store. It is an Android game changer; Huawei has pre-loaded new alternative apps of its own. It was the step we expected, the trade wars with China and the persecution of Huawei and the discrimination against Huawei was actually THAT stupid. Now that we are confronted with the changes we will see a new optional change. When an equal mobile is well over $500 cheaper we see the changes that matter. As the people get accustomed to other apps, apps that replace social media solutions we see a shift of consumers, I personally believe it will be a lager change. I do recommend that there will be an upgraded LinkedIn and a new Facebook available, yet there is a situation where the Asian population in Australia will embrace the Chinese solutions, there is in addition a larger need for affordable phones, so there will be a larger shift. Yes, most will hate being without Facebook, yet the credibility Facebook has lost in the past, the people might just keep these solutions on their laptop/Desktop. Yet there is already word that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp would all be available via Huawei’s own store, called the Huawei App Gallery, so all is not lost, but the fact that Google will lose millions of people who will now go via the Huawei App Gallery is almost a given. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49754376) also gave us: “He added that the firm had set aside $1bn (£801m) to encourage developers to make their apps compatible, and said more than 45,000 apps had already integrated the firm’s technology. But he did not name any of them“, so $1,000,000,000 to corner a market and get a handle into the Chinese app user market. It will be found and it will create momentum. I changed my mobile less than a year ago, so I have no need to change for now, yet there is every indication that the upgrade to a new Android version will see me change as well and why would I not do that? Perhaps I am part of the population that thinks “Maybe they’re just trying to ride it out in the hope that they eventually get access to those Google services later“, I am most likely on that fence, however when I check the amount of options that I desperately want on my Mobile, I am limited to WordPress and LinkedIn, and they are not essential, merely a nice to have on my mobile. I can do either on a desktop. I am not alone, as thousands will shift from one side to the other month by month, Google will feel the pinch. Consider that there will be a close to immediate shift on YouTube metrics, implying that the Google Ads department will start requiring new metrics to keep their push going, we see a larger impact on Google, it will not be immediate, but it will be there and growing from the beginning, even as Google and the US will debate on how wrong the metrics are, they too realise that the American corporations will see the impact on their business, it will be visible and direct, merely because a war on greed by flaccid politicians and surpassed technologists was stated to be in denial.

The US did not to its homework, it neglected the choirs they have and are now pushing their losses on other markets. Even as we contemplate what the impact of “side-loading” Google’s apps onto the handsets and that phone store staff would advise customers how to do that. They are wondering how it would limit its impact as long as the usage impact remains close to 100%, when that falters a few times the consumers will be offered alternatives that are 100% and that is where we see the shift towards Chinese commerce.

Now that Huawei has been informed on my 5 parts of IP (hopefully bringing me decent funds too), there might be a larger shift as the issues in 5G cybersecurity and propagating 5G commerce is still lacking at least 3 elements, I feel that I will win in the long run. All the players that are behind ‘T-Mobile gets closer to launching nationwide 5G on low-band spectrum‘, I have seen that Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telstra, as well as BT have not implemented certain parts and even what they designed lacks certain small business needs, as such I feel a lot more confident on my IP. They had 3 years to look at it and they have the same short minded and shallow approach to business ignoring the Small businesses (a little over 400 million of them) to the larger degree. All elements that were clearly visible moved from the 4G premise of ‘Wherever I am‘, to 5G ‘Whenever I want it‘, that failure alone gives Huawei an additional push. As the numbers rack up towards Huawei and Chinese innovation, we will see a larger change towards the business needs and so far none of the non-Chinese solutions have addressed these changes.

As the Chinese app user market explodes in activities between now and December 2020 we will see a larger shift. With Huawei market share at 19% and Oppo at 9.5%, we see a larger growth towards 5G, as Apple is now declining to 37%, we see that Apple in 5G will lose close to 15% all these parts matter, because it does more than increase the market share for Huawei, it actually gives China a larger option to grow in a few directions that it had no real option to grow in previously, the anti-Huawei steps were THAT stupid and now we start seeing the impact. The only way to stop this is for American brands to start offering their phones at the same price as Huawei is. And that is how we see it, Google took that step and offered the Pixel 3XL at a mere 16% extra and that might be a reason to switch to Google, but in the end the others are now pushing themselves out of the race quicker and quicker.

There is a larger need to consider, as the US is getting its thanksgiving and as we are all facing Christmas (and the Dutch will get Saint Nicholas as well) the consumers will have a limited option, yet an essential need to tickle themselves, when you consider that place, would you accept the $1249 that gives you what you need, or would you spend 37.5% for what others market you towards your needs? When you realise that the essentials can be done on the smaller budget, in a time when budgets are still tight and the dangers of recession remains, can you really afford to spend those hundreds of dollars more?

The bulk of the people I know cannot afford them, they often will accept a more expensive contract, yet in the stage when 5G is about to come, would you really want to tie yourself down? And when all the small business owners realise that the current stage will hurt their business for 2-3 years, would they really want to take that chance when the commerce slice is the one everyone wants, at that point can they tie themselves down?

The first changes are here, but they also signal larger changes towards a stage where commerce will be the deciding factor and the bulk of them merely looked at their needs to sell, they to a much larger degree forget to consider what their consumers needed in the 5G environment, that failure will rear its ugly head soon enough, as I see it, Huawei is finding themselves ready for that shift. In the end that is the third stage of innovation that lazy Americans ignored, I wonder how much that will cost them this time around. As I personally see it, 400 million small business owners was too large a group to leave in the cauldron of non-decisions, yet that is exactly what they did in Europe and the US.

Forbes

So as Forbes gives us ‘Shock New Google Warning For Anyone Buying Huawei Mate 30‘, we see how the writer Zak Doffman gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/20/shock-new-google-warning-for-anyone-buying-huawei-mate-30) “Despite impressive hardware innovation, the media write-ups went straight to the lack of full-fat Android, the lack of YouTube and Gmail and Google Maps, the lack of the Play Store” which opposes the BBC, who did give clear mention and as implied so did Huawei. So there we are, already we see issues with the media bringers. After that we see the barricade “24-hours post launch, the reality of the Mate 30 is firming up. It seems highly unlikely there is any Google workaround” yet the reality is that these users get a first glimpse that it is possible to be without Google on their mobile, we do not have to get bothered every minute on news we did not need. In addition with a functional browser we still get what we need, we just will not get it via an app (for now), and believe me when the numbers start slashing into the Google needs, they will want a workaround as desperately as possible. The writer even ends with: “And so for any of you enamoured with the Mate 30 hardware who can live without Google for an unknown amount of time, maybe this is a risk worth taking” which is at the heart of the matter, not the heart we choose and not the one Google choice, because when the numbers start proving that there is real life after google, those numbers will give growth to an exponential growth of people accepting Chinese apps and accepting non-Google solutions. I feel certain that it will happen, merely because the browser is still going to be there and it will show that there is a larger need in people, even if it is to show that the want to prove that dependency on Facebook and Google is a solution, even if it is a mere point of ego, they want to prove that they are not the slave of their mobile. That alone will be a driving factor as well.

No matter how we slice it, within the next 12 months we will see an almost polarised population, those who want the best and fastest and those who need some Google solution, both will have their own validity and merits, yet in the end as small business owners see that Huawei 5G solutions can cater to both, they get to win and that is the real victory, soon thereafter the US will change the blacklist, the moment that there is a clear invoice to the losses and Google will hold the US government accountable to these tax deductible losses, at that point will we see a strong push to find some middle ground, the US will have to give is with every additional billion dollar loss and market shift towards China. They basically have no options left, their inability to deal with Iran is one view, their inability to deal with Syria is a second stage of evidence, and within the next 12 months we will get several other pieces of evidence get released to the larger audience. And that is not the end of it, as the cases regarding Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Purdue Pharma, OrbCare, Insys Therapeutics Inc and their bankruptcy issues are rising, they matter to the regard that the US government is seeing the pinch from 3 directions at present, and that is only whilst California is able to keep its head above the waterline. All these impact are also the impact on 5G propagation, installation and implementation. When you doubt that, consider the Government tech source hat gave us “5G won’t roll out to much of Southern California for a few more years, but companies such as Verizon and AT&T are beginning to install the necessary infrastructure, including those small cells pole by pole, across the region” last April, the fires and other calamities only made things harder, so whilst we see the FCC stepping in, we only see more hindrance for these people, not less and that is the impacting issue from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, and that is only the most visible one. The infrastructure is getting a second hit as we are shown that “the Federal Communications Commission is now restricting how much cities can charge the companies to install equipment: $500 for up to five cells, $100 a cell after that and a $270 annual access fee for each cell“, it is a loaded issue no matter how you slice it and whilst they are trying to figure out how to resolve it, the truth of the matter is that Huawei had this issue solved already and that is how California (and other states) end up getting limited 5G for 2-3 years, all whilst the Huawei case is growing more and more outside of the USA. It is a situation where the technology is not up to scrap and the diminished amount of funds available allows for no alternatives either; now add to this the consumers shifting to some degree away from Google who relies on Google Ads more and more and a near perfect storm is created, a storm that slams the US and gives growth upon growth to China and Chinese interests.

As the EU is accepting Huawei and as Huawei is now embracing a shift towards cloud systems, and as it grows the needs, and sets the growing stage towards 21Vianet, we see a much larger shift and in all this, the first changes brought a push in directions we never considered before. It was only a day ago when Microsoft President Brad Smith requested that the United States should end its blacklisting of Chinese giant Huawei Technologies, we might not realise it, yet the changes allowed for Huawei to look into a partnership with 21Vianet, which will directly impede Microsoft Azure business that is not in Chinese hands (outside of China), in this stage 21Vianet will have a direct option to offer services to European players, as it will not be their solution, but a Huawei solutions and the group of small businesses that are in Europe (a nice slice of 400 million companies) they too will select ‘the other’ Chinese solution. All instigated by a Huawei war that was not based on facts or on reality, it was to address the need of greed and now that it bites back, the US will find itself at the dinner table where only humble pie is to be served. When they buckle (and they will) the shift becomes larger and faster, because at that point the consumers will have the additional questions that will be met with denial on every level conceivable.

