NSO Group: When Marketing and Confidence Mix with Specialized Software
May 13, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zellenials.
Some specialized software must remain known only to a small number of professionals specifically involved in work related to national security. This is a dinobaby view, and I am not going to be swayed with “information wants to be free” arguments or assertions about the need to generate revenue to make the investors “whole.” Abandoning secrecy and common sense for glittering generalities and MBA mumbo jumbo is ill advised.
I read “Meta Wins $168 Million in Damages from Israeli Cyberintel Firm in Whatsapp Spyware Scandal.” The write up reports:
Meta won nearly $168 million in damages Tuesday from Israeli cyberintelligence company NSO Group, capping more than five years of litigation over a May 2019 attack that downloaded spyware on more than 1,400 WhatsApp users’ phones.
The decision is likely to be appealed, so the “won” is not accurate. What is interesting is this paragraph:
[Yaron] Shohat [NSO’s CEO] declined an interview outside the Ron V. Dellums Federal Courthouse, where the court proceedings were held.
From my point of view, fewer trade shows, less marketing, and a lower profile should be action items for Mr. Shohat, the NSO Group’s founders, and the firm’s lobbyists.
I watched as NSO Group became the poster child for specialized software. I was not happy as the firm’s systems and methods found their way into publicly accessible Web sites. I reacted negatively as other specialized software firms (these I will not identify) began describing their technology as similar to NSO Group’s.
The desperation of cyber intelligence, specialized software firms, and — yes — trade show operators is behind the crazed idea of making certain information widely available. I worked in the nuclear industry in the early 1970s. From Day One on the job, the message was, “Don’t talk.” I then shifted to a blue chip consulting firm working on a wide range of projects. From Day One on that job, the message was, “Don’t talk.” When I set up my own specialized research firm, the message I conveyed to my team members was, “Don’t talk.”
Then it seemed that everyone wanted to “talk”. Marketing, speeches, brochures, even YouTube videos distributed information that was never intended to be made widely available. Without operating context and quite specific knowledge, jazzy pitches that used terms like “zero day vulnerability” and other crazy sales oriented marketing lingo made specialized software something many people without operating context and quite specific knowledge “experts.”
I see this leakage of specialized software information in the OSINT blurbs on LinkedIn. I see it in social media posts by people with weird online handles like those used in Top Gun films. I see it when I go to a general purpose knowledge management meeting.
Now the specialized software industry is visible. In my opinion, that is not a good thing. I hope Mr. Shohat and others in the specialized software field continue the “decline to comment” approach. Knock off the PR. Focus on the entities authorized to use specialized software. The field is not for computer whiz kids, eGame players, and wanna be intelligence officers.
Do your job. Don’t talk. Do I think these marketing oriented 21st century specialized software companies will change their behavior? Answer: Oh, sure.
PS. I hope the backstory for Facebook / Meta’s interest in specialized software becomes part of a public court record. I am curious is what I have learned matches up to the court statements. My hunch is that some social media executives have selective memories. That’s a useful skill I have heard.
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2025
China Smart, US Dumb: Twisting the LLM Daozi
May 12, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zellenials.
That hard-hitting technology information service Venture Beat published an interesting article. Its title is “Alibaba ZeroSearch Lets AI Learn to Google Itself — Slashing Training Costs by 88 Percent.” The main point of the write up, in my opinion, is that Chinese engineers have done something really “smart.” The knife at the throat of US smart software companies is cost. The money fires will flame out unless more dollars are dumped into the innovation furnaces of smart software.
The Venture Beat story makes the point that “could dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of training AI systems to search for information, eliminating the need for expensive commercial search engine APIs altogether.”
Oh, oh.
This is smart. Buring cash in pursuit of a fractional improvement is dumb, well, actually, stupid, if the write up’s inforamtion is accurate.
The Venture Beat story says:
The technique, called “ZeroSearch,” allows large language models (LLMs) to develop advanced search capabilities through a simulation approach rather than interacting with real search engines during the training process. This innovation could save companies significant API expenses while offering better control over how AI systems learn to retrieve information.
Is this a Snorkel variant hot from Stanford AI lab?
