Економіка

The push to legally restrict children’s access to social media in the United States is gaining steam. So far, however, researchers say there are both negative and positive aspects of minors using the platforms, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias found out.
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Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips — which are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets — as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February.

China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under President Donald Trump, has been cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons.

Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.”

Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year.

Investing in self-reliance

The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology.

China’s loudest complaint: It is blocked from buying a machine available only from a Dutch company, ASML, that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon chips on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Without that, Chinese efforts to make transistors faster and more efficient by packing them more closely together on fingernail-size slivers of silicon are stalled.

Making processor chips requires some 1,500 steps and technologies owned by U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers.

“China won’t swallow everything. If damage occurs, we must take action to protect ourselves,” the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jian, told the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad.

“I’m not going to speculate on what that might be,” Tan said. “It won’t just be harsh words.”

The conflict has prompted warnings the world might split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation.

“The bifurcation in technological and economic systems is deepening,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said at an economic forum in China last month. “This will impose a huge economic cost.”

U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong, and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes, and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses.

Chinese industries will “hit a wall” in 2025 or 2026 if they can’t get next-generation chips or the tools to make their own, said Handel Jones, a tech industry consultant.

China “will start falling behind significantly,” said Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies.

EV batteries as leverage

Beijing might have leverage, though, as the biggest source of batteries for electric vehicles, Jones said.

Chinese battery giant CATL supplies U.S. and Europe automakers. Ford Motor Co. plans to use CATL technology in a $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan.

“China will strike back,” Jones said. “What the public might see is China not giving the U.S. batteries for EVs.”

On Friday, Japan increased pressure on Beijing by joining Washington in imposing controls on exports of chipmaking equipment. The announcement didn’t mention China, but the trade minister said Tokyo doesn’t want its technology used for military purposes.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, warned Japan that “weaponizing sci-tech and trade issues” would “hurt others as well as oneself.”

Hours later, the Chinese government announced an investigation of the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, Micron Technology Inc., a key supplier to Chinese factories. The Cyberspace Administration of China said it would look for national security threats in Micron’s technology and manufacturing but gave no details.

The Chinese military also needs semiconductors for its development of stealth fighter jets, cruise missiles and other weapons.

Chinese alarm grew after President Joe Biden in October expanded controls imposed by Trump on chip manufacturing technology. Biden also barred Americans from helping Chinese manufacturers with some processes.

To nurture Chinese suppliers, Xi’s government is stepping up support that industry experts say already amounts to as much as $30 billion a year in research grants and other subsidies.
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U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence (AI) is dangerous, but underscored that technology companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public. 

Biden told science and technology advisers that AI could help in addressing disease and climate change, but it was also important to address potential risks to society, national security and the economy. 

“Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,” he said at the start of a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. When asked if AI was dangerous, he said, “It remains to be seen. It could be.” 

Biden spoke on the same day that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, surrendered in New York over charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn actor. 

Biden declined to comment on Trump’s legal woes, and Democratic strategists say his focus on governing will create a politically advantageous split screen of sorts as his former rival, a Republican, deals with his legal challenges. 

The president said social media had already illustrated the harm that powerful technologies can do without the right safeguards. 

“Absent safeguards, we see the impact on the mental health and self-images and feelings and hopelessness, especially among young people,” Biden said.  

He reiterated a call for Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to put limits on personal data that technology companies collect, ban advertising targeted at children, and to prioritize health and safety in product development. 

Shares of companies that employ AI dropped sharply before Biden’s meeting, although the broader market was also selling off on Tuesday.  

Shares of AI software company C3.ai Inc. were down 24%, more than halving a four-session winning streak of nearly 40% through Monday. Thailand security firm Guardforce AI GFAI.O fell 29%, data analytics firm BigBear.ai BBAI.N was down 16% and conversation intelligence company SoundHound AI SOUN.O was down 13% late on Tuesday.  

AI is becoming a hot topic for policymakers. 

The tech ethics group Center for AI and Digital Policy has asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to stop OpenAI from issuing new commercial releases of GPT-4, which has wowed and appalled users with its human-like abilities to generate written responses to requests. 

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has urged society to pause as it considers the ramifications of AI. 

Last year the Biden administration released a blueprint “Bill of Rights” to help ensure users’ rights are protected as technology companies design and develop AI systems.  
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The digital divide is one of the biggest challenges to education in sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations says nearly 90% of students lack access to household computers, and 82% to the internet. In Kenya, the aid group TechLit Africa aims to change that by building scores of computer labs. Juma Majanga reports from Mogotio, Kenya.
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An exhibition currently on display in Poland uses virtual reality to show the level of destruction Russia’s war has brought on Ukraine. For some visitors, the VR videos that can be viewed at the “Through the War” display have been overwhelming. Lesia Bakalets reports from Warsaw. Daniil Batushchak.
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Australia said Tuesday it will ban TikTok on government devices, joining a growing list of Western nations cracking down on the Chinese-owned app due to national security fears.   

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the decision followed advice from the country’s intelligence agencies and would begin “as soon as practicable”.   

Australia is the last member of the secretive Five Eyes security alliance to pursue a government TikTok ban, joining its allies the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.   