Huawei would need to do one additional thing to make that wave a lot larger, I wonder if they will do just that before the end of this year.

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Tagged as 21Vianet, 5G, Apple, BBC, Brad Smith, British Telecom, BT, China, Facebook, FCC, Forbes, Gmail, google, Google Ads, Google Maps, Google Pixel, Huawei, Huawei App Gallery, Huawei Mate 30, Instagram, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Oppo, Sprint, T-Mobile, Telstra, Vodafone, WhatsApp, Youtube, Zak Doffman

September 20, 2019 · 11:48

Tethered to the bottom of the ocean

Perhaps you remember a 1997 movie, about a ship that decided to take a fast trip to America, the HMS Titanic. We all have our moments and what you might not know is that there is a deleted scene that only a few limited editions had. The captain (played by Bernard Hill) was asked a question by one of the passengers: ‘Is land far away?‘ The response was: ‘No, it is only 3900 yards to the nearest land………straight down‘. OK, that did not really happen, but it does sound funny. You see, the image of a place can be anything we need it to be, dimensionality is everything and that is where we see the larger problem.

This is actually directly linked to the article I wrote on September 18^th, the article ‘The Lie of AI‘ gets another chapter, one that I actually saw coming, the factors at least, but not to the degree the Guardian exposes. In the article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/18/the-lie-of-ai/) I gave you: “more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree“, now we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/19/thousands-of-reports-inaccurately-recorded-by-police) a mere 8 hours ago ‘Thousands of rape reports inaccurately recorded by police‘, so we are not talking about a few wrong reports, because that will always happen, no we are talking about THOUSANDS of reports that lack almost every level of accuracy. When we consider the hornets’ nest the Guardian gives us with: “Thousands of reports of rape allegations have been inaccurately recorded by the police over the past three years and in some cases never appeared in official figures” Sajid Javid is now facing more than a tough crowd, there is now the implied level of stupid regarding technology pushes whilst the foundations of what is required cannot be met and yes, I know that he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not that simple, the simplicity is not seen in the quote: “More than one in 10 audited rape reports were found to be incorrect“, the underlying data is therefore more than unreliable; it basically has become useless. this is a larger IT problem, it is not merely that the police cannot do its job, anything linked to this was wrongfully examined, optionally innocent people were investigated (which is not the worst part), the worst part is that the police force has a resource issue and there is now the consideration that the lack of resources have also been going in the wrong direction. The failing becomes a larger issue when we see: “The data also found that a number of forces failed to improve in subsequent inspections, with some getting worse“, the failing pushed on from operational to systemic. Now consider IT, the laughingly hilarious step of AI, even the upgrades to existing systems that cannot be met in any way because the data is flawed on several levels. It is a larger issue that out of the national police force in this regard only Cumbria, Sussex and Staffordshire past the bar, a mere 3 out of 36 forces did their job (above a certain level) and it gets worse when you consider that this is merely the investigations into the sexual assault section, the matter could actually be a lot worse. Consider the Guardian article in July ‘Police trials of facial recognition backed by home secretary‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/12/police-trials-facial-recognition-home-secretary-sajid-javid-technology-human-rights), as well as ‘UK police use of facial recognition technology a failure, says report‘ from May 2018 (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/15/uk-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-failure), you might not have made the link, but I certainly did. When you take the quote: “Police attempts to use cameras linked to databases to recognise people from their face are failing, with the wrong person picked out nine times out 10, a report claims“, now consider that a victim reported the assault on her, a report is made and at some point the evidence is regarded and looked over, the information is linked to CCTV data and now we are off to the races, whilst 3 out of 36 forces did it right, there is now a stage where 91% is looking at the wrong information, inaccurate information and add to that the danger of 10% getting properly identified, even if the right person was picked out, there is still a well over 75% chance that the investigation is going in the wrong direction and optionally an innocent person gets investigated and screened, in the meantime the criminal is safe to do what he wanted all along.

Now we get the good stuff, in 2018 home secretary, Sajid Javid gave his approval and now as he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he approves the invoice and also sets the stage of handing out £30 million to a system that cannot function in a system that is based on cogs that were not accurate and are transposing the wrong data. Even then we see “the BBC reported that Javid supported the trials at the launch of computer technology aimed at helping police fight online child abuse“, a system this inaccurate, not merely because of its flawed technology is set in a stage where the offered data is not accurate either, this simply implies that until the systemic failure is fixed the new system can never function and it will take well over a year to fix the systemic failure. So tell me, what do you normally do to a person who is knowingly and willingly handing over £30 million to a plan that has no chance of success?

We need to stop politicians from wasting this level of resources and funds merely to look good in the eyes of big business. I also feel that it is appropriate that Sajid Javid will be held personally accountable for spending funds that would never be deployed correctly.

The reasoning here is seen in the quote “Recorded rape has more than doubled since 2013-14 to 58,657 cases in 2018-19. However, police are referring fewer cases for prosecution and the CPS is charging, prosecuting and winning fewer cases. The number of cases resulting in a conviction is lower than it was more than a decade ago“, the stage is twofold, we see a doubling over 5 years whilst convictions were down from more than a decade ago, it will in the end link to conviction rate on data, whilst the data numbers are not reliable. The quotes “the case was not recorded as a crime“, as well as “noting it as an incident“, in both cases rape registered as something else, and there is no conviction required on ‘incident‘, the underlying questions is whether this lack is optionally intentional to skew that statistics. You might not agree and it might not be true, but when we see a 91% failing from the police force there is something really wrong. The problem intensifies when we see the Guardian statement that “West Midlands was found to be ‘of concern’ and had ‘not improved’ rape recording upon re-inspection in 2018” this implies that the work of the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) is either not taken seriously or is intentionally ignored, you tell me which of the two it is and connected to this is Sajid Javid ready to ‘upgrade’ to AI (that remains funny) and spend over £30 million on that system, as well as the funds wasted on the current CCTV facial recognition solution, which is not cheap either.

I wonder who the CCTV will point to arrest for the person allegedly having sex on the desk of the Terry Walker, Lord Mayor of North East Lincolnshire. Images show that the local police might be seeing Noel Gallagher as a person of interest at present.

I wonder how that data was acquired?

In opposition

There is however the other side and even a I did not give it the illumination, there was no intent to ignore it. The options to ‘AI to reduce the burden on child abuse Investigators‘ is not to be ignored, it must be the task that will burn out a person a lot faster than they would transporting bottles of nitro-glycerin by hand through a busy marketplace. I am not insensitive to this, yet the Police Professional gives us: “The development will cost £1.76 million from a total investment in the CAID from the Home Office of £8.2 million this year“, which is different from the £30 million given, as I see it additional questions come to the foreground now. Yet there are other issues that are not part of this. There is the danger of misreading (and incorrectly acting on) seeded data. In SIGINT we see the part where data fields are used to misrepresent information (like Camera model, owner, serial number), when we start looking in the wrong direction, even if some of the data might be correct you are in a different -phase and the problem is that no AI can tell you that a camera serial number might be wrong, or right. There are larger data concerns, yet I do understand that some tasks can alleviate stress from the police, yet when we link this to the lack of accuracy on police data, the task remains equal to mopping the floor whilst the tap is running spilling water on the floor. None of these steps make sense until the operational procedures are cleared, tested and upgraded. A failing rate of 91% (33 out of 36) makes that an absolute given.

And for those who missed the Gallagher joke, please feel free to watch the movie the Grimsby brothers. There are actually two additional paths that are an issue, it is not about presentation, it is about the interpretation, as well as the insight of sliced data, they interact and as such a lot of metrics will go wrong and remain incorrect and inaccurate for some time to come. Data will get interpreted and optionally acted on, which becomes a non-option when accuracy is below a certain value. So feel free to be anchored to the ground in the approach to data surveillance employing AI (I am still laughing about that part), yet when you are tethered to the bottom of the ocean, how will you get a moment to catch your breath?

Precisely, you won’t!

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Tagged as AI, CAID, CCTV, Chancellor of the Exchequer, CPS, Cumbria, HMICFRS, Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, North East Lincolnshire, Police, Sajid Javid, SIGINT, Staffordshire, Sussex, Terry Walker, the Guardian, the Police Professional, UK, West Midlands

September 19, 2019 · 12:06

What if they redid it?

I got lucky last week. I stumbled upon Cash converters with a Mass Effect Andromeda (for Xbox One) for $2, even as I had the PS4 edition, replaying it for $2 was just too nice to pass up. There was another reason to not get it for any more than that. I was hugely disappointed with the game. The makers were holding a huge pastry in front of us, only to offer a mere outdated carrot in the end. Still, the graphics were nice, the game remains flawed on several levels and the goals are for the most too linear.

It was at that moment that my mind redesigned the game again (I did that exercise after I finished the PS4 edition). And I wondered about the one question that needed answering. What if I created Mass Effect Andromeda 2 (MEA2), whilst upgrading the first game from a 72% game to a 91% game or better, would you replay it?

In this stage the game would be 3 discs with the first game (mostly), the second disc would be the Nexus and the third disc would be the second game called Mass Effect Andromeda: Debellatio.

First off, the first game would end up being twice the size, the entire memory segments part would be on the Hyperion alone, the Hyperion would be roughly 20 times the current version, whilst the playable part of the Nexus is 10 times larger and the view makes it 200 times the size. The missions of the first game would remain (there would be more of them) and the story would be amped up to give a larger storyline to the Kett, the scourge as well as the Angara. The question is: Would you seriously consider playing it again?

I believe that this could work. The game would be massive on the consoles (200GB), yet the stage created would give close to 200 hours of gameplay. The original touched on great topics and then let them simmer, which was a waste on a few levels. Still, there is really good material to work with and if the maps are enlarged by well over 50% it becomes more of an exploration. We could also fix the flaws in the first version by making the second tier (after the vault is restarted) a lot more challenging and rewarding. The mining part required upgrades, so that there is a direct link in building the nexus and completing it linking it to the resources found and mined. These are all elements that add to the game and add requirements to the need of exploration.

