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Lightning and USB-C cables are seen with European Union flag reflected on Apple iPhone in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on September 25, 2021.
How the EU designed the new iPhone
Earlier this week, Apple unveiled the iPhone 15. The camera is better. The design is sleeker. The glass is less breakable. It comes in pink.
But the detail that caught our eye was down at the bottom: the charging port has changed from a lightning port to a USB-C port (that’s the one that looks, to us at least, like an M-dash).
The story of why Apple made that change takes us not to Cupertino, but to Brussels. Last October, the EU passed a law that required most kinds of portable electronics sold in Europe to have the same charging port – the USB-C.
The move will reduce the Babel of incompatible chargers to one single standard. Smartphones and tablets have to make the change by 2024, other devices by 2026.
Tech companies grumbled about it – they had refused to agree on a standard voluntarily – but ultimately they went along with it. Why?
Because they didn’t want to get shut out of a market of 450 million consumers (the largest among advanced economies) and it made little sense to make different phones for different regions.
The USB-C story is a nice example of how the EU, lacking tech juggernauts of its own, is nevertheless trying to shape the global technology industry as a “consumer first” regulator.
While the US and China duke it out for supremacy in both hardware and software, Europe has developed some of the strictest laws in the world governing online privacy, content moderation, and competition.
Just last week the EU unveiled another set of regulations targeting the six biggest tech companies with new competition rules.
This is the same approach that Europe is taking when it comes to AI — seeking to jump out in front with smart regulation rather than the most advanced AI modules as such.
For it to continue to work, Brussels has to bet that the allure of its market is greater than the bother of adapting to strict rules. So far it’s working.
Big Tech's big challenge to the global order
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Read Ian Bremmer's wide-ranging essay in Foreign Affairs that puts in perspective both the challenge, and the opportunity, that comes from the unprecedented power of Big Tech.
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here on the road, something we haven't done very much recently, but will increasingly as we try to move through COVID. And I want to talk to you about a new article that I just put out in Foreign Affairs that I'm calling "The Technopolar Moment." Not unipolar, not bipolar, not multipolar, technopolar. What the hell does technopolar mean?
It means that increasingly big technology companies are themselves geopolitical actors. So to understand the future of the world, you can't just look at the United States, Europe and China. You need to look at the big tech companies, too.
Now I'm saying that. I never felt that way about big oil or about the banks or any other major multinationals. And the reason for that is because they all exist in real physical space. And as a consequence, they are regulated in physical space or sometimes not effectively regulated. But nonetheless it is inside sovereign government entities, and their territories that they exist.
Technology companies actually have sovereignty over their digital space. They not only determine what the rules are going to be. But they actually create it from the ground up. They're the architects. They drive the algorithms. They own the data. They decide what to do with it. I mean, everything about that space is the mandate of the tech companies themselves. And that is the kind of power in digital space that increasingly feels like a parallel world to physical space where governments are in charge.
And so we see a couple of interesting things that come from this. First of all, I first became aware of this after January 6th. By far the biggest event that had transpired in terms of domestic political stability, instability of my lifetime by a domestic actor. And the response did not come from Congress, did not come from the executive, did not come from the judiciary. They all failed to act.
The responses came from the tech companies deciding to de-platform Parler, Amazon and Apple, de-platforming the sitting President of the United States by Facebook and by Twitter. And to the extent that people were eventually arrested and then tried, that came because of information they had posted on social media platforms. Now those companies, I mean, no one's voted for their rules. They decide in a kind of capricious way, what they do or don't want to do to respond.
I'm not saying that they didn't take responsible decisions. That's an entirely different point. But the fact was, they exerted sovereignty. It wasn't just true about January 6th. Was true, the most important attacks on the United States and on its allies, last year was the SolarWinds attack. And the US government and the Europeans weren't even aware of the attacks when they occurred. It was Microsoft that found out about them. And they were the ones that, with other private sector companies, figured out how to attack back.
In other words, whether you're talking about the economy or politics or national security, as all of those areas increasingly moved to a mixture of the virtual world and physical space, and as tech companies dominate the virtual space, they increasingly exert sovereignty. And so if we want to understand what the world is going to look like in 10 to 20 years and the balance of global power, we need to understand what drives these tech companies. What kind of actors are they? What do they want? What are they orienting towards? And then see which of those models are likely to play out what the balance of power looks like, including them as geopolitical actors.
