Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have two guests for this segment. We have Ronan Schwartz, he is the Senior Vice President and General Manager, Big Data Cloud and Data Integration at Informatica. Welcome back, Ronan. Yes, pleasure to be here. Welcome to Informatica World. Thank you, and we have Daniel Jewett, VP Product Management at Tableau. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Thank you for the welcome, Rebecca. Happy to be here. Yes, so there's some big news that's going to be announced later today. Tell us about the partnership with Tableau and Informatica. I want to start with you, Ronan. Yes, so Tableau have been an amazing innovator in the area of data visualization, analytics. I think more than all, they've actually opened the ability for more people to use data. And Informatica have been very excited to partner with Tableau on this journey of how do we empower more users, more company to become data-driven. So I think very exciting partnership, a lot of innovation, a lot of great capabilities. So we hear so much about the explosion of data and how much its use is being just across the enterprise more and more functions are using data to make their decisions. How does this impact the strategic importance of data? Yeah, absolutely. The relationship with Informatica for us has become important over the years as that data has exploded. It used to start off, you had a spreadsheet of some numbers and you wanted to try and understand what was in there and Tableau helped you with that. But then as data lakes started coming onto scene and not just a single data lake, but multiple feeds of data and streaming data and data's here and data's over in Europe and data's wherever it happens to be, that becomes a real challenge for the individuals who have some questions of that data. So Tableau's only as good as the data that we can get our hands on. So to have a great partner like Informatica who can marshal and rationalize where all that data is is a valuable partnership for us to have. And it's really about data governance but then also about democratization of data and analytics. You want to talk about that a little bit, Ronan? Yes, so I think democratization of data actually depends on your ability to have built-in governance so that the users are using the right data at the right time and the organization actually understand what is available where. I think this is actually one of the sweet spots for the partnership. Actually the ability of Tableau with a very easy interface to allow everybody to really work with data and the ability of Informatica to enable everybody to get the data in a governed way when you can actually control the quality and the availability of the data is actually our sweet spot as partners. There's some real tension there between the democratization and the governance side, right? So from a business user's perspective, democratization means I want to use that data and I want to start working with it. From a business user's perspective, governance typically means no. IT says you can't use that data or you can't have it or it's too complicated for you. So to be able to break that down and say no, data catalog and some of the tools from Informatica make the data available in an accessible and friendly manner and understandable manner is what enables the democratization to happen. So it's kind of turning that no into a yes, let me help you, which is a big difference. And how is that relationship between IT and the business side? I mean, how would you say that it has evolved in recent years as there is more of a push and pull between these two functions? Yeah, it's definitely evolved over the years. So as Renner said, we've been working together for a long time. I think we officially became partners back in 2011 and there was probably some tension out at a lot of accounts between the IT camp and the business camp and we were always the flag bearers of the business users. As we've seen over years, business users get frustrated by untrusted data and not being able to find data. So as the IT organizations have helped bridge that gap, I'd like to think we're helping put that olive branch in between the two camps at companies with the products working together. I think imagine that instead of IT actually being on the way of people using data, IT is really giving the power to find the right data to the business users. And this is actually instead of the user really working really, really hard to get the data, now it's in their fingertip. They can find it and when they find it, they can use it all the way from the source into Toblo in a very, very easy way. And trust it. And trust it. Which is the value added. Exactly. I can find a lot of data easily but most of it is not trustworthy and I don't know if I want to do my analysis on untrustworthy data. So to be able to trust that data that I've come across is really important. We're talking a lot about AI and machine learning here. How do those two concepts, ideas, approaches, methodologies play into Toblo's vision? Yeah, for Toblo, right? We've always been the company that wants the human as part of the process, right? We think people are curious and we want them to explore that data and work with it. So at first glance you might think, well AI and machine learning doesn't fit in with that but we think there is really a powerful way for it to do it. Instead of a machine learning solution handing you the answer, we want the machine learning solution to say, we think there's something interesting here that you should go explore more. So that's the angle that we're putting our investment on. So putting the human into these techniques. Human is still needs to be in the loop and the machine can help coach you along the right way to make those inferences around the data. Final question, we're talking a lot about the skills gap. It is a pressing problem in the technology industry. Ronan, I'm going to start with you. How much does this keep you up at night and what are you doing to ensure that you have the right technical and business talent to fill the open roles you have on your team? I think, I don't know if, I'd probably answer it in a relatively unique way. I think one of our job as a vendor is actually is to empower more users to do more complex tasks, actually without the necessity to build a huge skill set. And I think today, especially in this event, a lot of the clear RAI technology is really coming