Ni hao – welcome to the Taiwan category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the island of Taiwan, business issues relating to Taiwan, people from the island of Taiwan, or Taiwanese-specific culture. I don’t post that often about Taiwan but given its strategic location, vibrant culture and importance in global manufacturing I’d like to remedy that.
Taiwan has a range of cultural exports including music, but most of that is focused addressing a Chinese speaking audience. Many of China’s stars actually come from across the strait. Many Chinese factories are actually owned and run by Taiwanese companies with many managers and engineers crossing the straits to work. They were as responsible for the success and opening up as their Hong Kong brethren who moved their factories upstream along the Pearl river delta.
The Republic of China to give it its formal name has had a complex history, acting as a cradle of traditional Chinese culture that was destroyed and remade on the mainland under Mao Zetong. He was looking to build a new country, while Chiang Kai-shek was looking to preserve as much of an old country as he could. The island across the strait was like a seed bank ready to regenerate the mainland at some point in the future.
Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if the Palace museum launched a collaboration with a brand that had great design chops and that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in design as well as Taiwan. Or if there was a new white paper from the government of Taiwan, that might appear in ideas and Taiwan. If there are Taiwanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.
IEDM: DTCO & More than Moore – by Doug O’Laughlin – The future is about Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO), and Backside Power Deliever Networks (BSPDN) is a huge part of the roadmaps forward post-gate-all-around. A good place to start on what exactly Backside Power Delivery Networks (BSPDN) is is my post I wrote a few months ago about the bold bets Intel is making there. The big takeaway is that BSPDN is clearly going to be inserted in the design processes, and there is a small roadmap of improvements afforded by BSPDN. But after that, BSPDN will change the design process to allow adding more features, like moving functions on to the backside of the chip. By splitting the signal and power layers, there’s a whole new set of ideas of how to design chips with the space afforded from the power layers. This is Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO) and System Technology Co-optimization (STCO) at it’s best. BSPDN looks like it has several years of obvious scaling potential, so it will be a huge part of the incremental semiconductor process from here until 2030. It will not only improve the energy delivered to the chip, but actually shrink the cell size. Think about it like a new way to organize the room, and now we can fit more in less even though its the same room filled with the same objects. Next, the roadmap in the long term after we have fully achieved backside power contact networks means we could open up the wafer on the other side of the chip. If we are opening up the other side to be a functional signal layer, there’s a potential we can start adding backside devices to the chip! This blew my mind, and the options for stacking layer, memory, and other devices (like energy capacitors) is endless! This is huge! – BSPDN is a key part of Intel’s technology roadmap. BSPDN is a mix of process lithography and logic technology to decouple the power grid from the design.
The proposed technique delivers power from the backside of a thinned device wafer, which allows for greater wafer sizes in terms of the amount of logic in a chip
Business
Jeep-Maker Stellantis Is Laying Off 1,350 Workers, Blaming EVs | Business Insider – interesting and complex picture being painted. In general, electric cars have less parts for assembly than their internal combustion engine powered equivalent cars. The costs must be coming in component costs and or research and development
China
Fashion factory: Mango brings production closer to home in rethink on China | Financial Times – “In this debate about whether 30 years of globalisation will continue or go backwards, the most important thing for us to follow in detail is the China issue,” he said. Asked if Mango would reduce the proportion it buys from the country, Ruiz replied: “I would say yes, but we’ll be very alert to how things evolve.” Mango gains some freedom from the fact it has only six stores in mainland China and consumers there contribute little to total sales, which it predicts will this year surpass its 2019 record of €2.4bn. Other brands have already moved more decisively. The US jeans maker Levi’s and UK bootmaker Dr Martens have been reducing their sourcing from China since before the pandemic.
The US Army’s Land Warrior programme was in development for some 33 years. The idea behind it is that better informed soldiers who are connected to support assets can do more with less and survive.
Chris Capelluto put together a good accessible history of the programme.
Burning chrome
About a decade after the rise of cyberpunk developed as a literature genre, the defence thinkers realised the potential of modern technologies that would have sounded similar to Case’s cyber deck in Neuromancer.
Head up displays, small but connected and powerful networked computers and connected weapon sights of the Land Warrior programme have taken over three decades to fulfil the original vision. Technology takes time, while Land Warrior has taken three plus decades; artificial intelligence is taking a lot longer again.