Lastly, the arks, all 4 (with an optional 5^th) will be found by the end of the second game, making it part of the main storyline and not some DLC. Consider these elements and ask yourself, would you buy a game at $160 that offers all that? I believe it would, especially when the multiplayer part is upgraded to a Mass Effect 3 level. It could be a new wave of multiplayer hungry admirers, it will of course come with the guarantee that I get to cut off the head of any EA executive that messes with that concept or forces the buying of loot boxes, the Mass Effect 3 formula was utterly perfect, so let’s not ever mess with that again.

It took a mere hour to consider the steps that could get this game from 71% to 91%, and I get it, there are budgets to consider. The question becomes what does an EA executive see as the difference of a budget toward a 70% game versus the one delivering a 90%+ game? I wonder if they can really set a number to that. Consider that the first version was staged by a budget of C$100 million, which included marketing and research costs, whilst I designed in my mind improvements over a mere cappuccino. There is a benefit of having been a part of gaming since 1985, and I believe that I know what pushes a decent game to a great game. If the EA/BioWare executives make that claim, I wonder why they failed the first time, whilst they had 3 examples in front of them and they owned the IP of it.

Even as Forbes gave us in 2017 ‘EA Is Now Singing Mass Effect Andromeda’s Praises As A Revenue Driver‘, yes it is true, but the bulk of all these were people who had played the previous games and hoped for a glimmer of greatness. And a revenue driver sounds nice, but if it cannot be repeated it becomes lost IP, and who ever won a war by losing its IP?

The important part was that the combat part did not suck, it was a good combat system and that is at the core of the success that was and the greatness it could be. There is also a business case to be made, as Anthem is seen as a failure by more and more, we need to recognise that EA desperately needs a win, one that will allow them to be regarded as an AAA developer. The news ‘BioWare Loses Lead Producers for Both Dragon Age 4 and Anthem‘ that got out two weeks ago supports the placement that Bioware (EA as well) are no longer the high end developers they used to be. It is about business and profit at the expense of gaming, a disastrous formula well beyond twice over. I would go as far as stating that until these two players do not learn that lesson, they have lost their ability as an actual game maker.

The fact that there are options for both EA and Bioware is merely a stroke of luck on their part, hugely due to the previous designers who did do an excellent job, even now, one generation later Mass Effect 2 is still seen as one of the best games ever to grace the Xbox 360, moreover, the Xbox One has only produced games that equalled it, optionally with the exception of Assassins Creed Origin, a game that did break all the records.

And even now when we realise that a few months ago we got ‘EA ‘learned a lot’ from Anthem but doesn’t apologize‘ gives us the larger stage, we don’t need their apology, we need them to make an actual game (if they still can, and sport games do not count).

Yet the premise remains, what if the first MEA is added to the second and upgraded, would you pay for it, and would you play it? I personally believe it to be the case, especially when you realise the amount of times the first two games were played to be a nice and a naughty Shepard, optionally 4 times if you wanted to do it all for the ‘he’ as well as the ‘she’ version of the game. The groundwork was decent, but too largely unfinished and the amount of stages where the game failed on a few levels was just mind boggling, Mass Effect 3 had a few of these issues, but not as much, and they were less irritating I might add.

Why?

All gamers (including me) we yearn for the high of really good gaming and we want that feeling again and again. It is not just the sound of the achievement; the feeling of getting to the end of the game; and not to forget the entire journey to get to the end. We will go through great lengths to get that feeling again and again, hence the power of the Franchise, even after 5 partial failures, AC Origin made up for that and for the most we feel really happy that we got to that point. Ubisoft has seen this personally, EA might say that they learned, but it is still unlikely that they actually did. For the most EA became a pool of business graduates and there is nothing against that group, yet the business is gaming and not spreadsheets. You might want to keep it for your numbers, yet profit is no valid KPI of joy, the KPI of joy is excellence, it always was joy, Elder Scrolls, Ultima, Fallout, Dark Souls, Witcher, and God of War, not to forget the latest new RPG franchise Horizon Zero Dawn. They all know that excellence is what keeps you in profit, EA (optionally Bioware) forgot about that part and now they are bleeding, the amount of damage cannot be seen, it can only be seen in how they survive and whilst they think that profit and margins are the most important, these two players will miss the ball again and again. This is such a shame because before 2016 the Mass Effect franchise was a great achievement, the question becomes are the makers ready to fight for greatness?

Gamers care for that and even as we realise that others are vying for our attention and our allegiance, they now see that the time of options like Anthem is transient at best, the fact that gamers are willing to pay full price for a well-made remaster of the original three, even now after 10 years is the part that matters. You either rely on old games for a little while or you up the ante. It is at Ubisoft where we see that optionally become reality, even now, as far as we can tell, they went all out on Watchdogs 3: Legion and so far all the response is raving, and the fan club of those wanting to play it in the first hour is still growing non-stop, even after its initial view several months ago. Watchdogs had a speckled past, but they upped their game in the second game and it seems that now, in the third game they up it all in a very different and very novel way, the path a gamer did not see coming, the most enticing drug of all, the surprise path, EA and Bioware should learn from that.

It is important to learn and important to up the game because serious games do that and they are up against a larger community of games, games that will include Cyberpunk 2077, God of War 5, an optional Horizon Zero Dawn 2, Watchdogs 3, all games that have (seemingly) upped gaming and both EA and Bioware will be up against it. If they are to be considered an AAA developer they have to equal and surpass that opposition, a lesson that business graduates often did not learn, it might mirror the US stupidity in the Middle East, it is based on the American standard of ‘Money talks, Bullshit walks‘ it is there that the middle east policy failure shows it for what it is. It is the same in gaming, you need to flaunt it, but to do that, you have got to have it, there is no other way and business graduates are too often of the path: ‘Fake it till you make it‘, it merely keeps you afloat in an ocean of gamers, all well versed swimmers mind you.

I have seen excellence in gaming since 1984, I can recognise it almost instantly and it is not linked to micro transactions. I saw the excellence of Elite on a CBM64 in 1985, is still lives today as Elite Dangerous, 30 years later it creates a large following of over 4 million gamers, not a bad result. There were more games and there are even games that are successes and I missed them, I cannot be everywhere. Yet I have never failed to spot good games and I have seen the path to improve bad games several times. I believe that the Mass Effect Andromeda franchise could be resurrected as a great game; I wonder how far Bioware and EA are willing to go to make that happen.

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Tagged as AAA Games, Andromeda, Bioware, EA, Forbes, Hyperion, Mass Effect, Nexus, Ubisoft, Watchdogs 3: legion

September 18, 2019 · 11:06

The Lie of AI

The UK home office has just announced plans to protect paedophiles for well over a decade and they are paying millions to make it happen. Are you offended yet? You should be. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/home-office-artificial-intelligence-ai-dark-web-child-sexual-exploitation) is giving you that, yet you do not realise that they are doing that. The first part is ‘Money will go towards testing tools including voice analysis on child abuse image database‘, the second part is “Artificial intelligence could be used to help catch paedophiles operating on the dark web, the Home Office has announced” these two are the guiding part in this, and you did not even know it. To be able to understand this there are two parts. The first is an excellent article in the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science), the second part is: ‘AI does not exist!‘

Important fact is that AI will become a reality at some point, in perhaps a decade, yet the two elements making AI essential have not been completed. The first is quantum computing, IBM is working on it, and they admit: “For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don’t have enough computational power on Earth to tackle them.” This is true enough and fair enough. They also give us: “it was only a few decades ago that quantum computing was a purely theoretical subject“. Two years ago (yes only two years ago) IBM gives us a new state, a new stage in quantum computing where we see a “necessary brick in the foundation of quantum computing. The formula stands apart because unlike Shor’s algorithm, it proves that a quantum computer can always solve certain problems in a fixed number of steps, no matter the increased input. While on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases” This is the first true step towards creating AI, as what you think is AI grows, the data alone creates an increased number of steps down the line, coherency and comprehension become floating and flexible terms, whilst comprehension is not flexible, comprehension is a set stage, without ‘Quantum Advantage with Shallow Circuits‘ it basically cannot exist. In addition, this year we get the IBM Q System One, the world’s first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use, we could state this is the first true innovative computer acceleration in decades and it has arrived in a first version, yet there is something missing and we get to stage two later.

Now we get to the Verge.

‘The State of AI in 2019‘ published in January this year gives us the goods, and it is an amazing article to read. The first truth is “the phrase “artificial intelligence” is unquestionably, undoubtedly misused, the technology is doing more than ever — for both good and bad“, the media is all about hype and the added stupidity given to us by politicians connected the worst of both worlds, they are clueless and they are trying being dumb and clueless on the worst group of people, the paedophiles and they are paying millions to do what is cannot accomplish at present.

Consider a computer or a terminator super smart, like in the movies and consider “a sci-vision of a conscious computer many times smarter than a human. Experts refer to this specific instance of AI as artificial general intelligence, and if we do ever create something like this, it’ll likely to be a long way in the future” and that is the direct situation, yet there is more.

The quote “Talk about “machine learning” rather than AI. This is a subfield of artificial intelligence, and one that encompasses pretty much all the methods having the biggest impact on the world right now (including what’s called deep learning)” is very much at the core of it all, and it exists and it is valid and it is the point of set happening, yet without quantum computing we are confronted with the earlier stage ‘on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases‘, so now all that data delays and delays and stops progress, this is the stage that is a direct issue, then we also need to consider “you want to create a program that can recognize cats. You could try and do this the old-fashioned way by programming in explicit rules like “cats have pointy ears” and “cats are furry.” But what would the program do when you show it a picture of a tiger? Programming in every rule needed would be time-consuming, and you’d have to define all sorts of difficult concepts along the way, like “furriness” and “pointiness.” Better to let the machine teach itself. So you give it a huge collection of cat photos, and it looks through those to find its own patterns in what it sees” This learning stage takes time, yet down the track it becomes awfully decent in recognising what a cat is and what is not a cat. That takes time, yet the difference is that we are seeking paedophiles, so that same algorithm is used not to find a cat, but to find a very specific cat. Yet we cannot tell it the colour of its pelt (because we do not know), we cannot tell the size, shape or age of that specific cat. Now you see the direct impact of how delusional the idea form the Home Office is. Indirectly we also get the larger flaw. Learning for computers comes in a direct version and an indirect version and we can both put it in the same book: Programming for Dummies! You see, we feed the computer facts, but as it is unable to distinguish true facts from false facts we see a larger failing, the computer might start to look in the wrong direction, pointing out the wrong cat, making the police chase and grab the wrong cat and when that happens, the real paedophile had already hidden itself again. Deep Learning can raise flags all over the place and it will do a lot of good, but in the end, a system like that will be horribly expensive and paying 100 police officers for 20 years to hunt paedophiles might cost the same and will yield better results.

