Tag Archives: Cisco

July 25, 2026 · 00:42

Optional name calling

That is what has been going through my head, you see, as the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgj61j6l08o) gives us ‘US hits dozens of countries with new wave of tariffs’ where we as nations are starting to call names, and in that setting of name calling, we get a new stage. America has lost whatever allies he thought he might still have. Now, as I see it, America stands alone for the foreseeable future. So as we are given “The US has imposed new tariffs on 60 trading partners in the latest escalation in the trade war reignited by US President Donald Trump when he returned to office last year. Those targeted, including the UK, China and the European Union, will face a tariff of 10% to 12.5% on all goods, accounting for almost all American imports.” As such the kid in me (the one calling other names) wants to find a solution for this and leaving the United States out of this seems prudent. Can we sell to other commonwealth nations? So can we give the United States a bonus tariff twice as much? So any product coming into our nation will get 30% tariff, and we given other nations exporting to us 0% tariff (if applicable) in that same trend places like Canada and the EU importing Australian goods get 0% tariff, same for their stuff getting here. I reckon that America will fave a implosion of non-commerce soon enough. There is nothing wrong with the idea of suspending all goods from Kraft and preferring Italian goods over Kraft. Same for Heinz and whatever else comes from the United States. I bet that there are leagues of Canadian and EU goods that could replace other goods that are (for now) coming from America. I reckon that it merely takes 90-120 days for the United States to ring every alarm bell they can find, because this will also implode Wall Street, when brands like Cisco Systems Inc finds themself part of the tariff settings and when its EU competitor gets the bulk of the jobs that were for Cisco, what do you think will happen when ASUS gets these jobs? Because that is a larger playing field. When goods from the United States are rejected, the goal will be to push long term brands out and when they go anything could happen. Will it be easy? Nope, but could it be done? That is the setting that the American Administration is seemingly overlooking. And not going into a ‘lets talk about this’, but a direct rejection of these options. In the same trend that several European nations are now rejecting Microsoft, what happens when that rejection becomes global? Other brands could now see the rejection lights come into view for themselves, because there is every chance that places in the EU and the Commonwealth see opportunity rise, because they were held back by the competitiveness from the United States, when that falls away nearly anything becomes possible. I reckon that Dell will love that idea (and Ireland just as much so). 

So whilst we are given ““Today’s action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said. The new duties apply to the top 60 US trade partners covering 99.4% of US imports, the Office of the US Trade Representative said.” So whilst that amounts to 99.4% of the US imports, how much of the US Export is set towards these same 60 nations? So whilst we see ‘validation’ through “Asked about the forced labour justification, she said: “I think they were looking for a legal reason to put the tariffs in and that they can maintain them because their goals and Greer has been very clear about this, as has Trump, is about the trade deficit and it is about US manufacturing, it is not about forced labour.”” You see, we are also given “Australia’s total annual imports from the US reach approximately US$60.9 billion” so how much of that could be gotten from the other Commonwealth nations, the EU and China? And set up a system where these 60 nations are given those same settings. As such as these nations could instead of exporting to the United States export the same materials to other nations when they reject all the US exports to their nations. I am not saying it is simple, or even feasible, but the United States exported a record $3.43 trillion worth of total goods and services in 2025. So when we dampen that by at least 50%, I reckon that the old days with people jumping to their death on Wall Street might return. And after that, the United States gets to see what that also brings, because when $1-$2 trillion dollars is likely to keep many people in the United States employed, when that falls away they have another nightmare scenario to content with and they already have a few of these running all over the lawns in Washington DC and optional at Wall Street too. 

As I see it, we need to become a lot more proactive in stopping that insane asylum called White House. And as I saw a term called “Pimp of the United States”, I wonder who they meant, because I merely saw the term, not sure where it was coming from. But in this light it might get another settings too.

So whilst we are reshuffling trade agreements, I reckon that China will see opportunity to hand the United States much less good news, optionally the EU nations and the Commonwealth nations too. So consider this simple setting, Pakistan exports a wide range of goods totaling over $36 billion annually, led heavily by textiles, house linens, and rice. Major buyers include the United States, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom. So what happens when the United States is removed and they get Canada and Australia and a few EU nations to replace the United States? Pakistan is hit with 10% tariff, what happens when they can replace United States with these alternative destinations? How many will need to consider this to see what happens to the United States when places like Walmart end up having empty shelves? Just saying, that game can be played by more countries and what happens when Saudi Arabia and the UAE (both 12.5 percent nations) get the same options? How many more nations need to consider this before Jamieson Greer as the Trade representative can inform President Trump that he has a new nightmare coming his way? And I reckon that these 60 nations will add some numbers, I looked at three nations and I got $36B + $26B + $31B giving us $93B. I reckon that we cannot get 100%, but even if we get a mere 70%, it will add to the incoming nightmare into Washington DC pretty quick and it is the setting we cannot see, because if the Commonwealth, EU and China can create a setting to get our needs met, there is a larger setting that the United States will end up getting isolated in the process and that is a bad place to be, especially with their negative settings in their economy at present. 

