John Liccione is currently the only Democrat Running against Anna Luna for Florida’s 13th District House Seat
The Finite States of America
Here in the “Finite States of America”, I say let’s start by picking an Armageddon: Nuclear war or climate change. By “Finite States of America” I mean that America and its people have only a finite amount of money, attention, will, energy, and time with which to solve America’s most pressing problems. While our imaginations might be infinite, our resources are not down here on Earth 1. In this way, America can be looked at as a “Finite State Machine” (Wikipedia), a concept I learned in my systems engineering class in college.
And in this age of Putin-Trump, the state we in the Democratic Party are currently in is dazed and confused. That’s just how the Putin-Trump wants us.
The Bowling Alley
Think of the nuclear and climate threats to humanity as 2 target bowling pins to be knocked over with solutions. The bowling ball in this metaphor is a container for our attention, our will, our belief system, and all the finite resources we can bring to bear to knock down those threats. In a way, we are the bowling ball.
So, let’s aim the bowling ball at the lead pin. The lead pin should be the worst, most imminent, most deadly, most likely-to-occur threat to America and the world. Arguably, that lead pin at the moment is the threat of a nuclear war initiated by Putin in Ukraine. So, let’s make that pin 1. Let’s plan and execute a strategy to knock that pin over and achieve victory, however we chose to define it, before moving our limited resources on to the next threat pin.
How Not to Do It
If you want a perfect historical example of the opposite of this approach within the geo-political realm, just think of how George W Bush attacked Iraq on false pretenses...before he had fully finished the job with Bin Laden, Al Queda, and the Taliban. He starved our troops there in Afghanistan of the assets they needed to achieve quick and complete victory, and he diverted them to Iraq to solve a problem that didn’t exist. “Mission accomplished” my ass. It was just that reason that the Afghan war would stretch on for 20 years and it took seemingly forever to take out Bin Laden. This after Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld let him escape to Afghanistan while they distracted and hoodwinked us with cries of WMDs and “Al Queda’s-in-Baghdad” bullshit.
A Slave to Two Armageddons
Trying to achieve the two victories of reversing climate change and eliminating the risk of nuclear war will be impossible to accomplish in parallel in my estimation. Why? Because solving one, i.e., preventing nuclear war through elimination of all nuclear weapons and materials production, if we listen to the strategy espoused by some of my most progressive Democratic colleagues, will make the other (climate change reversal) much harder to achieve within our and our children’s lifetimes.
Why? Because subtracting ALL carbon-zero nuclear power out of the clean energy equation too soon will extend our dependency on carbon fuels...for too long. If there is a way to deliver victory on both objectives at the same time I’m not seeing it in the math or science. At least, not yet. I could be convinced otherwise I suppose and remain open to convincing.
Crossing the Chasm Theory
I’m going to apply to the geo-political realm a concept I learned from my decades as a high-tech executive. It’s called “Crossing the Chasm Theory.” In his book “Crossing the Chasm,” Geoffrey Moore wrote the bible for high tech start-up success. The bell curve graphic is the technology adoption lifecycle and Moore calls the approach I describe above as: “The Bowling Alley.”
Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm” With Bowling Alley, Tornado and the Technology Adoption Lifecycle
Here, you figure out what the lead bowling pin shall be, and you knock over that pin first before going on to an adjacent pin. You don’t try to bowl a strike. In high-tech, almost no one, if anyone, ever bowls a “market-cornering strike” on first roll. Remember how Jeff Bezos started Amazon? Selling books. Now Amazon sells pretty much everything and has 40% e-retail market share. But it didn’t happen overnight: It took Bezos three decades to get there.
Moore defines “cornering the market” as winning 60%+ of market share in your defined target market segment. He defines being the “market leader” as having won 40% market share. You knock that first pin down and that makes the next adjacent pin easier to topple. In the Moore bowling alley, a single pin consists of a pairing of a “whole product” with an addressable “target market segment.” If you don’t focus in this way, you will fail: You fall into the chasm that exists between the early adopter and the mainstream market phases of the “technology adoption lifecycle” bell curve as shown above.
The high-tech graveyard is littered with hundreds of tech start-ups that failed to follow Moore’s recipe with strict discipline. And American history is littered with the bodies of Democratic politicians who have lost elections because they failed to do the hard work up front to fully understand their customers’ (voters’) biggest problems, and by a failure to deliver a focused message and strategy for success that addressed those problems.
