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Tag: iab-computing

  • What metaverse? Meta says its single largest investment is now in ‘advancing AI’ | CNN Business

    What metaverse? Meta says its single largest investment is now in ‘advancing AI’ | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Roughly a year-and-a-half after Facebook renamed itself “Meta” and said it would go all-in on building a future version of the internet dubbed the metaverse, the tech giant now says its top investment priority will be advancing artificial intelligence.

    In a letter to staff Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to lay off another 10,000 employees in the coming months, and doubled down on his new focus of “efficiency” for the company. The pivot to efficiency, first announced last month in Meta’s quarterly earnings call, comes after years of investing heavily in growth, including in areas with unproven potential like virtual reality.

    Now, Zuckerberg says the company will focus mostly on cutting costs and streamlining projects. Building the metaverse “remains central to defining the future of social connection,” Zuckerberg wrote, but that isn’t where Meta will be putting most of its capital.

    “Our single largest investment is in advancing AI and building it into every one of our products,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday. He nodded to how AI tools can help users of its apps express themselves and “discover new content,” but also said that new AI tools can be used to increase efficiencies internally by helping “engineers write better code faster.”

    The comments come after what the CEO described as a “humbling wake-up call” last year, as the “world economy changed, competitive pressures grew, and our growth slowed considerably.”

    Meta and its predecessor Facebook have been involved in AI research for years, but the remarks come amid a heightened AI frenzy in the tech world, kicked off in late November when Microsoft-backed OpenAI publicly released ChatGPT. The technology quickly went viral for its ability to generate compelling, human-sounding responses to user prompts and then kicked off an apparent AI arms race among tech companies. Microsoft announced in early February that it was incorporating the tech behind ChatGPT into its search engine, Bing. A day before Microsoft’s announcement, Google unveiled its own AI-powered tool called Bard. And not to be left behind, Meta announced late last month that it was forming a “top-level product group” to “turbocharge” the company’s work on AI tools.

    “I do think it is a good thing to focus on AI,” Ali Mogharabi, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNN of Zuckerberg’s comments. Mogharabi said Meta’s investments in AI “has benefits on both ends” because it can improve efficiency for engineers creating products, and because incorporating AI features into Meta’s lineup of apps will potentially create more engagement time for users, which can then drive advertising revenue.

    And in the long run, Mogharabi said, “A lot of the investments in AI, and a lot of enhancements that come from those investments in AI, could actually be applicable to the entire metaverse project.”

    But Zuckerberg’s emphasis on investing in AI, and using the buzzy technology’s tools to make the company more efficient and boost its bottom line, is also “what the shareholders and the market want to hear,” Mogharabi said. Many investors had previously griped at the company’s metaverse ambitions and spending. In 2022, Meta lost more than $13.7 billion in its “Reality Labs” unit, which houses its metaverse efforts.

    And investors appear to welcome Zuckerberg’s shift in focus from the metaverse to efficiency. After taking a beating in 2022, shares for Meta have surged more than 50% since the start of the year.

    Angelo Zino, a senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said on Tuesday that the second round of layoffs at Meta “officially make us convinced that Mark Zuckerberg has completely switched gears, altering the narrative of the company to one focused on efficiencies rather than looking to grow the metaverse at any cost.”

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  • South Korea to build ‘world’s largest’ chip center in greater Seoul with $230 billion investment | CNN Business

    South Korea to build ‘world’s largest’ chip center in greater Seoul with $230 billion investment | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong/Seoul
    CNN
     — 

    South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in greater Seoul, with about $230 billion in investment from private companies.

    “We will build the world’s largest new ‘high-tech system semiconductor cluster’ in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Wednesday. “In addition, we will grow the ‘semiconductor mega cluster’ to the world’s largest in connection with the existing memory semiconductor manufacturing complexes.”

    The Seoul Metropolitan area includes the capital Seoul, neighboring city of Incheon and surrounding Gyeonggi province.

    This is a developing story. More to come.

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  • A New York man was arrested after allegedly threatening a shooting at Tops Friendly Markets in a social media post | CNN

    A New York man was arrested after allegedly threatening a shooting at Tops Friendly Markets in a social media post | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 20-year-old man from Upstate New York has been charged with making a terroristic threat after threatening to carry out a shooting at the Tops Friendly Markets in Manlius, New York, in a Discord post, according to court documents and local police.

    Police responded to a call Saturday from the manager of the Tops in Manlius – a village in Onondaga County – who said that the store got phone calls from two different people expressing their concern over statements made by a Discord user saying he was going to harm shoppers at their supermarket, according to court documents obtained by CNN affiliate WSTM.

    The two witnesses who called the supermarket reported that the threatening remarks on Discord – which included a racist reference – came from a 20-year-old man named Zachary who lives in the Manlius area and whose father recently died, according to the documents.

    Police investigated the posts and identified the user as Zachary Mullen of Jamesville, according to a statement from the Town of Manlius Police Department.

    Law enforcement arrested Mullen on Saturday for making a terroristic threat and, when conducting a search of his home afterward, found guns and ammunition, according to the police statement.

    A judge also issued an Extreme Risk Protection Order against Mullen on Sunday, which allowed authorities to seize at least two firearms from his home.

    CNN was unable to identify an attorney for Mullen.

    “There were some racist overtones to the posts made by Mr. Mullen and as of this moment we’re still trying to connect the dots as to why he picked the Tops in Manlius, but certainly the location of the store, the name of the store, the racist natures of the post, would cause anyone pause, that this may have been far more dastardly than it even looks on the surface,” Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick told WSTM.

    Discord is the same social media site that a convicted mass shooter posted on before killing 10 people at a Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo.

    Law enforcement officials verified that Mullen’s father, who they say was an avid hunter, had died a few days prior to Mullen’s posts on Discord and that he was grieving, according to the affidavit.

    Mullen, who lives with his mother, is not currently in jail, according to the county district attorney.

    “Unfortunately, he’s out on what’s known as pre-trial release because we live in New York and that’s the nature of Bail reform in New York. Incredibly enough he is out so if he has secret access to a gun, God forbid, that’s something we just don’t know but we’ll certainly be monitoring him as much as we can,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement to WSTM.