I reckon that doing this is a lot more productive than some people resorting to name calling, but that is merely my point of view. Oh, and what happens when people are introduced to Canadian, EU and UAE/KSA movies and TV series? Did anyone see the premise of that, because I have been irritated to no end of American streamers denying other parts of the world these series, because there is a benefit of withholding these series. So whilst Disney is hedging on the setting that these people will resort to Disney plus. But what happens when the opposite is achieved? What cost will they face then? I get that streamers want an advantage and they should use that, like perhaps a year, but what happens when people have had enough? If I feel this now, I am 100% certain that at least 2-3 dozen people feel that same way. And It should not be a forced buy from Amazon either. It feels like a repetition of movies in the 90’s. I am not sure it is a valid comparison, but that is what it feels to me and as I see it, there is plenty to consider from outside of Hollywood. But are these makers considered? Just writing my thoughts out loud (without resorting to capitals), so you all have a great day and consider what I wrote here, I reckon that several of them might see the light and as my mother was originally born in Argentina and lived in Uruguay (Montevideo), there might be some cultural needs too. I wonder who else has a connection to some of these 60 nations. Because culture is a strong handle to have in all of this. Which makes me wonder, when was the last time I had Dulce de Membrillo? Together with a lovely Dutch Cheese (Edam) is quite the treat and I haven’t had that in decades, perhaps even half a century. So what else can we get in the near future in a supermarket near us?

Write to you all later.

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March 1, 2026 · 03:27

Confusion speaks its mind

So here I was, one day in the past and I see a BBC article. I saw the headline, I saw the ‘bully approach’ and initially I ignored it. It was not the BBC, there was no setting that seemingly truly interested me. I was thinking of a few settings towards IP that could give Apple (and optionally Meta) a nice boost. As I was mulling over the ideas I was having, in comes the CBC about 10 hours ago, or better stated I noticed their article and now something clicks in my mind. I started rereading the two articles. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn48jj3y8ezo) gives us ‘Trump orders government to stop using Anthropic in battle over AI use’ with ““We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday.” Of course if he doesn’t want it, there must be a good reason why people might want to use it and we are given “Anthropic is mired in a row with the White House after refusing demands that it agree to give the US military unfettered access to its AI tools. The refusal led US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to say he’s deemed Anthropic a “supply chain risk”.” And we are given the quandary that there should be some clarity. The idea that the US Military has unrestrained or uninhibited access to any AI is dangerous. And that is merely to look at it from THEIR point of view. We saw over the last 5 years a few examples where Pentagon staff used whatever USB key they had optionally opening their systems to backdoors and this can result in several ways where the Pentagon would be affected including: Human Interface Device (HID) Spoofing, Malware Infection via Social Engineering, Exploiting OS Vulnerabilities or Juice Jacking (Compromised Public Ports/Cables) and a few other ways. Even in this decade more than one system seemingly ended up on the danger list. So, ‘someone’ now wants to grant AI unfettered access which opens the doors to AI accessing data involves sophisticated, automated, and often, continuous interaction between intelligent systems and vast data sources, including internal corporate databases, cloud storage, and public web content. It constitutes a critical, high-speed, and high-stakes component of the modern AI ecosystem that raises significant security and privacy challenges. And this is not some ‘fear mongering’ There is a lot of AI works that is still to be considered and because AI doesn’t exist and this is all DML on several layers that interact there are dangers to be seen. As we saw a mere week ago that Microsoft had to ‘confess’ that it had accessed confidential emails of Microsoft users. Now consider this happening on a serious level in the Pentagon. It has well over 50,000 desktop computers within its building, with reports from 2014 indicating at least 18,000 were part of specific virtualized infrastructure. Now consider that we have seen the accusation of “Based on reports in early 2025 and 2026, OpenAI has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of “inappropriately” distilling, or copying, the capabilities of OpenAI’s models (specifically ChatGPT and its reasoning models like o1) to train its own competing, low-cost models (such as DeepSeek-R1)”. As such, the dangers of unfettered access can go in two directions and that sets the bar of distilling from the Pentagon a lot lower than anyone could find acceptable. As such there is every chance that Russia is already considering the massive win they could gain once the unfettered access could merely hit one system that was transgressed upon. Because the greedy and the stupid will do anything to propel the setting of self, whilst not caring what others could gain in that setting as well.

So whilst some will consider the dangers of “The company said that “designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action — one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company.” Anthropic said the “designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government.”” No one seems to be considering that the opposite is a lot more dangerous. So whilst some focus on the stage of “Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that its AI chatbot Claude would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said it was not interested in such uses and would only deploy the technology in legal ways, but it also insisted on access without any limitations. The government’s effort to assert dominance over the internal decision-making of the company comes amid a wider clash over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how increasingly capable machines could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance. Trump said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. He wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic’s AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.” As I personally see it, it is the accumulation of stupid and technologically ignorant all combined in one package. And that is before we get to mass surveillance. You see combine mass surveillance with data distilling and the United States of America will be handing the data on 349 million Americans straight to China and Russia. This is not AI, this is DML. That means it comes with the hangups and limitations of a programmer. So when this goes wrong it goes wrong in a massive way. 

As such what will people like President Trump and Pete Hegseth say? Do they think that the response ‘Oops’ will cover it?

I don’t think so, but what do I know? 

So whilst CBC (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-anthropic-feud-ai-9.7109006) gives us “U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials took to social media to chastise Anthropic for failing to allow the military unrestricted use of its AI technology by a Friday deadline, accusing it of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used in ways that would violate its safeguards.” And this is the setting we expect to see and it will be the undoing of several people, because as I see it “U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials” is the start of what comes next. You see, the internet doesn’t forget and these ‘other officials’ have sealed their fate with this action and there is no ‘He told me to do that’ they were instrumental in assisting to hand over the data of the population of the United States of America to optionally both China and Russia. Do you feel safe now?

