This is not another mainstream video about BlackRock. By now, many people are familiar with the public narrative: “…BlackRock is an extremely dangerous company.” “They have that much control to get everybody to do what they want them to do. “Larry Fink, the guy running BlackRock, is really the president—if we look at the influence he has in every industry.” For Larry Fink, it´s not just about owning companies anymore. It´s about executing his $68 Trillion Dollar Gameplan. And no one—is going to stop him.

A new report traces the history of the early wave of Chinese hackers who became the backbone of the state's espionage apparatus....Tan and his university friends  were encouraged to participate in a PLA-affiliated hacking contest and won 1st place. The PLA invited them to an intense, monthlong hacker training camp, and within weeks Tan and his friends were building hacking tools, studying network infiltration techniques, and conducting simulated attacks. Tan, then launched his own hacking group—the Network Crack Program Hacker (NCPH). The group quickly gained notoriety for winning hacking contests and developing hacking tools. They created the GinWui rootkit, one of China’s first homegrown remote-access backdoors and then, experts believe, used it and dozens of zero-day exploits they wrote in a series of “unprecedented” hacks against US companies and government entities over the spring and summer of 2006. They did this on behalf of the PLA, according to Adam Kozy, who tracked Tan and other Chinese hackers for years as a former FBI analyst who now heads the SinaCyber consulting firm, focused on China. Tan said that he and his team were being paid about $250/month for hacking. The pay increased to $1,000/month after their summer hacking spree, a 2007 report by former threat intelligence firm VeriSign iDefense.  So, Tan switched teams and began contracting for the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s civilian intelligence agency, as part of its notorious hacking group known as APT 41. In 2020, the US Justice Department announced indictments against him and other APT 41 members for hacking +100 targets, including US government systems, health care organizations, and telecoms. Tan is just one of many former Honkers who began their careers as self-directed patriotic hackers before being absorbed by the state into its massive spying apparatus.

Market sources report that SpaceX, the low-earth orbit satellite giant founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is accelerating its expansion into fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP). The company aims to establish a new advanced packaging factory "built in Texas." Before the Texas facility becomes operational, orders are currently being handled by STMicroelectronics. Due to strong demand, overflow orders have reportedly been subcontracted to Taiwan's major panel manufacturer Innolux.

The best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. First published these lessons + 8 years ago, in late 2016. They open the 20  Chapters On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists. 

Tesla saw sales of its EVs drop 13% in the EU in 2024 and is facing growing pressure as rivals launch a wave of cheaper EVs. Tesla shares are down 4.7% in January after a 62% gain in 2024. The annual return came after the shares fell more than 56% in Q1 '24 because of worries Tesla's sales were falling.  The consensus estimate for Q4 '24 earnings is 77 cents a share, up 8.4% from a year ago. Revenue of $27.1B would be up 7.8%.  A challenge for the company is its inability to come up with a moderately priced vehicle for the U.S. market. Tesla's difficulties in Europe come as Elon Musk continues to shake up European politics. The billionaire caused outrage among many in Germany with his endorsement of AfD, a right-wing political party. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz branded Musk's support of the "extreme right" as "completely unacceptable." Several German companies have announced they will stop buying Tesla vehicles over Musk's comments in recent months. On Wednesday, activists projected an image of a controversial gesture made by the Tesla boss at Donald Trump's inaugural parade onto the side of the company's Berlin gigafactory.  Musk has also become entangled in UK politics, feuding with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and reportedly considering a donation to right-wing party Reform. The controversy surrounding Musk has seen one of Tesla's rivals step up efforts to court disgruntled owners. 

As Elon Musk wades into European politics, Tesla's sales across the continent are plummeting. The automaker saw sales of its EVs drop 13% in the European Union in 2024, according to data released by industry body ACEA this week and is facing growing pressure in its third-largest market as rivals launch a wave of cheaper electric vehicles.  Experts told Business Insider that an increasingly stale product lineup had hit Tesla's European business. Tesla saw big drops in sales in major markets like Germany, France, and Italy.

In Germany, the hub of Europe's auto industry and the home of Tesla's Berlin gigafactory, sales of Tesla vehicles fell by 41% in 2024, outstripping the 27% sales decline in the general battery EV market. The company's woes come as wider EV sales dropped across Europe in 2024, driven by the end of key subsidies in several markets.  "The big picture is a shrinking EV market across Europe. But Tesla is shrinking faster than that, and in specific markets, it is outpacing that decline," Dylan Khoo, an analyst at Argus, told BI.

