Wednesday, October 09, 2019

No Techies In Dubai


I just realized perhaps there are no techies in Dubai. Big brands like Microsoft managed to snag 50 years of free rent from the city, but they have not kept a major tech presence.

There are engineers in the city, of course. There must be a ton of civil engineers, electrical engineers.

But I don't see some hardcore tech team building the next big thing.

I am going to change that. I think Dubai is going to be my second base after NY/NJ. Not right away, but down the line for sure.

Dubai has an amazing location. It is so close to Africa and South Asia. I had a college friend who, given the choice between New York and London, she chose London. Because she was from Eastern Europe. And there's just something about home.

Dubai has an amazing infrastructure. It is quite literally number one. In my book, the most appealing aspect of any city for me is its cultural diversity. And I don't mean restaurants. I mean people. There Dubai is number one. That is a major clincher for me. I am sold.

I intend to build Dubai's first major tech team that is primarily based in Dubai and goes on to build a world-changing company. Port Silicon.

I was talking about the three buckets yesterday (or maybe two days ago). Dubai has a ton of two: human capital and financial capital. The third bucket you build.

Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation
The Dubai Magic (1)
The Dubai Magic (2)
The Dubai Magic (3)
The Dubai Magic (4)
Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings

That Microsoft sign looks sad, if you ask me.

Silicon Hub might be a better name than Port Dubai. When you have the world's number one airport, you are a hub, not a port.

Dubai, you had me at hello.





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The Dubai Magic (4)

Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation
The Dubai Magic (1)
The Dubai Magic (2)
The Dubai Magic (3)

How Dubai Became Dubai how St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai have become “crucibles of non-Western modernity.” ........

Dubai’s transformation from outlandish idea to an economic powerhouse of the Middle East.

......... The world became acquainted with Dubai only a few years ago. ..... was presented to Westerners as many things:

Rich, strange, tacky, threatening.

....... a “skyline on crack” .....

With 96 percent of its population foreign born, Dubai makes even New York City’s diversity — 37 percent of New Yorkers are immigrants — seem mundane.

....... Dubai is a city where “everyone and everything in it — its luxuries, laborers, architects, accents, even its aspirations — was flown in from someplace else.” ...... Dubai was touted as a new phenomenon, but it is actually just the most recent iteration of a far older one. For 300 years, instant cities modeled on the West have been built in the developing world in audacious attempts to wrench a lagging region into the modern world. While the rise of these global crossroads cities was once checked by the speed of ocean liners and locomotives, today their growth is powered by intercontinental jets that can move a passenger from any major city in the world to any other in a single day. So

while the city of Dubai is new, the idea of Dubai is not. It’s just that in the age of jet-powered globalization, the idea can achieve liftoff as never before

.......... As the locomotive built Daniel Burnham’s Chicago, the jetliner built [United Arab Emirates Prime Minister] Sheikh Mohammed’s Dubai. In 1974, Sheikh Rashid tasked the young Mohammed with overseeing the growth of Dubai International Airport. In the 1980s, Mohammed tapped British Airways veteran Maurice Flanagan to launch Emirates airline, which would become an archetype of the Dubai model: A state-owned company managed by Western experts that would thrive in open international competition. ............ Saudis and Iranians came to shop and enjoy the libertine nightlife banned in their native theocracies. Entrepreneurial Russians arrived to empty Dubai’s store shelves and resell the items back home during the chaos of the Soviet collapse and post-Soviet free fall. ...........

most of the world’s population lives within a reasonable flying time of the city-state.

...... the United States taxes foreign-earned incomes above $91,500 .......

(As the UAE has no antidiscrimination law, by company policy, Emirates prefers not to hire male flight attendants.)

........ Dubai was a common refueling stop for hijacked jets, and Sheikh Mohammed became one of the world’s most experienced hostage negotiators. ....... In dealings with fearsome groups including the (pre-Oslo) Palestine Liberation Organization, Japanese Red Army and Baader-Meinhof Gang, an underground cell of West German radicals,

