May 2012

The United States is woefully unprepared to counter a “catastrophic cyber-attack” that's expected within 12 to 24 months, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) said.

The House has been doing its part, Chairman Rogers said, easily passing his cybersecurity bill last month while his own committee adopted its spending bill for fiscal 2013 by a unanimous 19-0 vote. But the White House, citing privacy concerns, has issued a veto threat against the legislation that would allow the government to inform private companies about impending cyber-attacks. “We are today involved in a cyber war,” Chairman Rogers said in remarks at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event marking the launch of The Hill's Global Affairs blog. “Our challenge is … can we prepare ourselves quickly enough?”

[Commentary] Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway acquired his hometown newspaper in January and just snapped up dozens more in a $142 million deal. This is supposed to be the fastest declining industry in America. What is Warren Buffett up to?

Here’s how he explains it: “In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper. The many locales served by the newspapers we are acquiring fall firmly in this mold and we are delighted they have found a permanent home with Berkshire Hathaway.”

But media analyst Ken Doctor calls it “a three corner pool shot that accomplishes several things at once.” Doctor notes that the deal includes an enormous loan and credit line to the newspapers’ former owner, Media General, in which Berkshire Hathaway will earn 10.5 percent. Buffett’s company also obtained stock warrants that will likely pay out handsomely as Media General works on becoming a full-time broadcasting company. But what of the newspapers themselves? Doctor says that Buffett got them for a steal, noting that they sold on average for about $2 million a pop — or the price of an expensive home in each of the towns where they’re printed. “In these communities, the local paper is the sole source of everyday news — from high school sports, local events or obituaries,” says Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and founder of digital subscription service, Press+. This lack of competition has not only meant a slower decline in their print operations, but also a longer time period to make the transition to digital. While some metropolitan papers have rushed in a panic from one ill-advised paywall strategy to another in an effort to stay alive, smaller papers have had the luxury of a wait-and-see approach. In the meantime, digital subscription strategies have become more refined.

Is Facebook worth the $100 billion or so its pending IPO suggests it is? Who the good gracious knows. But one thing we can all be certain about is how the social network has radically changed people's behavior and expectations online in the eight short years since it was a nary more than a twinkle in the eye of its baby-faced founder(s).

Those changes have had the monumental impact of facilitating the formation of entirely new industries and dramatically shifting the way brands market themselves online. There are things we do online today, that we take so much for granted that we forget that some of them didn't exist even as recently as two years ago. And others were so radical they inspired outright rebellions when they were first introduced. And yet all of these things are not only commonplace today, they are the presumed paradigms. To operate any differently would seem downright odd.

Relations between Facebook and Apple are a bit like those between the United States and China. The two companies, great powers in their own right, are neither friends, nor outright hostile toward each other.

When I asked someone who has known the principals at Facebook for years about how Apple and Facebook view each other, he e-mailed me back a litany of somewhat contradictory emotions, using expressions like “mutual respect,” “cold and distrustful,” “not friends” and wanting to “find a way to work together.” First, there are the obvious reasons that Apple and Facebook do not hate each other. It would be difficult to find two companies of their stature in the tech industry that compete less. Facebook does not make computers, an operating system, a tablet and, at least for now, a mobile phone. Apple does have a social network, Ping, but it is a narrowly focused service aimed at people who want to share their musical tastes on iTunes. No one at Apple would argue with a straight face that it’s meant to challenge Facebook, and Ping seems largely to have been forgotten by the company and the public.