Now, two other things I want to say aside from "read the piece "so you can see what I have to say about all this. The first is, to the extent that we need to think about how these firms operate. Well with governments, we think about whether or not they're democracies or authoritarian regimes. And of course, no one is the perfect democracy. No one's really a perfect authoritarian regime. But you exist on a spectrum. Some countries are vastly more authoritarian, North Korea on one end, China and Russia towards that end. Some countries are much more democratic, Germany, Canada on one side, the United States towards that side, but slipping down, countries like Hungary and Turkey, not so much.
Okay. In the technology space, there is no tech typology. We don't have one. All we think is, "Well, they want to make money." But actually, if you think about the relationship of these companies to the state, they do have very different models. In fact, I'd argue they have three. One is the globalist model, kind of an outgrowth of their historic libertarianism, which is don't get involved. Don't regulate me. We want to have strong lobbying that allows us to capture regulations of the public sector. We want to be dominant in the space, be able to write the rules that the government will use to regulate us and achieve, maintain monopoly status in spaces that we exist in. I would argue that Apple is much closer to that kind of a model, Tencent, for example, in China.
And there's also national champions. And national champions are the technology equivalents of Lockheed in the 20th century, but for the 21st century. And these are companies that actually want to align with governments, think of the governments as very important partners. And they're not trying to invest as much in a global world, but instead understand there's going to be a much more fragmented world. I would argue that Microsoft is more in that direction, Amazon to a degree, Google a little bit. And they're balancing more between the two. And in the case of China, a company like Huawei would certainly be in that environment.
And then finally you have techno utopians, people that believe driving their corporations, that the government is literally going to go away. They're not going to be relevant in their space. I think Vitalik Buterin from Ethereum would definitely be in that space where he thinks that the future of currency will be crypto and not sovereign currencies, not fiat currencies anymore. So the government just won't matter in the digital space. It will be crypto. And some of what Elon Musk is trying to do with space is in that orbit. Some of what Mark Zuckerberg talks about in the metaverse would look like that. China used to have someone like that in terms of Jack Ma, but they don't anymore because they certainly don't want that model to exist in China.
The big remaining question then is where do we go from here? Who's going to win? And it's too early to say. But it's really interesting to play out three quick thoughts. One to the extent the globalists win, which means that the governments don't continue to do a lousy job of regulating the space. They don't align with the corporates. The corporates would rather continue to capture the regulatory space, that implies, we don't have a technology cold war between the US and China. Global models for technology continue to work more effectively over time. And it means Europe is actually much more important because they probably to the extent that anyone is developing effective rules of the road. They're going to be better at that, more thoughtful at that than the Americans or Chinese would be.
If the national champion model wins, then it is the Chinese continue to focus on squeezing the private sector. Everyone has to align with the government. The Americans increasingly do that too. It becomes a technology cold war. And there's very little space for Europe. In fact, everybody else needs to align to one or the other.
And then finally, you have the techno utopians. And it's hard for this to play out what happens to the world if the techno utopians win. Because in part it depends on if they win at what? Do they win at currency? In which case, central banks start mattering a lot less. And the US looks like it's in decline. Why? Because you no longer have the global reserve currency as the US dollar.
What happens if the metaverse ends up being a space that's completely ungoverned by the United States and other governments? Well, it means the governments will be expected to do a lot less. Federal power will erode. And the social contract will be driven either by those corporations in those spaces or not at all, a lot more inequality in that kind of an environment. Anyway, a lot to think about here, a piece that I've been considering pieces of for a long time now. I hope you find it worthwhile and we'll be talking more soon. Be good.
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Apple vs Facebook, a clash of the tech titans; social media algorithms scrutiny
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
How big of a blow is Apple's new privacy feature to companies like Facebook, who depend on tracking users?
The long-awaited update, including enhanced privacy features, actually empowers those users to decide not to be tracked. So that's great news for people who are sick of how the data trail they leave behind on the web is used. But it has to be said, that simple feature settings changed by Apple cannot solve the problem of misuse of data and microtargeting alone. Still, Apple's move was met with predictable outrage and anti-trust accusations from ad giant Facebook. I would anticipate more standard setting by companies in the absence of a federal data protection law in the United States. That's just to mention one vacuum that big tech thrives on.
Why are social media algorithms being scrutinized?
Now frankly, I wish they would be much more systematically scrutinized by academics or overseen by independent regulators. And that would require more access to data and information as a precondition for both evidence-based lawmaking and the public's ability to learn. Grillings of a select group of tech CEOs before Congress cannot be a substitute for laws and the rule of law to actually guide tech governance.