Mohammed never lost a passenger

. ........... The young sheikh’s triumphs barely made the international news, but they foreshadowed a development strategy that would serve his city well: Dubai would be an island of stability in a wealthy but volatile region, headed by a businessman/autocrat who thrived on high-stakes negotiations. To achieve liftoff, Dubai just needed a spark. That spark would be the most devastating hijacking of them all: 9/11. .............. Though only a sole Emirati was among the 9/11 hijackers, Dubai was crucial to the attacks. Since Dubai is the air hub of the Middle East, the majority of the perpetrators entered the United States via Dubai. And because Dubai is the financial hub of the Gulf, the money that funded the plot flowed through its banks. Moreover, in the run-up to the attacks, the Emirati elite had protected al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, if, perhaps, unwittingly. In 1999, the CIA abandoned an opportunity to execute bin Laden on a hunting trip because they believed Emirati royalty were leading the expedition. A cruise missile attack “might have wiped out half of the UAE royal family,” CIA chief George Tenet later testified. ......... the Americans, for whom Dubai serves as the largest overseas naval port ......... Hardly dyed-in-the-wool jihadis, the Emirati royals likely saw bin Laden as an eccentric buddy — part of their social milieu of Gulf Arab millionaire heirs but with an added frisson of radical chic. .......... the 9/11 attacks .... it was a boon, setting off massive growth that was only halted by the global financial crisis. ......... The anti-money-laundering provisions of the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, made investing in the United States less appealing to wealthy Gulf Arabs. Saudis alone are estimated to have pulled over $300 billion in assets out of the United States. At the same time, the instability in the Middle East set off by the attacks and the subsequent American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq helped raise the price of oil, which already had been creeping upward in response to increasing demand in developing economies like China and India. Thus, 9/11 both showered oil profits on the Gulf and ensured that those profits would be invested close to home. As the regional financial center, Dubai was the logical place to invest locally.

Sheikh Mohammed moved quickly to turn the increasing capital flows into a gusher

.......... In 2002, Mohammed issued a land reform decree allowing foreigners to own real estate in Dubai — a first in any Gulf state. ....... Loaded Lebanese afraid of another civil war back home, Indian nouveaux riches seeking respite from the poverty at their doorsteps, and Russian oligarchs banking assets stripped from operations in their decaying motherland all poured cash into Dubai properties. ................ What Miami had long been for the elite of Latin America — a place to park wealth too risky to keep back home — Dubai became for the magnates and kleptocrats of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and the former Soviet Union. ....... The apotheosis of this trend would come in 2009, when the dictator of Azerbaijan amassed nine waterfront mansions during a two-week, $44 million buying spree — all purchased in the name of his 11-year-old son. ......... the global real estate consulting firm Jones Lang LaSalle touted Dubai, along with Dublin and Las Vegas, as its “World Winning City” for 2002. .........

All three cities experienced massive booms, but Dubai’s was the most explosive. ........ Dubai was a real-life SimCity, a fantastical metropolis that looked as if it had magically leapt from an architect’s laptop running the latest computer-assisted design software out onto the pristine desert.

........... Housing developments sprouted up along the beachfront, and office towers rose along the city’s massive freeway spine, Sheikh Zayed Road, in the most outlandish shapes: An enormous golf tee, a silvery sandworm, even a proposed spherical “Dubai Death Star.” Architecture firms struggled to keep up with demand, importing new employees so fast that they could scarcely find desks for them all. ....... Between 2002 and 2008, the city’s population doubled and its urbanized footprint quadrupled — in part from speculation-driven land-reclamation projects reminiscent of the 19th-century Bombay boom, albeit in outlandish shapes of palm trees and maps of the world.

In 2008, Dubai experienced as much property development as Shanghai, a city with 13 times its population.

........ Through a parallel strategy designed to lure multinational companies, Sheikh Mohammed successfully turned Dubai into the global business hub of the Middle East. In the early 1980s, Mohammed had breathed new life into the languishing Jebel Ali port by declaring it Dubai’s first “free zone.” The term was something of a misnomer. Free zones in many countries were simply areas where companies were exempt from taxation. But in Dubai, there were no corporate or income taxes to begin with; the government was funded largely with the profits of state-owned enterprises, oil revenues and sin taxes on alcohol. Jebel Ali Free Zone was more like a Special Economic Zone in Deng Xiaoping’s China, where separate laws applied within the SEZ than beyond the gates. Beyond the borders of Jebel Ali, strict, traditional Shariah law would still govern business relations (under Shariah, for instance, those who can’t pay their debts are imprisoned). But inside the new free zone, business could be done much as it was done in the West, according to a specially crafted civil legal code geared specifically toward port businesses. Jebel Ali thrived under the new regime, becoming one of the busiest ports on the planet. Today, it processes over 10 million shipping containers annually. ............ With the success of Jebel Ali, Sheikh Mohammed began carving other free zones out of the desert, each specifically designed to woo an industry he felt would benefit Dubai. ........ Being a single city governed under multiple legal regimes would come to define Dubai. Global cities have always struggled with how to apply laws to their diverse assemblages of people. Through its patchwork of free zones, Dubai had come up with a new answer. While in the foreign concessions of Shanghai, different people were bound by different legal codes based on their nationality, in Dubai the same people would be governed by different legal codes depending on where they were within the city. .........