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  • The technology behind ChatGPT is about to get even more powerful | CNN Business

    The technology behind ChatGPT is about to get even more powerful | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly four months after OpenAI stunned the tech industry with ChatGPT, the company is releasing its next-generation version of the technology that powers the viral chatbot tool.

    In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, which the company says is capable of performing well on a range of standardized tests and is also less likely to “go off the guardrails” with its responses, as some users have previously experienced.

    OpenAI said the updated technology passed a simulated law school bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers; by contrast, the prior version, GPT-3.5, scored around the bottom 10%. GPT-4 can also read, analyze or generate up to 25,000 words of text, and write code in all major programming languages, according to the company.

    OpenAI described the update as the “latest milestone” for the company. Although it is still “less capable” than humans in many real-world scenarios, it exhibits “human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks,” according to the company.

    GPT-4 is the latest version of OpenAI’s large language model, which is trained on vast amounts of online data to generate compelling responses to user prompts. The updated version, which is now available via a waitlist, is already making its way into some third-party products, including Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing.

    “We are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, which we’ve customized for search,” Microsoft said on Tuesday. “If you’ve used the new Bing preview at any time in the last five weeks, you’ve already experienced an early version of this powerful model.”

    While ChatGPT has impressed many users with its ability to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts since its November 2022 launch, it has also raised some concerns. AI chatbots, including tools from Microsoft and Google, have been called out in recent weeks for being emotionally reactive, making factual errors and engaging in outright “hallucinations,” as the industry calls it.

    GPT-4 has similar limitations as earlier GPT models. “It is still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, wrote in a series of tweets Tuesday announcing the update.

    But there are noticeable improvements, he said. “It is more creative than previous models, it hallucinates significantly less, and it is less biased,” he wrote.

    Still, the company said, “great care should be taken when using language model outputs, particularly in high-stakes contexts.”

    The news comes two weeks after OpenAI announced it is opening up access to its ChatGPT tool to third-party businesses, paving the way for the chatbot to be integrated into numerous apps and services.

    Instacart, Snap and tutor app Quizlet are among the early partners experimenting with the tool. In January, Microsoft confirmed it is making a “multibillion dollar” investment in OpenAI and has since rolled out the technology to some of its products, including its search engine Bing.

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  • Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 employees | CNN Business

    Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 employees | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 workers, marking the second round of significant job cuts announced by the tech giant in four months.

    The latest layoffs, announced on Tuesday, come after Meta said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in the company’s history.

    In a Facebook post Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the job cuts will take place “over the next couple of months.”

    “We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May,” he wrote. In a “small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.”

    “Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Zuckerberg said.

    As of September 2022, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per a securities filings. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced Tuesday, that would bring Meta’s headcount down to around 66,000.

    Meta is far from the only Big Tech company to undergo layoffs amid higher inflation, recession fears and a whiplash in pandemic-induced demand. In the first months of this year, Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet and Microsoft have all confirmed major job cuts impacting tens of thousands of tech workers.

    Shares of Meta rose more than 4% in early trading Tuesday following the announcement.

    When the first round of job cuts was announced in November, Zuckerberg blamed himself at the time for the company’s over-hiring earlier in the pandemic. Meta  nearly doubled its headcount between March 2020 and September of last year, as the Covid-19 crisis led to a surge in demand for digital services.

    But the situation changed radically for the social media giant and other tech companies last year as pandemic restrictions eased and people returned to their offline lives. Meta’s core business was also hit by privacy changes implemented by Apple and advertisers tightening budgets amid recession fears.

    In its most-recent quarterly earnings report, Meta posted a sharp drop in profits and reported its third straight quarterly decline in revenue. But during the earnings call, Zuckerberg promised investors that 2023 would be the “year of efficiency” for the company, following years of heavy investment in growth and a more immersive version of the internet called the metaverse.

    On that call, Zuckerberg also suggested that more job cuts could be coming.

    “We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and restructuring some teams. When we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end,” Zuckerberg said during the earnings call in early February. He added that the company would be focused on “flattening” its org structure and “removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster.”

    “As part of this, we’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t performing or may no longer be as crucial, but my main focus is on increasing the efficiency of how we execute our top priorities,” Zuckerberg said.

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  • CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin says covering the SVB meltdown is like ‘walking a tight rope’ | CNN Business

    CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin says covering the SVB meltdown is like ‘walking a tight rope’ | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Andrew Ross Sorkin woke up early Monday morning, long before the crack of dawn, after managing to sneak in a handful of hours of sleep.

    The New York Times columnist had been up late into the night working on his DealBook newsletter. And now he needed to rise for a special edition of “Squawk Box,” the CNBC program he has co-hosted since 2011.

    The special 5am edition of “Squawk” had been tasked with covering the continuing fallout stemming from the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a massive financial news story that has drawn some eerie comparisons to the beginnings of the 2008 financial disaster.

    A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

    It is a story Sorkin described covering as “a balancing act, a little bit like walking a tight rope.” On one hand, he said, journalists must avoid sparking panic and causing a catastrophic run on the banks. But, on the other hand, journalists also owe it to their audiences to deliver them a clear-eyed assessment of the state of affairs.

    “Our job as journalists is to tell the public what is happening — and if you believe in transparency, we should all want that,” Sorkin said. “The downside of transparency in real-time is sometimes news that may not be positive can pile on itself in a way. And so I think it is really just about trying to contextualize what we’re seeing.”

    “You don’t want to cause a run on a bank,” Sorkin added, “but then at the same time, if everyone is running and they have reason to run, I think it’s important that the public understands what’s happening.”

    The approach to delivering the news and covering the implosion of SVB that Sorkin described stands in stark contrast to some of the commentary saturating the internet and at other media outlets.

    Over the weekend, some venture capital influencers amplified fear and suggested the entire US banking system was on the verge of collapse. The investor Jason Calacanis, who hosts a podcast and commands a Twitter audience of nearly 700,000 followers, tweeted, “YOU SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED RIGHT NOW.” On the right-wing talk channel Fox News Monday morning, “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt suggested Americans needed “to go to our banks and take our money out.”

