We're still on the breakfast plus TV Africa. Thank you for staying with us so much. We have a zikko Yeah, I took who joins the conversation this morning a zikko Compliment of the season happy new year to be precise Very same to you happy 2023 to all those I said we will not be here too bad for them right here Definitely we're here let's start off with the papers this morning and Would like to take a quick look at One of the papers has been made available by our paper vendor We'll be looking at the daily trust newspaper on the daily trust newspaper The headlines is state federal FCT to spend over 11.5 trillion naira in 2023 Projections barely, you know an annual retros that's what a spotter say bags orders must be weary granting loans to outgoing governors and That's also a picture of unprecedented crowd the shutdown candle for the state APC Presidential rally you could see a picture as well, but at some point It looks a save these pictures are photoshop, right? You look at it to some extent. I really don't know why People do this things, but you know, we have to be very honest as a people Let's quickly turn our attention from the daily trust. We have the nation newspaper Also in front of off to the bull shatima APC chiefs shot down canon and There's also a pictorial representation to that on the front page of the nation ex-legislative governor promises to serve Nigerians progressive Nigerians progressive governors will deliver at polls says Baguda now away from that central bank of Nigeria says the 1.35 trillion naira Polaris bank sales must be competitive is a competitive offer bite away and Another caption says government targets 8.2 trillion are from known oil sector It would really be great because as much as we make all of these projections on pep on paper Most times were still very dependent on people we K confident of victory for his preferred presidential candidate and Air Force redeploys the branch chief AOC's NDDC bad from awarding contract above limit These are some of the headlines you find this morning on the nation newspaper The next paper we have is the punch the punch says disco hike electricity tariff secretly and consumers kick So whatever is done in secret Cannot be hidden for too long the people will know that's why the consumers are kicking consumers accused this cause of a hike and Operators and ERC silent. You also have this goes begin new tariff January the first They are all the arbitrary increment of Anna who's saying all of that But these are some of the consents that you have underneath the right and right there and a PC prospect for oil in Nigeria and Borno NSPC Prospects for oil in Niger and Borno. I mean some people will say should we be celebrating about this? Especially when we look at the oil sector How far we fed what has gone on with the discovery of oil and the prospects all What can we say about it now just dead to heat? 77 trillion Naira loan 17 go up 5.2 trillion 25 buyers invited for the Polaris bag sale. That's what the CBN is saying Again, I don't understand why assilence killed my brother wife son That unfortunately so then the happen CBN Walker's sibling is quoted to say and The 2023 elections election I next set aside 1809 Beavers as backup quite commendable fuel marketers boycott private depots and 2174 or Let's look at it closely 274 trillion Naira security budget Low reps panel is saying The Guardian is the paper we have next Guardian says that servicing gobs eighty point six percent of the 2022 revenue federal government six fresh eight point eight trillion Naira loans lawmakers All does to take home 228.1 billion It's been dominating the papers yesterday. We talked about it on the show federal government to fund 553.46 billion Naira budget gap with spectrum fees Maritime tax security to go up with 13.4 percent of total expenditure outlay Education allocation increased from five point four percent to eight point two percent only 1.88 billion released for capital projects as at november Government not doing enough to generate incomes as expired. These are the riders you find this morning and Petrol petroleum tanker drivers threatened nationwide strike, okay Nigeria records that five fresh covet 19 cases as much as There's been different reports from different quarters But these are some of the headlines to take this morning and zika on yaitouk It's good to have you join us. Thank you so much. We appreciate your time Thank you again Then let's get straight to the crux of the matter. There are several interesting headlines, but let's look at the issue of revenue for Nigeria and the country debt servicing gobs 80.6 percent of the 2022 revenue federal government six fresh eight point eight trillion Naira's loan And we also know that the lawmakers have allocated 228.8 billion away from the 59 billion Naira that's been allocated So there's been a kick even despite the fact that was struggling, uh, you know, with revenue for our country That's on the guardian newspaper Yeah, um, thanks again, you know last week we were like playing with figures and I'm wondering where the missing link was and everything I did go back to look at the budget and the missing link Was the debt servicing because we're trying to add up, you know, the capital the recurrent And it didn't meet up to the 21 billion 21.7 billion the difference was in debt servicing and I don't know how many of us really I mean for somewhere like myself that is running for the governorship of a state When you look at the budget One of the very very critical areas that bothers me no end is the debt profile of the state And if people understand you see this the debts that we borrow They are shrouded in so much mystery that we don't really know the terms and conditions We don't know the conditionalities attached to this debt and if you come to a state level and Maybe and of course not even maybe there's going to be an ispo attached to it And you may not be able to reschedule it at any point you may realize that you you're projected income of about say 20 billion you may discover that about three four billion Is going to be going on a monthly basis to debt servicing That means that when you now have your capital and recurrent and you put together then you have nothing left For for or rather way take your your recurrent Where you have the Salaries and wages and running of government you may discover that there's nothing left for capital And because what you projected to be for capital is now going into debt servicing So the issue of debt servicing is something that every Nigerian every state government At the federal and at the sub national levels should take really really serious This issue of just borrowing borrowing borrowing you are putting the country or your state In a situation where they may not be able they may be crippled You know not even for the next generation, but even for the present generation for the incoming administration I think that Nigerians should wake up And make sure that one of the most important considerations one of the prime considerations Is how how How how concerned The the presidential candidate or the governorship candidate is about the issue of debt And what the person wants to do concerning it in our case We do have any option than to say number one change the music and number two go low profile because unless you Change your test boards from that consumption of we can't have a private jet attached to the government again We can't have this concept of government house that is taking so much money There are many things you've got to cut the waste stages Because the music has changed there's no more money And this has to apply at the national level and at the sub national levels We need to be very very careful about the character the personality the mindset Of the person that we want to bring into government when you see Let me be a little more specific One of the things that has endeared mr. Peter will be to a lot of people Is this aspect of feeling that look public funds? must have a a certain Conscience about it Where you must manage it in a way that must bring dividends to the people And this should be the mindset of anybody seeking any public office. It's not about your personal ego It's not about yourself because the dead body in Nigeria all the state We must have a very serious conversation around it even also. Okay. Look at the nationals. This chinese loans that we are taking up and down There's been a lot of speculation that they are tied to national assets Why can the the national assembly? Look into that allegation or assertion or What do you call it? Maybe conspiracy theory Is it a fact? And if it is which national assets are our debt tied to are we going to wake up one morning and discover that I don't even know. Maybe the the the villa Is in is being controlled by another government Or wake up and discover that nmpc has been taken over by another government Or wake up and discover that you know Some very very strategic, you know Investments that we've made over the years and are under the control. I don't want to even talk about the place They said they took over the police. I mean, I mean that's absurd.  