How to change a social media business model that profits from division
The United States has never been more divided, and it's safe to say that social media's role in our national discourse is a big part of the problem. But renowned tech journalist Kara Swisher doesn't see any easy fix. "I don't know how you fix the architecture of a building that is just purposely dangerous for everybody." Swisher joins Ian Bremmer to talk about how some of the richest companies on Earth, whose business models benefit from discord and division, can be compelled to see their better angels. Their conversation was part of the latest episode of GZERO World.
Kara Swisher on Big Tech’s big problem
Renowned tech journalist Kara Swisher has no doubt that social media companies bear responsibility for the January 6th pro-Trump riots at the Capitol and will likely be complicit in the civil unrest that may continue well into Biden's presidency. It's no surprise, she argues, that the online rage that platforms like Facebook and Twitter intentionally foment translated into real-life violence. But if Silicon Valley's current role in our national discourse is untenable, how can the US government rein it in? That, it turns out, is a bit more complicated. Swisher joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Phonemaker Apple says no new business for supplier Wistron after India plant violence
Wistron failed to implement proper working hour management processes, Apple said.
Will there be a big tech breakup? Apple likely to announce 5G phone
Watch as Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of WIRED, explains what's going on in technology news:
How likely will big tech companies Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google be forced to breakup as recommended by Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust?
I think it's pretty unlikely. I think there will be hearings. I think there will be damages. I think that there will be scrutiny on future mergers. I don't think there will be breakups.
"Hi, Speed." What can we expect from this week's annual Apple release?
Apple has a new phone most likely coming out next week. The motto is "Hi, Speed." I think it's going to be mostly about 5G. These phones will be 5G compatible. It doesn't mean the 5G infrastructure has been built up in this country or most other countries. But still, when it is, the phones will be fast. Also, I think the LiDAR sensors that were built on the last iPad, which was kind of a small announcement that people didn't really notice, will be on the new iPhone and that will be great for augmented reality.
The Big Tech breakup: Could it happen?
"Don't be evil", they said. Back in 2000, that was the internal motto of a scrappy little tech startup called Google. Twenty years later, and a trillion dollars higher in market cap, the company, along with fellow tech giants Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, is squarely in the crosshairs of US lawmakers who say their business models have gone to the dark side.
The latest challenge — a 450-page report released Tuesday by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives — says the four biggest US tech giants have abused their market power to undercut rivals and stifle competition, putting their users' economic and political freedoms at risk. The companies themselves say their businesses have created untold numbers of new jobs, markets, and innovations that previously did not exist.
Qualms about big tech firms' market power aren't new. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are already conducting antitrust probes of all four companies, but the report lays out the case in detail. It also makes a series of recommendations for lawmakers on how to update competition laws and strengthen oversight of tech firms. Some of those calls go as far as to explore breaking up the companies.
Could the Beltway really take a tougher line on Silicon Valley? Democrats and Republicans (who rarely see eye to eye on anything these days) generally agree that Big Tech needs to be reined in, although they have often disagreed about why and how. Two Republican members of the House subcommittee that released the new report put out their own dissenting documents on the same day. One faulted the main report for failing to address what Republicans believe is an anti-conservative bias on social media. The other, more substantively, agreed with the main report's call to update antitrust laws, but rejected breaking up firms.
The lack of a durable bipartisan consensus means the November election will be critical. If the Democrats take control of the Senate, they'd be in a more commanding position to advance some of the report's proposals. The main players to watch would likely be senators Elizabeth Warren, who has been outspoken in her calls to break up big tech, and Amy Klobuchar, a major digital privacy and antitrust advocate who would likely lead the Senate antitrust subcommittee.
Still, Silicon valley has immense lobbying power to fight tougher regulations, and it's not clear that a centrist like Chuck Schumer, who would likely take the helm of a Democrat-controlled Senate, would relish a big fight on this issue any time soon.
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has, like his opponent Donald Trump, called for reform of the so-called "Section 230" protections that shield social media firms from liability for content posted on their sites. But although he's criticized Big Tech's market dominance, he'd have a lot on his plate if he won — tech regulation would probably take a back seat to the pandemic, economy, foreign policy, and climate change.
Is there a US-China angle here? Well it's tech, so of course there is. The US and China are moving into an increasingly zero-sum rivalry over technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence, in which the tech giants are major players. If this turns into a 21st-century "tech Cold War" in which firms on either side of the Pacific are the main combatants, US companies will be facing off against Chinese rivals (like Huawei) that have the firm support of the Chinese government, and face few antitrust constraints of their own.
Under those circumstances, will US lawmakers — who seem to agree across party lines on the need to confront China — think twice about putting fresh constraints on America's heavyweight fighters? Or would they reason that regulating Big Tech better would ease some of the social polarization that afflicts the US, and create an even more powerful and innovative economy in the future?