Abby's Video Goes National. Democrat Candidates Support Illegal Criminals? Rubble of Discord. Rock Star Beto.Cyber Warfare. Poison Ivy and U of P !

From one of my father's former partners, a great lawyer and a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
"Dick, I’m also now reading the latest Krauthammer book.  I miss him more every day, just as I miss your father.

My prayers for your recovery are continuing. M---"

And:

Our real estate daughter, Abby, just posted a video showing her flying in the sea plane owned by a client who landed on the lake behind the house he was selling  and which Abby is the agent.  The house is located in her own neighborhood.

Hey Abby,

On March 24th, the national show will be the "Toys Spotlight Show" which will feature stories across the country. We selected your segment to air in full, nationally, across the country! It will be airing on CBS on Sunday morning in New York and Miami as well as every one of our 30+ markets. Congratulations and thank you for being part of the American Dream!

Kindly, 

Deyani Roth-Jennings | Account Manager | USMC Veteran

Set a time for meeting or call

     

Please note: The following days I will be off - March 25th, April 18th (after 2pm), April 19th, May 30th

Finally:

An e mail from an old family friend and fellow memo reader:"Dick, Really glad to know you are recovering nicely from your surgery and are back to the computer.

L---- and I love your memos as I have expressed before. But I want to go a step further and tell you that today you are" our Charles Krauthammer ". We were totally enthralled with him and thought he was brilliant. Though he was no  fan of Trump it would have been so helpful today to hear his take on the daily shocks to the system and hearts and minds of fellow conservatives...not to mention Jews. It seems our country has moved so swiftly it makes my head spin. 

Though the passing of Krauthammer is significant I am grateful we still have you to lend your keenly profound perspective on the day's events. Please keep on keeping on. We are counting on it!

Kind regards, L----"

I thanked her profusely for her e mail but told her she insulted "our" Charles because I could never hold a candle to him.

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Yesterday, there were two horrible crimes caused by illegal immigrants.  A stalker killed a woman in California .  He had had been in prison for a variety of crimes and then was released from a sanctuary city jail  The second crime was a rape of a 12 year old girl in Alabama.

This does not rise to a crisis because if you do the math only 4% of our states were involved.  I do not know the % required to become a national crisis but I am sure liberal judges will figure the math out but then, what about the human element?

To date every announced Democrat candidate for president supports the concept of sanctuary havens  etc.

Stop and think about this.  If one of them should be elected they will be required to pledge to defend our county yet, they support entities in violation of federal laws they would have just pledged to uphold. In essence, illegal immigrants have greater protection and privileges than citizens.

This is the insanity Democrats seek to impose on our nation in their bid to further bring about chaos. and finish the job Obama started when he pledged to transform America into a rubble of discord.

Also:

Yesterday, Beto O'Rourke (I was born to be in it) reversed himself and announced he too is running for president because he had a revelation that America cannot survive without his glamorous visage.  He raised and spent twice that of his Texas 2018 opponent , who was not particularly loved, and still lost. Because he is youthful and nice looking,  Beto believes he can capture the confidence of the nation.  He has less qualifications than Obama who was nothing but a Hollywood movie set. - an empty suit.

 Ah, but the mass media love him because they can make a rock star out of him.  But where's the "gravitas?"

Beto Is Running: I Was Born To Do This  Joe Hagan, Vanity Fair

O'Rourke Missing Just One Thing: An Actual Reason to Run Josh Voorhees, Slate

Every Time Dems Talk, I Want to Vote for Trump Twice George Bardmesser, Federalist
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Several years ago I asked  James Van de Velde , a cyber expert, to come and speak about cyber security.  He did so at a  SIRC monthly informational meeting.

I have written frequently that cyber security is the next war and we are vulnerable..  This articles might be of interest and validates my continued concern. (See 1 below.)
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When I observe the current  disintegration of the Democrat Party, I have mixed feelings. In my youth I tended to vote for their candidates and was pre-disposed to their social policies. (Jack Kennedy was the first president I could vote for and did so.) Sam Nunn was one of my heroes.

Then I went to Wharton and the rubber hit the road, so to speak. I was confronted by reality and fell in love with Ayn Rand, Hayek and other "radically" conservative authors. I read "Animal Farm" and "1984" and all of a sudden my bleeding heart became cauterized.

What happened to me is what should happen to most who go to college.  In other words, they have the opportunity to grow up, meet reality and change.  Some do, some don't.

