Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).
Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.
Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.
The rise and fall of Esprit, SF’s coolest clothing brand – Esprit appealed to the youth with a message of lefty, post-racial harmony. Wild prints, bright colors and baggy silhouettes reigned. Their tote bags and T-shirts hung from all the coolest shoulders, adorning fashion plates with the legendary Esprit logo. With the logo’s omnipresence at the time, it may as well have been Supreme for the teens of the late ’80s and early ’90s. – the article skips over some of the awful things that Esprit did to its Chinese emigrant workers in San Francisco.
Esprit Store in Gentings Casino, Malaysia by Ryan Lackey
The success of Esprit was down to its ‘Europeaness’. It had a Benetton kind of vibe, because they shared the same advertising creative and a similar approach to interior retail space design and bright colours. Esprit eventually listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange but never got its mojo back. The clean logo was designed by John Casado, who had worked for Apple on the Macintosh icons and New Line Cinema
China
Chinese documentary prompts rare criticism of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign | Financial Times – Analysts said the negative reaction to Zero Tolerance suggests the decade-long campaign has not sealed public confidence in the party’s ability to investigate itself for graft, which remains widespread….“Getting caught doesn’t mean you are more corrupt than others,” said a former official at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the highest government agency responsible for investigation and prosecution of criminal cases. “It just means you have bad luck.” – such a good read and reaffirms much of what I saw in China, prior to and during the early Xi premiership. The way it falls is arbitrary in nature and usually linked to power struggles
For Olympic Sponsors, ‘China Is an Exception’ – The New York Times – At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders will compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies like Samsung and Audi. Coca-Cola’s cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the event’s official credit card. President Biden and a handful of other Western leaders may have declared a “diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Games, which begin next week, but some of the world’s most famous brands will still be there. The prominence of these multinational companies, many of them American, has taken the political sting out of the efforts by Mr. Biden and other leaders to punish China for its human rights abuses, including a campaign of repression in the western region of Xinjiang that the State Department has declared a genocide. – at the end of the day, brands are more afraid of Chinese consumers and the Chinese government than they are of western governments and activist consumers
Implications of Revenue Models and Technology for Content Moderation Strategies by Yi Liu, Pinar Yildirim , Z. John Zhang :: SSRN – We show that a self-interested platform can use content moderation as an effective marketing tool to expand its installed user base, to increase the utility of its users, and to achieve its positioning as a moderate or extreme content platform. For the purpose of maximizing its own profit, a platform will balance pruning some extreme content, thus losing some users, with gaining new users because of a more moderate content on the platform. This balancing act will play out differently depending on whether users will have to pay to join (subscription vs advertising revenue models) and on whether the technology for content moderation is perfect.
We show that when conducting content moderation optimally, a platform under advertising is more likely to moderate its content than one under subscription, but does it less aggressively compared to the latter when it does. This is because a platform under advertising is more concerned about expanding its user base, while a platform under subscription is also concerned with users’ willingness-to-pay. We also show a platform’s optimal content moderation strategy depends on its technical sophistication. Because of imperfect technology, a platform may optimally throw away the moderate content more than the extreme content. Therefore, one cannot judge how extreme a platform is by just looking at its content moderation strategy. Furthermore, we show that a platform under advertising does not necessarily benefit from a better technology for content moderation, but one under subscription does, as the latter can always internalize the benefits of a better technology. This means that platforms under different revenue models can have different incentives to improve their content moderation technology.
What China thinks of possible war in Ukraine | The Economist – Both see a world order being reshaped by American weariness and self-doubt, creating chances to test and divide the democratic West. Chinese and Russian diplomats and propaganda organs relay and amplify parallel narratives about the benefits of iron-fisted order over American-style dysfunction. Joint military exercises demonstrate growing trust – but China will be very cautious and nationalists want the Russian Far East back where it belongs as part of China
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
ASML fire hits EUV lithography production | EE News Europe – EUV lithography is used to provide the latest semiconductor manufacturing processes. ASML is world’s only provider of EUV lithography equipment, so the fire is of concern. EUV or extreme ultra violet light is important to provide ever smaller silicon chips. YouTuber Asianometry provides a few good video explanations of EUV lithography and its importance for the technology industry.
