Ged Carroll

Search results for: “Nortel”

  • Uninsurable hacks + more things

    Uninsurable hacks

    As cybercrime has become more common there has been a move towards the incidents becoming uninsurable hacks in nature. 2022 looks like a watershed moment in the move to uninsurable hacks.

    Lloyd’s of London defends cyber insurance exclusion for state-backed attacks | Financial Times – Lloyds of London were looking at state backed exclusions. The parallel between a state backed cyber attack and and an act of war have clear parallels from an insurance point of view. An act of war would be exempt from most insurance policy cover. A state backed cyber attack then becomes an uninsurable attack. However, while a business could expect government retribution and likely support in an act of war, the uninsurable hack exists in a grey zone just below the threshold of government response.

    The closest thing that has happened was criminal charges filed against Park Jin Hyok for the Wannacry ransomware that affected the NHS, Bangladesh Central Bank theft and the Sony Pictures hack. Russia has attempted attacks against at an oil refinery in at least one NATO country likely due to the material support that Ukraine has been receiving. NATO isn’t in a state of war with Russia and there are likely to be few repercussions and deterrents. Chinese backed hackers dismantled Nortel and helped drive the business into bankruptcy. These would all be uninsurable hacks as the risk is unmanageable in nature.

    North Korea presents a particular type of risk for uninsurable hacks, using cyber crime to finance its sanction hit economy.

    Companies like NSO and service companies based in India have democratised sophisticated intrusions for legal firms and business purposes. Widening the risk even further and creating a shadow economy of such scale that it creates uninsurable hacks by his own nature. Some of these law firms may even work with insurance companies in other areas; indicating the kind of perverse business incentives that drive these uninsurable hacks.

    The final aspect ushering in uninsurable hacks is one of scale. Due to the economics of digital business – criminal or otherwise; they scale in a non-linear fashion. Insurance insiders see these as uninsurable attacks as they are ‘civilisation level’ attacks. Uninsurable hacks also come from an inability of the insurance industry to absorb pay-outs on a massive scale. But what can be done about uninsurable hacks since Pandora’s box has been opened?

    Business

    This story how Balkan organised crime groups completely compromised MSC is stunning for its audacity and impact.

    China

    Chinese business confidence falls to lowest in a decade | RTÉ 

    China to step up support for local chipmakers – supported businesses include NAND flash memory maker Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC) and AI chip developer Cambricon Technologies

    Notebook component makers see large absences at China plants due to COVID – some notebook supply chain companies in China have seen infections in their plants affect up to 50% of their workers, resulting in the temporary shutdown of production lines

    China’s Bureaucratic Slack: Material Inducements and Decision-Making Risks among Chinese Local Cadres | The China Journal – We find bureaucratic slack among lower-ranked cadres to be caused mainly by the lack of material inducements, while higher-ranked officials are more discouraged by increased risks

    Mao and markets – great talk on the permeable membrane between communist thought and capitalism.

    China Makes Moves in Middle East After Biden’s Frosty Reception – An eagerness to offer “Chinese wisdom” to the Middle East’s problems is symbolic of Xi’s decade in power, during which time he has thrown off the humble shackles of his predecessors to raise his country’s stature on the international stage. Welcome or not, his offer signals to China’s domestic audience Beijing’s growing influence abroad and its capacity to advise others on successful governance. However, China’s exact role in realizing its peacekeeping recipe remains unclear. A frequent critic of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere, Beijing knows all too well the political, economic and military costs of becoming involved. Its willingness to do so is also a matter of constant debate. “China is cautiously increasing its presence in the Middle East, driven more by Middle Eastern states than its own ambitions,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China sees the Middle East as volatile and an area still dominated by the United States. They are cautious about getting sucked into the region’s conflicts.”

    Consumer behaviour

    Why the U.S. middle class is feeling squeezed | Noahpinion 

    Fascinating talk by Scott Galloway

    Culture

    Mr Tape used custom modified reel-to-reel tape recorders. The reason why he can handle the reels is that its actually the tape capstans rather than the reels that are powered on a tape machine. So very different to how a cassette tape recorder works.

    Henry Cavill on his love for Warhammer 40K. He is seriously invested in the universe.

    Design

    Shedding some light on “dark patterns” and advertising regulation – ASA | CAP 

    Economics

    Making Products in America Means Stuff Will Be More Expensive | Business Insider – cost is less clear when one takes into account carbon tax. It is also worthwhile thinking about how this could drive an improvement in product quality as well as production moves away from China. Improved quality could help reduce consumption and improve environmental impact

    Ethics

    The Camp Fix: Infrastructural Power and the “Re-education Labour Regime” in Turkic Muslim Industrial Parks in North-west China | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core – Drawing on worker interviews, government documents, industry materials and images this article shows that for-profit public-private industrial parks have been built as part of a “camp fix” mechanism centred on detaining and “re-educating” Uyghurs and Kazakhs at the periphery of the nation. It argues that these industrial parks concentrate forms of repressive assistance and “dormitory labour regimes” that operate at other frontiers of Chinese state power and point these strategies of disempowerment towards a seemingly permanent, ethno-racialized underclass, producing a “re-education labour regime.” It further argues that the material infrastructures of these surveiled and policed spaces themselves are productive in enforcing the goals of the “camp fix”: the creation of high-quality, underpaid, docile and non-religious Muslim workers who are controlled through the built environment – this is the environment that large corporates have used in their supply chain. Companies such as VW Group and Anta (aka Salomon, Arc’teryx etc)

    Finance

    Scott Galloway breaks down a number of financial stories from 2022.