    Unprecedented in its sheer speed and volume, SVB’s collapse is “fascinating,” Sorkin said, causing a meltdown only now possible in the “true age of social media, as well as what might be described as digital banking.”

    “The ability for information to spread rapidly, both good information and bad, and for people to act on that information and then going to a bank app and transferring funds from one place to another, makes the responsibility [for journalists] even greater,” Sorkin said.

    Sorkin said banking is ultimately a “confidence game,” explaining that it is “genuinely about whether people have confidence in leaving their money in a particular institution.” And in this current environment where social media influencers and other irresponsible voices thrive, Sorkin said it “inherently makes things less stable.”

    “You have a lot of people who are on social media who don’t necessarily feel the same responsibilities to contextualize the news in the same way I might try,” Sorkin said. He suggested that in the case of SVB, there may have been “a little smoke in the corner of the theater” that could have been addressed before a fire burst out and prompted danger.

    “If you scream ‘fire,’ everyone runs out of the theater,” Sorkin said. “Could the smoke have been put out before everyone ran out of the theater? Maybe.”

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  • Chinese companies and founders rush to calm investors after SVB collapse | CNN Business

    Chinese companies and founders rush to calm investors after SVB collapse | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which courted Chinese start-ups, has caused widespread concern in China, where a string of founders and companies rushed to appease investors by saying their exposure was insignificant or nonexistent.

    SVB, which worked with nearly half of all venture-backed tech and healthcare companies in the United States before it was taken over by the government, has a Chinese joint venture, which was set up in 2012 and targeted the country’s tech elite.

    The SPD Silicon Valley Bank, which was owned 50-50 owned by SVB and local partner Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, said Saturday that its operations were “sound.”

    “The bank has a standardized corporate governance structure and an independent balance sheet,” it said in a statement. “As China’s first technology bank, SPD Silicon Valley Bank is committed to serving Chinese science and technology companies, and has always had sound operations in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations.”

    It’s unclear what will happen to SVB’s ownership of the joint venture.

    SVB Financial Group, the parent company of SVB, also has two business consulting firms and one financial services firm in mainland China, according to corporate database Tianyancha.

    Concerns about the failure of SVB have spread around the world, as investors fretted about the broader risks to the global banking sector and any potential spillover effect.

    In an extraordinary move to restore confidence in America’s banking system, the Biden administration on Sunday guaranteed that customers of SVB and Signature Bank, which was closed by regulators, will have access to all their money.

    That action appears to have appeased global markets, with US futures rallying in response and some Asian markets paring earlier losses.

    In China, at least a dozen firms have issued statements since SVB collapsed trying to pacify investors or clients, saying that their exposure to the lender was limited. Most were biotech companies.

    BeiGene, one of China’s largest cancer-focused drug companies, said Monday it had more than $175 million uninsured cash deposits at SVB, which represents approximately 3.9% of its cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

    “The company does not expect the recent developments with SVB to significantly impact its operations,” it said.

    Zai Lab, a pharmaceutical firm, announced that its cash deposits at SVB were “immaterial” at about $23 million.

    The closure of SVB “will not have an impact” on the company’s ability to meet its operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements, including payroll, it said.

    Other companies that publicly assured investors included Andon Health, Sirnaomics, Everest Medicines, Broncus Medical, Jacobio Pharmaceuticals, Brii Biosciences, CStone Pharmaceuticals, Genor Biopharma and CANbridge Pharmaceuticals.

    Mobile ad tech firm Mobvista and wealth management firm Noah Holdings said their cash holdings at SVB were “minimal” or “immaterial.”

    Popular selfie app Meitu said it hadn’t held any bank accounts at SVB since 2020. It issued a statement “to avoid any potential public misunderstanding.”

    Ascletis Pharma, MicroPort NeuroTech, Antengene Corp, and Suzhou Basecare Medical Corporation also denied they had any deposits or business dealings with SVB.

    Pan Shiyi, co-founder and former chairman of Soho China, a major Beijing-based property developer, denied he had any money at SVB after reports went viral on social media that he had lost billions of yuan.

    “We never opened an account with Silicon Valley Bank, nor placed a deposit,” he said late Sunday on his Weibo account.

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  • FBI says $10 billion lost to online fraud in 2022 as crypto investment scams surged | CNN Politics

    FBI says $10 billion lost to online fraud in 2022 as crypto investment scams surged | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    More than $10 billion in losses from online scams were reported to the FBI in 2022, the highest annual loss in the last five years, according to a new report from the bureau.

    The more than $3 billion jump in reports of online fraud from 2021 to 2022 was driven by a near-tripling in reports of cryptocurrency investment fraud, the FBI said in its annual Internet Crime Report.

    The report tallies a wide variety of fraud complaints – from marketing scams to ransomware – and is a metric for US policymakers in measuring how much hacking and other schemes are costing the American economy.

    While people in their 30s filed the most fraud complaints last year, the burden of many digital scams fell on the elderly. People over 60 accounted for $724 million, or more than two-thirds of the reported losses from “call center fraud,” according to the FBI. Such fraud occurs when scammers call someone impersonating tech support or government agencies.

    Ransomware, which locks computers until hackers are paid off, accounted for about $34 million in adjusted losses reported to the FBI last year. The relatively modest figure compared to other forms of fraud could be due to the fact that many victim organizations still do not report ransomware attacks to the FBI.

    A popular type of ransomware called Hive was used in 87 attacks last year, according to the FBI. The bureau seized Hive operatives’ computer infrastructure earlier this year, but not before hackers affiliated with the ransomware extorted more than $100 million from hospitals, schools and other victims around the world.

    While ransomware tends to get the headlines, a different hacking scheme known as business email compromise (BEC) leads to far more money stolen from victims in aggregate. A BEC scheme typically involves someone tricking a victim into wiring them money, often by impersonating a customer or a relative.