That is unthinkable You know unfathomable So this issue of debt. I will say it again and again Nigerians should wake up and smell the coffee the person that wants to be your president What's his mindset with respect to how you spend money where you spend money? prioritization and if you look from You know, uh in our language, they say they don't get a bit, but that you learn Dead from sleep The campaigning structure The way they spend money the approach to things doesn't show people who are going to be extremely Spend drifts or those who are going to be very full girl with money or those who are I mean What's the mindset because who you have today? Is the person that is going to run your life for the next four if not eight years Ezekiel let's move away from the garden newspaper and turn our attention to the punch because Nigeria's the country's where we're still talking about the issue of revenue revenue Is a major issue for us and that's because we have not been able, you know to convert all that's around us, you know to Reality and make it, you know tangible However, the daily trust reports that 36 states government and the federal capital territory Have proposed to spend over 11.5 trillion naira in 2023 fiscal year. Of course, we're already in 2023 now A fourth analysis shows that You know 6.482 trillion naira will be spent on capital project While 4.989 trillion will be spent on recurrent capital and you know that we have been very big You know on the issue of allocation How much we allocate to capital project and how much we used to run the cost of governance Now this is a holistic analysis You think that 2023 is really going to be a happy year for us in some states actually not entirely I'll tell you this There's a mindset that I've tried very hard to talk about and enlighten people The sort of democracy that we run Is such that the office of the chief executive whether the president Or the governor the third tier is just there in principles The local government they really don't they are the appendages of the state government between these two people The mindset of the person is so crucial Because they have such overwhelming powers That they can literally do or undo When the bible says that when the righteous is on the throne the people rejoice It's just a typical case of Nigeria We've got to know that the person that we bring into power The person that we support It's a sowing and reaping principle Those of us that have the mindset of Make I collect my own this time or going to collect going to collect Not that it is your reaping season and that you are going to be sowing for the next four years Why would you reap of two months and so for four years? It's nonsensical It makes more sense for you to think of a person you are going to support You are going to sow You are going to help he doesn't have but he knows he doesn't have the money But he has the spirit he has the mind he has the exposure He has what I need to manage this country or this state for the next four to eight years So you support that person on the 29th of of may that person comes to power And then you can relax for four years Because you have elected a competent capable person with character and love above all Love for country or for state You realize that there will be a new spirit that galvanizes every single person We start to work towards a common goal and that will be the beginning of our emancipation For people who have seen people that are completely You know Disenfranchised not disenfranchised They are not in a position to be able to do the regal's of the job And you're following the person because he has money The problem is not the person because everybody has a right to aspire the problem is you That you know this person is not competent to handle this job You're following the person as if a spell has been cast on you as a matter of fact in our last radio program We have to spend time Grateful this covering cast the spell that comes on intelligent articulate people during election And then suddenly leave them after election But um as I can yeah, I took is it not worrisome that out of this state as much as we're talking about the 2023 You know budget. There's only 20 states out of 36 that has you know gone ahead to Passing to law what they intend to spend for 2023 And so you have the remaining state is it not worrisome how will there be you know running the states at this point in time It's not budgeted for because i'm sure that the budget cycle Had already been expired except there's a different budget cycle that might be running on I'll tell you it comes to the same thing I say all the time almost sounding like a broken record When you expect a dog to meow Or a cat to bark The problem is not with the dog or with the cat the problem is with you that should know better These people have never been interested in governors They have only been interested in state capture the treasury So a little important little such a fundamental thing as the budget that should be A very very serious consideration for any state governor You realize that these these charlatans are still monkeying with it All their own is politics politics my Successor my successor because if you look at those states Literally all of them are people who are like doing their second term completing their second term So they are busy with what am I going to take? How am I going to take it? What do I do? What can I delay so that I can do this and do that and not how can my state be properly run It's worrisome like you said extremely worrisome But I think that There are eye openness to us for us to think in terms of the sort of people that we are going to bring in Into governance by next dispensation, which is just a few weeks away Well, let's see how all of that pans out and the next question will be because I mean this report and this conversation is Such that we should you know have over time over and over again Because in order to see some of the states that have you know put out their budget Have passed it and what have you just a few of them have stated how they intend to fund the budget Most of them have not stated that how they intend to you know, solve Fund this budget just only to be dependent on what comes from their allocation the federal allocation And now we know that you know, what's coming into the federal allocation Is not so big because of the challenges that we have so Is it no time that we we tell ourselves the truth and You know begin to decentralize power and allow states to begin to think outside of the box Maybe these states are becoming very lazy Just because they have to depend on an allocation that comes from the center Two things yesterday In a quibomb states the council of elders made up of past governors and their deputies past Ministers, you know the the attorneys general and things like that they came together and called all of us That want to be governors And said talk to us. They did not allow any other person coming strictly the council of elders and I think at the end of the day The jury was out there because luckily for us their lives streamed it The only problem that some of us had was that I wish they had more time to do more drill down to specifics So that You can tell us how you want to get the resources To fund these phantom projects this fantasy that you have in your head But I think that the little time we had We could tell who was ready for governance and who was just thinking Let me just go and collect the money and share. Okay. So what am I saying? I think people should start to drill down the professionals in every state Get yourselves together.  How I want to be able to fund this project. How Give us specifics on how you want to do all these things youth unemployment restiveness Tell us specifics security your finances tell us specifics So I think that the best we can do now is to tell all this whether you're or haneze and the different different groups or You know, whichever you are whichever you are call all your candidates Drill them now Put them to debate. I'm surprised that some people don't want to open themselves up to debate Like in aquaibong one of the people that said is a front line person. Come and let us talk Let's take you on one on one Let's know what you have because it's what is between your ears that we need not how much deep your pocket is That's absolute boulder that come and face the public Tell them who you are what you want to do and how you want to do what you want to do That is what should give the public the inspiration to line up behind you and not to go and vote by using the resources of the people and God is watching All right, then the garden newspaper This issue is about covet and we know that there's been a lot of concern in china The you know center for disease control in igia as we are sure that We haven't recorded. I mean that was you know some kind of report that we have not recorded anything I mean, there's nothing to be scared of or worried about However, uh, there are social recent reports saying that nigera records about 35 fresh covet 19 cases And the foreign airlines have also kicked fault in the return of ineffective covet 19 protocols Travel protocols. We know that it's not just nigera. I think nigera was following the lead You know following what was going on globally because even in the united kingdom and amongst other Countries, they had relaxed travel protocol. They have relaxed, you know, the covet 19 protocols When of no smacks and public and we'll have you so we're here again And should we be worried especially when we're itching closer to we're getting closer to the 2023 elections That's in november 2023. You see already sounds like we're in 2022 when we're very close to the elections How many more weeks how many more days before the elections in february? So should we be should we be worried now? I I think I need should use this opportunity to Happen what I have always always always advocated Play down on the rallies where you say next nothing where you spend so much money Do more of town hall and debate Play down on the rallies because the the fully of the rally has been exposed These are people that I mean look at the last election You know the cycle when article entered cano It was wow It was like like a tsunami was achieved here taking over the whole state But during election how many votes came out was an anti-climate So Nigerians should refuse to be impressed by these rallies where you pay people humongous amount of money Pay them and bring all sorts of it's called mobilization.  How much? To 2,000 bam. Everyone will just drop the boom boom boom. They come and empty in this space and watch the people that are there They are just milling around because as far as they are concerned They just came here on a contract pay me my money and go my way. I don't get problem You don't get problem you understand So is that is that campaigning? Is that what I need to to see the people people should put up record of their campaigns Look in acquai boom. I keep saying this I've been to 28 out of 31 local government where I can give you the report from every village Village not word Recorded by I went with NTA crew for weeks Span we're doing three hours in every local government Especially selected people strictly by invitation to cover every village and we sat down and hear the problems of Every village I doubt that any other candidate in this country can say that That is about somebody that has a heart that wants to work for the state And not the rallies and the jamborees where you say next to nothing. They asked me one on one questions I listen to them and I get on record the problem of virtually every village Three hours sitting down listening you say you cut it. How many words they say they are 11 words Okay, word one. How many villages there are four villages, right? Who is from this village they come what are your problem your name your word your problems and Of course. No your name. No, but Ezekiel Yeah, I took My concern here is Do you see us getting to a point where we feel that all that's happening in china will affect us We're in january rd and february Just around the corner and so we get to a point where You know We begin to record cases and then there's a need for us to go back to status quo Where we where we came from, you know from 2020 they're about and you know that I really don't know. It's the elections So do you see us getting to that point? where Yes, every question is relevant to the context and the essence The problem is COVID-19 The context is the situation we are in now, which is political error So the relevant answer is what i'm giving you limits the people limited spaces Contain yourself within Town hall meetings and not these crowds that you achieve nothing You spend all the money and then there's a higher risk of a spread of any disease So I was giving context to the essence of the question If not says oh the other wood job is not talking not but practically Political error is people gathering Can we limit the people through a simple policy guys? Please play down on the rallies. Maybe have an opening rally Maybe close it and do a closing rally But the rest of the time do more of town halls do more of the bed Do more of door to door so that we don't have these mega crowds Gathering achieving nothing and yet risking the lives of the people That's within the context that I was trying to give you my answers Okay, and just as we course this down Yeah, I took There's also another report from The punch newspaper that discourse have hiked electricity theory secretly And consumers have kicked. How do you describe this? Would you say that this is?  