The write up does not delve into the synthetic data short cut to smart software. After some mumbo jumbo, the write up points out the meat of the “innovation”:
The cost savings are substantial. According to the researchers’ analysis, training with approximately 64,000 search queries using Google Search via SerpAPI would cost about $586.70, while using a 14B-parameter simulation LLM on four A100 GPUs costs only $70.80 — an 88% reduction.
Imagine. A dollar in cost becomes $0.12. If accurate, what should a savvy investor do? Pump money into an outfit like OpenAI or the Xai- type entity, or think harder about the China-smart solution?
Venture Beat explains the implication of the alleged cost savings:
The impact could be substantial for the AI industry.
No kidding?
The Venture Beat analysts add this observation:
The irony is clear: in teaching AI to search without search engines, Alibaba may have created a technology that makes traditional search engines less necessary for AI development. As these systems become more self-sufficient, the technology landscape could look very different in just a few years.
Yep, irony. Free transformer technology. Free Snorkle technology. Free kinetic into the core of the LLM money furnace.
If true, the implications are easy to outline. If bogus, the China Smart, US Dumb trope still captured ink and will be embedded in some smart software’s increasingly frequent hallucinatory outputs. At which point, the China Smart, US Dumb information gains traction and becomes “fact” to some.
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2025
Google, Its AI Search, and Web Site Traffic
May 12, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
I read “Google’s AI Search Switch Leaves Indie Websites Unmoored.” I think this is a Gen Y way of saying, “No traffic for you, bozos.” Of course, as a dinobaby, I am probably wrong.
Let’s look at the write up. It says:
many publishers said they either need to shut down or revamp their distribution strategy. Experts this effort could ultimately reduce the quality of information Google can access for its search results and AI answers.
Okay, but this is just one way to look at Google’s delicious decision.
May I share some of my personal thoughts about what this traffic downshift means for those blue-chip consultant Googlers in charge:
First, in the good old days before the decline began in 2006, Google indexed bluebirds (sites that had to be checked for new content or “deltas” on an accelerated heart beat. Examples were whitehouse.gov (no, not the whitehouse.com porn site). Then there were sparrows. These plentiful Web sites could be checked on a relaxed schedule. I mean how often do you visit the US government’s National Railway Retirement Web site if it still is maintained and online? Yep, the correct answer is, “Never.” There there were canaries. These were sites which might signal a surge in popularity. They were checked on a heart beat that ensured the Google wouldn’t miss a trend and fail to sell advertising to those lucky ad buyers.
So, bluebirds, canaries, and sparrows.
This shift means that Google can reduce costs by focusing on bluebirds and canaries. The sparrows — the site operated by someone’s grandmother to sell home made quilts — won’t get traffic unless the site operator buys advertising. It’s pay to play. If a site is not in the Google index, it just may not exist. Sure there are alternative Web search systems, but none, as far as I know, are close to the scope of the “old” Google in 2006.
Second, by dropping sparrows or pinging them once in a blue moon will reduce the costs of crawling, indexing, and doing the behind-the-scenes work that consumes Google cash at an astonishing rate. Therefore, the myth of indexing the “Web” is going to persist, but the content of the index is not going to be “fresh.” This is the concept that some sites like whitehouse.gov have important information that must be in search results. Non-priority sites just disappear or fade. Eventually the users won’t know something is missing, which is assisted by the decline in education for some Google users. The top one percent knows bad or missing information. The other 99 percent? Well, good luck.
Third, the change means that publishers will have some options. [a] They can block Google’s spider and chase the options. How’s Yandex.ru sound? [b] They can buy advertising and move forward. I suggest these publishers ask a Google advertising representative what the minimum spend is to get traffic. [c] Publishers can join together and try to come up with a joint effort to resist the increasingly aggressive business actions of Google. Do you have a Google button on your remote? Well, you will. [d] Be innovative. Yeah, no comment.
Net net: This item about the impact of AI Overviews is important. Just consider what Google gains and the pickle publishers and other Web sites now find themselves enjoying.
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2025
US Cloud Dominance? China Finds a Gap and Cuts a Path to the Middle East
May 11, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zellenials.
‘How China Is Gaining Ground in the Middle East Cloud Computing Race” provides a summary of what may be a destabilizing move in the cloud computing market. The article says:
Huawei and Alibaba are outpacing established U.S. providers by aligning with government priorities and addressing data sovereignty concerns.
The “U.S. providers” are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle. The Chinese companies making gains in the Middle East include Alibaba, Huawei, and TenCent. Others are likely to follow.
