Thank you all for coming. I'm delighted you're here. My name is John Hammery. I'm the president at CSIS I have no role here other than an ornamental one, which is always a joke But to say welcome to all of you. I'm delighted that you're here. I did warn General Clapper This is probably the most dangerous audience I've ever seen because they look like they know something You know, this is usually Think tanks don't always have people that come as audiences that really know something this is quite a knowledgeable group That's here. We're delighted you're here Thank you very much. This is a this is going to be a very interesting session I'm a turn to Dan Prieto to formally introduce things in a second. I did want to just say a word of Thanks to my friend General Clapper and Clapper It I had nothing to do with inviting him so So I then I so I feel completely Liberated to say what I really think about him, which is he's one of my real heroes This is this is a man who has dedicated his life to something much bigger than himself and that's serving this country He the only he's done a spectacular job in virtually every position that the that the government has In the area of intelligence and national security the only thing that he failed at honestly was trying to be a civilian for a brief period of time he He never liked that very much And when called to come back into service after a very distinguished military or called back to come into service Went to NGA transformed it gave it the most complicated name in history for an agency But then that led of course to him being pulled into into Defense Department as the undersecretary for intelligence and then that of course led to his current role as the director of national intelligence Where he's doing a spectacular job at a really tough time. I mean we've had ever since the DNI was Established it has been an era of of additional resources and now we've have this Pivot point that's become the new favorite Washington word pivot points. We're pivoting here to an era where there's going to be some austerity and fortunately General Clapper has such a broad base and a depth of skill in understanding this community that he knows how to guide it Through this perilous time, and I think he's doing a terrific job now this is a This is a very awkward time for General Clapper to be coming because the budget is not formally released Okay, so I'm just going to give him permission upfront to refuse to answer some of your questions if he decides to he can As he's always been the case He's willing to put at risk his own career, but I'm not willing to do it for him And so I will give him permission to say I can't answer that because the president's budget is not out It'll be up to him to decide what he wants to do, but I Very famous American once said he wanted to judge people by the content of their character not the color of the skin I know the content of this man's character, and we're lucky to have him in service Dan Let me ask you to come up and get this started I want to thank our friends at IBM that are giving us the Possibility to bring this public forum to this this audience today, and we're glad you're all here Dan. Why don't I turn to you? Thank you, Dr. Hammery. Thank you Ozzie for hosting us today. My name is Dan Prieto I'm vice president and practice lead for public sector strategy and innovation consulting at IBM We're pleased to be CSIS a strategic industry partner for this important conference in this series Which has gone on for longer than the year around information sharing Today's conference again is an important step To continue this dialogue at conferences focused on information sharing adapting and improving and expanded information sharing environment In the years since the information sharing environment was established by the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention Act of 2004 we have come a long way in terms of predicting and preventing incidents not simply responding after the fact and we've done it by better Sharing information analyzing it anticipating and preventing incidents in real time Today's program aligns with IBM's long-standing commitment to support our nation's efforts to strengthen information sharing and improve global security Many members of the IBM team are going to be participating in events throughout the course of the day And we appreciate the opportunity to engage in these discussions Now it's my honor to tell you a little more than what Dr. Hammery did about our keynote speaker today Director of the National Intelligence James Clapper. He was sworn in as the fourth DNI in August of 2010 He leads the United States intelligence community and serves as the principal intelligence advisor for the president He has a long and distinguished career in the US armed forces beginning as a rifleman in the US Marine Corps Reserve and culminating as a lieutenant general in the US Air Force and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Over 32 years in uniform service He also held positions as assistant chief of staff for intelligence at the US Air Force headquarters during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm And as director of intelligence for three warfighting commands US forces in Korea Pacific Command and strategic air command of note He also served two combat tours during Southeast Asia conflict and flew 73 combat support missions over Laos in Cambodia He first retired in 1995 He worked in industry for six years as an executive on three successive companies with business focus on the intelligence community He served as a consultant and advisor to Congress the departments of defense and energy and as a member of a wide variety of government panels boards commissions and advisory groups He was a member of the Downing Assessment Task Force that investigated the co-war towers bombings in 1996 and was vice chairman of a commission chaired by former governor Gilmore of Virginia on the subject of homeland security He returned to government in 2001 as the first civilian director of the national imagery and mapping agency He served as director for five years transforming that organization He then served for over three years in two administrations as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence where he served as principal Staff assistant and advisor to the secretary and deputy secretary of defense on intelligence counterintelligence and security matters for the department He was also dual-hatted as a director of defense intelligence for the DNI He earned his bachelor's degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland a master's degree in political science from St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas and an honorary doctorate in strategic intelligence From the then joint military intelligence college He has won numerous numerous awards national intelligence distinguished service medals to defense distinguished service medals the Air Force Distinguished service medal the Coast Guard distinguished public service award the Department of Defense Distinguished civilian service award and a host of other awards and decorations He was named as one of the top 100 IT executives by Federal Computer Week in 2001 And he has been singled out by the NAACP in the form of its national distinguished service award and has been awarded the Presidentally conferred national security medal. I had the honor of meeting General Clapper in 2007 when we served on a council on foreign relations task force on civil liberties and national security and I had the honor working with the intelligence and national security alliance supporting Director Clapper's thinking around civil liberties and keeping the country safe in both those experiences with General Clapper I know his commitment to keep the country safe I know his commitment to information sharing and I know his commitment to civil liberties So with that I'd like to introduce director Clapper, and we look forward to a good day so I Be nice if I just quit while I was ahead here after all that. I appreciate the very generous Very kind introduction certainly appreciate CSIS for This opportunity to kick off. I think a very important dialogue Obviously Don't need to tell this crowd information sharing has been a huge mandate for us all since 9-11 You know the interest the notion of sharing is an interesting concept. It can be phenomenal. It can be dangerous It depends on what is shared and with whom it's shared There's an old Eastern saying that thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle and the life The candle will not be shortened Happiness never decreases by being shared now. That's a little too warm and fuzzy for you We've also found some words written by a noted Harvard professor Collecting data is only the first step towards wisdom, but sharing data is the first step towards community that That applies in spades just within the intelligence community At the same time of course we as you know have a dilemma of Protecting Information and so there is this dilemma that we've all wrestled with particularly those in this group And how you balance the two So we're we're here today of course to talk about the sharing of information And so we might define that As a national responsibility to ensure that any person with the appropriate mission need Can discover and access actionable information at the right time To successfully prevent harm to the American people and and and at the same time protect our national security So we believe I certainly do that that sharing must be done responsibly responsibly seamlessly and securely With regards to with safeguards in place to protect the privacy civil rights and civil liberties of the American people As well as to prevent unauthorized disclosure in short the right data any time any place usable by any authorized recipient Preventable only by law or policy and not technology and protected by a comprehensive regimen of accountability That's our vision or in a nutshell sharing and safeguarding all information Exquisitely and perfectly that is of course the nirvana of information sharing One we may not always achieve but that certainly is the is the goal and It's as we all know particularly in the last ten years. It's not an easy task The information sharing Goes far beyond the intelligence community where I work And it can get a little bit confusing So I wanted by way of explaining who some of the other speakers are kind of explain explain these Relationships at least as I see them So later this morning you'll be hearing from six other people from My office the Office of Director of National Intelligence So the panel first Will first panel will be On it will be the what's called the program manager for the information sharing environment Shemender Paul Now although Shemender is tethered to the DNI He really is the the national lead for for all US government information sharing and in that context reports directly to the White House So he cuts across the entire fabric of the US government straddling the other Domains besides intelligence, which means law enforcement Public safety home and security Defense and foreign affairs So he has a broader mission including synergizing and aligning these fields with with the White House so Intel Sort of my domain is just one area that that he touches and influence influences I'd also like to recognize David Shed Now the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency on that first panel David is an OD and I plank holder He was there at the beginning in 2005 On the second panel which deals with the culture of information sharing is cornstone She is the lead on my staff for information Sharing within the IC with a position that I established when I came on in this job The corn is so devoted to this topic that she came off maternity leave just to be here So this is her idea of fun get a babysitter and come to a conference sponsored by CSIS So good