And in response to this setting we see “The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists, prominent AI scientists and a large number of workers from Anthropic’s top rivals — OpenAI and Google — voiced support for Amodei’s stand in open letters and other forums.” And that should have been a clear message that the competition was on the side of Amodei, so, why would that be? Whilst people in the Pentagon (seemingly) forgot about that router with password ‘Cisco123’ there is every chance that these DML engines will be cleverly distilled by people controlling systems like DeepSeek and whatever the Russians have. I should buy another egg timer, because this is a setting that might gain me a few coins, especially as several people are blind to the danger that is coming for them. And consider one additional setting. It is said that:

“AI decisions can be corrupted primarily through the manipulation of the training data, the algorithms, or the inputs during operation. These methods can introduce biases, cause malfunctions, or lead to fraudulent outcomes, often making the corruption difficult to detect due to the complex “black box” nature of many AI systems.”

So what happens when distilling comes with an additional insertion of data? I can’t wait for that setting to lose balance and the training data in American data centers start losing authentication and reliability markers. But that is  likely a story for another day.

Have a great day today.

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February 16, 2026 · 21:33

Questions

That is what I was thrown, questions and quite a few. To get there I need to take you on a little journey it was around 1988 I got my fingers on some defence data (can’t tell you which one) the data shows results of some kind (I had no idea at that time what results they were) but the part that was, was the fact that they had log files and these files gave locations. It comes with the setting of log files. These files gives the hacker way too much information, what solutions are being used, what IT architecture was in play, in those days I was a simpleton. I never realised the power that this kind of information had, or as some hackers said in this setting “Copy me, I want to travel” This part matters, because around 2014 (after the traitor Manning gave the files to Wikileaks) I got my hands on some of them. The compression used was one I had never used before and it took a few days to get the program. What I saw was that log files were here too. It wasn’t that obvious, but I noticed them and these log files gave part of that current architecture to whatever hacker got (or was given) access to it. So a setting that was about 37 years old. This setting has been in place for that long a time, so as you see this, we can start with the articles, so keep what I just gave you in mind.

The article was given to us by NDTV (at https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/openai-accuses-deepseek-of-distillation-what-it-is-how-it-works-us-china-tensions-11002628) I got the news from Reuters, but they are behind a paywall, so NDTV gets the honour. We see ‘OpenAI Accuses DeepSeek Of Distillation: What It Is, How It Works’ and hit comes with “In the AI world, distillation is a common technique where a smaller or newer AI model learns by studying the responses of a larger, more advanced model” And we also see “The company told the House Select Committee on China that DeepSeek allegedly relied on a technique known as “distillation” to extract responses from advanced US AI systems and use them to train its own chatbot, R1,” according to a memo obtained by Reuters. The American AI giant stated that the Chinese firm was finding clever ways to bypass safety systems and trying to take advantage of the technology that US companies spent billions of dollars developing.” Now consider that (according to some) “OpenAI is valued at approximately $500 billion, cementing its position as the world’s most valuable venture-backed company” when you get that and when you realise that log files could be used to ‘distill’ information. Now imagine that this information could lead to corporate knowledge? So when you realise that this setting was out there for almost 40 years, do you think that more concise solutions would have been needed? So when we see that Sam Altman is prone to ‘excuses’ like the setting with Nvidia, the stage with Microsoft and now this? What is Sam Altman not telling its audience? Isn’t anyone taking that leap? So whilst I remember that at least one of the Pentagon routers still have the admin password to “Cisco123” you might consider the setting that this article (as well as the Reuters) version is a preamble to bad news and when you consider that Americans have an overactive dislike of anything Chinese (like DeepSeek)  and when we get to “In the AI world, distillation is a common technique where a smaller or newer AI model learns by studying the responses of a larger, more advanced model. Instead of training that model completely from scratch, the newer model observes and mimics the advanced model’s answers and behaviors.” The setting I gave you makes the setting of better protection even more sense. Especially as this impacts a expected $500,000,000,000 valuation. There are days that I don’t have that amount in my wallet (100% of the time) so I am left with questions. So in the first, why was there no better protection and in the second, how did DeepSeek get access to them. I would normally tend towards the inside job notion. And that setting is seen (personally and speculatively)  on a few levels and in a few ways, but happy go lucky, the media isn’t on that level yet (or ever). So does anyone else have the idea that something doesn’t seem to add up or match to the stage of a 500 billion dollar solution? Just a few questions come to mind at this point. 

Have a great day today, there about to have breakfast in Toronto and I kinda miss than frisky cold atmosphere whist drinking an elephant coffee (Jumbo cappuccino with full cream milk and three raw sugars) whilst nibbling on some sandwich (nearly anything goes there). So enjoy your day today.

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January 20, 2026 · 22:57

Thoughts of a different streak

That is what is bothering me. You see I had a weird ‘daydream’ there could be all kinds of reasons to have this dream, but it struck me as weird at the time. You see I was offered a sweet position in the Starlink program in tech support and I was placed in Abu Dhabi, there were two other tech support locations. Toronto and Sydney these three centers give reasons for 24 hours support and I was added to the Abu Dhabi station (from Sydney). It was a nice dream of having a decently paid job, but that was not the part that was bugging me. In the dream The US Department of War had taken control of Starlink (I have no idea why) and its was supposed to be a short term one. But the issue kept nagging on me. Why would they even need it? And these aren’t facts. It was a dream I had, a day dream no less, no nothing factual.

