Tom around the web

+ More links to the Pop!Tech vid:

• ArtLung
  
• DeepTape
  
• Alphachimp

+ The Boston Herald picked up last week's column.
+ Then some PhD candidate on 'Democracy Arsenal' punked it.
+ ZenPundit linked New officers...
+ So did Most Serene Republic.
+ Phred at Most Serene Republic says draft Tom for war czar, whether he wants the job or not.
+ And linked Got Robb's "Brave New War" in the mail today.
+ Draconian Observations linked The price of locking in China...
+ et alli. linked Catching up to the Israelis' logic on walls.
+ Soob linked The long, steady drum beat for American military strikes on Iran.
+ So did New Yorker in DC.
+ The War Room referred to the SysAdmin.
+ OregonGuy posted his question and Tom's answer.
+ Tom Roeser says he's still intrigued with Tom's PNM thesis.
+ I Am Net-Centric linked the Esquire State of the World article.
+ Mackinlay's (in Spanish!) linked Power loss.
+ EcoHutong linked Tipping points in the journey from the Gap to the Core.
+ And linked An interesting package on clean energy development in Asia.
+ Ablogistan linked Beware hypocrisy on Darfur, China.
+ Same post at Prose Before Hos.
+ HIV / AIDS Treatment linked Revisiting the System Perturbation argument on breaking global drug patents.
+ Energywire.net linked Connecting to the Core through the scary back door.

'Life finds a way'

ARTICLE: Iran to filter "immoral" mobile messages, Reuters, Apr 28, 2007 ET

Some focus on friction (censoring), but I focus on growing force (connectivity via phones among young to extent that elite are scared enough to act).

You know damn well what young people pass around. My 15-year-old daughter played me her latest downloads today on the way to Mass. Plenty forgiveness sought, by me at least.

The cellphone is to the Gap what the automobile was to the US post-WWII: the great enabler of youth-culture emergence--and the destroyer of morals (mais oui!).

Remember Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) the mathematician in "Jurassic Park": "Life finds a way."

Bet on the social blowback that follows, but lay down the serious lodge on the innate human need to connect.

Thanks to Nick G for sending this.

This week's column

Rebranding China’s military for tomorrow’s challenges

Last week in Honolulu I spoke at a high-level conference, hosted by our Pacific Command, of special operations forces (SOF) commanders from numerous Pacific Rim countries. This gathering was notable primarily for the attendance--for the second year in a row--of senior officers from the People’s Republic of China.

Now, depending on your worldview, you might be aghast that: 1) the U.S. military even interacts with SOF personnel from China, our rising competitor in the East, or 2) that it’s taken this long for such interactions to begin with a power already as globally significant as China is today.

I fall into the second category.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Note: The Scripps Howard version turned out really funky: unexplained excision in the first paragraph and underscores instead of dashes throughout. Still waiting to hear how that happened...

A few tweaks [changed]

Notice anything different?

I clicked down the the size of the fonts a little. Changed the search back to just the default, Movable Type weblog search with a link to an added page for advanced searches of the whole site or Tom's network.

At first I just changed the links to plain blue, but that seemed a little too bright. So I changed them to PNM blue. Then I thought, 'Why not use PNM khaki, too?' So I did.

On the whole I like it all better.

What do you think?

Second term come down

ARTICLE: "Rice Deputy Quits After Query Over Escort Service: Randall Tobias Oversaw U.S. Foreign Aid Programs," By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, April 28, 2007; Page A01

ARTICLE: "Tenet Details Efforts to Justify Invading Iraq: Former CIA Director Says White House Focused on the Idea Long Before 9/11," By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, April 28, 2007; Page A01

ARTICLE: "Wolfowitz Panel Finds Ethics Breach, Officials Say: World Bank Board Could Act on Monday," By Peter S. Goodman, Washington Post, April 28, 2007; Page A01

The classic end-of-administration milieu: scandal upon scandal.