on corn She'll be talking to you about how to change a culture to increase information sharing which is of course one of the challenges we have in the intelligence community and the way We're doing this Somewhat accelerated I suppose by WikiLeaks is Increasing the confidence that the information is is secure They're often times although it's probably mischaracterization that there's somehow zero some Relationship between the need to share and the need to protect Maybe it's better or more accurate to coordinate. You know, how do we increase both? So in the IC corn makes sure we have the policies procedures and technology all in place to share information protect the information and Safeguard civil liberties and privacy and it's sort of those three pillars of those three factors that we have to reconcile and synchronize The third panel today is on efficiency Scope and privacy has on it Mike howl who is Shemender's deputy and West Wilson Wilson from the National Counterterrorism Center or NCTC another new feature of the intelligence landscape by That was part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act NCTC also housed in an OD and I With again a special relationship with with the president The fourth and last panel has my civil liberties and privacy officer Alex Joel and I think there's a message just in the fact that again by law on the OD and I staff is a full-time civil liberties and privacy officer who Alex I think is a national asset has a very very trusted advisor on many of our most Sensitive important issues And he will be with others who focus on how we advance policy and legal operational framework so Just all to say we heavily Represented and have we committed to this to this conference because the importance of the subjects So let me just touch on a few points and then all was dangerous. I'll take questions One of the things that Is sort of a new thing for me in this job is of course engaging in the domestic arena particularly with the law enforcement Community Have had occasion to engage quite a bit with them as a matter of fact particularly through the auspices of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and many of their Sort of subordinate task forces and and and organizations And as was alluded to I'm retired military and But I've come to have great respect for what the law enforcement community does to protect our our security in this country as well and Found them to be a goldmine of wisdom and insight when it comes to what I'd call street intelligence And like the military and the intelligence community overseas they too put their lives online but here at home Many years ago. I remember I was President of the Community Association I lived in something I'll never do again and Had set up helped set up one of the first Neighborhood watch programs in Fairfax County. This is way back in the 70s and in accordance practice of doing that Had the opportunity to do some ride-alongs With Fairfax County Police and later on Virginia State Police and boy it's quite an education to sit inside a police cruiser looking out and see how what Our police and law enforcement officials deal with day in and day out And you pull somebody over you have no idea what you're getting into and of course the scariest call that Law enforcement officials Don't like to get and they always go in pairs is a domestic disturbance Anyway, it was a great appreciation a great sense of sensitivity training if you will for me on having that experience And knowing what our law enforcement people do day in and day out And I think Shemender will bring information sharing initiatives that He's working with with law enforcement So let me just Briefly address six key points About the sharing of intelligence and the first of course is integration which you may have heard is kind of my Emphasis my shtick my mantra in in this job is focusing on intelligence integration Absolutely mission-critical for the intelligence community Our element goal our vision if you will is and is simply a nation made more secure because of a fully integrated Intelligence community for all of the US government threats require us to accelerate responsible information sharing Secondly doing this requires some standardization and we're pursuing some efficiencies as all of us are and in our business Met yesterday with our five eyes colleagues and one of them Offered up the term that his pop has become popular in his country is Australia they call it the efficiency dividend Which is as he said a orwellian euphemism for cuts Anyway, we're doing that as well and one of the things in the big idea big idea department somewhat influenced by budget pressure cuts is for the first time ever an Integrated IT enterprise Across the major intelligence agencies in the community. This is something we have talked about for years Just never were impelled to do it and now we are always love the line of the New Zealand Physicist Robert Rutherford in 1927 and dealing with the New Zealand budget crisis And it's a paraphrase we're running out of money. So we must begin to think so we're kind of in that in that mode now Anyway, one of those is cloud computing Which I think has a huge potential for achieving savings and promoting integration and of course attended to that will be The requisite for security as well But like IT and generalists is an enabler not a panacea The third key point is in the IC protecting privacy civil rights and civil liberties is Paramount I Again in this job have become particularly sensitive to this issue and This is a is a big deal in this country as it must must be I think there is a maturity and sophistication in today's intelligence committee about this that I Regrettably the public doesn't appreciate or see But protecting the rights of Americans is is core to our information sharing efforts And this of course this this too requires enterprise wide approach Fourth sharing and safeguarding information must be done in tandem And I guess this would be you know the opportunity to bring up WikiLeaks, which of course has been a terrible event for us and that has caused us to make some changes in in our community in terms of auditing monitoring controlling mobile media and we have to do more to both tag data and ensure that we can Properly identify people so that if we're sharing information We are assured that you know they have the bonafides and that they are actually authorized to receive the information in it's sort of counterintuitive, but by having greater identity management and greater and improve labeling tagging and cataloging of data that actually ensure it in both insurer security and it also enhances sharing If you can be sure That the information that you're sharing is actually going to an authorized recipient that actually is an inducement to do more sharing Now we will of course as we always do instill all the appropriate IT mousetraps to prevent What recurrence of WikiLeaks, but in the end our system is based on personal trust We had an egregious violation of personal trust in this case. We've had them before and we'll probably have them again The president signed an executive order in October the executive order one three five eight seven Which was designed as a result of WikiLeaks to improve the class security of classified networks and to promote Responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified information and has set up some bodies Organizational bodies to make sure that happens so that we bring together both those polls of sharing and security so As part of this we need to build a more pervasive auditing and monitoring capabilities and and you know, we have varying degrees of capability right now in the intelligence community, so we're going to do some investing and to Bring that into balance We need to develop a national insider threat policy And as I said to establish the bona fides with shares The goal of course as I said is to find that Navvana that sweet spot between the responsibility share and the need to protect The fifth key point is and this is something Shamendra and the PM ISE is working hard at is is embracing common operating models and shared services So we need and that what that implies for me is a greater integration Horizontally across the so-called stove pipes in the intelligence community as well as vertically with from federal state local private tribal and and private sector and Our allies as well PM the program manager for the information-sharing environment is helping to transform justice and public safe safety Into the information getting them into the information sharing business model Working to promote common operating models and shared services The sixth and final point is the course that in all of this the challenges aren't technical as much as they are just ensuring right policies and governance We in the intelligence community have developed and coordinated a strategic intent plan for managing IC information-sharing activities and The PM ISE working together with us has also established a US government-wide mechanism for managing and overseeing compliance safeguarding standards and safeguarding standards among our mission partners So with that I think I will Stop and Will be happy to take some questions so Ozzie you're gonna moderate, okay Well, thank you very much general clapper for that We really appreciate the remarks and taking time out of your extraordinarily busy schedule to address this My name is Rick Ozzie Nelson. I'm director of the homeland security and counter-terrorism program here at CSIS I want to clarify one thing in my boss John Henry gave me the top cover Which I'm glad he did to to moderate the question and answer session and those of you that know me I run a tight ship the first thing I want to clarify is this is the information sharing conference This is not the Iran conference. This is not the pirate hostage rescue conference This is not the president's budget conference. So this is the information sharing conference So I would ask you not to put me on the spot and make a hold of tight ship about what we're going to focus on information sharing I'm also going to use my prerogative as a moderator to ask the first question And tap into some of director clappers, you know, extraordinary experience in this field On the issue of information sharing and particularly the culture How have you seen the community and not just the intelligence community, but the US government embrace information sharing? Over the particular last 10 years some of it has to been forced on them by legislation And what perhaps do you think was the big the biggest factor that's caused the the increase of information sharing? And do you think it's got enough traction now where it's self-sustaining? well First ask away Just one answer that's all the Obviously the biggest event which you know was a epiphany for all of us was it was 9-11 and Having been around the intelligence community, you know long time I think that that event and what ensued after it was a Signal thing for us Certainly in the intelligence community, and I think you know the larger government You know Classically historically it was you know, there was this firewall that having grown up in the intelligence business between foreign and domestic I was a young pup at NSA in the 70s and watched the church pike hearings and Which were you know addressed a lot of the abuses frankly that went on and under the Mantra of foreign intelligence, but it was done You know illegally really in the United States may be well intended but bad for Bad for the country that led to the first version of the executive order 12 triple 3 which laid out very specifically and kind of Reaffirmed that firewall between foreign and domestic well all that came of course to a halt dramatic halt with 9-11 And so that has what has caused us, you know, that's what gave rise to the intelligence reform terrorism Prevention Act, which of course mandated