Randy Schwimmer | October 1st, 2015 | http://www.middlemarketgrowth.org
This article is brought to you by DHG Private Equity. It appears in full in the October issue of Middle Market Growth.
Say you’re driving along the highway in your brand spanking new Jeep Cherokee. It’s a bright sunny day. You’re going 65, maybe 70. Listening to some Charlie Parker. Maybe headed to an ACG event.
Suddenly windshield wipers start flapping. The AC shuts off. Then so does Charlie Parker. Accelerator starts racing. Steering wheel jerks out of your control. The Jeep veers sideways, headed into a ditch. Your life flashes before your eyes, including the life insurance policy you meant to buy. Worst of all, the last thing you hear before plunging off the road is the radio blaring Taylor Swift.
The latest Liam Neeson hijack thriller? Actually it’s similar to a car-hacking that made news in July. Two professional hackers named Miller and Valasek used a laptop to seize remote control of a Jeep and, yes, drive it into a ditch. The good news is that the driver was in on the experiment.
Cars are now “computers on wheels.” According to a KPMG study, new cars are equipped with as many as 50 little PCs operating millions of lines of code. Apparently that’s more than a Boeing 787 …
Randy Schwimmer is senior managing director and head of origination and capital markets at Churchill Asset Management, a credit asset management firm affiliated with TIAA-CREF Asset Management LLC. He is also founder and publisher of The Lead Left, a weekly newsletter about deals and trends in the capital markets.
