MDA like North Korea and what's life like

MDA has been on my mind and so has what had happened recently in North Korea. The two are very different but for us outside observers they are as good as the same. Both are irrational. You try to use your brain on these two, it is a waste of time. You don't get anywhere except with speculation, which is also unfruitful. Nevertheless the NYT has produced an excellent article on the execution of the ruler's uncle. If we could do the same with MDA, that would be very good. A huge embarrassment is in store for the MDA when reputable foreign publications start writing up on their latest measures. Only the reputation for intelligence of the broader government protects them from drawing the conclusion that they a hopelessly confused regulator. They are as unpredictable and arbitrary as Kim Jong Un. Everyone is watching them for some evidence of rationality and they are not going to wait forever.  One publication mumbrella had decided to go ahead because these guys loses the opportunity when the big names pick this up.

Now I want to speculate on North Korea. I think the young Kim is in deep trouble. His late uncle was probably a very capable man which he failed to appreciate. Kim inherited a country in worse shape than his father had to rule. He also didn't have long years of apprenticeship like his father had. They cannot reach out to the west without trading away the nuclear option. As a result they are stuck with China. Killing his mentor so publicly is tantamount to dictating terms to China. He basically just want to be fed and fed well when the Chinese also want to manage the cost of supporting North Korea. To safeguard his interest he will play brinkmanship games. Most countries are no good at such games but the North Koreans excelled at it ignoring that this is fraught with risk and it is only a matter of time it ends badly.

I think the North Korea regime is finished but who knows when. This is the same challenge we regularly have with the markets. If you know what you could not know when. When you grasp the when, you have no precision on what is going to happen.

Similarly the riot in Little India. Small fights are common occurrence there suggesting that a big fight or a riot would happen some day but who knows when. Ditto the small hurricanes that regularly visit the Philippines before they get hit with Haiyan. You can think up countless examples. That's how life on earth operates in nature and society.

The Singapore Way is to have a sensitive radar and anticipate low probability but high impact events. Our security systems performed abysmally anticipating the riot in Little India. What happened to those sophisticated horizon scanning systems the former civil service head Peter Ho was so proud of? Must be like the British, whose guns were pointing south but the invaders came from the north. There is nothing wrong with the systems. The problem as usual is the people. Fortunately the Home Team were much better than the strategy and intelligence team but watching pictures of overturned and burning emergency vehicles in the foreign media, how I wished they could also have protected those assets. They made us looked really bad.