    One of the more high-profile examples of BEC fraud last year cost the city of Lexington, Kentucky, about $4 million in federal funding for housing assistance.

    BEC scams accounted for about $2.7 billion in adjusted losses in 2022, compared to about $2.4 billion in 2021, according to FBI data.

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  • China censors women modeling lingerie on livestream shopping — so men are doing it | CNN Business

    China censors women modeling lingerie on livestream shopping — so men are doing it | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Donning a sassy piece of silk lingerie, a male model grooves to the beat and forms a heart shape with his fingers during a livestreaming session on Douyin, one of China’s most popular video-sharing platforms.

    His modeling performance is the latest illustration of the kind of entrepreneurial innovation sometimes needed to bypass China’s rigorous internet censorship, a dragnet that can ensnare seemingly innocuous activities – in this case retailers selling women’s underwear online.

    China deploys one of the world’s most stringent censorship regimes, with a track record of blocking out not just politically sensitive information but images of women’s bodies deemed marginally racy.

    Several businesses specializing in selling lingerie through livestreaming have had their sessions cut short after they featured a female model and their brush with internet censorship came to light in January.

    Hence the use of men instead.

    On one of the sales channels, a man is seen dressed in black lingerie, standing next to a mannequin showing a similar outfit, in what appears to be a screenshot of a livestream broadcast on Alibaba

    (BABA)    ’s Taobao Live, a streaming platform for the e-commerce giant.

    In another image, a different male model put on a pink slip dress and silky shawl, accessorized with cat ear headbands.

    In one livestream clip, carried by multiple state media outlets, an owner of an online venture said he was simply trying to play it safe.

    “This is not an attempt at sarcasm. Everyone is being very serious about complying with the rules,” the man, who identified himself as Mr Xu, said.

    The emergence of male lingerie models has caused mixed views online in China, from merriment and annoyance to reluctant acceptance.

    “So what should I do if I want to promote and showcase lingerie in the live broadcast session? It’s very simple, find a man to wear it,” read one comment on China’s microblogging site Weibo.

    A man in a mini slip dress and velvet robe models beside a woman in pajamas in a video posted on Douyin on February 17, 2023.

    Livestreaming sales of products is a multibillion-dollar industry in mainland China, and was given a major boost during the three years of the country’s strict Covid lockdowns that battered many bricks and mortar businesses.

    As of June last year, the number of livestreaming e-commerce users in mainland China is over 460 million, according to the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, a body affiliated with Beijing’s commerce ministry.

    A 2021 report by iResearch, a Beijing-based firm specializing in measuring audience growth online, predicted the livestream sector would be worth as much as $720 billion this year.

    Male models are not the only workaround.

    On Douyin, the Chinese domestic version of TikTok, other female models have circumvented the censorship by showcasing the latest style of lingerie on themselves on top of a t-shirt they are already wearing.

    Others displayed the items on mannequins.

    In 2015, China led a crackdown on television shows exposing actresses’ cleavage, forcing some of the most popular costume dramas to zoom in on their faces to avoid getting into trouble with the broadcast authorities.

    Having male influencers promoting female-oriented products is not new in China, either.

    One of the industry’s most successful livestream shopping influencers is Austin Li Jiaqi, who made his name as the “Lipstick King” after selling 15,000 lipsticks in just five minutes in 2018.

    As one of China’s biggest internet celebrities, Li also peddles cosmetics, skincare products and fashion apparel, often applying products he’s selling to his own face.

    Even outside of China, platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have faced criticism for restricting the sharing of images involving partial nudity, especially of women.

    Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, restricts the sharing of breasts, although it says it intends “to allow images that are shared for medical or health purposes.” But even Meta’s own Oversight Board has called on the company to make its policy less confusing and more gender inclusive.

    YouTube says it prohibits “the depiction of clothed or unclothed genitals, breasts, or buttocks that are meant for sexual gratification,” but it may age-restrict other images or videos involving nudity.

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  • The new normal on Twitter: watching it break | CNN Business

    The new normal on Twitter: watching it break | CNN Business

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    Late last year, Dan Sinker found himself in a “Groundhog Day” situation. When he would check his notifications tab on Twitter, Sinker, who has tens of thousands of followers, often saw the platform recommend the same weeks-old tweet from another user. As Sinker described the situation in one tweet in early December, “we’re back to November 7 in my mentions again.”

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  • BBC’s flagship soccer show boycotted over Gary Lineker impartiality row | CNN

    BBC’s flagship soccer show boycotted over Gary Lineker impartiality row | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The BBC’s weekend soccer coverage has been plunged into chaos following its announcement Gary Lineker would “step back” from presenting, after he became embroiled in an impartiality row when he criticized British government policy on Twitter.

    The broadcaster now faces a boycott from pundits, presenters and even players of its flagship soccer show “Match of the Day,” while other soccer programs – Football Focus and Final Score – and some radio programming have been forced off-air as a result of the furore.

    Lineker criticized the government’s controversial new asylum-seeker policy on Tuesday and was subsequently relieved of his presenting duties this week since the BBC said his tweets breached their guidelines, specifically its commitment to “due impartiality.”

    The BBC’s decision has sparked controversy, leaving the organization under fire from opposition politicians, the Broadcasting Entertainment Communications and Theatre Union who represent BBC staff, and its former director general Greg Dyke.

    “The BBC will only be able to bring limited sport programming this weekend and our schedules will be updated to reflect that,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement Saturday.

    “We are sorry for these changes which we recognize will be disappointing for BBC sport fans.

    “We are working hard to resolve the situation and hope to do so soon.”

    In an interview with BBC News on Saturday, the broadcaster’s Director General Tim Davie was asked if he should resign over the crisis. He said he would not.

    “I honestly do not believe, despite a lot of the commentary, that this is about left or right,” Davie said. The BBC is a “fierce champion of democratic debate, free speech, but with that comes the need to create an impartial organization,” he added.

    When asked if he was sorry about the way he handled the situation, he said: “We made decisions, and I made decisions based on a real passion about what the BBC is and it is difficult – it’s this balance between free speech and impartiality.”