While Tesla's sales in markets such as Belgium, Netherlands, and Sweden rose last year, the overall picture in Europe is less than rosy for the automaker — especially with many of its rivals rolling out their own mass-market electric vehicles. Swedish brand Volvo, which is owned by Chinese conglomerate Geely, saw its sales rise nearly 30% in the EU last year, driven by the popularity of its 36,000 euro ($40,000) EX30 electric crossover.  Rivals like Renault and BMW also saw their sales grow in Europe and the UK last year, with French firm Renault launching cheaper models including the baguette-holding R5.

Tesla has not launched a new vehicle in Europe since the Model Y in 2021. Its most recent EV, the Cybertruck, is not available in the UK or Europe. "It's looking a little bit samey," said Philip Nothard, Insight and Strategy Director at Cox Automotive, adding that Tesla was facing a more crowded EV market in Europe and coming under pressure from domestic rivals and insurgent Chinese carmakers, who have ambitious growth plans for Europe.  

The CEO of EV brand Polestar said on Wednesday he had told the company's sales staff to target Tesla owners put off by Musk's push into politics and echoed Scholz in calling the billionaire's support of AfD "totally unacceptable."

"We get a lot of people writing that they don't like all this," Michael Lohscheller said in an interview with Bloomberg.

"It's important to listen closely to what they say. And I can tell you, a lot of people have very, very negative sentiment," he added.

Matthias Schmidt, a Germany-based automotive analyst, told BI he expected Musk's political involvements to eventually have an impact on Tesla's European sales, and said rivals like Polestar would likely reap the benefit of disgruntled Tesla owners ditching their vehicles.

"I expect Tesla's rivals are rubbing their hands together because this is the exact point where they need a big EV uptake for their own products," said Schmidt.

"The more Elon Musk continues to shoot himself in the foot, if you like, the more Germans and European manufacturers can only benefit. For them, it's like Christmas and all their birthdays coming all at once," he added.

At the same time, CEO Elon Musk hates his company being called a car company.

He believes Tesla is an artificial intelligence company. One reason: every Tesla vehicle communicates where and how it is being driven, Tesla collects all that data to improve vehicles and driving experience and improve the software that drives them. There is hope the company will introduce a sport utility vehicle this year. And Musk is promising to bring a Robo Taxi to market perhaps this year. One question that may get asked in the earnings call is how Musk can do two full-time jobs at once: running Tesla and working with the Trump Administration to cut federal spending.

TLSBlue encourages leadership to create their own path, constantly refining and adapting to fit their operational realities while still adhering to the guiding principles of systemic focus and improvement. TLSBlue integrates the best of TOC, Lean, and Six Sigma, with many other tools, for creating and sustaining a Blue Ocean.  It was not until 1968 that the Japanese approach to company-wide quality control, and Kaoru Ishikawa’s synthesis of the philosophy, which contributed to Japan’s ascendancy as a quality leader, began to be of interest to the Western world.  TLSBlue attempts to go one step further 

A few years ago, I thought I was about to die. And while (spoiler alert) I didn't, my severe health anxiety and ability to always assume the worst has persisted. However, the increasing proliferation of health-tracking smart devices and new ways that AI tries to make sense of our body's data has led me to make a decision. For my peace of mind, AI needs to stay far away from my health. And having just watched Samsung's Unpacked event, I'm more convinced of this than ever. I'll explain.  Sometime around 2016, I had severe migraines that persisted for a couple of weeks. My anxiety steeply increased during this period due to the attendant worry, and when I eventually called the UK's NHS helpline and explained my various symptoms, they told me I needed to go to the nearest hospital and be seen within 2 hours. "Walk there with someone," I distinctly remember them telling me, "It'll be quicker than getting an ambulance to you."  This call confirmed my worst fears -- that death was imminent.  As it turned out, my fears of an early demise were unfounded. The cause was severe muscle strain from having hung multiple heavy cameras around my neck for an entire day while photographing a wedding. But the helpline agent was simply working on the limited data I'd provided, and as a result, they'd -- probably quite rightly -- taken a "better safe than sorry" approach and urged me to seek immediate medical attention. I've spent most of my adult life struggling with health anxiety, and episodes such as this have taught me a lot about my ability to jump to the absolute worst conclusions despite there being no real evidence to support them. A ringing in my ears? Must be a brain tumor. A twinge in my stomach? Well, better get my affairs in order.  I've learned to live with this over the years, and while I still have my ups and downs, I know better about what triggers things. For one, I learned never to Google my symptoms. No matter what my symptoms were, cancer was always one of the possibilities a search would throw up. Medical sites -- including the NHS's website -- provided no comfort and usually only resulted in brain-shattering panic attacks.  Sadly, I've found I have a similar response with many health-tracking tools. I liked my Apple Watch at first, and its ability to read my heart rate during workouts was helpful. Then I found I was checking it increasingly more often throughout the day. Then the doubt crept in: "Why is my heart rate high when I'm just sitting down? Is that normal? I'll try again in 5 minutes." When, inevitably, it wasn't different (or it was worse), panic would naturally ensue.

