Category Archives: Big Tech

Elon Musk is back in the headlines this week. The founder and CEO of Tesla contributed a piece to China Cyberspace, the official publication of the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the government's cyber censorship arm. It's a big deal, and proof of how deeply entangled Musk is with a regime hostile to free speech, and to the human rights of its people more broadly.

Worse, Musk's closeness with the Cyberspace Administration of China raises important questions about whether Musk, who has a Giga factory in China and has taken over $1 billion in loans from the country, has fallen prey to China's Military Civil Fusion disclosure laws. And the stakes are high: Is Musk supplying China with classified information he gains by working with the U.S. space program and other national security-sensitive projects?

Not only does the Cyberspace Administration of China control and often choke the flow of information into and out of the country, but it also provides data security for Tencent, a giant logistics conglomerate controlled by the Communist Party of China that owns 5 percent of Tesla.

The scale of Musk's operations in China makes him vulnerable to intimidation by its communist leadership, and should make us wary of his pending deal to buy Twitter. Do we really want Twitter's owner to be someone entangled substantially with one of the most repressive governments on earth, one with a long history of forcing private companies to serve its interests?

Twitter is banned in China, along with many other media companies that don't toe the party line. But some Chinese dissidents do manage to use the platform inside the country, as do many outside the country to coordinate resistance. While Musk initially claimed to be a free speech absolutist, on April 27, he clarified that he would comply with the government laws that restrict free speech.

Of course, Musk is far from the only tech magnate who has raised concerns. Amazon has catered even more directly to the censorship needs of the Communist Party of China, like when it partnered with a propaganda arm of the government to market a collection of President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings published on a Chinese website in 2020. When Amazon customers began to publish unflattering reviews of the collection, the Chinese government ordered the reviews removed and the comment feature disabled for not just this but all products sold in China.

Moreover, the CCP has partnered with Amazon on a project known as China Books, which offers 90,000 Chinese books for sale but generates little revenue. The project is widely seen as a sop to keep the government happy so Amazon can function. The company stated in an internal document back in 2018 that "ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the Communist Party to achieve and maintain its success. We are not making judgment on whether it is right or wrong."

Meanwhile, Google is working on a China-only search engine that will black out websites and search terms the government considers threateninglike those pertaining to human rights, democracy and religion.

And Twitter has worked with the Chinese Communist Party to whitewash the abuse of the Uyghurs at the hands of the Chinese government. According to reports, Twitter promoted more than 50 tweets from the Global Times, a Chinese state-run media outfit, that deliberately mislead users on how the Uyghurs are treated in the detention camps in which they're forced to live.

Every day, we see stories of corporations making the choice to participate in everything from censorship to masking drastic human rights violations, in order to retain access to China's lucrative market of 1.3 billion people.

Fortunately, the days of this problem being ignored are ending. Already Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) and Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) are working to learn more and perhaps develop legislation to guide these exchanges.

Stewart wants hearings to determine exactly what confidential information may fall into China's hands as a result of Big Tech's cowardly capitulation, and Rubio is interested in reforming contracting procedures to make sure we're not going into business with Chinese Communist Party-aligned businesses.

A variety of approaches are possible. But one thing is clear: It is past time we learn more about what it means for an American corporation to do business in sensitive industries in China. We may be shocked at what we find.

Jianli Yang is founder and president ofCitizen Power Initiatives for China and the author of For Us, the Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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Big Tech Is Fully Cooperating With China's Censorship Regime. It's Got to Stop | Opinion - Newsweek

The recent rehabilitation of Adam Neumann, the entrepreneur behind WeWork, has been met with widespread astonishment.

WeWork, which leases office space and coworking space, is arguably the most infamous failure of the so-called tech unicorns. Its rapid overnight expansion was fuelled by vast amounts of easy capital. But this was quickly followed by an almighty crash.

So spectacular was the story that Apple TV even adapted it into a show called WeCrashed (based on a podcast series of the same name), which stars method actor Jared Leto as Neumann. WeWorks troubled finances and Neumanns personal indulgences were revealed by regulators in August 2019. WeWork had tried to go public, expecting to be valued at around $65 billion. But instead the exposure dealt a huge blow to the company. Neumann was bounced out just weeks later, $1.7 billion richer.

Now Neumann the messiah is back with a new venture, called Flow. Flow promises to do for residential accommodation what WeWork failed to do for office workspace, spicing up renting for millennials.

Neumann has the backing of venture-capital giant Andreessen Horowitz Capital Management. Adam is a visionary leader who revolutionised the second-largest asset class in the world commercial real estate by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before, said co-director Marc Andreessen earlier this month, explaining why he had written Neumann a $350million cheque. The decision by A16Z, as Andreessen Horowitz Capital Management is known in the tech world, gave Flow an overnight valuation of $1 billion.

But Neumann is no visionary. There was nothing even particularly original about WeWorks proposition. It was Mark Dixon an Essex boy whose first business was a burger van on Londons North Circular who really proved there was a viable market for leased workspaces. Today, Dixons Regus leases more space than WeWork ever did at its height. And, unlike WeWork, it has been profitable for years (although only after several near-death experiences and plenty of contractual battles with property owners). WeWork simply packs tenants in more tightly than Regus. And foolishly, it takes on longer leases. Its main USP is that it offers free beer and workspaces surrounded by vapid New Age slogans. This is a curious combination, as frat boys dont really do mindfulness and holistic aesthetes dont drink.

Nevertheless, the charismatic Neumann persuaded the big investors to back him. He played on their desire to believe that if they bet big, they could win big. He got lucky when Vision Fund, the largest ever VC investment vehicle, was created in 2017. And this fund was eager to indulge him where others wouldnt.

Vision Fund was an almost $100 billion venture, backed by $45 billion from Saudi Arabias Public Investment Fund. The remainder came from Japanese conglomerate Softbank, whose eccentric chairman and CEO, Masayoshi Masa Son, was entrusted to spend the money wisely. The mere presence of such large sums created a distortion in the tech market.

