哈囉 – here you’ll find posts related to Hong Kong. That includes the territory, the culture, business, creativity and history. I lived and travelled to Hong Kong a number of times, so sometimes the content can be quite random.
In addition, I have long loved Cantonese culture and cuisine, so these might make more appearances on this category. I am saddened by the decline in the film and music production sectors.
I tend to avoid discussing local politics, and the external influence of China’s interference in said politics beyond how it relates to business and consumer behaviour in its broadest context.
Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Apple Daily launched a new ad format that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in branding as well as Hong Kong.
If there are subjects that you think would fit with this category of the blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.
Warning: Stamps that say ‘1st’ or ‘2nd’ class are going to become unusable from 31 January 2023 – each stamp will have a proprietary QRcode type glyph. The stamp’s glyph will be linked to a digital twin. This isn’t to be used for tracking the letters and the packages that they are affixed to; but purely as a security measure on the stamps. How much effort is this going to take and is it really going to be cheaper than conventional printing technologies to limit stamp fraud? How much of a black economy is there in stamps anyway? While the Royal Mail promises innovative services enabled by the stamps, it isn’t clear what they will be at the moment. Looking at Amazon, the ‘barcode stamps’ as the Royal Mail call them don’t seem to be widely available yet. The Royal Mail has announced but not launched a scheme to swap out your existing stamps for the new design.
China
What is most interesting about Eileen Gu isn’t that she switched countries but the narrative of western decline that China is wrapping around this: Cold warrior: why Eileen Gu ditched Team USA to ski for China | The Economist and Winter Olympics: Eileen Gu and the Chimerican Dream – The Olympic freestyle skier has stirred controversy for representing China. She is the product of a vanishing shared space between the Chinese and American elite. As for Gu’s Mum’s background, it would be an ideal model if a screen writers was adapting The Americans as Chinese sleeper agents instead
Wang Huning’s career reveals much about political change in China | The Economist – As its chief of ideology and propaganda, he is in charge of crafting a very different message: that China practises true democracy, that America’s is a sham and that American power is fading. For a party locked in an escalating ideological war with America, this line is unsurprising. Mr Wang’s role in the struggle is more so. His early writing did not suggest narrow-minded nationalism. He saw weaknesses in America’s system, but did not exaggerate them. He saw problems, too, in China’s. Even more remarkably, he has been crafting the party’s message under three successive leaders.
What’s interesting about the future of the ideas that aren’t hinged in culture, is how similar they relate to 10 year predictions back in the late 1990s and early 2000s – Internet in 2035 | Pew Research Center
The Plausibly Deniable DataBase (PDDB) « bunnie’s blog – Most security schemes facilitatethe coercive processes of an attacker because they disclose metadata about the secret data, such as the name and size of encrypted files. This allows specific and enforceable demands to be made: “Give us the passwords for these three encrypted files with names A, B and C, or else…”. In other words, security often focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data, but lacks deniability.
A scheme with deniability would make even the existence of secret files difficult to prove. This makes it difficult for an attacker to formulate a coherent demand: “There’s no evidence of undisclosed data. Should we even bother to make threats?” A lack of evidence makes it more difficult to make specific and enforceable demands.
Thus, assuming the ultimate goal of security is to protect the safety of users as human beings, and not just their files, enhanced security should come hand-in-hand with enhanced plausible deniability (PD). PD armsusers with a set of tools they can use to navigate the social landscape of security, by making it difficult to enumerate all the secrets potentially contained within a device, even with deep forensic analysis
Korea Herald – After being called feminists, these women faced online harassment – One in 2 men in their 20s in South Korea tends to be anti-feminist, according to a 2018 study released by the Korean Women’s Development Institute, a government think tank. In the same survey, only 1 in 4 young men saw women as “weaker than men” or needing protection. But such strong antagonism against feminism has puzzled many looking from the outside at a country that has the highest gender wage gap among OECD countries. Women also feel less safe than men in the country, according to a 2021 report from the Gender Equality Ministry. Only 21.6 percent of women said they felt safe from crime, as opposed to 32.1 percent of men.