    FMCG

    Starbucks Sales Forecast to Decline Due to Customer Cuts in Add-Ons 

    Hong Kong

    Visual Framing: The Use of COVID-19 in the Mobilization of Hong Kong Protest | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core – messages and images posted on Lennon Walls between January and April 2020 have used COVID-19 to extend public expression of sentiment on the debates around the Hong Kong government and to further mobilize a sense of Hong Kong identity against China. The findings contribute to the understandings of how the cultural politics surrounding the pandemic became a collective action frame in the mobilization of a localized Hong Kong political identity against the Hong Kong and Chinese governments – this linking of COVID-19 to political discourse makes public health communications much more complex

    Hong Kong property: developers mourn demise of ‘coffin homes’ boom | Financial Times – Analysts, including Goldman Sachs, expect Hong Kong home prices to drop by 30 per cent by the end of next year. Shares of CK Asset and Henderson Land have fallen about a tenth in the past six months. The latter trades at 10 times forward earnings, which is more than 40 per cent lower than even 2014 levels — during the last property market decline — reflecting the dire outlook. – add into this also the amount of Hong Kongers leaving the city as well

    Indonesia

    Indonesia’s foreign retirees fear being driven out as new visa scheme targets ‘filthy rich’ | South China Morning Post 

    In Indonesia, ‘all-gendered’ priests are fighting to keep their traditions alive | South China Morning Post – With fewer than 40 Bissu remaining in areas across South Sulawesi, a community which once held divine status is now fighting against extinction. Many Bissu were accused of violating Islamic principles and faced persecution, but some are trying to preserve their heritage by performing cultural, shaman-like roles – the implicit influence of gulf Arab style muslim beliefs is not only about extremism but presenting a dead orthodoxy that will make Indonesia as unattractive as Malaysia has become

    Innovation

    Chipmaker TSMC in talks with suppliers over first European plant | Financial Times – it will take a while for TSMC to get a European project under way

    Ireland

    This is fascinating, it shows how Irish consumers have become much more sophisticated in the 50 years that Ireland has been in the European Union.

    Japan

    Sapporo, Japan Olympic Committee hit pause on Winter Games bid -Kyodo | Reuters – the scandal that encompassed Japan could be a good thing on balance as it allows Japan to press pause on a Winter Olympics bid. The IOC is more hassle than its worth for Japan. Japan already has a great reputation

    Korea

    Jinni’s shock departure from new K-pop group NMixx, just three days after its Loewe fashion campaign launched and within a year of debuting – | South China Morning Post – girl group seems to have been formed to become brand ambassadors for a luxury brand. Much of the money is in sponsorship but usually its mainstream brands like LG, Samsung, G-Shock etc

    Luxury

    From meme fashion to gamified drops: The top consumer trends of 2022 | Vogue Business 

    Rolex Sales: Pricey Luxury Swiss Watch Exports Jump to Record High on US Demand – Bloomberg – Americans snap up pricey timepieces, lifting exports by 33%. Retailers in Qatar stocked up ahead of the football World Cup

    From meme fashion to gamified drops: The top consumer trends of 2022 | Vogue Business 

    Media

    Google agrees NFL streaming deal as Big Tech chases sports rights | Financial Times 

    Online

    Legal basis for removing inaccurate Hong Kong anthem results from Google, John Lee says citing tech giant’s policy – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP 

    Read Zuckerberg’s 2019 Deposition on Facebook User Data | Business Insider – A 2017 report in The New York Times had said Cambridge Analytica previously claimed it could use data to glean voters’ inclinations. Zuckerberg appeared to address those types of news reports in his testimony to SEC regulators, saying it piqued his interest about how the company might have been using Facebook at the time.  “I kind of remember having this reaction to this, which is, if they are using our systems for advertising, then I’m curious to understand if they’re actually doing anything novel that matches the rhetoric that they have, or if they’re just kind of puffing up rhetoric around what would be a relatively standard use of our ad systems,” he told the SEC in 2019, according to the newly released testimony. – to be fair Zuckerberg’s reaction reminds me of a lot of discussions that I was having with peers about Cambridge Analytica at the time

    Netflix password sharing may be illegal – British government warns – Nadine Dorries has already confessed at sharing a password. I think we need a strong a approach to law enforcement and use her as a demonstration case. I think 10 years inside should do it ;-)

    Retailing

    Amazon hit by ECJ ruling on online sale of counterfeit goods | Financial Times 

    Security

    Why everyone needs a dedicated GPS device. TL;DR don’t rely on wireless networks

    How This Bombardier Challenger 650 Jet Became a High-Tech Spy Plane – Robb Report – interesting that this appearing in luxury publication Robb Report

    How SpaceX’s Starlink terminals first arrived in Ukraine | Quartz – Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, the US began scrambling to find satellite communications equipment that could keep the Ukrainian government connected to the rest of the world, new documents reveal. Those efforts resulted in thousands of satellite-antenna terminals that connect to SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet network being sent to Ukraine. They have proven vital to Ukraine’s war effort, but became a source of controversy for both SpaceX and the US over the service’s cost, and who is paying for it. Government contractor DAI began searching for the right equipment as early as Feb. 11, according to documents Quartz obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, shocking many, but not the US government, which sounded the alarm ahead of the invasion

    TikTok admits tracking FT journalist in leaks investigation | Financial Times – ByteDance, the Chinese owner of viral social media platform TikTok, has admitted it inappropriately obtained the data of users, including a Financial Times journalist, in order to analyse their location as part of an internal leaks investigation. Over the summer, four employees on the ByteDance internal audit team looked into the sharing of internal information to journalists. Two members of staff in the US and two in China gained access to the IP addresses and other personal data of FT journalist Cristina Criddle, to work out if she was in the proximity of any ByteDance employees