Crossing the Chasm at BoxTone in 2005
The BoxTone Logo I Created in 2005
I personally have achieved high-tech product success by following this methodology at two tech companies, BoxTone (FKA Panacya), and Evergreen Assurance. Below is the slide from the presentation I pitched to our venture investors in 2005. I ended up saving the company from shut-down. My BoxTone for Blackberry product was a first of its kind in the “mobile device management” market sector. The company would be relaunched and rebranded as “Boxtone,” a name I had derived from “mailbox dial tone.” BoxTone would ultimately be acquired by Good Technology for $101M in 2014.
My Presentation to Investors as CTO at Panacya (AKA BoxTone) in 2005 Where I Applied Crossing the Chasm Theory to Achieve Company Turnaround
In the graphic above, after researching the market and talking to a bunch of customers as Chief Technology Officer, I discovered an unmet market need, a problem that was not being solved by current technology: Blackberry device management overload. I figured out how to focus the company on a smaller, definable target market segment with a narrowly focused product. The market segment was the Microsoft Exchange installed base that were using Blackberry devices, at companies greater than 500 employees, in the financial services and health care and pharma industries, along the I-95 corridor. That’s what I mean by defining an addressable target market segment. You won’t succeed by trying to market yourself as the panacea for every problem to all customers (voters). I got there by doing a lot of market research, and a lot of good old fashioning listening in one-on-one meetings with CTOs and IT directors.
Now, is it me or is that that guy in middle of the Good Technology BoxTone picture below House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and to his left is that Mike Pompeo?
2014 Good Technology Acquisition of BoxTone — Group Picture (Good CEO Christy Wyatt center)
Russian Nuke Production/Weapons — My Target Selection for Lead Bowling Pin
My defined “target market segment” here is a subset of the global nuclear weapons production and weapons delivery system infrastructure. And the most imminent, most dangerous, and the most likely-to-occur threat is coming at us from Putin. It’s his state-controlled nuclear and radiological weapons industrial complex that is Rosatom. It is his Russian Strategic Rocket Forces (ICBMs). It’s his tactical nukes delivered by his aircraft, ships, missiles, and maybe even backpacks. And it’s whatever rogue state Putin choses to provide his nuclear and radiological materials to, such as North Korea, Iran, or their terrorist proxies like ISIS.
Where Canada Leads...
In a previous article entitled Putin’s Nuke Suprise and the American CEO That’s Enabling Him, I covered how Rosatom nuclear/radiological materials are being shipped to the US and to all over the world by Edlow International, a US company with a Russian subsidiary in St. Petersburg. Now I can report that Canada has just this week imposed sanctions on Rosatom and its executives...Ahead of the United States. Go Canada and Prime Minister Trudeau: You rock! Where Canada has led, the US must follow.
Confusion by Conflation: The FUD Factor
There is a tension and balancing act between trying to achieve the two imperatives of preventing nuclear Armageddon and preventing climate Armageddon. But because they both involve use of radioactive materials, there has been an illogical and dangerous conflation between the issues of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy that creates fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
Creating FUD is time-worn tactic used by dictators, lobbyists, and political demagogues that results in paralysis. It exploits the softer and more ambiguous social sciences of sociology and psychology versus basing decisions on the hard facts derived from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). I’m the STEM candidate in this race, an electrical engineer.
It’s unfortunate that both have the word nuclear in them and involve nuclear or radiological materials: I.e., enriched, weapons-grade nuclear, versus non-weapons grade nuclear. I think this is the root cause of some of the emotional and logical confusion. I don’t know if this confusion is being sown deliberately within the Democratic party out of ignorance, naivety or something else.
Note: I would never accuse my progressive Democratic brethren of being in the pockets of the solar or wind lobbies. You are well-intentioned brothers and sisters. So when you read this, don’t even try to accuse me of being in the pocket of the nuclear lobby. I take no money from them.
Threat Assessment and Prioritization
Here is how we bring clarity where there is confusion. We start with a threat assessment. Then we prioritize. Then we focus on the top priority versus trying to address every problem at once and dividing all our resources equally among them. Once we’ve nailed the top priority, or at least achieved 60% of our goal, then move more resources over to attack problem 2. Then to priority 3.
I’ll get the ball rolling. Here is my threat list. My number 1 as biggest threat to humanity is:
- Nuclear Armageddon - Started by Putin- Leads to humanity’s extinction — very quickly...then
- Nuclear Disaster from 1 nuclear plant (not a global extinction event but still terrible)
- Climate Armageddon from carbon emissions (Humanity extinction in, what, 200 years?)