cnet-voices-apple-watch-heart-rate-zone I've used Apple Watches multiple times, but I find heart rate tracking more stressful than helpful. - (Vanessa Hand Orellana/CNET)  Whether tracking heart rate, blood oxygen levels, or even sleep scores, I'd obsess over what a "normal" range should be, and any time my data fell outside of that range, I'd immediately assume it meant I was about to keel over right there and then. The more data these devices provided, the more things I felt I had to worry about. I've learned to keep my worries at bay and have continued to use smartwatches, without them being much of a problem for my mental health (I have to actively not use any heart-related functions like ECGs), but AI-based health tools scare me.  During its Unpacked keynote, Samsung talked about how its new Galaxy AI tools -- and Google's Gemini AI -- will supposedly help us in our daily lives. Samsung Health's algorithms will track your heart rate as it fluctuates throughout the day, notifying you of changes. It will offer personalized insights from your diet and exercise to help with cardiovascular health and you can even ask the AI agent questions related to your health.  To many, it may sound like a great holistic view of your health, but not to me. To me it sounds like more data being collected and waved in front of me, forcing me to acknowledge it and creating an endless feedback loop of obsession, worry, and, inevitably, panic. But it's the AI questions that are the biggest red flag for me. AI tools by their nature have to make "best guess" answers based usually on information publicly available online. Asking AI a question is really just a quick way of running a Google search, and as I've found, Googling health queries does not end well for me
Samsung showed off various ways AI will be used within its health app during the Unpacked keynote.  Much like the NHS phone operator who inadvertently caused me to panic about dying, an AI-based health assistant will be able to provide answers based only on the limited information it has about me. Asking a question about my heart health could bring up a variety of information, just as looking on a health website would about why I have a headache. But much like how a headache can technically be a symptom of cancer, it's also much more likely to be a muscular twinge. Or I haven't drank enough water. Or do I need to look away from my screen for a bit? Or I shouldn't have stayed up until 2 a.m. playing Yakuza: Infinite Wealth. Or a hundred other reasons, all of which are far more likely than the one I've already decided is the culprit.  But will an AI give me the context I need to not worry and obsess? Or will it just provide me with all the potential as a way of trying to give a full understanding but instead feed that "what if" worry? And, like how Google's AI Overviews told people to eat glue on pizza, will an AI health tool simply scour the internet and provide me with a hash of an answer, with inaccurate inferences that could tip my anxiety into full panic attack territory?

Or perhaps, much like the kind doctor at the hospital that day who smiled gently at the sobbing man sitting opposite who'd already drafted a goodbye note to his family on his phone in the waiting room, an AI tool might be able to see that data and simply say, "You're fine, Andy, stop worrying and go to sleep."  Maybe one day that'll be the case. Maybe health tracking tools and AI insights will be able to offer me a much-needed dose of logic and reassurance to counter my anxiety, rather than being the cause of it. But until then, it's not a risk I'm willing to take.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company is “open” to mergers and acquisitions as it “significantly” increases its investment in AI, as reported by CNBC. Cook’s statements were made alongside the release of Apple’s Q3'25 earnings results, revealing that the iPhone maker raked in $94 billion, marking a 10% increase over Q3'24.  When speaking about AI, Cook said the company is “embedding it across our devices, across our platforms and across the company,”

Though Apple has touted big plans for an AI-enhanced version of Siri, the timing of its release remains uncertain after the company delayed the revamp. Apple’s SVP of software, Craig Federighi, said it just wasn’t “reliable” enough to release broadly.