All that is contained in the quote: “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking, and that means your algorithm could be performing well for the wrong reasons” more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree.

The article ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” which is true and more important, it is not AI, the fact that we were not really informed about, there is not AI at present, not for some time to come and it makes us wonder on the Guardian headline ‘Home Office to fund use of AI to help catch dark web paedophiles‘, how much funds and the term ‘use of AI‘ requires it to exist, which it does not.

The second missing item.

You think that I was kidding, but I was not, even as the Quantum phase is seemingly here, its upgrade does not exist yet and that is where true AI becomes an optional futuristic reality. This stage is called the Majorana particle, it is a particle that is both matter and antimatter (the ability to be both positive and negative), and one of the leading scientists in this field is Dutch Physicist Leo Kouwenhoven. Once his particle becomes a reality in quantum computing, we get a new stage of shallow circuits, we get a stage where fake news, real news, positives and false positives are treated in the same breath and the AI can distinguish between them. That stage is decades away. At that point the paedophile can create whatever paper trail he likes; the AI will be worse than the most ferocious bloodhound imaginable and will see the fake trails faster than a paedophile can create it. It will merely get the little pervert caught faster.

The problem is that this is decades away, so someone should really get some clarification from the Home Office on how AI will help, because there is no way that it will actually do so before the government budget of 2030. What will we do in the meantime and what funds were spend to get nothing done? When we see: “pledged to spend more money on the child abuse image database, which since 2014 has allowed police and other law enforcement agencies to search seized computers and other devices for indecent images of children quickly, against a record of 14m images, to help identify victims“, in this we also get “used to trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation to see whether they would help track down child abusers“, so when we see ‘whether they would help‘, we see a shallow case, so shallow that the article in the Verge well over half a year ago should indicate that this is all water down the drain. And the amount (according to Sajid Javid) is set to “£30m would be set aside to tackle online child sexual exploitation“, I am all for the goal and the funds. Yet when we realise that AI is not getting us anywhere and Deep Learning only gets us so far, and we also now consider “trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation” we see a much larger failing. How can voice analyses help and how is this automated? and as for the term ‘trial aspects of AI‘, something that does not exist, I wonder who did the critical read on a paper allowing for £30 million to be spend on a stage that is not relevant. How about getting 150 detectives for 5 years to hunt down these bastards might be cheaper and in the end a lot more results driven.

In the end of the article we see the larger danger that is not part of AI, when we see: “A paper by the security think-tank Rusi, which focused on predictive crime mapping and individual risk assessment, found algorithms that are trained on police data may replicate – and in some cases amplify – the existing biases inherent in the dataset“, in this Rusi is right, it is about data and the data cannot be staged or set against anything, which makes for a flaw in deep learning as well. We can teach what a cat is by showing it 1,000 images, yet how are the false images recognised (panther, leopard, or possum)? That stage seems simple in cats, in criminals it is another matter, comprehension and looking past data (showing insight and wisdom) is a far stretch for AI (when it is there) and machine learning and deeper learning are not ready to this degree at present. We are nowhere near ready and the first commercial quantum computer was only released this year. I reckon that whenever a politician uses AI as a term, he is either stupid, uninformed or he wants you to look somewhere else (avoiding actual real issues).

For now the hypes we see are more often than not the lie of AI, something that will come, but unlikely to be seen before the PS7 is setting new sales records, which is still many years away.

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Tagged as AI, Deep Learning, Home office, IBM, IBM Q System One, Leo Kouwenhoven, London, Machine learning, Majorana particle, Netherlands, RUSI, Sajid Javid, Shallow Circuits, Shor's algorithm, the Guardian, the Verge, think-tank Rusi, TU Delft, UK

September 17, 2019 · 11:44

What mattered most

I refrained from giving a view for two days, I saw the attacks on Sunday and I was ready to give voice, but then something happened, a change in the wind was there and it was important to look at that side of the equation. It all started on Sunday (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49699429) with ‘Saudi Arabia oil facilities ablaze after drone strikes‘, yet that was not the real trigger for the west, there had been other attacks and the west ignored them, as I reported in several articles. It was: “Oil prices ended nearly 15% higher on Monday, with the Brent benchmark seeing its biggest jump in about 30 years” that woke people up, now there was finally a reason to report it, not the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been under attack for a month, it was the fact that fuel prices were going to rise.

And of couirse, the US ever willing to be late to a party gives us: ‘Attack on a major Saudi oil facility originated in Iran, U.S. intelligence indicates‘, which is weird as I had handed out evidence out weeks ago to show that Iran had been facilitating resources to attack Saudi Arabia, yet for me it is nice to know that I am more able in intelligence after 3 decades than the US has ever been. As such it is not interesting to read: “American intelligence indicates that the attack on a major Saudi oil facility originated in Iran, three people familiar with the intelligence told NBC News“, that part is not interesting, it is the part where we have known that Iran had been supplying drones to Houthi forces for the longest time, for many months, it would have been nice for US intelligence to hand out that information months ago, but I reckon until the prices of fuel soared there was no reason to show support for an ally, they claimed to be an ally of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, yet they never released the intelligence giving rise to lash out at Iran to any degree. That does not make for an ally that is the foundation for being an exploitation tool (at best).

And it gets to be worse, when you consider NBC News. The quote: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Saturday that Iran “launched” what he called “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”” seems nice, but it only seems so. I wonder if the US officials are really about the ‘world energy supply‘ or the consequences of oil price hikes and the increased value it has on Aramco? It is the impact of the headline ‘Saudi Arabia oil and gas production reduced by drone strikes‘ that is scary to Wall Street, as production reduces, prices go up, the need increases and it changes the economic models for Wall Street, so again it is not really about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or about being their ally, is it? It is about the profit margins everywhere else that is the actual debate behind closed doors.

So when the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126) gives us ‘U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran‘ we do not see anything new here. The issue is how the drones get moved from Iran to Yemen. We also see through the faded “Monday’s assessment, which the U.S. hasn’t shared publicly, came as President Trump said he hoped to avoid a war with Iran and Saudi Arabia asked United Nations experts to help determine who was responsible for the airstrikes“, just a moment to delay moments of decision making. The culprits are known. It is not the real fear, the real fear is “Higher fuel prices pose another threat to the world economy” and that is the real issue for the US and for Europe. The response: “Saudi officials said the U.S. didn’t provide enough proof to conclude that the attack was launched from Iran, indicating the U.S. information wasn’t definitive. U.S. officials said they planned to share more information with the Saudis in the coming days” makes perfect sense. As the attack was claimed by Yemeni Houthi, the proxy war stage stays intact, it is the intelligence on how the drones get into Yemen that counts and so far (until now) the US, UK and French have not been overly willing to keep closer eyes on it, they all need degrees of freedom to deal with Iran and their so called Nuclear treaty, that has been in the way for the longest of times.

There are two parts in this and both came from CNN. Part 1 gives us: “A Yemen armed forces spokesman was quoted by the agency as saying the Houthis successfully carried out a “large-scale” operation with 10 drones targeting Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais“, part 2 gives us “CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen said there have been more than 200 drone attacks launched by Houthi rebels from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, and none have been as effective as Saturday’s attack, lending credence to the belief that the attack did not originate from Yemen“, I personally agree with both. From my point of view the attack on Khurais has too many issues. It is close to twice the distance getting the attack from Yemen instead of from Iraq. It is dangerously close to Riyadh and when we look at the track record from Houthi attacks, we see a very different pattern. There are more reliable parts in all this when we consider Hezbollah or Iran to be the direct acting agent here. I have to mention Hezbollah as they have been involved in the past with attacks on Saudi Arabia. Abqaiq is right on the border of Bahrain and close to Qatar. The Houthi skillset does not give us any credibility on their actions, yet they claimed it, as a tool for Iran that could have been done to muddy the waters more, yet there is another matter in all this. I believe that there is a larger concern that is not open for viewing. We see this in the quote: ““It is quite an impressive, yet worrying, technological feat,” he said. “Long-range precision strikes are not easy to achieve and to cause the substantial fires in Abqaiq and Khurais highlights that this drone has a large explosive yield.”” The part not seen or spoken of is not that the attack happened, but it was completed with assistance nearby. The precision is not from the drones, it was most likely achieved as someone used a laser to paint the targets (one of a few optional examples) in the final minute. If the laser was small enough it would not be noticed, but for the drones it is like a searchlight guiding them to the explosive points. That part would make sense in more than one way, and it is the foundation that counts. The claims that were made by Yemen make sense and grow in validity when they have resources on the ground. That part is not merely on the stage of drones, there is a larger concern for Saudi Intelligence now. When they accept that the drones got their final guidance on the ground nearby, we see the impact that explosive drones would have and will have again. Iran has been staging this proxy war for the longest time and it is time for us to consider doing something about it in a more serious way (that is when Canada is done selling intelligence data to interested third parties that is).