France, the Netherlands and the European Commission have made similar moves.   

Dreyfus said the government would approve some exemptions on a “case-by-case basis” with “appropriate security mitigations in place”.   

Cybersecurity experts have warned that the app — which boasts more than one billion global users — could be used to hoover up data that is then shared with the Chinese government.   

Surveys have estimated that as many as seven million Australians use the app — or about a quarter of the population.   

In a security notice outlining the ban, the Attorney-General’s Department said TikTok posed “significant security and privacy risks” stemming from the “extensive collection of user data”.   

China condemned the ban, saying it had “lodged stern representations” with Canberra over the move and urging Australia to “provide Chinese companies with a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment”.   

“China has always maintained that the issue of data security should not be used as a tool to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power and unreasonably suppress companies from other countries,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.   

‘No-brainer’    

But Fergus Ryan, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said stripping TikTok from government devices was a “no-brainer”.   

“It’s been clear for years that TikTok user data is accessible in China,” Ryan told AFP.    

“Banning the use of the app on government phones is a prudent decision given this fact.”   

The security concerns are underpinned by a 2017 Chinese law that requires local firms to hand over personal data to the state if it is relevant to national security.   

Beijing has denied these reforms pose a threat to ordinary users.   

China “has never and will not require companies or individuals to collect or provide data located in a foreign country, in a way that violates local law”, the foreign ministry’s Mao said in March.   

‘Rooted in xenophobia’   

TikTok has said such bans are “rooted in xenophobia”, while insisting that it is not owned or operated by the Chinese government.    

The company’s Australian spokesman Lee Hunter said it would “never” give data to the Chinese government.   

“No one is working harder to make sure this would never be a possibility,” he told Australia’s Channel Seven.   

But the firm acknowledged in November that some employees in China could access European user data, and in December it said employees had used the data to spy on journalists.   

The app is typically used to share short, lighthearted videos and has exploded in popularity in recent years.   

Many government departments were initially eager to use TikTok as a way to connect with a younger demographic that is harder to reach through traditional media channels.   

New Zealand banned TikTok from government devices in March, saying the risks were “not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment”.    

Earlier this year, the Australian government announced it would be stripping Chinese-made CCTV cameras from politicians’ offices due to security concerns. 
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Britain’s privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty Tuesday for misusing children’s data and violating other protections for users’ personal information.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued a fine of $15.9 million to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people.

It’s the latest example of tighter scrutiny that TikTok and its parent, Chinese technology company ByteDance, are facing in the West, where governments are increasingly concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity.

The British watchdog, which was investigating data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts.

TikTok didn’t adequately identify and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, as required by Britain’s data protection laws, the agency said.

“There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release.

TikTok collected and used personal data of children who were inappropriately given access to the app, he said.

“That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll,” Edwards said.

The company said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.

“We invest heavily to help keep under 13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community,” TikTok said in statement. “We will continue to review the decision and are considering next steps.”

TikTok says it has improved its sign-up system since the breaches happened by no longer allowing users to simply declare they are old enough and looking for other signs that an account is used by someone under 13.

The penalty also covered other breaches of U.K. data privacy law.

The watchdog said TikTok failed to properly inform people about how their data is collected, used and shared in an easily understandable way. Without this information, it’s unlikely that young users would be able “to make informed choices” about whether and how to use TikTok, it said.

TikTok also failed to ensure personal data of British users was processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, the regulator said.

TikTok initially faced a 27 million-pound fine, which was reduced after the company persuaded regulators to drop other charges.

U.S. regulators in 2019 fined TikTok, previously known as Music.aly, $5.7 million in a case that involved similar allegations of unlawful collection of children’s personal information.

Also Tuesday, Australia became the latest country to ban TikTok from its government devices, with authorities from the European Union to the United States concerned that the app could share data with the Chinese government or push pro-Beijing narratives

U.S. lawmakers are also considering forcing a sale or even banning it outright as tensions with China grow.
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Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by Richard Branson, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell the business, the firm said in a statement Tuesday.   

The California-based company said last week it was laying off 85% of its employees — around 675 people — to reduce expenses due to its inability to secure sufficient funding.   

Virgin Orbit suffered a major setback earlier this year when an attempt to launch the first rocket into space from British soil ended in failure.   

The company had organized the mission with the UK Space Agency and Cornwall Spaceport to launch nine satellites into space.   

On Tuesday, the firm said “it commenced a voluntary proceeding under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code… in order to effectuate a sale of the business” and intended to use the process “to maximize value for its business and assets.”   

Last month, Virgin Orbit suspended operations for several days while it held funding negotiations and explored strategic opportunities.   

But at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, CEO Dan Hart told employees that operations would cease “for the foreseeable future,” US media reported at the time.   

“While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business,” Hart said in the company statement on Tuesday.   

“We believe that the cutting-edge launch technology that this team has created will have wide appeal to buyers as we continue in the process to sell the Company.”   

Founded by Branson in 2017, the firm developed “a new and innovative method of launching satellites into orbit,” while “successfully launching 33 satellites into their precise orbit,” Hart added.   

Virgin Orbit’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange were down 3% at 19 cents on Monday evening. 
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