Who do we report these matters to? What should the processes be have we come to a point where Enter the filling station any price you see you buy but you see that is on petrol but on this we is a monopoly where The phc end and the only people That can give you this credit and this power And if they choose to just take it above your roof and we need the power Is there any law? Is there any body? Is there any reprint? Is there anything we can go to? It's not like mtn and this other maybe It's a lot or any of this that if the price is high here you go to the other one If it's not this network you go to that network In this power matter. We have only one network which is phc end And the federal government has to come and let us know what you understand Is it I've had to have a very serious dialogue with the boss the chairman You know and there is a certain lie that we tell ourselves and we need to have A government that is honest. What is the lie? You can produce something for five naira and sell it for four naira. It doesn't make sense If you produce it for five naira And I government I want you to sell it for four naira It means that I am going to come to you and give you the differential of one naira Then plus your profit a reasonable profit reasonable markup On the other hand if you produce it for five naira and you want to sell it for 10 naira I'll tell you as a government you can do that a profit margin is too much. You're putting the load on my people The question is asked at today What is the cost reflective carry for a unit of power that we consume? What is it? Why is it don't it's just like the mystery of the barrels of oil What is the important cost of a barrel of petrol? You know a liter of petrol was what why can't we just label coming and give us those Those those statistics So that we all know if as a Nigerian, I know that the cost of bringing fuel in is 200 naira I know that for a fact is not disputable Then the person wants to sell it for 210 naira. I would say it makes sense Yes, go ahead just just finish up with that We don't really know what the cost reflective carry of this power is we need to know Number two, we need to know whether there is any subsidy on it Federal government cannot subsidize everything power will subsidize fuel They don't have the money they have borrowed in their broke come down tell Nigerians Surreal no vets. We don't get money again cost of bringing fuel in is 200 naira We've begged them to just peg it make just five naira profit on it We've brought down the tariffs at the port so that they can now make so please This 205 naira Nigerians will buy it. Yes Of course the reflected target of the addition of power is say 10 naira Please accept to buy it at 12 naira Yes, let's leave it at this point because we need to connect with our next guest For the next conversation. We appreciate your time So much and have yourself a wonderful 2023 Same to you and the whole of the management of plus TV Africa. All right, then As you go. Yeah, I took as a public affairs analyst. He joins us every other time on off the press We take a break when we return. We'll be looking at a second major conversation Please stay with us quite interesting


We at Densoages Network are obviously thrilled to get the Network of the Year is a big honor for us, particularly considering that we started with some 45-50 people and today to win the Network of the Year award in a short period of time, relatively short period of time, it really really feels good. But I'd like to say it is a lot of hard work put in by 2200 of my colleagues, my executive team, the executive committee and all the sort of hard work that has gone behind it and it really feels good to be recognized. Media is a brilliant property for the simple reason that there are hardly or in fact I can't think of any other award which recognizes individual media people, whether they are youngsters, whether they are business people, whether they are agency heads etc. So I think it's a brilliant property from that perspective. It also recognizes media agencies because we often win a lot of awards on behalf of our clients or for the work done for our clients, but there are very few if any awards that look after and motivate the media agency by itself or the network or individuals. To that extent I think it's doing a unique service in India. 2015 was brilliant, but the good thing is that 2016 is even better. So we're on a high growth path. We've already said that by the end of 2017 we'll be the second largest agency group in India, which really means that in a relatively short period of time of seven or eight years, we would have overturned maybe more than 80 years of historical ranking. So 2015 was really a record year for us, but it looks like 2016 will be even better. And we hope that this trajectory of growth will continue for the next few years because India's market is huge. There are huge sort of opportunities and potentials and our group has the momentum just now and I really want to keep capitalizing on it for a few more years to come. As far as the Densuages Network is concerned, our growth, we're clearly focusing on digital in a big way. So today as we stand, if we have 2,200 people, 900 of them are in digital. So that gives us, the market if you see is about 10-12% digital, but we get almost a third, 33% or more of our revenues from digital. We also focus on various aspects. For example, in the case of outdoor, we have nearly 35-40% market share, not only a leadership share, but a dominance share in that. So we're going to keep looking for places where our clients' needs are and try to give the maximum. Our thinking is that whatever are the marketing communication needs of our clients, we should be able to solve them all at Densuages Network.


You've ever been in one of Jeff's class, you know that it is exciting. It's the meeting with the students, the one-on-ones, the mentoring, the knowing that I've been teaching at SU for 23 years and that some of the students that I taught are now leaders in the industry. That means so much to me for a student to be able to say, you helped me, that's more than a paycheck is ever going to give you. We start out with a hundred incoming freshmen. We graduate close to 300 and I attribute the fact that many of them have transferred into the iSchool from his class. What he's done with sidearm and really taken a business that started with one school, the athletics website at Syracuse and now he's scaled that to over a thousand schools and he's been able to incubate that in the iSchool. The dean at the time, Ray Von Drann, who was one of my biggest mentors, really encouraged me to grow this company, to build it, to try. And the iSchool with Ray and then followed by Liz Liddy was with us the entire way. It was always, what can we do to help you, right? And I love that and it's what I try to do now is, what can I do to help you? We give students the opportunity to have internships, have part-time jobs and this allows them to grow. It allows them to get real-world experience, to mix with their academic experience. You need leaders if you're going to get anything done. Jeff was a leader in terms of Plaza 44 and then to honor three of the great running backs in the history of college football. It wasn't just about building three statues, it was about telling a story. And when I see the kids reading these stories and to understand about Ernie Davis, understand Jim Brown, the greatest athlete of all time, to understand Floyd Lill and what he's meant to the game of football and what he's meant to Syracuse University. I beam with pride. When you look at the nonprofits within the community, they don't exist without help. And so you pick where the ones that really impact you for whatever reason. It started because he has a true passion and a belief and a first-hand knowledge for what we do at David's Refuge, which is to care for parents who have a child with special needs. This was an organization that took care of the families, the caregivers. It just spoke to me in a way that no organization had. And it's one that I'm proud to be involved in. You know, his heart is all things orange and all things Syracuse and, you know, we are so fortunate to have someone like him in our community and at this university who serves first with his heart and all of his talents that follow. Orange to me is a sense of pride. It's a community, a belonging. I would not be who I am today. I would not be where I am today without orange.


The use of 4-H silicon carbide, 4-H, SICK, has been proposed as a promising material for high power and high frequency electronics due to its excellent thermal conductivity, high breakdown voltage, and low leakage current. However, the fabrication of 4-H, SICK wafers requires specialized processes such as chemical mechanical polishing, CMP. Improved CMP techniques can increase the efficiency of the process and reduce the cost of production. This paper reviews the properties of 4-H, SICK and the various methods used to enhance the performance of CMP. It also discusses the potential benefits of combining chemical, mechanical, and chemical-mechanical synergy to further improve the performance of CMP. This article was authored by Wang Dong Wang, Xu Asong Lu, Shin Kowoo, and others.


