Your employee’s favorite tool might not be acceptable.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/12/17/jpmorgan-chase-sec-fine-whatsapp/9161639750005/?u3L=1

SEC gives JPMorgan Chase record fine for using WhatsApp to conduct business

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay a $125 million penalty for allowing employees on Wall Street to use smartphone apps to get around federal record-keeping laws, regulators announced Friday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the violations occurred between 2018 and 2020, during which some JPMorgan employees used WhatsApp and personal email accounts to conduct official business.

Apparently everything I was taught was backwards!

https://hbr.org/2021/12/digital-transformation-changes-how-companies-create-value

Digital Transformation Changes How Companies Create Value

Digital transformation is about changing where value is created, and how your business model is structured. More and more, value creation comes from outside the firm not inside, and from external partners rather than internal employees. The authors call this new production model an “inverted firm,” a change in organizational structure that affects not only the technology but also the managerial governance that attends it. Executives must understand and undertake partner relationship management, partner data management, partner product management, platform governance, and platform strategy. They must learn how to motivate people they don’t know to share ideas they don’t have.

… The most obvious examples of this trend are the platform firms Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. They have managed to achieve scale economies in revenues per employee that would put the hyperscalers of the 19th and early 20th centuries to shame. Facebook and Google do not author the posts or web pages they deliver. Apple, Microsoft, and Google do not write the vast majority of apps in their ecosystems. Alibaba and Amazon never purchase or make an even vaster number of the items they sell. Smaller firms, modeled on platforms, show this same pattern. Sampling from the Forbes Global 2000, platform firms compared to industry controls had much higher market values ($21,726 M vs. $8,243 M), much higher margins (21% vs. 12%), but only half the employees (9,872 vs. 19,000).

Perspective. No need for laws as long as my killer robot is better than your killer robot.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/18/un-talks-fail-to-open-negotiations-on-killer-robots

UN talks fail to open negotiations on ‘killer robots’

… Sixty-eight states have called for a legal instrument at the UN while a number of NGOs have been battling the unregulated spread of such weapons and pushing for new regulations.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg and New Zealand’s Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control Phil Twyford have both called for the development of new international laws regulating autonomous weapons. The new government coalition agreements of Norway and Germany have promised to take action on this issue.

(Related)

https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/raf_shoots_down_drone_syria/

RAF shoots down 'terrorist drone' over US-owned special ops base in Syria

The RAF has scored its first air-to-air "kill" – where an aircraft downs an enemy aircraft – for almost 40 years after shooting down a drone over Syria.

The drone's type was not disclosed by the Ministry of Defence, which issued a press statement yesterday boasting of the Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR.4's victory.

"The engagement took place on 14 December when the drone activity was detected above the Al Tanf Coalition base in Syria," said the MoD. "RAF Typhoons conducting routine patrols in the area were tasked to investigate."

The Eurofighter Typhoon pilot used an ASRAAM missile to destroy the "small hostile drone." The MBDA-made heat-seeking missile is estimated to cost around £200,000 per unit.