Move the clock forward (like 60 plus years) and where are we today?  If you still held on to those "bleeding heart" views you believe everything you wish became an entitlement and the government is responsible to see you have it and at no cost. You continue to expect free lunches are served in the cafeteria of life. You feel guilty if you are successful and have achieved what others have not.  You continue to fear when you pour water into a glass it will spill because life is a bottomless pit of those called underdogs.

Why can't everyone have everything they want?  Why does capitalism fall short of delivering heaven on earth? How can one pursue happiness if everyone does not have free health care etc.?  What is happiness?  Is happiness the same for everyone? Do differences become intolerable challenges?

Democrats have all the answers and conservatives are heartless. How can you not feel guilty for having what other's are also entitled to and how could a person become wealthy without doing something wrong? Dependency carries no price tag. If you choose to believe what Democrats have been selling how can you not be miserable?  Being miserable and unhappy is a powerful motivation to accept anything that offers betterment because it relieves you of those liberal guilt pangs

I believe I have a social conscience but I also believe everyone, regardless of the hand dealt them, are responsible,in a free society, to row their own boat toward whatever shore they can. Some will drown along the way and that it is sad but a numerical "gene" based fact. Liberals can never accept this because reality equates to overwhelming guilt. Their way to avoid self imposed guilt is to take from others and redistribute through welfare. However, the way to feel good is to avoid recognizing and denying the consequences of the cause and effect of their policies.

Once again, America finds itself at a philosophical and political cross road. I find nothing redeeming in what Democrats are currently  proposing and I am glad I had the good fortune to go to Wharton when I did.  My professors allowed me to mature. They did not indoctrinate me with Marxism.

The University of Pennsylvania was founded by Ben Franklin.  Neither he nor I recognize it today. The Hallowed Ivy embedded in the brick walls  is now mostly poisonous. The ivy became tainted with all those fancy radical progressiveness and the cost of tuition has soared.

How sad indeed.
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Dick
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1) The Chinese Dragon Is a Hydra

By Bryson Bort

The China problem is bigger than you think. It's bigger than Huawei, bigger than 5G, and bigger than simmering trade wars. It's bigger, even than China.

Recent developments have brought China’s aggressive policy of state-sponsored cyber espionage back into the spotlight: The Justice Department (DOJ) filed charges against Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, and its CFO for industrial spying. This move came amidst reports that the U.S. government is seeking to curtail the company’s involvement with incipient 5G communications networks. Also, last week, U.S. intelligence chiefs described China as the nation’s top counter-intelligence threat.

These data-points fail to capture the scope and pervasiveness of a new kind of threat – the full-spectrum fusion of state and corporate resources – of which China is the most prominent but not sole example; Russia, Iran and North Korea are guilty as well. The new cold war is being fought through and in private industry, not strictly between governments. U.S. adversaries are preparing the modern battlespace while Western governments spit fire at one-off cases but miss the totality of the threat.

As FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee, the lines between the Chinese government and “ostensibly private companies” have been “blurred if not totally erased.” Its “Made in China 2025” industrial policy, for example, aims to use all of the country’s hard and soft power to dominate next-generation technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence, aviation, autonomous vehicles, and robotics.

To that end, China shields favored industries and nurture them with intellectual property theft. China also legally forces companies to transfer proprietary secrets. Allegations that Huawei offers company bonuses for espionage and physical theft of proprietary technology is typical and rampant; DOJ reported last year that 90 percent of its economic espionage cases from this decade relate to China. China is not content to rebuild what others have engineered; it has prioritized luring intellectual talent to boost its surge toward technological dominance.

Huawei illustrates the nexus between the government and a nominally independent enterprise. Its founder was a People's Liberation Army director and the company, which receives state subsidies, is hailed by the government as a "national champion" in its sector. Huawei officials deny that it is a state organ, but that is a meaningless distinction: Chinese law requires companies to comply with state security services, specifically as regards "electronic communications instruments and appliances.” Unlike the US, recall that when the FBI wanted Apple to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, the company’s refusal was legally protected. In China, the law compels compliance. Authoritarian regimes, it turns out, behave in authoritarian ways.

This knowledge informs the apprehension about Huawei's and ZTE's growing role in global telecommunications infrastructure, including future 5G networks. It is near-impossible to detect or prevent companies from installing back-doors or to potentially monitor or interfere with data and communications. The New York Times recently reported and a paper published in the journal, Military Cyber Affairs, last year outlined how China Telecom had, for months at a time, opened data to duplication, corruption, or other interference. Imagine if your snail-mail was detoured through China, where spies could read it.