My brain has seemingly connected the fact “Astronomy Disruption: This leakage disrupts radio telescope observations, specifically in the 10.7 to 12.7 GHz range, making it harder for astronomers to observe the universe” as well as “Starlink satellites are emitting unintended, low-level electromagnetic radiation that interferes with radio astronomy” but my brain (not to most obliging element in this universe) is connecting this to an old intrusion solution I devised. It was the Hop+1 solution I thought through when we saw the news on the Sony Intrusion and we now see “refers to the major 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), where hackers (Guardians of Peace) stole massive amounts of sensitive data, leaked unreleased films, and disrupted operations, linked to North Korea due to the film The Interview. There were also significant breaches involving the PlayStation Network (PSN) in 2011 (77 million accounts) and 2014, and a 2023 incident affecting Sony employees via a MOVEit vulnerability. ” I was of the mindset (as North Korea was pointed at) that they lacked the knowledge to do this. I wrote this piece on September 30th 2017 in ‘The Good, the Bad, and North Korea’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/09/30/the-good-the-bad-and-north-korea/). The article has a few other points, but my mind started to think that this was most likely an inside job, but in other setting how could it be done and with the Defence department and the NSA in mind, I created HOP+1. I make some mention of it in there. The insides were a little too well working (in my mind) to publish it out there, no need to give hackers any more handles. But then mind might have been mulling over, that if there is leakage and disruption, it might be used in other ways too. It might not have the desired initial effect, but as I see it, these satellites will have been set to a reengineered setting of Cisco solutions. And that would make sense and as such HOP+1 would be back in business.

Is it that simple? I have no idea, but my brain is trying to tell me something that I cannot yet see (or I am blatantly ignoring myself) and in part there is a setting that HOP+1 relied on an inside intrusion (or break-in) at a location that in on the hop path, no bunnies required and the outcome is usually successful as I have seen the laziness of IT people all over the lands (Netherlands, UK, Germany, Sweden, USA and Australia) as such I feel that my HOP+1 would work, but in Starlink, these blighters cannot be reached with a normal staircase, so I have no idea, but I think my mind has worked out what could be done with a program approach in the setting from 10.7 to 12.7 GHz range, but I am fishing here (my brain won’t tell me what it has figured out. Perhaps it is making me go through the motions. 

Well that is it for now, perhaps there will be another sequence on this if I figure out what I had figured out. It is almost midnight (70 minutes from now) so have a great day I will turn the Sahara forests into a desert by snoring all the wood away.

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April 25, 2025 · 17:25

Changing the reason

That is the setting and it is not a bad setting. The reporter, the spokespeople, no one broke any laws and no one created harm in the process. The latter reason is merely my reason, but with the tariff setting it matters. I am talking about the article in tech radar (at https://www.techradar.com/pro/pc-makers-are-planning-plants-in-saudi-arabia-to-try-and-avoid-us-tariffs) where we are given in the headline ‘PC makers are planning plants in Saudi Arabia to try and avoid US tariffs’, you see, it is not about tariffs at this time (perhaps partially).

You see, the article gives us “Major PC makers like Lenovo, HP and Dell are reportedly exploring building new manufacturing plants in Saudi Arabia in order to avoid high US tariffs on Chinese-made goods.” I reckon that ASUS is doing the same thing. There is a larger prospect. Consider NEOM Sindalah, NEOM Oxagon, NEOM Trojan, NEOM the Line, NEOM Magna and all its 12 subdivisions then we get the Mukaab project in Riyadh. These settings represent thousands of computers and most of them laptops and netbooks. A setting I predicted in January 2024 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/01/25/those-happy-dreams/) on the 25th of January 2024 I implied the need for Saudi Arabia (and the UAE) to change the way customer service was done in these places. With NICE as an example, Saudi Arabia could create a Muslim solution for this and considering the growth of travelers which is supposed to surpass 100,000,000, at present (last year) was over 800,000 people and NICE has that covered, but as it is an Israeli solution, it might not fly in Saudi Arabia or the UAE and as such the premise needed to be changed and in that article I set the premise out a little better (I had retyping my own words).

As such with these thousands of systems required, it makes perfect sense for Lenovo to get into the game on a local setting, I might not be a huge fan of the Lenovo, but plenty of people love them and as such I see tremendous strides forward for Lenovo, my personal vote goes to ASUS, but that does not make Lenovo a bad choice, it is merely not my cup of tea. 

As such when we see “DigiTimes says HP and Dell have also sent teams to Saudi Arabia to scout out potential factory sites following local government invitations. The biggest attraction for manufacturers to relocate to Saudi Arabia are the 10% reciprocal tariffs, compared with 245% for China.” As I personally see it, it needs close tracks to each of these centers, likely it needs to favor Oxagon and Riyadh, but that is merely my point of view. Likely there will be service centers in each of the 4 locations, and relying on how Magna plays out, a larger setting is required there, but other with more geolocating intelligence is required. 

As Lenovo goes there and as the others (DELL, HP) come too, the setting for Saudi Arabia increases, there is at the near coming time a setting where these brands could service clients in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria as well. It could explode service and sales settings a lot more for these regions than the EU and USA can. So when I see the quote “However, the PC market’s immediate future remains uncertain. “In addition to the direct impact of tariffs, the stop-start nature of announcements and delays have cast uncertainty around pricing for consumer electronics this year,” Canalys Analyst Greg Davis explained.” I merely mention “Go pull the other foot”, you see the tariffs are merely an excuse and an optionally bump in revenue for these companies. I reckon that these reasons Trump (oops typo) the tariff reason at present and as Saudi Arabia makes strides to completing these settings the need for systems increase a lot and the need for servers in these locations would explode the need for CISCO equipment as well. 

This is a larger setting in the need for these companies to get ready as they might require localization and as I see it, the one who is there will get a larger options and a larger slice of the revenue stream. But that could merely be me.