    Software

    How Amazon Uses AI To Automate Work In Its Corporate Headquarters – I was struck by how deeply artificial intelligence was already ingrained in their cultures. With in-house AI research labs that rank among the globe’s best, the tech giants were automating wide swaths of their operations and changing the nature of work within their companies. This commitment to AI in the workplace is newly relevant as powerful tools like Dall-E, ChatGPT, and their ilk make their way into the public’s hands. As access to this powerful technology spreads, nearly all companies will soon have tools like those I saw inside Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. So work inside our companies will change as well

    Taiwan

    Foxconn to sell stake in Tsinghua Unigroup, faces fine | EE Times 

    Technology

    Asianometry does a run down of Sun Microsystems history. A few things. When I started working agency side, this was what our client websites were hosted on. Sun had a partnership with Netscape to have a great software stack. Oracle’s hardware business is the old Sun Microsystems business. Cisco routers and other manufacturers as well were basically a Sun motherboard and a raft of ethernet ports together with a look-up database that handled the routing.

    Revenge of reality: how technology was discounted in 2022 | Financial Times 

    Vietnam

    Vietnam loses 25 ancient books related to culture and sovereign territory — Radio Free Asia – one of which is “relevant to Vietnam’s sovereign territory,” according to the deputy head of the literature department, Nguyen Xuan Dien. Posting on his Facebook page on Tuesday, a day after the institute’s annual meeting, Dien said the books were “extremely important for national culture.”The institute said Wednesday the books were among 35,000 volumes it had cataloged and preserved at the request of the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences When it inspected the inventory in April 2020, for the first time in over 10 years, it discovered that 29 books were missing. Four of the books were later found on the wrong shelves. Among the books still unaccounted for are four written by scientist Le Quy Don and two books which record the precise geography, boundaries and borders related to Vietnam’s sovereign territory, according to Dien. Those two volumes could help substantiate Vietnam’s territorial claims in the South China Sea – I would guess that these books have been incinerated in China, as it helps China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and debilitates Vietnam’s rival claims

    Web of no web

    How successful are Roblox branded experiences? – Peter Gasston – low continued engagement

  • State capitalism & more things

    State capitalism

    State capitalism has been created in various forms in China since opening up. Some of the new forms have aspects that impacts the relative attractiveness of doing business in or with Chinese companies.

    Opening up

    Historically since opening up China has been a mixed market model. There were small private businesses including many farmers. There was the state owned enterprises, a direct descendent of Mao’s work units and businesses that the government wanted to keep a strategic hold on.

    Shenzhen biennial
    Taken at an exhibition that was part of the Shenzhen Biennial, when I was there back in 2010

    Grey zone and hybrid companies

    Grey zone companies

    A classic example of a grey zone company would be Huawei. In their 2019 paper Who Owns Huawei, Balding & Clarke make a convincing argument that Huawei is a state controlled company, if not state owned in the conventional sense. This view is supported by:

    • The state hacking of Nortel which Huawei disproportionately benefited from in their subsequent telecoms carrier contracts and 5G technology
    • State bank vendor financing on behalf of Huawei at negative interest rates that telecoms providers like BT and Vodafone were given
    • The ‘princess’ Meng Wanzhou case in Canada

    Zichen Wang translated a Chinese academic paper that pointed out an alternative view. Yes the ownership structure was a shit show, was pretty much the one point of agreement between the two papers.

    But that much of this was down to domestic practice influenced by classic state capitalism and modern business law that China brought in and still doesn’t square up with what was happening on the ground in terms of business laws.

    You can make up your own mind if this is an element of state capitalism.

    Hybrid companies

    An example of this would be the Stellantis | Guangzhou Auto Company joint venture that made Jeep branded SUVs for China. These joint ventures were basically the way the Chinese government coerced technology transfer from western firms to local firms. The Stellantis JV has gone into bankruptcy and GAC seems to have its own range of capable SUVs based on Stellantis expertise gained over the years.

    Huawei’s joint venture with 3Com allowed the telecoms giant to build a large enterprise networking business to compete with the likes of Cisco Systems. At the time that China first rolled out its Golden Shield internet censorship platform, it relied on Cisco technology, and China would want to remedy this under its state capitalism system. Huawei now supports internet censorship around the world. This form of state capitalism has been common in a number of developing countries over the years, but China was particularly successful in using it in a coercive manner to enhance state capitalism rather than just driving economic growth.

    Rise of the hybrid firm – Gavekal Research – Today, 48% of onshore listed companies, representing 67% of market capitalization, have a mixed bag of major shareholders from the private and state sectors. While many of those companies are still clearly controlled by either state or private shareholders, a large and significant group of firms occupies an intermediate position that is harder to characterize. – on China’s state capitalism system

    How China’s communist officials became venture capitalists – Times of India – The US and other Western governments have long been wary of the economic power of China’s “state capitalism,” fueled by giant state-owned companies and an industrial policy driven by subsidies and government mandates. But policymakers need to pay more attention to what’s really propelling China’s growth: private firms with minority government-­linked investments. “The distinction between state-owned and private has been important for policymakers outside China and for analyzing the Chinese economy,” says Meg Rithmire, a professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in comparative political development in Asia and China. “That boundary is eroding.” – see also Chinese banks vendor financing deals which is the real reason behind Huawei’s growth (alongside stealing IP and other proprietary elements: Nortel cough, cough)

    Influenced firms

    Influenced firms are a particularly pernicious part of the Chinese state capitalism system. The Chinese economy has always relied on relationships and even patronage of government power brokers similar to Malaysia, Thailand and Korea. But the state has looked to move personal bonds to state bonds. Much of this comes from National Intelligence Law 2017; that puts demands on Chinese citizens, Chinese companies and anyone connected to China.