Human factors
Even now the Land Warrior programme isn’t completely sorted. The Microsoft Halolens AR displays are said to cause debilitating nausea, headaches and eye strain. More than 80% of those who experienced discomfort suffered symptoms within three hours of using the Land Warrior AR headset.
The wearable computer of the Land Warrior programme is an Android powered Smartphone sized device, but would be using very different networks. The network is both the strength and the point of weakness in the Land Warrior programme.
How the networked structures of Land Warrior will fully affect military culture and power structures will be interesting. All of it will be creating tensions in the millennia of ‘hard-wiring’ humans have had since before the dawn of civilisation as we know it and the impact will be much deeper than just the physical tiredness from head up display googles.
Just think about the benefits and ills of social media, or how the world has shrunk through video calls. In my parent’s lifetime, people leaving their homes in Ireland to emigrate to the US or Australia used to have a wake at their leaving. In some respects that departure was a form of death. That is very different to the relationship that I have with family and friends around the world now. Changes coming through from Land Warrior might be equally deep over time.
A lament for the age of apathy | Financial Times – Turnout in the US election of 1996 fell below 50 per cent. In Britain five years later, it was the lowest since the Great war. Most pop culture either side of the millennium wasn’t even allusively or allegorically political. You can read Jane Austen — goes the old line — without knowing that Napoleon was cutting through Europe. You can watch Friends without knowing that America has a government. The peak of the apolitical age was Big Brother, which, in sealing contestants from the news, didn’t disrupt their lives much. – I think a large amount of society still live in that bubble
I was watching this video and I could it imagine something similar being done to describe the luck of many market towns in the west of Ireland with the identikit feel
The video below is a good run down on the short term aspects of the current state of the UK economy. However UK productivity has been going wrong for decades. Several reasons:
The UK relies on services rather than manufacturing – While the UK was in the EU, those factories that remained imported more productive workers from the east. With Brexit the manufacturing and warehouses went east instead along with income tax revenues
The UK has a serious skills gap, there isn’t the prevalence of night colleges any more
The UK has been declining in automation. The classic example is trying to find an automatic car wash. During the 1970s and 1980s these were all over the UK. Now you get a bunch of people with buckets. UK warehouses are much less automated than most other places. This is partly down to several decades of short termism that Will Hutton wrote about back in The State We’re In circa 1995
Brexit has permanently re-eingineered supply chains around the UK
Too much UK investment has gone into real estate, you only have to see all the developments in London and Manchester
Universities are now developed for the benefit of foriegn students rather than domestic talent growth, innovation. And the universities are over leveraged in property development and are likely to go under if there is a reduction in foreign students or a rise in interest rates
Epson to End All Laser Printer Sales by 2026 – ExtremeTech – quietly chosen to stop selling laser printer hardware by 2026. The company will instead focus on its more environmentally-friendly inkjet printers, according to a statement obtained by The Register. Although the company stopped selling laser printers in the United States a while back, it had maintained the line in other markets, including Europe and Asia. Consumers will no longer be able to purchase new Epson laser printers as of 2026, but Epson has promised to continue supporting existing customers via supplies and spare parts. Epson itself claims its inkjets are up to 85 percent more energy efficient than its laser units and produce 85 percent less carbon dioxide. Interesting move, western companies would be virtue signalling the hell out of this.
Really impressive piece of technology and engineering by Sony. But I can’t work out why it was done. By this time Citizen, Casio and Sony were already making LCD televisions. Back in the day Sony used to some products, just because the engineers could. I also love how this looks like a miniature version of a Sony 14″ portable TV circa 1984, even down to the homage to the Trinitron branding.
There seems to be a lack of appreciation for economic trajectory that Hong Kong is on; inextricably linked in China
They don’t seem to understand the political trajectory Hong Kong is on
They aren’t the kind of talent that Hong Kong needs to plug losses in healthcare, education, social services and the creative industries
More developed countries aren’t likely to want ‘stepping stone’ Chinese people from Hong Kong. Their choices might be as limited as are on the mainland
This will only accelerate simmering nativist hostility and more Hong Kongers may leave via BNO visas etc.
If Hong Kong has been in a recession, what must the real state of the China economy be? Are they way worse than PMI and official numbers seem to suggest?