Reality was already catching up with Neumann by the time Son arrived on the scene. But Son indulged the founders megalomania. Son had, by then, already created a brief bubble of astronomical tech valuations, including Uber and a variety of courier services, such as Deliveroo. None of this was sustainable. This month, the Vision Fund posted a $23 billion loss for the quarter, and investors returns from 2017 are lagging far behind the market average. Low interest rates created a decade in which too much money had been chasing too few good ideas.

So why is Neumann being indulged again? Narcissism explains a great deal. In the world of venture capital, decisions are largely fashion-driven and firms are gripped by FOMO the Fear of Missing Out.

More importantly, the superstar VC investors see themselves as vanguardistas, or as prophets and visionaries in their own right. Thats certainly how Son saw himself. And visionaries need promotion. One of A16Zs partners, Benedict Evans, rather gave the game away in 2015 when he described the VC firm as a media company that monetises through venture capital.

This is a cynical formulation, but its correct in one important way: it acknowledges the postmodern nature of the market, in which a deal is essentially a consensual hallucination between two parties. WeWork is worth whatever a buyer is prepared to pay. Neumanns new idea must be worth $1 billion, because Andreessen Horowitz has decreed it so, simply by writing a large cheque.

Andreessen is in the position of a media tycoon who can cast himself in the storyline of any drama that his network broadcasts. And A16Z badly needs a hit, and for the narrative around A16Z to change.

After all, A16Z was one of the most prominent promoters of crypto-finance instruments like blockchain. Indeed, it heralded blockchain as the basis of future technology infrastructure, which it branded Web3. That proposition recently took a huge hit. After the crypto crash in April, Andreessen himself disappeared from Twitter for weeks.

At the end of the day, VCs are free to indulge in wildly irrational investments, since they are spending other peoples money. And those people are happy to take these risks as they are greedy for returns. But with rising interest rates and other economic clouds on the horizon, this excitable appetite for risk is likely to cool. Perhaps well also see a dent in investors quasi-religious faith in the shamanistic insights of CEOs and VCs. But as the return of Neumann the messiah shows, this will never go away completely.

Andrew Orlowski is a weekly columnist at the Telegraph. Visit his website here. Follow him on Twitter: @AndrewOrlowski.

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The false messiahs of Big Tech - Spiked

Opinion A year ago, corporate VR sucked deep on the hype pipe and offered it around. We weren't convinced. All that investment, all that technology, to recreate a drab pastiche of the very environments we'd gratefully escaped in the magical world of WFH.

Without imagination, without soul, with no humanity, who would want to visit?

Since then, the billions have continued to pour into the Metaverse Money Dematerialiser that lives in Zuckerberg's basement. The VR revolution seems no closer. The CEO himself celebrated the launch of Horizon Worlds in Spain and France with an in-world image of a dead-eyed robot selfie against a landscape of mid-'90s clip art. It was as awful as a year ago. Where is the cash going? The question is only hard to answer if you're human. Think like a big organization.

Here's one answer: fighting user privacy. One of the first steps towards protecting your VR identity across sessions, an open-source academic project called MetaGuard, is already reporting counter-measures. Because that's what matters to the creator gods of the new universes.

MetaGuard works by injecting noise into the signals sent to the world servers. Random tweaks to your voice, shifts in your location, enough to make the machinery uncertain that it's you again when you come back for more. It's a noble but doomed effort, and not just because the usual arms race will kick in. VR needs those signals to be fully immersive, and it needs to be fully immersive to justify your adherence to the walled garden model. That offers companies two things they can't get on the plain old internet: total surveillance and total control.

In the days before internet service providers, that was the norm. CompuServe and AOL ran their own networks of dial-up access points that connected your computer to their computers and their computers only. You paid by the month straight into their accounts, you accepted their services, and you talked to other users on their system.

The internet messed that up just as online content started to get good. The Facebook service is a valiant effort to rebuild those days, but you can escape those walls with a single click as easily as turning a page in a book.

With VR, the equivalent click is literally dislocating. The more immersive the environment, the greater the cognitive burden on the user of flicking away. Within that environment, you are under total surveillance: you have to be. Immersive VR has to respond to you as if it was reality responding to the physics of your body and senses, which means it has to track those as closely as possible. You're in a body scanner, and the output is feeding Zuck's AIs. If you fuzz or spoof it, you'll increase their uncertainty, but you'll also lose some of the immersive fidelity, and that's rather the point of VR. But you already know improving fidelity isn't the reason countermeasures evolved so quickly, just by looking at the place.

For corporates, the metaverse is a canvas not to create better worlds for us, but one on which to realize their deepest desires. We can see that in the billions spent on dullard chores, in the desire of lock-in and complete capture, in the chance to build a universe where every corporate wish is granted.

That won't be a place anyone will want to go. It's bad enough on the flat earth of the internet, where we do have the freedom to click away, we can install ad blockers and tracker defeaters, and we can configure our experience, if we choose, as we choose. In the metaverse, actual information and the sort of controls needed to access it are displayed on virtual screens within the space and good luck doing anything with those the corporate sponsor does not want. No off-menu ordering in this restaurant.

We've been there at least, anyone online in the CompuServe years knows what it was like when the internet became an option. When it did, we ran. The closed gardens turned to deserts, even though the companies behind them had more experience in online services than anyone else. They had access to the best technologies, and every opportunity to build spaces competitive with the raw internet. Many, like Microsoft with MSN, tried very hard. All are dead now.

Which is no reason to write off VR as a whole. The insane investment has at least produced some almost affordable hardware. In the same way that early investors in railways lost their shirts but left behind useful infrastructure, there's opportunity for better ideas to build on. Lots of people quite like VR games, and things like virtual conferences do seem to be better if you're aware of, and can interact easily with, fellow attendees. Neither of these use cases will power a corporate universe worth a penny.

Good. To be trapped by dint of platform in an environment under total control would be hellish. With Microsoft trying to sneak adverts into desktop UIs, think what they'd do with an immersive space where no naysaying is allowed. Which of the Big Tech companies would you like to give control over your walls, doors, windows, and space in your room? Which do you think wouldn't grab the opportunity with both tentacles?