”We’re making good progress on a more personalized Siri,” Cook said during an earnings call on Thursday. “We are also reallocating a fair number of people to focus on AI features within the company.”

Despite the AI hiccups, Apple’s core businesses remain strong. Apple’s iPhone business grew 13 percent year over year to $44.6 billion. Mac revenue also saw a boost, reaching $8.1 billion in revenue, likely due to Apple releasing a new MacBook Air in March. Revenue from Apple’s services, which include subscriptions to things like Apple TV Plus, iCloud, and Apple Music, saw a 13%  increase to $27.4 billion, which is an “all-time high.” 

The remarks come as Apple continues to be seen as behind the AI race, with its efforts on Apple Intelligence lagging relative to its peers and Meta poaching some of its top engineers. The company is increasingly turning to AI startups for help — and reports have suggested that Apple is even open to making big acquisitions to catch up.

The genius of the CIA's Sabotage Manual is that it recognises how fragile execution really is. You don't need to collapse the structure. You only need to inject just enough confusion, bureaucracy, or doubt to make the team hesitate.  And in many organisations, this kind of sabotage doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside the organization itself. It is the natural consequence of processes built on prediction rather than readiness. 

So if your strategy is starting to stall, don't just look at the plan. Look at the space you've created for action. Look at how decisions get made. Look at how meetings are run. Observe whether people are moving with purpose or merely performing the motions of alignment while nothing actually shifts.  Strategy rarely fails in theory; it fails when contact with reality reveals how brittle your execution really is. And in those moments, planning is not about control. It is your only defence. A strategy that survives contact with reality starts by protecting your ability to act.

Key points from this article: 

• Companies are adjusting or delaying sustainability targets (e.g., Coca-Cola and Walmart), but remain committed to long-term environmental goals despite current economic and political challenges. 

• While federal support is uncertain, especially amid EPA cuts, states are passing impactful laws, including Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) measures. 

• The patchwork of state and global recycling laws complicates compliance for companies. But tariffs and trade issues may incentivize more domestic recycling and use of post-consumer resin (PCR). 

• Companies increasingly view sustainability as smart business, not just environmental stewardship, driven by consumer demand and risk management (such as energy costs and supply chain resilience). 

• Consumer interest in sustainable and green products continues to grow, making environmental initiatives economically viable and socially relevant for corporations. 

Meta is teaming with defense industry startup Anduril Industries to develop military products that use AI and Augmented Reality,(AR).

Anduril said in a statement that the new products will provide "real-time battlefield intelligence" to soldiers in the field, allowing them to make decisions based on data. "This integration will transform how warfighters see, sense and integrate battlefield information," .

Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old billionaire behind Anduril, said on social media that tapping into Meta's expertise in virtual and augmented reality technology will "save countless lives and dollars."

Anduril has sought to distinguish itself from the rest of the defense industry by highlighting its ability to both fund and develop products, rather than tapping federal funding, creating unmanned, autonomous weapons that use AI to identify and engage targets. Luckey is the co-founder of Oculus, the VR company that Meta, then called Facebook, bought in 2014 for $2.3 billion. "It's a scary idea, but, I mean, that's the world we live in," Luckey told correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi in a recent "60 Minutes" interview. "I'd say it's a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapons system that doesn't have any level of intelligence at all." "Meta has spent the last decade building AI and AR to enable the computing platform of the future," said Mark Zuckerberg. "We're proud to partner with Anduril to help bring these technologies to the American servicemembers that protect our interests at home and abroad."

Since President Trump took office, China has come to view the US with increasing skepticism, prompting the Chinese government to implement several countermeasures in response to perceived US hostility.

Twitter's financials are still looking pretty dire — as owner Elon Musk himself admitted in a January email to staff reviewed by the WSJ..

Cutting Losses -- Banks that loaned multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk an appreciable $13B for his ill-advised $44B acquisition of Twitter in late 2022 are getting ready to offload billions of debt they accrued as a result, the Wall Street Journal reports. The hope is to minimize the hurt as they sell off the debt, a massive scar haunting the mercurial CEO's disastrous social media platform shopping spree.

