Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China, following an order from the country’s internet watchdog, which cited national security concerns.Related video above: French government watchdog agency ordered Apple to withdraw the iPhone 12 from the market (9/12/23)“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesperson told CNN on Friday. “The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear.”The apps, both owned by Meta, were already blocked in China and not widely used. They could be accessed in the country only by using virtual private networks (VPNs) that can encrypt internet traffic and disguise the user’s online identity.The removal of the apps by Apple represents a “further distancing between already separated tech universes” in the country and beyond, said Duncan Clark, the chairman of Beijing-based investment advisory BDA China.“It will cause inconvenience to consumers and businesses (in China) who deal with family, friends or customers overseas. Even if they use VPNs to access their existing WhatsApp apps, these over time will become obsolete and require updating,” he said.Other popular Western social media apps, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, are still available on Apple’s China app store, according to a check by CNN.The tech giant’s announcement comes against a backdrop of plunging iPhone sales in the world’s second-largest economy. Its smartphone sales tumbled a stunning 10% in the first quarter of this year, according to market research firm IDC.The company has lost momentum in China as nationalism, a rough economy and increased competition have hurt Apple over the past several months.The resurgence of Huawei and other Chinese brands, including Xiaomi and OPPO/OnePlus, will likely continue, according to IDC. Chinese consumers who once would have considered Apple are now turning to the country’s national brands.Besides being a key production center, China remains an important market for Apple as it is the largest market behind the United States. The company continues to offer discounts in the country to help boost sales.Its CEO, Tim Cook, visited Shanghai just last month to open the second-biggest Apple store in the world.Hassan Tayir contributed reporting.
Hong Kong (CNN) —
Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China, following an order from the country’s internet watchdog, which cited national security concerns.
Related video above: French government watchdog agency ordered Apple to withdraw the iPhone 12 from the market (9/12/23)
“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesperson told CNN on Friday. “The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear.”
The apps, both owned by Meta, were already blocked in China and not widely used. They could be accessed in the country only by using virtual private networks (VPNs) that can encrypt internet traffic and disguise the user’s online identity.
The removal of the apps by Apple represents a “further distancing between already separated tech universes” in the country and beyond, said Duncan Clark, the chairman of Beijing-based investment advisory BDA China.
“It will cause inconvenience to consumers and businesses (in China) who deal with family, friends or customers overseas. Even if they use VPNs to access their existing WhatsApp apps, these over time will become obsolete and require updating,” he said.
Other popular Western social media apps, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, are still available on Apple’s China app store, according to a check by CNN.
The tech giant’s announcement comes against a backdrop of plunging iPhone sales in the world’s second-largest economy. Its smartphone sales tumbled a stunning 10% in the first quarter of this year, according to market research firm IDC.
The company has lost momentum in China as nationalism, a rough economy and increased competition have hurt Apple over the past several months.
The resurgence of Huawei and other Chinese brands, including Xiaomi and OPPO/OnePlus, will likely continue, according to IDC. Chinese consumers who once would have considered Apple are now turning to the country’s national brands.
Besides being a key production center, China remains an important market for Apple as it is the largest market behind the United States. The company continues to offer discounts in the country to help boost sales.
Its CEO, Tim Cook, visited Shanghai just last month to open the second-biggest Apple store in the world.
No Google AI Search, I Don’t Need to Learn About the “Benefits of Slavery”
“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations,” said a Google spokesperson in an emailed statement to Gizmodo. “We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”
Google claims these protests impeded other employees’ work and prevented them from accessing facilities. No Tech for Apartheid tells Gizmodo that 19 of the employees fired on Wednesday did not directly participate in the sit-in protests, but were associated with the movement.
“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” said a No Tech for Apartheid spokesperson in an emailed statement. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor.”
In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, shared by The Verge, Google’s head of global security, Chris Rackow, said “behavior like this has no place in our workplace.” The memo also claims the protestors defaced Google’s property and “made coworkers feel threatened.” Rackow concludes his message by telling employees to “think again” if they expect Google to overlook conduct that violates its policies.
A Google spokesperson tells Gizmodo the cloud computing contracts at the center of these protests, Project Nimbus, are not directed at highly sensitive military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services. However, Time reported last week that Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The report claims the tech giant has recently negotiated a deeper partnership with Israel during the war in Gaza.
These 28 workers are not the first Google employees to be fired for protesting the company’s contracts with Israel. They join Eddie Hatfield, a Google software-engineer who was fired after disrupting an Israeli tech conference by yelling, “No tech for apartheid!” while a Google executive was speaking.
There’s some discrepancy over why these workers were fired. Google listed “bullying” and “harassment” as the reasons for the worker firings. However, No Tech for Apartheid allege their protests were peaceful, and claim the workers themselves feel bullied by Google’s response.
No Tech for Apartheid’s protest represents an increasingly loud voice within Google and Amazon opposing big tech’s cooperation with Israel. The movement’s New York protest gathered over 100 protesters on Tuesday and reportedly dozens more in Sunnyvale, California. The movement claims to have the support of “thousands of colleagues” within Google and Amazon. Organizers say they will continue protesting until the company drops Project Nimbus.
BRUSSELS/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Big Tech is facing its biggest challenge in decades as antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic crack down on alleged anti-competitive practices that could result in break-up orders to Apple and Alphabet’s Google, a first for the industry.
That in turn could inspire watchdogs around the world to pile on, as evidenced in the growing number of antitrust probes in various countries following the opening of EU and U.S. cases. Since AT&T was broken up exactly 40 years ago, no company has faced the possibility of a regulator-led break-up in the United States until now.
Google has said it disagreed with the EU’s accusations while Apple said the U.S. lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law.
In 1984, AT&T, also known as Ma Bell, was broken up into seven independent companies called “Baby Bells” to open up one of the most powerful monopolies of the 20th century. AT&T, Verizon and Lumen are currently the only surviving entities.
Regulators now allege companies such as Apple and Google have built impenetrable ecosystems around their products, making it difficult for customers to switch to rival services, which led to the coining of the term walled gardens.
The U.S Department of Justice on Wednesday warned Apple, a $2.7 trillion company, that a break-up order is not excluded as a remedy to restore competition after it teamed up with 15 states to sue the iPhone maker for monopolising the smartphone market, thwarting rivals and inflating prices.
Even so, it will likely take years to decide the case, which Apple has vowed to fight.
The U.S. actions come on the heels of other mounting threats across Europe this week.
Big Tech will face more scrutiny shortly with Apple, Meta Platforms and Alphabet likely to be investigated for potential Digital Markets Act (DMA) violations that could lead to hefty fines and even break-up orders for repeated breaches, people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Thursday, on the condition of anonymity.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager helped pave the way for drastic measures last year when she accused Google of anti-competitive practices in its money-spinning adtech business and that it may have to divest its sell-side tools.
She said that requiring Google to sell some of its assets seemed to be the only way to avoid conflicts of interest as it would prevent Google from allegedly favouring its own online digital advertising technology services versus advertisers and online publishers.
Vestager is expected to issue a final decision by the end of the year.
European Parliament lawmaker Andreas Schwab, who was heavily involved in drafting landmark EU DMA tech rules that kicked in this month, said lawmakers want bold action against Big Tech which flouts rules.
“If they don’t comply with the DMA, you can imagine what Parliament will ask for. Break-ups. The ultimate goal is to make markets open, fair and allow more innovation,” he said on Friday.
BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
It is far from certain that regulators will issue break-up order as they mull options and any action may just result in a fine. Legal experts also suggested the case against Apple, drawing from the 1998 case against Microsoft, could be more difficult this time.
“In the European Union, there is less of a tradition, with splitting a company seen as a last resort. It has never happened before,” said a Commission official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Apple’s highly integrated system would also make a break-up difficult compared with Google, said lawyer Damien Geradin at Geradin Partners, who is advising several app developers in other cases against Apple.
“It seems to me much more complicated. You are talking about something that is integrated, for example you can’t force Apple to divest its App Store. That doesn’t make sense,” he said.
He said it would be better to impose behavioural remedies on Apple that obligates it to do certain things while in the case of Google, a break-up order could simply target acquisitions made to strengthen its key services.
“What’s more likely is they (DOJ) go for remedies like opening up hardware functionality, or making sure developers aren’t being discriminated against in terms of pricing,” said Max von Thun, director of advocacy group Open Markets.
“I think they want to say that everything’s on the table, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll choose that path,” he said.
Apple gets most of its nearly $400 billion-a-year revenue from selling hardware — iPhones, Macs, iPads and Watches — followed by its Services business, which will brings in roughly $100 billion a year.
Structural remedies such as break-ups will ultimately be tested in courts, said Assimakis Komninos, partner at law firm White & Case.
“I would say that experiences of imposed structural measures, such as breakups, are not many, but the small past experience shows that this is very tricky, aside from the formidable legal challenges,” he said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee in Brussels and Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, additional reporting by Martin Coulter in London; Editing by Ken Li and Anna Driver)
Facebook has gone through a lot of facelifts over the past two decades. Observer
On this day 20 years ago, Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launched a website hunched over a computer in his dorm room. Later that year, he dropped out of college to focus on the development of the project, thefacebook.com, with a few friends. Fast forward two decades, Zuckerberg’s dorm-room startup has become a tech conglomerate valued at more than $1 trillion, leading innovations not only in social networking, but also in virtual reality, A.I. and other forefronts of tech.
The story of Facebook (Meta (META)), now rebranded as Meta, is one with its fair share of growing pains and a lot of facelifts. Here’s a look back at how Facebook has changed its look over the years:
2003-2004: The original Facemash logo
In 2003, Zuckerberg and his friends built Facebook’s less-than-politically-correct predecessor, Facemash, a website that compared Harvard’s female students side by side. Having devised an innovative way to utilize Harvard’s existing online student directory, Zuckerberg saw a bigger opportunity to connect students—by providing an online venue for them to judge the attractiveness of fellow students.
2004-2005: “thefacebook” in brackets
On Feb. 4, 2004, Zuckerberg officially launched the more familiar precursor to what we know today as Facebook, thefacebook.com. At its inception, only Harvard students were granted access to the site. But the website soon expanded beyond Cambridge. By December 2005, thefacebook had 6 million users and several new features, including the infamous Facebook Wall.
thefacebook profile page in 2005. Version Museum
2005-2015: A simpler and snappier look
In 2005, the founders decided to drop the “the” in front of “facebook” and shed the brackets in the company’s logo for a snappier calling card. That also kicked start a period of hyper growth for the company. By the end of 2007, Facebook had over 50 million users and around 100,000 business profiles. Facebook released its mobile app on iOS in July 2008, following the release of the first iPhone.
Facebook went public in May 2012 and reached 1 billion active users in the same year. In 2013, Facebook became a Fortune 500 company.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile page in 2009. Version Museum
2015-2019: A new shade of blue
In 2015, Facebook updated its logo with a slightly different font and a lighter shade of blue. On the business side, the company came under fire in 2016 for allowing the spread of fake news on its site during the 2016 presidential election. The controversy led Facebook to introduce a series of security features, such as giving users the option to flag misleading posts or report harmful language.
Facebook profile page in 2015. Version Museum
2019-2021: The new corporate logo
By 2019, Facebook was running multiple social platforms and products, including Instagram, WhatsApp and the Oculus headset. To distinguish the Facebook site and the company running it, Facebook introduced a color-changing, all-cap logo that would represent the corporate, while the Facebook site kept its original branding.
