Most smart companies should make themselves media companies. That means they put out their own information.

I wake up every day, and the family fortune is on the line, and that's a good thing.

We're not going into advertising. But we see the future battleground existing between ourselves, digital firms, and media-buying firms.

Mainstream media has been abandoned by many, for ideological reasons mostly, and brands need to directly engage with the end-user of information and offer opportunities for consumer- and employee-generated content.

We have seen an unprecedented dispersion of authority, such that 'a person like you' is now one of the most credible spokespersons on business, along with technical and academic experts.

We have been pushing forward on a new way of storytelling we call 'collaborative journalism' on behalf of a number of our clients.

Our goal is to put news where it earns attention, where readers can access it on every device and interact with it. We're meeting our clients' audiences where they are instead of asking them to come to us. Increasingly, that means hosting the content on social blogging sites like Medium.

More and more readers are finding important and interesting content through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and now Medium rather than traditional publishers.

The pace of change in marketing and the marketplace continues to accelerate. Unicorn companies are challenging long-established brands, and categories are being re-imagined.

We've learned that when a consumer moves from a relationship rooted in 'me' to one powered by 'we,' a new world of buying and advocacy opens up for a brand.

Instead of worrying about potential disruption, brands can be creative societal disruptors - because their consumers will be right there by their side as committed partners in a better life.

The trust of the mass population can no longer be taken for granted, and any continuation of the 'grand illusion' is dangerous for leaders in today's world.

CEOs who boldly lean into fulfilling the dual mandate of earning profits and providing societal benefits will find a receptive public.

Walter Isaacson attracts the best and the brightest to Aspen. It is exhilarating to listen to the likes of David Rubenstein and constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rosen speak about George Washington and Newt Gingrich and the original intent of the Second Amendment.

Gender parity in management is a necessity.

The problems of the world, from immigration to populism to income inequality to sustainability to peacekeeping, require a well-functioning supranational body.

The question for every Olympics is whether the giant investment will pay off in the future.

I was 14 when the Democratic convention in my hometown of Chicago erupted into violence. It was a tough year.

We can't, nor should we try, to influence who our employees vote for, but facilitating their involvement in civic action is better for business, better for our people, and better for our government institutions.

Trump has moved campaigns into a post-advertising era with a total reversal of spend from paid to earned media.

We must be able to appeal to the CCO and CMO with programs that have purpose at the core, that start movements and solicit views of the core community of brand supporters.

The historic quarrels between Japan and Korea pale in importance to the bigger question of extent of U.S. commitment to the defense of the region.

The best creative no longer has to originate in Chicago or London; it will be coming from Stockholm, Tokyo, and Seoul as well.

There was a near-universal set of editorial endorsements of Clinton. Trump used this disparity to his advantage, to claim media bias and unify his base of supporters.

The short form, speed, and consistency of communication by Trump beat Clinton's nuanced, detailed, and long-form communication. Trump came across as more genuine, Clinton as less than transparent. Trump engaged directly with his community; Clinton spoke through the media in a careful and less frequent manner.

When students and liberals initially occupied Tahrir Square, it looked like it might be a passing thing.

War is not a petri dish to examine and analyze our emotions.

The U.S. presence and American missteps made ethnic violence in Iraq far worse than it would have been otherwise after Saddam Saddam Hussein's fall.

Foreigners who speak Arabic in the Middle East are often assumed to be working for the C.I.A. or Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad.

An Egyptian newspaper once publicly identified me as the C.I.A. station chief in Cairo. It seemed so stupid at the time. I was only 24, a little young to be a station chief, and, of course, I was never with the C.I.A.

I had some training on how to cope with hostage-taking.

After literally hundreds of firefights, Chosen Company became increasingly battle-hardened. And they also became increasingly suspicious of their Afghan counterparts, believing - with their lives on the line at the end of the day - that they could only truly rely on themselves.

Everyone knows what can happen to soldiers who are in front line units.

By 2007, Iraqi society had completely collapsed.

There is no Afghan Awakening Movement.

The Taliban mostly attacks international and Afghan security forces. They rarely carry out attacks in markets.

For years, Lebanese have known that Palestinian camps like Nahr al-Barid and Ain al-Helwe - hopeless slums crowded with generations of disenfranchised Palestinian refugees who can't go home because of Israel, and can't work because of Lebanese laws - are awash with gunmen, criminals and, since the war in Iraq, al-Qaida inspired jihadists.

Lebanon does not have a powerful army.

Under Islamic law, adoption is difficult.

There are clearly many Egyptian free-thinkers and intellectuals - lots of wonderful Egyptian artists and architects and scientists.

ISIS is in many ways a creation of the Syrian regime.

The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq.

In October 2008, American commandos launched a cross-border raid into Syria to capture an Islamic militant known as Abu Ghadiya. He was accused of being one of al Qaeda in Iraq's main smugglers of fighters and money between Iraq and Syria.

Rockets fired by the Taliban generally aren't guided.

Putin believes Russia is back, and he may be right.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group.

If democracy brings an undemocratic group to power, is that a victory for democracy?

The Muslim Brotherhood is much more hardline than Turkish Islamists.

Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other.

It seems nothing good comes out of Abu Ghraib.