to give users that are less skilled a lot of power. And this is actually a critical thing in order to address the new needs, right? So the needs will continue to grow. The demand is going to continue to grow. We believe that a big part of answering the demand versus supplies by empowering new users to participate in an effective way within the integration, data management, analytic space. So we're making a major, major effort there, but we're also adding a lot of guided, a lot of advice, a lot of optimization that is done for the users automatically so that the users are more effective. I still think that the need for talent is only going to grow. It's not just the growth in the data, it's the growth in the demand for data and the growth in the demand for good data. So I think a lot of enablement, a lot of investment in people and in methodology to actually empower more users. Yeah, so for us, part of the onus is on us to make the software easy enough to use and understandable for the audiences that are coming across it. So there's really no reason why everybody can't be an analyst. They might be afraid of that title, but you're all working with data, you're looking at your phone, you're looking at your steps, you're looking at everything. Data, that's a simple example, but data comes across your landscape in a lot of ways. So it's up to us to make the analytic flow as easy as we can and understandable as we can. But it's also up to us to help grow the skills. You can only make it so easy because sometimes doing analytic tasks and working with data is just hard. There are complicated things. So what can we do to uplift the skills? We do a lot with Tableau for Teaching and trying nurture education programs all the way from K through 12 and up in universities to try and seed the universities and the elementary school instructors to start introducing the concepts of working with data at early ages and then in college there's whole classes that people use Tableau in to help understand the analytic process. So it's a little step and it's a forward-looking step, right? The payoff won't be for many years until those people get into the workforce. We're starting them young. But you have to. Mamas, teacher, babies, data science. Absolutely. Danielle Gronen, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. It's been a great conversation. Excellent, thank you, Rebecca. I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have much more of theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019. Stay tuned.


Welcome back to the Cube. We're at Accelerator in Mountain View, California. As you know, the Cube goes out to the events, extract the signal from the noise. We find the smartest people we can find. Ask them the questions that you wish you could ask them, and really try to find out what's going on and help you get closer to the action. So I'm really happy to have Camille Grant on. You're VP of Business Development now. Camille and I have been buddies for a long time, and Camille has a couple of interesting perspectives that we'll dig into. One, he's been always an enterprise guy. He never bought into the whole kind of crazy, some of the consumer stuff that wrapped up the valley over the last several years, and was recently at Sierra Ventures. So had a very interesting kind of point of view as to what was happening here in the valley, specifically in the start of space, but then also in the enterprise space, and you decided to leave a Sandhill Road, which most of us think we would never do, to come back down to the valley and jump in at an accelerator. So why? Yeah, great question. So yeah, I have spent the last number of years, as you know, in the enterprise space, and then the last five years at Sierra Ventures, watching a number of different industry trends. And this is one of these trends, which is a once in a lifetime kind of trend. I mean, I think mobility often gets simply defined as the device conversation, but as you well know, the enterprise is driven by a whole portfolio of applications and a whole portfolio of managing of those applications, and mobility is the grist here that is changing that whole stack. And so looking at it from the venture side, we saw she's lots of major trends, lots of interesting technologies to invest in, but very few that are true transformative platform opportunities that truly could be multi-billion dollar kind of movement of the market kind of things. What we're seeing right now, and as you know, I spent a lot of time with CIOs, both at my role at Sierra Ventures and here, and what we're seeing is the CIO is really thinking much differently. Innovation is critical, and the current legacy technologies that they've been beholden to are not the development environments for new applications. There is a whole different level of engagement with their consumer, with their business employees, with everyone inside the organization, and these mobile devices are the tools to do this with. So they're rethinking, just like they did in the Internet days, about moving from legacy of green screen to the Internet back in, you know, 15 years ago now, with mobility moving in the same way. They're going to reposition their entire portfolio of applications, hundreds and thousands of applications to be a mobile first set of applications. It started with very simple kind of what device should it run on, kind of like the browser wars back now 15 years ago, and it's what device? Should it be on an iPhone? Should it be on an Android? And now very quickly, the more mature CIOs are saying, it's not just about the app, it's not just about the device, it's about repositioning my entire portfolio. Every single application, not single one of them will be built with mobility first. Ask a developer, are you building new applications? Sure. What will you build them on? Will you build them to run on a desktop first? What's your desktop first strategy? Exactly. So clearly everybody is building mobile first, and at some point we'll get over this concept that it's mobility, it will just be the common development environment. Everybody in the organization building for a mobile app. So it's ironic for those of you who know the Valley were only blocks away from Netscape, you know, you bring up the early browser days and how transformative that was, but I want to talk to you, we talked a while back about what I thought was a really transformative story that you used about, you know, an