    On Tuesday, Lineker tweeted “Good heavens, this is beyond awful” to a video posted on Twitter by the British Home Office announcing the new proposed policy – an attempt to stop migrant boats crossing the English Channel from France which has been criticized by the United Nations and other global bodies.

    He added: “There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”

    As Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC is bound by “due impartiality” – a much debated term which the organization defines as holding “power to account with consistency” while not “allowing ourselves to be used to campaign to change public policy.”

    On Friday, the BBC announced Lineker would “step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” adding it considered his recent social media activity to breach its guidelines.

    In response, first pundits, then commentators, and then even Premier League teams announced their intention to boycott the show in support of Lineker.

    BBC commentators Steve Wilson, Conor McNamara, Robyn Cowen and Steven Wyeth said in a joint statement issued late on Friday “in the circumstances, we do not feel it would be appropriate to take part in the programme.”

    A shortened version of the program did eventually air on Saturday. It opened with a BBC continuity announcer issuing an apology, instead of the usual title sequence and theme tune.

    It then showed highlights from Saturday’s English Premier League games with no commentary, only the background audio from the stadiums.

    The show aired for 20 minutes, an hour less than the originally scheduled time.

    Jermain Defoe, a former England striker, announced Saturday he would not appear as a pundit on the Sunday show.

    “It’s always such a privilege to work with BBC MOTD. But tomorrow I have taken the decision to stand down from my punditry duties. @GaryLineker,” Defoe tweeted.

    Defoe’s announcement appears to be the first sign the British broadcaster’s Sunday television programming will also be affected.

    Meanwhile, the Professional Footballers’ Association announced on Saturday “players involved in today’s games will not be asked to participate in interviews with Match of the Day.”

    “The PFA have been speaking to members who wanted to take a collective position and to be able to show their support for those who have chosen not to be part of tonight’s programme,” the statement added.

    “During those conversations we made clear that, as their union, we would support all members who might face consequences for choosing not to complete their broadcast commitments. This is a common sense decision that ensures players won’t now be put in that position.”

    Following his side’s 1-0 defeat against Bournemouth on Saturday, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was asked about the BBC issue.

    “I cannot see any reason why they would ask anyone to step back for saying that. I’m not sure if that’s a language issue or not,” the German told reporters.

    “If I understand it right, then this is about an opinion about human rights and that should be possible to say.

    “What I don’t understand is why everybody goes on Twitter and says something. I don’t understand the social media part of it but that’s probably [because] I’m too old for that.”

    The BBC’s former director general Greg Dyke said the broadcaster has “undermined its own credibility” by suspending Lineker because it seemed like it had “bowed to government pressure.”

    Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the BBC had got “this one badly wrong and now they’re very, very exposed.”

    Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “As a strong supporter of public service broadcasting, I want to be able to defend the BBC. But the decision to take Gary Lineker off air is indefensible. It is undermining free speech in the face of political pressure – & it does always seem to be rightwing pressure it caves to.”

    Opposition Labour Party deputy leader Angela Rayner also lambasted the BBC’s decision in a tweet on Saturday.

    “The BBC’s cowardly decision to take Gary Lineker off air is an assault on free speech in the face of political pressure from Tory politicians. They should rethink,” she tweeted.

    Meanwhile Nadine Dorries, an MP with the governing Conservative party and former Culture Secretary, welcomed the BBC’s decision, tweeting: “News that Gary Lineker has been stood down for investigation is welcome and shows BBC are serious about impartiality.

    “Gary is entitled to his views – free speech is paramount. Lots of non Public Service Broadcasters can accommodate him and his views and he would be better paid.”

    For his part, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday issued a statement saying he hopes the situation between the BBC and its star soccer host can be resolved but it is not a matter for the UK government.

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  • Snap stock surges as Congress renews efforts to ban TikTok | CNN Business

    Snap stock surges as Congress renews efforts to ban TikTok | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Investors are betting that Washington’s mounting scrutiny on TikTok could be good news for rival Snapchat.

    Shares of Snapchat’s parent company surged nearly 10% on Monday and another 5% in early trading Tuesday following news that US senators are planning to introduce legislation that could make it easier to ban rival app TikTok.

    Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is expected to unveil bipartisan legislation Tuesday afternoon that expands President Joe Biden’s authority to ban TikTok and other suspected information technology risks from the United States, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. The bill is expected to have nearly a dozen co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

    The stock surge suggests some on Wall Street are taking the possibility of a TikTok ban more seriously, after years of chatter in the nation’s capital about cracking down on the short-form video app due to security concerns related to its Chinese parent company.

    It also highlights how lawmakers’ efforts to address the perceived threat of TikTok could ultimately benefit large US tech platforms, including dominant companies that some in Washington also want to rein in for other reasons.

    Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst CFRA Research, wrote in a note Monday that the “biggest beneficiaries of a TikTok ban” would be Snapchat, Facebook-parent Meta, and YouTube.

    “TikTok’s emphasis on short-form videos has increased engagement/time spent by consumers and has upended the entire industry, creating a headwind for META/SNAP,” Zino wrote. “Given TikTok’s growing engagement/user growth, it has been taking an increasing portion of the digital ad dollars pie from other social media players.”

    In recent years, TikTok’s popularity has led a number of major US apps to imitate some of its features, including the launch of Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts.

    Shares of YouTube’s parent company Alphabet were essentially flat on Tuesday. Meta, which is up 50% so far this year thanks to its commitment to “efficiency,” was up slightly in early trading Tuesday, likely because of a report claiming it’s planning more layoffs.

    A TikTok ban, or the possibility of it, may just be one more positive for Meta’s stock this year.

    – CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report.

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  • Chinese city proposes lockdowns for flu — and faces a backlash | CNN

    Chinese city proposes lockdowns for flu — and faces a backlash | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    A Chinese city has sparked a backlash on social media after saying it would consider the use of lockdowns in the event of an influenza outbreak.

    The city of Xi’an – a tourism hotspot in Shaanxi province that is home to the famous terracotta warriors – revealed an emergency response plan this week that would enable it to shut schools, businesses and “other crowded places” in the event of a severe flu epidemic.