Have a great day and enjoy the weekend. I have to kill hundreds of people in a place called Cyrodil this weekend and I am buying a nice house in Skingrad, but they tell me that I have weird priorities.

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October 13, 2024 · 18:01

What is real?

That is at times the question. There was an image on LinkedIn (see below) and I had taken notice of it. Yet today on LinkedIn we were given a rather large recruiting drive which seems odd, but it doesn’t need to be. The line “Amazon plans to cut 14,000 manager positions by 2025” directly opposes the recruitment drive on which 150 people applied for (as a presented fact).

We see all the big boys dumping staff around 120,000 of them and the others are planning to dump a significant amount of people (numbers unknown). One of them I know ‘personally’, it is the Swedish telecom company Telia. We were given a month ago “Swedish carrier Telia is set to cut 3,000 jobs this year as part of cost reduction measures. The proposed cuts would equate to around 15 percent of its workforce, and deliver annual savings of 2.6 billion Swedish crowns ($253 million), the operator said today (September 4)” the larger issue is not that they are dwindling down staff, a 15% decrease is significant. It is the other side of the coin that I cannot see at the moment. That 15% might be all over the place, but the turnover is that a company with 15% less staff tends to have issues all over the board. Perhaps it works out, perhaps not. But the issue that I see with 3,000 persons saving them 2.6 billion Swedish crowns is a more significant issue. You see that amounts to a personal saving of 866K per person and no one in Sweden makes that much (well almost no one) this means that Telia is downsizing a lot, as such we need to take a look at “As of 2023, the company had a market share of roughly 31.5 percent” This implies (implied does not mean factual) that Telia is downsizing a few more branches and that now leads us to a much larger setting. Another source on this gives us “I envisage that this intended approach will not only result in a Telia that is simpler and faster in decision-making and commercial execution, but also help us to grow our business and generate enough cash so that we can make necessary investments and cover our dividend, as we remain committed to our dividend policy” I feel uneasy on this. Especially the statement “we remain committed to our dividend policy”, now this might (and likely is) merely me, but it could also mean that Sweden is ripe for players like STC (Saudi Telecom Company) and Huawei (Ren Zhengfei) to take up the baton to wave a much larger change in Europe. I expect that Huawei might show links to China Telecom (a speculation, not a fact). You see, as these companies all dwindle down, these staff members (requiring a job) might be a nice niche for these two players. Saudi’s STC is already in Europe “Saudi Telecommunication Company’s subsidiary TAWAL officially began operations in Europe in August of that year. In September 2023, it was announced STC Group had acquired a 9.9% stake in the Madrid-headquartered multinational telecommunications company, Telefónica, S.A..” When you consider this stage, and Sweden is the next target, Finland and Norway are not far away. I saw some data on STC entering Slovenia (might have been Slovakia) and that puts the option of Poland on the table, at that point Saudi Arabia has a clear path from the South of Europe all to the far north. And with that on the road, Huawei will have negated a much larger win, it took them some time but with this in place America is out of the race in Europe. All that bantering of fear mongers (never showing any evidence) and now these players will succumb to a much larger setting. Mind you, I am speculating. I have no evidence of this. And when we consider that IBM and Cisco are also on the list, the internet overhaul could become a lot larger. We say ‘it won’t get this far’ but the stage where they could be replaced by other players There is a Chinese version of Cisco (not sure how that words), but the stage becomes that Huawei and STC would have a clear path taking over servicing the European population of 449 million people in the EU. It is what I would attempt to do and America losing 120,000 people to ‘streamlining’ businesses will not help. So what happens next? Well if this impacts Telecom in Europe, especially a well maintained network, America will lose more and more and now they have no data to look into, that implies that Google, Meta and Microsoft will get less data and that will hinder their actions in the long run as well, especially as the Department of Justice is seeking to slice and dice Google. In that setting Huawei and their Harmony OS NEXT will get a great option and as that vibrates through the Middle East and Asia, Huawei will get the sweetest revenge on America to start. In this setting (as I personally see it) Germany and France will soon count the chickens they have and the eggs coming from this setting. I feel that Germany will turn first, but that might merely be my view on the matter. 

What is a given is that this is merely a setting as I see it (optionally very wrong), but as Saudi Arabia via BRICS makes more inroads into Europe, America will essentially lose these income streams. And that is the beginning of the end for America and its $35,000,000,000,000 debt. There is every consideration that more then 20% loss of revenue implies that America can no longer pay the interest bill. A setting I saw coming a mile away (5 years ago), so I do not see any hindrance to this scenario (which doesn’t make it correct).

And in all this China is seeking ‘revenge’ on the accusations America spouted and Saudi Arabia is aiming to become a technology hub and they are well underway to make that so.

So in this day and age of redundancies, there is a larger group of people almost desperate to find a new gig and there these two players can find all kinds of people ready and willing to give their new employer the best that they had. Will it be so? Time will tell. 

I want to congratulate Vancouver as they join us on this Sunday and the rest on having an equally fine day.

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October 3, 2023 · 22:10

Cutting corners

Something did not sit well with me yesterday. I have been mulling things over for most of today and it all started with Politico (at https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/12/pentagon-cyber-command-private-companies-00115206) where we are given ‘The U.S. is getting hacked. So the Pentagon is overhauling its approach to cyber.’

This setting comes in a few stages. Lets start with the given that I have no opposition to the Pentagon getting involved. But the stage is not that simple. So we start with the quote “attacks on critical U.S. companies and federal agencies, and as the Pentagon eyes Chinese hacking efforts with increasing concern.” The first issue is that I would have said “Chinese and Russian hacking efforts”, it would be more accurate. There is an additional side to all this. If American corporations had done their job BETTER, this issue would not be the critical issue it currently is. 