insurance application, and I've been grilling the other guys earlier, and they're just not kind of getting there to the level of detail that we had that discussion. So I wonder if you could share with the audience, know what a mobile application means in something as simple as an insurance company that you just can't do with the laptop. Right. Great question. So every day I'm just blown away with how imaginative people are when they think about mobile first from an application standpoint. And the example you and I talked about was a company called Safeguard. You know, simple kind of environment, have a lot of people out cutting lawns and doing home inspections. Traditional model was take photos of the environment, stick it in a FedX box and ship it back and a few weeks later you get paid for the service you did. Geez, guess what? With a simple application of taking photos at the location, you can time stamp it. I know exactly whose device it is. I know exactly who you are. I know exactly where you are time of day. That photo, very simple application, fundamentally transform this whole Safeguard capture of information effort and transform the productivity of this inspector team that are not necessarily employees. So the poor CIO at Safeguard has to figure out how to create an immersive application environment that's highly productive and simply offering a new application that took the blackberry world of before or the simple collaboration world and and traditional photos and captured into a single application that they can use is a kind of business productivity change that I think we're about to see take, take, take charge everywhere. I think everybody's going to begin to see that there's things that you can do on a mobile device that you could never do in a desktop location, live payments, life collaboration, the ability to know who the individual is at that personalized device level or just some of the key tenants that say, boy, if you build an application with mobile first intent, you're not just building it so that it runs on that little simple screen. No, no, no, you're leveraging these incredible powerful new tools that can transform the productivity that individual business and clearly Safeguard is one of many and I could come up with dozens of others from Zipcar to Citibank to Merck to others that are actually using this technology in a way that is transforming how productive they are. And I think we're not just at the beginning of cool new applications level. I think this is the transformation of global productivity. The world will change based upon devices being able to give real time information in a way that we never had effectiveness before. And we're going to change productivity in an order of magnitude way. And the companies that do it first will scare their competition. And the competitive realm will take off based upon that. And again, I just think we're at the beginning of that overall race. It's funny, I just got I just got a new one myself. They said, now it measures barometric pressure. So if you can write a compelling app that integrates barometric pressure, and there's an app for that. So I want to I want to shift gears and leverage your long experience with Sierra and running CIO summits, which I know you did a lot. And, you know, to me, I think these poor CIOs are sitting there, right? And they've got the social trend, the mobile trend. This whole kind of what I do on the weekend, I want to be able to do during the week and then bring my own device. How should they think about kind of prioritizing it? And what are some of the insights that you can provide to CIOs watching this that weren't fortunate enough to be at some of those events? Great question. So yes, CIOs are just overwhelmed, I think, with the quantity of things that they have to become a really effective at.  And so at Sierra Ventures, they constantly were pinging me for insight. What should we be innovating around? And there were four key themes, as you likely know, it's that, you know, what are we doing around big data? What are we doing around mobility? What are we doing around social? And what are we doing around cloud? Each of those they're befuddled with how to leverage them. And in this situation, what what is causing, and as I mentioned, the safeguard example, this is a CIO who said, you know, this is not just about a cool application. This is about capturing data, big data analytics standpoint, leveraging cloud infrastructure and building new applications that allow me to collaborate social in a way that's altogether different. So a mobile application is my example of how they can finally get in front of the process of innovating in a way that captures these four major tenants, social, cloud, analytics, and mobility together into a single thing. The application captures this information that I never was able to capture before. It now captures usage at a level that I didn't have as insight before. It captures the kind of dynamics around how an application is actually being deployed in a way that I never had access to before. And I can now use this information to make really predictive information about how I should be launching my business and running this as a cloud infrastructure based application. So in a way, it's the first real cloud opportunity, you know, a lot of CIO spent a lot of time working on virtualization for the last five or 10 years, you know, quietly in the background, you know, the end users like so great, you've done virtualization, you consolidated 30 data centers down to three, no benefit to me as an end user. The mobile device is the benefit to me and really is the opportunity to create this new immersive application environment that again takes advantage of social, big data and cloud infrastructures. And again, I keep telling CIOs the ring is passing around on the Ferris wheel. This is your opportunity to grab it again and take charge, lead the business. Interesting as mobile is the way to kind of roll up all those trends. And as we've been talking with the other guests, you know, find a low hanging fruit application so that you can deliver immediate value and show value to the team, which will then help guide your investment into more and maybe less immediate ROI type of opportunities. Well, Camille, thanks for coming on. We could talk to Camille forever. Go stags. But we've got we've got people backed up here. So we will be right back with another guest again, you're on the cube.