    Like the more widely reported Cybersecurity Law (which went into effect on June 1) and a raft of other recent statutes, the Intelligence Law places ill-defined and open-ended new security obligations and risks not only on U.S. and other foreign citizens doing business or studying in China, but in particular on their Chinese partners and co-workers.

    Of special concern are signs that the Intelligence Law’s drafters are trying to shift the balance of these legal obligations from intelligence “defense” to “offense”—that is, by creating affirmative legal responsibilities for Chinese and, in some cases, foreign citizens, companies, or organizations operating in China to provide access, cooperation, or support for Beijing’s intelligence-gathering activities.

    The new law is the latest in an interrelated package of national security, cyberspace, and law enforcement legislation drafted under Xi Jinping. These laws and regulations are aimed at strengthening the legal basis for China’s security activities and requiring Chinese and foreign citizens, enterprises, and organizations to cooperate with them. They include the laws on Counterespionage (2014), National Security (2015), Counterterrorism (2015), Cybersecurity (2016), and Foreign NGO Management (2016), as well as the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law (2015), the Management Methods for Lawyers and Law Firms (both 2016), and the pending draft Encryption Law and draft Standardization Law.

    Tanner, M.S. Beijing’s New National Intelligence Law: From Defense to Offense (July 20, 2017). United States: Lawfare.

    China’s companies rewrite rules to declare Communist Party ties – Nikkei Asia – the latest party congress has heralded a new chapter in state capitalism with all of China’s companies rewriting rules to declare Communist Party ties, rather than shareholder responsibility.

    Business

    The cost of doing business amidst the culture wars is an entirely new question of risk | CityAM 

    China

    For Young Chinese, Even State Sector Jobs Are No Longer a Safe Bet – the public sector hasn’t lived up to its reputation of being a safe haven. Nearly three years into the pandemic, many of China’s local governments are facing eye-watering fiscal deficits and implementing austerity measures. And those cuts are hitting civil servants hard. Wang had originally expected to earn at least 250,000 yuan ($34,600) per year at his new job. In reality, he estimates he’s being paid just 160,000 yuan. His basic salary has been cut by 30%; his social insurance payments haven’t risen as promised; part of his annual bonus has never been paid. Instead, Wang finds himself forced to work regular unpaid overtime shifts, helping to implement the town’s virus-control policies, and trying to cut back spending at home. His plans to trade in his boring SUV have been put on hold indefinitely.

    Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada under investigation | Hong Kong Free Press – there is a definite turning point around the illegal Chinese police operations against its diaspora. I expect United Front activities to be the next point of focus and you could see triad organisations treated less like organised crime and more like the paramiilitary or terrorist arm of the United Front

    China wants homegrown logistics firms to take on FedEx, UPS | Quartz 

    The World According to Xi Jinping: What China’s Ideologue in Chief Really Believes | Foreign Affairs best read in comparison with this: There is no hope the Communist Party can reform — Q&A with Frank Dikötter – The China Project. The FT’s take: Maximum Xi | Financial Times  

    Design

    Chip Shortage Forces Toyota to Issue Metal Keys for Japan Cars | Jalopnik and New York state passes ‘Right to repair’ bill for electronic devices – Telecompaper – both could see a move for more repairable less software cloud dependent products

    Why isn’t the internet more fun and weird? – I was rereading this and it seems more powerful today than it was when I read it back in 2019

    Economics

    How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe – The Atlantic – “Between 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,” the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English. “It’s more like the people are taking the robots’ jobs.” That might sound like a quirky example, because the British economy is obviously more complex than blokes rubbing cars with soap. But it’s an illustrative case. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the U.K. manufacturing industry has less technological automation than just about any other similarly rich country. With barely 100 installed robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2020, its average robot density was below that of Slovenia and Slovakia. One analysis of the U.K.’s infamous “productivity puzzle” concluded that outside of London and finance, almost every British sector has lower productivity than its Western European peers. Read alongside – What British politics looks like to the rest of the world – The Face TL;DR a joke that makes their country look good by comparison.

    Economy improves in Q3 but faces mounting risks | Merics on China but the numbers in Europe, in particular Spain and Germany are bad: Eurozone manufacturing output falls at sharpest pace since initial COVID- 19 wave as demand for goods plummets | S&P Global 

    Semiconductor market continues to fall … | EETimes – guess that the economy isn’t going to pick up for a while. You can measure industrial activity and likely predicted consumer demand by following the trends in the semiconductor market. More structural pain due as well – We must prepare for the reality of the Chip Wars | Financial Times 

    Energy

    Japan cannot survive without Russian oil, warns trading house chief | Financial Times – Some analysts have expressed concern about Itochu’s heavy exposure to China through its 10 per cent stake in Citic, but Okafuji stressed that its risks were lower since its investment was in a government-owned company. “Currently, what they are doing in China is to move private assets from private companies to government-owned companies to reduce the gap between the rich and poor,” he said. “Our objective is to contribute to providing a prosperous lifestyle to the Chinese people, so I think the Chinese government welcomes that.” – I expect that the Chinese government and CITIC will tear the face off Itochu