The article notes:
Alibaba Cloud expanded strategically by opening data centers in the UAE in 2022 and Saudi Arabia last year. It entered the Saudi market by setting up a venture with STC. The Saudi Cloud Computing Company will support the kingdom’s Vision 2030 goals, under which the government hopes to diversify the economy away from oil dependency.
What’s China’s marketing angle? The write up identifies alignment and more sensitivity to “data sovereignty” in key Middle Eastern countries. But the secret sauce is, according the the write up:
A key differentiator has been the Chinese providers’ approach to artificial intelligence. While U.S. companies have been slow to adopt AI solutions in the region, Chinese providers have aggressively embedded AI into their offerings at a time when Gulf nations are pursuing AI leadership. During the Huawei Global AI Summit last year, Huawei Cloud’s chief technology officer, Bruno Zhang, showed how its AI could cut Saudi hospital diagnostic times by 40% using localized Arabic language models — a tangible benefit that theoretical AI platforms from Western providers couldn’t match.
This statement may or may not be 100 percent correct. For this blog post, let’s assume that it is close enough for horse shoes. First, the US cloud providers are positioned as “slow”. What happened to the go fast angle. Wasn’t Microsoft a “leader” in AI, catching Google napping in its cubicle? Google declared some sort of an emergency and the AI carnival put up its midway.
Second, the Gulf “nations” wanted AI leadership, so Huawei presented a “tangible benefit” in the form of a diagnostic time reduction and localized Arabic language models. I know that US cloud providers provide translation services, but the pointy end of the stick shoved into the couch potato US cloud services was “localized language models.”
Furthermore, the Chinese providers provide cloud services and support on premises plus cloud functions. The “hybrid” angle matches the needs of some Middle Eastern information systems professionals’ ideas. The write up says:
The hybrid approach plays directly to the strengths of Chinese providers, who recognized this market preference early and built their regional strategy around it.
The Chinese vendors provide an approach that matches what prospects want. Seems simple and obvious. However, the article includes a quote that hints at another positive for the Chinese cloud players; to wit:
“The Chinese companies are showing that success in the Middle East depends as much on trust and cooperation as it does on computing power,” Luis Bravo, senior research analyst at Texas-based data center Hawk…
For me the differentiator may not be price, hybrid willingness, or localization. The killer word is trust. If the Gulf States do not trust the US vendors, China is likely to displace yesterday’s “only game in town” crowd.
Yep, trust. A killer benefit in some deals.
Stephen E Arnold, May 11, 2025
Microsoft AI: Little Numbers and Mucho Marketing
May 10, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby who gets revved up with buzzwords and baloney.
I am confused. The big AI outfits have spent and are spending big bucks on [a] marketing, [b] data centers, [c] marketing, [d] chips, [e] reorganizations, and [f] marketing. I think I have the main cost centers, but I may have missed one. Yeah, I did. Marketing.
Has the AI super machine run into some problems? Thanks, MidJourney, you were online today unlike OpenAI.
What is AI doing? It is definitely selling consulting services. Some wizards are using it to summarize documents because that takes a human time to do. You know: Reading, taking notes, then capturing the juicy bits. Let AI do that. And customer support? Yes, much cheaper some say than paying humans to talk to a mere customer.
Imagine my surprise when I read “Microsoft’s Big AI Hire Can’t Match OpenAI.” Microsoft’s AI leader among AI leaders, according to the write up, “hasn’t delivered the turnaround he was hired to bring.” Microsoft caught the Google by surprise a couple of years ago, caused a Googley Code Red or Yellow or whatever, and helped launch the “AI is the next big thing innovators have been waiting for.”
The write up asserts:
At Microsoft’s annual executive huddle last month, the company’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users. On the same slide was another line showing ChatGPT’s growth over the same period, arching ever upward toward 400 million weekly users. OpenAI’s iconic chatbot was soaring, while Microsoft’s best hope for a mass-adoption AI tool was idling.
Keep in mind that Google suggested it had 1.5 billion users of its Gemini service, and (I think) Google implied that its AI is the quantumly supreme smart software. I may have that wrong and Google’s approach just wins chess, creates new drugs, and suggests that one can glue cheese on pizza. I may have these achievements confused, but I am an 80 year old dinobaby and easily confused these days.