There is additional support for my view and it comes from the BBC. They gave us: “One official said there were 19 points of impact on the targets and the attacks had come from a west-north-west direction – not Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, which lies to the south-west of the Saudi oil facilities” to be this precise requires drone technology only the largest players have (like the US and the UK), Iran does not have software that sophisticated and to succeed to this degree required the most likely culprit Iran to have assistance nearby. Painting the targets makes the most sense, but it is not the only option, merely the most likely one. It there were 19 base stations guiding a drone, it would require resources Yemen does not have, it has merely attacks in small clusters of less than 5, the images from the US government satellites involved showed the spread and size of the targets, when you consider resources required to be this precise and the pilot skills involved the shift towards support teams nearby becomes a clear issue. Still there are gaps in the intelligence I admit to that, however, when we look at the maps, the size of the attacks and aligned parameters, an attack from Iraq or Iran are the only options remaining. That in itself is not evidence, yet the premise of what was required is clear and even as we can prove that more basic drone attacks could not have been done by Houthi forces because they lack all levels of infrastructure to create and guide drones to the degree required, we see Iran to be guilty by elimination of other players. The precision requires well trained pilots which the Houthi are not; again we are left with Iran. Actually Iraq might have been party to this, but their drone abilities (read: with additional lacking skill sets to consider) are nowhere near the level required.

This now gets us to the New York Times part which gave us: “Administration officials, in a background briefing for reporters as well as in separate interviews on Sunday, also said a combination of drones and cruise missiles — “both and a lot of them,” as one senior United States official put it — might have been used. That would indicate a degree of scope, precision and sophistication beyond the ability of the Houthi rebels alone” it is the ‘a combination of drones and cruise missiles‘ that pushes Iraq out of the consideration circle leaving Iran all alone. We should consider the skills Iran shows here, and it will also be their undoing. When we consider that only Iran remains as an optional player to do this and when we see that Europe and the US will not actually act, but ‘force’ talks, that is the first instance when Saudi Arabia needs to consider that their allies are nothing more than paper tigers, pussycats that make a lot of noise, but when you know they are sculptures the enemies will come, Saudi Arabia needs to realise this fast and we need to consider that the EU, the US and the commonwealth needs to create an actual plan of attack on Iran. This evidence was handed to us almost 2 weeks ago when we were given ‘Iran puts pressure on Europe to save nuclear deal within 60-day deadline‘, Iran keeps on holding the Nuclear deal as a juicy carrot and will use it to stop a direct attack on them, a path that should now be considered to be totally unacceptable. I for one would like to ‘loan’ a Saudi Eurofighter Typhoon (EF2000) and see if all my hours on a Microprose flight simulator (knights of the sky) were well spent and let’s face it, I do have a quirky sense of humour. I would be able to test my knowledge in guiding that Typhoon to Tehran and level a military building or two, on the other hand seeing their oil fields burn might feel equally rewarding. And there is the optional reward to answer the eternal outstanding question: Can you hear the GBU-16 Paveway II bomb explode whilst you fly a plane?

You think that I am making light of the situation and to some degree I am, the basic need for everyone to realise that Iran has been steering towards war whilst employing the oldest Italian excuse (read: It was not me, I know nothing); This stage has been months in the making and now that the drums of combat are approaching, we will see more and more politicians peaking up offering to start talks. I believe it is too late for that, it is almost 6 months too late for that, but that might just be me.

Yet there is one other voice we need to consider. It is the voice of Fabian Hinz, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Monterey (via the Washington Post). Here we get: “photos of the remnants of a missile in Saudi Arabia show a weapon both too sophisticated to be produced domestically by the Houthis and never seen in Iran“, I only partially agree here. ‘Photos of the remnants of a missile‘ is merely partial evidence that should not be ignored. A multi-tiered attack makes perfect sense, it is the scope of the attack and patterns used that makes Iran stand out; it also gives a larger consideration that their new drones are a lot more powerful. There is also his quote “Is Iran secretly designing, testing and producing missile systems for exclusive use by its proxies?” A quote that is not accurate and not wrong. I believe that earlier evidence showed the need for Iran to scrap all identifiers form their electronics, make clean system boards, in addition, it altered the export drones to trade accuracy in for yield (which maximises the Houthi outstanding debt to Iran), in addition to that they had to make a more idiot proof operating system (the Yemeni are nowhere near the academics they need to be to pilot drones). This is not because I want Iran to be guilty; this is because the elements are so overwhelmingly clear that Iran could not be innocent. There are too many parts in play that require the war machine that Iran has to develop what we see in action at present. And there is every indication that the 60 day nuclear deal deadline is used to stage more and more attacks whilst the indecision of Europe and the US remains in place. If there is one small blessing than it is the stage where the Israeli Defence Forces have even less consideration for Iran than Saudi Arabia has and there is every indication that what is created now in Iran will be shipped to Hezbollah soon enough; forcing Israel to act as well.

When this escalates beyond a point of no return the people in Washington, Wall Street, Brussels and Strasbourg need to consider that when they have no options left and they are no longer considered a voice on the issue: ‘What mattered most to them?‘

Because these considerations with the inaction we see is what drives the war no one can prevent. Saudi Arabia has a clear right, Israel has a duty to its citizens and Iran never cared for anyone but themselves. So when we see cries for talks when the bombs fall, remember that this did not start last Sunday, this has been going on for well over 6 months. The news merely decided not to report on much of it that was until the fuel prices went up, now they are all over it, but way too late.

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September 14, 2019 · 11:33

That one sentence

You have all faced it before, the moment where that one sentence stops you in your tracks. I am not talking about the sentence a partner states when they come with ‘If you get naked now, we can have sex‘, most people jump at that point. No, it is the ‘if you value your life‘ moment. It is not always a threat, and more important, it is not a sentence that is an imminent danger to you, that would be a reaction as well, but one of another kind. It is the sentence that makes you realise just how dangerous the stage is. I saw one today that came from Warsaw. It was an opinion piece, but the issue is not that it was an opinion; the issue is that this opinion is shared and it shows just how essential Brexit is to the UK. Besides the two failed stimulus events and a new one rolling off the bankrolls as we speak, a third, or perhaps more accurately stated a second mistake in a three part plan that goes nowhere. We now get that sentence ‘The Financial Times editors, heads of German business and many economists argued that Germany should start spending which it does not intend to do‘ this sentence is dangerous and idiotic, there is no relief in spending more, there is no relief, not merely because a government spends more, it is idiotic because Germany has a debt that surpasses 2,250,000,000,000 €, more important, their debt increases almost €2,000 a second. So every person in Germany has a €27,500 debt to deal with. A nation in that position is not in a good place and needs to reduce debt, but the deception and the brainless issue is that Europeans are all in a stage to take on more debt, whilst the ECB is playing with trillions in stimulus. That danger is too large and leaving the EU is the only option to get a handle on the debt every European faces.

The danger that these exploiters face is that the UK can pull it off, and when the first economic victory is scored. all those EU members will stand still and look at how they can pull it off, the people behind the scenes, the people handing us this contrived stories will then have to report to the large corporations and the custodians of the European corporatocracy that they have failed and they will no longer matter or be considered valued. That is the larger game and whilst the UK moves closer to proving that point, others keep on fear mongering as much as they can for as long as they can. Yet the dangers are becoming real and they are increasing in visibility. The Local in Germany (at https://www.thelocal.de/20190913/should-germany-give-into-pressure-and-boost-spending-to-revive-europe) gives us: ‘Should Germany boost spending to help revive Europe?‘, yet its economy is slowing and they are close to a €2.5 trillion debt. Still, for the economic value of Germany it does not seem much, but it is not a multi-billion valued debt, it is a thousand times worse and people do not seem to get that this debt pushes nations towards a corporatocracy where the banks and corporations are in charge and that danger is not understood anywhere, except perhaps the boardrooms of the Fortune 500 and they are extremely unwilling to explain it to you. As we see the stage of corporatocracy growing, we should also notice the lack of media looking into that matter. I would state it is because the media aligns with Shareholders, stake holders and advertisers and corporations are in charge of all three. So in a stage where we see: ‘a day after the European Central Bank warned it had reached the limit of its powers to avert recession‘, we get two things. The first is the stimulus that is coming, and second German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz gets the news: “Germany faced renewed pressure on Friday to boost public spending and help revive a sputtering European economy“, neither will solve anything and there is now the crux, because if the UK exits the EU and gives a real first sign of improvement (which will be year 2 or 3 after Brexit), we see a change, Germany will anger to a degree not seen before and the German population will demand Gexit, AfD (Alternativ fur Deutschland) is already pushing in that direction, but it is not powerful enough, the first UK signs will push it to such a level that Gexit would optionally happen overnight. That is the problem for the fear mongering lot and they are scared because Brexit is still on the road, and the second problem is that it will bring a better stage to the UK, which also means that Germany will get out as fast as possible. At that point the EU can no longer continue, with three trillion in debt it will collapse. I had actually expected for France to leave as a second country, yet with France electing an investment banker, that danger was temporarily averted. Now as Brexit is in a higher stage the Germans start looking at the ACTUAL issues and FACTUAL problems and benefits that the EU leaving stages bring, it is the one part no one had considered to the degree they needed to. Fear mongering remains a virtual issue and the real facts are not in line with the fears created and now that this void is becoming visible, a lot more people are realising that they were played and that will give the entire EU collapse a speed boost, but in all this, it is the UK that pushes what happens next, that is why we see UK Labour cold calling on every door with some hilarious moments (at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9924096/homeowners-brexit-rant-terrorist-corbyn-democracy-labour-caller/). Yet they are merely stalling and buying time, at present Labour has no political power to their position, Jeremy Corbyn and his stupidity destroyed the Labour party, so he decided to openly support (read: hide behind) the remain groups. It is a valid strategy, yet the truth is also that more and more people are aware just how dangerous remaining has become and the British people have one full faith, they have full faith in Britannia and in that setting there is no EU, large corporations never understood that, it is not Wall Street, so they cannot comprehend.

So there we see it all and this all started with that one sentence: ‘Germany and others need to spend more‘ and when we see the debts rising and rising more and more people realise the one urging thought ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?‘

The smallest level of consideration would have been given if the second stimulus has shown levels of victory, it did not and now we have and a €3 trillion debt and no restored economy. The truth does not come from economy, it was Albert Einstein who gave us: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results every time“, it is the realisation of that truth that is now sinking in and spending more and more helps corporations, it helps banks, it does not help people, and that truth comes clear when it all collapses and all the pensions stop existing. That will be the next step and still the ECB will remain in denial, this entire matter is staged around organisations and gravy trains that have no bearing on our economic benefit or our economic long term stability. It serves them and the members of their teams, and more people are figuring that out.

