• China syndromeA Ban on WeChat and TikTok, a Disconnected World and Two Internets

    By Fang Bing, Adam Xu, Jiu Dao

    President Trump’s new executive orders banning Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat marked a significant escalation in the ongoing technology tensions between the U.S. and China. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, predicted in 2018 that within the next decade, there would be two distinct Internets: one led by the U.S. and the other one led by China. Only two years after his comments, that prediction seems to have become a reality.

  • PrivacyConsumers Consider Third-Party Use of Personal Location Data as Privacy Violations

    The National Security Agency issued a warning to its employees 4 August that cellphone location data could pose a national security risk. But how do consumers feel about their location data being tracked and sold? New research yielded surprising results.

  • China syndromeChina Uses Its Market Power to Censor, Alter American Films, Threatening Free Speech, Artistic Expression

    In a report out last week, the literary and human rights group PEN America said Chinese government censorship is exerting influence on Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry, posing a clear threat to free speech and artistic expression. The U.S. film industry, in ways large and small, has over the past decade increasingly capitulated to Chinese government pressure to alter and censor films. Studios have made content changes to films, either at the direct request of government censors or increasingly through voluntary self-censorship in order to gain or sustain access to the tightly controlled and lucrative Chinese film market; in some instances, studios have even permitted state censors on film sets or in production studios.

  • Supply-chain resilienceLet’s Not Forget the Important Lessons the Coronavirus Taught Us about Supply Chains

    By Sarah Golden

    Resilience is priceless when you really need it. It turns out our economic systems are more fragile than we thought. As locations across the world implemented “shelter-in-place” orders in an effort to flatten the coronavirus contagion curve last spring, we got a real-time lesson in how intertwined our transportation and distribution systems are. It was staggering to see how efforts to curb the human toll of a pandemic rippled across every sector and created incalculable emotional and social impacts.

  • Deepfakes‘Deepfakes’ Ranked as Most Serious AI Crime Threat

    Fake audio or video content has been ranked by experts as the most worrying use of artificial intelligence in terms of its potential applications for crime or terrorism. : “As the capabilities of AI-based technologies expand, so too has their potential for criminal exploitation. To adequately prepare for possible AI threats, we need to identify what these threats might be, and how they may impact our lives,” says one expert.

  • IoTConsumers Do Not Fully Trust Smart Home Technologies

    Researchers investigating the trust consumers have in “smart home” – homes in which smart devices are connected to each other to create an “internet of things” (IoT) — found that consumers were worried about the likelihood of security incidents. Businesses and policymakers will have to work together to gain consumer trust in smart home technologies.

  • MigrationBrexit Uncertainty, Migration Decisions Spark Brain-Drain Worries

    A new study found that, over the last four years, the “collective uncertainty” triggered by Brexit has sparked major changes in migration decisions, equivalent to the impact of a serious economic or political crisis. The study reveals the U.K. is facing a potential brain drain of highly educated British citizens, who have decided to invest their futures in continental Europe. The study compares changes in migration and naturalization patterns of migrating U.K. citizens before and since the Brexit referendum. 

  • China syndromePompeo: U.S. Will Take Action on Chinese Software in “Coming Days

    Chinese software companies operating in the United States assiduously collect customers’ personal date, browsing habits, facial images, and other information and deliver it to China’s intelligence agencies for possible use by China when it would serve China’s interests to do so. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the fact the Chinese software companies serve as information collectors for China’s intelligence agencies poses a serious national security threat to the United States, and that the administration, in the coming days, will soon announce a series of measures aiming to restrict the ability of Chinese software companies to operate in this way, and ban some companies from operating in the United States altogether.

  • China syndromeMystery Seeds from China A Concern for USDA

    During the last few weeks, dozens of people in twenty-two states have been receiving mysterious packages of seeds from China in their mail. The purpose of the mystery packages is not clear, but USDA urges recipients of the seed packages to hold onto the seeds and packaging, including the mailing label, until someone from their states’ department of agriculture or USDA APHIS contacts them with further instructions. The mystery seeds should not be planted, or mixed with legitimate seeds.

  • China syndromeIs West Turning Away from Nixon's Approach to China?

    By Jamie Dettmer

    In 1972 US President Richard Nixon shocked the world, and many in his administration, by announcing his intention to normalize relations with Communist China. Forty-eight years on, America and China are embarking on another perilous voyage, filled possibly with even greater uncertainty than encountered in the 1970s. Western powers fear Beijing is out to re-shape the liberal world order, subscribing to a growing view that not only does the Chinese Communist Party want to ensure its continued rule at home but to make China the number one global power.  

  • China syndromeHuawei and TikTok Are at the Forefront of a New Drift to Regionalism – Many Others Will Follow

    By Zhongdong Niu

    Huawei and TikTok were two of the most successful examples of globalization. Both of these Chinese companies are now at the mercy of a widening geopolitical divide. The U.S. has led an increasingly successful campaign to eliminate Huawei from the global market over alleged security fears, and is threatening to ban TikTok too. These developments are signs of attempts by the U.S. to decouple from China’s economy and concentrate on alliances within its own political and economic sphere. It chimes with the wider drift away from globalization towards a more regional approach to trade.

  • First respondersAutotalks Deploys Smart Traffic Signals in Alpharetta, Georgia

    By Brian Blum

    When an emergency vehicle comes speeding towards an intersection, drivers know to pull over and give the ambulance or firetruck the right of way. Israeli automotive technology firm Autotalks takes that one step further by sending a wireless signal from the emergency responder to the traffic lights so the signals will automatically change to stop cross traffic.

  • Treason lawsU.K. to Overhaul Treason Laws

    Britain is overhauling its treason laws, the most sweeping reform of these laws since 1695. The overhaul will see a new Treason Act and a new Espionage Act for tracking foreign agents and agents of influence, as well as a rewriting of the Official Secrets Act to make it suitable for the digital age. Government officials say the reforms are needed better to deal with the Russia’s sustained campaign to undermine Western democracies and corrupt the politics liberal societies, and the growing efforts of China to steal intellectual property and gain access to other countries’ critical infrastructures by encouraging them to buy subsidized Chinese technology.

  • Better approachThe Right Approach to Getting out of the Current Crisis

    Four leading Israeli researchers call for a realistic, science-based, myths-free approach to the coronavirus crisis. They argue that the Swedish approach, despite early localized setbacks, has not only been a success – it also helps explode the three myths which have led governments around the world to impose economically ruinous and socially destructive lockdowns. These myths are: 1) That the immunity triggered by infections does not last long, and hence cannot be relied upon to create herd immunity; 2) that in order to achieve herd immunity through infection-triggered immunity, at least 60 percent of the population must be infected; and 3) that the number of death resulting from wider infection would higher than the number of deaths resulting from economic lockdown and social restrictions.

  • Lockdown costLockdown May Cost 200,000 Lives, U.K. Government Report Shows

    More than 200,000 people could die from the impact of lockdown and protecting the NHS, an official government report shows. Sarah Knapton writes in The Telegraph that as national restrictions were imposed, experts from the Department of Health, the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the government’s Actuary Department and the Home Office forecast the collateral damage from delays to healthcare and the effects of recession arising from the pandemic response. It estimated that in a reasonable worst case scenario, around 50,000 people would die from coronavirus in the first six months of the pandemic, with mitigation measures in place. But in the report published in April they calculated that up to 25,000 could die from delays to treatment in the same period and a further 185,000 in the medium to long term - amounting to nearly one million years of life lost.