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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff walk to a helicopter on their way to Cape Coast in Accra, Ghana, Tuesday March 28, 2023.

Misper Apawu/Pool via REUTERS

What We’re Watching: Zambia warns against anti-LGBTQ protests, AI scares tech leaders

lgbtq rights

Zambia warns against anti-LGBTQ protests ahead of Harris’s arrival

Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema is warning against anti-LGBTQ protests ahead of US Veep Kamala Harris’s visit Friday, part of a three-nation Africa tour aimed at shoring up US relations across Africa.

While in Lusaka, Harris will (virtually) address the Summit for Democracy, a Biden-crafted international conference designed to bolster democratic institutions and norms amid rising global authoritarianism. But dozens of Zambian opposition MPs claim the summit also aims to introduce gay rights to the country.

The opposition Patriotic Front Party reportedly plans to hold protests before the summit, but Hichilema has called for calm and for a dialogue with his opponents. Earlier this month, he vowed to maintain Zambia’s laws criminalizing consensual same-sex acts, which carry a life sentence.

This isn’t the first time gay rights have come up during Harris’s tour. In Ghana, she noted that LGBTQ rights are human rights but did not discuss the proposed Ghanaian bill to criminalize LGBTQ identification and advocacy. Harris’s visit also follows Uganda’s adoption last week of a draconian law that criminalizes identifying as LGBTQ, which could involve the death penalty in some cases.

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summit for democracykamala harriszambiaHUMAN RIGHTSafricahakainde hichilemapatriotic front partybiden foreign policyghanapunjabamritpal singhfugitive from justiceINDIAartificial intelligenceelon muskLABOUR ISSUESSOCIAL MEDIAus-china competitiontechnology sectorlgbtq rights

A pedestrian passes a "Help Wanted" sign in the door of a hardware store in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

US jobs soar despite Fed’s high interest rates

us job market

A stunning US jobs report on Friday showed that the US economy added a whopping 517,000 jobs in January, far more than the expected 187,000 – taking unemployment down to 3.4%, the lowest it's beensince May 1969. This, coupled with the 11 million US employment openings at the end of 2022, reflects a hopping job market. Experts attribute the surprise figures to there being so much pent-up labor demand that companies continue to hire, though the tech sector has seen a recent slew of layoffs. Job creation has increased in areas like housing and finance, which would normally be more sensitive to high interest rates.

Sounds pretty great, right? Not exactly. The Federal Reserve has been desperately trying to slow the economy and tamp down inflation by raising interest rates, with eight hikes since March 2022. More jobs, however, mean more money being heaped into the economy, so markets tumbled Friday morning as investors anticipated more interest rate hikes in response. That said, the hiring surge may give economists a reason to soften their predictions about a looming recession, or at least about its severity.

Federal Reservewall streetTECHNOLOGY SECTORhousing marketfinanceus job market
Should We Ban Artificial Intelligence? | Global Stage | GZERO Media
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Artificial intelligence and the importance of civics

artificial intelligence

What's more important to fight AI-enabled disinformation: policies or social norms?

Eileen Donahoe, executive director of Stanford University's Global Digital Policy Incubator, believes we haven't done enough on the cultural level and in terms of civic education.

But, should governments ban AI? She's on the fence when asked during a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.

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Iran's Ahmad Noorollahi, Sadegh Moharrami, and Alireza Jahanbakhsh line up during the national anthems before the World Cup match against England.

REUTERS/Marko Djurica

What We're Watching: Iran's silent anthem, Russia's tech brain drain

iran world cup

Iran’s Kurds rise up, soccer squad goes silent

Even as widespread anti-government protests over democracy and women’s rights continue across Iran, things are getting particularly dicey in Kurdish-majority areas along the northwestern border with Iraq. Iran’s revolutionary guards have not only cracked down on the protests in the city of Mahabad, but they also reportedly sent missiles across the border into Kurdish areas of Iraq for good measure. Kurdish groups have struggled for independence from Iran for more than a century, and Mahabad is hugely symbolic — it was the capital of a short-lived independent Kurdish state in the 1940s. Meanwhile, the broader anti-government protests continue to get high-level sympathizers. Two prominent female actors who removed their headscarves publicly in solidarity were arrested over the weekend. Then, on Monday, Iranian footballers stunningly refused to sing Iran’s national anthem ahead of their opening World Cup match in Qatar as a show of support for the protests back home.

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Whistleblowers & How to Activate A New Era of Digital Accountability | Full Interview | GZERO World
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Whistleblowers & how to activate a new era of digital accountability

social media governance

Frances Haugen famously blew the whistle against her then-employer, Facebook. She says we must recognize that the gap between fast-changing tech and slow-moving governments will continue to widen, and the best way to narrow it, is to encourage people to speak out against questionable practices. These whistleblowers need better laws to protect them, she tells Ian Bremmer in a GZERO World interview.

Despite all of this, Haugen still has hope that the corporate culture inside tech companies can change for the better. The role of social media companies in politics is still growing, and now the failures of social media companies can have life-or-death consequences.

Haugen suggests that governments need to rethink how they regulate social media companies, and hold them more accountable for the consequences of their actions.

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Dirty Lobbying Practices by Tech Companies Pose Danger to Public | Cyber In :60 | GZERO Media
youtu.be

Meta's moves to malign TikTok reveal common dirty lobbying practices

meta and tiktok

Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses dirty lobbying practices by the biggest tech companies.

Meta reportedly hired a GOP firm to malign TikTok. How dangerous is this move to the public?

Well, I think it is important that we know these kinds of dirty lobbying practices that apparently looked attractive and acceptable to Meta or Facebook. It seems like a desperate effort to polish a tarnished image of the company and they must have thought that offense is the best defense. But generally, the public, the audience, readers of the news have no way of knowing which stories have been planted or that they are planted in media at all. And I think the fact that this is a common practice is revealing and cynical. But the problem is that for many of the biggest tech companies all kinds of lobbying, sponsoring, influencing has become accessible in ways that very few can compete with, they just have a lot of money to spend. I was surprised to hear, for example, that WhatsApp's lead, Will Cathcart, claimed this week that his company was not heard by European legislators when it came to the Digital Markets Act while a public consultation was held. And Meta, which owns WhatsApp, spent 5.5 million euros on lobbying in Brussels last year. So I'm pretty sure they did have an opportunity to engage.

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Ukrainians In the IT Industry ... During War | GZERO World
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Ukrainians in the tech industry ... during war

ukraine war

You are more dependent on Ukrainians than you may realize. Every time you use a ride hailing app, order food with your phone, or even just send an email — there’s a good chance you’ve used software designed or maintained by someone in the country. In fact, as you read these words, you are depending on the work of coders from Kyiv.

That’s because over the past 10 years Ukraine has become one of the leading sources of talent and outsourcing in IT and software development. On the eve of Russia’s invasion, there were close to 300,000 IT specialists in the country, according to a local IT association.

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Gabriella Turrisi

Hard Numbers: EU semiconductors, Ortega vs students, Taiwan missile defense upgrade, US mask mandates, TikToking at 92

TECHNOLOGY SECTOR

48 billion: The EU plans to spend $48 billion to become a major chipmaking hub in response to the global semiconductor shortage. The US also wants to produce more homegrown semiconductors and reduce its dependency on Asian suppliers.

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semiconductorstaiwan invasionTAIWANTIKTOKeuropean unionTECHNOLOGY SECTOR

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