Leo Messi’s Facebook profile page in 2019. Version Museum
2021 to 2023: Meta, as in “metaverse”
In October 2021, Zuckerberg renamed his company Meta Platforms—in his pursuit of building a metaverse, a virtual world in which people interact with one another using avatars. The Meta logo features a blue infinity symbol and a plain, black font.
“From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first,” Zuckerberg said in a letter announcing the name change in 2021. “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together…But all of our products, including our apps, now share a new vision: to help bring the metaverse to life.”
Big Tech companies closed 2023 with a blowout quarter. Getty Images/Observer
This week, five of the stock market’s “Magnificent Seven”—Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Meta (META)—reported financial results for the last quarter of 2023. Big Tech companies closed a year full of bold headlines: Alphabet’s YouTube reached 100 million subscribers; Microsoft launched a suite of A.I. products and finalized its acquisition of gaming behemoth Activision Blizzard; Apple debuted the iPhone 15 and released its Vision Pro VR headset (It’s available in stores today (Feb. 2)); Meta began paying its first ever cash dividend; and Amazon further expanded its e-commerce offerings and upped its game in video streaming.
Here is a recap of Big Tech’s overall blowout Q4 and what their CEOs said on earnings calls.
Alphabet
Quarterly revenue: $86.3 billion, up 13 percent from a year ago
Net income: $20.69 billion, or $1.64 per share
Advertising revenue: $65.52 billion
Google (GOOGL)’s ad revenue for the December quarter included $48 billion from Google Search and approximately $9.2 billion from YouTube. On a call with analysts on Jan. 30, CEO Sundar Pichai touted the rapid growth of YouTube, calling it a “key driver of our subscription revenue.”
The tech giant also reported the first time that YouTube had more than 100 million paid subscribers at the end of 2023. The video platform plowed in as much revenue as Google’s cloud business, which also saw strong growth in the fourth quarter.
Microsoft
Quarterly revenue: $62 billion, up 18 percent from a year ago
Net income: $21.9 billion, or $2.93 per share
Cloud revenue: $33 billion, up 24 percent from a year ago
Microsoft drew headlines throughout 2023 for its many initiatives, from deepened collaboration with OpenAI to legal progress in its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
On the earnings call on Jan. 30, CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the company’s transition from experimenting with A.I. to applying the technology at scale, with A.I. capabilities being integrated across Microsoft’s product offerings, from Microsoft Copilot to Azure AI to GitHub Copilot, the popular A.I. developer tool.
“We’re using this A.I. inflection point to redefine our role in business applications,” Nadella told analysts.
Apple
Quarterly revenue: $119.6 billion, up 2 percent from a year ago
Net income: $33.9 billion, or $2.18 per share
iPhone revenue: $69.7 billion, up 6 percent from a year ago
iPhones continued to dominate Apple’s revenue makeup, accounting for roughly 60 percent of its Q4 sales. The Mac segment generated $7.8 billion in revenue, returning to growth, while iPad revenue fell 25 percent from the previous year to $7 billion. The sharp decline was in part due to Apple’s lack of new iPad models in 2023.
Apple’s revenue in the “Wearables, Home, and Accessories” business fell 11 percent year-over-year to $12 billion. This decline was offset by a 11 percent growth in the “Services” unit, which includes Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple One bundles. The unit reported $23.1 billion in revenue in the December quarter, a record high.
Apple reported earnings a day before its Vision Pro headset arrived in stores in the U.S. On yesterday’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook called the Vision Pro “the most advanced personal electronics device ever. We can’t wait for people to experience the magic for themselves.”
Amazon
Quarterly revenue: $169.9 billion, up 14 percent from a year ago
Net income: $10.6 billion, or $1.00 per share
e-Commerce revenue: $70.54 billion, up 8 percent from a year ago
AWS revenue: $24.2 billion, up 13 percent from a year ago
Amazon saw record user acitivites during last quarter’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events, where customers purchased over 1 billion items on Amazon globally. In the U.S., over 500 million items were ordered from independent sellers, attracting millions of new Prime memberships. Throughout 2023, Amazon provided its fastest-ever global delivery to Prime members, delivering over 7 billion units the same or the next day.
“This Q4 was a record-breaking Holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023,” CEO Andy Jassy said on the earnings call yesterday.
Amazon plans to increase capital expenditures in 2024, particularly in expanding its A.I. efforts. The company just launched Rufus, an A.I.-powered shopping assistant. In addition, its recent move to display ads on Prime Video aims to leverage Amazon’s massive audience for advertising expansion. In the fourth quarter, Amazon generated $14.7 billion in ad revenue, up 26.7 percent from a year ago.
Meta
Quarterly revenue: $40.1 billion, up 25 percent from a year ago
Net income: $14 billion, or $5.33 per share (up 300 percent from a year ago)
Meta tripled profits in the December quarter, in part thanks to aggressive cost-cutting in the previous months. The tech giant also announced its inaugural cash dividend of $0.50 per share during the earnings call yesterday.
Meta’s family of social media apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, had 3.19 billion daily active users at the end of 2023. Threads, Meta’s answer to Elon Musk’s X, had 130 million monthly active users at the end of last year. CFO Susan Li said on the earnings call Meta would no longer report Facebook-specific numbers, suggesting a shift away from its legacy social media platforms. Altogether, revenue from the total family of apps came at $39 billion during the quarter, a 24 percent increase from the previous year.
Looking into 2024, CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised significant investments in A.I. for foundational research and product development, expecting capital expenditures to be between $30 billion and $37 billion this year. “Moving forward, a major goal will be building the most popular and most advanced A.I. products and services,” Zuckerberg said on yesterday’s earnings call.
Investors wondering where the S&P 500 is headed, at least for the next month or so, will want to pay attention to three key days this week.
Between Tuesday and Thursday, five Big Tech companies with a combined market value of more than $10 trillion will report earnings: Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve will issue its decision on interest rates, followed by Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference where he’s expected to discuss the outlook ahead.
The stakes couldn’t be much higher, with the S&P 500 Index pushing deeper into record territory on bets that central bankers are poised to began easing monetary policies and tech behemoths like Microsoft getting more valuable by the day.
“Tech disproportionately moved the market last year and big tech continues to have the biggest earnings power, so the results will be crucial for the markets,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance.
After a shaky start to the year, the S&P 500 is rising again and on pace for a third monthly advance that’s added more than 18% since late October, when the index hit a near-term low before Fed officials started signaling that rate hikes were over.
The rally is again being led by megacaps including Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Nvidia and Meta Platforms, which were responsible for a majority of the index’s 24% gain last year as investors became captivated by the possibilities of artificial intelligence services. The so-called Magnificent Seven, which also includes Tesla Inc., just hit a record 29% of the S&P 500 despite a slump in shares of the electric-vehicle maker that’s erased more than $200 billion in market value just this month.
AI Booming
Microsoft and Alphabet will kick off earnings on Tuesday after markets close. The two companies are among the best positioned to benefit from the AI boom after investing heavily in the field for years. Microsoft has been adding the features to its suite of software products, and investors are betting that AI will soon start boosting profit and sales growth.
On Wednesday, the focus shifts to the end of the Fed’s January meeting, where it’s expected to hold interest rates steady for a fourth-consecutive meeting. Traders will be primarily focused on what Powell and other policymakers have to say about the timing of easing. Recent data showing inflation continuing to recede and resilient US economic growth suggest central bankers won’t be in a hurry to cut interest rates.
Apple is the biggest draw on Thursday, when Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta Platforms also report in the afternoon. The iPhone maker has been dogged by concerns about revenue growth and is expected to report its first sales expansion in four quarters.
With most of the megacaps in record territory, there are concerns that investors are over exposed to just a handful of stocks, which could open the door for some pain if quarterly results underwhelm.
The Magnificent Seven stocks were again named the most crowded trade in a Bank of America survey of fund managers, according to a research note published by the bank last week.
No Protection
Still, traders aren’t rushing to scoop up hedges against declines, according to options market data.
A gauge of projected price swings in Apple in the next three months is hovering near the lowest level in six years. Traders expect a 3.3% move in the stock in either direction a day after the results, which would be among the narrowest post-earnings swings in two years.
Projected three-month volatility in Meta Platforms, which more than quadrupled since its November 2022 nadir, is at the lowest in two years. The cost of protection against a 10% decline in Microsoft in the next month is hovering near the lowest level since August relative to the cost of options that profit from a similar rally.
Tesla demonstrated the risks last week after missing fourth-quarter earnings estimates and warning that its sales growth would be “notably lower” in 2024. The stock tumbled 12% the following day, its biggest drop in a year.
Microsoft recently overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company with a market value above $3 trillion. The rally has made the stock even more expensive, at 33 times profits projected over the next 12 months compared with an average of 24 times over the past decade.
To Jason Benowitz, senior portfolio manager at CI Roosevelt, there’s no doubt the megacap trade is crowded. But that doesn’t mean the stocks can’t continue to rally with economic growth slowing and easing financial conditions.
“There’s a good reason for the crowded trade,” he said. “The environment is good for them.”
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In his latest essay, Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX, has laid out his investment playbook in the current global economic landscape, focusing on the potential of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, big tech, and traditional financial markets.
Dumb Trades
Hayes begins with a blunt critique of traditional investment strategies, particularly the purchase of long-term bonds in the current economic climate. He explicitly states, “The dumbest thing one can do is purchase long-term bonds with a buy-and-hold mentality.”
Hayes explains this viewpoint by highlighting the risks associated with these bonds, especially when liquidity conditions shift, saying, “You will experience a market-to-market gain today, but…the market will start to discount the impact of further Reverse Repo [RRP] balance decreases and long-end bond yields will creep higher, which means prices fall.”
Moving on to smarter investment approaches, Hayes acknowledges leveraging short-term debt, as exemplified by Stan Druckenmiller. Hayes notes that Stan Druckenmiller went mega-long 2-year treasuries. He remarked, “Great trade, brah! Not everyone has the stomach for the best expressions of this trade (hint: it’s crypto). Therefore, if all you can trade are manipulated TradFi assets like government bonds and stocks, then this isn’t a bad option.”
Hayes also argues that a trade “that’s a bit better than the medium-smart trade (but still not the smartest) is to go long on big tech.” Hayes focuses on AI-related companies. He identifies AI as a pivotal future technology, arguing, “Everyone knows that everyone knows that AI is the future. This means anything AI-related will pump, because everyone is buying it too. Tech stocks are long-duration assets and will benefit from cash being trash once more.”
Smart Trades: Bitcoin And Crypto
However, the smartest trade is to go long crypto, which has significantly outperformed other assets relative to the increase in central bank balance sheets. Hayes presented the chart below, comparing the performance of Bitcoin, Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, and Gold against the Fed’s balance sheet since March 2020, highlighting Bitcoin’s exceptional growth.
Bitcoin (white), Nasdaq 100 (red), S&P 500 (green), and Gold (yellow) divided by the Fed’s balance sheet | Source: Arthur Hayes / Medium
Hayes identifies Bitcoin as the primary investment target, describing it as “money and only money.” Following Bitcoin, he points to Ether as the commodity powering the Ethereum network. “Ether is the commodity that powers the Ethereum network, which is the best internet computer.”
