Wampum

Last Monday Northrop Grumman announced that 300 of its top executives are leaving Century City for the Washington area, including the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, leaving 21,000 people in Los Angeles County and another 9,000 people in the rest of California.

It is a big change, and part of a trend of the defense industry management teams flight from their WW2 origins in Pacific Theater airfields rich in trade and craft Okie labor and skilled SoCal technical labor, to the permanent war without locus waged from Washington. They, their product, their innovation, is simply insufficient to prevail in the expenditure driving deceit hawks who don't have to overcome a major technical challenge, ever, in their war against rhetoric and technique.

The next day ICANN announced that James 'Jamie' Hedlund, a Washington-based lobbyist, will take over at the end of the month as vice president for government affairs for the Americas. He is nominally replacing Paul Levins who held the position of Vice President of Corporate Affairs.

Now this isn't quite the same thing as shutting down one wing of a floor of the 4676 Admiralty Way site, but it bears repeating .. the VP for governmental affairs for the Americas will be someone who has never set foot in the building, has never attended an ICANN meeting, has never ...

His earnings, according to one source:

Year	Earnings	Client
2009	$1,060,000	Consumer Electronic Association
2008	$1,200,000	Yahoo!
2007	$1,625,700	Yahoo!
2006	$700,000	Yahoo!

An interesting quote. I've been more open in the past year that the fundamental problem is managing the delta between the MdR and Beijing roots, a delta I'd a very small part in causing to come into existence. I doubt if he is aware that "maintaining a single internet" puts him on collision course with (a) the belief that the US can act arbitrarily without adverse consequence, that is, the dull bits of the DoD glitterati, (b) the belief that the US is the only competent jurisdiction, that is, the dull bits of the DoC competition law and letters set, and their counter parties, (c) the sharper bits of the PRC science and tech policy advisers and (d) the unamused European Commission. Oh well, a man paid to be optimistic.