In Shanghai, extraterritoriality meant that no matter where you were in the treaty port, you were, in a legal sense, always back home; in Dubai, the free zones made traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, in a legal sense, like moving from country to country.

........ The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) free zone, opened in 2002, is physically set on a block of desert off of Sheikh Zayed Road. The DIFC complex, designed by San Francisco architecture firm Gensler as a massive horseshoe-shaped office building wrapped around a central 12-story arch, soon filled up with the giants of global banking, including Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Credit Suisse. As with the architectural blueprints, the intellectual blueprints for the DIFC had been drawn up for the monarch by an American firm — consulting behemoth McKinsey — which advised the Dubai government to create a financial district governed by Western-style business regulations. It fell to veteran finance regulator Errol Hoopmann, who was hired away from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in 2003, to write the legal code. “The whole concept here was to vacate 110 acres of [land of UAE] laws, just empty it of civil and commercial laws,” Hoopmann explained in his Australian accent, wearing a pinstriped suit in his office atop the arch. “And then we had to write our own laws to fill up that vacuum. And those laws are based on mainly UK [regulations] —

though there’s an awful lot of Australian because I wrote it.”

.........Hoopmann called the DIFC “a state within a state… We compare it to the Vatican.” ........ Like a state, the DIFC has its own court system, presided over by an imported British judge, to enforce its laws. The DIFC even has its own official currency — the U.S. dollar rather than the UAE dirham — and its own official language. “English is the official language, in a sense, of the country we’ve got here,” Hoopmann said. ........ Beyond the 110 acres of the DIFC lies the realm of debtors’ prisons — about 40 percent of Dubai’s prisoners are in jail on debt charges — but inside, business can be done as it’s done in New York, with dollars and English and lawsuits. .......... In 1999, saltwater-inundated lowlands along Sheikh Zayed Road were drained and set aside to become two contiguous free zones, Internet City and Media City. ....... To entice companies to locate in Internet City and Media City, Dubai’s authorities exempted the contiguous free zones from the UAE’s strict Internet censorship policy. In the twin zones, the government promised, the Internet would be fully searchable (except for sites based in Israel, which would remain blocked). .......... unlike other authoritarian countries, notably China, the UAE is completely transparent about its Internet censorship. In the UAE, censored sites are blocked not with the message “The connection has been reset” but with “We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.” ......... prohibits, among other sites, web pages with instructions for computer hacking and bomb making and sites that offer Internet gambling and Internet dating, which, according to the regulations, “contradicts with the ethics and morals of the UAE.” ......... the Washington State–based software giant could lease space rent-free for 50 years .......... Internet City hosts the Middle East headquarters of not only Microsoft but Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Canon ......... despite its big corporate names, Dubai has only been able to lure the finance and marketing departments of the tech companies. Assurance of free thought in one designated neighborhood has not been enough to woo the creative research and development and programming departments, which remain clustered in the more liberal nearby nations of India and Israel. .........

Internet City, for all its successes, is still hamstrung by the lack of intellectual freedom in the wider city-state of Dubai.

........... The city-state was an ideal place from which to cover the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Journalists could hop on a plane for a short flight into the war zones, do their reporting, and then return to their office in rich, peaceful, stable Dubai. ......... To Sheikh Mohammed, part of the allure of building Media City was free publicity. Bringing major bureaus to the city helped make Dubai a global household name as locally based journalists ended up covering fluffy stories in the city-state that they would never have covered farther afield. Dubai’s over-the-top real estate projects — a shopping mall with an enormous indoor ski slope, giant man-made islands shaped like palm trees — became world famous. Many Dubai developments seem to have been conceived with just such stories in mind. ............ In 2007, at the request of fellow regional autocrat, Pakistani strongman General Pervez Musharraf, Dubai shut down two independent Pakistani media outlets that were reporting on unrest in their home country from Media City. .........

in 2011, Google’s Middle East marketing director, Wael Ghonim, openly organized revolutionary protests in his native Egypt via uncensored Facebook from his Internet City office.