    That prompted a mixture of anxiety and anger on China’s social media websites among many users who said the plan sounded uncomfortably similar to some of the strict zero-Covid measures China had implemented throughout the pandemic and which have only recently been abandoned.

    “Vaccinate the public rather than using such time to create a sense of panic,” one user wrote on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

    “How will people not panic given that Xi’an’s proposal to suspend work and business activities were issued without clear instruction on the national level to classify the disease?” asked another.

    While cases of Covid in China are falling, there has been a spike in flu cases across the country and some pharmacies are struggling to meet demand for flu remedies.

    However, Xi’an’s emergency response plan will not necessarily be used. Rather, it outlines how the city of almost 13 million people would respond to any future outbreak based on four levels of severity.

    At the first and highest level, it says, “the city can lock down infected areas, carry out traffic quarantines and suspend production and business activities. Shopping malls, theaters, libraries, museums, tourist attractions and other crowded places will also be closed.”

    “At this emergency level, schools and nurseries at all levels would be shut down and be made responsible for tracking students’ and infants’ health conditions.”

    The backlash comes as the central government in Beijing has emphasized the need to open the country back up following the removal of all Covid restrictions in January.

    Throughout the pandemic, China had enforced some of the world’s most severe Covid restrictions, including lockdowns that stretched into months in some cities. It was also one of the last countries in the world to end measures such as mass testing and strict border quarantine periods, even amid growing evidence of the damage being done to its economy.

    Xi’an itself was subject to a draconian lockdown between December 2021 and January 2022, with 13 million residents confined to their homes for weeks on end – and many left short of food and other essential supplies. Access to medical services was also affected. In an incident that shocked and angered the nation, a heavily pregnant woman was turned away from a hospital on New Year’s Day because she didn’t have a valid Covid-19 test, and suffered a miscarriage after she was finally admitted two hours later.

    Residents take nucleic acid tests in a closed community in Xi'an in January 2022.

    Shortly before China removed its pandemic era restrictions the country had been rocked by a series of demonstrations against its zero-Covid policy.

    Memories of being confined to their homes and of panic buying that in some areas led to food shortages remain fresh in people’s minds and the idea of a return to Covid-style measures appears to have hit a nerve.

    However, some voices called for calm.

    Epidemiologist Ben Cowling, from the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, said he saw the rationale of the move.

    “I think it’s quite rational to make contingency plans. I wouldn’t expect a lockdown to be needed for flu, but presumably there are different response levels,” he said.

    One user on Weibo expressed a similar sentiment: “It is merely the revelation of a proposal, not putting it in place. It is quite normal to take precautions given this wave of flu is coming at us very strong.”

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  • Capitol Hill data breach more ‘extensive’ than previously known | CNN Politics

    Capitol Hill data breach more ‘extensive’ than previously known | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A sweeping cybersecurity breach of congressional members’ private information was more extensive than previously known and affects not only House lawmakers and their staff but also Senate employees.

    The Senate sergeant-at-arms alerted Senate staff about the breach Thursday in an email obtained by CNN.

    The compromised data is “extensive,” and includes sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, home addresses and information on Senate employees’ health insurance plans, the sergeant-at-arms said in the email, which urged Senate staff to freeze their family credit to guard against fraud.

    Law enforcement gave the sergeant-at-arms a list of Senate employees whose data was stolen, the email said, and the sergeant-at-arms was contacting those employees so they could protect themselves from fraud.

    Hundreds of US House members and staff also had their personally identifiable information stolen in the breach, which affected a DC health insurance service, CNN reported Wednesday.

    Punchbowl News first reported on the sergeant-at-arms’ email.

    The revelation that Senate staff also had their data stolen will only increase pressure from Capitol Hill on DC Health Link, the affected insurance service, to provide a full accounting of how the breach occurred.

    DC Health Link said Wednesday it had “initiated a comprehensive investigation” of the incident and is working with law enforcement. The FBI is involved in the investigation, the bureau said.

    It’s unclear how the data was accessed or who was responsible for the breach, but it immediately raised concerns among lawmakers that they could become the victims of identity theft, as many other Americans have in recent years.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have written a letter to DC Health Link expressing their concern over the breach, McCarthy previously told CNN.

    Others were less alarmed.

    “I can’t get all that worked up about this, honestly,” a Senate staffer told CNN Thursday night.

    China “got all my data already in the OPM hack,” the staffer added, referring to the 2014-2015 breach of the Office of Personnel Management that compromised millions of US government personnel records. US officials have blamed Chinese hackers for the breach, a charge Beijing denied.

    On a popular cybercrime forum this week, someone claimed to have sold the data belonging to DC Health Link. The advertisement for the stolen data, which CNN reviewed, claimed the leak affected 170,000 people and included Social Security numbers.

    CNN was unable to independently verify those claims.

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  • Judge orders former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to turn over emails from his private account said to be White House records | CNN Politics

    Judge orders former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to turn over emails from his private account said to be White House records | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge has ordered former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro to turn over to the US government certain emails from his time at the White House, granting the Justice Department a victory in a civil lawsuit the department brought against the ex-trade adviser.

    US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that the emails in question – from a non-official email account Navarro used at the time – were covered under the Presidential Records Act.

    “It bears note that under the PRA Dr. Navarro’s obligation to copy from or forward from his personal account to the official account was ‘no later than’ twenty (20) days after the original creation or transmission,” she wrote. “Plainly, he did neither during his tenure in the White House, nor has he forwarded Presidential record emails in the years since.”

    She rejected Navarro’s arguments that producing the emails would put at risk his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as well other arguments Navarro made in the case.

    Navarro was ordered by the judge to immediately produce 200 to 250 emails that his lawyers had found when they had done a search, using search terms provided by the the National Archives and Records Administration, of his emails last summer. The Archives had asked him to prioritize the emails that had come up with those search terms.

    The judge also ordered that Navarro and the government meet within 30 days to come up with a plan for identifying and turning over the other emails that should be produced under the PRA. She is asking for a status report to be filed by seven days after the parties meet.