    Finance

    Paul Graham’s Legacy | I, Cringely – god save us from blockchain garbage

    Germany

    Concerns mount over German Chancellor Scholz’s upcoming trip to China | Axios – it looks like there is a battle royale brewing between the German public and their large corporates. Add to this: Ports in a storm: Chinese investments in Europe spark fear of malign influence | South China Morning Post  and Watching China in Europe with Noah Barkin – 55 percent of Germans believe he (Scholz) is out of his depth), deepens divisions in his government, and undermines its quest for a common European policy toward Beijing, a goal that was spelled out in black and white in the three-party coalition agreement. More worryingly, it shows that Scholz and his advisers still have a steep learning curve on China. Germany’s sway with Beijing depends on a united front in Berlin, in Europe, and across the G7. Scholz has managed to torpedo them all in the span of a few weeks. To be clear, the problem is not that Scholz is meeting with Xi. The party congress showed that Xi may be the only member of China’s leadership who is worth talking to these days. And it is normal for Scholz, who has been chancellor for nearly a year but unable to meet with Xi in person because of China’s restrictive COVID-19 rules, to want to sit down for a face-to-face with the country’s newly anointed leader for life. But the when, where, and how of this first meeting are important. And Scholz has whiffed on all three. The situation is reminiscent of his predecessor Angela Merkel’s decision, two years ago, to hurry through the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) weeks before Joe Biden entered the White House. Like Merkel, Scholz is gifting Xi a geopolitical victory without much in return. And he is voluntarily sacrificing whatever leverage his government might have had with China. He may not realize that but members of his own government—some of whom have been working diligently for months on a new, tougher China strategy—are furious. “As long as the German chancellor doesn’t buy into his own government’s China strategy, then it is worthless,” one German official fumed. “The Chinese can see the divide in Berlin and Europe, and believe me, they will find a way to exploit it. It is absolutely fatal. And what is so stunning is that Scholz has done all of this of his own free will.”

    Hong Kong

    America’s Biggest Financial Firms Are Still Collaborating with the Sanctioned Hong Kong Government – After an increasing number of critics began to pile on, including the co-chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Jeff Merkeley, a coalition of 20 U.S.-based Hong Kong activist groups, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Citibank’s Jane Fraser claimed that she had tested positive for Covid-19 and will pull out of the summit. The rest of these executives have only a couple of days to come down with similar illnesses or unexpected family commitments, but I’m not holding my breath and Hong Kong Summit Surrounded by Drama Before It Even Begins – Bloomberg – Top executives pull out after getting Covid; storm approaches. Event aimed at showing city is back in business after pandemic

    National security: Ex-leader of Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil group demands prosecution disclose more info – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP and High-profile national security trial of Hong Kong democrats to begin after Lunar New Year, court reveals – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP 

    BN(O) Hongkongers and Britain’s Chinese proficiency deficit — AgoraHK 

    Ideas

    Are Technologies Inevitable? – by Matt Clancy also worthwhile reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants

    Japan

    Kiko Mizuhara finds Heaven in Tokyo – The Face 

    Marketing

    9 in 10 marketers spend time in making global marketing locally relevant: report | Advertising | Campaign Asia – Marketers say local requirements are kept in mind by headquarters when making decisions, however, the majority (82%) feel they spend too much time educating HQ on Singaporean nuances and needs. 47% of marketing decision-makers in Singapore say that senior leadership in regional or global offices are misaligned with local marketing teams, there is a lack of local understanding of effective channels, and in some cases, there’s an assumption that a global approach will work across countries. Over a third (36%) of marketers believe in localising content for maximum ROI, however, the local tone, diversity and humour in campaigns is often not well understood by global offices teams. 

    Media

    Hong Kong editors used Stand News to praise criminals and promote illegal ideologies, says prosecutor at sedition trial | South China Morning Post – which gives you an idea of how far Hong Kong has changed after the National Security Law

    Online

    Inside the world of Wikipedia’s deaditors – The Face 

    Naspers Denies Report It’s Selling Its Tencent Stake to Citic – Caixin Global 

    Retailing

    11.11 shopping festival turns to long-term, sustainable growth | Marketing | Campaign Asia – Amid competition and economic uncertainty, more brand participants in China’s preeminent e-commerce festival in China may be seeking deeper customer engagement beyond driving up GMV with discounts. – Some thoughts: Chinese consumers are changing

    • Growth is changing towards disproportionately benefiting domestic brands and is very much in line with Xi Jinping’s vision
    • Economic growth is happening at the slowest pace in decades affecting consumer confidence and future consumer spend

    The macro-environment is changing too:

    • Economic growth is no longer a Chinese government priority
    • Chinese personal data laws are not marketer friendly

    Security

    US to deploy B-52 bombers to Australia as tensions with China mount | Financial Times 

    ‘We do rely on China — but so does every university’ | Scotland | The Times – admission by Edinburgh university principal

    Cybersecurity

    China to kick off ‘World Internet Conference’ next week with Beijing set to promote its vision of internet governance | South China Morning Post – The annual internet event will see participation from Huawei, Alibaba, Kaspersky and Infosys. Participation by western firms has diminished in recent years amid strict Covid-19 measures and Beijing’s crackdown on Big Tech

    Technology

    Apple’s Online Store and Information Systems Chiefs Are Leaving (AAPL) – Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-31/apple-s-online-store-and-information-sy…

    – The departures mean Apple is losing at least three vice presidents — the highest manager level below Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s executive team — in recent weeks. Evans Hankey, Apple’s vice president in charge of industrial design, is also leaving the company, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath has departed Apple in recent weeks as well, taking a position at a law firm

    Vietnam

    Xi Jinping Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Vietnam’s Communist Party Chief – The Diplomat – The elaborate ceremonials of Nguyen Phu Trong’s state visit are a reminder of the alternating attraction and resistance that underpin Sino-Vietnamese relations

    Web of no web

    Metaverse could open new kinds of cybercrime, Interpol warns, with scams operating differently in virtual reality | South China Morning Post 

    Wireless

    Trio conduct 6G reconfigurable intelligent surfaces trials … – Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces can be programmed to modulate the phase of electromagnetic waves and reflect signals into blind spots, enhancing coverage and improving user experience. The low cost, low energy consumption and easy deployment, of RIS have attracted broad interest in 6G research and made it a popular candidate technology. The technical trial mainly evaluated the deployment effects and performance of sub6 GHz RIS and mmWave RIS in different indoor and outdoor scenarios. The tests modelled deployment conditions with and without RIS, different incidence and reflection angles, different deployment distances, etc. Recorded performance index parameters included RSRP, throughput and others. The trial participants worked together to carry out several RIS test projects yielding hard data that makes a strong argument in favor of continued RIS technology development.