Star China investor Boyu seeks to navigate Xi Jinping’s tech crackdown | Financial Times – Liu Tianran, son of vice-premier Liu He, a confidante of Xi Jinping, established Skycus Capital in late 2016. Skycus has invested in units of Chinese technology giants Tencent and JD.com, which are Ant and Alibaba’s biggest rivals. Wen Yunsong, the son of former premier Wen Jiabao, founded the New Horizon investment fund in 2005, when his father was in power.
China’s business crackdown threatens growth and innovation | Financial Times – It would not be a surprise if China returned to a version of the joint private-state ownership model adopted under the leadership of Mao Zedong in the 1950s. This would amount to a de facto nationalisation of private companies — at least those in sectors such as data collection, national cyber security and financial services
SCMP | Hong Kong chief executive election 2022: why this year’s leadership race is unusual – the narrowed political spectrum which he said would prevent any non-pro-establishment hopeful from entering the arena. “Whoever is running, they will hold very similar political visions … There won’t be much to fight over. The competition will be just like Omicron versus Delta,” he said, referring to variants of the coronavirus.
How to
How a super reader gets through 52 books a year | Financial Times – Skim non-fiction. Fiction demands a close, word-for-word reading. But it’s more important to understand, not read most non-fiction, says US author and consultant, Peter Bregman. This can mostly be done by confining yourself to the table of contents, introduction, conclusion, and a few pages of each chapter.
The Japan – Soul Train connection can consider to have started with The Three Degrees who seemed to do consistently more successfully in Japan than the US. The Three Degrees The Sound of Philadelphia is better known to people over 40 as the theme tune of the Soul Train TV programme. The popularity of The Three Degrees was such that there was some Japan only releases like Midnight Train.
The Afro Rake discotheque opened in 1974 and a visit to the club convinced TBS to broadcast episodes of Soul Train on a Sunday night, forging a true Japan – Soul Train connection.
In 1980, Yellow Magic Orchestra played Soul Train cementing the Japan – Soul Train connection with a cover version of disco song Tighten Up. YMO also told the viewers of the Japan – Soul Train connection and its large regular audience on TBS.
The Japan – Soul Train connection trickled down into 1970s Japanese club culture like the Afro Rake night club. The Japan – Soul Train connection was made through articles and photographs of the show. This and artists like The Three Degrees built the Japan – Soul Train connection. It was ironic that the Afro Rake made the Japan – Soul Train connection for TBS.
China sportswear: Fujian Tigers earn their stripes in Nike fight | Financial Times – what’s really interesting is the collapse in share of New Balance (down to poor execution over the past five years) and adidas in China. Li Ning have had a boom and a bust and risen again. Anta have acquired brands like Arc’teryx, Suunto, Salomon and Wilson. Salomon and Arc’teryx are particularly interesting because of their use by western special forces units
Consumer behaviour
The ‘Boomer remover’: Intergenerational discounting, the coronavirus and climate change – Rebecca Elliott, 2021 – the emergence of the ‘Boomer remover’ as coherent with a longer history of fascination with the Baby Boomers, a generation that has ‘been watched, commented upon, and invested with hope and despond in equal measure’ (Bristow, 2019, p. 92). This fascination has taken a more negative turn towards ‘Boomer blaming’ in the last 15 years. The Boomers have themselves become social problems, ‘folklore demons’ who, for their sheer number, are feared for the unprecedented burdens they may place on welfare states: a ‘Boomergeddon’ created by a ‘tidal wave of retirements’, combined with longer lifespans (Bristow, 2019, p. 92; Bristow, 2016; Somers, 2017; Walker, 1990, 1996). Fears about the impacts of an ageing population have then been moralized, turned into a critique of the attitudes and behaviours of this particular generation, namely, their perceived individualism run amok and selfish, hedonistic, reckless actions that have ‘robbed’ their children of a prosperous future (Bristow, 2016; White, 2013). The Boomers are maligned for the kind of people they are believed to be, today serving as the ‘archetypal ‘villain’ in the narrative of generational conflict’ (Bristow, 2021, p. 768). Younger generations are then made out to be the true adults in the room, who have to take responsibility for the messes their elders have made (expressed also by some on Twitter, like the user above who suggested young people might ‘show ’em how it’s done’). In this case, broadly available tropes about the Boomers’ perceived sins and deficiencies get attached to ‘older generations’ generally, in a context in which the cohort most at risk of dying from the virus actually seems to be those over the age of 80 – the so-called ‘silent generation’ rather than the Boomers