That's the reason corporate VR is going to be a glorious flop. By offering deep-pocketed tech firms the ability to indulge in their own virtual reality where they can have everything they wish, it exposes their complete inability to envision anything worthwhile. That lack of imagination so evident in the experience of the worlds they make is revealed to run through all the things they want to do. By magnifying their desire, it showcases their banality. If the whole world is you, you've got nowhere to hide.

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Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there - The Register

The 1998 movie Enemy of the State starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith seemed like fiction at the time. Why I didnt regard that movie which still holds up in nearly every detail as a warning I do not know. It pulls back the curtain on the close working relationship between national security agencies and the communications industry spying, censorship, blackmailing, and worse. Today, it seems not just a warning but a description of reality.

There is no longer any doubt at all about the symbiotic relationship between Big Tech the digital communications industry in particular and government. The only issue we need to debate is which of the two sectors are more decisive in driving the loss of privacy, free speech, and liberty in general.

Not only that: Ive been involved in many debates over the years, always taking the side of technology over those who warned of the coming dangers. I was a believer, a techno-utopian and could not see where this was headed.

The lockdowns were the great shock for me, not only for the unconscionably draconian policies imposed on the country so quickly. The shock was intensified by how all the top tech companies immediately enlisted in the war on freedom of association. Why? Some combination of industry ideology, which shifted over 30 years from a founding libertarian ethos to become a major force for techno-tyranny, plus industry self-interest (how better to promote digital media consumption than to force half the workforce to stay home?) were at work.

For me personally, it feels like betrayal of the most profound sort. Only 12 years ago, I was still celebrating the dawning of the Jetsons World and dripping with disdain for the Luddites among us who refused to get with it and buy and depend on all the latest gizmos. It seemed inconceivable to me at the time that such wonderful tools could ever be taken over by power and used as a means of social and economic control. The whole idea of the Internet was to overthrow the old order of imposition and control! The Internet was anarchy, to my mind, and therefore had some built-in resistance to all attempts to monopolize it.

And yet here we are. Just this weekend, The New York Times carries a terrifying story about a California tech professional who, on request, texted a doctors office a picture of his sons infection that required a state of undress, and then found himself without email, documents, and even a phone number. An algorithm made the decision. Google has yet to admit wrongdoing. Its one story but emblematic of a massive threat that affects all our lives.

Amazon servers are reserved only for the politically compliant, while Twitters censorship at explicit behest of the CDC/NIH is legion. Facebook and Instagram can and does bodybag anyone who steps out of line, and the same is true of YouTube. Those companies make up the bulk of all Internet traffic. As for escaping, any truly private email cannot be domiciled in the US, and our one-time friend the smartphone operates now as the most reliable citizen surveillance tool in history.

In retrospect, its rather obvious that this would happen because it has happened with every other technology in history, from weaponry to industrial manufacturing. What begins as a tool of mass liberation and citizen empowerment eventually comes to be nationalized by the state working with the largest and most politically connected firms. World War I was the best illustration of just such an outrage in the 20th century: the munitions manufacturers were the only real winners of that one, while the state acquired new powers of which it never really let go.

Its hard to appreciate just what a shock that Great War was to a whole generation of liberal intellectuals. My mentor Murray Rothbard wrote an extremely thoughtful reflection on the naive liberalism of Victorian-age techno enthusiasts, circa 1880-1910. This was a generation that saw progress emancipation on every front: the end of slavery, a burgeoning middle class, the crumbling of the old aristocracies of power, and new technologies. All these enabled the mass production of steel, cities rising to the heavens, electricity and lighting everywhere, flight, and countless consumer improvements from indoor plumbing and heating to mass availability of food that enabled enormous demographic shifts.

Reading the greats from that period, their optimism about the future was palpable. One of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, held such a view. His moral outrage toward the Spanish-American War, the remnants of family feuds in the South, and reactionary class-based biases were everywhere in his writings, always with a sense of profound disapproval that these signs of revanchist thinking and behaving were surely one generation away from full expiration. He shared in the naivete of the times. He simply could not have imagined the carnage of the coming total war that made the Spanish-American war look like a practice drill. The same outlook on the future was held by of Oscar Wilde, William Graham Sumner, William Gladstone, Auberon Herbert, Lord Acton, Hillaire Belloc, Herbert Spencer, and all the rest.

Rothbards view was that their excessive optimism, their intuitive sense of the inevitability of the victory of liberty and democracy, and their overarching naivete toward the uses of technology actually contributed to the decline and fall of what they considered civilization. Their confidence in the beautiful future and their underestimate of the malice of states and the docility of the public created a mindset that was less driven to work for truth than it otherwise would have been. They positioned themselves as observers of ever-increasing progress of peace and well-being. They were the Whigs who implicitly accepted a Hegelian-style view of their invincibility of their causes.

Of Herbert Spencer, for example, Rothbard wrote this scathing criticism:

Spencer began as a magnificently radical liberal, indeed virtually a pure libertarian. But, as the virus of sociology and Social Darwinism took over in his soul, Spencer abandoned libertarianism as a dynamic historical movement, although at first without abandoning it in pure theory. In short, while looking forward to an eventual ideal of pure liberty, Spencer began to see its victory as inevitable, but only after millenia of gradual evolution, and thus, in actual fact, Spencer abandoned Liberalism as a fighting, radical creed; and confined his Liberalism in practice to a weary, rear-guard action against the growing collectivism of the late nineteenth-century. Interestingly enough, Spencers tired shift rightward in strategy soon became a shift rightward in theory as well; so that Spencer abandoned pure liberty even in theory.

Rothbard was so sensitive to this problem due to the strange times in which his ideological outlook took shape. He experienced his own struggle in coming to terms with the way in which the brutality of real-time politics poisons the purity of ideological idealism.

The bulk of the Rothbardian paradigm had been complete by the time he finished his PhD in economics from Columbia University. By 1963-1964, he published his massive economic treatise, a reconstruction of the economics of the origins of the Great Depression, and put together the core of the binary that became his legacy: history is best understood as a competitive struggle between market and state. One of his best books on political economy Power and Market that appeared years later was actually written in this period but not published because the publisher found it too controversial.

