IP and Data are the New Gold

[Arthur Hanson]

I recently wrote that IP is the new gold or store of value and should have included Data in that. Facebook which has developed a massive amount of IP to handle their massive data load, now wants to trade a few services like account warnings and alerts to have access to your banking/financial data. Their record for data protection and proper use has already been proven to be sadly lacking and with IP and Data combined on a massive scale like Facebook wants this is a massive and possibly very dangerous intrusion on the entire world in general and I don't feel any company should be given such power from having made finance and economics not only my living, but my hobby for fifty years(when I first started reading the Economist and Wall Street Journal at 14). Giving any company the power of AI over the world's largest social network access to our financial data and communications used to handle that data is an expansion of powers few if any truly understand the complete power and ramifications of such a move. The ecosystem the semi/nanotech sector has created combined with coming AI/ML all on 5G is a system no one understands its potential and dangers and what is an acceptable level of risk. Nothing will ever be perfect or risk free, but handing this much power to Facebook with their record would be a very dangerous move at best at this point in time for their isn't even a true competing network for Facebook and competition is just one of the ways to provide a check and balance system. The semi/nanotech sector ecosystem can no longer sit back and randomly hope its creations are not abused, but must take an active role from inception for with power, wealth and knowledge, go responsibility. To try and separate the them is irresponsible and dangerous.

Protecting our IP and Data must be made a national priority for IP is the foundation/tools that enables us to use our data to its full potential whether its social data or hard data from monitoring physical or biological systems. It's the combination of the both that are the drivers of our economy and we need a government that makes protection a priority which in the past some have not and we will never get back the size of our edge that we have lost.

Facebook wants banks to hand over customers’ financial information - MIT Technology Review