The write up also contains some information I found a bit troubling; to wit:
And at this point, Microsoft is just not in the running to build a model that can compete with the best from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and even xAI. The projects that people have mentioned to me feel incremental, as opposed to leapfrogging the competition.
One can argue that Microsoft does not have to be in the big leagues. The company usually takes three or more releases to get a feature working. (How about those printers that don’t work?) The number of Softie software users is big. Put the new functionality in a release and — bingo! — market leadership. That SharePoint is a wonderful content management system. Just ask some of the security team in the Israeli military struggling with a “squadron” fumble.
Several observations:
- Microsoft’s dialing back some data center action may be a response to the under performance of its AI is the future push. If not, then maybe Microsoft has just pulled a Bob or a Clippy?
- I am not sure that the payoffs for other AI leaders’ investments are going to grab the brass ring or produce a winning lottery ticket. So many people desperately want AI to deliver dump trucks of gold dust to their cubicles that the neediness is palpable. AI is — it must be — the next big thing.
- Users are finding that for some use cases, AI is definitely a winner. College students use it to make more free time for hanging out and using TikTok-type services. Law firms find that AI is good enough to track down obscure cases that can be used in court as long as a human who knows the legal landscape checks the references before handing them over to a judge who can use an ATM machine and a mobile phone for voice calls. For many applications, the hallucination issue looms large.
- China’s free smart software models work reasonably well and have ignited such diverse applications as automated pig butchering and proving that cheaper CPUs and GPUs work in a “good enough” way just for less money.
I don’t want to pick on Microsoft, but I want to ask a question, “Is this the first of the big technology companies hungry and thirsty for the next big thing starting to find out that AI may not deliver?”
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2025
IBM AI Study: Would The Research Report Get an A in Statistics 202?
May 9, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zellenials.
IBM, reinvigorated with its easy-to-use, backwards-compatible, AI-capable mainframe released a research report about AI. Will these findings cause the new IBM AI-capable mainframe to sell like Jeopardy / Watson “I won” T shirts?
Perhaps.
The report is “Five Mindshifts to Supercharge Business Growth.” It runs a mere 40 pages and requires no more time than configuring your new LinuxONE Emperor 5 mainframe. Well, the report can be absorbed in less time, but the Emperor 5 is a piece of cake as IBM mainframes go.
Here are a few of the findings revealed by IBM in its IBM research report;
AI can improve customer “experience”. I think this means that customer service becomes better with AI in it. Study says, “72 percent of those in the sample agree.”
Turbulence becomes opportunity. 100 percent of the IBM marketers assembling the report agree. I am not sure how many CEOs are into this concept; for example, Hollywood motion picture firms or Georgia Pacific which closed a factory and told workers not to come in tomorrow.
Here’s a graphic from the IBM study. Do you know what’s missing? I will give you five seconds as Arvin Haddad, the LA real estate influencer says in his entertaining YouTube videos:
The answer is, “Increasing revenues, boosting revenues, and keeping stakeholders thrilled with their payoffs.” The items listed by IBM really don’t count, do they?
“Embrace AI-fueled creative destruction.” Yep, another 100 percenter from the IBM team. No supporting data, no verification, and not even a hint of proof that AI-fueled creative destruction is doing much more than making lots of venture outfits and some of the US AI leaders is improving their lives. That cash burn could set the forest on fire, couldn’t it? Answer: Of course not.
I must admit I was baffled by this table of data:
Accelerate growth and efficiency goes down with generative AI. (Is Dr. Gary Marcus right?). Enhanced decision making goes up with generative AI. Are the decisions based on verifiable facts or hallucinated outputs? Maybe busy executives in the sample choose to believe what AI outputs because a computer like the Emperor 5 was involved. Maybe “easy” is better than old-fashioned problem solving which is expensive, slow, and contentious. “Just let AI tell me” is a more modern, streamlined approach to decision making in a time of uncertainty. And the dotted lines? Hmmm.
On page 40 of the report, I spotted this factoid. It is tiny and hard to read.
The text says, “50 percent say their organization has disconnected technology due to the pace of recent investments.” I am not exactly sure what this means. Operative words are “disconnected” and “pace of … investments.” I would hazard an interpretation: “Hey, this AI costs too much and the payoff is just not obvious.”