He categorizes other cryptocurrencies, stating, “Bitcoin and Ether are crypto’s reserve assets. Everything else is a shitcoin.” He further elaborates on alternative layer-one blockchains like Solana, calling them “all overhyped, me-too, pieces of shit that won’t overtake Ethereum in terms of active developers, dApp activity, or Total Value Locked.”
Hayes also discusses decentralized applications (dApps) and their tokens. He finds this sector exciting for its high-return potential, though he acknowledges the risks: “Finally, all manner of dApps and their respective tokens will pump. This is the most fun, because down here is where you get the 10,000x returns. Of course, you’re also more likely to get rugged, but where there is no risk there is no return. I love shitcoins, so don’t ever call me a maxi!”
Geo-Economic Factors
Regarding his investment strategy in the context of current economic fluctuations, Hayes explains his focus on the net of RRP minus Treasury General Account (TGA) to gauge market liquidity, which informs his decisions on T-bill sales and Bitcoin purchases. He emphasizes the importance of adaptability, stating, “I will stay nimble and flexible. The best-laid plans of mice and men have a tendency to falter.”
Hayes also delves into geopolitical considerations, specifically the potential impact of the Hamas v. Israel conflict on oil prices and monetary policy. He notes Bitcoin’s resilience in such scenarios: “Bitcoin has proven to outperform bonds during times of war. […] The long-term US Treasury bond ETF has fallen 12% vs. Bitcoin pumping 52% since the onset of the Ukraine / Russia war.”
While he concedes that Bitcoin could fall in an initial move when Iran is drawn into the Hamas v. Israel war, it would be a “buy the dip” situation according to Hayes.
In a candid conclusion, Hayes comments on the historical context of geopolitical conflicts, expressing skepticism about the prospects for global peace: “Of course, if those in charge of Pax Americana committed themselves to peace and global harmony… nah, I’m not even going to finish that thought. These mofos have been practicing war since 1776, with no signs of letting up.”
According to Hayes, however, all roads lead to Bitcoin: “[It] will reassert itself as a real-time scorecard on the health of the war-time fiat financial system.”
Big Tech companies are coming out of the woodwork to challenge the European Commission’s new enforcement regime for digital competition with TikTok and Meta Platforms filing legal appeals this week.
Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft are all considered “gatekeeper” companies under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Union’s new digital rulebook, for 22 core online services they run — everything from app stores and social networks to messaging services and online marketplaces.
Meta on Wednesday was the first to say it had filed a legal challenge to the EU’s revamped enforcement regime before the European Union’s General Court, disputing EU officials’ decision to bring its Marketplace and Messenger services in scope of the new digital competition rulebook.
TikTok’s owner ByteDance on Thursday argued its video-sharing platform was wrongly labeled as a social network under the new law. The firm also took issue with being targeted as a digital giant when it sees itself as a challenger to the other “gatekeeper” companies that have a vast ecosystem of digital services.
The six targeted firms had until November 16 to file their legal paperwork. Some already indicated that they aren’t happy with the new labels the Commission has given them, according to filings published online in recent weeks.
Already some companies are making changes to how they run their businesses in Europe. Facebook and Instagram will offer paid ad-free subscriptions in the EU. Google has been opening up data sharing as part of German and Italian antitrust cases.
Their other option is to convince European Union judges to overturn the Commission’s decisions.
But we don’t understand!
Companies designated as gatekeepers can ask the EU’s General Court to cancel individual decisions. That’s precisely what Meta and TikTok did in their filings Wednesday.
Alfonso Lamadrid, a partner at law firm Garrigues, said they could claim that they don’t understand why certain services were caught by the law and that EU officials failed to give “sufficient reasoning.”
They could also file appeals — either now or later — on the Commission’s probes to determine whether Apple’s iMessage, along with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, its Edge web browser and its advertising service, should be considered core platform services. There’s a February 6 deadline to wrap those up. Another probe into Apple’s iPadOS has until September 6 next year.
Lamadrid — who has worked with Google on antitrust challenges including the tech giant’s recent court appeal against an antitrust fine for its shopping service — said he doesn’t think Big Tech firms “will be taking the decision to appeal very lightly.”
Who might grumble?
Meta and TikTok aren’t the only gatekeepers unhappy with the Commission’s decisions so far.
Meta isn’t the only gatekeeper unhappy with the Commission’s decisions so far | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Apple previously argued with the Commission that its services shouldn’t be subject to the new rules, according to the Commission documents.
Apple tried unsuccessfully to convince officials that its App Store comes in five separate versions for different devices and that its Safari browser in three, which would reduce the number of active users for each service. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
ByteDance told the Commission earlier that its viral video app is “about content discovery, not about establishing or maintaining real-world connections,” according to an EU decision published last month.
Telecoms companies are also unhappy. They told the Commission it should designate Apple’s iMessage as a core platform service that needs to follow DMA curbs, according to a letter to Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton seen by POLITICO.
What are the others saying?
Microsoft is classified as a gatekeeper for its social network LinkedIn and Windows PC operating service. Microsoft spokesperson Robin Koch said in September that the tech giant “accepts our designation as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act and will continue to work with the European Commission” to meet its obligations.
Alphabet — which has eight core platform services targeted under the DMA, including Google Search and web browser Chrome — said in September it will “work closely with the European Commission and other stakeholders” and would “make changes that meet the new requirements while protecting the user experience.”
Alphabet — which has eight core platform services targeted under the DMA, including Google Search and web browser Chrome — said in September it will “work closely with the European Commission and other stakeholders” and would “make changes that meet the new requirements while protecting the user experience.” | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Amazon’s marketplace and advertising businesses were both labeled as core platform services under the DMA in September. The company said at the time it is “committed to delivering services that meet our customers’ requirements within Europe’s evolving regulatory landscape” and would “work constructively with the European Commission as we finalize our implementation plans.”
Amazon earlier this year did challenge another digital label in the EU, asking a court to cancel the Commission’s declaration that it was a Very Large Online Platform.
But with just four months to go now until the rules are enforceable, any challenge could just poke the bureaucratic bear.
“This is now an important moment in time for compliance,” Lamadrid said, “so it’s not ideal to have pending court proceedings while you’re trying to negotiate with the Commission on compliance… I don’t think it’s in the company’s best interest to antagonize the Commission.”
This article was updated on November 16 to include recent developments.
Meanwhile, S&P 500 (^GSPC) futures were down 0.3% in the wake of the benchmark’s lowest close since May. Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) futures traded flat.
Earnings are in the drivers seat for stocks, as investors punish megacaps whose third-quarter reports turned out more downbeat than hoped. Concerns are growing that valuations are too high in a world of surging Treasury yields, as the benchmark 10-year yield (^TNX) climbed back near 5% on Thursday.
While Meta’s (META) earnings beat on the top and bottom lines, its shares reversed initial gains after the Facebook parent warned geopolitical unrest could drag on its ad business. The flow of earnings resumes Thursday, with Amazon (AMZN), Intel (INTC), Ford (F) and Chipotle (CMG) the highlights on the docket.
“There’s real dispersion,” BlackRock’s Global CIO Rick Rieder said, noting Microsoft and Alphabet earnings. “We’re getting a series of conflicting signs around market. That’s why markets are so jumpy, so uncertain.”
In one positive development, Thursday’s third-quarter GDP reading came in hot with the US economy growing at its fastest pace in nearly two years.
The strong data comes despite the Federal Reserve’s higher for longer interest rate mantra, which has failed to constrain the American consumer. The Fed’s next interest rate decision is scheduled for Nov. 1
Other central banks are beginning to shift their monetary policy. On Thursday, the European Central Bank held interest rates steady for the first time in over a year following ten consecutive rate increases.
The ECB said it would hold its deposit rate at a record high 4%. The bank maintained its previous guidance of steady policy moving forward.
A
GDP: US economy grows 4.9% amid strong consumer spending
The US economy grew at its fastest pace in nearly two years during the past three months as consumers stepped up their spending despite a high interest rate environment.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis’s advance estimate of third quarter US gross domestic product (GDP) showed the economy grew at an annualized pace of 4.9% during the period, faster than consensus forecasts. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated the US economy grew at an annualized pace of 4.5% during the period.
The reading came in higher than second quarter GDP, which was revised down to 2.1%.
The GDP release highlights the resilience of the US consumer despite ongoing concerns of a slowdown. But many economists see this as the high water mark for economic growth before the credit tightening induced by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes and the recent rise in bond yields grabs hold of business development and consumer spending.
Wall Street stocks were on track Thursday to add to the previous day’s sharp losses, as investors looked ahead to fresh earnings releases.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) were down 0.41%, or 136 points, while S&P 500 (^GSPC) futures shed 0.67%. Contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (^NDX) were 0.95% lower.
LONDON — Back in the spring, Britain was sounding pretty relaxed about the rise of AI. Then something changed.
The country’s artificial intelligence white paper — unveiled in March — dealt with the “existential risks” of the fledgling tech in just four words: high impact, low probability.
Less than six months later, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems newly troubled by runaway AI. He has announced an international AI Safety Summit, referred to “existential risk” in speeches, and set up an AI safety taskforce with big global aspirations.
Helping to drive this shift in focus is a chorus of AI Cassandras associated with a controversial ideology popular in Silicon Valley.
Known as “Effective Altruism,” the movement was conceived in the ancient colleges of Oxford University, bankrolled by the Silicon Valley elite, and is increasingly influential on the U.K.’s positioning on AI.
Not everyone’s convinced it’s the right approach, however, and there’s mounting concern Britain runs the risk of regulatory capture.
The race to ‘God-like AI’
Effective altruists claim that super-intelligent AI could one day destroy humanity, and advocate policy that’s focused on the distant future rather than the here-and-now. Despite the potential risks, EAs broadly believe super-intelligent AI should be pursued at all costs.
“The view is that the outcome of artificial super-intelligence will be binary,” says Émile P. Torres, philosopher and former EA, turned critic of the movement. “That if it’s not utopia, it’s annihilation.”
In the U.K., key government advisers sympathetic to the movement’s concerns, combined with Sunak’s close contact with leaders of the AI labs – which have longstanding ties to the movement – have helped push “existential risk” right up the U.K.’s policy agenda.
When ChatGPT-mania reached its zenith in April, tech investor Ian Hogarth penned a viral Financial Times article warning that the race to “God-like AI” “could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race” – urging policymakers and AI developers to pump the brakes.
It echoed the influential “AI pause” letter calling for a moratorium on “giant AI experiments,” and, in combination with a later letter saying AI posed an extinction risk, helped fuel a frenzied media cycle that prompted Sunak to issue a statement claiming he was “looking very carefully” at this class of risks.
Known as “Effective Altruism,” the movement was conceived in the ancient colleges of Oxford University, bankrolled by the Silicon Valley elite, and is increasingly influential on the U.K.’s positioning on AI | Carl Court/Getty Images
“These kinds of arguments around existential risk or the idea that AI would develop super-intelligence, that was very much on the fringes of credible discussion,” says Mhairi Aitken, an AI ethics researcher at the Alan Turing Institute. “That’s really dramatically shifted in the last six months.”
The EA community credited Hogarth’s FT article with telegraphing these ideas to a mainstream audience, and hailed his appointment as chair of the U.K.’s Foundation Model Taskforce as a significant moment.
