Here’s a pithy comment by Peter Salama, head of the new Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization, about factors leading to Ebola crisis unfolding this year in DRC:

These viruses manage to exploit social vulnerabilities and fault lines. That’s what we’re seeing in this Ebola outbreak starkly.

And even more to the point:

In the last two years since I have been here, 80 percent of our major outbreaks have been in conflict-affected areas. This is the issue of the future.

The issue of urban outbreaks of high-threat pathogens is really an issue of our generation. I don’t think we’ve fully grappled with that. Now with yellow fever, plague, with Ebola, we are starting to see these patterns. All bets are off [in terms of] thinking we know about the transmission of diseases because of what happened in rural outbreaks in the past. It’s completely different now.

Ok, so you have this data showing conflict-affected areas are where the major outbreaks occur, and that is “the issue of the future”. Consider this in terms of infected drones easily deployed over/under/around barriers into urban areas, and then rapid lateral transmission.

I’m not trying to think out of the box here. This is an ancient security worry, for those familiar with the history of siege weaponry.

Who (pun not intended) can guess the current US regime’s response to the outbreak of a high-threat pathogen in the place most expected? Perhaps the title of this post gave away the answer.

Vox reporter Julia Belluz asks Salama the following:

The US pulled its Centers of Disease Control and Prevention workers out of Beni, the outbreak epicenter. They decided it was too dangerous for America’s best Ebola experts to be there — and it sounds like they are not coming back anytime soon. […] But I understand Canada, the UK, even nonprofits with US personnel, are sending people, and you have hundreds of WHO officials deployed. Is the US government an outlier?

This makes the American leadership appear weak and feckless; and Salama replies very diplomatically:

The US government is the main country that has had constraints.

Japan has strict anti-authoritarian rules, as a relic of occupation by the US military after WWII. This has just manifested in corporate security, leading to an investigation and incarceration of Nissan’s Chairman

The chief executive revealed that a whistle-blower had passed information to Nissan’s auditors who then began a wider investigation. The evidence was then passed to Japan’s public prosecutor.

The story calls out anti-authoritarianism rules, very specifically

Facing the press alone, the chief executive added that he felt the mistake had come after allowing a concentration of power in one individual. Saikawa said the misconduct went on for “a long period” and it looked like Kelly had been allowed to take control of internal operations, as he had the direct backing of Ghosn.

I’ve written before about recent history and why Japanese resistance to authoritarianism is so interesting to study. A key turning point was the 1931 Mukden Incident, which allowed a small cabal to solidify control and foment war.

While it was clear Japanese militant leaders had used false-pretense to breach the post-WWI agreements on peace, nonaggression and disarmament they also faced little tangible resistance and they flatly refused to stand down.

Occupation of Manchuria by Japan soon expanded in threat; the stage was set for escalation into the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and destabilization/expansion into the region, which eventually led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Japan and Germany have essentially become time-capsules of US theories in anti-authoritarian thinking, due to the occupation and lessons forced upon them post-1945.

Meanwhile the US clearly has drifted away from the lessons it used to teach, letting the CSO of Facebook roam freely instead of going to jail after years of alleged acts of misconduct far worse than the Chairman of Nissan.

Just this week it was revealed on top of all the other breaches during the CSO tenure that Facebook engineers in 2018 were writing passwords to the URL and storing them, which is literally the worst possible management of security.

This is a rather jarring and basic security lapse for Instagram and Facebook, which hasn’t done much at all to prove to users it knows how to handle sensitive data. It certainly raises the question of other security practices…

Facebook’s CSO literally had no real security management experience other than a short attempt at Yahoo (also massively mis-mangaged and breached at record levels). He now arguably is the security industry’s face of executive fraud. How long before wanted posters go up for his arrest?

The Seth Meyers show does a pretty good job capturing the unapologetic racism of white supremacist candidates in America

A crucial bit of analysis is missing, however.

You might, like most rational people watching this video, wonder why someone saying “a public hanging, I’d be on the front row” (death penalty) suddenly can pivot to saying anti-abortion platitudes as their preferred defense against criticism. I mean on the one hand they’re saying lynchings are like their favorite spectator sport, while on the other hand they’re saying not a single life can be ended.

Isn’t this an obvious contradiction?

Alas, historic context explains the white supremacist perspective here, such as why they see no contradiction in carelessly taking lives while telling others lives can’t be taken under any circumstances.

Slavery was an industry of owning humans and birth was the means of production and enrichment for the slave owners. They did not give slaves any rights, let alone choices, when they demanded that children be born as quickly as possible without medical care, to the detriment and death of black women.

The historic white supremacist attitude towards maternity rights persists in America even to this day.

The ongoing maternal mortality crisis disproportionately affects black women, who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes are three to four times more likely than white women to die from complications related to pregnancy.

Why is this happening? The medical field is seeking answers, but one of the most obvious solutions is ensuring black women’s access to quality, unbiased medical care.

And then these same owners of humans causing high rates of maternal mortality also claimed to reserve the right to kill humans indiscriminately, murdering whomever they wanted, and brag about their desire for front row seating in any lynchings. See the consistency in the dehumanization?

I’ve written about this before, and in particular how Abraham Lincoln described the situation in 1838 America:

Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers; till, dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.

Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim was only sacrificed there. His story is very short; and is, perhaps, the most highly tragic, of any thing of its length, that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man, by the name of McIntosh, was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world.

Such are the effects of mob law; and such are the scenes, becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order; and the stories of which, have even now grown too familiar, to attract any thing more, than an idle remark.

I hope that gives better context and some needed analysis for why the white supremacist candidate Hyde-Smith today is saying “a public hanging, I’d be on the front row”; bringing up lynchings in her campaign to prevent the first black senator to represent the state since the Reconstruction era.

The story gets worse, far worse, however. Several people have pointed out to me that very large silicon valley technology companies are funding these white supremacist platforms.

U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) was caught on tape “joking” about her willingness to attend a lynching at a campaign event in November. […] One corporation that apparently was unbothered by Hyde-Smith’s remarks: Google. On Tuesday, Google donated $5000 to Hyde-Smith’s campaign, according to documents filed with the FEC.

This is no joke. Google after a widely-discussed lynching statement threw campaign donations at a white supremacist candidate. One might be tempted to think this is a one-off, a strange coincidence. However, investigators already have pointed out that Google is funding an even more well known white supremacist candidate:

Google previously donated $10,000 to the Making America Prosperous PAC, the leadership PAC of Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX). Making America Prosperous gave Congressman Steve King (R-IA) a cash infusion after other corporate donors abandoned him over his ties to white nationalism.

After other corporate donors had abandoned candidates with a white nationalism (Nazi) platform, and after a candidate made comments in favor of lynchings, Google apparently sent funds to help the white supremacists win.

Recently, as I met with many Chief Security Officers (CSO) to discuss cross-cloud security architectures, I heard several times from different leaders “do not mention Google in this room, they are not an option”. It seemed so harsh. And it came without detail, as If I already should know. I had to learn more, to find out what was driving the hard line eliminating the giant brand.

Turns out it is…ethics.

I had figred it related to the history of lying about privacy controls and failing to monitor staff abusing access to private data. That was bad, for sure, and Google hasn’t done the best job clearing their name. It also isn’t the sort of thing that writes off a brand entirely, as controls evolve and trust returns through operations monitoring.

However, that wasn’t the only issue. People sent me stories about Google choosing to fund campaigns despite widespread (easily searchable) condemnation. I mean Steve King…come on Google, why would you fund him? Even AT&T dumped that unrepentant racist. There seems to be a timing issue for a brand claiming to be the most up-to-date source of knowledge.

And it gets worse again. Google now has been caught in further controversy after an attempt to claim ignorance and make a “we do not condone” explanation for their contribution.

Google claimed it made the donation on Nov. 2—the same day Hyde-Smith made her comments. “This contribution was made on November 2nd before Senator Hyde-Smith’s remarks became public on November 11th,” Google representatives said. “While we support candidates who promote pro-growth policies for business and technology, we do not condone these remarks and would not have made such a contribution had we known about them.” If Google’s claim were true, that would mean the Hyde-Smith campaign filed a false report. It would also mean the campaign failed to report on time. Federal law requires than any donations made within 20 days of an election be reported within 48 hours.

“We do not condone” is not “we condemn”. Historians again are needed here, because context helps explain what’s really going on.

Mississippi had the highest rate of lynchings of African Americans, which of course was linked inexorably to economics.

Once black were given their freedom, many people felt that the freed blacks were getting away with too much freedom and felt they needed to be controlled. Mississippi had the highest lynchings from 1882-1968 with 581.

As you can see in the quoted writings of Lincoln above, citing mob law before the civil war, white supremacist candidates always have and always are positioning lynchings as “pro-growth policies for business and technology”. It is more plainly described here:

March 1892, a white mob lynched three black men — Thomas Moss, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell — and left their mangled bodies in a field a mile north of downtown Memphis….their crime was their temerity. They dared to challenge white businessmen accustomed to having a monopoly on economic activity.

A Google inability to straightforwardly condemn such a statement about public hangings (see the redemption train video above), while further endorsing white nationalists as being pro-business and technology…should be more in the news. Or how did Lincoln put it?

…have even now grown too familiar, to attract any thing more, than an idle remark

At least I know a wide group of CSOs are monitoring the situation, as a function of deciding how and when to trust a cloud service provider that fails so hard at ethics.

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Update Nov 26, 2018:

Google is unmentioned among the companies distancing themselves further from the white supremacist campaign

Jaz Brisack, the first female student at the University of Mississippi to receive the prestigious Rhodes scholarship, called Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) a “white supremacist” in an interview with The Oxford Eagle on Sunday.

[…]

Groups including Major League Baseball, Walmart, AT&T, Leidos, Union Pacific and Boston Scientific have all asked for their donations to Hyde-Smith’s campaign to be returned.

Google does get a mention elsewhere, asking a day before the election that their contribution be returned.

Meanwhile in other news about this candidate:

• “Hyde-Smith Accepts $2,700 Donation from Notorious White Supremacist“
• Hyde-Smith is caught on tape saying voter-suppression is a good idea
• Hyde-Smith “was seen celebrating Confederate history at a museum in a 2014 Facebook post. In that photo, she’s wearing a Confederate soldier’s hat and holding a rifle, with the caption: ‘Mississippi history at its best!'”