Good morning to everybody. I'm the last one to speak on economic topics this morning. And the topic of my talk is the economic prices in economics. And then Professor Hopper invited me to deliver a speech on this topic, for which I gratefully thank him. Of course, I accept it with a lot of enthusiasm, but also with some apprehension. And the reason for this is that to cast a critical opinion on this price implies a critical attitude toward virtually the entire economics profession as it has developed at least during the last 40 years. And this is a very serious implication because it puts into question the scientific value of the activity of tens of thousands of researchers in economic science. However, like everybody here, I believe that an argument should be judged on its own validity and not on the grounds of its implications. And this implies that one should not be reluctant to re-examine an institution, such as the Nobel Prize in Economics. To begin with, let me first clarify that the Nobel Prize in Economics is not a genuine Nobel Prize. It was established only in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden on the occasion of its teresentenary. The idea came from the then Central Bank's governor, Per Osbrink, and initially met some resistance by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, which, of course, was invited to become the awarding authority for the new prize as it has been playing this role for the prizes in chemistry and physics. However, the Academy's consent was won by the active lobbying of three people, Assar Lindbeck, economic advisor to the Central Bank governor, Erich Lundberg, professor of political economy at Stockholm University, and Gunnar Mirdal, himself member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, and a future laureate. Now, the agreement of the Nobel Foundation was easy to secure, as the Foundation would receive additional funding by the Central Bank of Sweden. In addition, the exact name of the new award, the Central Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was meant to dissipate any possible confusion with the five original prizes. However, everything else was set up in such a way that confusion would be guaranteed. The procedures for nominating, selecting, and awarding laureates were directly borrowed from, and as a matter of fact, integrated into the procedures used by the Nobel Committees in Chemistry and Physics. After a few years, the Swedish Royal Academy discontinued calling the prize by its full name. At the same time, the Nobel Foundation started providing extensive informational details about the prize exactly as it did for the five genuine prizes. And the thought after effect of assimilating the newly created prizes to the Nobel prizes, or as some would say, to borrow symbolic capital, has been achieved at perfection. It could not be denied that the prize has been a remarkable success to the extent that it lets the American Economic Association to discontinue awarding the Francis Walker Medal in 1977. It could not be denied also that this success received support, even though mainly implicit, from the economic profession. The so-called scholarly journals have published only one single article about the prize in 1985 by Assar Lindbeck himself, who at that time served as chairman of the prize committee. Published books on the prize either offer reverential biographical sketches in one single instance by the laureates themselves, or consist in popularizations of the laureates' theories, the common theme of which is presented as the wish to improve human condition. Some criticisms of the prize have found, however, their way in the everyday press. The grand-grand-nephew of Alfred Nobel, Peter Nobel, has been emphasizing for the last 10 years that the Swedish Central Bank has engaged into a trademark infringement by awarding the prize to stock market speculators, which did not reflect Nobel spirit of improving the human condition. The prize committee is most commonly accused of ideological bias in favor of neoclassical, monetarist, and free market approaches, developed primarily by American men, and against less mainstream and more socially oriented paradigms, developed by male but also female scholars from the developing world. Thus, the prize will reflect and reinforce the existing race in gender-power hierarchies in economics, and its exclusive focus on social relations in terms of prices and markets would be a barrier to new thinking. It is quite clear that these criticisms are fundamentally rooted in the Marxist class analysis, in the same way that Marxist class analysis correctly identifies the issue of class exploitation as historically prevalent, but provides a faulted explanation thereof. I believe the Marxist criticism of the prize is correct in its structure, but faulted in essence. In my opinion, a review of the prize committee's justifications for its choices of laureates as revealed by its presentation speeches and press releases demonstrates, indeed, a clear ideological bias, but only in favor of pro-government and anti-private property theories. And my attempt to demonstrate this anti-free market bias of the Nobel Prize in economics is directly linked to a criticism launched initially by Friedrich von Hayek, himself a laureate of the prize, together with Mirdall in 74. Hayek's banked speech focused on two reasons for which he would have decidedly advised against the creation of the prize would he have been consulted. The only reason that Hayek emphasizes is the high authority the prize confers on a single individual, which in the social sciences, according to him, translates into an undeserved strong influence over laymen. The other reason, namely the apprehension that the selection committee may tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion has been proved unfounded according to Hayek himself by his own receiving the prize. However, Hayek's prize was only the sixth of a long series and the subsequent 35 prizes offer enough empirical material to reconsider Hayek's opinion that no particular fashion in economics would be promoted by the prize. The fashion that the prize promotes, in my opinion, is characterized by the use of mathematical models and econometrics by a misrepresentation of the market process and by a defense of all forms of government interventionism. That way, I hope to show that statism has been the driving force behind the prize. When awarding the first prize to professors Frisch and Thindurgen for their pioneering efforts in the development of economics into a mathematically specified and quantitatively determined science, the academy took stock of the line of research that had characterized the development of economics in prior decades. In particular, the academy noted that, quote, one essential object of the laureate's research has been to get away from the vague, more literary type of economics, end of quote. Hence, from its very inception, the prize announced its little respect for all scientific achievements accomplished by verbal economists and decided to promote the new view that economic science is only mathematics and measurement. From the outset, the prize appears in radical opposition to a centuries-long tradition in social sciences. It has been promoting the new mathematical approach to the study of economic phenomena into closely interconnected fields, mathematically formalized theory and empirical research. The rewarded contributions to mathematically formalized theory are overwhelming. Hicks and Aral in 72 for applying differential analysis, Leontief in 73 for his input-output model, Kantorovich and Koopens in 75 for applying linear programming to the problem of allocating resources, Dubru in 83 for incorporating the mathematical theory of sets into economic theory, and Ale in 88 for his rigorous mathematical description of market economy. The prizes of 94, 96 and 2005 went to game theorists for their formal analysis of strategic interactions. Now, the prize committee's choice to promote formal mathematical analysis has important implications for the scientific content and substance of the distinguished contributions. A major problem with the construction of social theories and mathematical foundations lies in mathematics complete independence from and indifference to human action. By themselves, abstract mathematical categories cannot account for the real-world purposeful human behavior. The essence and consequences of different types of action cannot be understood by means of mathematics. Moreover, a formal mathematical analysis could actually lead to an effective loss of knowledge. A case in point is the vanishing of the fundamental distinction between voluntary exchange and forced transfers, so much present in the pre-mathematical verbal economics. Now, this one dimension of human action in this specific distinction cannot be accounted for by mathematical economics, as exemplified in particular by game theory. The so-called non-cooperative game theories which have been the core of this discipline and the very justification for giving the price to John Nash, seem inappropriate for representing the market process. After all, market exchanges are by definition cooperative as they presuppose the respect of the exchangers and third parties property. Accordingly, non-cooperative action implies either isolated action or violation of private property. What game theory has achieved is to completely delude these important distinctions. Competition between buyers and sellers is represented as a trade war and analyzed as if it were a case of armed conflict. Similarly, the imposition of a tax or of regulatory norm is analyzed exactly if it were a case of peaceful exchange between the tax and the taxa. The end result is a misrepresentation of social cooperation, but also government is de facto legitimized as its aggressive and anti-private property nature is being watered down. Hence, mathematical economics is not neutral with respect to the scientific conclusions it raises. As far as the validation process of its conclusions is concerned, mathematical economics faces a second fundamental problem, namely the issue of causality. If mathematics is indifferent to the category of causality as it is, how then could a social law that is a definitive causal relation between social phenomena be established? Here steps in the second leg of the mathematical economics promoted by the price, namely empirical research. Almost every award attribution mentions the empirical base of the laureate's scientific work. Moreover, a substantial number of prizes have been delivered exclusively for advances in econometrics, that is, the area of statistical methods for treatment of data. After the initial prize to Frisch, who had been the founder of the econometric society, the 1980 prize rewarded Lawrence Klein for his pioneering construction of econometric macro models. All these macro models are today used by government and intra-governmental institutions for forecasting the future and fine-tuning macroeconomic policies. As a complement to the macroeconomics, microeconomics was rewarded by the 2000 prize to Heckman and McFadden. In 2003, Engel and Granger were distinguished for introducing new methods for dealing with time-varying volatility. But I believe the most representative of all prizes in econometrics is the 89 award to Havelmau for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics. The prize to Havelmau is as far as the academy has ever gone in the field of epistemology, which makes it worth examining in some detail. From the outset, the academy declares that economics is an empirical science, the development of which is based on at least two fundamental requirements. One of these requirements is the creation of theories which reflect reality. These