Implicit in this outlook was a general presumption of the universal merit of free enterprise compared with the unrelenting depredations of the state. It has the ring of truth in most areas of life: the small business compared with the plotting and scamming of politics, the productivity and creativity of entrepreneurs vs the lies and manipulations of bureaucratic armies, the grimness of inflation, taxation, and war vs the peaceful trading relationships of commercial life. Based on this outlook, he became the 20th centurys foremost advocate of what became anarcho-capitalism.

Rothbard also distinguished himself in those years for never joining the Right in becoming a champion of the Cold War. Instead he saw war as the worst feature of statism, something to be avoided by any free society. Whereas he once published in the pages of National Review, he later found himself as the victim of a fatwa by Russia-hating and bomb-loving conservatives and thereby began to forge his own school of thought that took over the name libertarian, which had only recently been revived by people who preferred the name liberal but realized that this term had long been appropriated by its enemies.

What happened next challenged the Rothbardian binary. It was not lost on him that the major driving force beyond the building of the Cold War security state was private enterprise itself. And the conservative champions of free enterprise had utterly failed to distinguish between private-sector forces that thrive independently of the state and those who not only live off the state but exercise a decisive influence in further fastening the yoke of tyranny on the population through war, conscription, and general industrial monopolization. Seeing his own binary challenged in real life drove him to found an intellectual project embodied in his journal Left and Right, which opened in 1965 and ran until 1968. Here we find some of the most challenging writing and analysis of the second half of the twentieth century.

The first issue featured what might be his most mighty essay on political history: Left, Right, and the Prospects for Liberty. This essay came from a period in which Rothbard warmed up to the left simply because it was only on this side of the political spectrum where he found skepticism of the Cold War narrative, outrage at industrial monopolization, disgust at reactionary militarism and conscription, dogged opposition to violations of civil liberties. and generalized opposition to the despotism of the age. His new friends on the left in those days were very different from the woke/lockdown left of today, obviously. But in time, Rothbard too soured on them and their persistence in economic ignorance and un-nuanced hatred of capitalism in general and not just the crony variety.

So on it went through the decades as Rothbard was drawn ever more toward understanding class as a valuable desiderata of political dynamics, large corporate interests in a hand-in-glove relationship to the state, and the contrast between elites and common people as an essential heuristic to pile on top of his old state vs market binary. As he worked this out more fully, he came to adopt many of the political tropes we now associate with populism, but Rothbard was never fully comfortable in that position either. He rejected crude nationalism and populism, knew better than anyone of the dangers of the Right, and was well aware of the excesses of democracy.

While his theory remained intact, his strategic outlook for getting from here to there underwent many iterations, the last of which before his untimely death in 1995 landed him with an association with the burgeoning movement that eventually brought Trump to power, though there is every reason to believe that Rothbard would have regarded Trump as he did both Nixon and Reagan. He saw them both as opportunists who talked a good game though never consistently and ultimately betrayed their bases with anti-establishment talk without the principle reality.

One way to understand his seeming shifts over time is the simple point with which I began this reflection. Rothbard dreamed of a free society, but he was never content with theory alone. Like the major intellectual activists who influenced him (Frank Chodorov, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand) he believed in making a difference in his own time within the intellectual and political firmament he was given. This drove him toward ever more skepticism of corporate power and the privileges of the power elite in general. By the time of his death, he had traveled a distance very far from the simple binaries of his youth, which he had to do in order to make sense of them them in the face of grim realities of the 1960s through the 1990s.

Would he have been shocked as I have been about the apostasies of Big Tech? Somehow I doubt it. He saw the same thing with the industrial giants of his own time, and fought them with all his strength, a passion that led him to shifting alliances all in the interest of pushing his main cause, which was the emancipation of the human population from the forces of oppression and violence all around us. Rothbard was the Enemy of the State. Many people have even noted the similarities of Gene Hackmans character in the movie.

The astonishing policy trends of our time are truly calling on all of us to rethink our political and ideological opinions, as simple and settled as they might have been. For this reason, Brownstone publishes thinkers on all sides. We are all disaffected in our own ways. And we know now that nothing will be the same.

Do we give up? Never. During lockdowns and medical mandates, the power of the state and its corporate allies truly reached its apotheosis, and failed us miserably. Our times cry out for justice, for clarity, and for making a difference to save ourselves and our civilization. We should approach this great project with our eyes wide open and with ears to hear different points of view on how we get from here to there.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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How Could We Have Been So Naive about Big Tech? - Brownstone Institute

Representatives of Big Tech like Amazon, Google, Netflix and Microsoft, among others, have been summoned by the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Finance on Tuesday to depose on the subject of anti-competitive practices by tech entities.

According to official sources, the panel, which is headed by BJP MP and former Union minister Jayant Sinha, will hold a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the matter, which has garnered a lot of attention in recent times.

The committee has also summoned representatives of ecommerce entities like Flipkart and even cab and hotel aggregators like Ola and Oyo, respectively, to discuss the matter.

The summoning of representatives of Big Techs by the Parliamentary panel is in line with its earlier discussions on the matter, with competitive behavior in the digital market space being the area of focus.

The panel has already held deliberations with the representatives of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and also with the officials of Indian tech firms on the subject.

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Big Tech firms to testify on anti-competitive practices before Parliamentary panel - Economic Times

First, credit where credit is due: Healthcare and technology have made incredible strides in patient care over the last two decades, shifting care from within the four walls of a hospital to remote-care settings. Medical records can even be accessed from a smartphone.

But not all tech vendors that enter the healthcare environment do so successfully. Many vendors, including some of the the most dominant players in the tech space, have a revolving door of healthcare leaders. Others hop in, then hop out again when the juice doesn't quite prove worth the squeeze.

There are exceptions: Those that forge ahead, establishing stronger partnerships with health systems to bring innovative solutions to longstanding medical challenges. And it's those fringe cases that prove the great opportunity for innovation within healthcare for vendors willing to commit, said Dan Dodson, CEO of Fortified Health Security, to truly ascertain the challenges and engineer solutions that above all else realize the "uniquenesses of healthcare.

Vendors able to do that can solve real problems in healthcare, can be very successful, and help move the market forward, said Dodson.

