{"id":4585,"date":"2021-02-10T21:14:19","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T21:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/?p=4585"},"modified":"2021-06-30T18:07:15","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T18:07:15","slug":"a-contrarian-view-corporate-security-crisis-management-and-wholesale-malaise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/a-contrarian-view-corporate-security-crisis-management-and-wholesale-malaise\/","title":{"rendered":"A Contrarian View: Corporate Security, Crisis Management, and Wholesale Malaise"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Contrarian View:\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Corporate Security, Crisis Management, and Wholesale Malaise<\/strong><\/p>\n

February, 2021\u00a0\u00a0 Part I<\/p>\n

Jon Watson<\/p>\n

During my time at the FBI Atlanta Field Office, I once received a cable from the State Department informing us that one of our area university professors had been in extended contact with the Russians.\u00a0 He ran a laboratory that was involved in some fairly meaty research and, over the course of a couple of years, had sponsored some twenty-five of them to work in his shop.\u00a0 My assignment was to reach out, arrange a visit, and provide an abbreviated counterintelligence briefing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the appointed day, we met, and I explained that while most of these \u201cvisitors\u201d were probably interested only in bettering themselves personally and professionally, there was always the one percent who were likely exploiting the assignment to steal our technology.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After I had concluded my remarks, he put his coffee cup aside and, with a slight smile, politely responded, \u201cMr. Watson, they\u2019re not coming here to steal our technology.\u00a0 We beg them to come so that they can show us how to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How many of you have sons, daughters, grandsons, or granddaughters who are currently in college?\u00a0 How many of them are majoring in mathematics?\u00a0 Get the point?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We apparently have somehow managed to foster a general community of students who now select their life\u2019s work based on majors that don\u2019t require a course in algebra or the writing of a term paper. \u00a0This, as you might imagine, has created a vacuum of home-grown intellectual talent.\u00a0 Microsoft, Cisco, and Google, to name a few, have all been quoted as saying how starved they have been for high-tech talent despite starting salaries in the six figures.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As this professor went on to say to me, \u201cIf you need an attorney, the United States is the place to be.\u00a0 If you need a plasma physicist, however, you\u2019re likely to find yourself in the company of someone from India, China, or Russia.\u201d\u00a0 I say no problem!…As long as we know as much about them upon their arrival as the FBI knew about me before extending an offer of employment.\u00a0 As those in Congress continue to raise the alarm of how our dependence on foreign oil will diminish America\u2019s future, I promise it will pale in comparison to what we will inherit if we continue to find ourselves dependent on foreign brains.<\/p>\n

The real pathways to \u201cnational security\u201d or \u201ccorporate resilience\u201d will originate in the softer sides of the human equation.\u00a0 They always have.\u00a0 Your intellectual property protection challenges, for example, won\u2019t be solved by hosting a \u201ccyber security week\u201d or in some bigger, bolder firewall, or by purchasing more powerful pistols for your security staff.\u00a0 No, like it or not, the answers to your future systemic security problems are sitting in the third row of a second-grade classroom today, and if we, as a nation, have any collective brains at all, we\u2019ll move Heaven and Earth to develop theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Contrarian View:\u00a0 Corporate Security, Crisis Management, and Wholesale Malaise February, 2021\u00a0\u00a0 Part I Jon Watson During my time at the FBI Atlanta Field Office, I once received a cable from the State Department informing us that one of our area university professors had been in extended contact with the Russians.\u00a0 He ran a laboratory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107,86],"tags":[126,125,127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4590,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions\/4590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odinenterprises.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}