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2 months ago
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McALLEN, Texas – Members of the CEO Group should use their connections with high tech companies in the Rioplex region to bring in more advanced manufacturing plants.
This is the view of retired naval commander, FBI intelligence analyst, and global security specialist Mike Braun.
Braun, who lives in McAllen, gave a presentation to the CEO Group at a recent meeting at McAllen Country Club. The CEO Group, comprising businessmen and entrepreneurs from across the region, is a subcommittee of the Prosperity Task Force.
Braun said the group’s connections to Samsung, Labcorp, Eaton Corporation and SpaceX could pay big dividends. He also said higher ed institutions like Texas A&M University and South Texas College could be developing more intelligence specialists.
The task force was set up by Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez to tackle poverty.
In his in-depth presentation, Braun listed possible examples of industries that the region should be going after.
• Elections microprocessor manufacturing
• pharmaceutical clinical testing, development and production
• computer assembly and manufacturing
• satellite telecommunication development and manufacturing
Braun said any and all of these would meet the task force’s goals.
“All of these industries are highly creative and susceptible to intellectual property compromise. Therefore, they will need a pool of socially trained cyber warfare specialists,” Braun said.
That is where A&M and STC comes in, he suggested.
Braun said Robert S. Mueller, III, was the FBI director when he worked for the agency.
“Mueller basically pounded into our heads as intelligence analysts that we need to know our domain. And he did that over and over and over again. I used to be sick of hearing it but after a while, I began to realize what he was trying to tell us,” Braun said.
“We literally need to understand the resources that are in front of us. And then we need to treat those resources as if they’re pieces of a puzzle. And our job as analysts was to piece that puzzle together and try to find a trend or potential mechanism by which we might be able to identify future risk or a threat to this country or other parts of the world.”
Braun said the Prosperity Task Force could learn a lot from this.
“Well, I would suggest that this group should try and maybe adopt that model. Because if we really do a good job of knowing our domain, we’ll find that we have some amazing resources available to us in this area that could be parlayed into new manufacturing facilities, like the ones I’ve been exposed to and trained to work with,” Braun said.
Samsung
The example he spoke most about was Samsung.
“Everybody knows Samsung. Many of you may have Samsung TVs. But do you know that they’re one of the most preeminent microprocessor chip manufacturers in the world?” Braun asked.
Braun said Samsung is the largest competitor to TSMC, otherwise known as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.
“Samsung is doing some phenomenal things besides just building TVs and heads up display devices for the Defense Department, some of which they do here in their Reynosa facilities,” Braun said.
“They’re building multibillion dollar microprocessor chip manufacturing facilities. It’s always bugged me because I’ve worked with them and IBM and some other companies; that they are building a new chip now that’s going to be designed in Taylor, Texas.
“It’s always concerned me that… and I have talked to some of these folks… why aren’t we maximizing our experience with Samsung and basically parlaying that into a facilitator that could help us maybe expand Samsung operations in our locale? Maybe a microprocessor manufacturing opportunity?”
Braun said the Rio Grande Valley has some “amazing” technologists and scientists that could help. He referenced Dr. Karen Lozano of UT-Rio Grande Valley.
“She’s considered probably one of the best nanotechnology specialists in the world. She’s here and she teaches at UTRGV. She is also an alumnus of mine at Rice. She originally came here, got her training in Monterey, and she’s probably one of the smartest ladies I’ve ever been fortunate enough to work with.”
Braun continued: “So, we could bring to bear not only our experience with
Samsung manufacturing experience here. We could also assist them by bringing in a scientist who is a specialist in nanotechnology because the new chips that Samsung is building are built not on the old per inch wafer design. They’re built on the Nano design.”
Braun then gave an example of a nano design.
“You could take a hair follicle and in which it would be twice the size of a nano wafer. And with the Samsung technology they’re developing in Taylor, Texas, they’re going to be able to put 250 to maybe 300 million transistors on these individual small narrow wafers. Trying to get your head around that.”
