USA

The perfect storm

Energy, Environment, Europe, Geopolitics, Innovation, Leadership, Policy, USA / 2 minutes of reading

There are types of storms that you can hear about on the news. There are types of storms that you can simply hear knocking on your window. And, there are types of storms that you can feel all around you—the perfect storms.

Perfect storms might be rare and require a perfect alignment of multiple elements from unrelated ecologies. Yet, once they hit, they emphasize the interconnectivity of these elements and the fragile lines that hold everything together. When a perfect storm arises, it can devastate the surrounding structures and collapse our societal wellbeing.

We are about to be struck by such a storm.

The consequences of COVID-19 are beginning to take a toll. I’m not here to judge the decisions that policymakers took when driving lockdowns, masks, distance working and learning, and more. Yet, the law of physics should have played a bigger role before taking these actions—every action has an equal opposite reaction. We have not even approached the full force of the aftermath winds, yet we can already now see a hint of what is coming our way.

The geopolitical climate is changing, and circus shows are only adding to an already burning situation. From a devastating blow to the promise of freedom in the digital domain to intensified supply chain struggles, fuel shortages, and food shortages. Add to that an uncontrolled inflation and the realization that nations around the world cannot sustain themselves, it is clear that the king is indeed naked.

One of my favorite quotes is by Vivian Greene, who said, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”  When faced with a perfect storm, we all learn that there is no place we can simply wait it out.

Fascism for our future

Energy, Environment, Europe, Geopolitics, Philosophy, Policy, Russia, USA / 1 minute of reading

Net-zero and the green deal philosophies pose the greatest threat to our societal and physical infrastructures. Antagonistic towards human beings and science, and full of a fascist tone, these philosophies, if fully adopted and implemented, could bring about the doom and gloom they aim to prevent.

Sustainability is a balance between environmental, equity, and economic considerations. It dawned on me that the keyword is balance. The scare-driven narratives behind net-zero and the green deal are jeopardizing the already delicate balance we have in securing a sustainable future. They push us towards not just an unattainable future, but one that is unnecessary.

Killing in the name – When everyone wants a job but no one wants to work anymore

4th industrial revolution, Europe, Innovation, Leadership, Policy, Technology, USA / 2 minutes of reading

Amazon has stopped using their six-wheeled robot, “Scout,” for home deliveries. FedEx is planning to discontinue its last-mile robot, Roxo.

FedEx chief transformation officer Sriram Krishnasam told employees that the last-mile delivery robot will be scaled back.

“Although robotics and automation are key pillars of our innovation strategy, Roxo did not meet necessary near-term value requirements for DRIVE,” Krishnasam wrote in the memo. “Although we are ending the research and development efforts, Roxo served a valuable purpose: to rapidly advance our understanding and use of robotic technology.”

At one hand, this is brilliant for humans who work with package logistics supply chain—they get to keep their jobs. I have always argued that we shouldn’t blindly replace human jobs with technology, and that technology is here to make us better humans, not replace us. Yet, I cannot help but wonder about the larger issues—the gap between policymaking, technology development, and social needs, wishes, and preferences.

Technology-driven automation has been around for a while. However, our physical and social infrastructure was always able to accommodate these technologies and the users repurposing of that technology.

With the advancements of technology and its impact on our social fabric, along with the lack of accountability and smarter decisions by policymakers, our infrastructure is beginning to show signs of wear.

Look at South Korea. The demographic problems are clearly showing a disconnect between the situation to its potentials. Samsung is placing a lot of emphasis on automation due to a lack of available workers. The construction industry is facing a shortage of 250,000 employees. Schools are closing due to a lack of students. The taxi industry is lacking 30% of its manpower. The South Korea crisis wasn’t entirely unexpected, given the writing that was on the wall for some time now. However, it was pushed back by those who cling to the past.

South Korea must be a red flag to Europe and the US. The demographic challenges and the shift in social needs, wishes, and preferences where everyone wants a job but no one wants to work anymore will require a new set of policies.  We cannot continue to patch our societal building blocks and infrastructure with temporary fixes. We must allocate enough management power, budget, and intellect to reflect on our future before it will become our present.

Amazon and FedEx’s struggle with their automated delivery services is a failure only if policymakers, cities, and business are unwilling to learn from it, as it is not a failure of technology, but of the business model and infrastructure.

On US, Europe, and Russia leadership

Europe, Geopolitics, Russia, USA / 1 minute of reading

A confused leadership, stubborn leadership and a spinless leadership walk into a bar… This might sounds like a joke yet both in our geopolitical and industrial landscapes, this is the reality. While we are now facing unprecedented challenges. Not just for our tomorrows but for one of our children, it appears that we are led by those who are blind to the implications of their actions (or maybe we are the blind ones)

You can’t resolve today conflicts using yesterday’s means. One must look into the future and reverse engineer the desired impacts into meaningful steps that are anchored in a new (needed) landscape. A landscape that can actually accommodate our place in the future, Innovation, and transformation should close the gap between politics, society, and technology rather than deepen it.

