On a day on which we’d prefer to bask in the afterglow of football, an influential US senator iswarning we should all be worried about the prospect of World War III thanks to The Donald. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the New York Times in an interview yesterday that “President Trump was treating his office like ‘a reality show,’ with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation ‘on the path to World War III.’”

(The interview came after Corker and US President Donald Trump exchanged taunts on Twitter, with Corker penning a line we wish we had written: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”)

The House of Representatives is expected to discuss the Industrial Development Authority Act in a plenary session today. The Industry Committee signed off on the bill on Saturday, and the legislation is expected to give the IDA more autonomy, separating its budget and accounts from the Trade and Industry Ministry’s, and granting it authority to sell land without government approval. The 37-article law will introduce the IDA to the “one stop shop” policy (ugh), in theory to facilitate processes such as applying for industrial permits.

The 2017 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be announced today. Guessing the victor is notoriously difficult because of the diverse branches of the discipline, Cass Sunstein writes. He suggests that the leading candidates for this year’s economics Nobel are Esther Duflo, Richard Posner, William Nordhaus, W. Kip Viscusi, and Richard H. Thaler. We are rooting for Duflo since we are big fans of her work on poverty and development economics and her book Poor Economics. If she succeeds, she would be only the second woman to take home the prize.

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Are you prepared to survive the data apocalypse? The dangers of lax cyber security do not need to be elaborated on. But when the lethal WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware attacks were launched earlier in the year, it did seem like a data apocalypse had come to pass. The attack hit nearly 100 countries and some of the world’s largest organizations, prompting both the private sector and government organizations — including our ICT Ministry and the central bank — to take extensive protection measures. The attacks brought into the forefront how the cyber security is imperative to the survival of organizations and a top national security priority. According to Information Security Buzz, key takeaways from the attack was that no organization is immune from security breaches; there is no silver bullet for protection; and most crucially, paying attention to security fundamentals is paramount. They also conclude that organizations paying attention to security maintenance could make a huge difference.

Where would you start? Global CyberSecurity firm Trend Micro is running a special survey of Enterprise readers to dig into whether companies are being targeted by ransomware and if they are prepared to fight it. The survey will also analyze the impact of ransomware attacks on both direct monetary cost (such as the ransom your company would pay to a hacker) or the indirect cost of employee downtime. You’ll learn a lot in the two minutes you’ll spend taking it, whether you’re a CEO or a CTO.
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When you’re done taking the survey, go visit the hive mind of Google and learn more about their Pixel 2. As good iSheep, we’re still holding out for the iPhone X, but Google’s offering this year looks even more compelling than the Pixel last year, which we enjoyed very much. Google’s Pixel 2 page is here, and the Verge has a take here.

Also for geeks this morning: The global business press isn’t going to help you make up your mind before you go watch Blade Runner 2049. The Financial Time calls it a film full of “big ideas” and “stupendous spectacle,” crowning it an “astoundingly good film.” The Wall Street Journal counters that it “short of expectations” at the box office despite good reviews. The follow-up to the 1982 classic was still the top film last week at the US box office.

** Did you miss yesterday’s issue? We publish without exception Sunday-Thursday before 7am (though we’ll confess to taking national holidays and occasional “Enterprise days off”). We failed to reach a number of you yesterday because the algorithms that decide whether we make it to your inbox took umbrage at something we had written. If ever we’re not in your inbox, check other tabs or just hop over to our website, which we update every morning as soon as we dispatch that day’s issue.