Set up the DNI Set up some other things and and the need recognize the need legislatively for information sharing So now that firewall is Gone That's not to say it's completely eradicated culturally I'll say But I think we've you know, we've made a lot of strides, and I think there are more and more is a recognition of The need to share responsibly and securely But protect civil liberties Yeah, and the answer to your answer to your question Will it stick is there enough momentum enough traction traction absolutely I I don't I don't think there's any question about that Now that said because of the the history where we've been doing the foreign intelligence a lot longer Then our engagement in the domestic arena, which is not as mature there are still a sort of disparities there, which I think accrue largely from the history and But from what I I have seen and several capacities three jobs. I've had in the last ten years I think we've made great strides. That's not to say there's not more to do Great. Thank you for that. Okay. We do have questions. We have the microphones We have microphones going around please state your name and your affiliation if you have one, please We'll start in the front right here Dave Folgem aviation week What's your best assessment of? unintended information sharing The effect on military programs in particular the F-35 program, which was successfully hacked and Is it your belief that that breach of information resulted in? New cost and program stretch outs to Compensate for those breaches Well, I'll just say in general that this is You know what the internet age and and all that that's given us It's also led to you know, grievous pilfering of intellectual capital intellectual property and You know that the F-35 was clearly a target and but I really can't draw any Empirical conclusions for it because I simply don't know what that what that the impact that may have had in terms of Program stretch out or program management challenges. I just don't know but clearly the The attacks on our intellectual property Across the board whether from individuals or nation states is is a serious challenge of the country and you know, we need to do something about it Okay, next we'll go ahead and I like over here front like Thanks, Ozzie. I'm Kim Dozier with the Associated Press You mentioned that you were working hard to do things like tag the information And also put in a system where you're monitoring your own people. How far along are you on that? Well, I get too specific. It's a work in progress And this will be part of our as we go to this new Architecture if you will with and I'm just speaking within the intelligence community part and parcel this Which will I certainly promote The thing I'm pushing is his integration Not to mention efficiency Will be the ability to share more more broadly within the intelligence community Data which is still a challenge for us And and in doing so when we can tag the data so we we can label it we can account for it We can catalog it and then when it comes time to let's say establish a community of interest You know what data is in question and if you have the bona fides of those who need to have access to it You can do that You know much more quickly and more efficiently than we're able to do it now So that's part of this trend what I hope will ensue with the transformation of our IT enterprise Just within the intelligence community. So that then serves As the stem size of point I tried to make in my remarks that that actually serves to both enhance security and promote sharing If you know what the data is in question, you know where it is and you know with whom it can be shared And then you can account for it When it is You're in a much better posture both from a security as well as a sharing standpoint Well, our plan is over Next say five years. I think we'll make it will made some Serious and noticeable changes Okay, great. Thanks, Kim. We'll go over the gentleman of blue shirt. Good morning, sir. Colin Clark a well defense There's been a lot of discussion about the continuing size of the commercial imagery buys by the Intelligence community the White House has the study group Where are you with the study group and is the role of commercial imagery going to change substantially? Well, I going back to For anybody heard of it and when I first took over at Nima in 2001 We were I became a big believer in in commercial imagery it has the benefit of course of being unclassified so that is great for sharing both with coalitions overseas and and certainly domestically and so I think there's always going to be a need a substantial need for Commercial imagery within the intelligence community and and for and for many other purposes I don't exactly know where we are on the study, but it should be the next couple of months I would guess we'd have we'll have that done and of course that's just a relook at the Utility and applicability of commercial imagery but that's not to say that in this Era of budget cutting that commercial imagery is to be considered in that In that situation as well Great. Thanks for hearing that John McAffin CSIS advisor, but formerly of the CIA and the DO associate deputy director station chief Despite what the reputation that My former organization has of being the troglodytes of sharing I'm not and I don't think most knowledgeable people are I mean you don't spend hours in a safe house and bagged at it with a source wanted to keep it all to yourself You want people to know and I think you've got we've got it right that the responsibility to share and the need to protect what I'm still not clear about and then a lot of people are concerned about when you get into the terms that you use the Bonafides of the recipient information and authorities. I Think there's a confusion of what does that mean? It's a distinct contrast it seems to me to the notion of need to know which became for a while You know a bad term I think we've come back to saying there's there's an essence of need to know and everything we do with COI six is a need to know Can you help us understand the difference between Sort of the notion of need to know which is fairly strict Constructionism and Bonafides and authorities relative to information sharing Even within within the context of the intelligence community There is of course as John well knows the the need to protect particularly sources and methods and At the same time You know there's the old saw about Intel cool Intel is cool and reported Intel is really cool. And so you have this, you know kind of dilemma there between protecting sources methods and And the information that is then gleaned and how that information is used So what I was trying to get at was that if if you're able to tag and label data So that you can break those segments if you will The sources and methods from as opposed to the substance of the information, which is really what you need and then You also can Determine routinely and systematically so it's not a big huge deal and Done it and don't do it with Automaticity that you can establish quickly communities of interest this sort of thing based on a given need that If you have the data labeled and you know the people who need to have access to the data And we can do that and do it on an automated basis, which we can't do now very well I think you promote the interest of both sharing and and security Okay next in the blue shirt in the middle here Microphones coming John Paris the information security oversight office. Does the current classification system aid or hinder information sharing? And if not, what recommendations would you have to help enhance information system in our digital age? Well, it's nothing wrong with it with a system It's how it's used And making a classification determination, so I guess one way you could Remove the hindrances is just not classify anything But you know the information sharing I did I'm you know Cartooning us a bit to take it to its extreme and of course this gets to the issue of clout overclass overclassifying Which is an allegation that's that's often made and and there's probably some substance to those accusations My experience in tells community that a lot of What derives or motivates classification decisions And given, you know the volume of data we deal with is actually affected by contemporaneous circumstances So something that we classify today would you might make a different Determination if you looked at it a year from now or five years from now I do think we you know, we're very very conservative frankly is personal opinion not company policy that about Declassifying material but Again, this is another one of these Nirvanas these holy grails were always looking for what you know, what is the ideal sweet spot for? Classifying we shouldn't either overclassify or underclassify so it's got to be in the middle somewhere, and that's That's just a difficult thing to do perfectly Day in and day out Great, thank you so much. Okay gentlemen in the red tie over here And sorry, I can't see some of you because of the David come in mind-aligned systems Sir To your mind which agency has the lead responsibility for Sharing information about a suspicious activity that indicates an imminent attack and making sure that the regional stakeholders are aware of that Is this a structure data problem, or is this an operational problem, and who's making sure there's no problematic seam between those two perspectives When I'm sorry is there when your question applies as one agency Well, it's hard to you know say there's one single agency that has a legal obligation to do that it is a Collective responsibility That that we all we all have I mean under the scenario of you site. It's You know state and local officials Whoever or starting with a citizenry for that matter as someone that witnesses an event like that and gets it to the appropriate authorities I think tremendous probably can speak more to the suspicious activity reporting Process and the training modules that have been set up for for doing that, but I Really can't I mean I think it'd be Well, it's not it's just not set up that way that one element is exclusively responsible for Legally accountable for ensuring that you know warnings are passed quickly. It's a collective responsibility it's my responsibility Particularly to ensure and that's what I've been placing so much emphasis on integration for as I said before both horizontally within the intelligence community and vertically of federal state local tribal private sector and that by the way is not intended to imply One-way hierarchy. It's it's it's two ways The nexus at the state level of course are the 72 or so fusion centers which is Again, there's 72 of them not just one that sort of are the I look upon as kind of the organizational nexus for either bringing information up from the local level or bringing it down from the federal level Right well go right over here to General copper veal again go from Bloomberg news instead of You you talked about the insider threat policy Can you talk a little bit about more about what that involves and Where that is in the process and it has been about a year and a half since so wiki leaks So what you know, where is that and what's taken? so long and Can you talk also a little bit about the the color the insider threat? I'm sorry I didn't hear the your first. I'm sorry the insider threat policy that you mentioned You said we need to develop a an insider threat policy if I understood you correctly Yeah, so what what does that involve and where is that in the process? Well, I don't know exactly where the Written document is that's what you refer to but I think Frankly inherently we've always had a responsibility for detecting insider threats. So we have in the intelligence community I just think what wiki leaks obviously is done is Heightened our sensitivity about that So and of course for in an IT context inside an