    When it filed the lawsuit, the Justice Department said that the National Archives had become aware of the emails on Navarro’s private account because of a House investigation into the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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  • Everyone hates switching the clocks for Daylight Saving Time. So why is it so hard to get rid of? | CNN Business

    Everyone hates switching the clocks for Daylight Saving Time. So why is it so hard to get rid of? | CNN Business

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    Everyone hates switching the clocks for Daylight Saving Time. So why is it so hard to get rid of?

    CNN’s Harry Enten tells “Nightcap’s” Jon Sarlin why Americans switch the clocks back and forth twice a year, even though the time change is pretty universally hated. Plus, Los Angeles Times columnist LZ Granderson on how legal sports betting has changed March Madness. And CNN’s Clare Duffy explains why the FTC’s investigation of Twitter could be a real problem for Elon Musk. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.

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  • Hundreds of US lawmakers and staff affected by data breach | CNN Politics

    Hundreds of US lawmakers and staff affected by data breach | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Hundreds of US House members and staff had their personally identifiable information stolen in a breach of a DC health care insurance service, the House chief administrative officer told lawmakers Wednesday in a letter obtained by CNN.

    The FBI is investigating the “significant data breach,” which occurred Tuesday and potentially involved thousands of enrollees in the DC Health Link marketplace, House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor told lawmakers in the letter.

    “It is important to note that at this time, it does not appear that Members or the House of Representatives were the specific target of the attack,” Szpindor wrote.

    DC Health Link confirmed in a statement that “data for some DC Health Link customers has been exposed on a public forum.”

    “We have initiated a comprehensive investigation and are working with forensic investigators and law enforcement. Concurrently, we are taking action to ensure the security and privacy of our users’ personal information,” the statement said, adding that DC Health Link will provide identity and credit monitoring services for impacted customers as well as credit monitoring services for all of its customers “out of an abundance of caution.”

    The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that it is “aware of this incident and is assisting. As this is an ongoing investigation, we do not have any additional information to provide at this time.”

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN that the breach, which was first reported by Punchbowl News, is a “real concern.”

    “Leader Hakeem Jeffries and I sent a letter to the DC Health about the concern we have here,” the California Republican said, noting that he does not know how many members may have been affected.

    On a popular cybercrime forum this week, someone claimed to have sold the data belonging to DC Health Link. The advertisement for the stolen data, which CNN reviewed, claimed the leak affected 170,000 people and included Social Security numbers.

    CNN was unable to independently verify those claims. The user advertising the data did not immediately respond Wednesday night when CNN asked in an online chat how much they sold the data for.

    The advertisement was removed from the cybercrime forum later Wednesday night. It was not immediately clear why.

    The user has been on the cybercrime forum for months and earned a reputation for selling compromised databases, Michael DeBolt, chief intelligence officer at security firm Intel471, told CNN.

    “Like other financially motivated actors, (this actor) is opportunistic rather than seeking to target specific regions or sectors,” DeBolt said.

    Contractors that store data belonging to US lawmakers could face greater scrutiny following this week’s breach.

    The Committee on House Administration Republicans tweeted that Chairman Bryan Steil “is aware of the breach” and is working with Szpindor, the House chief administrative officer, “to ensure the vendor takes necessary steps to protect the (personally identifiable information) of any impacted member, staff, and their families.”

    The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, told CNN the data breach is “egregious” and that the FBI discovered it because the information ended up on the “dark web.”

    He said in addition to investigating what happened, Congress needs to figure out how to allocate more resources so those who contract with the government can better protect this type of information.

    “We are deeply concerned about DC Health Link’s data breach and the impact on our Members and staff. We will continue to communicate any updates we receive from law enforcement to impacted Members and staff,” a CAO spokesperson said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Michelle Obama opens up about her ‘uncontrollable sobbing’ on day of Trump’s inauguration | CNN Politics

    Michelle Obama opens up about her ‘uncontrollable sobbing’ on day of Trump’s inauguration | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Michelle Obama broke down shortly after leaving then-President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the former first lady candidly shared in a new podcast, as the emotions of leaving their family’s home after eight years and resentment over Trump taking office overwhelmed her.

    “When those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight, uncontrollable sobbing, because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years,” Obama said, referring to her final trip aboard the presidential airplane.

    The fresh revelation of Obama’s experience came in a clip of her “The Light Podcast,” which launched on Audible Tuesday. The podcast audio comes from the former first lady’s recent book tour for her third book, “The Light We Carry,” which reflects on how she’s dealt with relationships, self-doubt and anxiety during uncertain times. It captures conversations from her visits to six cities with all-star moderators, like Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien to promote and discuss her best-selling book.

    “After the inauguration – and we know whose inauguration we were at – that day was so emotional on so many different reasons. We were leaving the home we had been in for eight years, the only home our kids really knew,” Obama shared. “They remembered Chicago but they had spent more time in the White House than anywhere. So we were saying goodbye to the staff and all the people who helped to raise them.”

    Obama confirmed she wasn’t in a “good mood” but she “had to hold it together.”

    “There were tears, there was that emotion. But then to sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display – there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage, there was no reflection of the broader sense of America,” Obama said.

    She also took a jab at her husband’s successor over his inauguration crowd size, a long-running point of contention for the Trump White House which has falsely claimed the turnout was the largest ever.

    “You take your last flight off, flying over the Capitol, where there weren’t that many people there. We saw it,” she said, which gained laughs from the audience.

    Promoting the podcast on Twitter Monday, Obama said that she hopes it inspires others to “share your own light.”

    In the years since leaving the White House, the former first lady has revealed other tidbits about her mood that day in January 2017, including that she “stopped even trying to smile” during Trump’s inauguration. Speaking to Jimmy Fallon in 2018, she said, “A lot was going on that day,” but as she bid farewell to the White House one thought was clear: “Bye, Felicia!”