Here's what doesn't usually work: A vendor identifies an inefficiency that it decides to fix for the healthcare sector, then goes off into the lab so IT developers can decide what is the most effective approach. Too often the end result fails to consider the nuances that drive healthcare decision making.

It can be kind of a culture shock almost because a lot of times the primary motivators are much different in healthcare than they are in other verticals, specifically around patient care and things of that nature, said Ben Denkers, chief innovation officer for CynergisTek. Its unlike anything else."

For example, reliance on legacy tech is more prevalent in healthcare than in any other industry because, unlike other sectors, a firewall cant be placed around every single piece of vulnerable tech. When it comes to remedying those vulnerable elements, a vendor must also understand how to handle something that breaks, all while protecting the patient population.

Many provider organizations rely on legacy infrastructure that's been under-invested in, including 15- to 20-year-old medical devices operating on the network, combined with limited staff," explained Dodson.

Combine that complexity of legacy technology with the requirements of confidentiality, integrity, and availability associated with healthcare data, which is everything, Dodson stressed. Vendors must ensure systems are up 24/7, but they also must work within the challenges associated with some version of legacy technology on the network.

In order for me to be successful as a vendor in healthcare, I have to understand those dynamics in the way that I build my technology, but also the way that I support my technology on a go-forward basis because they don't have large teams, said Dodson. Unless you're in the top 100 health systems in the U.S., you have to be able to operate in that environment.

Indeed, vendors must be able to assess the operational impact of its technology and potential implications of failures, Denkers added. Because in healthcare, those failures can have long lasting effects that could potentially lead to patient harm or how the organization itself handles patient care.

This is a perfect example of where non-healthcare entities or vendors may not do very well," he said, particularly if the vendor does not appoint expert leadership within.

The disconnect between products designed for healthcare by a vendor and the need for provider feedback can be seen clearly with medical devices. The security challenges have been long discussed, rooted in one prime flaw: the devices werent designed with security in mind.

While the culture is changing, Denkers noted that often there was no skin in the game for the vendor and those device flaws, patch challenges, and related issues all fell to the provider organizations.

In fact, until recently, many device manufacturers werent investing in security. Instead, they relied upon someone else to assume the risk. Software and widgets werent strongly tested, nor were research or development dollars spent on these elements.

All they were designed to do was make sure that they could keep a patient safe. That is it, said Denkers. Now the onus falls to the manufacturer, with the Food and Drug Administration working hard to advance its cybersecurity requirements and frameworks for manufacturers. Many vendors have taken these shifts in stride, making swift disclosures to protect organizations. But some are resisting, noting that its not within their wheelhouse and that the device was designed to be clinically safe.

Denkers believes the culture is changing and things are getting better. Once a business associate agreement is signed, manufactures are working to invest in security before building the software or widgets, often with support from security vendors. FDA manufacturer requirements will help.

But as it stands, the risk acceptance is on the provider and not on the not on the vendor, Denkers said, adding that a shared responsibility approach is the only means of effectively establishing those trusted relationships between the healthcare entity and the vendor.

In fairness, even as product vendors historically offloaded risk to the provider, the providers themselves assumed otherwise focusing on operational impact and patient care and leaving cybersecurity considerations to third-party vendors to address, said Denkers. So if you're going to invest, and you're going to bring a product to market to bear, please take the time to implement what you need from a security perspective upfront.

Given the disconnect that often exists between vendor and provider, a strong business associate agreement and contract are crucial to effectively support healthcare entities and ensure compliance with all aspects of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Contracts should include how data must be stored and accessed, as well as the frequency of changes and reviews to business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Without it, Denkers noted the organization itself has no teeth with the vendor.

By adding specifics to the contract, there's a much larger level of trust upfront that would be appealing to anybody, said Denkers. That enables a shift from "assume and trust" to validation, ensuring the vendor is doing everything theyve attested to do before a breach occurs. Some of the fallout currently facing customers of Eye Care Leaders, more than a year after a ransomware attack, arguably could have been avoided with a more detailed and properly managed business contract.

It's the difference between wanting to do the right thing and doing something because someone told you to do it, Dr. Dan Golder, principal for Impact Advisors recently told SC Media. Good organizations have kept up regardless of what the rules say.

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Healthcare is littered with failed attempts by big tech to break in. Here's why. - SC Media

Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital group, is betting on crypto to break up the excessive concentration of Big Tech power that the firm played a prominent role in creating, according to one of its leading partners.

Chris Dixon, founder of Andreessens crypto arm, said the internet had led to power being held by a handful of companies including Facebook and Twitter, which the venture capital group backed at an early stage.

I dont think that any of us expected this level of concentration, he told the Financial Timess Tech Tonic podcast. I dont think this is a good outcome, both societally and from a business point of view, because our business is investing in entrepreneurs...the idea of having the internet controlled by five companies is very bad for entrepreneurs and bad for VCs.

His comments come as the firm is seeking to hone a new investment strategy built around cryptocurrencies and digital tokens to replace the traditional equity investments made by VC firms and create a new, community-led model for investing in high-growth start-ups.

Proponents of the Web3 movement claim decentralisation will shift the balance of power away from centralised platforms and towards users.

However, critics warn firms such as Andreessen will use the new technology to create a new generation of internet gatekeepers.

The web is just becoming re-centralised in the hands of a small few investors, or in some cases the same exact people who hold so much power in the current web, said Molly White, a software engineer and prominent critic of Web3.

The venture capital firms co-founder Marc Andreessen is one of Facebook-owner Metas longest-serving board members. The firm made $78mn from its seed investment in Instagram when it was acquired by Facebook in 2012, a 300 per cent return.

Andreessen also invested $80mn in Twitter before it went public, and was among the financial backers of Elon Musks initial bid for the platform earlier this year.

Dixon believes blockchain technology offers safeguards against anti-competitive activity by building rules into smart contracts written into the computer code.

Of course, [business people] will try to create monopolies and big businesses and maximise shareholder value, he added. What we can do to create a better internet is create new systems where the network effects accrue to the community instead of to companies.

Since its crypto fund was launched in 2018, Andreessen has raised more than $7.6bn to invest in cryptocurrencies and related technology companies.