We should never re-elect anybody, it would seem. Second terms? Name one that wasn't a significant come-down from the first.

The only improvement you can cite in the 20th was FDR.

New officers...

ARTICLE: Army Officer Accuses Generals of 'Intellectual and Moral Failures', By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, April 27, 2007; Page A04

This article underscores the reality of the current generational change going on because of Iraq. In short, it won't be led by the Vietnam-era grey beards (retired flags) you currently watch on TV. It will be led, as it was back then (by many of those same grey beards in a younger form) from below.

This is the fundamental reason why I've concentrated my work more with mid-level officers than seniors. They're basically the military's version of the New Core--as in, most incentivized to change and adapt.

So this is a good example, I guess, of "New Officers --> New Rules."

Thanks to the anonymous reader who sent this.

Could Bush bargain with Iran?

OP-ED: Interest on Both Sides In U.S.-Iran Talks, By David Ignatius, April 27, 2007

Ignatius, whose sources are wide and deep, continues to make the best case for the emerging dialogue between the U.S. and Iran. It remains my great hope that Bush makes the leap of logic on Iran before his term ends, although I remain deeply suspicious of: 1) the skill sets missing in this crew to make the diplomacy work (tell me, where has the Bush administration made any serious diplomatic breakthrough happen anywhere that doesn't look like a pale, rushed, unimaginative version of what Clinton ended up pursuing a decade earlier?); 2) their real motivations (I fear the effort is cynical at best); and 3) the lack of signs elsewhere in our regional policies that they're beginning to think holistically).

Instead, I tend to see only the same basic thinking of the past, just deeply tempered by the reality of the continuing tie-down in Iraq. To me, this "realism" is just neoconism-plus-postwar-Iraq--i.e., with no teeth.

The imaginative thinking on financial sanctions is encouraging, but I fear it won't be decisive for reasons I've laid out recently.

So while I truly hope for breakthroughs in this regard, I don't expect the level of bargaining flexibility required for this to happen in the time remaining for Bush, although--again--the worse Iraq gets the more flexible everyone gets--including us.

So an open mind remains a requirement, and nobody feeds that openness better than Ignatius' continued excellent reporting on the subject.

Thanks to kilngoddess for sending this.

Still optimistic on China

OP-ED: "China Needs an Einstein. So Do We." By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times, April 27, 2007

OP-ED: Changing China, Trade's Power - and Limits, by George Will, April 26, 2007

This is a tendency to want to slice and dice globalization along various planes in order to: 1) simplify the process in people's minds and 2) to express some great concern about a potential destabilizing trend within.

One great horizontal slice is, of course, global warming. People get hugely focused on it and want the whole discussion on globalization to center around it, in a profound trumping effect. Related to that is peak oil. Both get you arguments that say, "Everything you say about globalization and security may be true, but this changes everything!"

A version of vertical slicing is to see all of globalization within a few key players. Americans, naturally, tend to see our role as paramount. Now, there's a rising sense of similar impact by China--a sort of, "as goes China, so goes the whole concept of globalization." Because there's so much hyperbole on China, the natural pushback is to argue the null hypothesis: this must fail and here's why.

All of these vertical and horizontal slices are useful, if not taken to extremes. They are not overriding guides to action. They are serious data points, though.

All of these slices are presented as incisive explorations of the usual have-havenot argument: China will fall apart because the have-havenot split will get too big, global warming will dramatically expand the have-havenot split, peak oil will . . . well, most peak oilers jump straight to the "we're all going to hell" argument.

On the China argument in particular, this concern is what drove me to write the section in "Blueprint" called "The Train's Engine Can Travel No Faster Than Its Caboose," essentially the Core-Gap argument taken below the level of nation-states to that of society. Go too fast, and you end up with revolution, like with the Shah's Iran. But go too slow and things will go badly too.