Biden’s trade policy is crafted with political rewards in mind | Financial Times – “worker centred” is like the “hard-working families” long invoked in both US and UK politics: you cannot oppose a trade policy supporting workers any more than you can be biased towards feckless loners. But helping all workers equally is not what it means in practice. Nearly 10 months in to the administration, this worker-centred policy shows a disturbing focus on old-style manufacturing-centred protectionism — and not even all manufacturing, just the politically rewarding parts. Although it is also proposing to extend trade-distorting support to new sectors like electric vehicles, the Biden administration has continued the historic US obsession with steel
U.S. Housing as a Global Safe Asset: Evidence from China Shocks by William Barcelona, Nathan Converse, Anna Wong :: SSRN – This paper demonstrates that the measured stock of China’s holding of U.S. assets could be much higher than indicated by the U.S. net international investment position data due to unrecorded historical Chinese inflows into an increasingly popular global safe haven asset: U.S. residential real estate. We first use aggregate capital flows data to show that the increase in unrecorded capital inflows in the U.S. balance of payment accounts over the past decade is mainly linked to inflows from China into U.S. housing markets. Then, using a unique web traffic dataset that provides a direct measure of Chinese demand for U.S. housing at the zip code level, we estimate via a difference-in-difference matching framework that house prices in major U.S. cities that are highly exposed to demand from China have on average grown 7 percentage points faster than similar neighborhoods with low exposure over the period 2010-2016. These average excess price growth gaps co-move closely with macro-level measures of U.S. capital inflows from China, and tend to widen following periods of economic stress in China, suggesting that Chinese households view U.S. housing as a safe haven asset. – capital flight
Will Germany Depart from the Merkel Model on China? Beijing Will Have a Say. – The Diplomat – the appointment of Greens co-leader and former chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock as foreign minister has made such a break a real possibility. As an outspoken critic of China’s human rights practices and overseas economic coercion, Baerbock will advocate for a comprehensive China strategy that is more European, normative, and “rigor[ous].” She will be reinforced by FDP leader Christian Lindner, who joins the coalition government as finance minister, seen as the most powerful office next to chancellor. Lindner found himself on Beijing’s bad list in 2019 when he visited democratic opposition representatives in Hong Kong en route to the mainland
Xi fails to signal support for a second term for Hong Kong’s Carrie Lam | Financial Times – interesting earlier in the year the political insiders I knew of thought that Lam was going to run for a second time, when I thought that it might the be the security chap who had recently been moved to be her deputy. After this visit, CY Leung might throw his hat in the ring
Ideas
Maersk is no longer just a shipping company — Quartz – Maersk owns more container ships than anyone on earth, but it would be a mistake to think of the company as just a cargo shipping line. It’s also an airline, a trucking company, a port terminal operator, and a freight forwarder. Maersk has gobbled up a piece of virtually every stage of the global supply chain as part of its ambition to become a one-stop shop for logistics.
Yesterday (Dec. 16), Maersk struck a deal that offers a glimpse at the future of its business—and the future of global shipping. Starting next year, Maersk will effectively run the logistics operations of Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. Maersk announced in a press release that it “will be providing operational management of international ocean and air transport” for Unilever from 2022 to 2026.
Normally, Unilever uses its own in-house software, dubbed the “International Control Tower Solution,” to manage its own supply chains. But as of 2022, Unilever will hand off the run of its supply chain software to Maersk. “It’s a strong indicator that Maersk’s expertise extends well beyond sailing ships,” said Eytan Buchman, CMO at the cargo booking platform Freightos, who has written about Maersks’ acquisitions and expansion. “Combined with their other assets and what they’ve been building towards, it’s not a stretch to assume that this is another rung in the ladder towards full end-to-end global supply chain ownership.”
