EuroWire January 2016

Transatlantic cable all of North America,” the Times was told by John Savageau, an information and communications technology consultant who formerly managed IXPs owned by CoreSite Realty Corp (Denver, Colorado), a major player in security systems. “If one of these major nodes goes down, you’re going to have pain because customer performance will be seriously degraded. But if you have a coordinated attack on multiple locations, that’s a nightmare scenario.” Because IXPs are crucial to the e cient operation of the Internet but most of them are privately held, with very few controls, addressing concerns like those of Mr Savageau and Dr Barford presents complex regulatory as well as physical challenges. Until a broad strategy for securing IXPs is developed, bre optic cables can still be disabled in one quick cut; and so the “cyberthreat beneath the street” persists. “The only way to solve this problem is to create a more robust network so you don’t have these single points of failure,” said Mr Newby, of the earlier dinosaur reference. In the meantime, companies that can’t wait are turning to businesses like Allied Fiber, CoreSite, Zayo (Boulder, Colorado), and Integra (Vancouver, Washington) – builders of alternative dark bre networks. Martyn Warwick, the editor-in-chief of London-based TelecomTV , clearly has endured a few too many tra c jams in Silicon Valley – the southern portion of Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area and a precinct of magnetic attraction for high-tech companies. Mr Warwick devoted the better part of his recent report on a new Toyota Motor Corp initiative in Silicon Valley to the execration of conditions in “what is now one of the most expensive and crowded places on the planet in which to be and do business.” On 6 th November the Japanese multinational automotive conglomerate announced a ve-year plan for the establishment of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), to be built in the vicinity of Stanford University. The new laboratory will be one of the largest and costliest such facilities anywhere, with an emphasis, Toyota says, on arti cial intelligence (AI) as a bridge between “cutting-edge science and commercial engineering.” The initial work, by 200 R&D scientists and engineers, will be on smarter and safer cars, self-driving vehicles, improved in-vehicle voice recognition systems, and on “AI to aid senior citizens with both outdoor and indoor mobility.” While Mr Warwick took glancing blows at “projects that run the gamut from the intriguing and possibly useful through to the grandiose and the downright scary,” his misgivings about the TRI mainly concern its location. (“Cram ‘Em In! Toyota to Build $1 Billion AI Lab in Silicon Valley - even though the Place Is Full to the Bursting Point,” 8 th November) Automotive All roads lead to Silicon Valley – but how much more high-tech talent can be squeezed in?

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January 2016