In China today, the balance of opinion is that the extension of globalization's benefits to the rural poor has gone too slow. The resulting peasant unrest (something like 65k events last year) is real caboose-breaking, serious enough to become a bit of an obsession with 4th Gen leaders Hu and Wen. The correlating fear is that this slow pace is ossifying into a sort of caste-like Domestic Core that permanently disenfranchises and exploits the disconnected Domestic Gap. It's a natural and logical fear, and all I can tell you is that it's not something unknown inside Beijing, but rather something the elite talks about all the time and seeks to work.

Naturally, the Party is going to try to finesse this process historically in such a way as to maintain its firm grip on power. As I have stated consistently, I don't think that's possible over the long run, so I'm looking for a China, on its current trajectory, to experience a lot of political evolution by 2025, coming fairly close to what most people would define as political pluralism, albeit one grown--in spurts that will often be tumultuous--originally from within the ranks of the party itself (first wings, then serious factions, then parties-within-parties).

I remain optimistic but realistic on this pathway. It won't be pretty. It will be marked by spasmodic incidents of crisis and patching-over change. China will need many great leaders to arise to make it happen, and I described a few in the "Heroes Yet Discovered" ending of "Blueprint."

So yeah, I'm with Friedman on China needing plenty of new smart guys to alter paradigms (and America too). As a professional self-described grand strategist, I want to be one of those people and create others in my wake--not just on my side but on China's too.

Having taken on such a life-defining task, I'm naturally optimistic about it happening and unfolding in positive ways (otherwise, why would I try), so I don't share Will's or Mann's deep pessimism (Will, for example, expresses pessimism given China's 35 years to change following Nixon's opening; I would argue China's change has been huge, but largely concentrated in the last 10 years of opening up incredibly to globalization, which, quite naturally, replicates some of the same have-havenot dynamics of globalization writ large). I find the Chinese to lack no ingenuity, which--again--I consider to be an inexhaustible global resource not defined by any Anglosphere or WASP universe-unto-itself.

But I also expect the Chinese to remain Chinese. I expect many of their answers to initially confound us, because their history, as I argued in BFA, is not ours.

So yeah, I tend to be more patient than most people, who can't wait to declare crises all over the dial and to prematurely define failure, whether it's with China or the Big Bang or globalization itself.

But hey, it sell books.

Although I would note that optimistic books (especially those focused on individual-led self-help) tend to outsell pessimistic ones.

Thanks to John for sending this.

Tom's new story at Esquire

Tom's new story is up on the Esquire website. It's called State of the World and it's must reading. Here are the contents:

Iran: The Coming Distraction

Middle East: The Big Bang Theory

Globalization: Life During Wartime

Al Qaeda: The Global Brand

Iraq: The Quagmire

Long War: The Theater-After-Next

Defense Department: The New Coin of the Realm

War on Terror: The Legal Underpinnings

Afghanipakistan: The Ungovernable

China: The Slated Near-Peer

North Korea: The Persistent Outlier

White House: The Bush Imperative

Rising East: The Degree of Compliance

Aging West: The State of Alliance

All the Rest: Other Complications

The Wildest Card: 2008

Enjoy!

Bjorn the Man on climate change

Lomborg's ranking work with the Copenhagen Consensus Group is basically the same thing I did with Cantor and all our bigwig guests atop World Trade Center 1 in June 2001 when we looked at global climate change: when we ranked the big choices, we came up with a number of easier and more impactful short-run fixes than tackling CO2 emissions per se.

The fact that Lomborg, a serious genius, did the same thing later with a bunch of Nobel Laureates, makes me believe in his thinking so much: it's a totally reproducible strategic concept that others can arrive at on their own.

Here is a great transcript of his appearance on Lehrer.

Thanks to Kevin Shook for this link.

An interesting package on clean energy development in Asia

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: “Clean-Energy Firms Make Pitch to Asia: U.S. Trade Mission Aims to Capitalize on Growing Commitment in China, India,” by Jane Spencer, Wall Street Journal, 18 April 2007, p. A9.