Braun said that based on his experience and what he’s seen of this technology, “I don’t understand why we’re not really taking advantage of these new types of companies that we have relationships with and using that to maximize our capabilities to expand manufacturing into this area that could bring the high paying jobs like I saw when I was, I guess you’d call a child, growing up in Houston back in the 60s and 70s.”
Labcorp
The next example Braun mentioned was Labcorp.
“Another opportunity is a company that’s here in the Valley called LabCorp. If you have ever gone into a doctor’s office and they are taking a microbiological chemistry exam… LabCorp is the company that basically does this, or they’ll do it in the hospital. And sometimes some of the hospitals here actually farm that out to Labcorp.”
Braun said Labcorp now Covance.
“Why aren’t we leveraging that kind of relationship into bringing a company like Covance into the Rio Grande Valley. Lord knows we have some of the some really great microbiological services here,” Braun said.
“We have some real horsepower here. We just need to kind of take a little bit better advantage of it.”
Eaton Corporation
Braun said the Eaton Corporation is “probably one of the most premier power management companies in the world for managing and providing uninterrupted power supply for major computing systems.”
He said their technology is used in IBM and HP mainframes.
“They have a very large footprint here in the Rio Grande Valley. They have a working relationship, particularly with IBM and HP, which are now trying to decouple their working relationship with China and bring that into the United States or Mexico,” Braun said.
SpaceX
Braun said of SpaceX: “SpaceX is not only renowned for its aerospace technology in the area of how we’re going to someday get to Mars and other planets in the solar system. They also own a company called Starlink. How many of you know what Starlink is?”
Braun said Starlink is an alternative telecommute communication satellite system that uses what we call LEOS, low earth orbiting satellites.
“These low earth orbiting satellites are really quite unique. And Elon Musk has made it a point in developing some of the best in the world. Right now, he’s got a little over 6,000 of these satellites in orbit. I was told recently that he wants to build 34,000 of them in order to meet the demand that he knows his company has.”
Braun said that right now the Valley is with SpaceX as a deployment research facility. “Why the heck can’t we expand on this and use our relationship with Elon Musk and SpaceX to maybe bring Starlink’s manufacturing capability to the Rio Grande Valley? Believe me, we have all the the know how in place to be able to build the satellites.
“We could actually not only build a satellite, but we could launch it. Really. Mr. Musk would would truly appreciate that economy of scale.”
Cyber threat intelligence
Braun said that in his work as an intelligence analyst he sees a lot of cyber threat intelligence as it relates to intellectual property.
“Many of these companies are moving to areas where there are large pools concentrations of people like myself that have a wide range of experience in how to protect their IP or intellectual property equipment, know how, and technology,” Braun said.
“One of the best programs in the world, and I have actually worked with it, is a program that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI” has. There here are a number of universities that have ODNI-sanctioned intelligence training programs. Texas A&M is one of the top three in the world. Their intelligence analyst graduates are literally scoffed up by national security agencies throughout the world and by large private sector companies who want to see their property protected.
“Why couldn’t Texas A&M here in McAllen not go to the board in College Station where this program exists and say, why can’t we replicate that here in McAllen? We could train some of the best security specialists in the world here.”
“And it would provide a highly recognizable safe environment for these companies to say, hey, I’m willing to pick up and move to Hidalgo County because they have people there that could protect all of what my company has developed. And believe me, all those of us who work in my profession, that’s what we do all day long.”
Braun said there is another program that should be of interest to the region called the SANS Institute.
“The SANS Institute is a worldwide institute that basically has a cybersecurity training program which is quite impressive. Some of the best I’ve worked with. Actually, some of my graduate students I’ve send down to get some training with the SANS Institute,” Braun said.
“If we wanted to reach out to the SANS Institute, a community college or university here locally, could maybe adopt their training program.”
Braun said the region also has the ability if it wanted to expand its National Security Agency sanctioned programs. Braun said STC has such a program. “I’ve actually worked with some of these students and put them on to some of the areas where I worked. And they turned out to be great security analysts.”
Braun concluded: “These are just kind of a sample of some of the things that we could actually parlay to. The bottom line is, if we look around little closer at what we have here in our locale, we probably get a pretty good vision of what the future might look like in the RGV, if we basically apply the resources that we have.”
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