G3 Level Solar Storms and Disruptions to Satellites and the Power Grid Increasing

Picture Credit: NOAA

IAI has dedicated some time recently to investigating long term economic threats to the U.S. economy in conjunction with recently becoming a Fellow at the American Center for Democracy. I have already written about the threat of cyberwarfare for ACD and they focus on this area in their Economic Warfare Institute. The preservation of independent policy making institutes like ACD is essential to protection of the First Amendment. For policy wonks, the linkage between economic threat events and totalitarianism was postulated by Fromm (1942) and Rickert (1998) who found that systemic changes in the economy led to declines in real incomes and increases in economic equality.

Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Cartwright, June 5th, 1824

Like Black Swan events in the stock market, economic threat events are infrequent in occurrence but have material consequences and usually involve economic losses. The same is true for weather / space events as the author of Black Swans and Antifragility, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, has pointed out recently. Statistician Taleb has extensive knowledge about risk management and has about written “ruin events” in a series of papers. He writes, “Our concern is with public policy. …Policy makers have a responsibility to avoid catastrophic harm for society as a whole; the focus is on the aggregate, not at the level of single individuals, and on global-systemic, not idiosyncratic, harm. This is the domain of collective ‘ruin’ problems.”

On Tuesday, October 25th, 2016, magnetically charged solar particles triggered a G3-level geomagnetic storm which threatened power grids, satellites and radio navigation systems, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). PJM Interconnection LLC, operator of the biggest U.S. power grid, and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) which manages high-voltage transmission lines across 15 U.S. states and one Canadian province, issued geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) warnings on Tuesday and MISO is conveniently running an Emergency Operating Procedure (EOP) Coordinating Workshop today.

Northern Lighthouse Project estimates that a strong G3 storm occurs 200 times in each 11 year solar cycle.

A G2 storm alone (our current state) affects RF radio propagation (shortwave communications) and high-latitude power systems which can cause voltage alarms, and long-duration storms may cause transformer damage. ore auroras are in the offing.  SpaceWeather.com warns that, “this solar wind stream is broad and fast; it is currently blowing 700+ km/s and is expected to influence our planet for some days to come.  High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras on Oct. 26-27.”

Based on the loss of instrument use in the 1950s due to “radioflash”, the British have studies electromagnetic pulses for a half century, as the Telegraph reports. In a recent  report (and summary) by the Royal Academy of Engineering into space weather and its potential impact, UK science and industry experts have analyzed the likely impact of the most extreme space weather on technology.

 

Picture Credit: Markets-S.Murray@SpaceWeather.com

Truly beautiful but tough on electronics, these auroras are forcing the Internet of Things (IoT) system developers (like IBM) to consider the impact of communication disruptions. And, more critical than having your fridge fail to order a new loaf of bread, blockchain networks operations are critical to the Internet of Value (IoV) or the ValueWeb. For the unintiatiated, IoT is becoming pervasive and is being embedded in buildings, the environment, automobiles, households and in everything that can host a sensor, as IBM broadcasts in this video.

“It’s not so much about the emergence of new technology, it’s the convergence—the ability to use sensors for everything in the world to basically be a computer, whether it’s your contact lens, your hospital bed, or a railway track.”

Harriet Green, General Manager,  IBM Watson Internet of Things, Commerce and Education

Some organizations are being left behind as GovLab points out in “Value and Vulnerability” that we, “encourage state CIOs to make IoT part of the enterprise architecture discussions on asset management and risk assessment and to develop an IoT roadmap. States must consider security, privacy, accessibility and standardization when crafting a roadmap for IoT.” Wise advice indeed…

Want to Innovate? Find Your Role Model !

 

Here at IAI- we spend a lot of time investigating innovations AND the people/teams behind them. In this inspiring video, motivational speaker Tony Robbins urges aspiring entrepreneurs to learn, live well and honestly, take care of yourself and your friends and community, and find your role model(s). Did you know that Tony was homeless early on but decided to go to libraries so that he could learn about business and fill his brain with ideas that he shares freely today? Did you know he had stage fright but now cheer-leads entrepreneurs to focus on your audience and declares, “the secret to living is giving.”

https://youtu.be/fA4oi33c4Cs

And Tony’s mentor was: Jim Rohn – founder of Adventures in Achievement.