are the aforementioned mathematical models. These theories, the second requirement, is a methodology which can be used to quantify and test theoretical relations on the basis of empirical observations. However, the testing of economic theories faces a fundamental problem related to the lack of full conformity between economic relations and available data. And it is for his proposed solution to this very problem that Havelmau was distinguished. The solution he offers, and which is characteristic of the economic science that the prize wants to promote, consists in the reformulation of economic theories in probabilistic terms. Then the academy concludes that methods used in mathematical statistics could be applied to derive stringent conclusions about underlying relations from the available random sample of empirical observations. Hence, the prize promotes positivism without ever naming it. It de facto denies the possibility to arrive at universally valid economic laws by the use of logic. It adheres to the view that knowledge in the social sciences is to be acquired through the same methods that are used by natural sciences. Now, one of the implications of this approach to economics is the relativism of the results of research. As another random set of data derives from other individuals or at other times could confirm different, if not opposite, theoretical relations. And this is actually revealed in a number of prizes with conflicting results. The 93 prize was awarded to Fogel and North for finding out that technological change was not essential for economic growth. Now, this is in direct contradiction with the 87 prize to Sol who found out that technological change was accounting for at least two-thirds of economic growth. Similarly, the 2004 prize was awarded to Kidland and Prescott for having demonstrated that shocks on the supply side may cause the business cycle. And this, of course, is in stringent contradiction with the view that business cycles are caused by demand shocks. And this view underlies the work on stabilization policy by Friedman, rewarded in 76, by Olin and Mead, rewarded in 77, and by Mühndel, distinguished in 99. Notice also that this relativism of conclusions opens the way for an infinite number of prizes being given as any previous assumption could be contradicted by a new set of data. These contradictions, however, seem not to bother the prize committee. The relativism of the economic conclusions is even used to put into question the validity of some approaches that are critical about government policies. Thus, in 82, when rewarding Stigler for his empirical work on economic legislation as being designed by the state in order to favor special group interests, the economy of this life is still unknown. Now, what does it imply? This implies a negation of the possibility to arrive at some general and universal propositions about government regulation, and hence to make a logical critique of governments. In a sense, by promoting the type of fashionable mathematical economics, the Swedish academy has been making the negative case against logical critiques of governments. I believe also that the academy has been equally active in making the positive case for government interventions through the specific content of economic contributions that it has chosen to distinguish. In their substance, the distinguished theorists cover an extremely wide range of economic disciplines. In my opinion, the vast majority of rewarded contributions, however, share in common two basic views. The first view is that the market process is inefficient, and according to the second view, the failures of this inefficient market process needs to be corrected, and government policies are well-fit for achieving this goal. In other words, the government should macro-manage the economy. Let me first deal with the support inefficiencies of the market process. Now, at the surface, the price committee pays due tribute to Adam Smith's demonstration of the spontaneous coordination brought about by the market process. As a matter of fact, all distinctions attributed for advancing the so-called general equilibrium theory pay due tribute and establish such a positive link to Adam Smith. However, there is a nuance here. The price committee believes that the invisible hand of Smith is operating only under some ideal conditions. The real world is a completely different matter. It is filled with imperfections, which are sources of actual market inefficiencies. Now, this view has been expounded by the price committee in 83, while rewarding Dubru for establishing the conditions which guarantee that the price mechanism brings about an efficient utilization of resources. The committee very quickly clarified that this does not necessarily imply a recommendation for laissez-faire. Why? Because there remains the empirical task to assess the extent to which these conditions are fulfilled in an actual economic system. And a non-negligible number of prizes have been won precisely by economists who have developed rationalizations for the alleged market imperfections. Already in 72, a role was distinguished for having demonstrated that there exist general tendencies towards inoptimality in the allocation of resources between research and investment in real capital. In other words, the market would be short-sighted. In 82, Stigler was rewarded for having established the area of economics of information which explains price rigidities and provides a significant point of departure for current research on the ultimate origins of unemployment and inflation. In other words, unemployment and inflation would be a market-driven phenomenon. In 2001, Arkelov received the price for extending this view about the imperfection of information and he even claimed that the market may actually not come into being as informational asymmetries could prevent mutual transactions from occurring. There could be spontaneous mechanisms for solving this problem, but they would be costly themselves which would again mean that the allocation of resources by the market is somehow inefficient. The transaction costs for which calls received the price in 91 also imply in the committee's own assessment that the administrative management of resources in some conditions is more efficient than an allocation of resources that relies on the price mechanism. So in a nutshell, the price has rewarded abundant contributions to the market failure doctrine. Studies of government failures or of market successes have not won the committee's appreciation to any comparable degree. Thus, even when enumerating causes contributions, the committee simply omits to mention the laureates' work on the market's capacity to provide public goods. As a matter of fact, no price has been awarded yet for an in-depth analysis of the essence of governments and of the consequences of their policies. Indeed, such a price would contradict the committee's praise for contributions to the theory of macro-managing the economy. Now the simplest dimension of the theory of economic macro-management is stabilization policy. Stabilization policy is followed by governments in order to smooth the fluctuations of economic activity over the cycle and to make sure the full employment of resources and especially labor. The price committee has taken an apparently ambiguous position on the issue of stabilization policy efficiency. The 76th prize distinguished Friedman for having focused on the importance of money and of unpredictable time lags. The 99th prize rewarded Mundel for having integrated external trade relations and capital movements into the analysis of monetary and fiscal policies. With Mundel, the efficiency of stabilization policy becomes even the main determinant of the optimal size of areas on which a single currency should be used. Now the prices to Friedman and Mundel should not be understood and are definitely not presented by the awarding committee as criticisms of the crude Keynation view that deficit government spending can stabilize the economy. Rather, the rewards theories which are accepting the essence of the Keynation approach and are trying to render stabilization policy ever more efficient. The prize committee has taken an apparently different stance in later years. The price to Kidland and Prescott in 2004 clearly acknowledged the failure of Keynation type counter-cyclical policies which had resulted into stagnation. The Academy distinguished the laureates for their work on expectations and for showing that society could gain from prior commitment to economic policy. Similarly, Phelps was rewarded in 2006 for his analysis of inter-temporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy. The integration of expectations into the analysis has had, however, a very limited impact on the assessment of economic policy. The recognition that isolated and discretionary policy actions may be inefficient did not lead the prize committee to reject stabilization policy. Rather, it moved it to the view that policy actions at different times should be coordinated and that this inter-temporal consistency would then lead to even improved efficiency. So what appears to be a critique but actually is a rehabilitation of stabilization policy has its roots in the so-called Lucas Critique which the prize committee eventually endorsed in 85. The hypothesis of rational expectations for which Lucas was distinguished had actually been rejected implicitly by the prize committee in 81 when Tobin was congratulated for having referred to the stickiness of wages in his refutation of the rational expectations assumption. I believe the Academy decided to reward Lucas only after it became increasingly clear that rational expectations are an all-purpose assumption that could integrate into and even reinforce the conclusions of Key Nation models. The Lucas Critique states that because individuals can anticipate correctly the results of policy actions and hence change their behavior, the structural relations assumed by macroeconomic models may not hold true. This critique appears to be relatively weak, in my opinion, for at least two reasons. First, it misses the essentialist point that economic policy must be constrained by economic laws implied from the reality of human action. Indeed, if this were not the case, economic relations would be contingent upon the will of the policymakers and it would be meaningless to speak of economic science at all. Second, because it does not adopt this essentialist approach, the Lucas Critique focuses exclusively with the technical problems of how to construct formal models with rational expectations. The end result is not a critique, but again a reformulation of macroeconomic policy. Now, stabilization policy is only one dimension of the theory of macro-managing the economy. A much more abstract but crucial aspect at the are of is a so-called welfare or social choice theory. In a nutshell, social choice theory studies collective actions and establishes the conditions under which individual choices could be considered as socially optimal, that is as promoting society's welfare. Social choice theory offers a fundamental justification for any policy action taken by governments. Now, for any student of marginalism, social choice theory based on aggregation of individual preferences appears as an intellectual error. If individual's welfare could not be compared, how then could the very notion of social welfare be conceived of? The Price Committee in 72 rewarded a role for a critique in this direction, which nevertheless seems to be noticeably mild. A role showed that if individual preferences are assumed to possess a number of mathematically determined qualities, and if social preferences are to possess the same mathematical qualities, then social choices must be taken