Under Hogarth, who has previously invested in AI labs Anthropic, Faculty, Helsing, and AI safety firm Conjecture, the taskforce announced a new set of partners last week – a number of whom have ties to EA.
Three of the four partner organizations on the lineup are bankrolled by EA donors. The Centre for AI Safety is the organization behind the “AI extinction risk” letter (the “AI pause” letter was penned by another EA-linked organization, the Future of Life Institute). Its primary funding – to the tune of $5.2 million – comes from major EA donor organization, Open Philanthropy.
Another partner is Arc Evals, which “works on assessing whether cutting-edge AI systems could pose catastrophic risks to civilization.”
It’s a project of the Alignment Research Centre, an organization that has received $1.5 million from Open Philanthropy, $1.25 million from high-profile EA Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Foundation (which it promised to return after the implosion of his crypto empire), and $3.25 million from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, set up by Skype founder and prominent EA, Jaan Tallinn. Arc Evals is advised by Open Philanthropy CEO, Harold Karnofsky.
Finally, the Community Intelligence Project, a body working on new governance models for transformative technology, began life with an FTX regrant, and a co-founder appealed to the EA community for funding and expertise this year.
Joining the taskforce as one of two researchers is Cambridge professor David Krueger, who has received a $1 million grant from Open Philanthropy to further his work to “reduce the risk of human extinction resulting from out-of-control AI systems”. He describes himself as “EA-adjacent.” One of the PhD students Kruger advises, Nitarshan Rajkumar, has been working with the British government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as an AI policy adviser since April.
A range of national security figures and renowned computer scientist, Yoshua Bengio, are also joining the taskforce as advisers.
Combined with its rebranding as a “Frontier AI Taskforce” which projects its gaze into the future of AI development, the announcements confirmed the ascendancy of existential risk on the U.K.’s AI agenda.
‘X-risk’
Hogarth told the FT that biosecurity risks – like AI systems designing novel viruses – and AI-powered cyber-attacks weigh heavily on his mind.The taskforce is intended to address these threats, and to help build safe and reliable “frontier” AI models.
When ChatGPT-mania reached its zenith in April, tech investor Ian Hogarth penned a viral Financial Times article warning that the race to “God-like AI” “could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race” | John Phillips/Getty Images
“The focus of the Frontier AI Taskforce and the U.K.’s broader AI strategy extends to not only managing risk, but ensuring the technology’s benefits can be harnessed and its opportunities realized across society,” said a government spokesperson, who disputed the influence of EA on its AI policy.
But some researchers worry that the more prosaic threats posed by today’s AI models, like bias, data privacy, and copyright issues, have been downgraded. It’s “a really dangerous distraction from the discussions we need to be having around regulation of AI,” says Aitken. “It takes a lot of the focus away from the very real and ethical risks and harms that AI presents today.”
The EA movement’s links to Silicon Valley also prompt some to question its objectivity. The three most prominent AI labs, OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic, all boast EA connections – with traces of the movement variously imprinted on their ethos, ideology and wallets.
Tech mogul Elon Musk claims to be a fan of the closely related “longtermist” ideology, calling it a “close match” to his own. Musk recently hired Dan Hendrycks, director of Center for AI Safety, as an adviser to his new start-up, xAI, which is also doing its part to prevent the AI apocalypse.
To counter the threat, the EA movement is throwing its financial heft behind the field of AI safety. Head of Open Philanthropy, Harold Karnofsky,wrote a February blog post announcing a leave of absence to devote himself to the field, while an EA career advice center, 80,000 hours, recommends “AI safety technical research” and “shaping future governance of AI” as the two top careers for EAs.
Tech mogul Elon Musk claims to be a fan of the closely related “longtermist” ideology, calling it a “close match” to his own | Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
Trading in an insular jargon of “X-risk” (existential risks) and “p(doom)” (the probability of our impending annihilation), the AI-focused branch of effective altruism is fixated on issues like “alignment” – how closely AI models are attuned to humanity’s value systems – amid doom-laden warnings about “proliferation” – the unchecked propagation of dangerous AI.
Despite its popularity among a cohort of technologists,critics say the movement’s thinking lacks evidence and is alarmist. A vocal critic, former Googler Timnit Gebru, has denounced this “dangerous brand of AI safety,” noting that she’d seen the movement gain “alarming levels of influence” in Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, the “strong intermingling” of EAs and companies building AI “has led…this branch of the community to be very subservient to the AI companies,” says Andrea Miotti, head of strategy and governance at AI safety firm Conjecture. He calls this a “real regulatory capture story.”
The pitch to industry
Citing the Center for AI Safety’s extinction risk letter, Hogarth called on AI specialists and safety researchers to join the taskforce’s efforts in June, noting that at “a pivotal moment, Rishi Sunak has stepped up and is playing a global leadership role.”
On stage at the Tony Blair Institute conference in July, Hogarth – perspiring in the midsummer heat but speaking with composed conviction – struck an optimistic note. “We want to build stuff that allows for the U.K. to really have the state capacity to, like, engineer the future here,” he said.
Although the taskforce was initially intended to build up sovereign AI capability, Hogarth’s arrival saw a new emphasis on AI safety. The U.K. government’s £100 million commitment is “the largest amount ever committed to this field by a nation state,” he tweeted.
Despite its popularity among a cohort of technologists,critics say the movement’s thinking lacks evidence and is alarmist | Hollie Adams/Getty Images
The taskforce recruitment ad was shared on the Effective Altruism forum, and Hogarth’s appointment was announced in Effective Altruism UK’s July newsletter.
Hogarth is not the only one in government who appears to be sympathetic to the EA movement’s arguments. Matt Clifford, chair of government R&D body, ARIA, and adviser to the AI taskforce as well as AI sherpa for the safety summit, has urged EAs to jump aboard the government’s latest AI safety push.
“I would encourage any of you who care about AI safety to explore opportunities to join or be seconded into government, because there is just a huge gap of knowledge and context on both sides,” he said at the Effective Altruism Global conference in London in June.
“Most people engaged in policy are not familiar … with arguments that would be familiar to most people in this room about risk and safety,” he added, but cautioned that hyping apocalyptic risks was not typically an effective strategy when it came to dealing with policymakers.
Clifford said that ARIA would soon announce directors who will be in charge of grant-giving across different areas. “When you see them, you will see there is actually a pretty good overlap with some prominent EA cause areas,” he told the crowd.
A British government spokesperson said Clifford is “not part of the core Effective Altruism movement.”
Civil service ties
Influential civil servants also have EA ties. Supporting the work of the AI taskforce is Chiara Gerosa, who in addition to her government work is facilitating an introductory AI safety course “for a cohort of policy professionals” for BlueDot Impact, an organization funded by Effective Ventures, a philanthropic fund that supports EA causes.
The course “will get you up to speed on extreme risks from AI and governance approaches to mitigating these risks,” according to the website, which states alumni have gone on to work for the likes of OpenAI, GovAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.
People close to the EA movement say that its disciples see the U.K.’s AI safety push as encouragement to get involved and help nudge policy along an EA trajectory.
EAs are “scrambling to be part of Rishi Sunak’s announced Foundation Model Taskforce and safety conference,” according to an AI safety researcher who asked not to be named as they didn’t want to risk jeopardizing EA connections.
EAs are “scrambling to be part of Rishi Sunak’s announced Foundation Model Taskforce and safety conference,” according to an AI safety researcher | Pool photo by Justin Tallis via AFP/Getty Images
“One said that while Rishi is not the ‘optimal’ candidate, at least he knows X-risk,” they said. “And that ‘we’ need political buy-in and policy.”
“The foundation model taskforce is really centring the voices of the private sector, of industry … and that in many cases overlaps with membership of the Effective Altruism movement,” says Aitken. “That to me, is very worrying … it should really be centring the voices of impacted communities, it should be centring the voices of civil society.”
Jack Stilgoe, policy co-lead of Responsible AI, a body funded by the U.K.’s R&D funding agency, is concerned about “the diversity of the taskforce.” “If the agenda of the taskforce somehow gets captured by a narrow range of interests, then that would be really, really bad,” he says, adding that the concept of alignment “offers a false solution to an imaginary problem.”
A spokesperson for Open Philanthropy, Michael Levine, disputed that the EA movement carried any water for AI firms. “Since before the current crop of AI labs existed, people inspired by effective altruism were calling out the threats of AI and the need for research and policies to reduce these risks; many of our grantees are now supporting strong regulation of AI over objections from industry players.”
From Oxford to Whitehall, via Silicon Valley
Birthed at Oxford University by rationalist utilitarian philosopher William MacAskill, EA began life as a technocratic preoccupation with how charitable donations could be optimized to wring out maximal benefit for causes like global poverty and animal welfare.
Over time, it fused with transhumanist and techno-utopian ideals popular in Silicon Valley, and a mutated version called “long-termism” that is fixated on ultra-long-term timeframes now dominates. MacAskill’s most recent book What We Owe the Future conceptualizes a million-year timeframe for humanity and advocates the colonization of space.
EA began life as a technocratic preoccupation with how charitable donations could be optimized to wring out maximal benefit for causes like global poverty and animal welfare. Over time, it fused with transhumanist and techno-utopian ideals popular in Silicon Valley | Mason Trinca/Getty Images
Oxford University remains an ideological hub for the movement, and has spawned a thriving network of think tanks and research institutes that lobby the government on long-term or existential risks, including the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.
Other EA-linked organizations include Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which was co-founded by Tallinn and receives funding from his Survival and Flourishing Fund – which is also the primary funder of the Centre for Long Term Resilience, set up by former civil servants in 2020.
The think tanks tend to overlap with leading AI labs, both in terms of membership and policy positions. For example, the founder and former director of GovAI, Allan Dafoe, who remains chair of the advisory board, is also head of long-term AI strategy and governance at DeepMind.
“We are conscious that dual roles of this form warrant careful attention to conflicts of interest,” reads the GovAI website.
GovAI, OpenAI and Anthropic declined to offer comment for this piece. A Google DeepMind spokesperson said: “We are focused on advancing safe and responsible AI.”
The movement has been accruing political capital in the U.K. for some time, says Luke Kemp, a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk who doesn’t identify as EA. “There’s definitely been a push to place people directly out of existential risk bodies into policymaking positions,” he says.
The movement has been accruing political capital in the U.K. for some time, says Luke Kemp, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk who doesn’t identify as EA | Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau via AFP/Getty Images
CLTR’s head of AI policy, Jess Whittlestone, is in the process of being seconded to DSIT on a one day a week basis to assist on AI policy leading up to the AI Safety Summit, according to a CLTR August update seen by POLITICO. In the interim, she is informally advising several policy teams across DSIT.
A former specialist adviser to the Cabinet Office meanwhile, Markus Anderljung, is now head of policy at GovAI.
Kemp says he has expressed reservations about existential risk organizations attempting to get staff members seconded to government. “We can’t be trusted as objective and fair regulators or scholars, if we have such deep connections to the bodies we’re trying to regulate,” he says.
“I share the concern about AI companies dominating regulatory discussions, and have been advocating for greater independent expert involvement in the summit to reduce risks of regulatory capture,” said CLTR’s Head of AI Policy, Dr Jess Whittlestone. “It is crucial for U.K. AI policy to be informed by diverse perspectives.”