How many people in Japan have actually worn a couple’s outfit? | SoraNews24 -Japan News – less than 20 percent of married couples have tried going on a date in a couple’s outfit. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t want to try it! The survey, which was conducted between November 18 and November 26 of this year, asked 800 married people–400 women and 400 men—about their experiences with couple’s outfits. When asked whether they’d ever gone on a date with their spouse in matching outfits, only 18.1 percent said yes. – I thought it was more of a drama trope rather than a trend
Risks to China’s Growth in Luxury Retail | Luxury Daily – China accounts for 35 percent of all luxury sales across the globe. By 2025, those sales could shoot up to 50 percent of all luxury retail revenue, according to Bain Analytics. Luxury sector concerned by China’s GDPR type laws, regulations on biometrics and common propserity
Zegna shares surge in New York after SPAC deal | Vogue Business – The company has struggled during the pandemic, with core revenue falling 23 per cent last year. This year, sales are expected to stay behind pre-pandemic levels at €1.2 billion – positioned very much as a COVID issue but also seems to be down to the wider move of luxury and streetwear going closer
China’s Big New Idea – The Atlantic – “common prosperity,” has been adopted by journalists, scholars, and corporate executives in China with a fervor only a dictator can ignite. State newspapers are routinely plastered with commentary on the topic. On November 11, a shopping holiday known as “Singles Day,” the usual conspicuous excess took a back seat to the common-prosperity spirit. The e-commerce company Alibaba, the holiday’s primary purveyor, focused its marketing on eco-friendly initiatives and charitable programs instead of sales figures. Its management, eager to get into Xi’s good graces, had already pledged billions of dollars in charitable donations to support the leader’s cause, rather than its own shareholders.Until now, common prosperity has mostly been a concept for domestic consumption in China, but it might soon be heading overseas. The idea could become a central node in the ever-expanding lexicon of language Xi is trying to use to increase Beijing’s influence in international affairs and reshape the world order to favor China’s authoritarian interests – I think its more memetic in nature than an ‘idea’ per se, something that could mean whatever people want it to mean in their head
Guidance for preventing, detecting, and hunting for CVE-2021-44228 Log4j 2 exploitation – Microsoft Security Blog – observed the CVE-2021-44228 vulnerability being used by multiple tracked nation-state activity groups originating from China, Iran, North Korea, and Turkey. This activity ranges from experimentation during development, integration of the vulnerability to in-the-wild payload deployment, and exploitation against targets to achieve the actor’s objectives. For example, MSTIC has observed PHOSPHORUS, an Iranian actor that has been deploying ransomware, acquiring and making modifications of the Log4j exploit. We assess that PHOSPHORUS has operationalized these modifications. In addition, HAFNIUM, a threat actor group operating out of China, has been observed utilizing the vulnerability to attack virtualization infrastructure to extend their typical targeting. In these attacks, HAFNIUM-associated systems were observed using a DNS service typically associated with testing activity to fingerprint systems
Huawei documents show Chinese tech giant’s involvement in surveillance programs – The Washington Post – These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition. “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in the Washington Post report,” the company said in a statement, after The Post shared some of the slides with Huawei representatives to seek comment. “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards.” The divergence between Huawei’s public disavowals that it doesn’t know how its technology is used by customers, and the detailed accounts of surveillance operations on slides carrying the company’s watermark, taps into long-standing concerns about lack of transparency at the world’s largest vendor of telecommunications gear – I can’t say I am surprised
Chinese Spies Accused of Using Huawei in Secret Australian Telecom Hack – Bloomberg – a key piece of evidence underpinning the U.S. efforts — a previously unreported breach that occurred halfway around the world nearly a decade ago. In 2012, Australian intelligence officials informed their U.S. counterparts that they had detected a sophisticated intrusion into the country’s telecommunications systems. It began, they said, with a software update from Huawei that was loaded with malicious code. The breach and subsequent intelligence sharing was confirmed by nearly two dozen former national security officials who received briefings about the matter from Australian and U.S. agencies from 2012 to 2019. The incident substantiated suspicions in both countries that China used Huawei equipment as a conduit for espionage, and it has remained a core part of a case they’ve built against the Chinese company, even as the breach’s existence has never been made public – so I was working on Huawei when Australia banned them from their national broadband initiative in 2013. My boss who was an ex-government guy had gone back to Australia to lobby for Huawei and three days later the guillotine dropped. This disclosure explains the why. China views Australia as its own personal colony. Am I surprised that the Chinese have a tailored access programme? No, but it shouldn’t be made any easier for them
Merck to invest NT$17 billion in Taiwan over next 5-7 years | DigiTimes – to set up production capacity for semiconductor and display materials and enhance R&D capability in Taiwan over the next 5-7 years, according to Merck Group Taiwan managing director John Lee. The investment is the largest as compared with the investment projects Merck has historically undertaken in Taiwan, Lee said. The investment is part of Level Up, Merck’s global investment plan with a total budget of over EUR3 billion (US$3.4 billion) and investment projects varying among different countries, Lee noted.