- Large Asteroid Impact (extinction level) (See: NASA DART Project success)
Threat 1 is not some far-fetched hypothetical that can be denied, like some who deny climate change. Putin and his henchmen and agents here on US soil, one of them being my opponent Anna Luna, have been issuing threats or warnings as part of a Putin-driven psychological warfare strategy in an effort to bully, bluff, or trick the free world into ceding Ukraine to Russia by denying them our most advanced and deadly fighters, bombers, Naval ships, tanks, and long-range missiles. We see you.
So far this has been a marginally effective strategy for Putin as the Biden Administration has been slow-rolling advanced weapons and pilot-training delivery for a year and a half and is only now delivering the first M-1 tank and training Ukraine pilots on the F-16.
This incremental approach runs counter to what should be America’s near-term goals:
- The rout and defeat of the Russian military in Ukraine within the next 120 days while safe-ing their nuclear triggers...and;
- The imprisonment of Vladimir Putin by the Russian Ministry of Justice
- The release of jailed Russian politicians Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza followed by democratic elections in Russia
By focusing on these short- and mid-term goals, we eliminate the most imminent threat of nuclear Armageddon. Then we can move to reduce nuclear arms count amongst all nations like Reagan tried to do in the ‘80s with START. The goal: Nuclear weapons driven to zero by, say, 2033. I’d very much to see it in my lifetime.
The Highway to Nowhere
A key to any victory in any endeavor is to define what victory is, after having first studied your history and after assessing where you are now. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger: If you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you are, and you don’t know where you’re going, “You be on the highway to nowhere!”
The takedown of Vladimir Putin by his military, intelligence, and Justice Ministry leadership, a coup in which Russia’s nuclear triggers are safed by his generals, is a pre-requisite for achieving lasting peace and nuclear disarmament.
Out With Unsafe Nuclear
Simultaneously advocating for a clean energy portfolio that is absent “safe nuclear,” while also advocating for elimination of all nuclear weapons, in parallel, will be a recipe for failure in both endeavors. Stop conflating them.
Let’s work to build the safest possible nuclear power plants in regions way less prone to natural disaster, with the technical and procedural safety guardrails needed to never again risk another Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, or Fukushima. And don’t tell me that’s impossible, progressives. It’s not black and white: It’s on a risk spectrum. We can all agree that building near-sea level coastal nuclear power plants near earthquake fault lines is a terrible idea, can’t we?
So, let’s phase out the older, unsafe, geographically riskiest nuclear plants, like CA’s Diablo Canyon, quickly. Let’s ramp up safe nuclear energy capacity over time, in the mid-term at least, before throwing the nuclear energy baby out with the bathwater on the naive belief that solar and wind alone are enough to power the world’s mounting energy needs. The French approach to nuclear energy seems to be working well for them. Let’s learn from them.
Too Many Notes
We Democrats suffer not from deficit of good intentions, we’ve got oodles of those, but a deficit of focus. As I’ve been listening to our Democratic leaders, their speeches, and after attending a handful of Democratic Party meetings in Florida since I decided to run against Luna, one of the more disturbing takeaways for me is that we’re all over the place with our messaging, our slogans, our priorities, our vision for the future, and how to take down Trump and his henchwomen and men.
Like Emperor Joseph II in the movie Amadeus with his scalding critique of Mozart’s opera, our Democratic messaging and strategy about climate change and nuclear arms reduction has: “Too many notes.”
Let’s focus on taking Putin and his “Nuke Surprise” down and defang their nuclear-industrial-military complex and quickly end his Ukraine war. Then work to eliminate nuclear weapons in general over a reasonable interval while we work to reverse carbon-driven climate change and continue to tap the safest carbon-zero nuclear energy we Americans can possibly engineer.
Let’s achieve elimination of Threat 1, on Earth 1, before we wipe out all of our carbon-free nuclear energy production.
Once Threat 1 on Earth 1 is defeated, we can focus more of our resources on trying to save the world from a bit-farther-off global climate tipping point that will play out over perhaps decades or even centuries.
Now, I’m not saying ignore climate, I’m just saying we need safe nuclear energy as a stopgap until we can invent and deploy, at-scale, something better and safer that’s not subject to the vagaries of wind and rain.
Given the above, if you like where I’m going on this and other issues, like my Strategic Child Defense Initiative, I ask you to consider donating to my Congressional campaign at voteliccione.org/donate.
John Liccione
John Liccione is a candidate for US Congress in Florida’s 13th Congressional District where he is the only declared Democratic Candidate running against Anna Luna in 2024. VoteLiccione.org
He is also Founder and CEO of RussiLeaks, an online media company solely focused on exposing Putin’s secrets and those of his agents on American soil. He is also the Founder and CEO of Leaks Media, a start-up media company whose mission is “Exposing the Secrets of the Enemies of Democracy.”