What's good YouTube this your boy Chihuahua back at y'all again with another art video Today, I'm finna turn myself into a fortnight character Yes Did what I'm saying if you're new to the channel go ahead and hit that like button come in subscribe Make sure you hit post notification so you will be notified every time your boy drops on heat And without further ado, let's jump right into the video I will be dropping some videos to on how to use clips to your pain soon because I'll be having a lot of people Asked me to drop that so I will have that coming soon for you guys So I'm gonna start out in a good resolution. We're going to 300 for the resolution The size of the canvas we drawing on gonna be a 18 by 18 inch Let's get it Okay We're gonna start out with drawing my face Character style. Let me go ahead find me a little pencil We're gonna make my face. You know I'm saying so I Got a slim face Wait, do I got some big ears? Yeah, your boy got decent size ears Okay, we got the ears See my eye game on point.   I mean the eyebrows. I'm tripping. Okay Yeah, do I want to smile? Yeah, I smile a lot man. So that's one thing we're gonna have to incorporate We're gonna have to incorporate that in our character We got some I got some nice size lips as well. So Chinching.  You feel me real talk. I love you got the beard going I like to wear my hair in the beehive So we got to put the beehive bun on top of my head man We're gonna drop the size down. I'm thinking we making good progress Go ahead and do my little hairstyle. I like to wear you and then what's my weapon of choice gonna be? But we're gonna figure that out. We're gonna figure out what's my weapon of choice, man Nine times out of ten my weapon of choice would be a guy ain't Draco And my Draco instead of regular bullets, we'll be shooting See how much I don't draw a Draco from memory. That's some joggers on like the Dita trainers Boy had a joggers on you know I'm saying cuz I gotta be able I gotta be able to deal But I gotta be in style at the same time. It's like a I Gotta make a fashion statement at the same time.  I don't know about the rest y'all but me You know, she ain't worried about no I ain't worried about no danger We ain't worried about no we good in any circumstance you feel in the scenario We got this thing in the Gucci sandals, man I don't know how y'all do it. This how I'll do it Only can speak for myself No words in the world. Okay, I Be out there with the Draco shoot and paint paint brushes Gucci slippers a Dita joggers a V-neck Let me see what else what I have out there. We gotta have a no I can't I can't wear that I was going to put one of them look Supreme bags on but you know I'm saying can't be wearing a fanny pack But you buddy do gotta have it gotta have a paint grenades on So we're gonna have some nays attached to me You feel me a couple good nays, okay, we got the paint grenades And I need me one of them Apple watches on No, not an Apple watch for some Something to tell me what's going on like a little show the little mouth. So future is the type stuff Let's see what else we gonna need. I Get hungry a lot. So you boy gotta have I'm a little I gotta have me a little backpack man, you know what I'm saying with all the snacks and chips and All the good stuff man, you know, I'm saying what Capri Sun is on the side Precise Damn this side Okay, now that we got the character off sketched up with everything I would have On the game now it's time to go in And add the detail and there you have it you guys if your boy was a fortnight character I'll be so stuck Go ahead and hit that like button coming more heat coming soon and I'm honest


So today I'm working on an interior drill which is drilling the walls and filling them with insulation from the inside But I wanted to show you how interconnected houses can be.  So there's a stud that's running right in between here Yet, there's that much airflow going from one to the next. You normally won't see anything like this because I'm putting a fair amount of pressure on it from my blowing hose here But normally there is some leakage all the time and This is an interior wall, but the exterior walls do this too And this is part of why you get higher blower doors in older homes like this one


Now, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedelsen. I want to block this as global changes with a retired Second Circuit Chief Judge. Judge Shackley-Rofetto, who pairs a lot and has been to China a lot. And he's happy to talk with us about cultural changes in China, namely the book by, let's see, Desmond Shung, called Red Roulette. It's very interesting. Shackley, welcome to the show. Nice to see your smile and face. Thanks, Jay. Good to be here. Good to see you. So, OK, so we look from the outside in because China is a kind of a place that has guardrails around it these days. And everybody wants to go there. But we need to study it for so many reasons. And one of the things we study is the books coming out, the testimonies provided by people who've been on the inside. Desmond Shung is one of those people. And he wrote these books in the United States, I guess. And he wrote this book and it's like a best seller because it has an insight into what goes on in business and, for that matter, in social experience in China, which is dramatically changing. You've read the book and you've seen a video, which was very good, of Desmond Shung talking about his book. Where is he coming from? What is this all about? Well, he was a Hong Kong boy who came from a poor upbringing and then was educated eventually in the United States, went back to Hong Kong and then started working, I guess, in an investment fund organization, ended up in Beijing running their office and then branched out on his own. And it became extraordinarily successful, but it seems that it had a lot to do with Whitney, his wife, that he met, who also had a similar background all over from a different area. But she was very good at networking and she was able to establish a close networking relationship with the wife of then Premier Wen Jialao of China. And that opened a huge number of doors for them. And he describes that in great detail in the book. And he goes into a really interesting detail. We're all on the outside, so we just guess it's a stuff, but this guy was actually right in the middle and made billions of dollars on zero. And so he knows what he's talking about. I have a couple of