As we are brought more and more revelations on how there will be a new recession, we see others come with news, fake news, bad presentations and so on. The Guardian in 2018 gave us: ‘We are due a recession in 2020 – and we will lack the tools to fight it‘, the recession is still coming, the tools are not there and more debt is coming in at the same time. This was always a formula for bad tidings. More important, it will hit Europe and the US both to a larger degree. It will not be a 2008 event, but it will be bad and as I see it, as Germany has the best economic position as their debt is merely 60% of GDP, they have the best chances to get through it all. The UK follows after that, yet they too will be hit and now we get the kicker, if Brexit has been completed, the drag, the huge drag that the UK would get because it had to tend to the 27 member states will no longer be there, so they can rise faster and sooner. That lesson, when we see that in reality will be the trigger for Germany, France and Italy to get out as fast as possible. It will end the EU, it will make a lot if issues messy yet it is only after that that a global economy can be grown in proper ways.

This was not a mystery, this was not a consideration and it was not a devil plan. It was merely that application of nature. Consider that any economy has high tides and low tides that is how it was, like the seas they have an influencer. For the sea the larger influence is the moon. There is nothing we can do anything about it, yet these tides are also regular, so for a larger part they are predictable. Now consider that tides fall away, on a planet with 24 time zones, we decided to place 4 of them in one group. Then we decided to nullify the tide (which was unnatural) and now we are all screaming that recession is our bane, it never was, economic cycles are as normal as the tides and we all face high and low, it is not something that corporations like and they designed a way around it. They failed, nature always finds a way and that is where they are now. They want to stall as much as they can and they are willing to sell 500 million people in the EU down the drain to keep their profits, and now as we all realise that these times have come and gone, and as we realise that debt helps them, it does not help us, people wake up and decide to find a way to end their struggle. It will be a long fight, but at present we could win it and end the EU cycle called corporatocracy, the nations, their monarchies and republics get to win. There will be a mess, it will not be pretty but it will get better.

So what one sentence woke you up today?

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Tagged as Brexit, Corporatocracy, ECB, Eu, France, German Finance Minister, Germany, Gexit, Italy, Jeremy Corbyn, labour party, Olaf Scholz, stimulus, the Guardian, the Sun, UK

September 13, 2019 · 14:18

Buying into USM Inc.

Forbes gave me the news that actually made me livid. I understand that it is done; I can to some degree even accept that it was done, but it angers me, it is beyond acceptable. It shows that we have aligned with a bully for far too long and if I had to try and be diplomatic (which I will not do) is that in this stage is that current President Donald Trump is the biggest piece of filthy shit in the history of mankind (with well over 5000 years of examples), his existence should be regarded on the same level as the essential extinction of the Neanderthal (and equally as long overdue).

Never before have we needed to be so ashamed of a nation (the United States) who through bullying and fear mongering set the stage of exploitation, gave rise to non-elected officials to exploit systems and demolish our way of life. For the first time in history the United States is the largest danger, larger than Russia in the cold war ever was.

Why?

The headline ‘Huawei CEO To Sell Entire 5G Technology Stack To American Companies In Shock Peace Offer To Trump‘ gives rise to a stage where the flaccid and useless technology sector in the Unites States have bullied others into handing over the IP they never worked for. Iteration and complacency got to score a victory like VHS replaced a superior Betamax through the application of mass marketing.

So when we get the quote: “In a shocking move, Zhengfei Ren, the CEO and founder of Huawei offered the ultimate olive branch to the Trump administration: Sell all of the Chinese telecommunications giant’s 5G technology to American companies. The surprising offer, which was reported earlier this week by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, would essentially allow the U.S. to finally get in the race for 5G supremacy which is now dominated by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE, Ericsson of Sweden and Nokia from Finland“.

Should actually be phrased as “American companies that have been unable and became too incompetent to innovate mobile opportunities saw fit via the bullying of the current tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. to bully innovators to hand over technology for mere cents on the dollar. Its approach and tactics that would give regard to consideration for Nazi Germany to be seen as a humanitarian organisation has created a state of uncertainty in all of us and has given view to the unacceptable acts from companies and their unwillingness to face up to their own stupidity, which has now forced Chinese to seek an unacceptable point of view, whilst at present the pharmaceutical industries in America are still willing to destroy what was once the cornerstone of innovation, that same tactic of iteration has shown to be the downfall of American Technology and as such America has become a nation that should no longer be regarded as the leader of the free world, but merely an existing vulture to strengthen and prolong exploitation“, I hope that I was clear here?

As such, I have no chance of my own IP, yet I can prolong the cloud of stupidity in America to hand over all my IP over to Huawei hoping that they will optionally reward me, America surely will not and when 400 million small business owners all show the Huawei sign their shopping window, I will feel satisfaction, even if it does not bring me any wealth in the end.

That part was made clear to me when I considered “Ren added that the American licensees will be able to sell their 5G equipment based on Huawei’s intellectual property anywhere in the world, except in China“, I might be able to give Chinese and Middle Eastern commerce a larger boost, giving a larger appearance on how insignificant and trivial American technology has truly become.

I wonder how the EU will be seen in 15 years when the media would start considering to give the actual events the true and correct exposure of what was; when the people realise what a mess the world become due to stupidity and unacceptable support to Wall Street through the American government administrations, when we see on how the ECB with a third stimulus is poisoning wells that were supposed to be protective, all whilst the gravy trains just keep on driving. To be honest, I have never been so ashamed to give any level of credibility to American interests in the near past. The events from the last 6 months alone give rise to the change of venue away from the US, away from the EU and on the condition of a large muzzle on the head of the ECB.

Part of me finds the rage within me uplifting, I have not been this angry for well over half a decade. The article (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/09/12/huawei-ceo-to-sell-entire-5g-technology-stack-to-american-companies-in-shock-peace-offer-to-trump) is short and to the point, and I wonder how that idiot with a bad haircut will degrade news into some form of tweeting victory (the one using @realDonaldTrump); even as we see that Huawei clearly won the European war against the American trade bully, we need to realise that ALL our IP is now in danger. If America can resort to this against a tech giant like Huawei, what will it do to anyone that gets in its way of not being pronounced bankrupt? When idiots of that calibre remain in denial of their national debt of well over $22 trillion, with no chance of resolving that debt, when it ignores the never ending exploitation by ‘Big Pharma’ and when Wall Street is not held to account on their actions, we are no longer free, we are merely pawns in a corporatocracy and America is actively dragging Japan and the EU with itself so it can present and delusional consider itself as remaining afloat.

Holy cow, I am so angry today!

you see, I was always of the mind that in this world, in this technology the most innovative one would win, and that it would be a harsh lesson for America to learn that iterative companies could merely exist, but would remain inferior below the true innovators, the fact that we see that this is no longer the case and we remain ruled by foul mouthed bullies is a reality that overwhelmed me to the largest degree. Even now earlier this week when Brad Smith, top lawyer to Microsoft hands out that the Trump Huawei ban made no sense, we now see the truth of the matter. It was merely mind over matter, China initially did not mind, because America did not matter anymore, how wrong we all are! We are being played by the bully and everyone dances (especially the politicians).

It merely gives rise to the fact that we have no freedom, we have no rights, and the rights are only there where corporations accept us to have any. Be honest, how many of you signed up for that? That is the real danger of a corporatocracy, in that stage your right to exist and your rights as a person are linked to how profitable and applicable you are in its workforce. You are either a consumer and an asset, or a liability and a burden (or was that the other way round), at that point there are no equal rights, when you stop being part of the gains spreadsheet of corporations your value becomes nil and that realisation will be scary soon enough. It goes beyond mere age discrimination, race discrimination or religious discrimination, it becomes populist acceptance, the consumer, the user and accepting and paying individual is in the populist group, the rest is not, it is an accelerated and extreme version of those who have and those who have not, those who ‘have not’ would be removed from life, support and consideration.

If we take a step back then I would agree that I was not happy that China had won the 5G fight, I preferred it to be European players like Nokia, yet I accepted it as I clearly saw 4 years of pure innovation by Huawei. Apple with it proclaimed innovation was merely iterative and yes Samsung did have innovations, yet Huawei won and technology leaped forward, to see the events that followed, instigated by a loser named America was just disgusting.

If I had one wish to be granted, then it is that every fear mongering journalist, politician, technologist and reporter who pushed for the fear mongering of ‘Huawei spy risk‘ would be engraved on a monument that showed how these people are too unacceptable to be allowed to exist in this world. I prefer them to be hung, but their actions are not illustrated in any Criminal law act, so that would be an illegal action, and I still believe in the law (for now). However, just like we hung every German in Nuremburg who had the default defence of ‘Befehl ist befehl‘ , we get to engrave the fear mongering and misrepresenting facilitators named on a monument (preferably in the form of a flaccid penis) with the consideration texts on a brass cock ring stating: ‘Most stupid person on the planet‘. People who will hide behind ‘I was misinformed‘, ‘I was led to believe‘ and: ‘this is what they told me‘. People like that should not be allowed to carry titles like ‘Journalist’ they should never again be allowed to be part of news publications and never be given the consideration of credibility ever again.

That part is also seen in Forbes when we see: “U.S. companies would be allowed to modify as they see fit the software code used to run any of Huawei’s 5G equipment or even change it and use their own. That way, they will be able to avoid any fears that the Chinese company might be able to access these licensed American made 5G telecommunications gears to spy for the Chinese government“, it gives Huawei additional consideration, especially as the entire Chinese government spy part was NEVER proven, or clear evidence was ever presented to that effect.

Wow, I am still angry!

It bleeds my heart that we (mainly politicians) gave in to America in unproven ways again. Just like there were no WMD’s, there was no Chinese government espionage evidence. This level of injustice and the way some players got here makes me sick to my stomach and there is actually no chance that this feeling will improve over the next day. Too many people will soon realise that they have been pushed into a state where we were treated to the presentation of the United States Manure corporation (USM Inc.), all sold via corporations and too many players were eager to deal this stuff to the populations at large like they were golden covered chocolate truffles.