Taiwan opposition clings on for political relevance as voters shun Beijing | Financial Times – an overwhelming majority of Taiwanese reject unification with China, and over the past decade, the KMT’s support has gone into a tailspin. According to the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University, the proportion of voters identifying with the KMT has dropped to 18.7 per cent, compared with 31.4 per cent for the ruling Democratic Progressive party. – Not entirely surprising given the example that Beijing has provided with Hong Kong
A celebrity divorce spotlights declining China-Taiwan relations — Quartz – The controversies around the former couple, whose ups and downs are often compared in China to the US reality show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, paint a picture of the increasingly confrontational attitude in China towards Taiwan. For decades, citizens from both sides of the straits have sidestepped the tricky political relations of the Communist-ruled People’s Republic of China, and the democratically governed Republic of China (as Taiwan is formally called), to forge personal and professional ties. Taiwanese businesses have been integral to China’s economic advance, and music stars and actors from Taiwan have long found audiences in the mainland. That coexistence often relied on people on both sides dancing around what it means to be Taiwanese. “But as Chinese ultra-nationalism boils over under Xi [Jinping], there is no longer space for ambiguity between nationality and cultural identity,” said Joshua Yang, a doctoral student who tweets about Taiwanese identity and relations with the PRC. As opportunities for Taiwanese and Chinese residents to connect directly through study, work, or jobs shrink, it could harden attitudes in the mainland even further
Do the costs of the cloud outweigh the benefits? | The Economist – few aspects of modern life have made geeks drool more than the cloud, the cumulus of data centres dominated by three American tech giants, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, as well as Alibaba in China. In America some liken their position of impregnability to that of Detroit’s three big carmakers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, a century ago. During the covid-19 pandemic they have helped transform people’s lives, supporting online medical appointments, Zoom meetings and Netflix binges. They attract the brightest engineering talent. Amazon Web Services (aws), the biggest, is now part of business folklore. So it is bordering on heresy to argue, as executives at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm, have done recently, that the cloud threatens to become a weight around the necks of big companies.
Why Apple Is Trash? Because Apple has demonstrated a moral bankruptcy in its behaviour. In the west, it is pro-LGBTQI, pro-security, pro-freedom etc. However its conduct elsewhere shows that it supports and strives to please authoritarian regimes.
The Information on Apple in China, Apple’s Deal, Evaluating Apple’s China Risk – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – This analysis of what Apple did is, of course, distinct from the question of whether or not it was right. That is certainly something worth debating, but I suspect it is more of an academic question here in 2021. The time for Apple to decide whether to start the process of decoupling itself from China was when this deal was made; the company decided to go in the opposite direction — deepening its dependence in the process — and I don’t see it reversing anytime soon. The fact of the matter is that Apple isn’t simply the preeminent example of China’s manufacturing prowess – Apple Is Trash.
Is Britain entering an age of aggravation? – The Face – “My own, lefty inclination is that this is what happens when you continue to grind people up against each other in an increasingly competitive society. That years of austerity rule and a “fuck off” discourse are really starting to show”
Do AI-Powered Mutual Funds Perform Better? – ScienceDirect – AI-powered mutual funds significantly outperform their human-managed peers. AI-powered mutual funds show superior stock selection capability and lower turnover ratios to humans. – index trackers still important
The Amazon Empire Strikes Back – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – For years, Amazon has been quietly chartering private cargo ships, making its own containers, and leasing planes to better control the complicated shipping journey of an online order. Now, as many retailers panic over supply chain chaos, Amazon’s costly early moves are helping it avoid the long wait times for available dock space and workers at the country’s busiest ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles… By chartering private cargo vessels to carry its goods, Amazon can control where its goods go, avoiding the most congested ports. Still, Amazon has seen a 14% rise in out-of-stock items and an average price increase of 25% since January 2021, according to e-commerce management platform CommerceIQ… Amazon has been on a spending spree to control as much of the shipping process as possible. It spent more than $61 billion on shipping in 2020, up from just under $38 billion in 2019. Now, Amazon is shipping 72% of its own packages, up from less than 47% in 2019 according to SJ Consulting Group. It’s even taking control at the first step of the shipping journey by making its own 53-foot cargo containers in China. Containers are in short supply, with long wait times and prices surging from less than $2,000 before the pandemic to $20,000 today.