After a chaotic couple of years, and Musk seemingly doing his best to wipe out what was left of the platform's largely ad-dependant revenue with increasingly erratic behavior, X-formerly-Twitter's finances have yet to recover. The company is still drowning in accumulated debt while loaners are struggling with massive payments.  In short, the financials are still looking pretty dire — as Musk himself admitted in a January email to staff reviewed by the WSJ.  "Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even," he admitted.  Scraping By -- Musk's own actions, including racist tirades, tantrums, and personal insults, sent advertisers — the platform's top source of revenue — running for the hills.  X has maintained that its financials are improving, the WSJ reports, with brands coming back to advertise on the platform.  But as the increasingly hate-filled microblogging site continues to embrace what it claims to be "free speech," several key competitors, including Meta's Threads and Twitter alternative Bluesky, have emerged as serious contenders.

Both platforms have seen a dramatic influx of new users fleeing Twitter, indicating widespread disillusionment with Musk's disdain for content moderation and embrace of the extreme far right.  Now that Musk has catapulted himself onto the political world stage by throwing himself at Trump's feet, banks are seemingly seeing the moment as an opportunity to sell their debt without incurring huge losses. In short, Musk's acquisition of Twitter remains a major blemish on his resume.  At the same time, the platform has turned out to be a powerful tool for pumping out a firehose of hate speech, state propaganda, and disinformation. And who knows how much that's worth to Musk or Trump?  "Over the last few months, we’ve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes," Musk wrote in the email.

Meta Platforms’ former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was sanctioned by a judge on Tuesday for deleting emails related to litigation over Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, despite being told to preserve the messages. The judge, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, of Delaware Chancery Court, said evidence showed Sandberg used a personal account under a pseudonym and erased messages that were likely relevant to the shareholder lawsuit.

The sanction will make it harder for Sandberg to tell her side of the story and avoid liability at the eight-day, non-jury trial scheduled for April. The judge also ordered her to pay the expenses related to the sanctions motion incurred by the shareholders, which include California’s huge teachers’ retirement system known as CalSTRS.

“Because Sandberg selectively deleted items from her Gmail account, it is likely that the most sensitive and probative exchanges are gone,” Laster wrote in his opinion published on Tuesday.  Meta and an attorney for Sandberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sandberg had argued she was forthcoming about the personal account and rarely used it for business and when she did, others were copied on the messages so the information was preserved.  Laster imposed a higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” rather than “preponderance” of evidence, for Sandberg’s affirmative defenses, which are her arguments and evidence for why she should not be held liable.  The case was brought in 2018, when it emerged that Facebook allowed data from millions of users to be accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s successful campaign for U.S. president in 2016.  Shareholders sued the company’s directors and officers for allegedly harming investors by continually violating a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission to protect users’ data.  Shareholders also allege the company’s board bargained to pay a larger fine of $5 billion to the FTC in 2019 so that founder Mark Zuckerberg would not have personal accountability. Zuckerberg is expected to be deposed for a second time before the start of the trial, according to court records.  In 2023, Laster refused to dismiss the lawsuit, which he said was a “case involving alleged wrongdoing on a truly colossal scale.”  Shareholders also asked Laster to sanction Jeffrey Zients, who was former President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and who also used and deleted personal emails when he was on Meta’s board. The judge said that Zients’ messages were less pertinent because he joined the Meta board in 2018, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and was not a company officer.

I am wrapping up my dissertation for a Ph.D in Behavioral Econmics for review by my academic advisor and manuscript for the companion book on the Strategic Inflection Point of 2022 that I saw Robert's recent video on "Memento Mori" ("Remember That You Will Die"). In 2018, Robert had a near fatal stroke that enabled him to confront death head on, listening to his story and his embracement of the "Way of Death" that I came to deeper understanding of my own life. You see I've had multiple near death experiences over the last 18 years of my life that forced me to also embrace the "Way of Death", not in some grim way but as a reminder that we will all die at some point for some reason. I was recently reminded of this by a quote from the film 2005 "Kingdom of Heaven", where the primary character lives by a Latin quote hanging in his blacksmith shop translated "What man is a man who does not make the world better.".In the end of it all we all are measured by what we do with our lives, not the color of skin, not our gender, not our religion, not our social status, or how much money we made or anything else. It is only what we do that goes into the history books, our legacy of what we do that matters and is what our lives are measured against. A worthy reflection for all of us to do