Finally, China has disliked Hong Kong being a vehicle for capital flight. With a greying workforce and declining birth rate will they dislike the talent flight of middle class Chinese through ‘stepping stone’ Hong Kong?
Ideas
Interesting viewpoint on Russia from author Ian Garner. You can find out more about his book here.
China’s puffer jacket obsession: Its not just Moncler and Canada Goose, homegrown brands are taking off | Campaign Asia – Domestic Chinese and international puffer jacket brands are battling for market share in the mainland. We take a look at which names are emerging victorious. China’s puffer jacket obsession: Its not just Moncler and Canada Goose, homegrown brands are taking offWhen temperatures in China started to cool down in early October, one of the biggest fashion trends to return was the puffer jacket. Alongside higher-priced brands like Canada Goose — which saw 20 percent higher sales compared to the previous year — homegrown puffer jacket labels such as Bosideng, Xue Zhong Fei, and Yaya all reported that their gross merchandise value (GMV) growth rate on Tmall exceeded 100 percent. Meanwhile, European brand Moncler sold out of its classic Maya coat on the first day of its debut on Tmall Luxury Pavilion in October.
Media
Why Hong Kong’s outdoor advertising is underperforming | Media | Campaign Asia – Based on a recent study by Hong Kong Baptist University, OOH ads are failing to capture people as they severely lack creativity. Dang, I feel bad for you son, that’s burn to the Hong Kong agency scene right there. Seriously though I would be curious about the methodology
The $300 Million Sneaker King Comes Undone – WSJ – In May, Mr. Malekzadeh’s fiancée—also the company’s finance chief—pushed for both of them to come clean, according to people familiar with the situation. Federal prosecutors a few months later charged the couple with bank fraud and Mr. Malekzadeh with wire fraud and money laundering. Customers claim they paid millions of dollars for shoes that never arrived. A court-appointed receiver is sorting out the remaining inventory of the entrepreneur’s company, Zadeh Kicks. Early last year, Mr. Malekzadeh collected orders for about 600,000 pairs of Air Jordan 11 Cool Grey sneakers months before they hit stores, netting over $70 million, according to prosecutors. He priced the sneakers between $115 and $200 a pair, cheaper than their expected retail price of around $225
In 2020 Forbes magazine described Yeezy’s rise as “one of the great retail stories of the century”. Yeezy influenced and inspired a multitude of other fashion brands. Kanye West and the Yeezy brand has been a phenomenal power in street wear. West collaborated with BAPE early on his career and Yeezy took off with the famous Nike collaboration output: Air Yeezy sneakers. Adidas reached out to West, after
Adidas has a plan to sell Yeezy sneakers without Ye – Because the company owns the designs it made with Ye, it can—and it probably will—sell the shoes, chief financial officer (and interim CEO until Dec. 31) Harm Ohlmeyer said on the company’s Nov. 9 earnings call. – They can’t use the Yeezy name though. Given that Yeezy is responsible for up to 40 percent of adidas properties according to some sources, this could end up being the best of both worlds for adidas. Kanye West was unhappy for a long time with the adidas deal, so unlikely to complain, and he may yet be able to use the Yeezy brand with another sneaker maker, for instance in China.
Opinion | How China Lost America – The New York Times – interesting piece by Thomas Friedman – the big take out for me is that China thinkers don’t realise that Xi Jinping doesn’t care due to his Marxist dialectic world view. Read also: The Return of Red China: Xi Jinping Brings Back Marxism – China is now breaking from decades of political, economic, and foreign-policy pragmatism and accommodationism. Xi’s China is assertive. He is less subtle than his predecessors, and his ideological blueprint for the future is now hiding in plain sight. The question for all is whether his plans will prevail or generate their own political antibodies, both at home and abroad, that begin to actively resist Xi’s vision for China and the world. But then again, as a practicing Marxist dialectician, Xi Jinping is probably already anticipating that response—and preparing whatever countermeasures may then be warranted – Kevin Rudd on China
Consumer behaviour
PR emails: I said yes to every single one for a day. Oof. | Slate – Could it be possible that the publicists are on to something? Is the daily flood of hopeless pitches actually a secret window into American ingenuity, optimism, and desperation—not to mention a very interesting line of scientifically tested sex toys?