  • China evacuation

    ‘China evac‘ or China evacuation is something that I have been hearing more about from my network. Its less dramatic in it sounds in some respects. It isn’t an immediate bailout like the fall of Saigon in 1975.

    China evacuation in this case is about businesses moving processes and supply chains out of the country to more stable and friendly environments. This has resulted in net capital outflows from China.

    US Embassy April 29, 1975

    China’s policy of lockdowns and Ukraine have brought a ‘China evac’ to the fore in terms of public discussions, but its actually been on the the minds of business people and think tanks for far longer. The reality of a china evacuation for businesses is more like apocryphal tale of a slow boiled frog.

    The China of Xi Jingping isn’t the China of 20 years ago when it ascended to joining the WTO. China has an unusual concentration of direct and indirect government funding in business. The state uses this funding to direct industry. In some respects this is similar to the development model deployed by Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The difference is that the Chinese industry has kept up this investment for both military and economic purposes – what’s known as military civil fusion.

    A second aspect was forced technology transfer that happened. And ongoing industrial espionage on a scale that has been unprecedented in world history to date. China now leads in certain technological areas that it intends to use for diplomatic coercion and military advantage.

    Xi Jingping is looking to direct the economy more under the government and looking to remove any dependencies on western countries – including foreign companies doing business in China.

    Why China evac now?

    In order to understand the forces driving the consideration of China evacuation, one has to go back to the Initial incentives to invest in China.

    Initial incentives

    Stability

    The government was literally prepared to crush dissenting voices. The government controls the labour unions and isn’t afraid to use force. Home markets and stakeholders shamefully ignored June 4th, but the Hong Kong protests and Xinjiang have brought the dark side of stability to the fore. Many brands are having to choose between China, or their western stakeholders and customers – they have straddled both sides but a China evacuation is only a matter of time.

    China’s market size

    The size of the local Chinese market. However this is better for some markets than others. KFC benefited for a while. As have luxury goods manufacturers. FMCG and technology brands have seen them ‘make a market’ for local brands to then come in and fill, pushing the pioneering multinationals to the sidelines. In the meantime their western market middle class customer base was declining due to globalisation.

    Secondly, the spending power of a Chinese middle class on a per person basis is way lower than in the west. Just because there is an increase in middle class, doesn’t mean that there will be a like-for-like spending boost like one would get in the west. In absolute terms, incomes and tax are both lower than the UK, but then there isn’t much of a social welfare safety net and no health insurance.

    China’s regulatory environment

    China is skilled in the use of non-tariff barriers to punish businesses and countries. This skill was used previously to ‘compel’ foreign direct investment in order to sell within the Chinese market.

    Changing macro-environment

    COVID-19 demonstrated the fragility of global supply chains with China at the centre of them. China’s foreign policy stance has forced companies and governments to ask what would happen when they get into the kind of conflict with China that is currently happening with Russia.

    China like Russia has maximised its actions in the grey zone so far. It is only a matter of time when open conflict happens. Whether its over North Korea, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, military action against the Philippines, Australia or Japan.

    Policy thinkers are also conscious of the way China wilfully acts against western aligned countries with less and less regard to the mutually beneficial relationship that they currently have.

    What are the limitations of leaving China?

    China’s rise has led to a catastrophic wilful destruction of capability by multinational companies in other countries. What made sense from a short term shareholder value perspective, was strategically deadly for their home countries. (The only bigger bit of corporate criminality would be Lee Raymond’s time at Exxon which excessively aggregated climate change, despite the early work on alternative energy done under the likes of previous CEO John Kenneth Jamieson.)

    So China is the single source for a lot of products, and the more one relies on it, the worse things get in terms of doing a China evacuation:

    • 20 percent of American cars by value are now Chinese components
    • Much of the world’s vitamin C production and most of the world’s precursors for drugs manufacturing come from China
    • 90 percent of the world’s rare earth metals that are key for everything from wireless chips to battery technology comes from China
    • We could rebuild the plants, but rebuilding the expertise base will be harder and take longer. Its so hard that policy experts are looking at friend shoring; working with partners to move production where it makes the most sense from an economic competitive advantage perspective

    One of the reasons why this all happened is that businesses believed you could design products without having to understand deeply how the products are made. But the situation has now moved from CEOs being misguided, to being willing agents of the Chinese state. In foreign countries from the UK to Australia political and business elites have been willing participants against their countries own interests.

    Businesses often don’t realise when the gap that they are trying to straddle has become too wide. Examples of this include law firms in Hong Kong and clothing brands Nike and H&M. Professional services firms have actively looked to profit from the deteriorating relationship between China and the west.

    Finally executives that have built their careers on saying that China is the future are emotionally, intellectually and personally invested in staying put rather than doing a China evacuation. Examples of this would be companies like Apple, Swire and HSBC.

