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COBOL (COBOL?), Defanging, and Still More Snowden Fallout

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I was lucky enough to be asked, again, by Francis Rose to be on his regular Friday ‘Federal News Countdown”, this last Friday, January 31st. The show can be heard here: Federal News Countdown.

The other guest was Jon Desenberg, the Policy Director for the Performance Institute, The Performance Insitute.

For those unfamiliar with the show, each guest selects their three top stories of the week relating to the Federal Government. The third most important story is discussed first by each, the second next, and the most important last.

COBOL (COBOL?), Defanging, and Still More Snowden Fallout

How Is Counterinsurgency Like the Way the Human Body Fights Disease?

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Last week, I attended a Brookings Institute event, which focused on analogies between the human body, and how it reacts to disease and how nations react to insurgency.

The speakers were General Stanley McChrystal, formerly commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and now a senior fellow at Yale University, and Kristina Talbert-Slagle, an associate research scientist at Yale Global Health leadership Institute. The session was moderated by Brookings Senior Fellow, Michael O’Hanlon.

How Is Counterinsurgency Like the Way the Human Body Fights Disease?

90% of the Cells in the Human Body Are, In Fact, Non-Human

No, this is not a reference to the latest Zombie movie and is not a typo.

I was reading the latest issue of Science magazine which listed its top science subjects for 2013 (it is that season for lists). Their top subject was Microbiome.

If my daughters were still in high school, microbiome would immediately be put down as an SAT word and added to the study list. From Wikipedia a microbiome is “the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share out body space”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiome. The word was created by Joshua Lederberg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Lederberg.

90% of the Cells in the Human Body Are, In Fact, Non-Human

Federal News Countdown Stories – Mobile Apps, Continuous Monitoring, Confusion Around Intell Review Leadership

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Last Friday, I was on the Federal News Countdown on WFED, hosted by Francis Rose, along with Steven Bucci, Director of the Douglas & Sarah Allison Center and Senior Fellow for Defense & Homeland Security at The Heritage Foundation.

Here is the link to the broadcast: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/156/3425850/Federal-News-Countdown-New-DHS-contract-standardizes-cyber-protections-DoD-cuts-force-lower-sights-on-drones.

The way the News Countdown works is that each of the guests talks about their third most important story of that week relating to the Federal Government, then the second and finally the most important.

The following are the three articles I selected plus some additional comments.

Federal News Countdown Stories – Mobile Apps, Continuous Monitoring, Confusion Around Intell Review Leadership

AMARC Update

As some of you know, Tom Suder and I have setup a non-profit called the Advanced Mobility Academic Research Center or AMARC, www.amarcedu.org.

AMARC’s three broad goals are to:

  • Increase the efficiency and optimize the delivery of government services in the US at all levels through the utilization of mobile communications technology
  • Implement such efficiency and optimization through the greater integration of academic research capabilities with government organizations and their corporate partners
  • Emphasize STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) investments, training at academic institutions and the exposure of students interested in STEM to government and academic careers

Over the last few months, we have been reaching out to thought leaders in our three constituent communities: academic, government and corporate, to get advice on where we should focus and to identify individuals who might want to get involved more actively to help us out.

Our initial activities have been to host a series of Government summits, working with MobileGov, www.mobilegovt.com; one on cloud, one on networks and July 9, one on mobile technology. I’ll do a write-up on the July 9th summit next week.

AMARC Update

My Appearance on the Federal Countdown, April 26

This last Friday I participated in the Federal News Countdown with Ron Sanders, Booz Allen Hamilton, hosted by Francis Rose, WFED. The transcript and audio can be accessed here, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/86/3301646/Federal-News-Countdown-Furloughs-fizzle-spectrum-search-GS-update.

The way the show works is that each guest brings three articles from their least important, number 3-3-3-3; to their most important, number well you get the idea.My Appearance on the Federal Countdown, April 26

Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors For Developing System Architecture

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Last week I read about a research team at Harvard lead by George Church that encoded Church’s next book in DNA. As the write-up in the Harvard Medical School web page, http://hms.harvard.edu/content/writing-book-dna, said:

“Although George Church’s next book doesn’t hit the shelves until Oct. 2, it has already passed an enviable benchmark: 70 billion copies—roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time.”

A Wall Street Journal write-up by Robert Lee Hotz, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444233104577593291643488120.html?mod=e2tw, quoted Church as pointing out that:

“A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet”

The articles go on to talk about the issues involved with the achievement, for example currently it is only possible to read the information sequentially and both reading and writing is slow, all of which in the end are engineering issues which will be solved over time.

The interesting issue to me is how it is increasingly useful to use biological metaphors to drive thinking about systems design and architecture and in more recent times of course using actual biology itself. And while we use the words, I am not convinced we have thought through all of the implications.

Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors For Developing System Architecture

Thoughts On Technology Futures

For the last two year’s I have written, or largely written, the Powertek Corporation, www.powertekcorporation.com, response to a SmartCEO, http://www.smartceo.com/, set of questions associated with where Powertek is positioned technically and what that means to the company. While preparing this year’s, I looked at what I had written in 2011 and by golly, much of what I wrote is still pretty good, so thought I would post it here and then follow up a while later with our new, improved thinking.

Thoughts On Technology Futures