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Tagged as 5G, Big Pharma, China, Corporatocracy, ECB, Ericsson, Eu, Finland, Forbes, Germany, Huawei, IP, Japan, New York Times, Nokia, Nuremburg, Patents, President Donald Trump, stimulus, Sweden, Thomas Friedman, US, Wall Street, Zhengfei Ren, ZTE

September 12, 2019 · 11:25

Predictive Analytics or crystal ball?

We all have these moments, we all have that limelight moment that is all about the lights and not the lime; or better stated, in this world where about 23 people pointed at me, making me sound like an evangelist who is casting the bones, calling me tainted by the Afreet. They all stated that delusion was my middle name, to them today I say; ‘Hah!‘

The Arab News about an hour ago (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1553251/saudi-arabia) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia’s SAMI, Navantia in SR3.7bn military deal‘, which represents a few coins less than a billion dollars in green US pieces of paper, now gives us that “SAMI Navantia Naval Industries (SAMI-Navantia) signed a SR3.7 billion ($986 million) contract with Spanish shipbuilder Navantia to collaborate on combat system integration (CSI) on the Avante 2200 corvettes for the Saudi navy“, whilst on September 1st (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/01/change-is-coming/) where I wrote “SAMI has the option of building space well over 5 times the combined spaces that Damen, Spanish Navantia and Dearsan combined have. It changes the equation a fair bit“, in response to “As the links with Navantia matures, we see the option to cater to the needs of coast guards on several national levels and these are not the small players. Some might have noticed the small mention of ‘Offshore Patrol Vessels Market 2024: New Business Opportunities for Manufactures to Upsurge in Coming Years‘, yet Navantia and therefor SAMI are in the thick of that part of the equation“, 11 days later I would be proven correctly and this is just the start for SAMI. I understand that some might unite under the expression of ‘one Swallow does not a summer make‘, but the setting of preparation was too large, too much effort had been made in several directions by Saudi Arabia and a few foreign interested parties. More importantly, the EU gravy train decision makers have been taken out of the equation. As I see it, it is merely the first of several new ventures that we will see happen and each success is an almost guaranteed stage towards the follow up job which will be substantially larger than the previous one. It is here where we see what Walid Abukhaled, Chief Strategy Officer at SAMI, as well as Dr. Andreas Schwer, CEO of SAMI are capable of when two visionaries unite in a view that has a similar direction. One would consider that it feels really good being His Excellency Ahmed Al-Khateeb this week in light of these successes, yet they are not merely successes, they are the beginning of milestones that thrust the abilities and capabilities of SAMI forward. The data was decently clear on that. It was not merely their ability, it was the hindrance that Heckler and Koch, Farbique Nationale Herstal as well as BAE Systems are finding operating under EU procedures, all whilst the procedures are nothing short of hypocrisy in the first place; a stage of what some call holier than thee ideology. I get it, there is nothing wrong with something like Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), yet it can only work if it is balanced and it is not, so now they merely achieved in losing commerce for the UK (and parts of the EU). There is nothing wrong with ideology, but if it is not dipped in some level of realism, they will do more harm than good. You cannot act in one direction and after that refuse to hold Iran to account who has been visibly ignoring and shunning agreements, and these pressures are also being applied by Turkey on other fronts, all these pressure points result in turmoil and stress and the market will respond to the needs of other governments requiring the hardware to do something about it, the SAMI deal might merely be the first deal for the Saudi Navy, but there are two parts there, first the Saudi Navy is growing, second is that once the knowledge is implemented other orders can be completed as well and it is that second part that will matter even more, as the governments require additional value out of their vessels, Navantia, if SAMI delivers could get a lot more value out of their Life Support services department and these overhauls add a lot of value, which works for SAMI as a facilitator as well. In this Navantia will get the stage of upgrading and give additional services to the preventive maintenance and remote technical assistance divisions of their yard. And it is more than facilitation for Saudi Arabia, as its knowledge of logistics is applied. Whilst we think that there is no news under the sun when it comes to predictive models to support strategic purchases, and optionally scripted and tested Machine Learning techniques to expenditure control and collaborative development with suppliers through common digital platforms most do not realise that in shipping it is very different from other industries. There are external inhibitors (weather) there are operational inhibitors (idle time) and logistical inhibitors (active manpower/resources), all stages on 2-3 levels that other industries never had. It is like Google being baffled by their answer of ‘What is Standard Deviation‘, whilst the answer does not compute with the customer who knows it to be: “the angular difference between magnetic North and the compass needle due to nearby sources of interference such as magnetically permeable bodies, or other magnetic fields within the field of influence“, it is there and the fact that the answer differs on the other side of the equation where we see a mismatch of standards and concepts. Whilst we laugh away the difference, some might realise that 2 miscommunications is enough to lose out on a billion dollars and then the life aquatic is no longer a simple comedy with Bill Murray, the stage of global maritime needs has changed and changed differently from most other industries. Navantia and a few other players have remained on top of it (as well as a few other serious players), it is here where we also see larger failings. We might see growth in a report like: “LNG Bunkering will register a 65.2% CAGR in terms of revenue, reach US$ 24400 million by 2023, from US$ 1200 million in 2017“, and that report might be completely correct, and now, even whilst I have not looked into that report (as it is not important to this article), how does that growth and equation impact idle time? Anyone who ignores idle time also ignores any captain confronted by it. when we consider “new mega-vessel, more capacity and a tremendous effort to improve competitiveness and efficiency are now hand to hand with a new collaborative mind-set, involving new technology to enhance connectivity that leas the seaport supply industry to the future” we accept a growing industry, yet the premise of “Idle time at waterside (arrival and departure), constitute 38 per cent of the total port stay for a container ship, which cost billions of USD per year to the shipping lines“, we get this from Ruben F, in his thesis ‘Identification And Measurement Of Idle Times Port Visit Of Container Ships Through An Explorative And Simulation Study: The Case Of Algeciras’s Terminal‘, his advisor was Jalal Ashayeri, PhD. It is in this document where we see: “The latest news is that in 2019 NYK line will test a crewless container ship from Japan to North America (BloombergTechnology, 2017) . This is not the only carrier working in this new technological model for container ship, however the future for in this industry is still being unwritten“; there is nothing wrong with the quote, yet everyone forgets that every harbour has one darling limit, the amount of berthing space available and when we consider that dangerous cargo is a second limitation we see a larger windfall for SAMI, because weapons (specifically ammunition) is a Class One dangerous cargo, which now also means that whenever a government upgrades its navy there is a shift in what is available, and therefor pushed idle time by a lot, consider ANY harbour and consider that due to government upgrades two berthing spaces are lost due to naval upgrades. Not every navy has its own long term harbour space at times; now consider the impact on idle time and having the software to manage that more efficiently, that is where Spain and Saudi Arabia get the larger windfall down the road, not merely implementing, but managing logistics and operational options through consultants and remote servers. What some saw last month is the ‘claim’ of cyber warfare capabilities was shy of one element. The element of cyber logistics and cyber upgrading as a facility becomes more and more important, especially when you realise that those in that field have little to no experience with naval logistics and what makes naval logistics a lot more different (as well as complex and difficult) from other logistics. Most of them have no experience with idle time algorithms. That oversight might make some people run to books and learn, but unless you have the knowledge of a harbour master with added quarter of a century experience you lose out, plain and simple, Navantia has that (as do some others) yet the larger group is absent that knowledge and this is where SAMI gets the added benefits down the road.

And that makes sense how?

Well, for that we need to realise that several sources mentioned almost a month ago that in the EU (Spain was separately mentioned as well) that there is a ban on double trucks and that these trucks are given the limit of double tractor-trailers to 63.5 tons or less. It gives a larger rise to capacity problems in harbours, even as some hide behind safety issues like in “There is insufficient rail capacity, and “we would have to bet on the growth” of rail if double tractor-trailers disappeared, according to the proposal, which suggests that weight reduction would improve safety“, to me it seems that there is a larger growing capacity problem and the speed that the lack of capacity is growing at is also worrying, the ships have grown a lot bigger and whilst harbours were deepened in many parts, the amount of berthing spaces (as well as cranes, and its capacity) have not improved in a decade, this now implies that ships are docked longer, it pushes idle time by a fair bit and in all this, ships require upgrades. So when Navantia gets the added SAMI capacity to do things faster, optionally having access to Saudi berthing locations, the two together will make for additional growth options for SAMI, that part was already clear on September 1^st to me. My undergrad was in ships engineering and even as I never worked in that industry (IT was too appealing) I do know what impacts there are and I do see where SAMI could be heading. There are over a dozen governments all wanting to upgrade their navy, whilst the resources and skills are almost universally lacking. I think that this Union with Navantia and SAMI will spell a lot more options than anyone realised.

The fact that the US was eager to add Australian BCT to its resources shows just how short the supply is, it is not merely cyber defence, electronic warfare, technology, and intelligence. There is in the naval sense a lack of ICT solutions to a much larger degree, it is the combination that is hard to find and some solutions are antiquated to say the least. Most IT people always thought of naval cyber needs to be too mundane or too unappealing which resulted in a maritime applicable shortage in several nations. Navantia recognised that weakness for the Spanish navy two decades ago and it resulted in a Combat Management System (CMS) called SCOMBA, now that SCOMBA is highly sought after in many places and there we see the applicability that goes beyond the Spanish navy, as the links with SAMI deepens we see that Navantia has a product that has appeal to several allied players and Navantia via SAMI gets to upgrade the facilitation that it internationally has without losing ownership of its IP, which in this day and age seems a lot more important than it was a decade ago.

Should you doubt this, you could always try the $12.99 solution (at https://www.amazon.com/Amlong-Crystal-Including-Golden-Package/dp/B005DK1AQU) and see how fast you could unload one container with 21500 kg of IMCO 5.1 at Singapore harbour, I wish you a lot of luck and fair weather handing that information over to the captain of whatever SS Minnow he is in charge, I dare you to end that conversation: ‘Get it done today, or else‘, I will be selling popcorn with a big smile and a loud laugh at that event.

