Website blurb: This week’s roundup features coverage of recommendations for US-EU tech cooperation, China’s bid for semiconductor independence, Gorbachev’s legacy in Putin’s Russia, a RocketLab-MIT mission to Venus, and new NYU research on congressional candidates’ tendencies to share misinformation on social media. Additionally, Kochava Inc. is allegedly selling consumers’ sensitive geolocation data, BlocPower seeks to decarbonize buildings across the US, and phishing campaigns are reaching targets via text message.
Industrial Policy & International Security
Lighting the Path: framing a transatlantic technology strategy | Center for New American Security
The Center for New American Security (CNAS) released a new report this week, “Lighting the Path: Framing a Transatlantic Technology Strategy,” recommending steps to align technology policy between the US and Europe and boost global competitiveness. The authors suggest steps the US and European partners can take to manage disagreement on data governance and privacy; foster a collaborative innovation base focused on talent and research and development; enhance coordination on technology controls; and build an advantage in seven critical technology areas. The report covers artificial intelligence, biotechnology, clean energy technology, information and communications technology and services, quantum information science and technology, semiconductors, and standard-setting.
Xi Jinping’s vision for tech self-reliance in China runs Into reality | The New York Times
To minimize reliance on Western technology, Xi Jinping is pursuing a vision of government-led tech self-reliance in China. Semiconductors are at the center of this effort. Yet, experts believe that a self-reliance strategy applied to the semiconductor industry is doomed to fail; the complex supply chain depends on long-established regional comparative advantages. While Xi Jinping has recently promoted leaders behind successful projects in the space and defense industry, chip investors at Big Fund and Tsinghua Unigroup and other industry leaders are under investigation for corruption. Technological progress in the semiconductor industry has been slow and Xi Jinping is pivoting to a top-down approach to mobilize resources, inspired by the planned-economy period between the 1950s and 1970s. While China’s chip sales grew by over 30% in 2020, chips are still their largest import and there are capability gaps in more advanced market segments.
Disdained by Putin, Gorbachev walked a tightrope to defend his legacy | The Washington Post
The last leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev passed away this week at the age of 91, leaving a complex political legacy. President Vladimir Putin has dismantled many of the reforms Gorbachev implemented to increase freedoms and openness in Russia and has formed an agenda around nostalgia for the Soviet Union. While Gorbachev supported Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, he opposed his extended presidency and recently called for an end to the hostilities in Ukraine. Putin offered condolences upon Gorbachev’s passing, but Russian officials announced there will be no state funeral. State media are locking in a narrative that “Putin saved Russia from the 1990s,” painting a picture of Gorbachev as a historical leader who grew too close to the West and is responsible for a period of decline.
US Regulation
FTC sues mobile data broker over abortion location data sale | Bloomberg
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agreed four-to-one to sue data broker Kochava Inc. over allegations that it sold mobile geolocation data that could be used to track consumers’ movements to sensitive locations such as abortion clinics. Specifically, the FTC maintains that Kochava implements minimal restrictions on the purchase and usage of time-stamped location data. Kochava argues that customers can opt-out of sharing geolocation data and preemptively sued the FTC, claiming the agency misunderstands its business. The FTC is currently seeking public comments on “commercial surveillance” or businesses that sell or share consumer activity across websites and apps.
Innovation
Donnel Baird wants BlocPower to be the Amazon of home electrification | Protocol
BlocPower is looking to decarbonize (and electrify) buildings across the United States and their mission begins with low-income communities. CEO Donnel Baird is looking to challenge the “green premium” model that delivers clean tech products at high price points; he wants to drive down costs and jumpstart a more sustainable future. Recent federal legislation that incentivizes electrification and allocates some research and development funds for climate change solutions provides a strong starting point. And Baird is optimistic that even expensive retrofits will pay off through energy savings and increased property values. BlocPower is partnering with US cities Ithaca, Menlo Park, and New York City to complete building electrification projects and reduce their carbon emissions.
The first private mission to Venus will have just five minutes to hunt for life | MIT Technology Review
Private launch company Rocket Lab, supported by a team at MIT, is looking to send a probe to Venus where recent observations indicated the presence of phosphine in the planet’s clouds. The discovery prompted NASA, the European Space Agency, China, and India to plan missions to Venus. However, their spacecraft will not retrieve usable data until 2025 or even 2030. Rocket Lab’s small spacecraft, Photon, is capable of making the trip to Venus in just five months and will carry a probe (currently in development at MIT) to take direct measurements of the planet’s atmosphere. While the probe would only be able to operate for five minutes until it accelerates toward the planet’s surface, the Rocket Lab mission costs only 2% of the price of NASA’s mission to Venus. The target launch window is May 2023.