Equifax (2017)
Marriott International (2018)
Capital One (2019)
First American (2019)
Solarwinds (2020)
Colonial Pipeline (2021)
LikedIn (2021)
Microsoft Exchange Server (2021)
Twitter (2022)

This is merely a small grasps, this grasp has millions of records online for each of these cases, In this Linked in stood out with “Personal records of over 700 million users – 92% of the user base – were scraped from the platform and put up for sale in a hacker forum. Why did this happen? Attackers found a public API without authentication and breached it to scrape content.” This case is also the larger issue (beside the fact that it was an API and I wrote about that risk in ‘A simpleminded A, B, C’ On August 30th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/08/30/a-simpleminded-a-b-c/) a simple setting now out in the open. People still think I was grasping at straws? Now here we see (in the LinkedIn case) “Attackers found a public API without authentication”, as such couldn’t they do their bloody jobs? I understand the setting of the Pentagon, but there needs to be a bill for utter stupidity and a link to your data without authentication is definitely one.

Corporations have been cutting corners on cost and staff and now that the consequences are out in the open, the Pentagon needs to rescue them? Screw that!

It is nice that the Pentagon comes to the rescue, but every rescue needs to come with an audit of that company and a hefty bill for the action. Consider a pointless rescue by coast guard and Marine rescue, these people get a hefty fine, I see that someone employs an API without authentication in pretty much the same way.

Yet the article is merely the start. You see, we can all agree on “Hackers are increasingly infiltrating private companies and government agencies far outside the Pentagon’s usual purview, and the hacks are being perpetrated by cybercriminals who honed their strategies abroad before striking the United States.” OK, that is fine and the fact that the Pentagon and its digital weapon systems are brought to bear is fine, but the utter stupid setting by corporations that cut corners is part one and that is on those corporations. I am even willing to accept that it took a disgruntled employee to hand visibility to the wrong people. Yet that also implies that these corporations have a larger problem and THEY have to pay for that. 

So about Three weeks ago, we were handed the 2023 DoD Cyber Strategy guide. The PDF (see bottom) is a nice piece of work. My issue is with page 6 where we are given “The Department will continue to persistently engage U.S. adversaries in cyberspace, identifying malicious cyber activity in the early stages of planning and development. We will track the organization, capabilities, and intent of malicious cyber actors. We will leverage these insights to bolster the cyber resilience of the Nation and will coordinate with interagency partners to publicize this information as circumstances permit.” As I personally see it, it should say “The Department will continue to persistently engage U.S. adversaries in cyberspace, identifying malicious cyber activity in the early stages of planning and development. We will track the organisation, capabilities, and intent of malicious cyber actors, whilst registering corporate shortcomings. We will leverage these insights to bolster the cyber resilience of the Nation and will coordinate with interagency partners to publicise this information as circumstances permit, where corporate shortcomings will not be silenced.” In this case some will state that this is not the job of the DoD and they would be correct, but Corporate America fell short and they now want help, that shortcoming needs to be illuminated as well. You cannot have it both ways.

The document gives us a lot to think about and I agree with 99% of it all, especially when it comes to the Department of Defense Information Network. 

I created the Hub+1 intrusion solution in 2014 (or 2015). As far as I know, no one is at this time ready for that creative little caper. I got there shortly after the Sony hack. The information never added up to me and I started to wonder how it could have been done (always a nice way to find the issue by re-engineering the possibilities). And all this is long before we consider issues like non-repudiation, a simple setting I learned about in UTS (University of Technology Sydney) about 3 years before the Sony hack and corporations have been cutting corners ever since. Consider the routers of the FBI, DoD, DMV, Department of Homeland Security and the postal services. Now check EVERY router and tally the ones where the password was Cisco123. I reckon you will find close to a dozen routers. I know it is more presumption than speculation on my side, but that is the larger failure and that is BEFORE we check all the corporate routers. People in IT have been too lazy (for many obvious reasons) and most of them involve resource shortages and why should the Pentagon pay for that bill?

I see that corporate America needs to pay for their cutting corners, the Pentagon has enough issues to work through and when it needs to step in (and when shortcomings are found) that corporation needs to get billed. This is specific. Corporate players cannot shield themselves from top tier hackers, that is BS. But letting the Pentagon pay for corporate stupidity is equally stupid and that needs to be out in the open. 

So this was my rant on stupidity, enjoy the day.

2023_DOD_Cyber_Strategy_SummaryDownload

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June 20, 2023 · 00:01

He said what?

The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-65920024) gives us ‘Blinken and Xi had ‘robust conversation’ in Beijing’ and I had to take a look, if not only to see what they mean with ‘robust conversation’, that is an expression that could go in any direction and not all of them good. The BBC hands us:

“He says he has been seeking to “disabuse” China of the notion the US is “seeking to economically contain them””, sorry this started a 5 minute intermezzo to get a hold of all the laughter I have. The US has been seeking to contain China since Huawei left Nokia and all others behind them in the 5G field, it is still going on, all whilst we have never ever been given CLEAR evidence that Huawei was doing anything negative. In that same timeline we have an Airman handing out classified information, a former president has more classified materials in his toilet than the CIA has in its archive and we have several other issues. That is before we look at Cisco and its issues (which was not intentional, I know). 

And even as several statements came from Strasbourg, the manner of speaking implies a clear American hand on the shoulder of the speaker. 