by a single will and imposed upon society. In other words, a role was rewarded for having shown that dictatorial central tanning is the decision process which is most compatible with mathematically formulated general equilibrium theory. Now, it may be a role while mentioning at this stage that the early prizes have shown a lot of sympathy for the Soviet Union. In 71, when rewarding cuisines, the Committee congratulated the Soviet Union for its economic performance. In 75, when distinguishing Kantorovich for his influence on the economic debate in the Soviet Union, the Price Committee reported loudly the latest findings of the Soviet mathematical school. As a matter of fact, the early prizes have been all focused on the possibility for and techniques of central planning. In my opinion, this also explains why from the Austrian School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises never got the price, and also why Mr. Hayek, whose critique of socialism is significantly less radical, was distinguished. Actually, from the wording of the Price Committee, one wonders whether Hayek was not rewarded for advancing the idea of market socialism. And as we heard yesterday, later writings by Hayek may give some credit to this interpretation. I believe this distinction by the Price Committee of our all findings in social choice theory must be seen precisely in this context of a favorable bias towards central planning. Now, even though central planning has been discarded by reality itself, the Price Committee did not see in the failure of collectivism an empirical reputation of mainstream social choice theory. In 1998, it rewarded Sam for his work on so-called reasonable comparisons between individual preferences. These reasonable comparisons, supposedly by pass are all strategic and would provide theoretical foundations for reconstructing social preferences out of aggregation among individuals. Again, for the student of marginalism, Sam is being distinguished for having rehabilitated welfare theory on grounds that are clearly contradictory with the notion of subjective preferences. Indeed, on which objective basis, neutral to individual's preferences, could one consider that some comparisons of utility are reasonable while others are not. However, whatever the scientific validity of Sam's work, it could not be denied that his conclusions provide an intellectual justification for policies pursued by democratically elected governments. Now, I try to show that the Price Committee by its choices of laureates in economics has promoted scientific endeavors which minimize the importance of the market process and support the rise of governments. But I believe that one should also pay attention to some additional rhetoric used by the Price Committee. When referring to high-ex contributions to business cycle theory, the committee merely noted that his theory of business cycles and his conception of the effects of monetary and credit policies attracted attention and devolved animated discussion. He tried to penetrate more deeply into the business cycle mechanism than was usual at that time. Now, to me, it is unclear whether the Price Committee considered high-ex attempt successful or not and whether it describes to them some value out of time. The next year, however, while contributions to the theory of optimal allocation of resources were distinguished, the committee clearly indicated that the laureates have been able to achieve highly significant results. Furthermore, observed the difference when in 1979 the committee distinguished Arthur Levis who has come to be known for two explanatory models which with the simplicity of genius mark out the causes of poverty. In other words, Levis is a genius for having shown that poverty could originate inside the market process but of course not from governmental policies. And just for the sake of another example, Muneau's research agenda very much influenced by a state at the IMF from 61 to 63 is given the status of a quasi prophecy. Now, I believe the biggest problem that such a pro-government and anti-market bias is raising for the Nobel Prize is its relation to truth. The single goal of scientific research should be the discovery of new knowledge either through correcting past errors or through the discovery of previously unknown truths. Truth, however, does not appear to be the primary concern of the Prize Committee in economics. In his article on the Nobel Prize, Lindbeck summarized the committee's criteria for selecting laureates in the following way. It is also clear that the Prize Awarding Authority has tried to favor constructive contributions rather than contributions that are destructive in the sense of mainly launching criticism that does not lead anywhere. To provide childers on which other scholars can stand and thus climb higher has been favored over attempts to show that everybody else is wrong. Now, this clearly shows that criticism and the possibility that errors could be committed by laureates is somehow impossible. Now, this comment in my opinion perfectly reveals that the actual goal of the Prize Committee has been to promote the mathematical fashion in economics irrespectfully of its validity. And I believe this neglect for truth is essentially a reflection of the Prize Committee's endorsement of the status agenda. Thank you.


Hello, everyone, and welcome to theCUBE's day one coverage of CrowdStrike Falcon 23 Live from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Dave, we got to go to the keynote this morning. It was action packed, a lot of news, some great demos, but I want to start, before we dig into that, you did a great breaking analysis on CrowdStrike. Check out siliconangle.com. You'll find it on the homepage. Give us the lay of the land in terms of the state of the business, a lot of growth, George Kurtz has pumped, we know that, what's your take? It's pumped as he gets, he's kind of a subdued dude as far as CEOs go, but let's see. So CrowdStrike, obviously a very successful company, just for those of you who don't know, $3 billion in revenue, $40 billion of market cap, they're growing with about 37% a year. If you go to their website, they have a little snapshot of their subscription customers, free cash flow, I think it's 63% of their revenue to go into free cash flow, which is, sorry, free cash flow, rule of 40. So in other words, if you take your free cash flow margin and your growth rate, add them up, you want to be at 40, they're at 63. Wow. Yeah, so rule of 40 is, from a free cash flow standpoint, it's very, very good, they're at 63. They started out at Endpoint with a single module, their whole claim to fame is they have this single lightweight agent, they also do agent lists, and it collects the data once, uses it multiple times, and then over the years they've built up many, many, many modules from surveillance and threat detection and response and on and on and on. And they're now up to, I think, 23. They announced at Black Hat, Charlotte AI, which is a large language model, generative AI assistant, SOC assistant. They demoed it on stage today, it was quite an impressive demo, I think you'd agree. And they said they were going to expose pricing at Falcon, but it was more call for pricing. Yeah, it was, yeah. They kind of really didn't expose much. But, so that's the high level. I think a couple things, the spending momentum overall, based on the ETR data for security, has been down, been compressed this year, even though security has performed better than most sectors. But even if you look at last spring, last May, it kind of dipped. And the big leaders, Zscaler, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Okta as well, even though Okta had some other challenges with the Auth0 acquisition, they all sort of dipped, but they've come back very nicely. And so the spending climate, still tight. The macro, you know, long sales cycles, a lot of scrutiny, but platform players like CrowdStrike are playing the consolidation game. As is Palo Alto, and maybe to a lesser extent Zscaler, but they're consolidating existing tools, and that's a winning formula in the marketplace. And the last thing I'll say is competition. George Kurtz called out, and I'm going to ask him about this, he called out Microsoft on the stage today. Many times. A lot of jokes about Microsoft with security problems. Called out Sentinel-1 through a little fud in the mix with Sentinel-1 getting supposedly rumors they're going to get acquired by private equity. He said, you know, we've seen this movie before. Do you really want to invest in them? He also called out Wiz, very hot company. We saw them at RSA.  You couldn't make it, but we went to the parties and Wiz, the party was out the back door. Really? It's a very hot company. And they're known for having a great user interface, great container protection. But he called them out as a competitive win. CrowdStrike has a much more robust platform and has built some partnerships to sort of address that gap. And they also called out Arctic Wolf Networks, which is kind of an SMB specialist in MSSB. CrowdStrike's doing a lot of partnerships there with folks like Dell and PAX 8. So a lot going on, a lot of momentum in the business, but I still have some concerns about the macro. There's a lot of headwinds out there, a lot of spending concerns, soft landing, is that even a reality? And that'll weigh on, I think, people's minds and investors' minds, because the stock's pretty rich. It is, definitely. Did you hear, you talked about the consolidation plan, you wrote about that in your breaking analysis, that was one of the things you were expected to hear. You mentioned also the pricing and what was announced this morning, wasn't really an announcement, you talked about it will vary by customer by customer. Yeah, it didn't expose anything. No, nothing there. Did anything surprise you in the keynote that, like that, for example, that you didn't hear that you thought customers are going to be clamoring for this? Because the demo was impressive. I mean, it was a really excellent demo. I don't know how real it was. I doubt they were using actual real-time data, but I'm going to ask as to whether or not they are. And so, but even so, it was, I believe it was a real demo. In other words, that was pre-recorded, that's based on, I'm assuming pre-recorded, based on some live data. And the responses seemed very accurate, very timely. That would surprise me if Gen AI actually works that precisely, that quickly. We've seen it with chatGPT how fast it is, but it always requires some fine tuning. It's like Google search in the early days. This plus that, plus this, put some quotes in there. You kind of got to shape it, prompt engineer it. There wasn't a lot of prompt engineering going on there. You know, it was a demo, so in a keynote, you don't want to waste the audience's time, so you want to demonstrate the outcome, which I presume is what that was. But that was disappointed that we didn't hear more on the pricing. I thought for a minute they were going to say, hey, for a period of time we're giving it away, and just to see what adoption looks like, and then over time start charging for it. Well you've got George Kurtz on the cube, and what, about a couple hours, are you going to ask him about that? A hundred percent, absolutely. What are some of the things top of mind for you to really unpack from his mind? So, I want to understand what the pricing strategy is. You know, they sort of promised that. Definitely want to talk about M&A, you walk around this exhibit hall. I don't know, I've probably met, I don't know, 10 companies that CrowdStrike has invested in, so I kind of want to understand their investment strategy. You know, some of the announcements, Falcon for IT, I thought that was pretty cool, where