Really interesting commentary on how Adidas designed the mesh used in the 4DFWD running shoe that provides a similar energy transfer to the carbon fibre shank in Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% shoes that completely changed long distance running
Great video on how additive manufacturing’s unique properties can result in innovation. This heat exchange was printed from laser sintered aluminium alloy powder. The weight savings and increased thermal efficiency figures claimed are very impressive. The problem is using this technology at scale, or will it be niche like carbon fibre fabrication is now?
Some machines combine CNC milling machines with additive manufacturing capability, this hybrid expertise makes a lot of sense.
The US used shell companies during the Cold War to secure titanium from Russia. Now it seems that Russia has done similar things with electronics components for its smart weapons obtained from US manufacturers.
The amount of stories about the Chinese illegal foreign police stations that have broke over the past couple of days is really interesting. The clampdown on illegal foreign police stations seems as if it was either coordinated, or there was an inciting incident that persuaded other governments that they had to act. Secondly, what becomes apparent from the coverage is that governments were aware about them for a while, but chose to do nothing. The mainstream media lack of coverage made China critics look like paranoid cranks when they discussed Chinese illegal foreign police stations in their countries. There is a contrast between the British military Operation Motorman to stop what they perceived as the illegal provisional IRA policing of ‘Free Derry’ and the current handling of illegal foreign police stations set up by the Chinese.
I think that one of the reasons why illegal foreign police stations hasn’t been covered well by mainstream media is that they didn’t want to give credence to coverage by media that are right of centre like Fox News.
China
US think tank CSIS shares expert thought on the 20th Party Congress.
China’s limitless presidency means limited diplomacy | Financial Times – … Chinese diplomats find it disconcertingly easy to revert to behaviour that could be seen as bullying. This confirms the suspicion that European governments have of the Communist party: that it is becoming more brazen. A certain school of Chinese nationalism says that the west is set on containing China’s rise at all costs — and that, as a result, Beijing may as well conduct external relations for internal consumption. Yet European alliances are still in China’s grasp, and many of its own objectives, from technological upgrading to climate action, can only be achieved with a wide range of allies and Video before Hu Jintao’s exit from congress puts files in focus – Nikkei Asia
German exporters rethink €100bn ‘love affair’ with China | Financial Times – Competition — fair and otherwise — remains a problem. “Our members know that every technology they bring into China, in a relatively short time, will be part of the Chinese market,” said Ulrich Ackermann, head of foreign trade at the VDMA. “We say, be aware you can be kicked out in a short time.” Ackermann spoke of a German manufacturer of construction machinery, whose state-owned Chinese rival sent machines to customers, free for use for the first year. “How can we compete with that?” – This has been the standard playbook for decades. Huawei won telecoms because of state bank vendor financing at negative interest rates, not superior technology and certainly not superior reliability. What took the Germans so long to catch on? I suspect it was the outsized political impact that a few large companies have on German policies versus the middle sized companies that actually drive exports, German employment and prosperity.
Hong Kong Policy Address: How much of John Lee’s maiden speech was old wine in new bottles? – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – Hong Kong has experienced a mass outflow of residents since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the implementation of the national security law. The previous administration disputed the scale of the exodus, with Lam attributing it to the suspension of quarantine-free travel with mainland China, saying that the number of One-Way Permit holders coming into Hong Kong had significantly decreased. Lee, who has been pressured to stop the exodus of talent from the city, acknowledged the trend for the first time on Wednesday, admitting that the local workforce had shrunk by 140,000 people over the last two years. Lee had previously rejected the use of the term “emigration wave” to describe the city’s recent and dramatic population decline. While Lam said that she did not want the government to be asking citizens to stay, Lee presented a series of proposals on Wednesday, ranging from new visa schemes to stamp duty cuts, designed explicitly to attract talent. – even the talent attraction proposals won’t make much difference, looking for people only from the world’s top 100 universities and earning at least $318,000 per year. That isn’t going to plug education, healthcare and social care staff gaps. It won’t fill much of the many financial services opportunities either, nor multinational regional hubs
Ideas
Adam Curtis on the collapse of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. His commentary on Brexit is spot on.
