Short Takes – 6-5-23

Salami Slicing, Boiled Frogs, and Russian Red Lines. SAMF.Substack.com post. An interesting look at the geopolitics of the Ukraine war. Pull quote: “It is now Russia’s deterrence that is losing credibility as they continue to be caught out by a series of incremental Ukrainian moves for which they have few answers. A recent Washington Post story notes that the Biden Administration has become less worried about Russia’s red lines because Putin ‘has not followed through on promises to punish the West for providing weapons to Ukraine.’ As his bluffing became evident, Western leaders gained in confidence. Of course this confidence carries its own risks if one day Putin decides that he dare not bluff any more, but for now it is the Russian salami that is being sliced in ways that leave it frustrated and thwarted.”

A Week With the Wild Children of the A.I. Boom. NYTimes.com article. Long piece. Pull quote: “As two analysts at N.E.A., an investment firm, put it in a recent report, generative A.I. may not be as disruptive to established businesses, and beneficial to start-ups, as previous big shifts in tech platforms. “Unlike with the prior shifts, incumbents do not need to re-architect their entire products to adopt this new platform shift,” the analysts wrote. “In addition, this shift favors companies with bigger, proprietary data sets which can give an edge to more established companies.””

OpenAI Unveils Million-Dollar Cybersecurity Grant Program. SecurityWeek.com article. Pull quote: “The company is also looking to fund projects that assist network or device forensics, automatically patch vulnerabilities, and optimize patch management processes to improve prioritization, scheduling, and deployment of security updates.”