 

Picture Credit: Flipboard

Tony highlights the youngest self-made woman to become a billionaire, Sara Blakely of Spanx, who started her business with $5,000 in savings. Forbe’s Kelly Caprino created a great series on Forbes called, “Entrepreneurial Women Rocking the World” in which Sara is profiled. Here’s a product evangelist – “Believe in your idea, trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to fail. It took me two years from the time I had the idea for Spanx until the time I had a product in hand ready to sell into stores. I must have heard the word “no” a thousand times. If you believe in your idea 100%, don’t let anyone stop you! Not being afraid to fail is a key part of the success of Spanx.”

Here are the top 10 lessons I learned from Sara’s journey from fax machine saleswoman to entrepreneurial superstar:

1)      Fail Big – Sara’s beloved father followed Wayne Dyer’s guidance in teaching his children the power of failing big.  Each day, her father would ask – “So, what did you fail at today.” And if there were no failures, Dad would be disappointed.  Focusing on failing big  (which startup guru Tom Peters championed) allowed Sara to understand that failure is not an outcome, but involves a lack of trying — not stretching yourself far enough out of your comfort zone and attempting to be more than you were the day before.   Failing big was a good thing.

2)      Visualize it – Sara is a big fan of “visualizing” your big goal, in specific, concrete ways.  She saw herself clearly on the Oprah TV show 15 years before it happened.  She simply knew it would happen.  She’d see in her mind’s eye sitting on the couch with Oprah having an exciting conversation, and wondered, “What are we talking about?”  The rest was just “filling in the blanks” to get there.

3)      Don’t share your fragile idea with the world too soon.  Sara kept her idea of making a fabulous new undergarment for women under wraps for an entire year while working on developing the prototype.  Only after she was 100% committed to it and ready to launch, did she sit her friends down and explain her new direction.  Sara explains that ideas are vulnerable, fragile things.

4)      Don’t take no for an answer. Sara reached out to slews of manufacturers and lawyers to help her patent her idea and create a successful prototype.  In every conversation she had with potential manufacturers, she was asked three questions: 1) Who are you? 2) Who are you with? 3) and Who is backing you?  When the answers to these three questions remained, “Sara Blakely,” no one wanted to take a chance on her, until one manufacturer called her back and said “OK.”  Why? Because he had gone home and told his daughters about the idea, and they said, “It’s brilliant!”

5)      Hire people you like and trust (even if they don’t know a great deal about what you need them to do).  Sara hired a head of Product Development and a PR director who had been friends and supporters from the beginning.  Neither knew anything about the functional areas they were hired to oversee, but Sara trusted they’d be fabulous at their new roles, and they were.

6)      You don’t have to go in order. Sara’s passionate commitment to her new Spanx product was so fierce, she just tackled each task in the development and marketing journey as they came up, not necessarily in the best order for a smooth launch.  She landed a Neiman Marcus deal involving placement of the product in seven stores, before figuring out how to mass produce.

7)      You CAN figure it out – you have the ability.  Sara knew absolutely nothing about women’s undergarments, patenting a new product, manufacturing, marketing, product development, website development, online commerce, and more.  But that didn’t stop her. She researched what she needed to, hired out what she couldn’t do, and marched forward with undying commitment and energy.

8)      You can build a billion dollar business starting with $5,000.  Sara had only $5,000 in savings on that fateful day when she cut the feet off of her stockings in order to wear them under her white pants for a more flattering look (and thus, realized the world needed a new undergarment product that would be comfortable yet flattering to the female form).

9)      Don’t worry about the outer “stuff” until the time is right. Sara worked tirelessly from her apartment creating her product, avoiding investing in outside office space or other marketing and business tools until the product had taken off.  Anything that wasn’t essential to building the product and getting the name out there simply wasn’t a priority.

10)   Breaking the mold is a good thing.  When Sara began to research undergarments for women and how they’d been made for the last 50 years, she was astonished.  From the absurd sizing protocols (only one average waist measure was used on all the products, regardless of the size of the garment), to how products were tested (on manikins not real people), Sara saw that the undergarment industry needed a female perspective – insights from a real woman wearing these items.

Sara is not afraid to be a rebel or thank her mom last Mother’s Day. But keep grounded, unlike James Dean in the iconic 1955 movie – “Rebel without a Cause“.

Reach out to your family and friends JUST BECAUSE!

#CallYourMom – http://sarasnotebook.com/2016/04/19/happy-mothers-day/

Sara, Alexandra and their moms Ellen & Elsa talk entrepreneurship, motherhood
and the sneaky things they got away with as kids (or so they thought!).

There are countless inspiring characters from peacemakers like Martin Luther King and Gandhi, intellects like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, sports heroes such as Lou Gehrig and David Ortiz (go Red Sox), etc. but find whomever inspires you !