On Meta’s ‘regulatory headwinds’ and adtech’s privacy reckoning | TechCrunch – “The investigation shows that gambling platforms do not operate in a silo. Rather, gambling platforms operate in conjunction with a wider network of third parties. The investigation shows that even limited browsing of 37 visits to gambling websites led to 2,154 data transmissions to 83 domains controlled by 44 different companies that range from well-known platforms like Facebook and Google to lesser known surveillance technology companies like Signal and Iovation, enabling these actors to embed imperceptible monitoring software during a user’s browsing experience. The investigation further shows that a number of these third-party companies receive behavioural data from gambling platforms in realtime, including information on how often individuals gambled, how much they were spending, and their value to the company if they returned to gambling after lapsing.”
Professional specific support – Self-Care Catalyst – is aimed at stressed and burnt out nurse practitioners in the US. I heard about it from my US colleagues and imagine that we will see similar businesses soon
Why brands are burning NFTs | Vogue Business – Burning NFTs, which are tokens stored on a blockchain, is the process of permanently removing a token from circulation. This can be done to eliminate unsold or problematic inventory from an NFT drop, or it can be used to engage collectors and fans through “upgrades” that replace an original NFT with something else. For fashion and beauty brands, burning NFTs could offer a way to manipulate scarcity, and therefore price. It could also lead to more intriguing NFT projects, in which consumers must weigh risk and reward by burning an NFT in exchange for something else. These scenarios, among others, are already playing out among artists and gaming startups, paving the way for fashion. Already, Adidas is using a burn mechanism to change the state of its NFTs when NFT owners make a purchase. Apparel brand Champion recently partnered with Daz 3D’s NFT collection, Non-Fungible People, and will use burning to enable peoples’ profile picture NFTs to digitally dress in Champion gear, while Unisocks invites NFT owners to burn them in exchange for physical products. – burning NFTs sounds like a dangerous precedent
Environment | Gallup Historical Trends – interesting longitudinal data set. Environmental messaging effectiveness is proportional to consumer disposable income and financial security at the time
When will the music stop? | Financial Times – bill being called due on financialisation and post-industrialisation of western economies and a move from globalisation to regionalisation
US embassy warns TU Dublin about risks of ties with Chinese university | Ireland | The Sunday Times – China wants Ireland to host international campus of Harbin University. Ireland should be looking at the experience of Hungary who were made to foot the bill for a campus that only benefit Chinese students – In 2020 HIT was added to an “entity list” by the US Department of Commerce, which identifies people or organisations that it believes are involved in activities contrary to US security or foreign policy interests. Last week the American embassy in Dublin said it was still concerned about HIT’s ties with the People’s Liberation Army and its efforts to acquire foreign technology in support of its defence aims
British research ‘could help China build superweapons’ | News | The Times – The number of research collaborations between scientists in the UK and Chinese institutes with deep connections to the country’s defence forces has tripled to more than 1,000 in six years, a figure that lays bare the scale of cooperation with the hostile state. The university funding includes £60 million from sources now sanctioned by the US government for supplying the Chinese military with fighter jets, communications technology and missiles. The article was published with this opinion piece: Is getting into bed with President Xi for science . . . or just sleazy? | News | The Times – It is 1914 and our scientists, encouraged by government and big business, have been co-operating with their German opposites on machine-gun technology, ballistics and aeroplane design — all in the name of exciting new technology and with a rising country with an important market and close ties with the UK. Now return to the present, but with an eye to the future. As The Times reveals today, UK scientists are working closely with Chinese scientists from institutes intimately associated with weapons development
Why gamers hate crypto, and music fans don’t – gamers feel that they are being ripped off, music fans look at NFTs like as if they are souvenirs or trading cards. This has important implications for mechanisms governing the metaverse
I have been going back through the content on this website as part of a site revamp. I conducted the content aspect of the site revamp while I created new content, did work and general life stuff. So it took a while as the content went as far back as March 2004.
I ended up paring the number of blog posts down from almost six thousand posts to just under eighteen hundred. I deleted a few posts because in retrospect I didn’t have much to say.
But the bulk of the posts that I deleted was where I was consolidating posts that focused on curating content from around the web, similar to this one.
The primary reason why I was consolidating these posts together was link rot. Links that went out to dead sites and the pages hadn’t managed to be indexed in the Wayback Machine.
So what did I learn from this content site revamp process?