insider Threat is quite profound and that's why I think everybody is more sensitized about Being alert to Detecting insider threats and there isn't a silver boat here. We have to have that you have to have auditing and monitoring We've done a lot to over the last three or four years to enhance and improve and streamline the Clarence process which is another another dimension of this which sort of gets at the issue of a personal trust Let's go ahead and in the last question Over here gentlemen with glasses next to Some Peter Bishop with WWN software in your point six. I was wondering if you could expand just a little bit on that Where you say that you're not looking primarily for tech tech new technology But you're doing more in the way of right to policies and governance Presumably that means that you are not waiting for new technology to move forward But that you are on the other hand you are still open if new technology is developed That can help with a more perfect and exquisite sharing of information. You are still open to it Could you just expand a little bit on that? Well, I think you said it Answer your own question. That's exactly right I mean that this has always been about governance and and oversight leadership if you will But as we're able to Acquire the technology and substantiated Pervasively Where there is a confidence assurance about The data it's content and with whom it's going to be shared that actually serves as I said earlier to enhance sharing so to the extent that we bring to bear technology would help facilitate that even in you know Our our big idea aside absolutely What a brilliant last question a question answered itself, so thank you for that Well first I get we have a great agenda today So I'd ask and encourage you to stay behind and please see the rest of the agenda Of course, I want to thank our sponsor IBM for this and then most importantly Thank director clapper for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his thoughts on this important topic. Thank you, sir


So I think the halving is coincidental to the macro cycle, but it doesn't matter, because it still works. Things that we most anticipate generally don't happen. That's what I'm concerned about. It's complete consensus. The catalyst that should spark the next crypto bull market is just around the corner. We are less than 200 days away from the Bitcoin halving. Halving events have marked the beginning of the most impressive bull markets in Bitcoin history. But does the Bitcoin halving really guarantee the price of Bitcoin will go up? And most importantly, what should we expect from the next halving set for April 2024? In this video I'll explain the significance of the Bitcoin halving, its impact on prices and why the next halving may play out differently from previous ones. I'm Giovanni and this is a Cointelegraph Report. So why is the halving considered such a booster for prices? The bullishness around the Bitcoin halving is based on a very simple rule of economics. Supply and demand. Approximately every four years, the rate at which new Bitcoin is created is cut in half during the halving, which creates a supply shock. Basically, after each halving, there is less new Bitcoin entering the market, which means if demand remains constant or increases, the price of Bitcoin should go up. Also, the halving event attracts a lot of media attention to Bitcoin. It generates hype and excitement around the asset, which tends to have a positive effect on prices. At least that is how it has played out so far. As you can see in this chart, the price of Bitcoin has gone parabolic in the months following each halving. So does that mean Bitcoin's price is automatically bound to skyrocket after each halving? That would be awesome, but the answer is no. And here is why. First, as I mentioned, supply is only one side of the equation, the other is demand. While the supply of new Bitcoin decreases during the halving, demand does not necessarily go up. And if demand is stagnating, big upside price moves are unlikely. Second, the halving's impact on the supply of new Bitcoin gets smaller after each one of these events. And it will eventually become irrelevant. That means demand, rather than supply, is becoming the main factor impacting Bitcoin prices. Third, the halving is an entirely predictable event. We all know well in advance that it will take place and when. And that may undermine its influence on prices. Imagine that a surprise party is about to happen, but everyone already knows about it, so they start parting in advance. When the actual surprise party starts, it is not that exciting because everyone already knows about it. Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg, told us more about this specific aspect. Who has not said anything bullish about cryptos because of the halving? That's what I'm concerned about. It's complete consensus. Things that we most anticipate generally don't happen. We speak about it as much before and that's not an issue that really affects markets. Okay, you must be thinking, if it isn't the halving, then what is the catalyst behind Bitcoin's cyclical price uptrends? Well, there is always a combination of factors, like market sentiment, regulatory development, and adoption trends. But the most important one is macroeconomic factors. In particular, I'm talking about M2 or money supply, which is an indicator that shows the amount of money circulating in the economy. Essentially, M2 shows how much cash is available to people for buying goods and making investment. Periods of high M2 usually correspond with low interest rates. Basically, when borrowing money is cheap and there is a lot of cash floating around, people are more likely to invest in risky assets like Bitcoin, which means more than that. That is clearly visible in this chart. Historically, picks in money supply have coincided with crypto bull markets and money supply bottoms are correlated with bear market. And guess what? All previous halvings happened during periods of high monetary supply. That coincidence has fueled the belief that halvings are a booster for Bitcoin's price. That is why Raoul Paul, macro investor and CEO of Real Vision, defines the Bitcoin halving as a false narrative. This is what he told us. The halving is coincidental to the macro cycle. It just so happens that in 2008, 2009, magic things happened. One, all debts, all interest payments on all debts were forgiven. We went to zero interest rates everywhere, zero interest rates in Bitcoin at birth at the same time. And the macro cycle is this debt refi cycle every three and a half years to four years that happens that exactly corresponds to the crypto cycle. I think it's coincidental. And so that leads us to a crucial question. Is the next Bitcoin halving going to spark a major bull run? The answer is probably not, unless macroeconomic factors don't come into play. As we already showed, previous halvings coincided with periods of high monetary supply and low interest rates. But that may not be the case this time. Since the beginning of 2022, M2 has been shrinking and it is currently still very low, while interest rates are high. That has created another favorable environment for risk assets like Bitcoin. Whole history of cryptos have been in the back of zero interest rates and now they're not. They're very high, particularly in the US, particularly versus inflation. The Fed's got to start cutting rates and add liquidity. And that's what I started with. Liquidity right now is negative. So typically for that liquidity to be turned back on, risk assets have to go down. Maybe we won't have a US recession. Maybe the Fed can start cutting rates and risk assets can just go right up. But that would be unlikely. By the time we get to April next year, which is when the halving is supposed to be, I'm fearful that cryptos, most cryptos will be lower prices along with most risk assets like stock. So the main takeaway is this. Unless there is a significant change in the macroeconomic environment, the price of Bitcoin is unlikely to rally solely because of the halving event. Sorry to disappoint you guys. The 2024 Bitcoin halving is unlikely to be the main catalyst that sparks the next crypto bull market. The macroeconomic picture is what matters most. In particular, global liquidity would have to increase. An interest rate should go down in order to enable the next parabolic move. However, this should not undermine the significance of the Bitcoin halving in the long term. While it may not have a direct impact on prices, the halving remains a core element of Bitcoin's value proposition. That of a scarce asset with a thick supply comparable to gold. That is the property that has made Bitcoin one of the best performing assets of the last decade and potentially of the decade to come. That's all for today's video. I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.


CHAPTER 31 THE SACRIFICE The kings in the palace were in a strange condition.  In a room nearby, the colonel of his guard, also in bed, without a soldier to obey him. In six other rooms, far apart, six miscreants, each watched by a beast jailer, ministers to them all, an old woman and a page, and in the wine cellar, forty-three animals, creatures more grotesque than ever brain of man invented. None dared to approach its gates, and seldom one issued from them. All the dwellers in the city were united in enmity to the palace. It swarmed with evil spirits, they said, whereas the evil spirits were in the city, unsuspected. One consequence of their presence was that, when the rumour came that a great army was on the march against Winston, instead of rushing to their defences, to make new gates, free port-colourses and drawbridges, and bar the river, each band flew first to their treasures, burying them in the cellars and gardens, and hiding them behind stones in their chimneys. And next to rebellion, signing an invitation to his majesty of Borsigras, to enter at their open gates, destroy their king, and annex their country to his own. The straits of isolation were soon found in the palace. Its invalids were requiring stronger food, and what was to be done? For if the butchers sent meat to the palace, was it not likely enough to be poisoned? Curdie said to Durber he would think of some plan before morning. But that same night, as soon as it was dark, Lena came to a master, and let him understand that she wanted to go out. He unlocked a little private post-enforer, left it so that she could push it open when she returned, and told the crocodile to stretch himself across it inside. Early the next morning the leg serpent crept out of the wine cellar, threw the broken door behind, shot into the river, and soon appeared in the kitchen with a splendid sturgeon. Every night Lena went out hunting, and every morning leg serpent went out fishing, and both invalids and household had plenty to eat. As to news, the page and plain clothes would now and then venture out into the marketplace and gather some. One night he came back with the report that the army of the king of Bossa-gras had crossed the border. Two days after he brought the news that the enemy was now but twenty miles from Winston, the colonel of the guard rose and began fervishing his armour, but gave it over to the page and staggered across to the barracks, which were in the next street. The sentry took him for a ghost or worse, ran into the guard room, bolted the door, and stopped his ears. The poor colonel, who was hardly yet able to stand, crawled back despairingly. For Curdie he had already, as soon as the first rumour reached him, resolved if no other instruments came, and the king continued unable to give orders, to call Lena and the creatures and march to meet the enemy. If he died he died for the right, and there was a right end of it. He had no preparations to make, except a good sleep. He asked the king to let the housemaid take his place by his majesty that night, and went and lay down on the floor of the corridor, no farther off than a whisper would reach from the door of the chamber. There, with an old mantle of the kings thrown over him, he was soon fast asleep. Somewhere, about the middle of the night, he woke suddenly, started to his feet and rubbed his eyes. He could not tell what had waked him. But could he be awake, or was he not dreaming? The curtain of the king's door, a dull red ever before, was glowing a gorgeous, radiant purple, and the crown wrought upon it in silks and gems was flashing as if it burned. What could it mean? Was the king's chamber on fire? He darted to the door and lifted the curtain. Glorious, terrible sight! A long and broad marble table that stood at the end of one room had been drawn into the middle of it.  