Instead of the risks of existing foundation models like GPT-4, EA-linked groups and AI companies tend to talk up the “emergent” risks of frontier models — a forward-looking stance that nudges the regulatory horizon into the future.
This framing “is a way of suggesting that that’s why you need to have Big Tech in the room – because they are the ones developing these frontier models,” suggests Aitken.
At the frontier
Earlier in July, CLTR and GovAI collaborated on a paper about how to regulate so-called frontier models, alongside members of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft and academics. The paper explored the controversial idea of licensing the most powerful AI models, a proposal that’s been criticized for its potential to cement the dominance of leading AI firms.
Earlier in July, CLTR and GovAI collaborated on a paper about how to regulate so-called frontier models, alongside members of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft and academics | Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images
CLTR presented the paper to No. 10 with the prime minister’s special advisers on AI and the director and deputy director of DSIT in attendance, according to the CLTR memo.
Such ideas appear to be resonating. In addition to announcing the “Frontier AI Taskforce”, the government said in September that the AI Summit would focus entirely on the regulation of “frontier AI.”
The British government disputes the idea that its AI policy is narrowly focused. “We have engaged extensively with stakeholders in creating our AI regulation white paper, and have received a broad and diverse range of views as part of the recently closed consultation process which we will respond to in due course,” said a spokesperson.
Spokespeople for CLTR and CSER said that both groups focus on risks across the spectrum, from near-term to long-term, while a CLTR spokesperson stressed that it’s an independent and non-partisan think tank.
Some say that it’s the external circumstances that have changed, rather than the effectiveness of the EA lobby. CSER professor Haydn Belfield, who identifies as an EA, says that existential risk think tanks have been petitioning the government for years – on issues like pandemic preparedness and nuclear risk in addition to AI.
Although the government appears more receptive to their overtures now, “I’m not sure we’ve gotten any better at it,” he says. “I just think the world’s gotten worse.”
Update: This story has been updated to clarify Luke Kemp’s job title.
U.S. Republican Senator Ted Cruz called for details on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) work with its European counterparts in a letter to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan on Tuesday.
The conservative Texas lawmaker criticized Khan and other FTC staff for meeting with European Commission officials to discuss incoming EU rules designed to rein in Big Tech companies, which are largely U.S.-based.
“It is one thing for the EU to target U.S. businesses,” the letter said, but “it is altogether unthinkable that an agency of the U.S. government would actively help the EU” on its digital platform regulation.
The FTC’s “collusion with foreign governments not only undermines U.S. sovereignty and Congress’s constitutional lawmaking authority,” Cruz’s letter said, “but also damages the competitiveness of U.S. firms and could negatively affect the savings of millions of Americans who hold stock in those companies” through pension plans.
The letter comes just as tech giants like Meta, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok are set to have to comply with the Commission’s Digital Services Act (DSA); they face steep fines if they don’t follow the DSA’s content-moderation rules, adopted in 2022.
The Commission also plans to label companies with core digital services — such as Apple’s App Store and Google Search — as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Market Act (DMA), which is designed to make it harder for them to abuse their market dominance. Seven companies — including the U.S.-headquartered Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft — notified their own platform services to the Commission as potential gatekeepers in July.
The senator said that the DMA and DSA “objectively discriminate against U.S. companies” through mandatory compliance costs. In the letter, Cruz asks for detailed information on the number of FTC officials who have been “sent to Europe since June 2021,” as well as their titles and monthly expenses.
Cruz also asked for details on the Commission’s office in San Francisco, which opened last September, and the FTC officials who have met with their EU counterparts there.
On a visit to the EU’s California office in June, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton rejected accusations that the bloc’s digital rulebooks target U.S.-based companies, calling the idea an “urban legend” and noting that non-U.S. companies must also comply with the rules.
It follows a similar letter from Republican U.S. Representative James Comer, who’s the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asking that communications between the FTC and Commission on the DMA be turned over to Congress.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Tech companies under 500 employees — and thus the most innovative and forward-looking — are leading the charge when it comes to flexible work. According to the recent Flex Index report, a whopping 88% of small tech companies offer employees full flexibility in where they work. At the same time, 65% of giant tech companies with over 25,000 employees have transitioned to a “structured hybrid” model with specific in-office work requirements. There is a growing divide between big tech and small tech when it comes to flexible work options, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of large tech firms.
While behemoths like Apple, Google, and Meta are walking back remote work in favor of two to three days per week in the office, smaller tech startups are embracing virtual-first policies that give employees full control over where they work. This poses a threat to the dominance of big tech companies, which have traditionally had the upper hand in attracting top talent due to their vast resources and brand power.
For many ambitious tech workers seeking autonomy and work-life balance, small startups with flexible policies may prove irresistible. The future is unclear, but for now, the flexibility divide between big tech and small tech is poised to reshape how Silicon Valley attracts and retains top talent. This trend will likely only accelerate as remote-first generations join the workforce, demanding flexibility as a top priority in their job search.
While legacy tech giants rose to prominence with an office-centric mentality, the new wave of innovation may depend on startups fully embracing virtual work. Remote employees tend to have higher job satisfaction and lower burnout rates, allowing startups to tap into a more diverse global talent pool. Yet scaling flexibility is easier said than done, and big tech’s structured return to office risks diminishing some of the benefits of remote work for innovation and inclusion.
Big tech’s shift to structured hybrid models with two to three assigned in-office days reflects a philosophy that in-person interaction fosters collaboration, apprenticeships and team cohesion. However, this stance fails to recognize the value of virtual communication and its role in boosting autonomy, diversity and work-life balance for many employees. By limiting employee choice in work location, big tech also risks losing top talent to startups with more flexible policies.
While facetime may benefit some teams and tasks, compelling employees to commute and collaborate in person risks reduced productivity and job satisfaction for many knowledge workers. As tools like video conferencing, virtual whiteboards, and team messaging grow more advanced, the need for physical offices to foster collaboration and innovation is diminishing. The office may have a role to play, but not at the cost of flexibility and choice.
Rather than require blanket return-to-office policies, forward-thinking companies should evaluate collaboration needs on a team-by-team basis and implement flex programs with employee input. They must recognize that a one-size-fits-all solution will not work, and that flexibility and cohesion can absolutely co-exist with the right investments in virtual collaboration infrastructure and management training.
The future of work depends on companies scaling flexibility and investing in the technology and culture to support virtual teams. While the flexibility divide currently favors small tech, any company able to overcome the challenges of managing remote work at scale may gain a competitive advantage.
For now, small tech startups embracing virtual-first flexibility have an opportunity to attract top talent and pioneer new models of innovation suited to a remote world. But big tech would be wrong to dismiss flexibility as a “startup phase” alone. With a supportive culture and the right collaboration solutions in place, companies of any size can scale flexibility and tap into benefits like reduced costs, access to global talent, and higher employee productivity and wellbeing.
The possibility is there for forward-thinking companies in any industry to make flexibility a competitive advantage — if they are willing to invest in the management and technology to do so. While the future remains uncertain, one outcome is clear: Choice and autonomy matter deeply to knowledge workers, and companies able to provide flexibility at scale will be best positioned to succeed in the post-pandemic world.
The future of flexible tech
The critical question is whether small tech startups can scale flexibility. Currently, 67% of tech companies with under 100 employees are fully remote, compared to 26% of tech companies with 250 to 500, and just 8% of tech companies with over 500 employees.
While flexibility may be easier to implement at a small startup, will these companies harden their stance on work locations as they mature? I’ve helped tech companies ranging from late-stage startups with 50 to 100 employees to behemoths with over 30,000 staff figure out their flexible work models, and I have to say that the larger they get, the more challenges they face with making remote work truly effective. That’s because the challenges of managing remote teams and collaborating across distances may increase with company size. Larger companies typically have more complex organizational structures, multiple offices and a wider range of roles with diverse collaboration needs. They may also face greater scrutiny and bureaucracy, making quick shifts to virtual work more difficult.
However, for companies able to surmount these challenges, the rewards of flexibility could be significant. With strong communication tools, management training and an outcomes-based mindset, flexibility may continue to enhance innovation and attract top talent even after startups scale. The companies able to achieve this stand to gain substantial cost savings, access to global talent and higher productivity and employee wellbeing.
Ambitious yet employee-centric tech startups would be wise to implement flexible programs thoughtfully and brace for challenges, but not assume that scaling means limiting choice. By proactively addressing common obstacles around collaboration and oversight, tech leaders can create flexible programs ready to scale. With investments in infrastructure, policy, and culture, the result could be a win-win for both startup and employee.
The companies that thrive will be those recognizing flexibility not as a temporary phenomenon but rather as a permanent shift in how and where knowledge work happens. They will implement remote collaboration and management solutions with scale in mind, provide guidelines and training for productive virtual work, and evaluate employee performance based on outcomes and impact rather than hours logged or roles. They will treat flexibility as vital for innovation, not as an employee perk alone.
The future of work is still being written. But if small tech companies can figure out how to scale flexibility, they may gain a key competitive advantage over big tech. The opportunity is there for forward-thinking startups to pioneer new models of remote collaboration as they grow – without compromising on autonomy, work-life balance or productivity. For now, the flexibility divide favors small tech – but the future could belong to those companies that find ways to push the boundaries of virtual work regardless of their size.
While legacy tech companies struggle with providing flexibility at scale, a new generation of startups has a chance to make remote work a competitive advantage if they invest in solutions and culture to overcome common challenges, like:
Communication silos: With poor communication infrastructure and policies in place, remote teams can become disconnected and isolated. Startups must implement collaboration tools, encourage informal interactions and provide guidance on best practices for productive virtual collaboration.
Management challenges: Managing remote employees requires a high degree of trust, as well as training for managers unused to overseeing virtual teams. Startups must evaluate management practices, provide resources for leading remote teams and hire managers able to motivate and engage employees from a distance.
Lack of cohesion: Some express concern that remote work reduces opportunities for relationship-building and mentoring. Startups can address this by organizing virtual social events, setting up mentorship programs, and leveraging technology that enables more personal connections between coworkers.
Security and compliance risks: With remote work, ensuring data protection, privacy and policy compliance may require additional effort. Startups need to apply best practices for remote cybersecurity, provide employee education around safe virtual work environments, and implement monitoring systems enabling visibility into how sensitive resources and data are accessed.
Related:
Conclusion
The future of innovation depends on pioneers — and in a post-pandemic world, the pioneers of virtual work may be tech startups that scale flexibility. With the right investments and culture in place, small tech companies have an opportunity to make flexible work a competitive advantage and tap benefits beyond cost savings alone.
U.S. stocks booked big gains on Thursday, a day after the Federal Reserve skipped a June rate hike, but indicated more increases could be on the table this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.26%
jumped about 430 points, or 1.3%, ending near 34,409, according to preliminary FactSet data, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +1.22%
gained 1.2% to score a sixth session in a row of wins and its longest stretch of straight gains since Nov. 8, 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +1.15%
closed up 1.2%. The rally for stocks comes in the wake of the S&P 500 emerging from its longest bear market in decades, with shares of big technology companies continuing to lead the index higher on Thursday. Its Communications Services segment rose 1.5% Thursday, while the Information Technology sector gained 1.3%, according to FactSet. Critics of the rally have pointed to exuberance around new advances in artificial intelligence helping lift a select set of seven stocks higher. One of those stocks, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +3.19%
rose about 3.5% to $349, per preliminary data, a record close on Thursday.