Navigating the future

BRICS, Europe, Geopolitics, Leadership, Russia, USA / 3 minutes of reading

In recent years, the world has seen an increasing number of transformation-triggered events, from climate and other natural disasters, to epidemics, pandemics and a pending global war. The accumulated impact of these events will disrupt (yes, there are still systems that can be disrupted more) every aspect of our societal and economical landscapes. Managing these events as they come will strain our capacity. While facing the aftermath of the global Corona pandemic crisis and the upcoming energy and economic challenges, we need to realize that it is just a matter of time before the next event, one with potentially even greater catastrophic consequences. A severe event, which becomes an Opportunity for Change (OfC) Event, requires substantial cooperation among industries, civil authorities, and key international organizations.

To be able and brace the unknown, organizations, and governments must first accept that fact that they can’t escape the impact—evolution in driven by disruptions. Even if the result of the upcoming event will be half of what some predict them to be, it’s obvious that it’s going to be enough of a disruption to affect our political, societal, economical and technological landscape.

Second, it’s obvious that the emergence of a new economic landscape will drive the majority of changes. The dominance of the Dollar empire is fading away—and the more we try to fight the inevitable, the more the noose will tighten against our necks. This process didn’t start with the current war in Ukraine, or it’s a carry on from the days of Covid. The stage was set already in 2001 when Jim O’Neill coins the term BRIC. Jim O’Neill didn’t design BRIC, but rather simply gave it a name. The design itself was the result of the USA and Europe thought-fixations that they are of immune from disruption.

The emergence of a new economic landscape will not eliminate the current one, as it’s even set on the same playing filed—there lies the current system problem. While the leaders of the USA and Europe try to drive new values to their systems, The BRIC model is creating a new impact. Think about it this way—the iPhone is a direct decedent of the impact line created by the Gutenberg press (i.e., giving society access to information) and Tesla is a direct decedent of the Roman horse and carriage impact line. The new model is a result of an entirely new impact line.

This disruption is not the end as the media and some leaders like to portray it, but rather an Opportunity for Change. It’s not a bout choosing a side, but about figuring out what is the best next move for your organization, your government. It’s about cooperation rather than dictation. Situation are driven by their potentials. What we need to understand that there is a big difference between fighting the future and navigating it.

What should the Biden administration learn from the Voyager mission.

China, Geopolitics, Innovation, USA / 3 minutes of reading

The Biden administration move to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment is nothing more than a declaration of war not just on China, but on technological progress in general.

According to U.S. the rule is the latest in a series of moves aimed at slowing China’s technological advances, which the U.S. sees as a national security threat. I will not argue with Biden administration concerns for U.S. national security, as I wrote in the past, the interpretation of any topic is always subjective. Yet, the requirement by firms to obtain a license before using U.S. chip-making equipment to produce semiconductors for Chinese needs, will introduce a bureaucratic layer that will stop innovation and invention. While this move is mainly aimed at China’s military and intelligence services, its impact will echo all around the world.

Let’s look at the immediate implications. It’s easy to imagine how China would react—invade Taiwan and take over its chip infrastructure. That will immediately would be a major blow to the U.S. economy. What would U.S. do? Try to drive China back into the technological landscape of the 90th the same way it’s trying to do to Russia? How will China react? 

While the official story keep evolving around the narratives of the semiconductor industry, this battle between U.S. and China goes deeper than that and threaten society on a much deeper level.

The advancement of technology and science is already defining the geopolitical landscape, and its applications are poised to bring forward game-changing solutions in agriculture, health, energy and more. At the end of the day, it’s technological progress that will enable us to achieve leap-ahead breakthroughs, creating new industries, driving societal prosperity and eventually, expanding humanity to the stars.

I seam to me that the Biden administration forgot the story of one of humanity’s greatest achievement—the story of the Voyager. I know that NASA is proud of “owning” the Voyager mission. Yet if you take a closer look, you will find out that it was the international collaboration, the collective minds of scientist, engineers, and thinkers from all over the world, that made this project possible. This message in a bottle object, was deigned for a five-year mission to explore the outer solar system and were not expected to last more than a few decades. But here they are, still going strong after 40 years. The Voyagers have transformed our understanding of the solar system. They have made discoveries that have rewritten the textbooks. And they have shown us that there is so much more to explore. None of it would have happened without cooperation and collaboration.

Now that humanity is facing its greatest challenges yet, the Voyager collaborative narrative is more important than ever before.

U.S. focus on an outdated economic and innovation model is counterproductive. It will drive its economy and society to the days before World War I when the U.S. was able to look only inward (in a sense, it’s already there). The Biden administration need to remember that we are born into culture, we are not born with culture. It is something we learn through the interaction set by our environment. To instill a culture of creativity and risk-taking, you must have an assertive leadership team’s commitment to set the example. There must be a willingness to embrace new approaches and challenge the existing state of affairs.

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