India and China gear up to spend billions on renewable energy as that $10T gets spent on new infrastructure by 2030 (six in energy, four in water). Naturally, our clean-energy businesses want in, which is smart.

Accessing the build-out in Asia is re-learning how to sell to the bottom of the pyramid--pure and simple.

The usual hyperbole from a investment fund manager looking to profit: “Either we have a complete environmental collapse, or we have to quickly evolve the entire global economy to a much more energy-efficient, resource-efficient and environmentally conservative model.”

Hmmm.

I’ll take Option B, but can I stretch out the payments some?

Commerce is involved due to fears of IP loss, which makes good sense.

When we did the Cantor Fitzgerald-Naval War College “NewRuleSets.Project” economic security exercise on future environmental damage in Asia back in the summer of 2001, Cantor kept saying, this is going to be huge within a decade, and we want a big role in shaping the markets that make it happen--thus their new energy-trading business whose debut was trumpeted at the event. Can’t remember the name off the top of my head (probably blocking, cause the CEO who attended, Carlton Bartels [see bios as bottom], died on 9/11), but have a mug in my office (CO2e.com). The side biz was designed to anticipate, shape, and exploit future cap-and-trade regimes, which they believed would grow, bottom-up around the world (national and regional first) versus a global rule set like Kyoto being imposed from above.

So here’s the first bit that interests me:

The clean-energy mission is part of a wave of initiatives developed by the U.S. government that seek to harness the forces of the free market to address Asia’s environmental problems, creating business opportunities while dealing with global pollution problems. The projects are part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate--the U.S., China, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea--that was organized as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

The signature program, Pollution Prevention and Energy Efficiency (P2E2) is rolled out later this year.

This is the second cool bit:

P2E2 aims to help companies in Hong Kong turn profits while cleaning up heavily polluting factories in China. It will ultimately be backed by $1 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank and other sources that will grease the wheels by eliminating capital costs for the companies involved.

The basic idea is to match environmental-service companies based in Hong Kong with individual factories in China’s Pearl River Delta region, one of the most heavily industrialized--and most intensely polluting--places on the planet. The service companies will conduct environmental audits at the factories and then install new energy-efficient technology and machinery to cut both costs and pollution at the factories. In effect, the Chinese factories will outsource their clean-up to the Hong Kong environmental-service companies.

The trick is that neither party will face any upfront costs or capital investment. The Hong Kong companies will finance their work with loans from the Asian Development Bank and other sources. The factories get the technology free and later pay the environmental-service companies a cut of the cost savings generated by the new technology over a period of years. The Hong Kong companies then pay off the loans and pocket the remainder as profits.

That is sweet. It just needs to be marketized by private capital markets so it can be scaled up.

Brilliant quote to end:

“We can’t fund enough regulators or prosecutors to solve Asia’s environmental crisis,” says Stewart Ballard, chief commercial consul for the U.S. Commercial Service at the American Consulate General Hong Kong and Macau. “We need to start looking at the environment as business opportunity.”

Couldn’t have said it better.

Enterra’s doing similar stuff on the security angle first for a waterway stretch from Philly out to the mouth of the Delaware bay, another hugely concentrated chunk of intense industries (energy and chem.) Tons of conflicting rules to work. Perfect for us.

Eventually we’ll be working this stretch in China too--my prediction.

The new connectivity sanctions: momentum is everything

INTERNATIONAL: “How to get a handle on the axis: Financial sanctions have a big place in a tool-box designed to thwart the proliferators of Pyongyang and Tehran,” The Economist, 14 April 2007, p. 69.

The use of specifically targeted financial sanctions is clearly intriguing, because it gets right to the heart of the thin connectivity that rogue regimes must maintain, almost like criminals, to “launder” their transactions. Typically, these connections are very tightly concentrated at the top of the elite, like it was with Milosevic and his family cronies in Serbia (the first time I heard of these very personally-specific efforts to get at leaders’ money).

In short, these sorts of sanctions avoid the usual problem of enriching the elites and killing the poor, and they definitely get the bad leaders’ attention focused.