Instead of receiving traditional equity, it has been investing in tokens, a form of digital asset built on the blockchain, which can be traded.

It is a completely different kind of economic model in Web3 in which our investments are mostly in tokens instead of companies, Dixon said. And that was a big change. That is a big part of why we created a separate crypto fund...it requires a whole different legal structure.

Andreessens portfolio includes the crypto exchange Coinbase, NFT marketplace OpenSea, and FlowCarbon, a crypto carbon credit venture set up by former WeWork chief executive Adam Neumann.

Dixon said crypto was an opportunity for new entrepreneurs and start-ups, as companies such as Amazon and Google focus on other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Ive seen no evidence that [dominant] companies will muscle in, he added. We have a much wider berth for our start-ups to operate, as compared to areas like AI and virtual reality, where the incumbents are making significant investments.

While cryptocurrency values had been in a gradual downturn since late last year, the market plummeted in May after the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin. Market instability drove the price of Bitcoin to pre-pandemic levels and contributed to the collapse of a number of crypto lenders and hedge funds.

Dixon said the downturn had made Web3 investments more appealing.

There are a lot of great entrepreneurs entering the space, there are a lot of great ideas and prices are lower, Dixon said. In venture capital, youre hopefully buying low and selling high...so my experience has been downturns have been opportunities.

Additional reporting by Jemima Kelly

You can listen to the full interview with Chris Dixon on the FTs Tech Tonic podcast

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Andreessen Horowitz bets on crypto to break up Big Tech power - Financial Times

Grady McGregor here in Hong Kong, filling in for Jeremy.

Late last week, Chinese regulators publicly shared details on 30 algorithms that power some of the countrys most widely used apps and websites, an unprecedented measure that marks a new escalation in Beijings years-long campaign to rein in the power of big tech.

The list of algorithms included details on the underlying technology that power apps from Chinas largest internet companies, including e-commerce firm Alibaba, social media company and TikTok-owner Bytedance, and delivery giant Meituan. The A.I.-driven recommendation algorithms are highly valuable trade secrets that have come to govern many parts of day-to-day life in China, determining what videos people watch, the products they buy, and routes that food delivery workers operate.

The fact that the Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC), the countrys tech regulator, released the list to the public was unusualand not just for China.

Im not aware of any other country in the world that has a public facing list of every piece of code that manages your [online] decisions, says Kendra Schaefer, head of China tech policy research at Trivium China.

Its been clear that Chinese tech companies would need to share some details of their algorithms with authorities since at least March. That month, Chinas government implemented a sweeping new law governing recommendation algorithms. The new law banned any algorithm that might threaten national security, social stability or induce user over-indulgence or wanton consumption, says Angela Zhang, associate professor at the University of Hong Kongs law school.

One of those new rules required Chinese tech companies to register their algorithms with the CAC, which explains why the companies had released at least some technical details to authorities. While the information that the government has since released to the public does not include the actual computer code underlying the various algorithms, its not clear if Chinese firms have handed over more granular, code-level details that the government has not released. How much access the CAC ends up getting to that code is a big question mark, Schaefer says.

For now, Beijings crackdown on the recommendation algorithms appears equal parts populist and draconianBeijing wants to grant consumers more rights to their information online as long as the government ultimately retains more power over the industry. Half of the regulations are focused on very forward-looking, very positive consumer rights issues, says Schaefer. Half of the regulations are focused on tightening content control online.

Big tech companies, meanwhile, appear to be clear losers of Beijing tightening the algorithm rules, and the governments approach raises questions about the broader future of A.I. development within the worlds most populous nation.

Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in Chinese A.I. policy, says that Beijing has not completely soured on A.I. Rather, he says authorities are aiming to re-align uses of A.I. with the governments larger socio-political goals, even if that means weakening consumer-facing algorithms.

A.I. is woven throughout Chinas economy [so authorities are now] regulating the actual operation of these algorithms to ensure that they are pushing in the direction that they want, he says.

And, at the same time that Beijing is cracking down on consumer-facing technology firms that deploy A.I., the government has prioritized deep tech applications of A.I. such as in robotics and industrial applications, says Sheehan.

Investors and the companies themselves have begun to follow the political winds. Last month, the Financial Times reported that Neil Shen, the influential Chinese investor and founder of Sequoia China, planned to deploy a $9 billion new fund to supporting artificial intelligence and other technologies like semiconductors while he continues to divest from consumer-facing companies that use A.I. like Meituan. Social media giant Tencent, meanwhile, has stepped up its own deep tech efforts in the past year, putting billions into new A.I. and robotics investments.

Theres plenty of ways to use A.I. that are perfectly in line with the Chinese Communist Partys vision for the economy and society, he says. Companies are trying to strategically fall in line with with those priorities.

Heres the rest of this weeks news in A.I.

TikTok launched a text-to-image A.I. generator. Called A.I. Greenscreen, the recently added feature allows users of the short-form video platform to create unique, computer-generated images after typing in a text prompt. The inclusion of the text-to-image A.I. software on TikTok's platform marks a rapid expansion of a technology that is less than two years old. In early 2021, artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI released the original text-to-image platform called DALL-E, which became popular as users experimented in making wholly original pieces by simply typing in words like flower or chair. TikTok's 'A.I. Greenscreen' feature is still primitive compared to DALL-E, Google's Imagen, or Midjourney's eponymous platform, according to the Verge, with many prompts producing abstract images. But that may be a good thing due to the potential that users might abuse the technology and make explicit or hateful images,theVergenotes.

Chinese A.I. giant SenseTime is selling a new robot that plays Chinese chess. The SenseRobot sells for $299 (or $368 for a pro version) in China and comes equipped with a mechanical arm, camera, and chess board. The move marks SenseTime's first foray into the consumer market, after the firm has spent years struggling to reach profitability and fighting political battles. SenseTime develops commercial A.I. technologies used in surveillance cameras, self-driving cars, and facial recognition cameras. The U.S. government alleges that at least some of SenseTime's technology has been used to perpetuate human rights violations in China's western Xinjiang province. SenseTime has denied the allegations. Now, the firm may hope that a chess-playing robot can soften its image. "We hope to create a robot product that can truly think and act through innovative and leading A.I. technology, allowing industrial-grade A.I. technology to enter thousands of homes and interact with children and elders in a real way, SenseTime chairman Xu Li, tellsSCMP.

