State capitalism is defined as an economic system that is primarily capitalistic but in which there is some degree of government ownership of the means of production. With the huge stimulus packages being passed by Congress, the topic of state capitalism has made surprising inroads into the news -- ...

On the heels of a new policy recommendations and new audit recommendations for cyber security issues comes this news: Tiversa employees found engineering and communications information about Marine One at an IP address in Tehran, Iran. Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, said, "We found a file containing en...

Change is in the air. That's nothing new, of course. Change is always in the air. But a lot people believe that when it comes to generating electrical power fundamental changes will arrive more like a blast of arctic wind than a soft summer breeze. The current recession, coupled with promises ma...

In a recent post entitled Testing the Rhetoric of Sustainability, I focused on an article from The Economist's special report prognosticating about the upcoming year [The World in 2009]. An article focusing on Africa had an interesting twist, it talked about shedding some much needed light on th...

SCADA, there is a term that tends to scare the crap out of little children and small furry animals these days thanks to the FUD factories. The disconnect is often painful to read about. I have read that SCADA systems are easily hacked into and the perception that one gets from reading these stories ...

In my posts about Development-in-a-Boxâ„¢, I have often written about the importance of investing in human capital as part of the sustainable development process. Brazil is a good case study in this area. Touted as one of the up and coming economic powerhouses known collectively as BRIC countries (f...

Among the topics regularly discussed in this blog are connectivity and "emerging market" opportunities. BusinessWeek magazine recently published an article about Cisco and how it is trying to capture business in emerging markets ["Cisco's Brave New World," by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek, 24 November...

Mumbai's 8/11 is emblematic of a lack of security co-ordination across city, national and private sector organisations. Jyoti Banerjee examines the lessons that the West can learn from Mumbai's 8/11. Mumbai’s terror attacks at the end of November have created a deep sense of sadness and loss among...

We've all heard about the butterfly effect -- the notion that a butterfly can gently flaps its wings somewhere in the world and set in motion a series of events that result in catastrophic wind damage thousands of miles away. The current financial crisis is something like that. It began with eas...

In a recent post entitled "Development-in-a-Box™ at Home in America," I focused on an op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman. In that piece, he chided U.S. politicians for not embracing policies that fostered the "next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power." Their ...