This is not merely a Chinese version of What’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Traditional economic espionage involves stealing industrial secrets; the merger of state and corporate interests, as well as the world's growing connectivity,  add a new dimension of peril. Last week's intelligence assessment notably reported that for the first time that Beijing can conduct cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure.

Consider autonomous cars, which figure to rapidly fill U.S. roads in the next decade and whose controlling software and hardware should quickly qualify as critical infrastructure. Keen Security Lab, a division of the Chinese company Tencent, won an IT research award from BMW, with whom it has been working on these issues. While Keen is ostensibly private, the time and money they invested in the project suggest government backing. Either way, as a practical matter, this means that China is on the way to cornering that market and will have the inside track to exploit its vulnerabilities.

At stake is the world’s information architecture and whose values inform it: authoritarianism or liberal democracy. That’s why the Trump administration is preparing an executive order to bar U.S. companies from using Chinese technology in critical telecommunications networks; it’s why the European Union is considering barring Huawei from its 5G networks; it is why U.S. military bases no longer sell Huawei and ZTE gear.

These are positive steps, but the U.S. and its allies must build a broader policy framework that encompasses these steps, and others so that we are not reacting individually but moving holistically – before our adversaries rewire the world in their image.

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Bryson Bort is the founder and CEO of Scythe and a Fellow at the National Security Institute.

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2)The Decivilization of Venezuela

Of late, Venezuela has had a wretched time of things.

By: Peter Zeihan

As a rule I attempt to be judgement-free when it comes to evaluating governing systems. For the most part, governments—like economies and cultures—are products of geography. Germany’s proximity to so many competitors makes it focus on organization and quality. America’s territorial insulation and richness enables it to get by with a much smaller, more laissez faire system. China’s regional splits force it to gyrate between central clampdowns and peripheral spin-outs. I try not to criticize or play favorites, and keep my personal preferences to myself.

But then there’s Venezuela.

Venezuela is a country of geopolitical advantages in a region where those are hard to come by. It has oil and agricultural wealth, an educated populace, a commanding position on world trade routes, and easy access to the world’s largest consumer market. It is far from the most advantaged country, but Venezuela had what it needed to thrive…until a reckless, selfish cult took that wealth for itself.

The Venezuelan system isn’t socialist at all. It hasn’t been for a long time. When a socialist government takes over a productive asset, it runs that asset with an eye towards furthering some government goal.

Perhaps not competently, but keeping seized assets operational so they can provide this or that input is sort of the point. For at least the past decade when the Venezuelan government has taken over something—say a farm—they instead loot it like a flock of locusts and simply leave it to lie fallow.

This isn’t socialism, or even mismanagement—this is kleptocracy. (Yes yes yes there’s an argument to be made that most socialism-flavored governments concentrate so much decision-making into government hands that such cronyism is a constant danger, but that’s a debate for another time.) Suffice to say, since roughly the middle of the Chavez era in the late 2000s, the only thing socialist about the Venezuelan system has been the propaganda.

Under the misgovernment of President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has suffered one of the worst economic depressions in human history—so far we’re at an estimated 50% contraction in GDP and seven-digit annualized inflation growth.

The crisis can be seen, and felt, most acutely in terms of food prices. A Venezuelan earning the official minimum wage would need five months of savings to purchase a single can of olive oil. Private grocery stores struggle with supply issues thanks in large part to corruption in government-controlled supply chains. “Non-essential” items like condoms, diapers, and medicines are all but inaccessible. Venezuelan fuel is now sold just across the border in Colombia to Venezuelans by corrupt government officials who keep the cash.

Venezuela used to have a modern healthcare system, but now basic supplies are so scarce that intensive care units have shut down. Doctors have emigrated. Over 70% of the hospitals that are still open don’t have running water and frequently lose power. An estimated 3.4 million, or 10% of the population, have fled the country, mostly to Colombia and Peru.

Those who stay have begun the process of dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases. The average Venezuelan lost 24 pounds in calendar year 2017. The pace of decline is accelerating. At the time of this writing, the bulk of the capital of Caracas has not had power for a week. No power means no running water means no refineries means no gasoline means no food distribution.

