History Didn't End, Cyber Conflicts and Choose Muse

What I learned yesterday

From a speech at the Charlotte World Affairs Council yesterday over lunch, Josef Joffe, Publisher and Editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, commented that what is going on in Iraq and Ukraine is a consequence of American power "punching below its weight." Contrary to a prophecy made 25 years ago, history did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Global politics still demands leadership. He believes the West will respond eventually to ISIS and to Putin, but that it always takes time to move a coalition. When you act alone, as Putin does, it is always easy to moves first, to take the offensive. But Putin is fighting time. Russia, according to Joffe, is still living in the 19th Century. It is an economy with little future. It is a one-trick pony, reliant almost solely on natural resources, not human resources. The western economies are far more resilient and dynamic. And ISIS, he said, is still living in the 15th Century. It is not interested in the future. It is interested in reinstating the past. And it will not win hearts and minds. It will be squashed.

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From an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the CEO of Fireye Inc David DeWalt described the recent wave of cyber security breaches around the world. In his view, this is a new kind of warfare, a conflict over a new domain.

"If you study mankind, it's had conflict over every new domain that's been discovered, whether it's land or ocean or air or space. Whenever there's a new land discovered we've fought wars over it. We're in a major conflict. It's been brewing. The gloves have been off a bit the last year or two. We've been on the front lines watching it, and it's probably one of the most interesting times of my career."

Across nations, DeWalt has noticed certain trends. In the case of China, he noted that the focus of their hackers is the theft of company secrets and intellectual property. He's never witnessed Chinese hackers attack a computer network strictly for money, or even destruction. Russian hackers, on the other hand, are almost exclusively after the money. Russians never engage in sabotage either, so long as they can access money. North Koreans, however, are out to destroy, with a focus on all things South Korean. North Korean hackers are out to bring down whole networks and cause as much destruction as possible. Crazy times.

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From Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income podcast (Ep #150), I learned about a company called Choose Muse, which uses an electronic headband and a smartphone app to monitor your meditation exercises. The headband can detect your brainwave activity and record how well your mind has achieved a calm, focused state. Pat has incorporated meditation into his morning routine, and loves it. Just a few minutes each morning. He was inspired to do so after interviewing Hal Elrod and reading his recent book, The Morning Miracle.