I wish to offer some observations:
- IBM spent some serious money designing this report
- The pagination is in terms of double page spreads, so the “study” plus rah rah consumes about 80 pages if one were to print it out. On my laser printer the pages are illegible for a human, but for the designers, the approach showcases the weird ice cubes, the dotted lines, and allows important factoids to be overlooked
- The combination of data (which strike me as less of a home run for the AI fan and more of a report about AI friction) and flat out marketing razzle dazzle is intriguing. I would have enjoyed sitting in the meetings which locked into this approach. My hunch is that when someone thought about the allegedly valid results and said, “You know these data are sort of anti-AI,” then the others in the meeting said, “We have to convert the study into marketing diamonds.” The result? The double truck, design-infused, data tinged report.
Good work, IBM. The study will definitely sell truckloads of those Emperor 5 mainframes.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2025
Google: Making Users Cross Their Eyes in Confusion
May 9, 2025
No AI, just a dinobaby watching the world respond to the tech bros.
I read “Don’t Make It Like Google.” The article points out that Google’s “control” extends globally. The company’s approach to software and design are ubiquitous. People just make software like Google because it seems “right.”
The author of the essay says:
Developers frequently aim to make things “like Google” because it feels familiar and, seemingly, the right way to do things. In the past, this was an implicit influence, but now it’s direct: Google became the platform for web applications (Chrome) and mobile applications (Android). It also created a framework for human-machine interaction: Material Design. Now, “doing it like Google” isn’t just desirable; it’s necessary.
Regulators in the European Union have not figured out how to respond to this type of alleged “monopoly.”
The author points out:
Most tech products now look indistinguishable, just a blobby primordial mess of colors.
Why? The author provides an answer:
Google’s actual UI & UX design is terrible. Whether mass-market or enterprise, web or mobile, its interfaces are chaotic and confusing. Every time I use Google Drive or the G Suite admin console, I feel lost. Neither experience nor intuition helps—I feel like an old man seeing a computer for the first time.
I quite like the reference to the author’s feeling like an “old man seeing a computer for the first time.” As a dinobaby, I find Google’s approach to making functions available — note, I am going to use a dinobaby term — stupid. Simple functions to me are sorting emails by sender and a keyword. I have not figured out how to do this in Gmail. I have given up on Google Maps. I have zero clue how to access the “old” street view with a basic map on a mobile device. Hey, am I the only person in an unfamiliar town trying to locate a San Jose-type office building in a tan office park? I assume I am.
The author points out:
Instead of prioritizing objectively good user experiences, the more profitable choice is often to mimic Google’s design. Not because developers are bad or lazy. Not because users enjoy clunky interfaces. But because it “makes sense” from the perspective of development costs and marketing. It’s tricky to praise Apple while criticizing Google because where Google has clumsy interfaces, Apple has bugs and arbitrary restrictions. But if we focus purely on interface design, Apple demonstrates how influence over users and developers can foster generations of well-designed products. On average, an app in Apple’s ecosystem is more polished and user-friendly than one in Google’s.
I am not sure that Apple is that much better than Google, but for me, the essay makes clear that giant US technology companies shape the user’s reality. The way information is presented and what expert users learn may not be appropriate for most people. I understand that these companies have to have a design motif or template. I understand that big companies have “experts” who determine what users do and want.
The author of the essay says:
We’ve become accustomed to the unintuitive interfaces of washing machines and microwaves. A new washing machine may be quieter, more efficient, and more aesthetically pleasing, yet its dials and icons still feel alien; or your washing machine now requires an app. Manufacturers have no incentive to improve this aspect—they just do it “like the Google of their industry.” And the “Google” of any industry inevitably gets worse over time.
I disagree. I think that making interfaces impossible is a great thing. Now here’s my reasoning: Who wants to expend energy figuring out a “better way.” The name of the game is to get eyeballs. Looking like Google or any of the big technology companies means that one just rolls over and takes what these firms offer as a default. Mind control and behavior conditioning is much easier and ultimately more profitable than approaching a problem from the user’s point of view. Why not define what a user gets, make it difficult or impossible to achieve a particular outcome, and force the individual to take what is presented as the one true way.