paragraphs, which I'd like to read if you don't mind. Please, I'd like to field the pros of it. OK, he starts out, Whitney and Auntie Zhang, that's Wen Jialao's wife, and Whitney is his wife, had a verbal agreement that Auntie Zhang would get 30% of any profit from our joint enterprises and we and any other partners would share the remaining 70%. In theory, the Wens were responsible for putting up 30% of the capital as well, but they rarely did. And the few instances that they provided capital, it was always after the project was sure bet. Auntie Zhang never took any risk, so we deducted their investment stake when we distributed the profits. Nothing was on paper, it was all done on trust. The arrangement generally followed the industry, quote, industry standard, unquote. Other families of high-ranking party members extracted a similar percentage in exchange for their political influence. The template was always fungible and could be tweaked to accommodate investment opportunities as they arose. Chinese officials, executives at state-owned companies, and private businessmen who are close to the party presented insiders like Auntie Zhang with opportunities all the time. But the deals weren't as sweet as those available to China's red aristocrats. Those would be the children of the people who founded the Communist Party. They would get deals like they could sell all the water on all the trains in the Chinese railway system. You know, they're making billions of dollars. Finally, let me just read this, this is interesting. This is about how you network. It says, neither Whitney nor I felt much discomfort spending more than $1,000 on lunch. To me, it was just the cost of doing business in China in the 2000s. That's how things were done. The big element was the Chinese concept of face.  And it was precisely that fact that gave our guest face. If I'd been buying lunch for my personal consumption, I would have looked at it as a value proposition, that I wasn't there for fun. I was there for business, and I wanted to do business in Beijing. And that's what lunch cost. Pretty interesting. Wow, of course, the owner of the restaurant was also in on it, wasn't he? Yeah, he was all the way to the bank, right? He was related to the guy with the water.  I was coming back from Navy duty in the Philippines and I went to Hong Kong. And that was just five years after Chairman Mao died. And you couldn't even go into China before that, I don't think, and it was still hard. But I happened to stop at the China travel bureau.  And I said, no. He says, you got $10. I guess he went in the other hand and he came back with a visa. So I thought, okay. That's friendly. That was my introduction to mainland China. And I went on this great 10 day tour and near Guangzhou. But it was really primitive. There was like zero trace of Western culture. There were no cars, only bicycles. There were no, this is Guangzhou, which is a huge metropolis now. And there were six-story buildings with bamboo scaffolding and stuff like that. We went to a lot of factories and places, but it was very third world, nothing modern at all. And then I happened to pass through Beijing on a couple of day layover in 1994. And it was incredibly different just in that short period of time. There were cars everywhere, big fancy hotels and hummers and then of course, it's just gotten more and more ever since. And in the past 15 years or so, I've been there many times and for long periods, I've been to probably 20 different cities in China and lecture with the schools and, you know. Well, what impresses you is beyond the fact that it's way different than it was the last time you looked is that while you're watching, it's growing. And I remember my first trip to Shanghai, we arrived late, it's dark and we're looking at these buildings and there are lights, construction scaffolding lights all over the buildings. Those guys worked 24 by seven. That building was gonna go up and really soon. And I said, well, this is a city that grows while you watch, dramatically, yeah. You know, when I was there in 84, people were really poor and there'd be motor scooters or the big basket with chickens in it and stuff like that, but no one was sitting around. Everybody was going here, going there, doing something, selling something. That was sort of the beginning of selling things, but the energy was unmistakable. No question of eating it. Hong Kong was of course the same, but in mainland China, you just felt it.  And you still feel that kind of energy when you talk to the students. I'll say this too. I met a lot of people in China, I made some good friends and they're great people. I always had a wonderful time. I did get cross-rides with the government a little bit at one point, but aside from that, I always had a wonderful time in China and that's some really nice people. Well, Desmond Xu's wife did not have a wonderful time. So you may have been friendly with Auntie, was it Auntie Zhang? But at the end of the day, she paid a terrible price for knowing Auntie Zhang. Can you talk about it? Well, I just, I haven't finished the book, so I don't know the real details, but I saw his interview and he basically said that they had parted ways, so they were divorced, but they had, they built a huge complex onto the Beijing International Airport, which was used for customs and international trade. They were into real estate. This was a real estate development operation, yeah. Yeah, and then they built a huge office complex someplace in Beijing and she was, I guess, running that. And then one day she went to work and she was disappeared like the Canadians who were just released and she's still disappeared. And he said that he was living in London at the time, I don't know if he still lives there, I guess the Sun is with him. And he said that the day before it was to come out, the book that he wrote, which is basically a tell-all, he said he got a phone call from her. You don't know where she is, he hadn't heard from her, no one had heard from her, and then he got a telephone call asking him not to publish the book. And he said it was too late right now and it was already out in the shelves and about to be announced. So- Yeah, that's sort of the sort of reticule and he said in the interview that that was a really ridiculous call because they don't print it on the day they released it, they printed months before. It was already printed, as you say, it was already on