Activision has said it will “work aggressively” with Microsoft to overturn the U.K. competition regulator’s decision to block Microsoft’s proposed takeover of the game developer.
Microsoft and Activision were confident of approval after agreeing remedies to address concerns raised by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). But the CMA said on Wednesday that the proposed solution “failed to effectively address the concerns in the cloud gaming sector.”
It said: “The deal would reinforce Microsoft’s advantage in the market by giving it control over important gaming content such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft.”
A spokesperson for Activision said the CMA’s report “contradicts the ambitions of the U.K. to become an attractive country to build technology businesses… The report’s conclusions are a disservice to U.K. citizens, who face increasingly dire economic prospects. We will reassess our growth plans for the U.K.
“Global innovators large and small will take note that — despite all its rhetoric — the U.K. is clearly closed for business.”
Microsoft submitted proposals earlier this year to address some of these concerns but the CMA said they contained “a number of significant shortcomings” as they only applied to a defined set of Activision games.
Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting the investigation, said: “Microsoft already enjoys a powerful position and head start over other competitors in cloud gaming and this deal would strengthen that advantage giving it the ability to undermine new and innovative competitors.”
Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft said the company would appeal and remained “fully committed” to the deal.
“The CMA’s decision rejects a pragmatic path to address competition concerns and discourages technology innovation and investment in the United Kingdom.” He said the decision showed a “flawed understanding” of the market.
Microsoft agreed to buy Activision in a $69 billion deal in January 2022, prompting investigations in the U.K., EU and U.S.
LONDON — As the U.K. prepares to overhaul its competition regime, a fierce lobbying battle has broken out between the world’s largest tech companies and their challengers.
Ministers are gearing up to publish new competition legislation in late-April, giving regulators more power to stop a handful of companies dominating digital markets.
But concern over the U.S. tech giants’ influence in Westminster has prompted ministers close to the bill to warn that the new legislation could be watered down.
Two ministers have expressed concerns that Big Tech firms are seeking to weaken the process for appealing decisions made by the country’s beefed-up competition regulator, according to multiple people who were either present at those discussions or whose organizations were represented there. They requested anonymity to discuss private meetings.
One MP said a minister had also approached them to raise concerns, while at an industry roundtable, two ministers spoke of worry about Big Tech firms trying to influence the appeal mechanism.
An industry representative said: “There has been a sh*t load of lobbying from Big Tech, but I don’t know if they’ll succeed.”
Appealing to who?
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill will give new powers to a branch of the Competition and Markets Authority called the Digital Markets Unit (DMU). Under the plan, the DMU will be able fine a company 10 percent of their annual turnover for breaching a code of conduct.
The code, which has not yet been published, would be designed to ensure that a company with ‘strategic market status’ cannot “unfairly use its market power and strategic position to distort or undermine competition between users of the … firm’s services,” the government has said.
Jonathan Jones, senior consultant in public law at Linklaters and formerly the head of the U.K. government’s legal department, wrote that the plan would have “very significant consequences” for Big Tech firms and could force them to “significantly alter” their business models.
One of Big Tech’s concerns is that the bill will only allow companies to appeal decisions made by the DMU on whether or not the right process was followed, known as the judicial review standard, rather than the content or merit of the decision. That puts it in line with other regulators and should mean the process is faster, but it also makes it harder to appeal decisions.
Big Tech firms want to be able to appeal on the “merit”, arguing it is unfair that they can’t challenge whether a DMU decision was correct or not. They also argue it won’t necessarily be slower than the judicial review standard.
One of the biggest fears from medium-sized firms is that the biggest tech companies will use strategies to lengthen the appeals process or even get the entire bill delayed | iStock
Tech Minister Paul Scully, who has responsibility for the bill, told POLITICO: “We want to make sure that the legislation is flexible, proportionate and fair to both big and challenger companies. Any remediation needs to be in place quickly as digital markets move quickly.”
One representative of a mid-sized tech firm said: “This is the fundamental point of contention and it will influence whether the bill works for SMEs and challengers against Big Tech.
“The fear is that big companies with big lawyers understand how to eke things out (during the appeals process) so that they’ll keep their market advantage for years. We’ve heard ministers express these concerns too.”
Consumer group Which? is also urging the government to stay with its proposed appeal system. “For the DMU to work effectively, the government must stick to its guns and ensure that the decisions it reaches are not tied up in an elongated appeals process,” said director of policy, Rocio Concha.
‘Investigator and executioner’
But Jones argued that the bill will make the DMU too powerful.
“The DMU will have power to decide who it is going to regulate, set the rules that apply to them, and then enforce those rules,” he wrote. “This makes the DMU effectively legislator, investigator and executioner.”
On the appeal method, Jones argued that it is an “oversimplification” to think that the government’s proposed standard of appeal would be quicker than one based on merits.
Ben Greenstone, managing director of tech policy consultancy Taso Advisory, said: “I can understand the argument from both sides. The largest tech companies are incentivized to push back against this, but my guess is the government will keep the appeals process as it is, because it keeps it in line with the wider competition regime.”
However, he added the bill would work better if some sort of compromise can be found with the biggest tech companies.
The international playbook
One of the biggest fears from medium-sized firms is that the biggest tech companies will use strategies already tried and tested abroad to lengthen the appeals process or even get the entire bill delayed.
Rick VanMeter, executive director of the Coalition for App Fairness, which is based in the U.S. but has U.K. members, said: “In the U.S. we’ve learned that these mobile app gatekeepers’ will stop at nothing to preserve the status quo and squash their competition.
“To be successful, policymakers around the world must see through these gatekeepers’ efforts for what they are: self-serving attempts to retain their market power.”
Google and Microsoft declined to comment. Apple did not respond.
KYIV — As the distant howl of air raid sirens echoes around them, a dozen Ukrainian soldiers clamber out of camouflaged tents perched on a hill off a road just outside Kyiv, hidden from view by a thick clump of trees. The soldiers, pupils of a drone academy, gather around a white Starlink antenna, puffing at cigarettes and doomscrolling on their phones — taking a break between classes, much like students around the world do.
But this isn’t your average university.
The soldiers have come here to study air reconnaissance techniques and to learn how to use drones — most of them commercial ones — in a war zone. Their training, as well as the supply chains that facilitate the delivery of drones to Ukraine, are kept on the down low. The Ukrainians need to keep their methods secret not only from the Russian invaders, but also from the tech firms that manufacture the drones and provide the high-speed satellite internet they rely on, who have chafed at their machines being used for lethal purposes.
Drones are essential for the Ukrainians: The flying machines piloted from afar can spot the invaders approaching, reduce the need for soldiers to get behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, and allow for more precise strikes, keeping civilian casualties down. In places like Bakhmut, a key Donetsk battleground, the two sides engage in aerial skirmishes; flocks of drones buzz ominously overhead, spying, tracking, directing artillery.
So, to keep their flying machines in the air, the Ukrainians have adapted, adjusting their software, diversifying their supply chains, utilizing the more readily available commercial drones on the battlefield and learning to work around the limitations and bans foreign corporations have imposed or threatened to impose.
Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army. Dronarium, which before Russia’s invasion last year used to shoot glossy commercial drone footage and gonzo political protests, now provides five-day training sessions to soldiers in the Kyiv Oblast. In the past year, around 4,500 pilots, most of them now in the Ukrainian armed forces, have taken Dronarium’s course.
What’s on the curriculum
On the hill outside Kyiv, behind the thicket of trees, break time’s over and school’s back in session. After the air raid siren stops,some soldiers grab their flying machines and head to a nearby field; others return to their tents to study theory.
A key lesson: How to make civilian drones go the distance on the battlefield.
“In the five days we spend teaching them how to fly drones, one and a half days are spent on training for the flight itself,” a Dronarium instructor who declined to give his name over security concerns but uses the call sign “Prometheus” told POLITICO. “Everything else is movement tactics, camouflage, preparatory process, studying maps.”
Drone reconnaissance teams work in pairs, like snipers, Prometheus said. One soldier flies a drone using a keypad; their colleague looks at the map, comparing it with the video stream from the drone and calculating coordinates. The drone teams “work directly with artillery,” Prometheus continued. “We transfer the picture from the battlefield to the servers and to the General Staff. Thanks to us, they see what they are doing and it helps them hit the target.”
Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army | John Moore/Getty Images
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many of these drone school students were civilians. One, who used to be a blogger and videogame streamer but is now an intelligence pilot in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, goes by the call sign “Public.” When he’s on the front line, he must fly his commercial drones in any weather — it’s the only way to spot enemy tanks moving toward his unit’s position.
“Without them,” Public said, “it is almost impossible to notice the equipment, firing positions and personnel in advance. Without them, it becomes very difficult to coordinate during attack or defense. One drone can sometimes save dozens of lives in one flight.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher: “If you don’t fly, these tanks will kill your comrades. So, you fly. The drone freezes, falls and you pick up the next one. Because the lives of those targeted by a tank are more expensive than any drone.”
Army of drones
The war has made the Bayraktar military drone a household name, immortalized in song by the Ukrainians. Kyiv’s UAV pilots also use Shark, RQ-35 Heidrun, FLIRT Cetus and other military-grade machines.
“It is difficult to have an advantage over Russia in the number of manpower and weapons. Russia uses its soldiers as meat,” Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said earlier this month. But every Ukrainian life, he continued, “is important to us. Therefore, the only way is to create a technological advantage over the enemy.”
Until recently, the Ukrainian army didn’t officially recognize the position of drone operator. It was only in January that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi ordered the army to create 60 companies made up of UAV pilots, indicating also that Kyiv planned to scale up its own production of drones. Currently, Ukrainian firms make only 10 percent of the drones the country needs for the war, according to military volunteer and founder of the Air Intelligence Support Center Maria Berlinska.
In the meantime, many of Ukraine’s drone pilots prefer civilian drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI — Mavics and Matrices — which are small, relatively cheap at around €2,500 a pop, with decent zoom lenses and user-friendly operations.
Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor. “Larger drones with wings fly farther and can do reconnaissance far behind enemy lines. But at some point, you lose the connection with it and just have to wait until it comes back. Mavics have great zoom and can hang in the air for a long time, collecting data without much risk for the drone.”
But civilian machines, made for hobbyists not soldiers, last two, maybe three weeks in a war zone. And DJI last year said it would halt sales to both Kyiv and Moscow, making it difficult to replace the machines that are lost on the battlefield.
In response, Kyiv has loosened export controls for commercial drones, and is buying up as many as it can, often using funds donated by NGOs such as United24 “Army of Drones” initiative. Ukraine’s digital transformation ministry said that in the three months since the initiative launched, it has purchased 1,400 military and commercial drones and facilitated training for pilots, often via volunteers. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation said it has purchased more than 4,100 drones since Russia’s full-scale invasion began last year — most were DJI’s Mavic 3s, along with the company’s Martice 30s and Matrice 300s.
But should Ukraine be concerned about the fact many of its favorite drones are manufactured by a Chinese company, given Beijing’s “no limits” partnership with Moscow?
Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
DJI, the largest drone-maker in the world, has publicly claimed it can’t obtain user data and flight information unless the user submits it to the company. But its alleged ties to the Chinese state, as well as the fact the U.S. has blacklisted its technology (over claims it was used to surveil ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang), have raised eyebrows. DJI has denied both allegations.
