політика, бізнес, народ

Washington — The initial backlash came quickly.

Within hours of last week’s vote in the House of Representatives approving legislation that could lead to a ban of the popular TikTok app in the United States, anger and outrage poured onto multiple social media platforms.

Some of the anger targeted U.S. lawmakers who supported the bill. Some focused on China.

And a number of social media accounts, some with large followings, put the blame on Israel and pro-Jewish groups in the United States.

“A foreign government is influencing the 2024 election,” Briahna Joy Gray posted on X.

“I’m not talking about China, but Israel,” added the former national press secretary for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

Jake Shields, a former mixed martial arts fighter who has used social media in the past to share his views on transgender issues, blamed the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

“The ADL said Tiktok Is a threat to Israel,” Shields posted on X. “AIPAC the Israeli lobby gave Dan Crebsahaw [sic] millions of dollars Now Crenshaw fights to ban TikTok.”

And journalist Glenn Greenwald said on X that the TikTok legislation gained momentum only after “Bipartisan DC became enraged so many Americans were allowed to criticize Israel” using the TikTok app.

Other posts and videos were quickly shared across other major platforms, including TikTok and Facebook.

U.S. officials contacted by VOA said the rush by some social media users to blame Israel or Jewish groups was not a surprise.

“Unfortunately, there are antisemitic people in America who will blame Israel and the Jewish people for anything, even Congress banning a Chinese-controlled app,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said in a statement to VOA.

“Their love for TikTok is no coincidence; it’s a tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to sow division and weaken our nation,” said Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a supporter of the legislation. “We can debate Middle East policy, but we must not tolerate hate or allow Communist China to manipulate our discourse.”

The FBI, which has warned repeatedly over the last several months both about the danger of TikTok and about a rising tide of antisemitism across the country, declined to comment, pointing to comments made by Director Christopher Wray at congressional hearings earlier this month.

“Americans need to ask themselves whether they want to give the Chinese government the ability to control access to their data, whether they want to give the Chinese government the ability to control the information they get through their recommendation algorithm,” Wray told House lawmakers during the annual Worldwide Threats hearing last week.

“When it comes to the algorithm and the recommendation algorithm and the ability to conduct influence operations, that is extraordinarily difficult to detect,” Wray added.

Researchers who track influence operations on social media, while wary, tell VOA that they have yet to see evidence that the spread of conspiracy theories blaming Israel or Jewish groups for the TikTok legislation is part of a concerted campaign.

“The period after 10/7 [Hamas terror attack on Israel] made clear that antisemitic conspiracies can spread rapidly across TikTok just by the nature of the platform’s algorithm, so no external coordination would be required as an explanation,” said Ben Dubow, president of Washington-based Omelas, which uses a combination of data collection, artificial intelligence and experts to track and analyze online disinformation and influence operations.

Dubow did not rule out the possibility that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, could be giving the anti-Israel and antisemitic posts more play if the Chinese government thought it might be helpful.

“The scant research available on TikTok’s algorithm often suggests ByteDance privileges content favorable to CCP [Chinese Communist Party] policy goals,” he said.

Omelas also found the conspiracy theories received some attention from other media outlets, including Russia-controlled RT and Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

“We’re seeing a few posts from RT and Al Jazeera tying the renewed push for a ban to TikTok’s role in the spread of ‘anti-Zionism’ in response to October 7,” Dubow said. “But none tying it explicitly to AIPAC and ADL.”

Geoff Roth, a professor of practice and journalism at the University of Houston, agreed the surge of social media posts echoing the Israel-TikTok narrative appeared to be “more organic.”

“The Israel conspiracy theory, as I like to put it, just seems to be coming from people who in general post stuff that is anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian,” he told VOA.

“It comes from different sides of the political spectrum,” Roth said. “But I think there’s people on both sides of the political spectrum that have a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment because of what’s going on in Gaza.”

Roth also noted that the theory tying the TikTok legislation to Israel and Jewish groups, while possibly the most prominent, is not the only narrative that gained traction following the bill’s passage in the House.

“There’s the narrative of security and concerns about the [Chinese]Communist Party and whether or not that [the legislation] is justified,” he said. “And then sort of the more far out things out there like, this is a Republican plot to get younger voters to be against Biden because if Biden signed it into law, he’s going to lose votes from younger people.”

One account on X pushing the Republican plot theory called the TikTok legislation “another trick.”

A second X account added, “I’d wager Republicans who just voted for a TikTok Ban will rename it the ‘Biden Ban the moment he signs it and within weeks that will be the official name and all anyone remembers.”

 
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New York — President Joe Biden’s administration announced Wednesday revised pollution standards for cars and trucks meant to accelerate the U.S. auto industry’s shift to electric to mitigate climate change.

The rules set ambitious emission reductions for 2032 but are moderated somewhat compared with preliminary standards unveiled last April. Following carmaker criticism, the final rules give manufacturers greater flexibility and ease the benchmarks in the first three years.

Those shifts were criticized as a sop to corporations from at least one environmental group, even as the final rule won praise from other leading NGOs focused on climate change.

The final rules — which were described by administration official as “the strongest ever” and would likely be undone if Republican Donald Trump defeats Biden in November — still require a nearly 50% drop in fleet-wide emissions in 2032 compared with 2026 through increased sales of electric vehicles (EVs) and low-emission autos.

The rules, which dovetail with other key Biden programs to build more EV charging stations and manufacturing facilities and incentivize EV sales, establish the environment as a significant point of difference in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump has mocked climate change as a problem and cast the transition to EVs as a job-killer that will benefit China at the expense of American workers.