the shelves. And some bureaucrat who didn't know better was forcing her to call him, trying to stop it. I'm not sure that he could have stopped it even if he wanted, but he didn't want to stop it either. I recommend the book to anybody who's interested in how China actually works, especially during the big go-go period when it was expanding. And one of the points he makes is that both of them, he and his wife both believed that China was in an expansionary period but also an evolving period where the rights would be more easily protected and that it would be a continuous opening up process, which of course doesn't look like it's continuing. But they all believed that at the time and they thought that they were contributing to making China great again. And so they believed in what they were doing. While it was helping them and they could prosper, they were also doing something good for their country. She was a pretty serious player for her to disappear like that, it's troubling. But I guess she was caught at the tail end of the, what was his name, Wen Xiaobo scandal where Xi Jinping decided that when Xiaobo was not loyal to him and all of a sudden there was this big corruption charge. And I think it's clear from Desmond Xu, that corruption is just another way of doing power, of doing control, of getting rid of your enemies. It's not really corruption at all. Yeah, one of the things he reiterates which I've learned myself is that the judicial system is just another instrument of Communist Party control. And they use it whenever it's necessary. And also they're constantly changing policies and changing the legal requirements say applicable to development and getting permits and it gets more and more complex. But they're also, he said very vague so that it's really easy to charge someone with violating the law. And that's what happens in these corruption scandals is that they can always find something. And when they pass a new law, they make it retroactive. So you can't win. You can't win, hence I win, tales you lose. But with anybody with a legal background, without a legal background, that'd be illegal in the United States. Exposed facto law. But in China, it's a tool of Communist Party control. I mean, that's pretty frightening if you think about it. Well, Desmond Xu managed to navigate through it. And he talked about a given project where he had to get, I think it was 167 permits. Yes. And they all cost them some money.  He couldn't just convince the top guy because the lower guys control the top guys. And it's just quite an interesting story. In the interview, the panel of three interviewing him, they asked him, what about Guangxi? Guangxi's important, isn't it, in China? And you have to have Guangxi to do business. And his answer, if you recall, was really interesting. The old Guangxi is dead. It's over. Guangxi, if you want to even use that term, it's different now. Do you remember that conversation, Shackling? Yeah. And he basically said, you ingratiate yourself with someone and you make their life better. Usually economically. It's transactional. And Whitney was apparently really an expert doing that. And he recognized that and they made a good combination because he had a financial and accounting background. And so he was able to bring that to the party and she was really good at networking. The great team, they were too bad they fell apart. But maybe it was under the pressure of what was happening to her and possibly to him. It's not clear to me that he could go back. I don't think he could go back. Oh, and after writing this book, there's no way in his life that he can go back because he really pulls the rug out from under the PRC. But one thing that sticks with me, Shackling, and I wanted to ask you about it because you're much closer to it than me, is that he talked about the hierarchy of power. And this is a sort of an extension of what I was saying about Guangxi. And that was expressed in the way the table at this $1,000 lunch, for example, was ordered. And everybody had a seat at the table in a special place and it was hierarchical. And it was not necessarily family, although the children of a powerful government bureaucrat would be powerful also, but it was based on power, not necessarily Guangxi or old times forgotten, but power. And my impression of his discussion on that point is that this was new. This was new, this had emerged even in recent years and it was emblematic of the change in culture, if you will, that's our title of our show today, the change in culture, business culture, government power culture that has happened in China. The ordering, the simple ordering of the table. Well, I think that that's partially traditional because I know when I've been, our friend Russell Liu helped me a lot find my way around China. And he and his dean invited me to lunch. I actually had lunch for them several times. So when I went there, they put me on the farthest side from the door and I didn't know what it meant. And Russell told me later, well, that means you're the important guest in the room. So I think that some of that's just Chinese culture, but then they take it to extremes. It's like Feng Shui, it's physical, it's the geographical location of the people involved. Yeah, yeah. I think if you went into a traditional Chinese dinner and you were set by the door, it would tell you something. Like kitchen. Or the lavatoire. Or they didn't have a private room. Yeah, right. You know, the thing is, the point he was trying to make in that little discussion which left me in wonderment is that the way things work in business is different now. It's more transactional. The way that the government has its tentacles into everything, including business, is transactional now. You know, you spoke, for example, of the fact that years back, not that many years back, 10, 20 years ago, that was when I was making my trips there. There was this sense of we're going Western. We're comfortable for you. We'll serve you a hamburger if you want, Frankies. Frankies in Beijing was an examiner restaurant there. And we'll work together. We'll make deals with the West and you can be part of that. Although they retained all that thing about the holy-owned woofy and that requirement to have a local partner and all that, there was a certain opening, a fresh opening, as you mentioned. And what he was saying, I think Desmond Schum, and at least in his discussion on the interview, was