But as this article notes, in both instances, key outside enablers hold the key (by my definition: China in both instances, South Korea with North Korea, Europe and India and Russia with Iran). We can get old-school companies and banks in the Old Core to behave on this score, and with some effort, we can get some level of compliance/fear-avoidance from New Core companies (but typically less so).

So, you can almost imagine a sort of tipping-point in connectivity when the sanctions have the max impact: once the country or leadership in question decides the connectivity is worth more than the loss of political control. In the instances of both North Korea and Iran, I don’t think either country’s anywhere near there yet, meaning we can hurt them and we can certainly get their attention, but we can’t break them on this basis.

With the New Core enablers, our ability to crack our whips with them is caught up with their emerging ability to crack whips with us (e.g., Russia on energy in Europe, India on outsourcing services, China on currency reserves and manufacturing connectivity).

So while the sanctions seem far better than any we’ve used in the past, and while I advocate both their use and their expansion, I’m fairly suspect about any “silver bullet” effects. Part of the toolkit, yes, but not the hammer.

Blogflies in Egypt

ARTICLE: “Bloggers may be the real opposition,” The Economist, 14 April 2007, p. 54.

The pyjamahideen slowly emerge inside Egypt. Yes, some of the best and most impactful will have strong Islamist views (like any poll in the world shows: people want the globalization, but with content controls, labor controls and environmental controls), but do you think they would support the new, resulting Islamist regime that then turns on them and demands an end to their connectivity?

There is, of course, always the danger of the Iran Revolution scenario, but that’s the too much, too fast scenario, or what I would call the caboose-induced-trainwreck.

Actually, the slow but steady spread of this sort of protest is the best we can hope for:

Such pinpricks have yet to puncture the dominance of any Arab state. But with internet access spreading even to remote and impoverished villages, and with much of its “user-generated content” pitched in pithy everyday speech rather than the high classical Arabic of official commentary, the authorities are beginning to take notice.

Globalization is all about networks, and networks are all about workarounds, and workarounds promote the notion that man’s paths to happiness are infinite rather than singular, and that’s subversively political.

Good pipelines make good neighbors--eventually

ARTICLE: “A bear at the throat: The European Union is belatedly grasping the riskiness of its dependence on Russian gas, but it is disunited and short of ideas for how to reduce it,” The Economist, 14 April 2007, p. 58.

A quick overview: Russian gas clearly dominates east central Europe, because that’s the way it was under COMECON. Russia’s gas lines have dramatically penetrated western Europe since the end of the Cold War. Thus, Europe as a whole worries about this sort of dependency.

Two things I notice are primarily from the neat map that accompanies this story.

First, Russia is deeply networked with Europe on the basis of all those pipelines. Not yet a good neighbor, but then again, Europe could go a lot further itself besides snapping up Russia’s former satellite states and largely keeping Russia at arm’s length on serious integration. So yeah, Russia for now uses its energy for everything it’s worth. That’s crude all right, and it reflects the leadership generation that Russia both enjoys and suffers right now (our third iteration from the brilliance/stupidity of Gorby and the just-deceased Yeltsin--not moving fast enough for many, but for me, from a security angle, I’m pleased as punch because I just see stuff I don’t have to deal with).

Second, if you want great alternatives to Russian gas, then you go through Turkey and you access Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Either way, you better be nicer to Turkey.

Connecting to the Core through the scary back door

ARTICLE: “With Eye On Iran, Rivals Also Want Nuclear Power: Fears of an Arms Race; Peaceful Use Cited, but a Trend in the Region Poses Dangers,” by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, New York Times, 15 April 2007, p. A1.

You can’t get global gun control until the players in question feel they’ve got all the protection they need.

We got it with the USSR when both of us had gorged ourselves on nukes and any further advance was pointless. Until that point was reached, arms control itself was pointless, and once it was reached, it quickly became pointless again--except to keep the club as closed as possible.