Codelco uses A.I. to get more copper from aging mines. In 2020, Chilean mining firm Codelco introduced a new digital data center that uses machine learning to aid in mining copper. The use of A.I. helps Codelco optimize the processing of extracted ore, essentially helping the firm get more value out of the material the firm already mines. Codelco tells Bloombergthat A.I. is now helping it mine 8,000 more metric tons per year of copper, translating to a $80 million boost in annual profits. Chile holds the world's largest copper reserves, but Codelco's use of A.I. in copper mining has helped it battle against the fact that the quality of Chilean ore has been deteriorating in recent years.

The U.S. government passed The CHIPS and Science Act. The headlines regarding the new law were mostly about semiconductors because the legislation allocates $52 billion to promote semiconductor manufacturing industry in the U.S. But the CHIPS and Science Act also includes roughly $200 billion for research into A.I. and other critical emerging technologies. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board argued that the investment would only create a more bloated government bureaucracy, but U.S. President Joe Biden said the investment could make the U.S. more globally competitive for years to come. This bill is about more than chips. Its about science as wellthis increased research and development funding is going to ensure the United States leads the world and the industries of the future, from quantum computing to artificial intelligence to advanced biotechnology, Biden said about the new law.

Cybersecurity firm Vectra A.I. hired Myrna Soto as a key strategic advisor to the companys leadership team. Soto was most recently the chief strategy officer of technology provider Forcepoint. Vectra AI uses A.I. tools to detect and respond to cyber threats for companies that use hybrid or multiple cloud platforms.

Corvus Insurance promoted Madhu Tadikonda from president to CEO, taking over from Corvus founder Phil Edmundson who will become chair of Corvus board. The cyber insurance firm offers commercial insurance policies powered by A.I.-driven risk tools, and recently expanded into the U.K. and Germany.

Cybersecurity firm NetWitness hired Ken Naumann as its new CEO. Naumann was previously CEO of data forensics firm AccessData. Netwitness offers a range of A.I.-driven cybersecurity solutions to detect and eliminate digital threats.

Boston Dynamics and Hyundai Motor Group are launching a new Boston Dynamics AI Institute. The two companies made the announcement via joint press release on Friday, saying they would together invest $400 million to get the institute off the ground. The A.I. institute has not provided many clues on specific projects it will focus on, but the release said it will focus on four core areas including cognitive A.I., athletic A.I., organic hardware design, and ethics and policy. On a newly created website, Marc Raibert, the executive director of the new institute, pointed towards more lofty goals. "We need to make robots smarter, more agile and dexterous, and generally easier to use more like people. Once we do that, robots and other types of intelligent systems will increase productivity, free people from dangerous work, care for the disabled, and generally help people live better lives," he writes.

The U.S. is worried it will lose its scientific edge to China. By one new measure, it already hasby Nicholas Gordon

One of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades: Activist Ralph Nader urges regulators to recall Teslas self-driving technologyTristan Bove

Elon Musk wrote an op-ed for Chinas internet regulator, seeking like-minded Chinese partners and pitching Tesla Bot as an aid in its population crisisNicholas Gordon

United Airlines bets $10 million on flying taxisChris Morris

Inventory issues are hurting the bottom line. Its time for a hybrid approach to supply chainsKal Raman

Injecting A.I. into social science is a no-brainer, right? Indeed, researchers have come up with ground-breaking new findings after using machine learning methods for the first time, claiming that A.I.-driven pattern recognition has revolutionized fields like political science and psychology. One study claimed that artificial intelligence allowed researchers to predict when a civil war would break out with 90% accuracy, a 20% improvement on traditional statistical methods.

But some skeptics like Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan, and his PhD student Sayash Kapoor, have begun to question the A.I.-assisted findings. Kapoor and Narayanan say they were not able to replicate the civil war finding or several others after using their own machine learning methods. They believe that the initial experiments suffered from data leakage, meaning that the researchers accidentally exposed some data to the algorithm before they were supposed to.

Now, they warn the misuse of machine learning in science has created a reproducibility crisis and countless other studies could be plagued with similar issues. The idea that you can take a four-hour online course and then use machine learning in your scientific research has become so overblown People have not stopped to think about where things can potentially go wrong, Kapoor tells Wired.

See the rest here:

Chinas Big Tech built some of the worlds most powerful algorithms. Beijing just exposed some closely-guarded details online - Fortune

One month after graduating from the University of Lagos in November 2017, Timi Bolaji received an offer to become a software engineer at Microsoft after scaling through a process that was focused on hiring computer science graduates from African universities. He joined the companys team in Seattle a year later and has been there since, working on the Xbox Cloud Gaming team.

Microsoft is returning to Africa to hire more developers like Bolaji, with the same tantalizing promise of relocating them to offices in the US and Canada.

The company is interested in people still enrolled in or who have recently completed a bachelors or masters degree in engineering, computer science or related fields, and have one year of programming experience in languages like Java, Python and PHP. Being able to show an understanding of data structures and algorithms is also required.

Microsoft isnt the only Big Tech company directly fishing for new talent in Africa. Amazon is currently interviewing Nigerian developers for roles that promise relocation to Ireland and Canada. These moves coincide with the growth of software engineering talent in Africa in the last decade thanks in part to the work of companies like Andela that have helped produce the continents estimated 716,000 developers. Some of them have become startup founders who then hire developers, creating a ripple effect that inspires young students to consider careers in software engineering.

Microsoft and Amazon may simply be seeking a slice of an already globalizing African software engineering workforce since four out of ten developers in Africa work for at least one company based outside of the continent.

With the so-called Great Resignation of the last two years, theres a global shortage of talent and people are recognizing Africa as a source of talent, says Chika Nwobi, founder and CEO of Decagon, a Nigerian company that runs cohort-based software engineering training programs. He is certain that Big Tech companies will find the quality of talent they need in Nigeria because of the growth in expertise that has led to a vibrant tech-driven financial services ecosystem.