that that's changed now. Before the holy, the government-owned enterprises were like fading from the scene, fading from power. Now they're back and they're more powerful yet and they control everything now. And private companies are not nearly as powerful. You recall that part of the discussion. Yeah, and I think the one of the big crisis going on now is what looks like the bankruptcy of Evergrande, which is the second largest property developer in China. It apparently has the largest debt of any property developer in the world, over $300 million. Billion, billion. Billion, billion, oh my God. It's by Chinese standards. And the latest thing I heard is that the plan will be for the government to allow it to fail but break it up. And so it'll end up being owned by state-owned enterprises. And that makes sense. I mean, within China, they can always print as much money as they want, which they've done in the past. And the one question is that on Thursday, there are dollar-denominated bonds that come due. And I'm assuming that since they're dollar-denominated, they're probably purchased by Americans or others, not in China. And if they default on those, it may affect companies like BlackRock and other investors in China. So we have... I mean, if the U.S. defaults on those bonds. Well, they're dollar-denominated Evergrande bonds. Well, they're bonds out of Evergrande, okay. Yeah, yeah. But we have the possibility that our bonds, our bonds will be subject to default also if Congress doesn't act on the debt ceiling. Yeah, well, China has lots of dollar reserves, as I understand it. So they could probably, if a state-owned organization takes it over and the government banks support it why they can manage all that. But there's a lot of speculation about that right now. So what does it mean with these Evergrande and the $300 billion of debt and defaulting on the bonds because of government intercession? What does that mean? Well, it goes, it's consistent with what the book says, about the entrepreneurial spirit being dampened down. As I understand it, property development in general is like 20 to 30% of the GDP of China. So it's a huge gap. And it's gonna affect a whole lot of people. And of course the party has to make sure that that doesn't significantly disrupt their society. So they're gonna move on. I don't understand about a hundred property developers have already been bankrupt in China, according to the internet. So that could change things big time, I think, both in terms of what the party does in terms of control and also the interest of outsiders in investing in China. Which is already a problem. Yeah, well, the magic word is control. I mean, we've seen in the past several months and most recently when it occurred to me, and it seemed to me, that Xi Jinping and the PRC was into control. And it was expressing that in everything it did. Just things that come to mind at random is it has been much more oppressive in Hong Kong than it needs to be. It's been much more threatening to Taiwan than it needs to be. And it's actions in the South China Sea much more aggressive than it really needs to be. And then you look at the things domestically. Why permeate the tutoring business? Is that really necessary? Is there a point? And there were several other things that I've heard recently where it seems that Xi Jinping is trying to put controls on everything. And I guess that is, the common denominator seems to be, this is the new China, the new Xi Jinping China. Xi Jinping is like Mao or he wants to be. And he wants to control everything and that's good for China. But query isn't really good for China when you can't even understand exactly what benefit he's earning with it. Well, that's a good question. You would think not, but if control is all you're interested in, you're not, but you know, one of the things that always impressed me was how that, you know, if you teach in a law school there, everybody speaks English, so you lecture in English. And it surprised me how common it was amongst young people. And I realized that the government made the decision that people should learn English. But now Mao has, as you say, shut down the language tutoring industry, which was primarily English as far as I know. And that's a big, that's a real statement, I think, that he's gonna close things down and turn inward, which is difficult to understand because it's an export-based economy. And, you know, they have to import all kinds of natural resources, including oil. So I don't know just how insular they could actually get. Yeah, and there's some of the other things he studies. He's tightened export of intellectual property. The University of Hawaii and a number of other big schools from the mainland recently had a panel program in which all of their cyber people got together and talked about intrusions into American universities by China, which had been dramatically increasing, increasing by Chinese operatives and also by cyber techniques. And that's part of an initiative also. China is active in trying to get intellectual property from the US, but closing down any possibility the US will get any intellectual property from China. This is more aggressive than we've seen. And it's a disappointment as against what you and I saw 20, 30 years ago with the reopening. It's not reopening now, it's closing. And part of it is this cultural thing, part of it is this control of business. Where does this all take us, Shacklead? You know, here's a country that would like to present itself in the United Nations as a bunch of heroes, doing the right thing for the world. You know, high moral standards, which is just, that's fake. You know, doing things in Xinjiang that are unforgivable. They're atrocities, but they're going to the United Nations and telling everybody they want to save the world. It's so visible, it's so obvious. It's so, what's the word, illusory. What's going on here? I think, I don't know. I think, you might add that Belt and Road initiative and the communities in Africa are getting ports and so on. I think they're going to find like we have is that you can't export your culture someplace else. And we just found that out big time in Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah. Right, well, but can you create an image?  