Well, globalization is integrating countries like crazy, often with great unevenness. Some, like China, get network and economic integration far ahead of political and military integration.

Others, like the bulk of the Middle East, achieve it primarily through an energy flow that’s effectively viewed by its recipients more in a security perspective than an economic one, because of the lack of alternatives. The Middle East, because of its unwillingness to embrace globalization broadly, wants further integration largely on its own, seemingly weird terms (all sorts of controls on content). Those terms, for now, are so intense as to effectively preclude deep integration, especially since they trigger all sorts of security problems among themselves.

And yet, these many authoritarian regimes, want their sense of security strengthened especially as they contemplate deeper economic and network integration over time.

Not surprisingly, given America’s actions in the post-Cold War era, the primary tool for such security is viewed by many regimes as getting nuclear power/capability for weapons. That’s their backdoor route, along with oil, to gaining entry into the Big Boys club.

Given our complete failure to deal with the continuing security dilemmas in the region (Israel v. Palestine, Iran v. Israel, Saudi Arabia v. Iran, al Qaeda v. Saudi Arabia, Syria v. Lebanon v. Israel, every authoritarian regime v. their peoples, etc.), the region is using pursuit of nukes as its own forcing function. Left to their own devices, these tribes will self-sabotage their way for decades further, so if you consider our efforts to date to be the best we can do (and they may well be, given the “olive tree” nature of the region), then I say, bring the nukes on.

Why?

Where we’ve brought the nukes on before, state-on-state war has disappeared.

None of the existing regional fights gets me a regional security dialogue worth spit, but nukes will.

I guarantee it.

Know your supply chain, and its biology

ARTICLE: “China Yields To Inquiry On Pet Food,” by David Barboza, New York Times, 24 April 2007, p. C1.

Good stuff, signaling the rapid climb globally from know-your-customer to know-your-supply-chain to know-your-biological-chain.

China wants to sell the stuff, then China must open itself up on the basis of health concerns.

Some see our increasing brittleness with each such crisis unfolding or scandal revealed. I see something very different: more rules and more transparency.

Crises are not indicative of a lack of resilience. The inability to process them quickly is.

Hopeful signs on American food aid mess

ARTICLE: “Bush Administration Gains Support for New Approach on Global Food Aid,” New York Times, 22 April 2007, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “A Dam Connects Machakos, Kenya, To Archbold, Ohio: As Development Aid In Rural Africa Dwindles, American Farmers Pitch In,” by Roger Thurow, Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2007, p. A1.

First story is a bit of an oversell: conference hosted by USG entity that oversees food aid sees lots of condemnations on the usual crap I and others routinely condemn and which the Bush administration has valiantly tried to correct.

All the piece really says is that more and more people shine a light on these shameful practices and the villains and greedy bastards who feed off it.

Still, the more it is talked about, the better, like China and Darfur. Doesn’t mean anything will change. Just means it’s not unknown.

Second story reminds me--at least--that this iron triangle of shippers and aid groups and big ag companies doesn’t represent the average American small farmer. I grew up in that world, and while it’s a cheap bunch in many ways (no choice), it’s far from lacking in compassion and sensibility, and a strong sense of shared interest with other small farmers. This wonderful peer-to-peer aid story just reminds us of that.

The global commute signals globalization’s main economic characteristic: the extension of frontiers

ARTICLE: “Handled with care: Central banks try to make it cheaper for people to send money home,” The Economist 21 April 2007, p. 86.

Anything that encourages the global commute is good, and no, it is unfair to deride this flow of money as “forcing developing countries to self-finance their own developmental aid.” Only an ODA professional could make such a misguided remark (something I read in a New York Times magazine article about the stress the global commute puts on families).

Believe-you-f--king-me, I understand the stress of a global commute, and I send all my money home too. Granted, I’m sitting near the tippy-top of the pyramid, but the motivations and the willingness and sacrifices are basically the same: we want better for our families and this is what we’re willing to do to make it happen.

