A weekly digest of the latest news and research related to the work of the Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group. Topics covered in the digest include cybersecurity, domestic regulation, innovation, international competition, social media disinformation, and the California exodus.
Industrial Policy, International Competition and Cooperation
China has become a laboratory for the regulation of digital technology | The Economist
As the Chinese tech sector has expanded, it has run headlong into the growing apparatus of the Chinese state. The Chinese government’s willingness to mostly leave tech companies to their own devices has faded in recent years as the government has begun pushing companies to work in the party’s interest. These changing regulations have forced social media companies to boost government content and limit the number of hours children can play video games per week. In the next few months, even larger changes will be afoot, as the country’s first digital privacy law goes into effect and tech companies will be expected to protect national security and the public order.
Domestic Regulation
Congress Is Warning That the Federal Government Remains Vulnerable to Cyberattacks | Lawfare
The House Appropriations Committee expressed concern this week over the state of U.S. cyberdefenses. In its funding bill for the fiscal year 2022, the committee requested more information from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about efforts being made to ramp up cybersecurity programs. The authors provide an in-depth look into the practices of DHS, its efforts to increase the cyber capabilities of the U.S., and protect important assets from exposure or destruction.
Innovation
A.I. Can Now Write Its Own Computer Code. That’s Good News for Humans. | The New York Times
This article provides an overview of OpenAI’s new publicly available tool, Codex. Codex was created by feeding huge amounts of prose and code into a neural network which, by analyzing the vast amounts of data, was able to teach itself how to code at a basic level. Codex is able to write code to execute simple tasks, and researchers see it as an augment to their current suite of abilities and tools. Codex is unlikely to replace the career of a computer programmer as the program is still fairly limited, but it can perform some repetitive tasks far better than humans can.
DARPA Looks to Microbes to Process Rare Earth Elements | U.S. Department of Defense
Rare earth elements, such as lithium and neodymium, are becoming increasingly essential for a variety of industrial and military uses. The United States has domestic access to these minerals, but currently lacks the ability to process the supply (i.e. separating out the rare minerals from ore). To ensure adequate domestic production, DARPA has invested in a unique process of designing microbes that can complete this process in a way that is both more efficient and better for the environment.
California
Why Silicon Valley’s Optimization Mindset Sets Us Up for Failure | TIME
This piece by Stanford faculty members Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy Weinstein, adapted from their new book System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot, explores whether Silicon Valley’s obsession with increasing efficiency in each step of our daily life is inherently a good thing. It argues that, thus far, Big Tech’s quest for optimization has often meant we end up forgoing other goals, such as safety, health, or pleasure. They provide a few examples of cases in which technologies have tried to solve for one objective, but in doing so, introduced wide-ranging consequences. For example, Facebook’s simple goal of connecting people, something that inherently seems like a good thing, has introduced violations of user privacy, greater circulation of hate speech and misinformation, and could be argued to have increased political polarization in the United States.
Cyber
Cyberattack Halts Lessons at Howard University | Gizmodo
Howard University was forced to suspend its online and hybrid classes and shut down the school’s entire network for two days this week after detecting a ransomware attack. The FBI, local authorities, and private forensics experts were all involved in investigating who was behind the attack, and no details have yet been released. Last week, the White House and FBI warned about a possible increase in ransomware attacks around the Labor Day long weekend since attackers can feel like they have longer to explore a hacked network before being caught.
Why Hackers Love Smart Buildings | The Wall Street Journal
The expansion of the Internet of Things has been one of the major trends of the 2000s, and buildings are no exception to this trend. As the number of internet-connected devices in buildings has grown, they have become increasingly vulnerable to malicious hackers. Buildings thus far haven’t been built with cybersecurity in mind, and many systems are poorly secured and highly interconnected. If a group gains access to one portion of the system, they are often able to expand across the entire network. This has opened a profitable new window for ransomware hackers.
Freedom of Speech, Domestic Democracy, and Extremism
Texas forbids political ‘censorship’ by social media companies | The New York Times
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a bill on Thursday that bans social media companies from removing posts from their platforms because of political views expressed in them. It also asks the companies to publish regular reports showing how often they removed posts. The law allows private citizens that reside in Texas to sue companies with more than 50 million monthly active users over violations of this law. A similar law was recently blocked by a judge in Florida, making this Texas law likely to draw similar legal scrutiny.
LA police ask people they stop for their Facebook and Twitter account info | Ars Technica
The LAPD made public documents requested by the Brennan Center for Justice concerning their collection of email and social media information from those they detain. Detainees are not required to provide their social media information, but it is encouraged by the department, and as the Brennan Center argues, some may not realize they have a Fourth Amendment right to not respond. The information enables the LAPD to aggregate enormous amounts of data on individuals through services provided by Palantir, the Silicon Valley technology firm. The program appears to have few limitations on what data are off limits and what can be done with the broad database.