That's another element of this turning inward thing. It's being seriously suppressed. Not only the American press, but the press in general. Trying to control the message again, control. So, you know, how does that really play when China goes to the United Nations, it takes these lofty positions and tries to get control in the United Nations, but at the same time it's doing, you know, very inconsistent things in China domestically. And as you say, through Belt Road, where does that lead? It's a mixed bag for sure. Is it sustainable? What does the world really think? What is the world really gonna do? Is China gonna be able to muscle its way into these deals?  Well, it seems like as long as they're offering profit opportunities, foreigners are gonna continue to pour money in there. I think China is one of the largest economic partners in Germany, for instance, which is dominated by their car industry. So are they gonna withdraw? I don't know, you know, what about the European Union? European Union has a deal on hold, I guess, but they're not happy with America at the moment. So they might go ahead and make a deal. Australia seems to be out and so does the UK, but you know, there's plenty of capital around. And as long as people are willing to invest in China, I don't, you know, they're gonna, that's gonna create power for them, right? Yeah, so here we are. We're into Xi Jinping for about 10 years now. He certainly has left his impression on things. And what he's doing now is visible. And you know, nobody can miss the general direction of that. But where is it gonna take us? My question is to ask you what you think is gonna happen in the future. This control thing is gonna go forward for sure, it's gonna increase. The threats to Taiwan, South China Sea, Hong Kong, probably gonna increase. But what about business? What about the ordering of business societies, you will? What about the control of large corporations? I mean, look what he did to Alibaba and Jack Ma. Jack Ma had his feathers pulled right out. No big company can exist around Xi Jinping. He's gonna break him up every time. He doesn't want them to be powerful. So is that gonna continue? What do you see the direction, the result of this kind of strategy, say five or 10 years? Well, if he's around, and that's a question mark, I think it's gonna continue the way it is, you know? Xi Jinping thought being taught to grammar school kids. It's just like the red book, Chairman Mao. It's, as you say, the same game plan. And the question I have though is, could China actually turn inward? I mean, that's its history, in the long run. That's what it did, is it's the middle kingdom and folded in on itself, didn't need anything outsiders. I don't see how that can actually be done, but they're pretty resourceful people. But as long as he's around, now I understand that that's not necessarily assured under that system, so we'll see. But I try to make himself, you know, premiere for life, didn't he? Is that gonna stick? Well, so far, he changed the constitution. I think there's a big meeting next year, isn't there, about over that, to see whether he's continued or not. That'll be interesting, but, you know, it's a power place. So if he's still in power, I'm sure that's what's gonna happen. I don't think he's gonna attack Taiwan, though. Okay, the truth. He'll just continue to, I mean, why would he attack Taiwan? He might lose, and then what?  So I don't think he would take that chance. It's better for him to turn inward, control what he can, and deal with whatever problems he has inside where he can control it all. Last question, Jack Lee. Okay, given that, how do we adjust foreign policy to deal with him? How do you and I adjust our view of China? You know, the point on that is that 10, 20 years, 30 years ago, it was a luscious pomegranate. It was great to go over there, love the people, love the culture, love everything around you. So this is one of the most active, vivacious societies that ever happened on the planet. Now you really can't say that nor can you go back. So how do we adjust our conduct? And if we're business people, our business with them in the next five years, how do we calculate for, I mean, how do we compensate for what's happening? Oh, compensate. Well, I think we're out of luck in China for the time being. I'm looking forward to going back to Taiwan. All your Mandarin words are not lost forever. It's a great place. It is. It is a democracy, God bless. And it has lots of Chinese culture. All the best things.  Is this good for the world? Is it good for us? Is this something we need to be concerned about? Well, I don't think it's good, but I think it's going in a direction where things might change. You know, if anything's gonna change in China, it's gonna change because the Chinese people change it. And I've asked friends in China, I said, you know, China has a government structure and then it has a Communist Party which runs everything and controls the army. So they have a government and they have a judiciary. So if they didn't have the party, you know, they would have a bureaucracy in place so they could operate. I asked them, you know, given that, if you could get rid of the Communists, or if you ever, if the Communists were deposed, could that be done in a peaceful way so you could just transition to a normal goodness? They said, no, it won't happen. And I think that's true. It'll take another revolution of some sort. And I think that the closing down of China is gonna promote that. That's my own take. Very last question, which, you know, your last comment provokes me to ask this, you know. It was a huge mistake, but now organized a cultural revolution in the 70s. Was it turned out to be a disaster? Maybe you could make some left-handed argument that it helped to shape modern China, but I think it was more negative than anything else. And so one of the implications, in fact, it was specifically discussed with Desmond Schum, that, you know, we, they might be in another kind of cultural revolution right now. Do you agree with that? Seems like it could be, yeah. Yeah, this, you know, emperor worship kind of thing that's going on there. I think it's a sign that things are destructing, but we'll see. We'll see, we'll talk about it again. I'll tell you, if China ever emerged as a democracy like Taiwan, there would be no stopping it.  Well, it's not my lifetime, I guess. One can hope for the best. Okay, thank you. Judge Shackley-Refetto, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate this. We have to follow up on it, you know that. Take care. Aloha.