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  • Elon Musk thinks he can fix Twitter’s advertising business after derailing it | CNN Business

    Elon Musk thinks he can fix Twitter’s advertising business after derailing it | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk on Tuesday offered an optimistic picture for how Twitter can improve the advertising business he helped derail and boost its bottom line while also admitting that keeping the social network running is proving to be a challenge after multiple rounds of layoffs.

    In remarks at a Morgan Stanley Conference, Musk laid out his vision to boost Twitter’s core advertising business by adopting the standard strategy of most of the company’s peers: improving the relevance of the ads it serves.

    “The advertising relevance is the most gigantic thing,” Musk said. “And this is going to sound totally bizarre, but Twitter did not consider relevance in advertising until three months ago.”

    With that change, and larger cost cuts across the organization, Musk said he believes Twitter has “got a shot at being cash flow positive next quarter.”

    “Going forward, Twitter will have very relevant, useful advertising,” Musk said. “And because it is useful, because it is relevant, there will be a massive increase in revenue, because it is now useful. So I’m very optimistic about the future. It’s been a very difficult four months, but I’m optimistic about the future.”

    Since taking over the platform in late October, Twitter has suffered a mass exodus of top brands as Musk relaxed some content moderation policies, restored incendiary accounts and made a number of erratic remarks concerning politics and world affairs. Musk, who has previously tweeted about his hatred for advertising, made a quick bet on bolstering a paid subscription offering instead, but it has reportedly struggled to gain traction.

    He also took the time to thank advertisers that have stuck with Twitter throughout his rocky takeover, including Disney and Apple.

    But even as Musk looks to grow Twitter’s ad business, which has long made up nearly all of the company’s revenue, there are sincere doubts about whether the platform can even stay online.

    Twitter has been inundated with outages, including a significant service disruption on Monday, and other user headaches since Musk took over, likely linked to the multiple rounds of mass layoffs that occurred under his watch. On Tuesday, he blamed the “overly complex” underlying technology for some of the recent service disruptions.

    “The code base is like a Rube Goldberg machine, and when you zoom in on one part of the Rube Goldberg machine, there’s another Rube Goldberg machine, and then there’s another one,” Musk said at the event on Tuesday. “So it’s quite difficult to keep this thing running, and then also difficult to advance the product because it is really overly complex, to say the least.”

    “We’ll make a change, what appears to be a small change somewhere, that then causes a massive disruption,” he said. Musk said Monday’s outage was the result of “what was supposed to be a small change to 1% of the Twitter user base [that] ended up being a catastrophic change to 100% of the Twitter user base.”

    At the same time, Musk continues to make controversial remarks that may give brands pause about returning to, or increasing their spending on, the platform. Musk was criticized by some this week after he publicly mocked a Twitter worker with a disability who asked the Twitter owner whether he had been laid off.

    At Tuesday’s event, Musk went on a series of unrelated tangents, including repeatedly taking aim at legacy media organizations. “What I’d say to advertisers and brands is, you know, use Twitter yourself and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers,” Musk said. “Because what you see on Twitter is the real thing, and what you read in newspapers is not.”

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  • US senators unveil bipartisan bill empowering Biden to ban TikTok and other services | CNN Business

    US senators unveil bipartisan bill empowering Biden to ban TikTok and other services | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A dozen US senators unveiled bipartisan legislation Tuesday expanding President Joe Biden’s legal authority to ban TikTok nationwide, marking the latest in a string of congressional proposals threatening the social media platform’s future in the United States.

    The legislation, called the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, does not target TikTok specifically for a ban. But it aims to give the US government new powers, up to and including a ban, against foreign-linked producers of electronics or software that the Commerce Department deems to be a national security risk.

    The proposed law takes a wide-ranging approach to fears that companies with ties to China could be pressured by that country’s government into handing over Americans’ sensitive personal information or communications records. In the case of TikTok, lawmakers have said China’s national security laws could force TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, to provide access to TikTok’s US user data.

    TikTok CEO Shou Chew said this week the company has never received such a request from the Chinese government and would never comply with one. The company has taken voluntary steps to wall off US user data from the rest of its global organization, including by hosting that data on servers operated by the US tech giant Oracle. The company is also negotiating a possible agreement with the Biden administration that could allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States under certain conditions.

    In a statement, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said a US government ban would stifle American speech and would be “a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide.”

    But that has not stopped many policymakers from seeking tougher measures against the company.

    Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a bill that would require the Biden administration to issue a nationwide TikTok ban if an assessment of the platform found potential risks to US user data — risks that multiple administration officials have already said exist.

    Another bill led by Sen. Marco Rubio would ban transactions by social media companies based in or under the “substantial influence” of countries considered US foreign adversaries.

    Tuesday’s bill, unveiled by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner and South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, is less prescriptive — granting the Commerce Department wide discretion to identify, and then to mitigate, perceived risks stemming from foreign-linked technology companies. That latitude would reflect an entirely new authority granted to the Secretary of Commerce, not authority derived from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    The legislation would cover a broad range of technologies in addition to social media, Warner said, including artificial intelligence, financial technology services, quantum computing and e-commerce. It would also improve upon an ad hoc scramble focused on individual companies, and provide the US government with a systematic legal structure for addressing tech-driven spying threats, Warner said.

    In recent years, US concerns about Chinese espionage have largely focused on telecommunications companies such as Huawei and ZTE, who produce wireless gear for cellular networks. But those have expanded to include makers of surveillance cameras and, more recently, apps and software makers such as TikTok.

    “Instead of playing whack-a-mole on Huawei one day, ZTE the next, Kasperky, TikTok — we need a more comprehensive approach to evaluating and mitigating these threats posed by these foreign technologies from these adversarial nations,” said Warner, adding that the bill was crafted in consultation with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Justice and Treasury, along with US intelligence officials, the Federal Communications Commission and the White House.

    In a statement, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan endorsed the bill, calling it “a systematic framework for addressing technology-based threats to the security and safety of Americans.”

    “This will help us address the threats we face today, and also prevent such risks from arising in the future,” Sullivan said.

    Warner added that the legislation has “sparked a lot of interest” from other senators beyond the 12 co-sponsors and among some members of the House in both parties.

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