Then we get “Blinken reiterates that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence – stating it does not wish to change the status quo”,which is a harder issue. You see ‘The first agreement under the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade was signed on June 1, 2023.’ Might be seen as a declaration towards support for its independence. And that is debatable, I get that. It seems to me that America hopes it will go good, but at the same time it is afraid to anger China too much, so I can see how this plays and this is NOT against America. It is to acknowledge that some diplomatic strains are strained as far as they can get. 

Then it is time for “Blinken says some parts of the talks were “constructive”, but adds there is “work to do” in other areas”, OK a diplomatic answer if ever there was one. But in there are missing parts and there is every chance that they are not for our eyes yet. The ties with Iran and Saudi Arabia are worrying America. The new petroleum refinery that they are building in China must be a cause for concern. You see, the refinery is large enough to hand a lot more oil to China and that is where it is most likely to go, a setting America does not find comforting. They are already losing out to a million barrels a day, but with that new refinery that reduction COULD (could being the operative word) be reduced three times over to minus 3 million barrels a day. This could collapse the American economy and create a third world nation called The United Stages of Anything. For Taiwan it is not such a good stage. I reckon that China has been dipping its toe in the water to see how America would react when Taiwan is added back to China and charges Taiwan for overdue book fees and that invoice is likely to be stellar. Now, this is not a given, but that is what I would have done (if I was Chinese). In all likelihood as the EU and the US are uniting with Ukraine against Russia, China sees an opportunity because America is too broke to stop anything and that leaves Taiwan separated, segregated and all alone. A setting China would like at present and with three optional supports for Taiwan too poor to do anything (US, EU and Japan) Taiwan might not have too many options left. I reckon that a similar conversation with Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud took place almost a week ago. I reckon that at present China has all the answers it needs, but that is pure conjecture from my side. 

So as I see it, I wonder just how robust that conversation was, rejections by China does not make the conversation less robust, but that is about the only classification that conversation might have had overall. Am I wrong? Optionally yes, but the larger stage is catering to China, and with the ties with Saudi Arabia now stronger then anything, all whilst the ties with America are more and more dissolving leaves China in a much stronger position and as Saudi Arabia grows, so will the options for Huawei. It will not take long for the larger contracts with Egypt and Syria to start and when that happens, we get a triangle that covers part of Africa, towards Turkey all the way to India. It will not be overnight, but with the power core in Riyadh that setting would become one hell of a central chain for Huawei. And it is not a new setting, I saw this evolution come a little over three years ago. And with that infrastructure NEOM is not merely a small city, it will be a center piece of Saudi Arabia, uniting Africa to Saudi interests and they will all have that new Saudi news channel. It was a game well played and China is adhering to this not merely because it takes the wind out of the sails of America, it will diminish Europe in similar ways. Asia Times gave us in April ‘Huawei eyes Saudi Arabia as its regional hub’, I think it is only the beginning and it is a much larger partnership with China, who will have access to this and the Silk Road, which was never a secret. As such I wonder what expression they would replace ‘robust conversation’ with and very time that expression gets handed to us by the media, ask yourself. What did they mean with that? 

Another day, another step closer to next Friday.

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April 23, 2023 · 20:37

Whilst watching a painting

This is an odd day, even by my standards, but to see that we need to take this chronologically. It all started with an article about 10-12 hours ago. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/21/pentagon-leak-modern-spying-ts-si-fvey-signals-intelligence-five-eyes) gives us ‘TS, SI, FVEY: what the Pentagon leak initials tell us about modern spying’. The Guardian article is quite good, there is nothing negative to say, but whilst I was reading it, thoughts came to me. The first came with “Teixeira was one of 1.25 million people able to access top secret material on the US Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, a share repository created in response to 9/11. A former senior British official said he believed it was obvious that now was the time to review the distribution of top secret material.” It took me back several years and the over BS imagery that Huawei was a danger. It was so dangerous that it had to be taken out of the networks. The UK had a decent reason, but merely barely. Now we see that there is causality between showing off gamers and the Pentagon. They do not need to wait for China, US intelligence staff are eager to please (optionally through peer pressure) and they will put it all online. No weakness in Cisco, or backdoor in Huawei equipment was required. It sounds harsh and it needs to be. The next part is “In an era where counter-state threats are taking over, and the danger of leaks greater, it looks like a rethink is needed, the ex-insider said.” That is actually quite deep. Rethinking the intelligence classification system is not an easy task, but one worthy of considering. I reckon the Navy (any Navy) is the hardest part, they are set in their ways and changing that is near impossible, making a 50 year old hooker a virgin is probably easier. 

Anyway, I was contemplating these issues and suddenly an image appeared in my mind. It was a painting of General Lafayette I saw a long time ago and suddenly the cogs started to turn. I remembered certain arcade machines in the 80’s and now my mind redraw the specs and reset the issues to a new kind of arcade. One that might find great interest in places like Universal world in Orlando, and adjusted setting might make it also feasible for Disney-world (also in Orlando), and the idea didn’t stop there. The setting powered by Sony Playstation 5 (multiple) gives a rather different stage and one that I don’t think has been considered before. That being said, if one part works this thing could go in all kinds of directions. You see, if engagement is the power of marketing, what happens when rides become engaging and almost interactive? It is a new and different setting. The nice part is that the Sony Systems are more powerful then required, as such the stage isn’t merely what powers it, but HOW it is powered and I wonder if these two players ever thought in that direction. Now we merely need to fill in the blanks, almost like the pentagon is doing by handing blanks to people who should never have been given security clearance. Still it was the thought that counts and I reckon that even with the absence of Huawei equipment China is delighted with people like Jack Teixeira, I wonder if they will send them a Christmas card this year, just for jollies. 