In the midst of the roses lay the king, moaning, but motionless. Every rose that fell from the table to the floor, some one, whom Curdie could not plainly see for the brightness, lifted and laid burning upon the king's face. Until at length his face too was covered with the live roses, and he lay all within the fire, moaning still, with now and then a shuddering sob, and the shape that Curdie saw and could not see wept over the king as he lay in the fire, and often she hid her face in handfuls of a shadowy hair, and from her hair the water of her weeping dropped like sunset rain in the light of the roses. At last she lifted a great armful of her hair and shook it over the fire, and the drops fell from it in showers, and they did not hiss in the flames, but there arose instead as if it were the sound of running brooks. And the glow of the red fire died away, and the glow of the white fire grew gray, and the light was gone, and on the table all was black, except the face of the king, which shone from under the burnt roses like a diamond in the ashes of a furnace. When Curdie, no longer dazzled, saw and knew the old princess, the room was lighted with the splendour of her face, of her blue eyes, of her sapphire crown. Her golden hair went streaming out from her through the air, till it went off in mist and light. She was large and strong as a tightness.  Then darkness fell. The minor boy turned silent away, and laid himself down again in the corridor. An absolute joy filled his heart, his bosom, his head, his whole body. All was safe, all was well. With the helm of his mattock tight in his grasp, he sank into a dreamless sleep.  When he went into the king's chamber, the housemates sat were here to left her, and everything in the room was as it had been the night before. Saved that a heavenly odour of roses filled the air of it. He went up to the bed. The king opened his eyes, and the soul of perfect health shone out of them. Nor was Curdie amazed in his delight. "'Is it not time to rise, Curdie?' asked the king. "'It is, Your Majesty. Today we must be doing,' answered Curdie. "'What must we be doing today, Curdie?' "'Fighting, Sire.' Then fetch me my armour, that of plated steel, in the chest there. You will find the under-clothing with it.' As he spoke, he reached out his hand for a sword, which hung in the bed before him, drew it, and examined the blade. "'A little rusty,' he said, but the edge is there. We shall polish it ourselves to-day, not on the wheel. Curdie, my son, I wake from a troubled dream. A glorious torture has ended it, and I live. I know now well how things are, but you shall explain them to me as I get on my armour. No, I need no bath. I am clean. Call the Colonel of the guard.' In complete steel the old man stepped into the chamber. He knew it not, but the old princess had passed through his room in the night. "'Why, Sir Bronzebeard,' said the King, you are dressed before me. "'You need no valley, old man, when there is battle in the wind.' "'Battlesire,' returned the Colonel, "'Where, then, are our soldiers?' "'Why, there, and here?' answered the King, pointing to the Colonel first and then to himself. "'Where else, man, the enemy will be upon us here sunset, if we be not upon him here noon. What other thing was in your brave brain when you donned your armour, friend?' "'Your Majesty's orders, Sire,' answered Sir Bronzebeard. The King smiled and turned to Curdie. And what was in you, Curdie, for your first word was of battle?' "'See, Your Majesty,' answered Curdie, I have polished my mattock. If Your Majesty had not taken the command, I would have met the enemy at the head of my beasts, and died in comfort, or done better.' "'Brave boy,' said the King. He who takes his life in his hand is the only soldier. You shall head your beasts today.  "'Then we shall win this battle,' said the King. Curdie, go and bind securely the six, that we not lose their guards. Can you find me a horse, think you, Sir Bronzebeard?  I will go and fright the Valetru with my presence, and secure, I trust, a horse with your majesty and one for myself. "'Ah, look, you brother,' said the King, bring one for my minor boy, too, and a sober old charger for the Princess, for she, too, must go to the battle and conquer with us.' "'Harder me, Sire,' said Curdie. A minor can fight best on foot. I might smite my horse dead under me with a missed blow, and beside that I must be near to my beasts.' "'As you will,' said the King. Three horses, then, Sir Bronzebeard. The Colonel departed, doubting sorely in his heart how to accouter and lead from the barracks' stables three horses in the teeth of his revolted regiment. In the hall he met the housemaid. "'Can you lead a horse?' he asked. "'Yes, Sir.' "'Are you willing to die for the King?' "'Yes, Sir. Can you do as you are bid?' "'I can keep on trying, Sir.' "'Come, then, were I not a man, I would be a woman such as you.' When they entered the barrack-yard the soldiers scattered like autumn leaves before a blast of winter. They went into the stable unchallenged, and low, in a stall before the Colonel's eyes, stood the King's white charger, with the royal saddle and bridle hung high beside him. Traitorous thieves! muttered the old man in his beard, and went along the stalls looking for his own black charger. Having found him he returned to saddle first to the King's. But the maid had already the saddle upon him, and so gird that the Colonel could thrust no fingertip between girth and skin. He left her to finish what she had so well begun, and went and made ready his own. He then chose for the Princess a great red horse, twenty years old, which he knew to possess every equine virtue. This and his own he led to the palace, and the maid led the King's. The King and Curdie stood in the court, the King in full armour of silvered steel, with a circlet of rubies and diamonds round his helmet. He almost leaped for joy when he saw his great white charger come in, gentle as a child to the hand of the housemaid. But when the horse saw his master in his armour, he reared and bounded in jubilation, yet did not break from the hand that held him. Then out came the Princess a tired and ready, with a hunting-knife a father had given her by her side. They brought her mother's saddle, splendid with gems and gold, set it on the great red horse, and lifted her to it. But the saddle was so big and the horse so tall, that the child found no comfort in them. "'Please, King Papa,' she said, "'Can I not have my white pony?' "'I did not think of him, little one,' said the King. "'Where is he?' "'In the stable,' answered the maid. I found him half-starved, the only horse within the gates, the day after the servants were driven out. He has been well-fed since. "'Go and fetch him,' said the King. As the maid appeared with the pony, from a side door came Lena and the forty-nine, following Curdie. "'I will go with Curdie and the Uglies,' cried the Princess, and as soon as she was mounted she got into the middle of the pack. So out they set, the strangest force that ever went against an enemy. The King and silver armour sat stately on his white steed, with the stones flashing on his helmet. Beside him the grim old Colonel, armed in steel, rode his black charger. Behind the King, a little to the right, Curdie walked a foot, his mattocks shining in the sun. Lena followed at his heel. Behind her came the wonderful company of Uglies. In the midst of them rode the greatest little Irene, dressed in blue, and mounted on the prettiest of white ponies. Behind the Colonel, a little to the left, warped the page. Armed in a breastplate, headpiece, and trooper's sword, he had found in the palace, all much too big for him, and carrying a huge brass trumpet, which he did his best to blow. And the King smiled and seemed pleased with his music, although it was but the grunt of a brazen unrest. Alongside the beasts walked Durba, carrying Barbara. They refued the mountains, should the cause of the King be lost. As soon as they were over the river they turned aside to ascend the cliff, and there awaited the forging of the day's history. Then first Curdie saw that the housemaid, whom they had all forgotten, was following, mounted on the great red horse and seated in the royal saddle. Many were the eyes unfriendly of women, that had stared at them from door and window as they passed through the city, and low laughter and mockery and evil words from the lips of children had rippled about their ears. But the men had all gone to welcome the enemy. The Butcher's first, the King's guard to the last, and now, on the heel of the King's army, brushed out the women and children also, together flowers and branches, wherewith to welcome their conquerors. About a mile down the river, Curdie, happening to look behind him, saw the maid, whom he had supposed gone with Durba, still following on the great red horse. The same moment the King, a few paces in front of him, caught sight of the enemy's tents. Pitched where, the cliff receding, the bank of the river widened to a little plain. CHAPTER 33 THE BATTLE He commanded the page to blow his trumpet, and, in the strength of the moment, the youth uttered a right warlike defiance. But the Butcher's and the guard, who had gone over armed to the enemy, thinking that the King had come to make his peace also, and that it might thereafter go hard with them, rushed at once to make short work with him, and both secure and commend themselves. The Butcher's came on first, for the guards had slackened their saddle girths, brandishing their knives and talking to their dogs. Curdie and the page, with Lena and her pack, bounded to meet them. Curdie struck down the foremost with his mattock. The page, finding his sword too much for him, threw it away and seized the Butcher's knife, which, as he rose, he plunged into the foremost dog. Lena rushed, raging and gnashing among them. She would not look at a dog so long as there was a Butcher on his legs, and she never stopped to kill a Butcher, only with one grind of her jaws crushed a leg of him. When they were all down, then indeed she flashed among the dogs. Meantime the King and the Colonel had spurred towards the advancing guard. The King clove the Major through skull and collarbone, and the Colonel stabbed the Captain in the throat. Then a fierce combat commenced, two against many. But the Butchers and their dogs quickly disposed of. Up came Curdie and his beasts. The horses of the guard, struck with terror, turned in spite of the spur and fled in confusion. They were upon the forces of Borsagrass, which could see little of the affair, but currently imagined a small determined body in front of them, hastened to the attack. No sooner did their first advancing wave appear through the foam of the retreating one, then the King and the Colonel and the Page, Curdie and the beasts, went charging upon them. Their attack, especially the rush of the ugliest, threw the first line into great confusion, but the second came up quickly. The beasts could not be everywhere. There were thousands to one against them, and the King and his three companions were in the greatest possible danger. A dense cloud came over the sun, and sank rapidly toward the earth. The cloud moved altogether, and yet the thousands of white flakes of which it was made up, each moved for itself in ceaseless and rapid motion. Those flakes were the wings of pigeons. Down swooped the birds upon the invaders. Right in the face of man and horse they flew with swift beating wings, blinding eyes and confounding brain. Horses reared and plunged and wheeled, all at once in confusion. The men made frantic efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch, and they out-doubled them in numbers. Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a bucket of pinion in the face. Generally the bird-wood with sharp-clapping wings dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow against its single mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and ascend skimming, much the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of a lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled the feathered multitude in the grim game of war. It was a storm in which the wind was birds and the sea men. And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the enemy, it turned, descended, and sped to the front to charge again. The moment the battle began the princess's pony took fright, and turned and fled. But the maid wheeled her horse across the road and stopped him, and they waited together the result of the battle. And as they waited, it seemed to the princess right strange that the pigeons, every one as it came to the rear, and fetched a compass to gather force for the rear-attack, should make the head of her attendant on the red horse the goal around which it turned, so that about them was an unintermittent flapping and flashing of wings, and a curving, sweeping torrent of the side-poised wheeling bodies of birds. Strange also it seemed that the maid should be constantly waving her arm toward the battle. In the time of the motion of her arm so fitted with the rushes of birds, that it looked as if the birds obeyed her gesture, and she was casting living javelins by the thousand against the enemy. The moment a pigeon had rounded her head, it went off straight as bolt from bow, and with trebled velocity. But of these strange things others beside the princess had taken note. From a rising ground, once they watched the battle in growing dismay, the leaders of the enemy saw the maid in her motions, and, concluding her an enchantress, whose were the airy legions humiliating them, set spurs to their horses, made a circuit, outflanked the king, and came down upon her. But suddenly by her side stood a stalwart old man in the garb of a miner, who, as the general rodata sawed in hand, heaved his swift mattock, and brought it down with such force on the forehead of his charger, that he fell to the ground like a log. His rider shot over his head, and lay stunned. Had not the great red horse reared and wheeled, he would have fallen beneath that of the general. With lefted sabre one of his attendant officers rode at the miner. But a mass of pigeons darted in the faces of him and his horse, and the next moment he lay beside his commander. The rest of them turned and fled, pursued by the birds. "'Ah, friend Peter,' said the maid, "'thou hast come as I told thee. Welcome and thanks.' By this time the battle was over, the rout was general, the enemies staunched back upon their own camp, with the beasts roaring in the midst of them. And the king and his army, now reinforced by one, pursuing. But presently the king drew rain. "'Call off your hounds, Curdie, and let the pigeons do the rest.' He shouted, and turned to see what had become of the princess. In full panic fled to the invaders, sweeping down their tents, stumbling over their baggage, trampling on their dead and wounded, ceaselessly pursued and buffeted by the white-winged army of heaven. Homeward they rushed to the road they had come, straight for the borders, many dropping from pure fatigue and lying where they fell. And still the pigeons were in their necks as they ran. At length to the eyes of the king and his army nothing was visible, save a dust cloud below and a bird cloud above. Before night the bird cloud came back, flying high over Gwintstorm. Sink in swiftly it disappeared among the ancient roofs of the palace. CHAPTER XXXIV Judgment The king and his army returned, bringing with them one prisoner only, the Lord Chancellor. Curdie had dragged him from under a fallen tent, not by the hand of a man, but by the foot of a mule. When they entered the city it was still as the grave. The citizens had fled home.  The king rode through the streets in silence, ill-pleased with his people. But he stopped his horse in the midst of the marketplace, and called in a voice loud and clear as the cry of a silver trumpet.  Then he turned him gloomily to the palace. Just as they reached the gates, Peter, who as they went, had been telling his tale to Curdie, ended it with the words, and so there I was in the nick of time to save the two princesses. The two princesses' father, the one on the great red horse, was the housemaid. They said, Curdie, and ran to open the gates for the king. They found Durba returned before them, and already busy preparing them food.  When they had washed, and eaten, and drunk, he called the Colonel, and told Curdie and the page to bring out the traitors and the beasts, and attend him to the marketplace. By this time the people were crowding back into the city, bearing their dead and wounded. And there was lamentation in Gwintstorm, for no one could comfort himself, and no one had any to comfort him. The nation was victorious, but the people were conquered. The king stood in the centre of the marketplace, upon the steps of the ancient cross. He had laid aside his helmet, and put on his crown.  He called the people to him. And for all the terror of the beasts, they dared not disobey him. Those even, who were carrying their wounded, lay them down, and drew near trembling. Then the king said to Curdie and the page, Set the evil men before me. He looked upon them for a moment, and mingled anger and pity. Then turned to the people, and said, Behold your trust, ye slaves, behold your leaders, I would have freed you, but ye would not be free. Now shall ye be ruled with a rod of iron, that ye may learn what freedom is, and love it, and seek it. These wretches I will send, where they shall mislead you no longer. He made a sign to Curdie, who immediately brought up the leg serpent. To the body of the animal they bound the Lord Chamberlain, speechless with horror. The butler began to shriek and pray, but they bound him on the back of Clubhead. One after another upon the largest of the creatures they bound the whole seven, each through the unveiling terror looking the villain he was. Then said the king, I thank you, my good beasts, and I hope to visit you ere long. Take these evil men with you and go to your place. Like a whirlwind they were in the crowd, scattering it like dust, like hounds they rushed from the city, their burdens howling and raving. What became of them I have never heard. Then the king turned once more to the people, and said, Go to your houses. Nor vouchsafed them another word. They crept home like chidden hounds. The king returned to the palace. He made the Colonel a duke, and the pager night. And Peter he appointed general of all his minds. But to Curdie he said, You are my own boy, Curdie. My child cannot choose but love you, and when you are grown up, if you both will, you shall marry each other, and be king and queen when I am gone. Till then be the king's Curdie. Irene held out her arms to Curdie. He raised her to his, and she kissed him. And my Curdie too. She said, There after the people called him Prince Conrad. But the king always called him either just Curdie, or my minor boy. They sat down to supper, and Durba and the night in the housemaid waited, and Barbara sat at the king's left hand. The housemaid poured out the wine, and as she poured for Curdie red wine that foamed in the cup. As if glad to see the light whence it had been banished so long, she looked him in the eyes. And Curdie started and sprang from his seat, and dropped on his knees and burst into tears. And the maid said with a smile, such as none but one could smile. Did I not tell you, Curdie, that it might be you would not know me when next you saw me? Then she went from the room, and in a moment returned in royal purple, with a crown of diamonds and rubies. From under which her hair went flowing to the floor. All about her rubies lipped feet. Her face was radiant with joy. The joy overshadowed by a faint mist as of unfulfillment. The king rose and kneeled on one knee before her. All kneeled in like homage. Then the king would have yielded her his royal chair. But she made them all sit down, and with her own hands placed at the table-seats for Derber and the page. Then in ruby crown and royal purple she served them all. CHAPTER 35 THE END The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and women that had human hands. And many such he found, honest and true, and brought them to his master. So a new and upright court was formed, and strength returned to the nation. But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid. King came Curdie and said to the king that the city stood upon gold. And the king sent for men wise in the ways of the earth. And they built smelting furnaces, and Peter brought miners. And they mined the gold and smeltered it. And the king coined it into money. And therewith established things well in the land. The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home. When he told the good news to Joan his wife, Curdie rose from a chair and said, Let us go. And they left the cottage and repaired to Gwent's Storm. And on a mountain above the city they built themselves a warm house for their old age, high in the clear air. As Peter mined one day at the back of the king's wine-cellar, he broke into a cabin crusted with gems, and much wealth flowed therefrom, and the king used it wisely. Queen Irene—that was the right name of the old princess—was thereafter seldom long absent from the palace. Once or twice when she was missing, Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when nobody else had a notion whether she had gone, said she was with the dear old uglies in the wood. Curdie thought that perhaps her business might be with others there as well. All the uppermost rooms in the palace were left to her use, and when anyone was in need of her help, up thither he must go. But even when she was there, he did not always succeed in finding her. She however always knew that such a one had been looking for her. Curdie went to find her one day. As he ascended the last stair, to meet him came the well-known scent of roses, and when he opened the door, lo, there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch had been glorified by her fire, and there burned the fire a huge heap of red and white roses. Before the hearth stood the princess, an old grey-haired woman, with Lena a little behind her, slowly wagging her tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly so long restrain itself from springing as to be sure of its victim. The queen was casting roses, more and more roses upon the fire. At last she turned and said, Now, Lena. And Lena dashed, burrowing into the fire. They went up a black smoke into dust, and Lena was never more seen in the palace. Irene and Curdie were married, the old king died, and they were king and queen. As long as they lived, Gwintstorm was a better city, and good people grew in it. Yet they had no children, and when they died the people chose a king. And the new king went mining and mining in the rock under the city, and grew more and more eager after the gold, and paid less and less heat to his people. Rapidly they sank toward their own wickedness, but still the king went on mining and coining gold by the pail-fill, until the people were worse even than in the old time. And so greedy was the king after gold that, when at last the ore began to fail, he caused the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter, and they that followed him, had left standing to bear the city. And from the girth of an oak for a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir tree of fifty. One day at noon, when life was at his highest, the whole city fell with a roaring crash. The cries of men and the shrieks of women went up with its dust. And then there was a great silence. Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned with a palace, now rushes and raves, a stone obstructed rapid of the river. All around spread a wilderness of wild deer, and the very name of Gwintstorm had ceased from the lips of men. End of section 19 End of The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald


Welcome back to Vegas, guys. Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante here, wrapping up our coverage of day two of Snowflake Summit. We have given you a lot of content in the last couple of days. We've had a lot of great conversations with Snowflake, Spokes, with their customers, and with partners, and we have an alumni back with us. Please welcome back to theCUBE by Palmer, CEO of Sigma Computing. Mike, it's great to see you. Thanks for having me, and I guess again. Exactly. It's fantastic to hear. So, talk to the audience about Sigma before we get into the Snowflake partnership and what you guys are doing from a technical perspective. Give us that overview of the vision and some of the differentiators. Sure, over the last 12 years, companies have benefited from enormous investments and improvements in technology, in particular, starting with cloud technologies, obviously going through companies like Snowflake. But in terms of the normal user, the one that makes the business decision in the marketing department and the finance team, and the works in the back room of the supply chain doing inventory, very little has changed for those people. And the time had come where the data availability, the ability to organize it, the ability to secure it, was all there, but the ability to access it for those people was not. And so what Sigma's all about is taking great technology, finding the skills that they have, which happens to be spreadsheets. There are a billion licensed spreadsheet users in the world, and connecting that skillset with all of the power of the cloud. And how do you work with Snowflake? What are some of the, what's the joint value proposition? How are they as an investor? That's what I want to know. Quiet, which is the way we like them. No, I'm just kidding. Snowflake, well, first of all, investment is great, but partnership is even better, right? And I think Snowflake themselves are going through some evolution. But let's start with the basics of technology, where this all starts, because all of the rest doesn't matter if the product is not great. We work directly on Snowflake. And what that means is, as an end user, when I sit on that marketing team and I want to understand and connect, how did I get a customer where I had a paid ad and they showed up on my website and from my website they went to a trial and from there they touched a piece of syndicated content. All of that data sits in Snowflake. And I as a marketer understand what it means to me. So for the first time, I want to be able to see that data in one place and I want to understand conversion rates. I want to understand how I can impact those conversion rates. I can make predictions. What that user is doing is going to Sigma, accessing live data in Snowflake. They're able to ask ad hoc questions, questions that were never asked, questions that don't exist in a filter, that were never prepped by a data engineer. So they can truly do something creative and novel in a very independent sort of way. And the connection with Snowflake's live data, the performance, the security and governance that we inherit, these are all facilitators to really expand that access across the enterprise. So at a product level, we were built by a team of people, frankly, that also were the original investors in Snowflake by two amazing engineers and founders, Rob Willen and Jason Franz. They understood how Snowflake worked and that shows up in the product for our end customers. So if I may, just to follow up on that. I mean, you could do that without Snowflake, but what, it would be harder, more expensive. Describe what you'd have to go through to accomplish that outcome. And I think Snowflake does a good job of enabling the ecosystem at large, right? But you always appreciate seeing early access to understand what the architecture is going to look like. Some of the things that I will, leaning forward that we've heard here that we're very excited about is Snowflake going to attack the OLTP market, the transactional market, one of the transactional database market. One of the things that we see coming and one of the bigger things that we'll be talking about in Sigma is not just that you can do analytics out of Snowflake, I think that's something that we do exceptionally well on an ad hoc basis, but we're going to be the first that allow you to write into Snowflake and to do that with good performance and to do that reliably, we go away from OLAP, which is the terminology for data warehousing, and we go toward transactional databases. And in that world, understanding Snowflake and working collaboratively with them creates, again, a much better experience for the end customer. So they allow us into those programs. Even coming to these conferences, we talk to folks that run the industry teams trying to up level that message and not just talk database and analytics, but talk about inventory management. How do we cut down the gap that exists between POS systems and inventory ordering, right? So that we get fewer stock outs, but also that we don't overorder. So that's another benefit. Strong business use cases. That's correct. And you're enabling those business users to have access to that data, I presume, in near real time or near real time so that they can make decisions that drive marketing forward or finance forward or legal forward. Exactly. We had a customer panel yesterday, an example of that. Gopuff is hopefully most of the viewers are familiar with. As a delivery company, this is a complicated business to run. It's run on the fringes when we think about how to make money at it, which means that the decisions need to be accurate. They need to be real time. You can't have a batch upload for delivery. When people are on the street and then there's an issue, they need to understand the exact order at that time, not in 10 minutes, not from five minutes ago, right then. They need to understand, do I have inventory in the warehouse when the order comes in? If they don't, what's a replacement product? We had a, Mike came in from Gopuff and walked us through all of the complexity of that and how they're using Sigma to really just shorten those decision cycles and make them more accurate. You know, that's where the business actually benefits. And actually create a viable business model. Can you think back to the early, think back to the dot-com days and you had pets.com, right? They couldn't make any money. But now Chewy, okay, it appears to be a viable business model, right? Part of that is just the efficiencies and it's sort of a, I don't know if those are customers that they may or may not be, but they should be if they're not. Chewy is, but you know, and that's another example, but I'll even pivot to the various REI and other retailers. What do they care about? Cohorts, I'm trying to understand who's buying my product, what can I sell to them next? That idea of, again, I'm sitting in a department that's not data engineering, that's not BI, now working collaboratively where they can get a engineer, putting data sets together, they have a BI person that can help in the analytics process. But now it's in a spreadsheet where I understand it as a marketer. So I can think about new hierarchies. I want to know it by customer, by region, by product type. I want to see it by all of those things. I want to be able to do that on the fly because that creates new questions. That sort of flow, if you've ever worked in development, we use the word flow constantly, right? And as people, that flow is when we have a question, we get an answer that generates a question, we just keep doing that iteratively. That is where Sigma really shines for them. What does a company have to do to really take advantage of this? I mean, if they're kind of starting from a company that's somewhat immature, what are the sort of expectations, maybe even out of scope expectations so they can move faster, accelerate analytics, a lot of the themes that we've heard today? What is an immature company? It's actually a question in and of itself. I think a lot of companies consider themselves to be immature simply because for various constraint reasons, they haven't leveraged the data in the way that they thought possible. Good, good definition. Okay, so not... I use this definition for digital transformation. It's very simple. It is, do you make better decisions faster? McKinsey calls this corporate metabolism, right? Can you speed up the metabolism of an enterprise? And for me, and for the Sigma customer base, there's really not much you have to do once you've adopted Snowflake because for the first time, the barriers and the silos that existed in terms of accessing data are gone. So I think the biggest barrier that customers have is curiosity because once you have curiosity and you have access, you can start building artifacts and assets and asking questions. Our customers are up and running in the product in hours and I mean that literally in hours. We are a user in Snowflake. That's a direct live connection. They are able to explore tables raw. They can do joins themselves if they want to. They can obviously work with their data engineering team to create data sets if that's the preferred method. And once they're there and they've ever built a pivot table, they can be working in Sigma. So our customers are getting insights in the first one to two days. You referenced some, those of us that are old enough to remember, past.com are also old enough to remember, shelf wear that we would buy. We are very good at showing customers that within hours, they're getting value from their investment in Sigma and that just creates momentum, right? Oh, tremendous momentum and trust. And trust and expansion opportunities for Sigma because when you're in one of those departments, someone else says, why do you get access to that data? But I don't. How are you doing this? So I think that there is a big movement here. People, I often compare data to communication. If you go back a hundred years, our communication was not limited, as it turns out by our desire to communicate, it was limited by the infrastructure. We had the typewriter, a letter, and the US Postal Service and a telephone that was wired. And now we have walk around here. Everything is enabled for us and we send hundreds and thousands of messages a day and probably could do more. You will find that is true and we're seeing in our product is true of data. If you give people access, they have 10 times as many questions as they thought they had. And that's the change that we're going to see in business over the next few years. Frank Slutman's first book when he was CEO of Snowflake was Rise of the Data Cloud. And he talked about network effects. So basically what he described was Metcalfe's law. Again, go back to the dot com days, right? And Bob Metcalfe used the phone system. You know, if there's two people in the phone system, it's not that valuable. Right, exactly. You know, grow it and that's where the value is. And that's what we're seeing now