Ephemera
While the maxim that ‘everything stays somewhere online forever’ is useful life advice, it doesn’t accurately reflect the ephemeral nature of online content. Even many of the largest media companies seem to prune their older content on a regular basis. The exceptions to this seem to be the FT and the New York Times.
Companies are usually really bad at handling their redirects from the now dead pages of old content. With zero consideration being given to context. Of course, memes and revenge porn tend not to be as ephemeral unfortunately.
2014
2014 seems to have been a cataclysmic year for personal website content. Prior this year there were all kinds of interesting professional and corporate blogs being run. But in 2014, things seem to have changed dramatically. This seems to have occurred across sectors and specialisms. Companies seem to have given up on their content strategies.
My current working hypothesis is that part of this was probably due to the rise of social media and a secondary aspect of this must have been the declining returns of on network and off network search engine optimisation. I also think that at least some personal bloggers grew out of their sites. They probably found that their interests had changed, or no longer had time to write. I managed to avoid that fate for a number of reasons:
Writing helped me work out ideas
I don’t think that I am a good writer, but writing became a habit, one that was so engrained it survived when I moved to live in Hong Kong and back again
I deliberately never put this blog in a box, in terms of what I wanted to write about beyond what caught my interest. Part of this came down to my belief in the connected post-modern nature of the world. Previously I have talked about how understanding the dynamics of social media can be traced back to the rituals and structures of ancient Rome. People like Jed Hallam had since articulated this idea much better in his discussions about marketing existing inside culture and acting on culture
Between 2003 and 2012, there seemed to be more events and conferences that I got to go to during and after work that provided inspiration for content. This seems to have tailed off somewhat now
I thought the process of curation was as important as the process of creation. I never had to create content completely in a vacuum. Using social bookmarking tools and newsreader services helped enormously in this process.
The pattern of my writing has evolved. I publish less frequently, but tend to do longer posts now. At one stage I was developing two posts a day for this site, content for a blog on PR Week that was regularly featured in their print edition, the corporate blog of the agency that I worked for at the time and contributing a few posts to Econsultancy on marketing related issues. I also provided some content to political site Left Foot Forward at the behest of a policy wonk colleague of mine, this content focused on the intersection of technology, media and regulation. My writing had been driving a good deal of my career progression from 2005 through to 2014
Finally, I think that there has been a decline in the spirit of generosity in the exchange of ideas. I am not sure if this is an increase in ‘meaness’ – though more and more content is now behind a paywall, or a larger decline in ideas.
Missing link
I don’t think that Medium and LinkedIn have managed to plug the gap on brands and consumers looking to publish quality long form content for various reasons. Secondly, email newsletters while looking like the new blogs are likely to be equally ephemeral and may be a step backward in time; though I am still subscribed to listservs that I originally looked at in college.
As I write this, even Facebook looks as if it has finally started on its downward slope to irrelevance , where it will eventually join former online titans like Geocities, Friendster, MySpace and Bebo. Facebook content is already largely hidden from the open web behinds its wall garden. The way things are going, It is likely to disappear completely in the next decade or so.
The content site revamp brought home to me, the importance of having your own personal website, to have control over your content. Looking back strengthened my belief in the advice that I gave Omincom’s David Gallagher four years ago
Why have a website as part of your personal online brand?
LinkedIn and Facebook don’t have the same agenda as you. Your content becomes a hostage to their business whims It is hard for users to discover your content, Facebook and Google make it so Even on Medium you no longer really own your content. It can’t be easily exported like content on the Blogger platform Even in the world of Facebook, Google is still a reputation engine
The content process that I went through on the site revamp taught me that I need to make better notes about the significance of a particular piece of content because years later I won’t have any idea why I’d saved it. I have been getting better at this over years, but I still need to do better.
Handspring was a key part of my first agency job. It was the dot com era, Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan had founded Palm Inc. and left after it was sold to 3Com. They then went on to make modular PDAs with the Handspring Visor – which tapped into the clear plastic designs pioneered by Apple’s iMac. And then they built the PDA with smartphone capability called Treo. 3Com had made a Palm device in 1999 that used the Mobitex mobile data network, which was more analogous to a two way pager with a limited walled garden of content a la vintage AOL. Palm’s version of the Palm PDA has a common connector that could be used to connect external peripherals, such as the OmniSky sled which converted your PDA into an internet connected smartphone.
