The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

Psalm 27

Trump's Huawei Reprieve Is A National Security Debacle

From Zero Hedge:

At the end of last month, President Donald Trump publicly promised to give the Chinese company a reprieve from newly implemented U.S. restrictions.

Huawei is in no position to resist Beijing's demands to illicitly gather intelligence. For one thing, Beijing owns Huawei. The Shenzhen-based enterprise maintains it is "employee-owned," but that is an exaggeration. Founder Ren Zhengfei holds a 1 percent stake, and the remainder is effectively owned by the state. Moreover, in the Communist Party's top-down system, no one can resist a command from the ruling organization. Furthermore, Articles 7 and 14 of China's National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, requires Chinese nationals and entities to spy if relevant authorities make a demand. Ren has maintained the company would not snoop on others, but that claim, in view of the above, is not credible...

Additionally, Beijing has used Huawei servers to surreptitiously download data from others, most notably the African Union from 2012 to 2017.

Not surprisingly, Huawei is laying the groundwork for grabbing tomorrow's data.

First, Christopher Balding's study of résumés of Huawei employees reveals that some of them claim concurrent links with units of the Chinese military, in roles that look as if they involve intelligence collection. As he writes in his study, "there is an undeniable relationship between Huawei and the Chinese state, military, and intelligence gathering services"...

Theft is not the only risk. As Sen. Blackburn pointed out to Fox News, Huawei will also serve as Beijing's mechanism for controlling the networks operating the devices of tomorrow. The concern is that the Chinese government and military will be able to use Huawei equipment to remotely manipulate devices networked on the Internet of Things (IoT), no matter where those devices are located. So, China may be able to drive your car into oncoming traffic, unlock your front door, or turn off or speed up your pacemaker...

Ross on Tuesday implied that licenses would be granted for items available from other countries, saying "we will try to make sure that we don't just transfer revenue from the U.S. to foreign firms." At first glance, sales of those items appear non-objectionable, but, as the New York Times reported on Tuesday, U.S. companies seeking exemptions acknowledge that their products are often more advanced than those from Japan, South Korea, and other countries.

Therefore, the better course would be to get all American suppliers to stop all sales and licenses and to rally Tokyo, Seoul, and other capitals to do the same. That would severely disrupt Huawei, perhaps forcing it out of business or at least impeding its progress. In short, Ross is underestimating America's leverage.

As Eli Lake, writing on the Bloomberg site, points out, American policy on Huawei looks like it had "collapsed" after the bilateral meeting with Xi. Lake is right. Beijing, buoyed by the talk of the American climb-down, is now fast selling Huawei equipment around the world, which means, in the normal course of events, the Chinese will soon control the world's 5G backbone.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-12/trumps-huawei-reprieve-national-security-debacle

Japan Times: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son urges Moon to focus South Korea on developing AI

From Japan Times:

oftBank Group Corp. Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son proposed to South Korean President Moon Jae In on Thursday that South Korea focus on the national development of artificial intelligence, the presidential office said.

At their meeting in Seoul, Son said the country should direct all available tools, such as education, policies and budgets, to nurture the sector, while Moon asked the billionaire to invest in young entrepreneurs and help develop experts in AI.

Son gladly accepted Moon’s request, according to the office.

Moon also thanked Son for advising former presidents Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun while they were in office, saying Son’s advice on the need for broadband internet infrastructure and an online gaming industry greatly helped the South Korean economy, the office said.

Son, who is ethnically Korean, was quoted as replying that he is happy to see many excellent internet technology companies emerge in South Korea.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/05/business/softbanks-masayoshi-son-urges-moon-focus-south-korea-developing-ai/#.XSmLHCAzbcs

Robert Reich: Here’s Why We Need to Break Up Big Tech

From Naked Capitalism:

The combined wealth of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin, and Larry Page is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population.

They are the leaders of a second Gilded Age – ushered in by semiconductors, software and the internet – which has spawned a handful of hi-tech behemoths and crushed competition.

Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft now have the highest market values for all public corporations in America.

As of today, only three countries in the world have a GDP higher than these companies’ combined market value of approximately 4 trillion dollars.

America’s first Gilded Age began in the late nineteenth century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – that culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and William Vanderbilt.

The answer then was to break up the railroad, oil, and steel monopolies.

The answer today is the same: Break Up Big Tech.

First: They have a stranglehold on the economy.

Second: Such size also gives these giant corporations political power to get whatever they want, undermining our democracy.

Third: Giant tech companies also hurt the environment.

Finally: Their huge wealth isn’t being shared with most of their workers.

Nine in 10 workers in Silicon Valley make less now than they did in 1997, adjusted for inflation. And many are part of the “working homeless.” That is, people who work full time and yet are still homeless.

The answer is to break them up. That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels instead of a centralized platform. And more startups could flourish.

Even one of Facebook’s founders has called for the social media behemoth to be broken up.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a proposal to do just that. It would force tech giants to open up their platforms to more competition or break up into smaller companies.

Other countries are already taking on Big Tech. The European Union fined Google nearly 3 billion dollars for antitrust violations in 2017.

Let’s be clear: Monopolies aren’t good for anyone except for the monopolists, especially when they can influence our elections and control how Americans receive information.

In this new Gilded Age, we need to respond to them as forcefully as we did to the monopolies of the first Gilded Age and break them up.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/06/robert-reich-heres-why-we-need-to-break-up-big-tech.html