Biden argues that U.S. auto builders need to take the lead in the expanding EV market.

“I brought together American automakers. I brought together American autoworkers,” said Biden in a statement. “Together, we’ve made historic progress.”

Alluding to his target set three years ago that 50% of new vehicles in 2030 would be EVs, Biden predicted we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”

EVs accounted for 7.6% in 2023 sales, up from 5.9% in 2022, according to Cox Automotive.

The original proposal had envisioned the EV share surging to as much as 67% of new vehicle sales by 2032.

Carmakers, which are midway through sweeping, multi-billion-dollar investments to build more EV capacity, criticized the initial standards as overly-stringent. They cited the limited state of charging capacity in the United States that has dampened consumer demand, as well as difficulties in supply of metals and other raw materials for EV batteries.

Following input from the auto industry, organized labor and auto dealerships, Biden administration officials decided to allow manufacturers a “variety of pathways” to reaching the standard, a senior Biden administration official said Tuesday.

This path could include a mix of EVs, conventional but more fuel-efficient engines, and plug-in hybrid vehicles, which have seen a rise in demand of late.

Biden administration officials opted to soften year-to-year emissions improvements in the 2027-2030 period, while maintaining the same target in 2032.

Moderating the targets in these first three years “was the right call,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a Washington lobby representing carmakers.

“These adjusted EV targets — still a stretch goal — should give the market and supply chains a chance to catch up,” said Bozzella, adding that the extra time will allow more EV charging stations to come on-line.

The final standards set a fleet-wide target of 85 grams of carbon dioxide in 2032, down from 170 in 2027, according to an administration fact sheet.

Wednesday’s initiative won praise from leading environmental groups including the Sierra Club and NRDC, which said the new rules “take us in the right direction,” according to a statement from NRDC chief Manish Bapna.

But Dan Becker, director of the climate transport campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, slammed the adjusted rules as “significantly weaker.”

“The EPA caved to pressure from Big Auto, Big Oil and car dealers and riddled the plan with loopholes big enough to drive a Ford F150 through,” Becker said.

“The weaker rule means cars and pickups spew more pollution, oil companies keep socking consumers at the pump, and automakers keep wielding well-practiced delay tactics.”
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Washington — The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide Intel with up to $8.5 billion in direct funding and $11 billion in loans for computer chip plants in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon. 

President Joe Biden plans to talk up the investment on Wednesday as he visits Intel’s campus in Chandler, Arizona, which could be a decisive swing state in November’s election. He has often said that not enough voters know about his economic policies and suggested that more would support him if they did know. 

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the deal reached through her department would put the United States in a position to produce 20% of the world’s most advanced chips by 2030, up from the current level of zero. The United States designs advanced chips, but its inability to make them domestically has emerged as a national security and economic risk. 

“Failure is not an option — leading-edge chips are the core of our innovation system, especially when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence and our military systems,” Raimondo said on a call with reporters. “We can’t just design chips. We have to make them in America.”

The funding announcement comes amid the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign. Biden has been telling voters that his policies have led to a resurgence in U.S. manufacturing and job growth. His message is a direct challenge to former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, who raised tariffs while in the White House and wants to do so again on the promise of protecting U.S. factory jobs from China. 

Biden narrowly beat Trump in Arizona in 2020 by a margin of 49.4% to 49.1%. 

U.S. adults have dim views of Biden’s economic leadership, with just 34% approving, according to a February poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. The lingering impact of inflation hitting a four-decade high in 2022 has hurt the Democrat, who had a 52% approval on the economy in July 2021. 

Intel’s projects would be funded in part through the bipartisan 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which the Biden administration helped shepherd through Congress at a time of concerns after the pandemic that the loss of access to chips made in Asia could plunge the U.S. economy into recession.  

When pushing for the investment, lawmakers expressed concern about efforts by China to control Taiwan, which accounts for more than 90% of advanced computer chip production. 

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat up for reelection this year, stressed that his state would become “a global leader in semiconductor manufacturing” as Intel would be generating thousands of jobs. Ohio has voted for Trump in the past two presidential elections, and Brown in November will face Republican Bernie Moreno, a Trump-backed businessman from Cleveland. 

Wednesday’s announcement is the fourth and largest so far under the chips law, with the government support expected to help enable Intel to make $100 billion in capital investments over five years. About 25% of that total would involve building and land, while roughly 70% would go to equipment, said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. 

“We think of this as a defining moment for the United States, the semiconductor industry and for Intel,” said Gelsinger, who called the CHIPS Act “the most critical industrial policy legislation since World War II.” 

The Intel CEO said on a call with reporters that he would like to see a sequel to the 2022 law in order to provide additional funding for the industry. 

Biden administration officials say that computer chip companies would not be investing domestically at their expected scale without the government support. Intel funding would lead to a combined 30,000 manufacturing and construction jobs. The company also plans to claim tax credits from the Treasury Department worth up to 25% on qualified investments. 

The Santa Clara, California-based company will use the funding in four different states. In Chandler, Arizona, the money will help to build two new chip plants and modernize an existing one. The funding will establish two advanced plants in New Albany, Ohio, which is just outside the state capital of Columbus. 

The company will also turn two of its plants in Rio Rancho, New Mexico into advanced packaging facilities. And Intel will also modernize facilities in Hillsboro, Oregon. 

The Biden administration has also made workforce training and access to affordable childcare a priority in agreements to support companies. Under the agreement with the Commerce Department, Intel will commit to local training programs as well as increase the reimbursement amount for its childcare program, among other efforts. 
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