Dubai 2021
Dubai Economic Report 2018
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The Dubai Magic (3)

Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation
The Dubai Magic (1)
The Dubai Magic (2)

Dubai – the future business capital of the world? Dubai has emerged as a leading global hub for financial services, logistics, hospitality and trade ....... A major event planned for 2020 is a six-month-long exhibition of trade, innovation and products from around the world. Expo 2020 Dubai, is expected to attract 25 million visitors to the city, with 70% of visitors coming from outside the UAE. ........ “Human ingenuity” has always been key to Dubai’s success. ....... Dubai has consistently recognised that embracing exciting new developments and opportunities is essential in creating a strong dynamic centre. ........ 3000 BC The first human settlement in Dubai ........ 1930 Dubai becomes a successful port, with a population of nearly 20,000, and is already popular with expats ......... 1966 Oil is discovered in the Dubai region, with revenue from oil exports is used to finance major investment in transport links and establish schools, hospitals and telecommunications networks ......... 1971 Dubai, along with Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujayrah, Sharjah and Umm al Quwain gain independence from Great Britain and form the United Arab Emirates. Dubai International Airport officially opens ...... 1999 The world’s only seven-star hotel, Burj Al-Arab opens .......... 2017/18 Dubai becomes one of the world’s top five centres for trade, logistics, finance and tourism, and the Capital of Islamic Economy ......... A background of economic and political stability has provided the foundation for Dubai’s continued progress as a leading centre for trade, logistics, finance and tourism. Its future is looking bright, as it moves away from the region’s dependency on oil to a more diverse economic make-up. ........ the transformation of the economy accelerated as oil surged to a record $147 a barrel in 2008, but continued in the aftermath of the financial crisis when oil plummeted to a low of $26 in 2016. .........

its aim to become the “most business-friendly city in the world”

........ Boosting its position as a leading financial centre .......... plans to accelerate the transition towards a knowledge economy by allocating 8% of the total government spend to develop performance and establish a culture of excellence and innovation, particularly in cutting-edge technology such as nanotechnology and the Internet of Things......... technology is expected to increasingly impact the workplace with more flexible working patterns and collaboration......... Dubai is bringing businesses closer to the world’s fastest-emerging markets


Dubai culture and lifestyle: what to expect Modern Dubai is a multicultural and diverse city, that has developed rapidly since its origins as a fishing and trading port in the early 1900s.......... By the 1930s, Dubai’s popularity was growing, with immigrants making up around one-quarter of the population. ......... 2021 Dubai Plan, which focuses on six key areas: its people, society, experience, place, economy and government – to make Dubai the best city it can be. .........

Today’s Dubai is a fusion of more than 200 nationalities – with Emiratis making up only around 10% of the population of 9.5 million. Individuals pay no income, property or capital gains tax, which makes it an attractive financial proposition for many expats.

....... The hottest months are between June and September, when temperatures average 45C. A cooler 24-25C is usual in January and February....... "When it comes to socialising, such as experiencing the local nightlife, there is little difference to Europe." ......... “It’s an extremely safe place, with a zero-tolerance approach to bad behavior and crime. As long as you stay respectful to the city and its modern, Middle Eastern traditions, this is one of the best places to live.” ......... “The culture today has a deep respect for religion, time with family, and intangible heritage like poetry, storytelling and falconry; it can be tricky to navigate on your own. At the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding in Dubai you can learn about local customs at special events. Modest dress and a few words in Arabic open a lot of doors and make it easier for others to approach you.”........ “However, if you have legal problems – consumer rights issues or tenancy disputes – there may seem to be very little redress.” ........ The court system operates in Arabic ..... Understanding the laws – most of which are in Arabic – and finding a good lawyer and/or translator is essential for those involved in a court case. ....... “It’s easy to spend all your earnings. .......... Most apartment blocks and compounds popular with expatriates have gyms and swimming pools exclusively for residents. ........

The working week in Dubai runs from Sunday to Thursday

....... Dubai is seen as the top city in which to live in the Middle East and North Africa. ......... Expats need to be aware of Dubai’s cultural and religious norms – and an increasing cost of living – but they will be rewarded with a diverse and welcoming place to live and work.