Asked if DJI’s China links worried him, Prometheus seemed unperturbed.
“We understand who we are dealing with — we use their technology in our interests,” he said. “Indeed, potentially our footage can be stored somewhere on Chinese servers. However, they store terabytes of footage from all over the world every day, so I doubt anyone could trace ours.”
Dealing with Elon
Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced it had moved to restrict the Ukrainian military’s use of its Starlink satellite internet service because it was using it to control drones. The U.S. space company has been providing internet to Ukraine since last February — losing access would be a big problem.
“It is not that our army goes blind if Starlink is off,” said Prometheus, the drone instructor. “However, we do need to have high-speed internet to correct artillery fire in real-time. Without it, we will have to waste more shells in times of ongoing shell shortages.”
But while the SpaceX announcement sparked outcry from some of Kyiv’s backers, as yet, Ukraine’s operations haven’t been affected by the move, Digital Transformation Minister Fedorov told POLITICO.
Prometheus had a theory as to why: “I think Starlink will stay with us. It is impossible to switch it off only for drones. If Musk completely turns it off, he will also have to turn it off for hospitals that use the same internet to order equipment and even perform online consultations during surgeries at the war front. Will he switch them off too?”
And if Starlink does go down, the Ukrainians will manage, Prometheus said with a wry smile: “We have our tools to fix things.”
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Big layoffs have been happening in the tech industry, and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve been impacted.
You might even already have an entrepreneurial spirit. You probably already have an idea, you have a hybrid work balance, and you know how to get complex, technical ideas into concise and usable platforms.
As you plan your next steps, imagine what could be. Start small and build from there. You are not alone, many are starting over — right now. This does not mean not applying for other positions. However, given the state of big tech in early 2023, new tech job openings are becoming scarce. Similar to other economic downturns, this may be the best time to explore your entrepreneurial options.
Create a blueprint
What is the core of the idea (or ideas) that you have? While working in tech, there has like been a business idea or two that have crossed your mind. What problem does it solve, what would be involved to implement it, and how could it be done with potentially little to no investment backing or slow ramp-up?
Start by visualizing how the idea could be refined and improved and what will be next to help put your strategy together. Additionally, start researching if this idea already exists and if another business is already acting on it. If so, how will your service or offering stand out? While many startups will be in stealth mode, see what is already public and how that may impact your plans.
2023 will be a year of more new ideas and innovation than ever before, partly due to the increasing number of former tech employees doing precisely the same thing that you are. While the space may be crowded, you may be the only one with your particular idea or a willingness to put effort into the concept.
After such a massive change in your life, it is essential to take time for yourself and reflect on what you want and need moving forward. Consider what would bring you the most satisfaction in your next job — whether that’s money, meaning or something else entirely.
Understand what strategy is needed
Even if you have experience in the tech industry, you still need to have a strategy to pursue your idea. No, the strategy does not start with how to get venture capital or how to create a big exit.
Start with a minimum viable product. Before determining a scaling strategy, first determine a sales strategy. How many people would pay to use the service or product you are developing? What is a realistic customer acquisition cost?
Long-range planning (LRP) must begin with a detailed analysis of feasibility, structure and available resources, combined with realistic expectations based on current external conditions. The reality is that building a winning strategy will require more patience than in the past. Without access to capital investment to facilitate long-term projects into fruition, it necessitates a well-crafted roadmap making optimal use of the resources available.
You must understand how each move affects the next and plan for contingencies. Creating a successful company in times like these requires intense focus and foresight to ensure every essential element is intact. Fortunately, by implementing an effective LRP process, the organization can maximize potential success while still riding out turbulent financial waters.
Bringing in a trusted brand strategy expert to your team is not something to take lightly — it’s a critical step to ensure the success of your innovation. A strategic and well-thought-out approach to building, driving and scaling the brand can mean a ground-breaking triumph or complete disaster.
A non-disclosure agreement is an important additional factor that helps protect both parties, as any interference or breach could jeopardize the current undertaking and future collaborations. In short, it pays to bring in an esteemed brand strategist and ensure all relevant details about your innovation remain confidential until it is ready for launch.
After the initial strategy, evaluate. Viewing this venture as a side gig or growing incrementally is acceptable. The prevailing thinking in tech is that you should only work on the next unicorn or build something for the next big exit. But what if your idea can become cash-flow positive, growing at a pace you can handle as a solopreneur, and eventual revenue can pay for more extensive growth?
Secure the name and structure
Deciding how and when to begin your venture might be a looming question in your mind. However, there are practical steps you can take right now — even before settling on all the details — to get you closer to success.
The first step is choosing a name and establishing a suitable structure around it, ensuring other companies or organizations will not take it. You also need to consider what framework and processes are required as you start.
Moreover, one significant factor you should consider is a group of people who can come together to make this venture possible — from development teams to potential partners. If the project allows for it, look into hiring remote teams based on occasion instead of including full-time payroll that could bring up overhead fees sooner than expected.
Build and validate
Having a well-thought-out plan for an idea is one thing, but turning that idea into a reality is quite another. Before venturing too far down the path of investing and building out the product, it’s vital to ensure that the project will have some return. To this end, you need to validate the idea — find out whether or not people would be interested in your product or service. Most importantly, make sure that the messaging lines up with what potential investors will want to hear.
Doing all this before contacting potential investors is essential, otherwise, you might exhaust all avenues without gaining traction.
Thierry Breton is winning the war of ideas in Brussels.
The ex-CEO is a political whirlwind with a gigantic portfolio as internal market chief, the backing of French President Emmanuel Macron and lots of proposals. He’s been touring European Union capitals to win support for plans to shield Europe’s industry from crippling energy prices, American subsidies and “naive” EU free traders.
France’s decades-long push for more state intervention is finally findingsome echo in Berlin and the 13th floor of the Berlaymont building, occupied by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who largely owes her job to Macron.
Omnipresent and ebullient, Breton is playing a key role in marshaling industry and political support for sweeping but so far vague plans to boost clean tech, secure key raw materials and overhaul EU checks on government support that he blasts as too slow to help companies.
“Of course there is resistance; my job is precisely to manage and align everyone,” he told French TV this week of his January meetings with Spanish, Polish and Belgian leaders to flog a forthcoming industrial policy push that could be a turning point in how far European governments will finance companies.
Time is short. Von der Leyen wants to line up proposals for a February summit. European industry is complaining that it can’t swallow far higher energy prices and tighter regulation for much longer, with at least one announcing a European shutdown and an Asian expansion.
Breton said governments don’t need convincing on the need for rapid action. But he’s running up against one of Europe’s sacred cows — EU state aid rules run by Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager that curb government support with lengthy checks to make sure companies don’t get unfair help. She’s also under intense pressure to preserve a “level playing field” as smaller countries worry about German and French financial firepower.
The French internal market commissioner’s bullish style often sees him act as if he’s got a role in subsidies. In the fall, he sent a letter to EU countries asking them to send views on emergency state aid rules to the internal market department, which is under his supervision, two EU officials recalled.
In a meeting with European diplomats, a Commission representative had to correct it, the EU officials said, asking capitals to make sure the input goes instead to the competition department overseen by Vestager.
Europe First
While Breton doesn’t like to be called a protectionist, his latest mission has been to protect Europe from its transatlantic friend.
As early as September, one Commission official said, the Frenchman was mandated by Europe’s industry to speak out against U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides tax credits for U.S.-made electric cars and support to American battery supply chains.
U.S President Joe Biden gives remarks during an event celebrating the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on September 13, 2022 | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
His Paris-backed campaign charged ahead while EU officials and diplomats tiptoed around the subject. Some within the Commission headquarters found his bad cop routine helpful in keeping pressure on the U.S.
“He’s been constructive, though clearly disruptive,” said Tyson Barker, head of the technology and global affairs program at the German Council of Foreign Relations.
The Frenchmanhas even pitched himself as the bloc’s “sheriff” against Silicon Valleygiants, warning billionaire Elon Musk that an overhaul of the Twitter social network can only go so far since “in Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.”
“Big Tech companies only understand balances of power,” said Cédric O, a former French digital minister who worked with Breton during the French EU Council presidency. “When [Breton and Musk] see each other, it necessarily remains cordial, but Breton shows his teeth and rightly so. It’s his job.”
Breton can even surprise his own services, according to two EU officials. In May, the Commission’s department responsible for digital policy — DG CONNECT — was caught off guard when Breton announced in the press that he would unveil plans by year-end to make sure that technology giants forked out for telecoms networks.
In so doing, Breton — who was CEO of France Télécom in the early 2000s — resurrected a long-dormant and fractious policy debate that had been put to rest almost a decade ago, when erstwhile Digital Commissioner Neelie Kroes ordered Europe’s telecoms operators to “adapt or die” rather than seek money from content providers.
After Breton’s commitments, the Commission’s services were soon scrambling to develop some sort of a coherent policy program to deliver on the Frenchman’s comments. A consultation is scheduled for early this year.
Carte blanche
Breton is a rare creature in the halls of the Berlaymont, where policy is hatched slowly after extensive consultation. To a former CEO with a broad remit — his portfolio runs from the expanse of space to the tiniest of microchips — rapid reaction matters more than treading on toes or singing from the hymn sheet. This often sees him floating ideas and then pulling back.
Last year he alarmed environmentalists by raising the prospect of a U-turn on the EU’s polluting car ban. He wagged his finger at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for a solo trip to China. He called for nuclear energy to be considered green. He has pushed out grand projects — such as industrial alliances on batteries and cloud, or a cyber shield — that he doesn’t always follow up on.
He’s even pushed forward a multibillion-euro EU communication satellite program dubbed Iris², a favorite of French aerospace companies, that will see the bloc build a rival to Musk’s space-based Starlink broadband constellation.
“It’s clear that he’s been given more free rein than others,” said one EU official. “He has von der Leyen’s ear,” the official added, noting that Breton enjoys “privileged access” to the Commission president — who may be mindful that she’ll need French support for a second term.
According to an official, Breton “has von der Leyen’s ear” and enjoys “privileged access” to the Commission president | Valeria Mongeli/AFP via Getty Images
Indeed, Breton’s massive role was partly designed as a counterweight to a German president.
“There is a criticism of von der Leyen for being too German,” explained Sébastien Maillard, director of the Jacques Delors Institute think tank. “There may inevitably be a division of roles between them — [where Breton is] a counterbalance.”
He’s been called an “unguided missile,” but more often than not, the Frenchman has Paris’ backing when going off script. His October op-ed with Italian colleague Paolo Gentiloni, which called for greater European financial solidarity, was part of France’s agenda, according to one high-ranking Commission official.
“When he went out in the press with Gentiloni against Scholz’s €200 billion, he was clearly doing the job for Macron,” the official said.
His November call for a rethink on the 2035 car engine ban came just after a week after critical green legislation had been finalized by Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans and jarred with the EU’s own position at the COP 27 climate summit in Indonesia. But it aped the position of French auto industry captains, such as Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares and Renault’s Luca de Meo, who wanted Brussels to slam the brakes on the climate drive.
Breton had not coordinated his car comments with colleagues in advance, according to two Commission officials.
Less than 10 days later, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne echoed caution about the “extremely ambitious” engine ban and warned that pivoting to electric car manufacturing was daunting.