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Tagged as Ahmed Al-Khateeb, Arab News, Australia, BAE Systems, BCT, Bloomberg Technology, CAAT, Campaign Against Arms Trade, CMS, Combat Management System, Dr. Andreas Schwer, Eu, Farbique Nationale Herstal, Heckler and Koch, Jalal Ashayeri, Life Support services, Navantia, SAMI, Saudi Arabia, SCOMBA, Singapore harbour, Spain, UK, Walid Abukhaled

September 6, 2019 · 12:09

Focal points

I am in a slightly darker stage, I got there myself and I will get myself from it as well. The first issue is the United Nations,

The Yemeni Jam

I never considered that I would one day be ashamed of the existence of the United Nations. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/05/australia-may-be-complicit-in-war-crimes-if-it-supports-saudi-led-coalition-in-yemen-un) gives us: “a Saudi-led coalition that has starved civilians, bombed hospitals and blocked humanitarian aid as tactics of war, may be complicit in war crimes“, I will not go any deeper into it, as I reported on this in my article: ‘Unemployed or UN employed?‘, (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/04/unemployed-or-un-employed/), so doing that again is just doubling up (there is more in the article as well). The media has not released that report yet and I will dig into that one deep the moment I can. Part of this problem was given to the people by the Human Rights Watch in an article giving us: “The May 2019 report of an independent investigation by a Guatemalan diplomat, Gert Rosenthal, raised serious concerns about the UN’s handling of the human rights crisis in Myanmar. The secretary-general should promptly carry out reforms to prevent what the report called the recurrence of the “systematic” failures and “obvious dysfunctional performance” and to ensure individual accountability for those failures“, the problem is larger, even as the articles are all about showing just how exposed the allies of Saudi Arabia are, the word ‘Iran’ is only seen twice in the entire article. There are a multitude of acts that Iran is involved in and they do not reach the media to the largest extent, the unmentioned actions by Hezbollah in Yemen are cause for further worry in all this. Even as we get ‘The UN leadership has taken an important step to learn from its failures in Myanmar‘, we see only a part; the failure of the UN is seen all over the Middle East. Yemen, Syria, Jordan are only three of the places where UN actions fall short, or better stated they fall far too short.

Let’s also see the larger issue, the UN needs more resources and it needs the ability to act, both are presently in short supply. It is important to see that the entire matter is larger than presented, there are more issues. This does not absolve the connected parties, but the accusations become one-sided. There was enough doubt on some of the accusations against Saudi Arabia, but not all accusations are without merit, they need to be looked into, yet in that same setting there is an abundance of issues on the opposing sides to the Saudi coalition, less than 10 hours ago houthi forces fired a ballistic missile into Saudi Arabia, it never got that far and crashed in the al-Safraa region, as well as in Saada (both Yemeni), yet that is a part that does not make the news, in addition, the established fact that houthi forces have no options to create the ballistic missiles imply that Iran is still delivering them and a lot of that had not been mentioned by the media, and as such I want to get my fingers on that UN Report (especially after seeing that essay from Agnès Callamard).

The Conveyance of GGGGG

We see that the US s still playing its trade war game and it found a new tool. That tool is named Poland. Now, let’s be fair, any nation can use whomever or whatever they desire, need or demand to get their business done and there is nothing out there that Huawei is the only player, because they are not.

So why did I call them a tool?

That part is seen in a news article that gives us: “It was signed by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who’s visiting Warsaw for a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of World War II, and Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. “We believe that all countries must ensure that only trusted and reliable suppliers participate in our networks to protect them from unauthorized access or interference,” according to the declaration, which doesn’t single out China or any companies“, you do not send the Vice President to Poland to implement a 5G solution, you do not send that man to introduce new technology; this was done. The article is all about implied and accusation towards Huawei on “prevent the Chinese Communist Party from using subsidiaries like Huawei to gather intelligence“, which still has not been proven after a few years and the one issue from 2011 was settled and adjusted for. In addition to all this, Mike Pence comes across as an absolute hypocrite when we see “using subsidiaries like Huawei to gather intelligence“, whilst places like Facebook have been spreading data like a prostitute with an STD to anyone willing to listen and store data (Cambridge Analytics anyone?)

The issue becomes even more hilarious when we consider the source FierceWireless. There we get ““Polish counterintelligence have detected certain actions, which might have been an espionage nature”“, a quote given by Poland’s president Andrej Duda, Apart from Polish counterintelligence being too stupid, I meant untrained to shut down the FSB/entrepreneur silver acquirers in Gdynia being one example and those individuals have been active since before 2002. I am basically stating the speculative situation where Polish intelligence could not find a clue unless it was spoon-fed and is it my speculative view that Mike Pence fed the Polish president some CIA reports of a highly dubious nature. so whilst we see the operative ‘which might have been‘, there is a 87.332% likelihood (roughly) that Polish Intelligence can too often not differentiate between FSB, Chinese MSS, Polish Students and Russian Entrepreneurs (Russian Mafia is such an overused term). I have to admit that I have not bothered to look into Polish abilities after 2003, yet in those days SIGINT in Warsaw really did not add up to anywhere near the needed level they needed to be.

The problem for the US is not that they have 5G equipment; the issue is that it is too inferior at present. It is the price of iterative technology versus innovative technology (a fact I highlighted on numerous occasions) and Huawei has been the innovator for several years now. In this setting we see the accusations of US being nothing but a bully going up against a tech giant that has at present shipped over 200,000 base stations and the delay that some governments are creating (because they know not what they do) will hinder them as per 2021 a lot more than they realise. There is now an additional shift happening. There are early indicators that the Huawei offices in Saudi Arabia have been part of a larger group that are making progress on getting Pakistan on 5G using Huawei, even as the sources are unconfirmed (read: not super reliable), the stage that India now has it that the 3 year delay because of the Huawei issues would give them additional set-backs as well. Not to mention that certain new 5G IP that is openly for sale will also foster additional speed for Huawei in other ways. Huawei now has the created stage to directly instigate advancements to a global community of over 400 million small businesses whilst these players all get to have a larger stage on their own creation of awareness, visibility and marketing. That power directly to the business will leapfrog business in places like India faster and faster (the largest beneficiary when they get it), when that door opens places like IBM and Google will see a loss of revenue growth and a dip in their data soon thereafter, with the Princeton Digital Group (PDG) now in the stage of building their data centres in China and Singapore, more options will open up outside of the US, more important the connections that the joint venture has created with 21Vianet will change a lot more heads in the coming year. I doubt that the centre will be ready before the end of 2020, but there are larger clusters now being made ready outside of the US and Huawei will benefit a lot more than anyone else at present. In addition to that the Colocation Saudi Arabia Data Centres (19) as well as the Google Data Centre (upcoming) changes the cloud even further, with the US losing the monopoly it once had we see a shift and the consideration that data becomes a currency. That seems outlandish, but it is not, it is merely the next step and 5G is essential to that part of the racetrack, a racetrack that the US tried to grease, making it a slippery place to be and the consumer market is waking up to that danger. These elements are visible out there via a whole range of openly visible sources and published agreements.

In the end the conveyance of 5G is starting to get an additional pool of players that are openly out there growing business ventures and those ventures are not in the US. That what the US feared the most is now slowly becoming reality.

The larger concern is not merely these focal points, it is how they take resources away from places where focus needs to be, the actual and proven transgressions by Iran, even as it is removing more and more limits on their nuclear programme, we see Forbes giving us the part that matters to the US, or better to US corporations. the headline ‘War With Iran Would Be Disastrous And Enormously Costly‘ is true on both sides and even as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton are all for military actions (to some degree), we need to see two parts. The first is that corporations want a peaceful settlement and the media is not mentioning large issues with Iran on several levels, the second is that with a debt of well over $22 trillion ($22,500,000,000,000,000) there is no money for a costly war. The US is playing the paper tiger and the slowdown that they are creating in the US-China trade war is having a much larger issue, so the US is depending on tools to do the work for them and even as Poland is on their side, Greece is ready to embrace Huawei with 5G because of the economic momentum they gain. These are merely two of a much larger pool of issues, basically the US needs to fight a war on two fronts (China and Iran) whilst they are out of money, options and technology, a setting that seemingly implies a war but without soldiers and without weapons. It is funny, but this reminds me of a Star Trek episode from 1967 called A Taste of Armageddon.

There the two players have decided on a virtual war to keep their cultural heritage safe. The problem is that both need to agree on the rules, so we see in the translated reality a UN SC versus UNIFIL setting. The United States Security Council intervenes when two parties agree (MFO), the United Nations intervene when two parties disagree (UNIFIL). I personally was in the first force in 1982 (Sinai). In this game we see the US trying to play a virtual game, whilst the evidence is not there, so they rely on tools. In addition this virtual game is not played because China and Iran both disagree on matters and the US cannot afford to send troops and wage a super expensive war.

All elements come to blow in the two given focal points, so until the other players are willing to deal with Iran, there will be no action leaving the pressure on Saudi Arabia, the UAE with Yemen in the middle. Until the US gives actual and factual evidence the 5G stage is moving towards China (Huawei) more and more and all those who support the US will see a slowdown on their future economies and it making more governments reconsidering the Huawei solution. It is optionally seen as a war on two fronts (US vs Iran and China) as well as two dimensions (economy and technology) whilst at present it is almost a given that the US will lose both of them.

The second part was given by the South China Morning Post in July when they reported ‘Nearly 60 per cent of Huawei’s 50 5G contracts are from Europe‘, 28 out of 50 chose Huawei. All in all there is a tactical problem in the US and it is getting worse, the moment that they act against Iran too late is the day that whomever is in the Oval office will have to publicly admit that they would decide to signing an economic trade agreement with Iran. I wonder how Israel and Saudi Arabia will react that day, because it will redefine a lot of global lines that day.

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Tagged as 21Vianet, Andrej Duda, Cambridge Analytics, China, Colocation Saudi Arabia Data Centres, Facebook, FierceWireless, FSB, google, Greece, Huawei, IBM, India, Iran, Israel, John Bolton, Mateusz Morawiecki, MFO, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, MSS, National Security Advisor, Pakistan, Poland, Polish counterintelligence, Princeton Digital Group, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State, SIGINT, South China Morning Post, UAE, UN SC, Uniffil, United Nations, United States Security Council, US, Yemen

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