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On tech, the EU doesn't speak for Europe:
The European Commission of President Ursula von der Leyen vowed in 2019 to make "a Europe fit for the digital age," dubbing the 2020s Europe's "digital decade."
Building on the European Union's flagship privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Brussels's regulatory race to the top gained historic momentum over the past four years. And from digital markets to content moderation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, computer chips and data governance, the Commission has left little on the table in terms of regulation.
Bolstered by mended ties with the administration of United States President Joe Biden and increased coordination with the U.S. through the Trade and Technology Council (TTC), the von der Leyen Commission seems to have achieved the impossible in an often rancorous 27-member bloc — a unified Europe around a common digital agenda.
But this narrative of unity obfuscates a much more complex reality in which the Commission's policies are dominated by its two largest — and most zealously regulatory — countries: France and Germany. In fact, Europe's smaller but most tech-oriented members rarely feel heard in the halls of Brussels, even as they often disagree with the Commission's agenda.
Privately, officials from these countries say the Commission's strategy will hamper innovation by imposing complex compliance rules on smaller companies that can't afford to implement them. They also worry that foreign investment — particularly from U.S. investors, which are responsible for a whopping 76 percent of foreign investment in European tech companies — will wane as the Commission goes after large American tech firms. And many lament that Brexit took away the United Kingdom's counterbalancing voice, leaving a vacuum for France and Germany to fill.
While these concerns are rarely aired publicly, simply put, Central and Northern Europe know that when it comes to tech, the EU doesn't speak for Europe.
And no wonder: None of the EU's major institutions — the Commission, the European Council or the European Parliament — have Central Europeans at the helm, even as the power balance in Europe shifts eastward after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Proportional representation in the Parliament also means that the largest countries — France, Germany and Italy — have the most power in terms of votes. Even if all the Nordic, Baltic and Central European countries voted as a block — which they don't — they would still have fewer votes (191) than just France, Germany and Italy (251).
As a result, smaller countries then need to prioritize focusing on the most critical issues — defense and security — and the Parliament's ability to set Europe's tech agenda is then hamstrung by the Commission's sole power to propose legislation.
But just as the power balance on defense and deterrence is shifting to the east and north, so are the economic headwinds when it comes to tech innovation and investment.
For example, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn have higher growth rates for capital invested in startups than London, Munich and Paris. And while unicorns — or firms valued at $1 billion or more and are still predominantly privately owned — in Western Europe still raise nearly double the amount of money as those in "new Europe," the latter has the highest valuation-to-investment ratio on the Continent.
In short, tech companies in Central and Eastern Europe do more with less.
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China appeals to Japan to halt export restrictions as chip war escalates:
China is urging Japan to repeal restrictions on the export of chip-making technology, citing violations of international and trade regulations.
Beijing's condemnation is the latest development in the ongoing chip war between the US and China, which has seen moves from both nations to thwart each other's semiconductor manufacturing prowess.
The Japanese government's move to impose a ban on chip exports comes days after China banned the use of Semiconductors manufactured by US-based chipmaker Micron, citing a cybersecurity issue.
[...] In January, the US convinced The Netherlands and Japan to join it in expanding a ban on exports of chip-making technology to China.
According to analysts, Washington's strategy to strike a deal with the two countries was a significant move, as some of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment are headquartered in these nations.
The US first imposed restrictions on exports of chips to China in 2015, extending them in 2021 and twice in 2022. The most recent restrictions were introduced in December.
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Brace Yourself for the 2024 Deepfake Election:
Artificial intelligence was once something the average person described in the abstract. They had no tactile relationship with it that they were aware of, even if their devices were often utilizing it. That's all changed over the past year as people have started to engage with AI programs like OpenAI's DALL-E and ChatGPT, and the technology is rapidly advancing.
As AI is democratized, democracy itself is falling under new pressures. There will likely be many exciting ways it will be deployed, but it may also start to distort reality and could become a major threat to the 2024 presidential election if AI-generated audio, images, and videos of candidates proliferate. The line between what's real and what's fake could start to blur significantly more than it already has in an age of rampant disinformation.
"We've seen pretty dramatic shifts in the landscape when it comes to generative tools—particularly in the last year," says Henry Ajder, an independent AI expert. "I think the scale of content we're now seeing being produced is directly related to that dramatic opening up of accessibility."
It's not a question of whether AI-generated content is going to start playing a role in politics, because it's already happening. AI-generated images and videos featuring president Joe Biden and Donald Trump have started spreading around the internet. Republicans recently used AI to generate an attack ad against Biden. The question is, what will happen when anyone can open their laptop and, with minimal effort, quickly create a convincing deepfake of a politician?
There are plenty of ways to generate AI images from text, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. It's easy to generate a clone of someone's voice with an AI program like the one offered by ElevenLabs. Convincing deepfake videos are still difficult to produce, but Ajder says that might not be the case within a year or so.
"To create a really high-quality deepfake still requires a fair degree of expertise, as well as post-production expertise to touch up the output the AI generates," Ajder says. "Video is really the next frontier in generative AI."
Some deepfakes of political figures have emerged in recent years, such as one of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy telling his troops to surrender that was released last year. Once the technology has advanced more, which may not take long considering how quickly other forms of generative AI are advancing, more of these types of videos may appear as they become more convincing and easier to produce.
"I don't think there's a website where you can say, 'Create me a video of Joe Biden saying X.' That doesn't exist, but it will," says Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information. "It's just a matter of time. People are already working on text-to-video."