In part I wonder why the Pentagon doesn’t have a verification system. I read about it once, I forgot where. The systems creates almost identical documents, the punctuation was key here. They figured out the source by having different versions with here and there a different punctuation and with some punctuations missing. As such with only 33 punctuation alterations, you could drill  down on the leak with the second document, consider the amount of punctuations 3-5 pages has, it would be an easy task and with deeper machine learning it could be automated to some degree. No interference and a clear path towards seeking verification. This was not my idea, I read it somewhere and for the life of me, I cannot recall where I read it. 

Still this all led to a new idea in theme park options, it just came to me, thank you very much General Lafayette (he died 189 years ago, so the IP is all mine). 

Still there is another link, the link is one the approach to classification. You see, mot nations have a clear track, the US and the five eyes intelligence group a lot less so. It does not matter how it is done, the issue is resources and staff and that link is not optimised. Tell me in all honesty, why do 1.25 million Americans with top secret clearance have access to all these documents? Why is there not a database where it is stored and people will have to access when needed. But when was there information? Is that not in reports THEY file. There needs to be a more intelligent tag system that allows people with access to seek document that they should be aware of. In all honesty, which documents did Jack Teixeira actually need? It is a serious question because there is part of the solution. Anyway, it is a slippery slope and it is not easy to navigate SIGINT and GEOINT and those are the two I have some knowledge of from 1981 onwards and my exposure was extremely limited. Still it makes for an interesting puzzle and it led me to a new IP options in theme parks and in all honesty I have no idea what to do with it next. I need to figure that out at some point.

Enjoy Sunday.

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October 28, 2022 · 03:36

Two linked events showing trouble

Yes, that I how it started for me today. It all links back to the Optus failures and a few other matters, but cybersecurity is at the heart of it. Initially I saw the second article, but I will get back to that later. First we look at ‘Sydney teenager accused of using Optus data breach to blackmail indicates guilty plea in court’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-27/teenager-accused-of-using-optus-data-breach-to-blackmail-court/101584078), a simple deception. Yet one with a few sides. The first part “Australian Federal Police (AFP) charged Dennis Su with two offences earlier this month, claiming he sent text messages to 93 Optus customers demanding they transfer $2,000 to a bank account” sets the guilty party up, but in more ways when we consider part two “The charges were laid after a bank account belonging to a juvenile, which Mr Su allegedly used, was identified”, so he used a third parties account and wholly Moses, it is apparently of a minor. How the bough breaks! Well it actually doesn’t break. It seems that there was a serious amount of thoughts and planning here. Well, for some it is not a serious amount, but he had to know what was planned and he got a minor to be the front to some parts. It all refers not to the second article that as the first on my eye sight. It was ‘Medibank and Optus hacks spark warning over identity theft risks from former victims’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-27/identity-theft-warning-after-optus-medibank-hack/101576992). Here we get “The first thing the victim knew about her identity being hacked was when a man turned up on her parents’ doorstep asking for the sexual services he’d paid for online.” It is the start of a new steeple chase. When we consider “Former identity theft victims have shared how their details were used to steal luxury vehicles, take out personal loans in their name and hock fake goods online, because criminals got hold of the kinds of information millions of Australians are believed to have had compromised in the latest Medibank and Optus hacks” and this is not nearly the end of this. When we see “While living in Melbourne, she sent a photo of her licence to a real estate agent applying for a lease, and that image was somehow then uploaded into a gallery of property photos featured on that agent’s website” especially in the Australian housing market, can we please remove this bozo’s character from the housing market? How can anyone be stupid enough to ‘upload’ identity details? There is an unacceptable lack of common cyber sense in Australia. It goes from the big banks to the most stupid of housing players. They have no idea what they are doing and the excuse ‘we made a boo-boo’ just doesn’t play here. First Optus, then Medibank and that list keeps on growing. That is accelerated by alleged cowboy institutes that make money offering cyber degrees. Australia has a serious problem and it needs to be dealt with starting with a lot better protection regarding ID’s and identity documents.  

And we do not blame Google here, but “Probably the most shocking and stressful part was just seeing my licence there on Google for anyone to use” should be seen as evidence that a much larger issue is in play. When we see newspapers give us “The federal government has promised to dedicate millions of dollars to “investigate and respond” to the massive cyber attack which rocked Optus” which according to some amounts to $6,000,000 over two years. I reckon that in two years the problem will be a lot larger and two years to investigate what I in part did in 5 minutes is a joke. Something needs to be done NOW and lets start by holding corporations accountable to cyber security and lets make sure that a certain housing agent is an Uber driver in 48 hours and not a housing agent any more. Yes, I agree that I am overreacting, but uploading ID details? To a photo gallery? I think we hit rock bottom on the village idiot scale and that needs to be addressed well within 2 years, within 48 hours be more likely. I think that my optional IP move to Canada might be a good thing. It is not out of the question that these players will set my IP on a server with a connected router that still has the password ‘Cisco123’, that could be how my luck goes and I have seen enough bad luck to last me a lifetime. 

As I see it Australia has a lot of problems, not in the least the larger absence of Common Cyber Sense, I raised that in ‘The Bully’s henchman’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/01/31/the-bullys-henchman/) which I wrote on January 31st 2020, almost 3 years ago, it is that much of a failure and if I raised it then, it was already an issue. As such we see a failure that surpasses 3 years and now they want to debate it for two more years? These people are out of their flipping minds!

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