The shale boom began in the U.S. as a ripple in North Dakota and Texas. Some thought its impact would be limited and regional, not global. Now that uptick on our domestic production curve has triggered a tsunami with geopolitical implications.
Read More »We’re at war online. Iran, North Korea, and Russia are the sources of sustained attacks on our government and our economy. They steal from us, they disrupt our operations, and they’re no better than the pirates of old. On the sea, such attacks would eventually mean war, but on the Internet they get a pass.
Individuals do tend to get nabbed after the fact, as they build massive botnets for credit card fraud and Bitcoin mining, but it’s not enough to sit back passively and wait to get attacked before doing anything.
We need to be proactive, and that means putting together all the information we can about attacks past, present, and future. We need to be able to deal with attacks before the spin up fully. We need to pass along warnings before it’s too late. And that means we need legislation to prevent trial lawyers from making a mess of all of this. So that’s why it’s time to pass CISPA.
Read More »On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Paul Bonicelli to discuss the uprisings in Egypt, the fight for democracy and turmoil in the Middle East.
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It’s too bad. We’ve had all the hype, all the build up, and all the promise shown in the FCC’s incentive auction program, allowing underperforming legacy spectrum to be transferred to where it can be of most use. And yet, FCC might still mess up the program.
Of course, it’s unfortunately true that Obama’s FCC has done a poor job all around on spectrum, to the point that it’s changing numbers around to cover up the facts. Caught red-handed?
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Justice is impeding the Sprint/Softbank merger. Gee, whoever could have predicted that if Sprint funded the left-wing effort to embolden Obama antitrust action, then Sprint itself could suffer bad consequences? I wonder. It wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t point out that Sprint Nextel itself had a history of mergers, such as the Sprint-Nextel merger, did I? Hmm.
Hey Chuck Grassley: The first amendment is not a suggestion any more than the second amendment is. There is no Video Game exception that I saw. You’d have to be as special as the Vice President to think think citing the words of a crazed murderer as an authority helps you make a point, anyway.
Besides, it is not your job to dictate ‘artistic value’ to others, nor does your own job have ‘artistic value.’ So if you would silence others who do not have ‘artistic value,’ then that do we conclude about your right to speech? Everybody knows you never go full Biden, Senator.
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Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!
We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.
The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.
Read More »Well, well, well. It turns out that UN Ambassador and prospective Secretary of State nominee Susan Rice (she’s a multimillionaire, by the way) has some rather interesting financial ties to numerous foreign energy companies that still do business with that oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic, and downright barking mad insane regime currently controlling Iran. The most interesting one of those is Royal Dutch Shell, which has about | Read More »
On Tuesday, President Obama held the 16th “full” White House press conference of his presidency. That’s right Obama goes golfing more than six times for every press conference he gives.
This was the first scheduled, solo news conference for Obama since March. The last time Obama saw fit to allow the White House press corps an opportunity to formally ask him questions on U.S. soil was his “hastily-announced” appearance in the White House briefing room on June 8, 2012, during which he infamously said “the private sector is doing fine.”
During today’s press conference Obama was asked about climate change, Gen. David Petraeus, the fiscal cliff, immigration reform, Iran, A mandate, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Gov. Mitt Romney and Syria.
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Now that Obama has won reelection, news of how he plans to run his new administration has been springing forth fast and furiously. Despite alluding to a time of peace in his reelection speech last week, the latest on foreign policy going forward indicates otherwise. Like so many other issues, the new foreign policy agenda would have been nice to know before the election. According | Read More »
According to an article in The New York Times, on August 15 of this year a successful cyberattack struck Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company and the world’s largest oil producer. The virus-based attack wiped the hard drives of 30,000 personal computers, three-fourths of the company’s internal network, replacing data files with the image of a burning American flag. Damage was limited to the corporate | Read More »
We’re still in wait and see mode on what the Obama administration will try with respect to cybersecurity, but of course they’ll use every news event as justification. Here’s the problem though: Attacks like the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia prove that businesses must use best practices, but government regulation will only hinder industry from keeping up with the latest. Regulation is too slow. Government is too restrictive, and not accountable enough.
Read More »So, more cybersecurity. The government is starting to recognize state actors online, which makes sense given that enemies like Iran aren’t shy about it. That’s good. Recognizing fact is a prerequisite to making good policy. But I think trying to dictate to private business is the wrong idea. Huawei and ZTE may be organs of the People’s Liberation Army, which would make it a good | Read More »
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss a Chinese hacker attack on the White House, the cyber attacks we face from China and Iran and the vulnerability of our infrastructure.
Read More »On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by David Holt to discuss Obama’s plans to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve before the election, the risk we would face with a depleted reserve should Israel attack Iran, and why fracking has an image problem. We’re brought to you by Stephen Clouse and Associates and The Heritage Foundation’s | Read More »
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Allysen Efferson are joined by Jed Babbin to discuss the Democrat’s convention in Charlotte, what he thinks may happen between Israel and Iran, and why sequestration in the Defense department could be devastating to our national security. We’re brought to you by Stephen Clouse and Associates and The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell. If you’d like | Read More »
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