Karzai and de Gaulle

"Karzai was no puppet, but the United States probably hadn't had a more troublesome ally in war since Charles de Gaulle in World War II, perhaps because both were nearly totally dependent on the United States and both deeply resented it." - Bob Gates in Duty

Thoughts on Cyber Security

Firms:

In the past few years, the contractors have embarked on their own cyber building binge parallel to the construction boom at Fort Meade: General Dynamics opened a 28,000-square-foot facility near the NSA; SAIC cut the ribbon on its new seven-story Cyber Innovation Center; the giant CSC unveiled its Virtual Cyber Security Center. And at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where former NSA director Mike McConnell was hired to lead the cyber effort, the company announced a “cyber-solutions network” that linked together nine cyber-focused facilities. Not to be outdone, Boeing built a new Cyber Engagement Center.

One of the most secretive of these contractors is Endgame Systems, a startup backed by VCs including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Paladin Capital Group. Established in Atlanta in 2008, Endgame is transparently antitransparent. “We’ve been very careful not to have a public face on our company,” former vice president John M. Farrell wrote to a business associate in an email that appeared in a WikiLeaks dump. “We don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,” added founder Christopher Rouland. True to form, the company declined Wired’s interview requests.

Dragos Security - critical infrastructure security firm

Books:
https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/threat-research/cybercanon

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It (2010) by Richard Clarke and Robert Knake
-focuses on policy

@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex (2014) by Shane Harris
"This is a book that any cyber professional can have family members and friends read; once read, they can all have lively, informed discussions on the hot topics of surveillance, espionage, power grabs, etc.—it is that readable and engaging."

Future Crimes:  Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It (2015) by Marc Goodman
 "basic historical background on computer security and then guides the reader through a cybercrime journey spanning consumer, industrial, medical, and various other technologies."

Concept Store

What defines a concept store?

“It should be created in the image of a single highly itinerant, very driven, very passionate owner with a highly attuned, very individual aesthetic,” says Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. “If you take somewhere like Just One Eye in Los Angeles, it is like entering a different world.” Here the highly unusual mix of Alexander Calder carpets (from $39,000), Diane Arbus photographs (from $30,000) and beautifully curated gifts and clothes from unusual designers is pulled together by the artistic eye of owner Paola Russo.

Above all it is the concept store’s capacity to surprise, to make a customer feel they have embarked on a voyage of discovery, that sets them apart. “Somewhere like J’Antiques in Tokyo,” says Amed, “which specialises in mostly American vintage fashion and furniture, pulls it off brilliantly. Wherever you turn you get the impression of an enormously fastidious, idiosyncratic eye.” But creating the element of surprise is infinitely harder for retailers today than it used to be. “The bar is set much higher and it isn’t enough just to have a singular or eccentric mix of products – it has also to offer a unique experience,” Amed continues. “Which is why many owners are creating communities around their stores, making them places where like-minded people can spend time, where they are introduced to new food and books, and encouraged to linger.” Excelsior Milano, for instance, is a 5,000m2 Jean Nouvel-designed space spread over seven floors that couldn’t be more different from 10 Corso Como. It offers a very carefully edited selection of fashion, fragrance, fine food and design in a futuristic cinematic setting with huge digital screens in the windows. It nearly always has large crowds milling around to see what the latest excitements are.

So if we take the concept store to be one that sells a wide range of items that are thrillingly different from standard department-store fare, that is overseen by a single brilliant “eye” and that continually surprises...

...While Hadida is working out how to renew and refresh the Leclaireur proposition for LA, he is not alone. Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe have just presented London with an enlarged version of their much admired Dover Street Market. Though much of the press persist in believing it to be a paradigm of the concept store, Joffe himself rejects the notion. “No,” he tells me firmly, “we are not a concept store. I don’t know what the word ‘concept’ means any more. We are just a clothes shop that likes to share its space with other designers who have something to say. It’s a place where the relationships between customers and staff, and between us and the designers, are paramount. It’s also a place where the visual elements are crucial and preconceived ideas dispensed with.”

Chris Sanderson, co-founder of trend-forecasting consultancy The Future Laboratory, has observed a fundamental change in the role of what we have come to call concept stores. “The idea depended on shifting the focus away from a purely transactional relationship towards giving the customer a real experience,” he says. “Shops were no longer merely places to buy, they were also places of learning and inspiration, even if this meant slowing the journey to purchase. Now the experiences have evolved to become much more immersive.”

Stores:

10 Corso Como, Corso Como 10, 20154 Milan (+3902-2900 2674;www.10corsocomo.com). The Apartment by the Line, 76 Greene St, New York, NY 10012 (+1646 6784 908; www.theline.com). Autor Rooms, Lwowska 17/7, 00-667 Warsaw (+4879-7992 737; www.autorrooms.pl). Dover Street Market, 18-22 Haymarket, London SW1 (020-7518 0680;www.doverstreetmarket.com). Excelsior Milano, Galleria del Corso 4, 20122 Milan (+3902-7630 7301; www.excelsiormilano.com). Harrods, 87-135 Brompton Road, London SW1 (020-7730 1234; www.harrods.com).J’Antiques, 2-25-13 Kamimeguro, Meguro-Ku, 153-00051 Tokyo. Just One Eye, 7000 Romaine St, Los Angeles, CA 90038 (+1888-563 6858;www.justoneeye.com). Leclaireur, 450 N Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90048 (www.leclaireur.com). Peak Performance,www.peakperformance.com and see Harrods.

Financial Times (http://howtospendit.ft.com/style/108013-evolution-of-the-concept-store)