applied to data. And even more than that, I think that's a great analogy. In fact, the direct comparison to what Sigma is doing actually goes one step beyond everything that I've been talking about, which is great at the individual level. But now the finance team and the marketing team can collaborate in the platform. They can see data lineage. In fact, one of our big emphasis points here is to eliminate the sweet products. You know, the ones where, you know, you think you're buying something but you really have a spreadsheet product here and a document product there and a slide product over there. You know, you can do all of that in Sigma. You can write a narrative. You can real-time live edit on numbers. You know, if you want to, you could put a picture in it. But you know, at Sigma, we present everything out of our product. Every meeting is live data. Every question is answered on the spot. And that's when you know, you know, to your point about Metcalfe's law, now everybody's involved in the decision-making. They're doing it real-time. Your meetings are more productive. You have fewer of them because they're no action items, right? We're answering our questions there and we're moving forward. Your meeting sounds good. Productivity is weird now with the pandemic. But you know, if you go back to the 90s, there I am, I'm dating myself again, but that's okay. You know, you didn't see much productivity going on when the PC boom started in the 80s, but the 90s had kicked in. And pre-pandemic, you know, productivity in the US and Europe anyway has been going down. But I feel like, Mike, listening to what you just described, how many meetings have we been in where people are arguing about the numbers, what are the assumptions on the numbers, wasting so much time, and then nothing gets done and then they bolt. Cut that away and you drive in productivity. So I feel like we're on a renaissance of productivity and a lot of that's going to be driven by data. And obviously, communication is the whole 5G thing. We'll see how that builds out, but data is really the main spring of I think a new renaissance in productivity. Well, first of all, if you could find an enterprise where you ask the question, would you rather use your data better and they say no?  But I do agree and I unfortunately have a career history in that meeting that you just described where someone doesn't like what you're showing them and their first reaction is to say, where'd you get that data?  So they just undermine your entire argument with an invalid way of doing so, right? When you walk into a meeting with Sigma, where'd you get that data? I was like, that's the live data right now. What question do you want answered? The lineage, right? And you know, it's like Slutman's book about, you know, got to move faster. I mean, this is an example of just cutting through, making decisions faster. Like, you're right, Mike.   You know, protect his or her agenda. True, but now to be fair to the person who's tended to do that, part of the reason they've done that is that they haven't had access to that data before the meeting and they're getting blindsided. Right, so going back to the collaboration point, the fact we're coming into this discussion more informs in and of itself takes care of some of that problem. Yeah, for sure. And if everybody then agrees, we can move on and now talk about the really important stuff. That's good. It seems to me that Sigma is an enabler of that curiosity that you mentioned. If that's been lacking, people need to be able to hire for that. But you've got a platform that's going, here you go. Ask away. That's right. And the, we're very good. You know, we love being a SaaS platform. There's a lot of telemetry. We can watch what we call our mouse-to-dows, you know, which is our monthly average users to our daily average users. We can see what level of user they are, what type of artifacts they build. Are they, you know, someone that creates things from scratch? Are they people that tend to increment them? Which, by the way, is helpful to our customers because we can then advise them, hey, here's what's really going on. You might want to work with this team over here. They could probably be a little better at using the data. But look at this team over here. You know, they've originated five workbooks in the last, you know, six days. They're really on it. There's, there's, you know, that ability to even train for the curiosity that you're referring to is now there. Where are your customer conversations? Are they at the lines of business? Are they with the chief data officer? What does that look like these days? Great question. So stepping back a bit, what is Sigma here to do? And our first phase is really to replace spreadsheets, right? And so one of the interesting things about the company is that there isn't a department where a spreadsheet isn't used. So Sigma has an enormous TAM, but also isn't necessarily associated with any particular department or any particular vertical. So when we tend to have conversations, it really depends on, you know, either what kind of investment are you making? A lot of mid-market companies are making best technology investments. They're on a public cloud. They're buying Snowflake and they want to understand what's built to really make this work best over the next number of years. And those are very short sales for us because we prove that, you know, in minutes to hours. If you're working at a large enterprise and you have three or four other tools, you're asking a different question and often you're asking a question of what I call exploration. We have a product that has dashboards and they've been working for us and we don't want to replace the dashboard. But when we have a question about the data in the dashboard, we're stuck. How do we get to the raw data? How do we get to the example that we can actually manage? You can't manage a dashboard. You can't manage a trend line. But if you get into the data behind the trend line, you can make decisions to change business process, to change quality accuracy, to change speed of execution. That is what we're trying to enable. Those conversations happen between the IT team who runs technology and the business teams who are responsible for the decisions. So we are, you know, we have a cross departmental sale, but across every department. One of the things we're not talking about at this event, which is kind of interesting because it's all we've been talking about is the macro, supply chain challenges, Ukraine, blah, blah, blah, and the stock market. But how are you thinking about that macro, the impact you're seeing, you know, a lot of private companies being recapped, et cetera. You guys obviously very well funded. But how do you think about, I mean, I asked Frank a similar question. He's like, look, it's a marathon. We don't worry about it. You know, they made the public market. They got five billion in cash. How are you thinking about it? You know, first of all, what's the expression, right? You never waste a good, you know, in this case, recession. I don't know, we don't have one yet. But the impetus is there, right? People are worried. And when they're worried, they're thinking about their bottom lines. They're thinking about where they're going to get efficiency and their cost. They're already dealing with the supply chain and issues of inventory. We all have it in our personal lives. If you've ordered anything in the last six months, you used to getting it in, you know, days to weeks, and now you're getting in months. You know, we had customers like US Foods as a good example that they're constantly trying to align inventory they have with transportation that gets that inventory to their end customers, right? And they do that with better data accuracy at the end point, working with us on what we are launching, and I mentioned earlier, having more people be able to update that data, creates more data accuracy, creates better decisions. We align that then with them and better collaboration with the folks that then coordinate the trucks. With Prologis in the panel yesterday, they're the only commercial public company that reports their valuations on a quarterly basis. They work with Sigma to trim the amount of time it takes their finance team to produce that data. That creates investor confidence. That holds up your stock price. So I mean, the importance of data relative to all the stakeholders in enterprise cannot be overstated. Supply chain is a great example, and yes, it's a marathon because a lot of the technology that drives supply chain is old, but you don't have to rip out those systems to put your data into snowflake to get better access through Sigma to enable the people in your environment to make better decisions, and that's the good news. So for me, while I agree there's a marathon, I think that most of the, I don't know if I could continue this metaphor, but I think we could run quite far down that marathon without an awful lot of energy by just making those couple of changes. Awesome, Mike, this has been fantastic. Last question, I can tell, I know a lot of growth for Sigma, I can feel it in your energy alone. What are some of the key priorities that you're going to be focusing on for the rest of the year? Our number one priority, and number two priority, and number three priority are always build the best product on the market, right? We want customers to increase usage, we want them to be delighted, we want them to be, we have customers at our booth that walk up and it's like, you're building a great company, we love your product. If you want to show up happy at work, have customers come up proactively and tell you how your products changed their life, and that is the absolute most important thing because the real marathon here is that enablement over the long term, right?  Under that, we are growing, we've been tripling the company for the past few years every year that takes a lot of hiring, so I would have, alongside product, is building a great culture with bringing the best people to the company that I guess have my energy level. If you could get paid in energy, we would have more than tripled it, you know? But that's always going to be number two. Where we're focused on the segment side, you know, is really the large enterprise customer at this point. We are doing a great job in the mid-market. We have customers, we have hundreds of customers in our free trial on a constant basis. I think that without wanting to seem overconfident or arrogant, I think our technology speaks for itself in the product experience for those users. Making a great ROI case to a large enterprise takes effort, it's a different motion. We're very committed to building that motion. We're very committed to building out the partner ecosystem that has been doing that for years and then is now coming around to the Snowflake and all of the ecosystem changes around Snowflake because they've learned these customers for decades and now have a new opportunity to bring to them. How do we enable them? That is where you're going to see Sigma going over the next couple of years. Wow, fantastic, good stuff and a lot of momentum. Mike, thank you so much for joining Dave and me, talking about Sigma, the momentum, the flywheel, what you're doing with Snowflake and what you're enabling customers to achieve that massive business outcomes. Really cool stuff. Thank you and thank you for continuing to give us a platform to do this and glad to be back in conferences doing it face to face, it's fantastic. It's the best, awesome, Mike, thank you. For Mike Palmer and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching theCUBE, hopefully all day. We've been here since eight o'clock this morning, Pacific Time, giving you wall to wall coverage of Snowflake Summit 22. Signing off for today, Dave and I will see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Take care, guys.