A lot of people stress the importance of information, and the value attached to it. New economic models are often based on leveraging access to big data with AI ability to process it. Both together, it can provide optimized solutions to their clients. That is the model communicated for the world to hear. The one easily available (with internet how-to and all); the one media economists are publicly debating about. But that’s not the one being discussed behind closed door, at least behind the closed door I’ve accessed. The target today as it was before (and new technology hasn’t fundamentally changed that) is to value secrecy!
Secrecy as source of value
Information has value, no doubt about that. However, accessing, collecting and processing a wide range of data is very demanding. That requires a rather large and exposed structure, that is piling up resources (time, material & human) in the process. All this can quickly weight against financial efficiency (you can refer to for the efficiency formula from Humanitis episode), making the whole venture leaping into the future (maybe), but at loss (most of times). Bubble, bubble, bubble… pop!
So information has value, and keeping it concealed makes accessing it even more valuable. So the real discussions nowadays are about privacy of information and data: how to ensure it for ourselves, how to breach others, and how to monetize the result. Legality is often an afterthought. The boundary between insiders’ illegal behaviors and smart companies’ competitive advantage being very very very thin at times.
Back to classics, lost retreats
Old time solutions to secure information are obsolete, providing risks and opportunities. From a legal point, NDA (non-disclosure agreements) or professional covenants (lawyer or doctor) are no longer effective. Insiders, reporters (albeit less and less) or whistle blowers (who sometimes benefit from specific laws on their side) often disregard such legal constraints.
From a tech point of view, cyber security battles pirates, and they will forever. Sometimes guards win, sometime they loose. Banks (HSBC US data breach article on Financial Times), government (a top 10 list from Digital Guardian), or large internet companies (Facebook data breach article from Forbes), all have seen their database breached at some point, and they will be again. And dropping all your electronic devices outside of meeting room is pointless; IoT (internet of thing) progresses have connected the table, chairs, windows, blackboard and pen already, exposing them to interference (even Tesla cars and kids’ dolls were hijacked…).
From a social perspective, information circles can be breached too. To mitigate the risk, interconnected interests solidify mutual trust. That’s partly why the same group of people are sometimes monopolizing top positions, it simply is safer in terms of information sharing. Unfair, unethical, but safer…
Solitude & secluded space
And so today Effy (which we already know does not deal with moral or legal hurdles) found one of the few place she could use to efficiently share valuable information without being disturbed. A yacht in Bora Bora lagoon, or white beach in Mauritius island could have worked too…
G.M.