We may not have that many engineers who can operate at the scale of these large companies, but thats just an implementation hurdle thats easy to hop over, at the risk of trivializing it, says Justin Irabor, a developer who works remotely in Nigeria for a European company. As with all kinds of professions, there is a wide variation of talent quality, but I strongly believe we have good engineers here.

By going directly to universities for candidates that do not necessarily have years of experience, Microsofts betting on the diffusion of the innovation buzz from African tech companies and communities typically based in cities like Lagos, Nairobi, and Kigali to other parts of each country. The Windows maker may have to thank its competitor, Google, whose developer groups on campuses have become a key channel introducing young African undergraduates to the world of software development.

Many of the students that may apply to join Microsoft from Nigeria are probably at home due to a strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the union for lecturers in government-owned universities, now in its seventh month. Theres no end in sight.

Still, it is a sign of the maturing computer science programs in some schools in Africa that one of the worlds biggest companies is seeking students or recent graduates. Africas top universities for engineering and computer science are in Egypt and Tunisia, according to the US News and World Reports 2022 ranking. Greater Big Tech interest could be the catalyst for schools in other parts of the continent to compete for places on such rankings in the future.

Link:

Microsoft and Amazon tease US relocation to African developers - Quartz

When can we truly say goodbye to this bear market? While Bank of Americas global fund managers are no longer apocalyptically bearish, some on Wall Street remain wary.

Add our call of the day to that last batch. It comes from True Contrarian blog and newsletterschief executive,Steven Jon Kaplan, who sees investors mired in what could be the longest bear market in history, and approaching the next and probably the biggest percentage drop of this bear market so far.

MarketWatch last spoke to Kaplan in mid-November 2021, when he warned of a looming selloff for stocks, notably big highfliers. Just days later, the Invesco QQQ QQQ, -2.63% exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index, and many other tech funds topped out. The S&P 500 SPX, -2.14% peak followed on Jan. 4.

Kaplan based that November caution partly on one of his favorite indicators company insider selling and buying, which he tracks via J3 Information Services Group.

In an interview with MarketWatch on Wednesday, he rattled off a list of worrying signals, such as aggressive selling by that group again, individual investors piling into the market, declarations that the bear market is over and the Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX VIX, +15.53%, skirting under 20 in recent days.

History also plays a big part in his worries about markets right now.

It is fascinating to see how closely the 1929-1932 and 2000-2002 bear markets paralleled each other, with almost exactly the same kinds of pullbacks and rebounds. I expect similar behavior for 2022-2025, he said. (See link to original chart)

Kaplan noted that it took eight years for the 1929 bear market to arrive, nearly 10 years for March 2000s and even longer for the bear market he sees as ongoing, given the bull market began in March 2009.

So what they all have in common is that these very long bull markets preceded the bear markets for so long, that people tended to forget how to invest in bear markets and what theyre about, he said.

The familiar bear market pattern through history has been a small drop to start that doesnt spread panic, then a soothing bounce, then a bigger drop and a bigger rebound, which again relaxes investors. But he said based on 1929, 1973 or 2000, the next stage of selling could bring dramatic losses, such as 40% for a fund like QQQ.

Kaplan is worried about the latest Fidelity quarterly retirement survey, which revealed investors clinging to hopes that the market will return to highs if they wait long enough. Challenging that, Kaplan pointed to another study showing that individuals who invested in the market in September 1929 were still 38% down by August 1982 in real terms, adjusted for inflation.

It kind of explodes the myth that you have to come out ahead if you just kind of hang in there when things are tough, he said.

Read: Most retirement savers are staying the course even if theyre totally stressed

So how to cope with another big drop. Repeating November advice, he recommends I-Bond or Series I savings bonds that can be bought directly from the government and are currently offering a return of just over 9%. U.S. Treasurys are also paying 3% to 3.5% right now, another way to go for the coming years, he said.

Read: This rule with a perfect record says the market hasnt bottomed, says Bank of Americas star analyst

Stocks DJIA, -1.91% SPX, -2.14% COMP, -2.55% are drifting south, following Wednesdays Fed-inspired losses, as bond yields TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.020% TMUBMUSD02Y, 3.301% drop, while the dollar DXY, -0.13% moves higher. Oil prices CL.1, -0.11% BRN00, +0.70% are also climbing, and bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.65% is hovering under $24,000.

Read: Why one economist fears the Japanese yen could be headed for a destabilizing downward spiral

Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY, -16.23%, which has been on a crazy meme ride lately, are slumping after GameStop GME, -5.45% Chairman Ryan Cohen disclosed plans to unload his hefty stake in the retailer months after buying it. The company said Thursday it has been working expeditiously for weeks to strengthen its balance sheet

Meanwhile, this 20-year-old made a massive profit on the stock, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Retailer Kohls KSS, -5.52% is tumbling after a profit miss and slashed outlook amid plans to cut inventory bulk

Cisco CSCO, -2.03% stock is climbing after the tech giants surprisingly upbeat earnings and revenue forecast.

Apple AAPL, -2.30% plans to unveil its latest iPhone 14 and smartwatches on Sept. 7, according to a new report.

End of an era. Stellantis STLA, -5.99% unit Dodge to discontinue two popular muscle cars as it tilts toward electric vehicles.

Jobless claims slipped 2,000 to 250,00 in the latest week, while the Philly Fed index rose to 6.2 from a predicted negative 5.0. Existing home sales and leading economic indicators are still to come, along with appearances by Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who will speak at 1:20 p.m. Eastern and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, at 1:45 p.m.

Big Oil is too optimistic a slow transition away from carbon will be enough to halt global warming

Two years after Covid infections, risks of psychotic disorders and dementia linger

Kremlin reportedly ousts head of its Black Sea Fleet following Crimea attacks

These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern Time:

Tourists behaving badly: Two arrested in Venice for cruising its waterways on motorized surfboards.

An extinct massive shark was faster, bigger and hungrier than scientists originally thought

Cambodia finds its lost ancient artifacts at the Met

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This contrarian investor gave a timely warning for the last big tech top. He now sees the biggest drop of this bear market dead ahead. - MarketWatch