they're basically helping IT clean up some of their mess. My laptop's running slowly, why is that? Yeah. You know, a lot of stuff, a lot of assets, they purchased, they made an acquisition today of a company called Bionic. Bionic, great. Originally an Israeli company, they moved to Palo Alto, but they're basically security posture management. Supposedly paid $350 million for them as reported by TechCrunch. Falcon Foundry, I thought was interesting, where you can essentially create unlimited number of sort of response workloads. George said, hey, we have an infinite number of modules. I was like, how are you going to get an infinite number of modules? And well, sure enough, this Falcon Foundry to create bespoke workloads. So I want to ask him about that. I just want to get his take on partnerships. Remember, two quarters ago, I think, two quarters ago, they had a bump in the road with small business. They've done a deal with Dell, which presumably should help shore that up, but these deals take a while to get traction. So I want to ask him about that. And maybe poke at that consolidator play a little bit to see how that's working. Yeah, I'm curious too, in the years you've been following CrowdStrike, this is our second year of covering Falcon. How do you see CrowdStrike as really redefining modern security? So I think the big thing, the other thing I want to talk to George about is the TAM expansion, the way they've added modules, added new capabilities, done it with the same agent, and now starting to touch on adjacencies like observability. So I want to understand that a little bit, but I don't think CrowdStrike's going to become an observability company, but they'll play in that space. So those are TAM expanders, which is very important. That's a big part of a CEO's job. She or he has to keep thinking about and driving new capabilities that expand the TAM, new product capabilities, whether that's through M&A or organic invention. What are some of the magic ingredients you think that CrowdStrike has? I was telling you when I got to the airport last night, there were some ads for Sentinel-1 that played on the word crowd, like don't be lost in the crowd if the thought was funny. I also thought it was unique on their website. We talked with their CMO earlier this morning, JJ, and I said, it's very rare to see competitive intelligence information published on a website. Normally, that's the competitive Intel team with a marketing or with a product that uses that for customer conversations. And she talked about really wanting to be focused on educating their prospects and their customers, how they're different versus saying, we're better and this is why. I just thought that was a really interesting approach, but do you see any sort of magic ingredients that's making them as successful as they are? Compared to the crowded pool? Yeah, I think there are several. I mean, I think first of all, it starts with the architecture, this whole idea of we have a single agent, collect once, use many, many times. I think the second thing is this company, and I actually found a chart in their investor deck, self-serving, but I used it because I thought it was good. It says CrowdStrike at the forefront of AI-led innovation, but basically it went back to 2011 and said, these are all the areas in which we've used AI. Now, AI and security have always been strong bedfellows. I mean, you'll get the same sort of story from a company like Palo Alto, another platform company, but I do think their expertise in AI, so the architecture, their expertise in AI, part of their architecture is this idea of a data graph, again, something in security. Data graphs, knowledge graphs, graph database are very expressive, so you can visualize things in 3D, and security's so complex, sometimes that's a super helpful thing to do. I also think that their M&A has been outstanding. They haven't done like these big, giant massive acquisitions. They've done these really interesting tuck-ins. They're very active in the venture community, so they get good visibility on the leading trends, and I also think the last thing is they go to market. I think they're a really strong go-to-market, go-to-market story. I think the one weakness I saw last year was the ecosystem, and it's clearly starting to grow. I mean, I think the ascendancy of an ecosystem tends to come after the ascendancy of a company, but we see it with Snowflake. They're sort of doing it, ratcheting it up together. I think CrowdStrike still has some work to do there, but they've made some great progress from just in a year in terms of the amount of activity here of really high-quality partners. I think Jay-Jee was saying it's over 2X growth from last year when you guys were here about 30. Yeah, like they said, 30 last year. It was actually really small last year. I think we were at the Aria, it's kind of a quiet show. This show's buzzing. It is buzzing. So it's doubled the number of attendees, and I think more than double the number of exhibitors, so that's a good sign. You like to see that. I think the next thing is, I'd be curious to see whether the GSIs jump in, you know, the global system integrators. That's usually another sign.  We saw it at service now. You see it, maybe to a lesser extent, but you definitely see it at UiPath. RPA's kind of a heavier lift, but security's a pretty heavy lift, too. Yeah, it definitely is. He mentioned their strong posture in M&A. How good are they on the integration side? Because it's always a challenge for organizations across industries, is actually integrating different technologies so that it's a win-win for the customer. You know, I think containers and microservices and cloud have made it easier from a technology standpoint to do those types of integrations, and I think CrowdStrike has done a very, very good job of that, probably, I don't know, I have to talk to their product people, but my guess is they've done a very good job of selectively choosing companies with an architecture that can fit nicely into theirs. So that's very important to check that technical box, but I also think that culturally it's very important as well. I talked about OCTA's acquisition of OZERO before. That's an example of a great acquisition on paper. I was very high on it, because OCTA had the enterprise locked up, OZERO had the developers, but they just never could figure out the integration, the culture, the go-to-market. There was a brain drain at OCTA after that acquisition, caused a lot of pain and anguish. I think they'll be fine to get through it, but it was a real bump in the road. Definitely hurt their momentum. And so that's an example where we've seen so many historically in this industry where it just kind of didn't work out, or it was just a forced marriage. I think CrowdStrike with smaller acquisitions like this one, a Bionic was 350 million, that's not really a big acquisition by today's terms. We're seeing Databricks and Snowflake do a lot of these little tuck-in acquisitions, which I think make a lot of sense. And so I think that's some of the reasons why I think they're good at it. I think they've got a good M&A team. I think George really understands this business well. He's been deep in it for a long, long time. It's kind of a visionary, even though he's very low-key, he's a dock connector. So you're going to talk to him, he's on at 4PM Pacific today with Dave. You're going to talk to him about the pricing structure. What are some of the other things that you want to unpack with George? I do know to your point about the competition. He said in the earnings call, was it the earnings call or maybe it was the Goldman Sachs? Communicopia, whatever they call it, conference. He talked about a lot of Microsoft accounts. Microsoft's their biggest competitor. Microsoft's got a big security business. They're easy to do business with. They're everywhere, and they're a pain to companies like CrowdStrike because it's easy for a customer to say, yeah, sure, I'll take the Microsoft security. So very, very high overlap, I was saying before, 70, 80% overlap. In other words, if you look at the CrowdStrike accounts, well over half have Microsoft tools. And so CrowdStrike has to demonstrate that it's got better product, and it does. I think there's, you know, a lot of times it's not hard to compete with Microsoft on the quality of product. What's hard to compete with is they got one of everything and they make it really easy to do business with and they're really good at packaging and pricing and delivering eventually and then they have Azure as a cloud, so it's very difficult to compete with them. You know, unlike AWS where they're a good competitor but they're much more open to partnering. Not that Microsoft doesn't partner, they do, but they love to compete head to head, which they do with CrowdStrike. They compete in identity with Octa. They compete in cloud security and network security with Zscaler. They've announced products there. It was interesting to see all those stocks dropped when Microsoft made the announcement I had said I did a break analysis as a buying opportunity, I think it turned out to be just that with those leaders. Yeah, but it's still Microsoft, you can't ignore them. No, no. I think, you mentioned the word momentum and I think that's something that I'm feeling as soon as I walked in this morning, you could feel that. You were here last night? Yeah. It was at the partner conference? I wasn't at the partner conference, but this hall opened, I want to say at five o'clock. It was jammed, it was buzzing.  I want to do that here next year because it's such good action. We can grab practitioners. It was all red lanyards, you know, that are the customer lanyards. There's over 2,000 customers here. And they like to talk, some of the partners I talked to. I said to GSIs, I had a great conversation with Deloitte last night, they're coming on here and a lot of the ecosystem, so theCUBE after dark day one next year at CrowdStrike Falcon is a definite going to make that happen. I love it, sign me up. Well, I'm looking forward to the rest of today. I'm looking forward to your interview with George. We've had some customers on today, we've had some practitioners, some of their execs are coming on and really kind of double click on the strategy, the vision and how they really are, really kind of leading this inflection point in the industry. So we've got another half day today, Dave, and we've got all day tomorrow to unpack. We've got great guests. The financial analyst event tomorrow at 11 o'clock, unfortunately, I won't be able to attend because we'll be doing CUBE interviews, but that'll be good. A bunch of the financial analysts are coming out. They'd be fools not to come out, CrowdStrike makes them come out to Vegas. A lot are in California, but a lot of the East Coast guys in New York, I believe are going to be flying out here. I know I've talked to a couple of folks. I know the Barclays guys are going to be here and some others, and they do a really good job of covering this company. So we'll see how they buy the story. We saw this at Snowflake, the stock rose, the day of the financial analyst event. We'll see what the action is tomorrow in the market. Excellent, and keep it right here for action speaking of action. Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante live day one of our coverage of CrowdStrike Falcon. We have great conversations coming up next again four p.m. Pacific time today. George Kurtz is on with Dave. We're going to be here all day tomorrow. We're going to unpack tomorrow's keynote as well. We thank you so much for watching theCUBE and remind you all of our content on demand at theCUBE.net. All of our editorial is on siliconangle.com. So check it out. We'll see you in a few minutes with our next guest.