I remember my life of 9-5 in DC. I could have stayed there forever, as so many do. But I wanted something I felt was better and through which I could earn a lot more money, and so I moved my family from Blue State to Red, taking advantage of a far cheaper cost of living, and traded off the countrywide and global commute for the time with my wife and kids.

Yes, a big driver on all that is my desire to effect change on a grand scale, but if I felt I could pull it off with young kids better on the East Coast, I would. But for now, the balance on that ledger says, live in the center, help on the aging mother-in-law (I married the only daughter), and make the sacrifices on time and distance.

With your average global commuter, the choice is far more stark: either earn a whole lot more abroad or earn much less at home.

This is not a new dynamic, even in a global sense. Who built out the American West? Freed African-American slaves, dirt poor Irish and German immigrants, and Chinese “coolies.” None of them were there for the sunshine. They were there, at enormous risk and sacrifice and often involving years of separation with virtually no contact with families, because it was the best deal going for them at the time.

The best deal going for those on the bottom of the pyramid is often the frontier that needs taming, no matter where it is found geographically. More generally, globalization opens up frontiers all over the place and at all levels of skill and compensation, the global “talent hunt” on top and the global “labor hunt” on the bottom. In many instances, and at both levels, it’s travel or forget about it.

Mexico gets $23 billion in remittances (trackable) now, up sevenfold in the last 12 years, with fees dropping by two-thirds.

The banks are just catching up with the global commute at the bottom of the pyramid. Not exploitation, and not undue sacrifice. Just people looking for better lives through better opportunities, stitching together a global community one person at a time.

Revisiting the System Perturbation argument on breaking global drug patents

LEADING THE NEWS: “Abbott’s Concession to Thailand On Drug Price Signals Power Shift: AIDS-Treatment Discount After Generics Spat Reflects Clout of Developing Market,” by Nicholas Zamiska and James Hookway, Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2007, p. A3.

ARTICLE: “Thai Showdown Spotlights Threat to Drug Patents: Abbott Protests Move To Buy Copycat Pills, But It Yields on Price,” by James Hookway and Nicholas Zamiska, Wall Street Journal, 24 April 2007, p. A1.

One of my favorite stories from PNM was how the whole anthrax scare, coming on the heels of 9/11, put Old Core states in the weird position of having to explain their hypocrisy on drug prices connected to huge global health burdens.

Since then it’s been a knockdown drag-out globally between rising New Core states and their companies versus the Old Core’s Big Pharma and their lobbying power (which is immense).

Great story here on how little and increasingly New Core Thailand is working Abbott over on this subject.

Abbott and Big Pharma suffer these slights and pushback because the Old Core’s ability to sustain their huge profits is waning, while the New Core’s is growing.

But guess what? The New Core recognizes its purchasing power, and they want a better deal.

And quite frankly, suffering as so many Americans do under the high price of medicine in this country, I don’t blame them one bit.

In fact, I cheer them on.

For that reason and so many more, I just laugh when critics identify my vision as vaguely or even openly imperialistic. It’s like they don’t have a f--king clue about how this world works, much less how it’s so dramatically changing with the phenomenon we call globalization.

The key difference

Thinking on my last post (Homer-Dixon): the key reason why I like working with Steve DeAngelis is that, like me, he worries about all the same bad things I do (and Homer-Dixon) does, but his answer is always to fix, improve, innovate, make more resilient, etc. He motivates through profit and does not seek to profit from fear.

The differences between the way Steve and I talk to clients and partners and mil and intell and so on, and the way the fear-mongers do is actually very small in terms of content but huge in terms of tone.

And that's because, in the end, we peddle a product, we have an answer, we seeks solutions.

You're always going to be called "naive" when you argue that complexity can be conquered, and you're always celebrated for your "realism" when you argue for limited-regret, firewalling strategies.

But all human progress is based on the former, and all historical retreats on the latter.

And I guess we just prefer the forward motion.