That includes companies like Runway, Google, and Meta. Once one company releases a high-quality version of a text-to-video generative AI tool, we may see many others quickly release their own versions, as we did after ChatGPT was released. Farid says that nobody wants to get "left behind," so these companies tend to just release what they have as soon as they can.
"It consistently amazes me that in the physical world, when we release products there are really stringent guidelines," Farid says. "You can't release a product and hope it doesn't kill your customer. But with software, we're like, 'This doesn't really work, but let's see what happens when we release it to billions of people.'"
If we start to see a significant number of deepfakes spreading during the election, it's easy to imagine someone like Donald Trump sharing this kind of content on social media and claiming it's real. A deepfake of President Biden saying something disqualifying could come out shortly before the election, and many people might never find out it was AI-generated. Research has consistently shown, after all, that fake news spreads further than real news.
Even if deepfakes don't become ubiquitous before the 2024 election, which is still 18 months away, the mere fact that this kind of content can be created could affect the election. Knowing that fraudulent images, audio, and video can be created relatively easily could make people distrust the legitimate material they come across.
"In some respects, deepfakes and generative AI don't even need to be involved in the election for them to still cause disruption, because now the well has been poisoned with this idea that anything could be fake," says Ajder. "That provides a really useful excuse if something inconvenient comes out featuring you. You can dismiss it as fake."
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If you still want your Mao memorabilia, you better hurry down to Tiananmen Square, Beijing, while you still have the chance.
In China, the State Council is somewhat comparable to the Cabinet. Headed by the Prime Minister and consisting of the heads of the various Ministries (Defense, Commerce, Education, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Justice, Civil Affairs, State Security, Public Security and so on), it handles the day-to-day running of the country while formulating economic policy.
Its operational procedures are described in a document, conveniently titled "Working Procedures for the State Council". On March 18, an updated version of that document was published, and it has a couple of changes.
First off, the State Council now has to "report any major decisions, major events and important situations" to the Central Committee "in a timely manner." Previous edition sentences like "administration according to law, seeking truth from facts, democracy, openness, pragmatism and integrity" have been scrapped, as has the requirement for the State Council "to correct illegal or inappropriate administrative actions", or to "guide and supervise" the bureaucracy. In other words, its wings have been seriously clipped.
Secondly, any and all references to Marxism/Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Deng Xiaoping and the ideologies of former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are now verboten. Only references to Xi Jinping Thought are allowed, as that is "the essence of Chinese culture and the spirit of the times".
To drive the point home, the Central Committee of the CCP launched another nationwide disciplinary campaign among its 96 million members.
This round will check them for loyalty to supreme leader Xi Jinping, weeding out "black sheep" and "two-faced" officials.
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Shortly after coming into office, President Joe Biden moved to restore net neutrality. He signed a sweeping executive order to promote competition, calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bring back the Obama-era internet rules rolled back by the Trump administration.
But close to two years later, the FCC remains deadlocked with only four of its five commissioner slots filled — and Biden may be running out of time.
Biden's pick for a new FCC commissioner was Gigi Sohn, a former FCC official and public interest advocate. Sohn would have secured a long-awaited Democratic majority at the agency. After she was nominated in October 2021, however, a well-funded opposition organized a brutal opposition campaign against her. The culture-war campaign called Sohn an "extremist" and a "censor" because of past tweets criticizing Fox News and former President Donald Trump, largely ignoring her decades-long professional record. After more than 16 months and three separate confirmation hearings, Sohn withdrew her nomination earlier this month, citing the "unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks" by broadband and cable lobbyists and their friends.
It's unlikely Biden will pick someone as critical of cable companies again — but Republicans could try to thwart even a centrist candidate
Now, the White House has been forced to start over, prolonging a vacancy that continues to obstruct the administration's broadband agenda. The White House hasn't announced a new nominee or when they're hoping to confirm someone, but it's unlikely that Biden would pick someone as critical of cable companies as Sohn. Republicans and "dark money" groups have already proved that they're willing to spend millions to block progressive nominees. With so little time left in Biden's first term, stakeholders may even try to thwart a more moderate nominee, especially if there's an opportunity to continue the stalemate past the 2024 election.
Even if the White House selects a new nominee in the next few weeks, it could take months for them to be vetted and confirmed by the Senate. If the White House drags its feet in finding a replacement, Biden could be without a fifth commissioner when the 2024 election season begins. "The FCC deadlock, now over two years long, will remain so for a long time," Sohn said in a statement announcing her withdrawal last week. "It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators."
Net neutrality, which bans internet service providers from favoring or degrading the quality of specific services, was one of Biden's big-ticket promises. But as it's an issue that mostly splits down party lines, the FCC's stalemate has left his hands tied — putting states in charge of issuing their own patchwork rules.
Other parts of Biden's agenda have suffered the same problem, including ones that are facing looming deadlines.
His 2021 infrastructure package required the agency to craft rules that would ensure all Americans, despite income status, have equal access to the internet. The agency has until November to draft these new digital discrimination rules, but civil rights groups fear it may be impossible to roll out meaningful protections without a third commissioner.
"If advanced, the rule could hold broadband providers liable if their practices result in less internet access for people of color and low income communities, even if companies don't intentionally discriminate," the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a February statement on the rulemaking. "Without a fully functioning FCC, that rule is likely to be much weaker."
"Lack of FCC oversight has enabled collection and sale of cell phone location data that puts vulnerable communities at risk"
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