Well, we're back to talk more on the breakfast this morning. We have Mike Osatuie who joins us this morning, an official of Ip Man. Mike, thank you so much for making our time to be part of the show. Yeah, good morning, good morning. All right then, let's run through what exactly all marketers are saying. We have reports saying that all marketers have proposed to the federal government that the natural gas dispenser be co-located on their network of gas stations, numbering about 30,000 in order to mitigate the effects of petrol subsidy removal. However, the federal government has said that it would also hold subsidy in June 2023, or just a few more days from that, budgeting only 3.35 trillion for half-year payment. Now, recently, am I interested to know that Zainab Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, had disclosed that the federal government had secured the sum of $800 million from the World Bank as part of a post-subsidy palliative plan. There was a letter that was dated the 3rd of April 2023, it was addressed to Ahmed, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria. Ipman presented a palliative situation and solution to cushion the effects of the removal of energy subsidy. The association said that it has existing agreement with gas analytics and solution limited to install natural gas dispensers. According to them, this collaboration with Ipman presents the most economic and expedient platform to deploy necessary infrastructure. That's to support the fast national rollout of C and G4 vehicles. This is what the letter actually said, no time to go through all of that. But Ipman has also highlighted the need for the CBN to release intervention fund for the national gas expansion program as loans to vehicle owners to acquire gas conversion kit. Now, Mike Osatouye is an Ipman official. He joins the conversation this morning. Mike, once again, thank you for making out time. Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Can you quickly take us through Nigerians, what the plan of Ipman is, this proposal, how does that stop or mitigate the effect of subsidy removal? Yeah, thank you. Good morning once again. Do you know that when the movement comes to me, then you see the price will go up. As of now, good price randomly to be up about it. I'm never trying that one to template. It is going to be answered on a later. And everywhere that we have options, we have gas, we have all done. So the government can, or the government can, empower some members, patients to install a CND and get patients that can be adopted to the, I mean, to very good. And it's cheaper, it's cleaner, and we are fit. We are going to have to support it yet. So that's a lot to know that we are population. And not that we are the SDP. So we're not going to be building in this region to get it. So it might be, the government said that we can use our CND that will follow the vehicle. And we can also use the CND also, to provide the help. So we have a lot of stuff to use on gas. Mike, if you can hear me, we seem not to have a smooth connection from your end. I would also advise if you can just, you know, move a little bit to the left and the right, you know how the network can be sometimes. So we can have a better reception. It's poor, and we can barely make sense of what you're saying. But if you can still hear me hoping that you're able to move to the right or your left, I'm asking that you should take us through how that can cushion the effect of, you know, the subsidy removal, because you're going to, I mean, your association is saying that this is actually the best way. You know, this is the way out. So can you quickly take us through the how? How, you know, is that going to happen? Show us and tell us, you know, in real time. We have the stations. Can you hear me now? Mike, can you hear me? Yeah, I hear you. So I'm asking that how is this going to solve the problem of, you know, the effects of subsidy removal? We know that the prices of petrol would go up. We can't for sure say how much petrol we'll be selling for. Some people have pegged it at 500 or this is saying it probably might be selling for 750 an hour per litre or this is saying 800. But your, you know, Ipman's position is that these would help mitigate the effect of, you know, the removal. So again, so that the CBN can grant you these funds, what, how is this going to happen? Can you take us through, you know, the how? Yeah, what I'm saying is that they might not have the chance to do like both right here at the band area and if they can you support CNG, it can be a story, you know, the stations. CNG is going to present you a gap, which is an option to feed the vehicles and this also can be used for generating the fuel. So since we have the stations and if this isn't going to be a story, vehicles can drive you to let the unknown petrol and fuel up and go. So the gas is on and it's clean now. And in general, we have gas in a boat that can last us about two or three years. So we are proposing an option for the municipal government so that this will mitigate the increase in price of petrol while subsidies will move. Well, so what level is Ipman on at this point in time? In terms of the stage, you're talking about 30,000 dispenser gas station. What's the level that Ipman is on now? What's the stage? Yeah, we have a panel and we already have the support of the government so that we have the support of the government. So we start for us to get the government that's on. I mean, so I'm also saying, you know, with the federal government and the funds, the letter that has been put out, where exactly are you at talking stage? Have you moved? What's the response from the government? Well, we have the support of the government. We have the station. So, I mean, you were saying that you have been in touch with the federal government. I'll find out for this project. And I cannot make you the comment later. So, what's the progress? Well, we're waiting for that comment, but we believe that the response is very different. What we have to do at this point is just quickly take a short break. We hope that that would last for a minute or two. So we're able to have a smooth connection and not able to make sense of all that you're saying. Unfortunately, please stay with us. Well, so we have been reconnected with Mike Osatouye. Thank you so much for being with us, Ip Man official. Yes. Well, so quickly now, can you bring us up to speed with, you know, the progress that Ip Man has made in terms of these gas dispensers, about 30,000 of them. And, you know, where you are now, asking for funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria. You know that this project, which we need the support of the government, that's why we are willing to renew some finance and proceed the efforts, I mean, for support. So, I need our support to the government to bring down the price of petrol. I mean, it's a more function than a gas dispenser because they're going to get the super. And you know, gas is clean now. And if we get the fuel in our state, vehicles took out and driving and free up. And we can also use gas for our generator in the house when it's being compacted. So, all these options are available, which we would, you know, in reducing the burden on the budget in terms of pricing. So, we'll just let it, you know, go at this point in time. You also have those who are associated with you. A bit of them were saying that, you know, the federal government should go ahead and suspend the removal of subsidy. Is that also the position of Ipman? No, no, no, no. We are the support of Ipman's subsidy. We are great on it, but at the same time, we are also providing people to link this in price by installing NG equipment in our stations so that people can have access to the gas. And you know, gas, gas is about about that. The local gas is also great here. We have it. We are number nine in the whole world. And the white and every kind of gas is that. So, let me show you how to do that. Mike, can you hear me? Yes. So, do you think that the central bank or the government would actually heed to your requests? You said you've made progress in terms of engaging the government. Do you see the government responding or the CBN responding in a positive light? I think that's how we should work together on the operational and security environment. Because what matters was the tuition to the increasing price of control when the movement comes in. So, we have to sit down. And I don't just say that once we are out, and we are now coming up with this function so that we can work. I know we have the special measure why. So, I'm not talking of using a new station. It's just to explore the government and fill out so that that's a very fast option to reduce the burden on the masses. Because I thought there was a lot of gas for the expensive part. Down petrol. Mike, we have to go now. Thank you so much for making our time to be with us. We definitely have this conversation in the coming days as we inch closer to the date of the removal of petrol subsidy. And let's see what happens. If your association is saying that you have a solution to help cushion the effect, then let's see how that pans out. Thank you so much this evening. Well, we have been speaking with Mike Osatuye, who is the national controller of IPMEN, right here in Ligas. Thank you once again for being part of the show. We take a break and when we return, we shift our attention to security votes and the fact that governors probably might just be under a lot of pressure at this point in time over the recent measures that has been taken by the government to ensure management of these security votes that are not, there's no constitutional provision for it. Stay with us.