But it was Handspring who had the ‘heat’ and the wherewithal to provide a neat connectivity slot for its peripherals to sit in, providing a neater experience. Springboard is a documentary about Handspring
Of course, the outcome of PDA based smartphones isn’t all sweetness and light as Scott Galloway shows with our modern mobile device usage.
Myst
Ars Technical are doing some great oral histories of games creation. This one on Myst is very close to my heart. What’s particularly interesting is how the game was developed at a moment in time with the transition to CD ROM media. This resulted in a huge leap forward in what the technology was capable of doing, comparable to the early web in terms of creative disruption. It also made me really, really miss HyperCard.
Jimmy Wang Yu
Taiwanese martial artist, actor and gangster Jimmy Wang Yu carved the way for Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee in Hong Kong cinema. This documentary on him is first rate.
Windows
Interesting CNBC documentary on the hegemonic position of Microsoft Windows in personal computers.
Audi S1 Hoonitron and vehicles of Cyberpunk 2077
Ken Block’s collaboration with Audi has produced some interesting material. Growing up in the 1980s, group B rallying held a fascination for me, so that’s what got me interested in the Block / Audi collaboration at first. But what’s interesting about Block’s prototype electric Audi Quattro S1 is the speed at which Audi is able to put together a prototype working car with modern technologies. All of which implies ever more opportunities for automotive customisation for customers and the potential for additive manufacturing at the luxury end of the market. Hoonitron does sound like a late 1970s Taiwanese or Korean copy of a Sony television set.
While we’re on about car design, there is also this great video on the vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077. 14 out of 10 for pure style.
Tudor Pelagos FXD
Tudor have been on point in their marketing. Their new version of the Pelagos has some lovely design cues, even if its modern day association with the French navy is marketing fluff. PELAGOS FXD – more from the Tudor press room.
Fake socialite
A graduation project by an art student from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing did an experiment that has sparked a debate about class, inequality and the massive wealth gap in modern China. In the video you see her attempt to live 21 days for free in Beijing. She disguised herself as a socialite and slept in the halls of extravagant hotels and enjoyed free food and drinks. What surprised me is that the work hasn’t been suppressed and that she hadn’t been arrested. It also shows how Xi Jingping’s concept of common prosperity is designed to tap into a deep tension in society at the moment.
Paper and glue
MSNBC put together an amazing documentary on French street artist JR who does giant photo collages as street art. Here’s the trailer.
https://youtu.be/7NmxynGAmrM
Hong Kong Christmas
Hong Kong’s relationship with Christmas is a complicated one. A substantial minority of Hong Kongers are practicing Christians. Until the opening up of China in the late 1970s, Hong Kong was a substantial supplier of toys, Christmas decorations and lights. And then there is the multinational community living alongside Hong Kongers, which brings the western commercialism of Christmas. For many Christmas is a ‘pre-lunar new year celebration, both are big on the colour red and the decorations for one used to bleed into the other in public spaces. So I thought the joy of this Christmas street market might appeal to readers here.
Is there an end in sight to supply chain disruption? | Financial Times -There are major barriers to ending supply chain disruption by decoupling from China. Japan is trying to reduce supply chain disruption by replicating Chinese factories in other countries like Thailand and Indonesia. Here are some of things stopping multinational corporations from making that happen. In order to end supply chain disruption, I would imagine that a higher degree of automation is key, which will require corresponding improvements in automation technology. This doesn’t just mean software but also in mechanical engineering. The main issue for fine motor control in robots is the design and price of harmonic drives. This doesn’t operate on a Moore’s Law speed and scale of innovation. Increased automation also likely means major changes in approach to product design. Back in the golden era of consumer electronics just prior to the consumer adoption of the internet, circuit boards were less dense because they were designed for automated ‘pick-and-place’ machines. Nokia had a similar approach to its phones prior to the pivot to Windows and Qualcomm chips. The reason why Apple needs iPhones made in China is because a lot of the final assembly is closer to the work of a watchmaker servicing a mechanical watch than you would credit. So lots of cheap, (younger, smaller, delicate, usually female) hands are required. Our financial system’s obsessive, narrow focus on shareholder value will curtail these movements. Look at how Apple crows about how green they are and yet makes the virtually unrecyclable Air Pods by the million. Until that changes and the computers are assembled from modular boards, closer to their home market the supply chain won’t change despite the political, economic, national security and moral imperatives otherwise. Which is why Apple amongst others point out that they have an inability to move production out of China. This will get even harder as China moves up the semiconductor value chain. Once they are building memory modules and modern silicon fab processes, its game over for manufacturing elsewhere in the electronics sector. China is also the sole provider for many of the ingredients in multi-vitamins and pharmaceutical products. They process and mine just under 90 percent of the world’s rare earth metals – key for a large swathe of technologies from magnets to chips and batteries. They have a similar position in solar cell polysilicon and lithium ion battery ingredients.