That makes business sense.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2025
Stanford University Students and Their Entrepreneurial Drive
May 9, 2025
Signal is useful for more than spreading state secrets. One enterprising resident of the San Francisco Bay Area used the encrypted messaging service for a different shady endeavor. SFGate reports, “Stanford Grad Sentenced for ‘DoorDash-Style’ Drug Trafficking Service.” 31-year old Natalie Marie Gonzalez was sentenced to over four years in federal prison for leading the operation. She and three co-conspirators were first indicted in 2023 after a raid turned up almost a kilogram of fentanyl, about seven kilograms of cocaine, some ketamine, methamphetamine masquerading as Adderall, and other illegal drugs. That is quite the selection. The service included creative measures designed to hide the fact that meetups were actually drug deals. Reporter Madilynne Medina describes the operation:
“The drug trafficking service operated from April to September, 2023. According to the attorney’s office, customers would place orders from ‘a menu of drugs for sale’ through the encrypted messaging system Signal. Orders required a $300 order minimum for the delivery, and Gonzalez paid her co-conspirators to work as drivers. Per the criminal complaint, an undercover agent first used the service to order cocaine and 2,000 fake Adderall pills that contained meth. Gonzalez instructed the agent to ‘hop in’ the car for a short ‘‘‘Uber” ride around the block’ to cover up the drug transaction when the driver arrived with the delivery on March 29, 2023. The agent then made multiple other purchases. During one of the sales in July 2023, the agent was even given the option to play with a dog to cover up the drug deal, the complaint shows. According to the agent, Gonzalez said her customers were ‘a lot of students and young professionals.’”
Ah, modern technology. Four years in prison is no fun but, as Medina reports, the maximum penalty Gonzalaz faced was 20 years and a $1 million fine. Let us hope she finds more above-board uses for her innovation once released. Stanford University is an interesting institution: Synthetic data and synthetic contraband. Will the individual get to rub shoulders with the former Stanford president who resigned due to research irregularities. Pacesetters indeed.
Cynthia Murrell, May 9, 2025
European Union: Academics and Researchers, Come On Over to Freedom
May 8, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zellenials.
Is the European Union actively advertising employment opportunities in Western Europe? Do canines sniff? I think the answer is, “Yes.”
I spotted an official European Commission announcement with the title or one of the titles: “Choose Europe. Advance Your Research Career in the EU.” Another title in the official online statement is, “Choose Groundbreaking Research.” The document says,
As a world-leading centre for research and innovation with freedom of science, the European Union offers an ideal environment to advance your career. With a wealth of stable and predictable funding opportunities and cutting-edge facilities, the EU enables researchers to work on projects where they can truly make a difference. You’ll join a dynamic and international community of top talent, all dedicated to finding solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. Europe offers an excellent quality of life, including affordable healthcare and education, excellent working conditions and strong social security for you and your family. You’ll also enjoy freedoms and protections based on our values.
I found the word choice quite interesting; for example:
affordable healthcare and education
dynamic and international community
excellent working conditions
freedom and freedoms (bang, bang!)
ideal environment
protections
quality of life
strong social security
top talent
values
world-leading
The word choice reveals what the EU thinks will appeal to some American academics and researchers as well as to others in different countries. One might think that this employment advertisement is identifying specific issues associated with certain non-EU countries.
To make the opportunity more concrete, the write up presents these data:
If I were young again, this type of lingo might appeal to me. I, however, am a dinobaby. Becoming a big-time academic researcher is a non-starter for me. For some, however, the EU’s inducement might be compelling. I have done projects and spent a reasonable amount of time in London and Paris. My son attended two universities in France, and I am not sure he wanted to return to the US, but the French government had other ideas for a 20 something.
Interesting. Opportunity with a possible message for some working in less salubrious situations. Crafty message and straight ahead marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2025
Knowledge Management: Hog Wash or Lipstick on a Pig?
May 8, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby who gets revved up with buzzwords and baloney.
I no longer work at a blue chip consulting company. Heck, I no longer work anywhere. Years ago, I bailed out to work for a company in fly-over country. The zoom-zoom life of the big city tuckered me out. I know, however, when a consulting pitch is released to the world. I spotted one of these “pay us and we will save you” approaches today (April 25, 2025, 5 42 am US Eastern time).
How pretty can the farmer make these pigs? Thanks, OpenAI, good enough, and I know you have no clue about the preparation for a Poland China at a state fair. It does not look like this.
