Las Vegas Sands‘ Web sites remain “under maintenance,” as the company reels from a vast and invasive cyber-attack. In addition to the FBI, the Secret Service has taken an interest in the matter. The assault is a boon for third-party sites, because online bookings can’t be made directly with Sands for the time being. (It’s a foul wind indeed that doesn’t blow somebody some benefit.) If credit-card records were stolen, Sands won’t say, which is a disservice to the company’s customer base. It’s possible that Sands itself doesn’t know, depending on the amount of damage to “certain core operating systems,” as spokesman Ron Reese called them. That damage is so extensive and so thorough that it looks as though the attack was a long time in the planning. After all, it’s been four months since Adelson’s now-infamous ‘nuke Iran‘ remarks, the causus belli for the cyber-warfare unleashed on his company.
It is difficult to say which caused the greater unease: The identity theft of Sands workforce or the spectacle of computer-generated flames representing Adelson’s four American properties (including Sands Expo Center). The latter is an icon that has taken on a sinister meaning in a post-9/11 world.
Adelson knows a thing or two about warfare. An eloquent Jon Ralston-penned, must-read probe in Politco.com looks into Adelson’s “Internet jihad” and notes that “the industry’s Christopher Columbus” has always seen what his competitors could not (whether it was all-suite hotels or Macao). “I’m not a political guy; I’ve been apolitical my entire life,” Sheldon asserts ludicrously. Writes Ralston, “for a man who makes his living from a business long associated with society’s seamy underbelly, Adelson can sound surprisingly like a Southern Baptist preacher.” Ultimately, Sheldon wraps himself in the last refuge of a scoundrel: patriotism.
What can one make of a gambling mogul whose father allegedly (to hear Adelson tell it) had a gambling problem? Or one who says, “I know how vulnerable [people] are, and how easily they can get sucked into the concept of, ‘Oh, this is very easy.’” To hear that coming from the owner of the world’s biggest casino is rank hypocrisy. Indeed, Adelson is so desperate to wall off a realm of gambling he doesn’t understand that he’s crawled into bed with the Religious Right, including the Universal Baptist Church. Hallelujah, Brother Sheldon!
MGM Resorts International plans to spread parking for its arena-to-be across several adjacent resorts. If the company didn’t have extensive experience supplying parking to MGM Grand Garden Arena and Manadalay Bay Event Center, I’d fear they’re lowballing the number of vehicles that this newest venue will draw. MGM is certainly sanguine about making this elaborate scheme work like a charm.
To the east, in Springfield, MGM is finding it must walk a narrow tightrope while squeezing a casino into the Massachusetts city’s narrow downtown. The facades of many an elderly building will be incorporated into MGM Springfield. However, a planned demolition of the Union House Hotel is drawing opposition. Local preservationists are trying to negotiate a win-win solution.