JAXPORT promises less supply disruption
So ending supply chain disruption would mean replicating whole ingredient manufacturing chains and industry knowhow that multinationals had migrated to China decades ago. All of these actions to reduce supply chain disruption may not be received very well by China itself. China has bought key infrastructure around the world: power generation, ports, water supply, rail networks and more. All of which means that they get a greater say in how the world’s supply chain works. Xi Jingping has been straight forward in saying that he wants the world to rely on China more, and China to rely on the rest of the world less. Decoupling from Chinese supply chain disruption has taken on even more importance with the rise of Chinese secondary sanctions. More on nearshoring to avoid Chinese supply chain disruptions here: China’s economic woes: An opportunity for U.S. manufacturing?
China
Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab – but feared debate could hurt ‘international harmony’ – An email from Dr Ron Fouchier to Sir Jeremy said: “Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.” Dr Collins, former director of the NIH, replied to Sir Jeremy stating: “I share your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.” Institutions which held the emails have repeatedly resisted efforts to publish their content. The University of Edinburgh recently turned down an Freedom of Information request from The Telegraph asking to see Prof Rambaut’s replies, claiming “disclosure would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health and safety of individuals”. – this is going to turn into a dumpster fire
Dutch university gives up Chinese funding due to impartiality concerns | Netherlands | The Guardian – Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit (VU), the fourth largest university in the Netherlands, has said it will accept no further money from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing and repay sums it recently received. The announcement came after an investigation by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS last week revealed VU’s Cross Cultural Human Rights Center (CCHRC) had received between €250,000 (£210,000) and €300,000 annually from Southwest over the past few years. According to NOS, the CCHRC used Southwest’s money to fund a regular newsletter, organise seminars and maintain its website – which has published several posts rejecting western criticism of China’s human rights policy
Why is it still considered OK to be ageist? | Financial Times – A study by academics at Yale found that people with a negative approach to ageing deal with it worse mentally and physically and die seven and a half years younger. To put this in context, mild obesity shortens life by three years, extreme obesity by 10. Hardly surprisingly, this has prompted a great deal of fuss at government level. Policymakers and health professionals obsess over obesity. But what about the damage done by poor attitudes to ageing? Until I read about the survey I had no idea it was even a thing: the fact that ageism can actually kill you is a well-kept secret. It is also a costly one. According to the WHO report, the resulting ill health places an additional annual burden on the US healthcare of $63bn. I realise that health policymakers have been busy since the report came out last March, but still there hasn’t been a peep out of them
I love this 60 Minutes Australia film about an Australian inventor
Equations built giants like Google. Who’ll find the next billion-dollar bit of maths? | David Sumpter | The Guardian – The PageRank story is neither the first nor the most recent example of a little-known piece of mathematics transforming tech. In 2015, three engineers used the idea of gradient descent, dating back to the French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy in the mid-19th century, to increase the time viewers spent watching YouTube by 2,000%. Their equation transformed the service from a place we went to for a few funny clips to a major consumer of our viewing time.
Murata’s Thailand move heralds Japan tech shift from China | Financial Times – “The most populous country today may be China, but in 2030 that will be India, and further down the road it will be Africa,” Nakajima said. “Will those economies be aligned with China or the US? We don’t know. We should be able to respond to both scenarios.”