    Policy implications of a China evacuation

    Dealing with the enemies within

    China’s state capture of a country’s elite is the single most problematic aspect of preparing for, and dealing with a widespread China evacuation of business functions and processes. The UK and Australia have made baby steps in this regard. The challenge will be realigning the incentives of the business elites away from short term stakeholder value to a longer term view that takes into account stakeholders and national expectations. (There is a certain irony in this when you realise that it was the short termist shareholder value crowd who bankrolled Sir David Sterling’s efforts to cling on to the British empire by his fingertips.) It will mean unwinding long tentacles sown by the United Work Front and Chinese state media without alienating Asian minority communities, including effective policing actions against operators as diverse as social media influencers and organised criminals.

    Understanding the limitations

    Policy makers will have to understand the difference between what’s possible, all be it painful and what can’t be done at the present time. This means navigating between the nay-saying short-termist interests of business elites and reality of operations. Certain things will take decades to reshore as part of a China evacuation of business precesses. Expertise and knowledge will need to be learned, plants built on the rubble of bankrupt retail parks

    Building effective defences

    Any sign of concerted China evacuation will see a dramatic Chinese response. Countries would need to learn lessons from the experiences of Norway, Lithuania and Australia who have incurred responses from China in the past. At the present time the European Union is failing its members in this regard.

    Long term planning

    Maintaining secure supply lines and economic growth requires long term planning. The financialisation of western economies rewards short term opportunism and there lies a fundamental tension in how things are done. There could have been no China without the asset strippers of the 1960s onwards and a narrow interpretation of ‘shareholder value as god‘ mantra.

  • EXP TV + more stuff

    EXP TV – not quite sure how to describe it; EXP TV is just tremendous. In their words “EXP TV daytime programming is called “Video Breaks”—a video collage series featuring wild, rare, unpredictable, and ever-changing archival clips touching on every subject imaginable. Similar to how golden era MTV played music videos all day, daytime EXP TV streams non-stop, deep cut video clips filtered through our own distinct POV. Our Nite Owl programming block features specialty themed video mixes and deep dives on everything under the sun: Bigfoot, underground 80s culture, Italo disco, cults, Halloween hijinks, pre-revolutionary Iranian pop culture, midnight movies, ‘ye ye’ promo films, Soviet sci-fi, reggae rarities, psychedelic animation and local news calamities. On any given night you could watch something like our Incredibly Strange Metal show followed by a conceptual video essay like Pixel Power—our exploration of early CGI art. Aside from our unique tone and deep crate of video materials, one thing that really sets us apart in 2020 is our format. We are *not* on demand, we are *not* interactive—just like old TV! You can tune in anytime and something cool will be on. That’s EXP TV in a nutshell. It’s funny, it’s art, it’s music, it’s infotainment, it’s free and it’s 24/7.” EXP TV reminded me a lot of the pioneering night time TV programming that used to run on British TV.

    Gen Z wants brands to be ‘fun,’ ‘authentic’ and ‘good,’ study says | Marketing Dive – Gen Zers prefer brands that are authentic, with 82% saying they trust a company more if it uses images of real customers in its advertising, while 72% said they’re more likely to buy from a company that contributes to social causes. Product quality, positive ratings and reviews and customer service are the top three characteristics that establish trust in a brand among Gen Zers – really? I am sure if you asked any cohort through time of the same age that would have come out as the result. More on ‘generations‘ here

    Why Corporate America Gave Up on R&D – Marker – great conversation about basic research and its place in the economic life of a business

    The Changing Structure of American Innovation: Some Cautionary Remarks for Economic Growth – basically US innovation is dying out as corporate basic research is no longer happening. It echoes the work that people like Judy Estrin has done in the past

    Produce your own physical chips. For free. In the Open – FOSSi Foundation – interesting that Google is supporting open source silicon prototyping on 130nm process – not cutting edge but moving things forward massively for electronics designers

    China ‘trying to influence elite figures in British politics’, dossier claims | Politics News | Sky News – not terribly surprising. I’d be surprising if Chna wasn’t trying these things. More fool the UK for allowing it to happen passively

    Exclusive: Digital natives see PR as ‘press releases and gin-soaked lunches’ – Sorrell | PR Week – depending on the industry its probably pretty fair, though probably less gin than there was previously

    What’s really behind “tech” versus “journalism” | Revue – really management vs employees – it seems to have got much more toxic than when I worked at Yahoo!

    MullenLowe merges Profero and Open in UK – surprised that that this wasn’t on the cards sooner to be honest with you

    Lessons from the fall of luxury e-tailer Leflair – Vietnam based luxury start-up goes under with $280,000 in unpaid goods

    TikTok to pull out of Hong Kong – Axios – interesting how they got out ahead of Facebook, WhatsApp etc. TikTok might feel its mainland app Douyin can be swapped in. It is an interesting canary in the coal mine for Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp etc

    Holographic Optics for Thin and Lightweight Virtual Reality – Facebook Research and Alphabet buys a rival company North who do similar technology Our focus on helpful devices: Google acquires North – more related posts here.

    Interesting French short film about the future from 1947. In some ways it is a better predictor of technology usage than Star Trek some two decades later.

    La Télévision, œil de demain (1947) – J.K Raymond Millet

    ‘What Big Tech does to discourse, and the forgotten tech tool that can make tech less big’ with Cory Doctorow – It is a conspiracy is to have an energetic mastery of wrong information. And sometimes that information in fact provides a good, not evidentiary basis, but a good fact pattern to support skepticism of a regulator – Cory Doctorow’s speech is long but well worthwhile.