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The Dubai Magic (2)

Dubai's Remarkable Economic Transformation
The Dubai Magic (1)

Shanghai has the skyscrapers and the highways and the metro of New York City. In fact, it has surpassed NYC on all of those fronts, perhaps. Shanghai has a bullet train, NYC does not. But Shanghai does not have NYC's cultural diversity. That is where Dubai has surpassed even NYC. More than 80% of the residents in Dubai are from outside. That is quite a ratio. Not only that, it is a major tourist destination.

When you step inside a bank, it feels different from the street you were walking on. All of Dubai feels like one big bank. The architecture of the city is breathtaking. Dubai is ready for take-off. It can be home to the next generation of financial services. If the current crop of financial services are computers, the next generation of financial services are as different as the Internet has been from pre-Internet computers. We are talking of something fundamentally different.

I intend to play a role.

Dubai's the Very Model of a Modern Mideast Economy Saudi Arabia is trying to reduce its dependence on oil. A neighbor has already done it......... For more than 100 years, the Middle East has been defined by oil exploration, production and its boundaries. Now the region is getting repurposed by its aspiration to grow beyond fossil fuel. The shake-up in Saudi Arabia's royal family was as much about becoming a 21st-century economy as it was about rooting out corruption. ........

None of the region's petrostates has moved further from its oilfield roots than Dubai, which has been diversifying its economy since the 1970s.

The result is a thriving gateway to globalization with a superior economic outlook. .......... The most populous of the seven United Arab Emirates and home to more than 200 nationalities .......

Situated within eight flying hours of two-thirds of the world's population, Dubai has the region's busiest international airport

measured in total passengers and fourth-largest airline based on revenue per passenger kilometer....... The relentless commitment to infrastructure development turned Dubai into the Mideast hub for finance, information technology, real estate, shipping and even flowers........

Oil production, which once accounted for 50 percent of Dubai's gross domestic product, contributes less than 1 percent to GDP today.

........... Energy officials in 2016 said renewable energy will account for 25 percent of the emirate's needs in 12 years. Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, a year ago said that the renewable percentage will rise to 44 percent by 2050. ......... Even as oil prices declined 50 percent in 2014, construction continued unabated for Expo 2020, which aims to showcase "opportunity, mobility and sustainability" with a specific focus on education, financial capital, logistics, natural ecosystems and biodiversity, among other themes. .......... With oil down 37 percent since 2013, the Dubai stock market is up 155 percent and real estate firms are 135 percent more valuable ........ Since 2003, the seven companies that make up the real estate and construction sector of the index produced a 789 percent total return (income plus appreciation), beating the benchmark's 417 percent as well as the 250 percent return for the 242-member Bloomberg World Real Estate Index. No other market in the Persian Gulf comes close to replicating the performance of Dubai real estate. .......... Dubai now is poised to be the growth leader among the six countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, with GDP expanding 3 percent or more this year and in 2019










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Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings

There is this no small detail called gravity. It is big, it is fat.



And gravity is physics. And Elon Musk has a degree in physics from U Penn. He must know his physics because he seems to send rockets out into space at will.

But Elon was no biology major, looks like.

There is this funny thing called gravity. The human body needs the earth's gravity. That is why long term human habitation on the moon is a bad idea. Robots? Yes. Human beings? No, no.

In absence of gravity, your eyes might bulge out. Your joints might start getting, well, disjointed. Your bones need gravity to stay bones.

But Elon stays oblivious to the fact. He says everyone who signs up for Mars will get 10 cubic meters of space inside his spaceship, "which is a lot."

And that's just gravity. Radiation will have to be another blog post. Radiation might make those ten cubic meters a microwave experience, which is a lot. Like, too much.

It is not like Elon does not have enough on his plate. There are trillions to be made through robotic asteroid mining. Spices used to be like gold. Gold can become like spices. I want his 10,000 satellites to provide gigabit broadband every point on earth. I like the idea of any point on earth to any other point on earth in 30 minutes. You escape zero gravity before the bones figure it out. Hyperloop is massive. I have an entire real estate tech startup around the Hyperloop concept. Tesla? I want one. Solar tiles on the roof? I want. Super cheap, super boring tunnels? I want them. Although it could get literally boring down there unless the walls of those underground vehicles come alive and are entertainment.

Save earth like this is the only planet we got. There is no other. Plant a trillion trees. Elon should design some drones that will plant those trillion trees. And his satellites should map out the earth to find out every patch of land where trees can be planted. And let's get it done and over with already.

Somebody drop an apple on Elon's head.











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