Legal
Hong Kong: how colonial-era laws are being used to shut down independent journalism – police recently told reporters that opinion articles aren’t the only ones that can be regarded as seditious. Media interviews with exiled activists and features on clashes between protesters and riot police can also be considered seditious if the content is deemed by the government to be “fake news” or inciting hatred towards the government and endangering national security
Hong Kong independence activist Edward Leung released from jail, told to stay silent — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong barrister and former lawmaker Siu Tsz-man said supervision orders are sometimes issued to released prisoners involved in violent crimes, including murder and manslaughter, and require the former prisoner to maintain contact with supervision officers and remain at a stable residence. But Siu said the order to stay away from the spotlight was unprecedented. “I have never heard of this happening before,” Siu said. “My staff have never heard of a supervision order under which the person isn’t allowed to give interviews to the media.” Siu declined to comment on whether the order was appropriate without knowing the details of the case. “The point of a supervision order isn’t to confine someone at a certain location and not let them leave,” he said. Some drew parallels between Leung’s release and the continuing controls on released political prisoners in mainland China – similar in nature to an ASBO but inherently political in nature
Virginia burglaries work of ‘crime tourists,’ authorities say – The Washington Post – Authorities call them “crime tourists.” Law enforcement experts say cells of professional South American burglars, particularly from Colombia and Chile, are entering the country illegally or exploiting a visa waiver program meant to expedite tourism from dozens of trusted foreign countries. Once here, they travel from state to state carrying out scores of burglaries, jewelry heists and other crimes, pilfering tens or hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods each year, the FBI estimates. Experts said the groups often operate with impunity because they have found a kind of criminal sweet spot. Bail for nonviolent property offenses is often low, so an arrested burglar often quickly gets bond and skips town for the next job, experts said. The crimes often don’t meet the threshold for the involvement of federal authorities. And they attract less attention at a time when U.S. authorities are contending with a rise in homicides. Dan Heath, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s criminal investigations division, said “South American theft groups,” as the agency calls them, are a growing problem across the United States — and in countries including India, Britain and Australia, where they often employ similar tactics. “They represent an enormous threat right now in our country,” Heath said. “They are tending to thread the needle in avoiding both state and federal prosecution.”
VW fired senior employee after they raised cyber security concerns | Financial Times – A senior Volkswagen employee was dismissed weeks after raising the alarm about alleged cyber security vulnerabilities at the carmakers’ payments arm, which is soon to be majority-owned by JPMorgan. The manager alerted bosses in September 2021 to concerns that VW’s system in the region was “open to fraud” following an attempted cyber attack, and maintained that $2.6m sitting in the company’s accounts could be stolen, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. The staff member, who also told superiors that VW could face regulatory action if the vulnerabilities were not addressed, was then fired in October. – not terribly surprising
Software
After ruining Android messaging, Google says iMessage is too powerful | Ars Technica – “Google clearly views iMessage’s popularity as a problem, and the company is hoping this public-shaming campaign will get Apple to change its mind on RCS,” writes Amadeo in closing. “But Google giving other companies advice on a messaging strategy is a laughable idea since Google probably has the least credibility of any tech company when it comes to messaging services. If the company really wants to do something about iMessage, it should try competing with it.” – if this wasn’t an admission of failure by Google I don’t know what is. Google has a history of failed or closed communication services Google Talk (GTalk) (which was retired when Google decided to move away from an open messaging standard , Google Hangouts (which was spun out of Google+ messaging functionality), Google Allo and Google Wave
Christine Lee and Foreign Interference: what the UK can learn from Taiwan | China Dialogues – As part of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, Taiwan retooled its political commissar system (zheng wei 政委) – formerly responsible for policing political loyalty toward the regime – into an institution that safeguards democracy by working to identify Chinese influence at all levels of Taiwanese politics and society. Political commissars (PCs) not only receive extensive military training but also develop a deep understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s political warfare tactics. Most major government departments and private sector organisations in Taiwan will have PCs operating within their ranks, monitoring and reporting evidence of foreign interference. As many democracies facing Chinese influence and interference do not have such well-established systems in place, Taiwan’s zheng wei system may provide a starting point for how anti-foreign influence institutions can work effectively within democratic societies
Technology
EETimes – Arm Predicts Stagnation if Nvidia Deal Fails – without investment from Nvidia, Arm would be seriously disadvantaged in its bid to grow in data center markets and compete against Intel Corp. and x86 incumbents. The filing also explains why an Arm stock offering is a non-starter while noting that Arm faces stiff competition from emerging RISC-V competitors – interesting that they don’t mention ARM China crisis at all. Nvidia have now walked away from it and Softbank is supposed to be preparing a public offering for ARM