DIU’s director tried to overcome a calcified defense innovation system. It beat him. Now what? | Breaking Defense
As Director Michael Brown concludes his term at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) this week, former Senate Armed Services Committee staff member Bill Greenwalt reflects on the Department of Defense’s failure to embrace the DIU experiment. He writes that, despite the lack of funding and acquisition flexibility granted to DIU, Director Brown achieved some victories delivering commercial tech capabilities to the US military. However, Greenwalt is pessimistic about the Unit’s future given the Pentagon’s approach to filling the vacant director position. Instead of actively recruiting top Silicon Valley talent and leveraging the Department’s most flexible hiring mechanisms, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering is recruiting applicants the same way most DoD civilians are hired. Without leaders willing to embrace change at scale, the mission to adopt advanced, non-traditional capabilities to stay ahead of China will fail.
Cyber
New cybersecurity regulations are coming. Here’s how to prepare. | Harvard Business Review
Multiple federal and state-level organizations in the United States are working on new cybersecurity policies in response to the increasing scale and impact of cyber incidents on private-sector organizations. Existing incident reporting requirements are focused on attacks that compromise private information and therefore miss incidents that target other types of information or systems. New reporting requirements are being designed to reduce unknowns. However, broadening definitions could quickly overwhelm companies that experience persistent attacks. At this regulatory inflection point, it is important for companies to anticipate and prepare to implement new regulations. Author Stuart Madnick recommends that organizations take a company wide approach to assessing cybersecurity policy as implications extend beyond technical teams. More importantly, the time to provide feedback to regulators is now.
Why the Twilio breach cuts so deep | WIRED
Earlier in August, application programming interface provider Twilio was the target of a phishing campaign that compromised 163 of its customer organizations. Attributed to a group known as “Oktapus” and “Scatter Swine,” the campaign leveraged text messages containing malicious URLs instead of email, a more common attack vector, to gain access to Twilio accounts. Secondary victims included authentication firms Authy and Okta as well as the secure messaging app, Signal. Cybersecurity firm Group-IB reported that 136 organizations were targets in the same phishing campaign, which focused on companies that provide cloud services, software, or business management services to large clients. The attack on Twilio may represent an evolution in phishing tactics and strategy as hackers seek out opportunities to compromise supply chains.
State & Local Tech Ecosystems
Silicon Valley: no country for young men | Financial Times
The tech sector’s household names are getting older. The next generation of famous 20-something founders has yet to arrive in Silicon Valley. While this trend mirrors American demographics–the nation’s median age in 2020 was 38–it could be the result of big tech acquisitions. Promising startups are acquired before their founders become recognizable. Alternatively, the fraud perpetrated by Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes may have changed investors’ minds about the promise of an archetypal young, risk-tolerant, disruptive founder. While unicorns are more often founded by entrepreneurs in their mid-thirties, some leaders worry that this trend will diminish the tech sector’s capacity for revolutionary progress.
Democracy Online
Facebook parent Meta agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica lawsuit | The Wall Street Journal
In 2016, Cambridge Analytica leveraged Facebook user data to advise former President Trump’s presidential campaign. After this information was revealed publicly, Facebook users brought a lawsuit against the social media platform for allowing a third party to access private user data. Last week, both sides reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit but did not release any details about the terms and requested a 60-day stay. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica incident, Facebook paid fines in the United Kingdom and United States. The Federal Communications Commission also ruled in 2019 that the company must make structural changes to improve oversight of user privacy practices. Cambridge Analytica closed in 2018.
Republicans are increasingly sharing misinformation, research finds | The Washington Post
Researchers at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics found that Republican congressional candidates share links to unreliable news sources on Facebook more often than Democratic candidates. Leveraging NewsGuard’s source scores, they measured the number of times candidates shared links to sources with an “unreliable” score from January to July 2020 and during the same period in 2022. In 2020, 8% of links shared by Republican candidates each day came from unreliable sources; in 2022, the daily average increased to 36%. For Democratic candidates, the daily average increased from less than 1% in 2020 to 2% in 2022. Notably, nonincumbent Republicans were the worst offenders: almost half of the links they shared daily point to unreliable sources. The numbers still reflect this trend even when Sarah Palin is removed as an outlier–99% of her links point to her own blog posts, which are scored as unreliable. Similar patterns are playing out on other social media platforms, including Twitter.