“How Knowledge Mismanagement is Costing Your Company Millions” is an argument presented to spark the sale of professional services. What’s interesting is that instead of beating the big AI/ML (artificial intelligence and machine learning drum set), the authors from an outfit called Bloomfire made “knowledge management” the pointy end of the spear. I was never sure what knowledge management. One of my colleagues did a lot of knowledge management work, but it looked to me like creating an inventory of content, a directory of who in the organization was a go-to source for certain information, and enterprise search.
This marketing essay asserts:
Executives are laser-focused on optimizing their most valuable assets – people, intellectual property, and proprietary technology. But many overlook one asset that has the power to drive revenue, productivity, and innovation: enterprise knowledge.
To me, the idea that one can place a value on knowledge is an important process. My own views of what is called “knowledge value” have been shaped by the work of Taichi Sakaya. This book was published 40 years ago, and it is a useful analysis of how to make money from knowing “stuff”.
This essay makes the argument that an organization that does not know how to get its information act together will not extract the appropriate value from its information. I learned:
Many organizations regard knowledge as an afterthought rather than a business asset that drives financial performance. Knowledge often remains unaccounted for on balance sheets, hidden in siloed systems, and mismanaged to the point of becoming a liability. Redundant, trivial, conflicting, and outdated information can cloud decision making that fails to deliver key results.
The only problem is that “knowledge” loses value when it moves to a system or an individual where it should not be. Let me offer three examples of the fallacy of silo breaking, financial systems, and “mismanaged” paper or digital information.
- A government contract labeled secret by the agency hiring the commercial enterprise. Forget the sharing. Locking up the “information” is essential for protecting national security and for getting paid. The knowledge management is that only authorized personnel know their part of a project. Sharing is not acceptable.
- Financial data, particularly numbers and information about a legal matter or acquisition/divestiture is definitely high value information. The organization should know that talking or leaking these data will result in problems, some little, some medium, and some big time.
- Mismanaged information is a very bad and probably high risk thing. Organizations simply do not have the management bandwidth to establish specific guidelines for data acquisition, manipulation, storage and deletion, access controls that work, and computer expertise to use dumb and smart software to keep those data ponies and information critters under control. The reasons are many and range from accountants who are CEOs to activist investor sock puppets, available money and people, and understanding exactly what has to be done to button up an operation.
Not surprisingly, coming up with a phrase like “enterprise intelligence” may sell some consulting work, but the reality of the datasphere is that whatever an organization does in an engagement running several months or a year will not be permanent. The information system in an organization any size is unstable. How does one make knowledge value from an inherently volatile information environment. Predicting the weather is difficult. Predicting the data ecosystem in an organization is the reason knowledge management as a discipline never went anywhere. Whether it was Harvey Poppel’s paperless office in the 1970s or the wackiness of the system which built a database of people so one could search by what each employee knew, the knowledge management solutions had one winning characteristic: The consultants made money until they didn’t.
The “winners” in knowledge management are big fuzzy outfits; for example, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and a few others. Are these companies into knowledge management? I would say, “Sure because no one knows exactly what it means. When the cost of getting digital information under control is presented, the thirst for knowledge management decreases just a tad. Well, maybe I should say, “Craters.”
None of these outfits “solve” the problem of knowledge management. They sell software and services. Despite the technology available today, a Microsoft Azure SharePoint and custom Web page system leaked secure knowledge from the Israeli military. I would agree that this is indeed knowledge mismanagement, but the problem is related to system complexity, poor staff training, and the security posture of the vendor, which in this case is Microsoft.
The essay concludes with this statement in the form of a question:
The question is: Where does your company’s knowledge fall on the balance sheet?
Will the sales pitch work? Will CEOs ask, “Where is my company’s knowledge value?” Probably. The essay throws around a lot of numbers. It evokes uncertainty, risk, and may fear. It has some clever jargon like knowledge mismanagement.
Net net: Well done. Suitable for praise from a business school faculty member. Is knowledge mismanagement going to delivery knowledge value? Unlikely. Is knowledge (managed or mismanaged) hog wash? It depends on one’s experience with Poland Chinas. Is knowledge (managed or mismanaged lipstick on a pig)? Again it depends on one’s sense of what’s right for the critters. But the goal is to sell consulting, not clean hogs or pretty up pigs.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2025
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