    Luckin Coffee investors oust founder | Financial Times – this looks very similar to WireGuard. The problem is that audited books can’t be trusted due to local law. And locally written analyst reports have to self-censor allowing this kind of thing to happen. China doesn’t seem to be moving to change its law in the same way that Germany is to try and protect shareholders

    Facebook Suspending Review of Hong Kong Requests for User Data – WSJ – based on the Xi administration’s concerns about national security and cyber sovereignty; one can expect China to extend Great Firewall into Hong Kong with this. Which will then impact multinational companies who have traditionally used Hong Kong as an exit point for China operation VPNs. It will also affect Hong Kong’s position as a regional base. Firms would no longer want to use the data centres and backbone networks that Hong Kong has. More from the FT: Facebook and Twitter block Hong Kong authorities from accessing user data | Financial Times – WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Telegram have all given the Chinese Communist Party the finger. They have a strong incentive to. Chinese drop shipping businesses like Shein or Wish will suffer more than Facebook. And it plays well in parliaments and distracts from the other troubles that they may have. China gets burnt because of its information warfare games on these platforms. Facebook et al provide Chinese marketing teams a gateway into markets around the world that WeChat and TikTok don’t – which dings the Chinese government’s economic goals

    ‘Abolish Silicon Valley’ vs. ‘Always Day One’: Who’s Right About Fixing the Tech Industry? | OneZero – this conversation wouldn’t have even happened 10 years ago, but its needed. If not from ethics perspective, then from its failing in innovation as outlined many years ago by Judy Estrin.

    Encryption-Busting EARN IT Act Advances in Senate | WIRED  – if you care about privacy, this is frankly terrifying

    Above Avalon: Apple Is Pulling Away From the Competition – the obvious candidates missing here are Huawei, Xiaomi and the BBK firms (Oppo, Vivo etc) which have driven the smartphone market into the middle in China and opened a can of whoop ass on the premium sector overall

    Philip K Dick’s Metz speech is mind blowing. It was done at an international science fiction festival in 1977, held in Metz, France.

    Did China Steal Canada’s Edge in 5G From Nortel? – Bloomberg – short answer yes. Though it probably didn’t help that they had a management team that had failed to act when they were warned about infiltration, a infrastructure business reliance on the frame relay network market and partnered with Microsoft on a lot of enterprise technology. Some fantastic stuff in this article – Did a Chinese hack kill Canada’s greatest tech company? – BNN Bloomberg – in the late 1990s, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the country’s version of the CIA, became aware of “unusual traffic,” suggesting that hackers in China were stealing data and documents from Ottawa. “We went to Nortel in Ottawa, and we told the executives, ‘They’re sucking your intellectual property out,’ ” says Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who headed the agency’s Asia-Pacific unit at the time. “They didn’t do anything.” By 2004 the hackers had breached Nortel’s uppermost ranks. The person who sent the roughly 800 documents to China appeared to be none other than Frank Dunn, Nortel’s embattled chief executive officer. Four days before Dunn was fired — fallout from an accounting scandal on his watch that forced the company to restate its financial results — someone using his login had relayed the PowerPoints and other sensitive files to an IP address registered to Shanghai Faxian Corp. It appeared to be a front company with no known business dealings with Nortel. The thief wasn’t Dunn, of course. Hackers had stolen his password and those of six others from Nortel’s prized optical unit, in which the company had invested billions of dollars. Using a script called Il.browse, the intruders swept up entire categories from Nortel’s systems: Product Development, Research and Development, Design Documents & Minutes, and more. “They were taking the whole contents of a folder — it was like a vacuum cleaner approach,” says Brian Shields, who was then a senior adviser on systems security

    Why China’s Race For AI Dominance Depends On Math | The National Interest – concerns about STEM education outside China

    “Who Sells Bricks in Hong Kong” Hopes to Introduce New Actors | JayneStars – as dark as things are for Hong Kong’s film industry, ViuTV drama looks to Hong Kong film past for inspiration

  • Crush Google Plus + more

    How Mark Zuckerberg Led Facebook’s War to Crush Google Plus | Vanity Fair – Zuckerberg et al were helped by Google Plus having a poor product experience and dumb rollout approach. This has been evident across Google’s products from Google Wave to GTalk and the Google Cloud service. Facebook didn’t need to crush Google Plus, it just needed to do a better job on a consistent basis. More on Facebook here.

    Huawei Draws From Apple Playbook, Narrows IPhone Market Lead | Digital – AdAge – Guo Ping talks a good game, but why would someone develop specifically for Huawei rather than Android?

    Smart TVs are a dumb idea | TechEye – really nails it in terms of the value created and consumer behaviour

    The foibles of freemium – …turn the commercial model upside down by no longer relying just on journalists to report the news but also articles from a raft of other contributors – including corporate brand and advertising PR people. City AM goes all Forbes and Huffington Post blurring the line in editorial and advertorial content

    Samsung’s subtle nudge to get potential customers to upgrade – interesting acknowledgement that the competition is existing devices in mature markets like Europe and North America

    Huge: Microsoft opens up its Windows Holographic platform to third parties – In what could be a defining moment in the nascent augment reality and virtual reality spaces, Microsoft Corp. has opened up its Windows Holographic platform – trying to become the OS for immersion in the same way that AltSpace is the social platform for VR interactions

    SMARTPHONES: Microsoft Puts Smartphone Bets on Xiaomi Bottom line: Microsoft probably took a 10-20 percent stake in Xiaomi as part of the pair’s deal. At least Xiaomi doesn’t have a carrier relationship to burn by bundling Skype on a handset – let’s hope the do a lot better than Nortel, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Sendo or LG. All of whom had been in bed with Microsoft at one time or another

    Mobile location data is accurate up to 30 meters: report – Location data accuracy fluctuates which isn’t terribly surprising

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