Summed up, Venezuela in 2019 is teetering on the edge of a complete decivilizational event.

Decivilizational. It’s a big word with bigger implications. But first we need to unpack what we’re going to unpack: civilization itself.

Everything we know about human civilization is based on the simple idea of organization. Once a government lays down some basic ground rules like “don’t kill your neighbor” people start doing what people do: raising families, growing food, hammering out widgets. People start trading, so that the farmer doesn’t also have to make flour. This specialization makes us more productive in our chosen fields—be it farming or milling or blacksmithing. This society gets richer and expands. More land, more people, more specialization, more interaction, more internal trade, greater economies of scale.

Eventually we become so specialized and our technology has advanced so much that we become totally incompetent at tasks which used to be essential. Try producing your own electricity or enough food to live on while keeping up your full-time job. What makes it all possible is the idea of continuity: the idea that the safety and security we enjoy today will still be here tomorrow and we can put our lives in the hands of these systems. After all, if you were pretty sure the government was going to collapse tomorrow, you’d probably worry less about whatever work-related minutiae your manager insists is so important and instead focus your time on learning how to grow and can vegetables.

What the Americans have done in the post-World War II era is to vastly expand continuity via the global Order. Instead of specialization and interaction being limited to the internal affairs of individual nations, the Americans imposed security on the global system. Think of Europe, a place where dozens of ethnicities have fought wars with one another for millennia. Yet with the exception of some hiccups in the Western Balkans there hasn’t been a shot fired in anger between armies since May 1945. That’s flat-out unprecedented. Labor hyper-specialization is now the norm, and trade has become so complex entire economic sub-sectors (independent logistics providers, trade negotiators, contract mediation, and warehouse planning consultancies), now exist to facilite it. The civilizational process is reaching for its ultimate, optimal peak.

But “optimal” is not the same thing as “natural.” The Americans deliberately forced the Order into existence to fight the Cold War. The Americans have a deep continuity and large economies of scale without the Order, but the global system is wholly artificial. Making matters worse, the Order does not and cannot maintain itself.

Someone must pay the bill to keep it going, and the American right, the American left, and the American center have lost interest and are all arguing for a more constrained American role in the wider world. No one else has the spare economic heft or the large market or the globe-spanning naval capacity to force an Order. Break the global continuity and everything that makes our world work quickly cracks apart.

There are a number of ways down, but they all share something in common: reduced interaction means reduced access means reduced income means fewer economies of scale means less labor specialization means reduced interaction. Shortages force people to look after their own needs directly. The value-added advantages of continuity and labor specialization whither. Everyone becomes less efficient. Less productive. And that means less of everything: not just electronics but electricity, not just automobiles but gasoline, not just fertilizer but food. And it compounds. Electricity shortages gut manufacturing. Food shortages gut the population. Fewer people means less chance of keeping anything that requires specialized labor working. Say, things like the electrical grid or food production.

Whether the country in question is high-tech export-led manufacturer (Germany, South Korea, China), a mid-tech supply chain link (Thailand, Poland, Turkey), a resource exporter (Kuwait, Russia, Morocco), or a major agricultural supplier (Brazil, South Africa, Kazakhstan) the differences are one of scale rather than kind. Lack of continuity means disruption of what we think of as civilization to exist.

Just how vulnerable is everyone? Think of it this way:

While “only” about one-fifth of global foodstuffs are traded internationally, the vast majority of global foodstuffs are produced with industrialized inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. Those inputs on average more than triple yields. Those inputs are largely petroleum-derived and four-fifths of the world’s oil is traded internationally. Unless you live in a country lucky enough to produce enough oil for its own needs and have the ability to process it into agricultural inputs and have the climate and land necessary to grow your own food, all it takes is one small tweak to the physical security of trade routes in the general vicinity of places like the Former Soviet Union or the Persian Gulf to shift you from living in a world of plenty to a world of want.

What would you do—what wouldn’t you do—to get a full belly? To feed your children?

That is what decivilizational means: a cascade of reinforcing breakdowns that do not simply damage, but destroy, the bedrock of what makes the modern world work. And that’s just one example in one sector.

What is going on in Venezuela is horrible by any measure, and, in a world of Order, Venezuela is the very definition of outlier. But a world of Order is not the natural state of things. Pay attention: Some shade of what the Venezuelans are going through is what many of us will need to deal with. Soon, the only thing that will truly make Venezuela stand apart is that its pain is self-inflicted.

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