Going A-list
Breton acknowledged himself that he wasn’t Macron’s first choice for the critical EU post, telling POLITICO at a live event that he was a “plan B commissioner.”
Asked if he was targeting an A-list job for the new Commission mandate in 2024, he said he “may be able to consider a new plan B assignment — if it is a plan B.”
“He is thinking about the future,” said one EU official. “Look at his LinkedIn posts. He is thinking past the next European elections. He definitely wants to convince Macron to get an expanded portfolio.”
Grabbing the Commission’s top job may be tricky, relying on how EU leaders will line up, according to multiple EU and French officials.
There are other jobs, including overturning the unwritten law that no French or German candidate can hold the economically powerful competition portfolio. Another option could be becoming Europe’s official digital czar, combining the enforcement powers of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act into a supranational digital enforcement agency, one EU official said.
Breton has shrugged off speculation on his long-term plans.
“All my life, I have been informed of my next potential job 15 minutes before,” he said last month.
Jakob Hanke Vela, Stuart Lau, Barbara Moens, Camille Gijs and Mark Scott contributed reporting.
The two biggest antitrust bills in more than 50 years are dead after they were not included in year-end congressional spending legislation released Tuesday, angering anti-monopolists who believe Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) killed the best chance for this Congress to meaningfully limit corporate power.
While a pair of smaller provisions in the omnibus will help antitrust advocates take on the nation’s largest tech companies in the future, the death of the Open App Markets Act and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act — both of which had the necessary support to pass the Senate, advocates insist — amounts to a massive win for Big Tech’s well-funded lobbying and influence machine.
Antitrust advocates blame Schumer for promising Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) a vote on her American Innovation and Choice Online Act, postponing action for nearly a year, and then finally failing to deliver on his pledge by excluding it from the omnibus spending bill.
“Schumer has erased much of the goodwill he formed with the tech startup ecosystem during the net neutrality debates. He spent a full year running interference for the most powerful companies in the world and repeating the myth that this broadly bipartisan legislation ‘didn’t have the votes,’” Luther Lowe, the senior vice president for public policy at Yelp, told HuffPost.
“Thanks to him, Europe will lead the global rule-making for the internet indefinitely, and European consumers are enjoying better protections than U.S. consumers.”
The European Union adopted far-reaching antitrust legislation in March, against the wishes of Big Tech companies. The new law included provisions that died on the vine in the U.S. Senate, such as rules barring companies like Apple and Google from requiring smartphone owners to use their respective app stores for digital purchases.
David Segal, a co-founder of liberal advocacy organization Demand Progress, suggested that the demise of the antitrust bills could lead progressives to doubt future promises from Schumer, who worked throughout the past two years to keep the left satisfied on issues like student debt cancellation.
“Unfortunately, Schumer’s behavior made it clear that he was never serious about keeping this commitment,” Segal said. “Activists should be even warier of commitments he purports to make going forward.”
“They had bipartisan support and would’ve helped rein in an industry that in too many areas is out of control.”
– Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
At least one prominent antitrust advocate withheld criticism and praised the omnibus legislation’s smaller wins. One measure allows state attorneys general to keep antitrust cases in the state where they’re filed, which should prevent Big Tech from working to combine cases in a way that slow-walks the eventual decisions.
Another provision increases the filing fees that companies pay to antitrust agencies like the Federal Trade Commission when they merge, giving those regulators a funding boost.
“Big Tech, Big Ag and Big Pharma spent extraordinary sums in an unprecedented effort to keep Congress from delivering on antitrust reform and undermine the ability of state and federal enforcers to uphold the law — and they lost,” said Sarah Miller, the executive director of the antitrust-focused American Economic Liberties Project. She noted that the filing fee hike would be the first congressional action to strengthen antitrust enforcement since 1976.
Even that provision, however, is weaker than it could be. The increased filing fees won’t go into effect for another two years, giving corporations time to kill them and depriving antitrust advocates in President Joe Biden’s administration — including FTC Chair Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department — of resources as they battle Google and Apple.
“Including Merger Filing Fees is an important step forward for Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter’s ability to crack down on monopolies and fight for consumers – but the unnecessary two-year delay means we must hold onto the White House in 2024 to ensure this funding is used to enforce our antitrust laws,” said Emma Lydon, the managing director of the progressive group P Street.
Other antitrust proponents had more mixed reactions, expressing disappointment in Democratic leaders in Congress without dismissing the new funding for enforcement.
Segal argued that the new revenue would help Khan and Kanter continue to “push the bounds within the existing jurisprudence in order to ensure that antimonopoly policy works for everyday people and our broader economy.”
Lowe also acknowledged that the additional funding was a positive sign, noting that the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division will now get specific appropriations in congressional funding.
“I don’t see how as a Big Tech CEO you feel great about the broader trends across the globe in terms of greater enforcement of anticompetitive behavior,” he said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who proposed full-on breakups of major tech companies during her 2020 presidential run, avoided directly criticizing the majority leader but made clear that she thought the antitrust bills deserved stand-alone votes from the omnibus legislation.
“The ones that were omitted should’ve been included. We should’ve voted on them over the past several months,” Warren told HuffPost. “They had bipartisan support and would’ve helped rein in an industry that in too many areas is out of control.”
Warren was unsure about the effectiveness of the antitrust provisions that did survive. “We’re still reading the fine print,” she said. “The devil’s in the details.”
The pair of bipartisan bills that Schumer effectively killed would have provided Khan, Kanter and other antitrust enforcement officials with additional tools to curb the abuses of Big Tech.
Klobuchar’s American Innovation and Choice Online Act would have barred major platforms, such as Google and Amazon, from providing preferential treatment to their own products. The bill — which was backed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee — advanced out of committee on a 16-6 vote in January.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), left, and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pushed for passage of more meaningful antitrust legislation.
The Open App Markets Act, introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would have prohibited companies like Apple and Google from engaging in restrictive contracts with app developers that, among other things, prevent them from selling their apps in competitors’ stores. That bill had even greater bipartisan support, advancing out of committee on a 20-2 vote in February.
However, a person familiar with the negotiations said Friday that the legislation was dead at the behest of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)— an assertion viewed skeptically by progressives wary of Schumer. McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The powerful tech platforms Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon — sometimes identified collectively by the acronym GAFA — argue that such bills restrict the organic growth that has enabled the United States to become a world leader in technological innovation. They compare Amazon giving preference to its own branded merchandise with supermarkets giving prominent placement to generic store brand goods alongside other products.
But anti-monopolists maintain that the opposite is true, contending that the kind of innovation seen in Silicon Valley during the 1980s and ’90s would likely not be possible today amid the barriers to competition that tech giants have erected to protect their profit streams.
For example, they point to Meta’s Facebook co-opting the original features of newer platforms like Snapchat and acquiring would-be competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp. Meanwhile, Amazon’s preferential treatment of its own products, they say, goes far beyond what supermarkets do — both because of the leverage that Amazon has over sellers on its platform and the information it culls from sellers in the interest of undercutting them. (Amazon’s particular tactics were the focus of an influential paper by Khan as a student at Yale Law School.)
“These guys are gatekeepers in the economy,” said Lowe, whose company, Yelp, has spent years battling what it sees as Google’s abuses. “They have a special ability to distort the entire market place and bend it to their own ends.”
As much as Schumer has courted those on the left in recent years, they’ve long been suspicious of his intentions around Big Tech companies. The businesses are a major source of campaign funding, and the electorally conscious Schumer would be wary of losing access to their cash or having the money turned against vulnerable Democratic incumbents.
In July, antitrust advocates aired a television ad targeting Schumer on cable channels in Washington, backed by a relatively small buy that further underscored the forces they were up against. The Big Four tech companies, or groups they fund, had spent $120 million on television ads attacking the proposed antitrust legislation and $95 million lobbying against it.
European politicians said they were troubled by Twitter’s suspension of U.S. journalists from its platform but the move shows the limits of their planned new rules for online content and media freedom online.
France’s digital affairs minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he was “dismayed” about the direction Twitter was taking under Elon Musk after the platform removed nine U.S. journalists and other high-profile accounts in a seemingly arbitrary decision.
“Freedom of the press is the very foundation of democracy. To attack one is to attack the other,” Barrot tweeted.
European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová called the “arbitrary” removal of journalists worrying. French industry minister Roland Lescure announced he was temporarily quitting the platform in protest.
The Twitter ban for tech journalists from media organizations such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN appeared to come after they criticized the tech billionaire and self-proclaimed free speech advocate and wrote about the suspension of more than 20 accounts for sharing publicly available information about Musk’s private jet location.
“Talking a lot about #FreeSpeech, but stopping it as soon as one is criticized oneself: that’s a strange understanding of #FreedomOfExpression,” said Germany’s Justice Minister Marc Buschmann.
The German Foreign Affairs Ministry’s own Twitter account said press freedom should not “be switched on and off arbitrarily.”
Twitter has been mired in controversy since it was acquired by Musk in October and shed staff that worked on content moderation and policy affairs. The platform is now struggling to stem disinformation, potentially falling foul of commitments it took in June 2022. This week the company disbanded its board of experts advising the company on its content policy.
But restricting journalists’ access to a platform loved by the press risks a serious blow to media freedom and free speech. None of the banned journalists received an explanation of the social media platform’s decision. It was unclear if and when they would be allowed back on the platform. There had been calls to join alternatives such as Mastodon but links to it have reportedly been blocked on Twitter. The account for the open-source platform was also blocked.
Flying by EU rules?
In Brussels, politicians have pointed to the European Union’s legislative arsenal as a powerful tool to curb platforms’ power, with Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton insisting in October that Twitter’s bird logo “will fly by our rules” in the region.
Those laws or proposals aren’t yet ready for use and can’t yet counter Musk’s unilateral decisions for the platform he owns. The Commission is preparing to enforce the EU’s content law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), from summer 2023. The new Media Freedom Act is also being negotiated and may not become law until at least late 2024.
The DSA — and its ability to levy hefty fines — would require lengthy investigations by a Commission team that isn’t yet fully in place. The Media Freedom Act doesn’t specifically tackle an issue such as “deplatforming” or removing a person from a social network like Twitter.
The Commission’s Jourová warned Twitter about the possibility of future penalties under the DSA — up to 6 percent of a company’s global revenue if they restrict EU-based users and content in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner.
Twitter could also be sanctioned in the future if it doesn’t tell users why they have been sanctioned. Large online platforms with over 45 million users in the EU will have to assess and limit potential harms to freedom of expression and information as well as media freedom and pluralism.
“EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct,” she tweeted. “@elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
Politicians’ threats don’t reassure media and journalists’ organizations.
“The European legal arsenal is not sufficient to oppose acts of arbitrary censorship,” said Ricardo Gutierrez, general secretary of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ).
The draft Media Freedom Act largely aims at how Big Tech might treat news organizations. Very large online platforms would have to inform news outlets before they take down their content. It also foresees talks between media organizations and big social media to discuss content moderation problems.
Wouter Gekiere from the European Broadcasting Union in Brussels echoed similar worries saying public media services couldn’t see how the DSA could prevent takedowns of journalists’ accounts.
“The European Media Freedom Act would not do much more to protect the media online,” he said.” Journalists and editors need to have the ability to report on stories without fear of arbitrary platform controls.”
Laura Kayali and Mark Scott contributed reporting.