Smiles in Profiles: Improving Fairness and Efficiency Using Estimates of User Preferences in Online Marketplaces
Forbidden Questions – Marginal REVOLUTION – asks some interesting questions around science, innovation and politics. On the Flipside you have communism’s examples of bad science as an exemplar of what can go wrong when politics frames scientific exploration and ideas
I was fired from NYU after students complained that the class was too hard. Who’s next? – The Boston Globe – What is overwhelmingly important is the chilling effect of such intervention by administrators on teaching overall and especially on untenured professors. Can a young assistant professor, almost all of whom are not protected by tenure, teach demanding material? Dare they give real grades? Their entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients.
China’s wealthy activate escape plans as Xi Jinping extends rule | Financial Times and as an interesting counterpoint: Asian art and luxury buying boom | Financial Times – At one level, it is a worldwide trend. From fine art to fine wine, luxury-sector companies have bounced back from the depths of the pandemic as their super-rich customers have, so far, been largely immune to global inflation and economic turmoil. After its worst decline on record in 2020, the global personal luxury goods market grew last year to reach €288bn in value, up 7 per cent on 2019, according to consultancy Bain. It says 2022 began with a further healthy rise. In Hong Kong, though, the picture has been quite distinctive, with some of the super-rich spending locally while others have moved abroad, joining an exodus of more than 153,000 residents since the beginning of 2021. The territory has recorded a 14 per cent drop in the number of millionaires in 2022 compared with last year (that is, people with at least $1mn in liquid assets, according to residency advisory firm Henley & Partners). With about 125,100 millionaires out of a population of 7.3mn, the city fell by four places to 12th globally for the number of high-net-worth individuals – building imperial palaces while China becomes redder…
Second-hand Rolexes: watch out for stupid prices and superfakes | Financial Times – the FT blames millennials who started collecting watches when they couldn’t go on holiday during COVID. I think that the causes are multi-variant. Luxury brands have looked at and learned from streetwear ‘drop’ business models exemplified by the likes of Supreme and Nike’s SNKR app. Secondly, the market might moderate a bit when Rolex realises that there isn’t so much of a demand in China post the 20th party congress. I haven’t paid crazy money like what you’ve described for a pre-owned Rolex, but everyone of my watches original warrant cards have a (mainland) Chinese family name on them. Buying via the verified service on eBay at least reduces the risk of buying an overpriced real, rather than super fake Rolex. I think we should be thankful for small mercies that it didn’t go into meme stocks or OneCoin analogues.
Chinese censors alter ending of Minions: The Rise of Gru film | China | The Guardian – DuSir, a film review publisher with 14.4 million followers on Weibo, noted that the Chinese version ran one minute longer than the international one, and questioned why the extra time was needed. “It’s only us who need special guidance and care for fear that a cartoon will ‘corrupt’ us,” DuSir wrote. Huaxia Film Distribution and China Film Co, the film’s distributors in China, did not respond to a request for comment
Hit film Return to Dust has vanished from China’s cinemas. Why? | Financial Times – “In the beginning,” she says, “Return to Dust attracted almost no attention. An art-house film about poverty among rural peasants? Honestly, neither the government nor mainstream Chinese audiences would normally care.” But then came several fateful quirks of timing. Over the summer, an online short, Second Uncle, became a Chinese viral hit, telling the story of a kindly rural carpenter. On social media, the little-known Return to Dust was mooted as a companion piece. From such small acorns sprang word-of-mouth success. Week by week, the movie built an audience – it might be the government, it could also be forces in the domestic media scene as big budget Chinese films don’t need competition stealing their ability to pay back investments
From East Berlin to Beijing, surveillance goes in circles | Financial Times – Last month, the Stasi HQ hosted a Berlin Biennale seminar on the “Digital Divide”, where panellists discussed the ways in which old, disproved theories are recycled in modern surveillance. Shazeda Ahmed, a post-doctorate at Princeton University, described the rise of emotion recognition technology in China. Parents have pressured schools there to give up emotion recognition in classrooms, but some police forces are investing in the technology, hoping that a person’s movements and gestures can signal their propensity to commit a crime. Such methods fall under the umbrella of “predictive policing”, but they are dangerously unproven. Academics doubt whether gestures can be analysed as discrete events that carry the same meaning from person to person. Speaking at the Biennale, digital rights lawyer Ramak Molavi gave a historical perspective, comparing emotion-recognition trends today to phrenology and physiognomy, the ideas that a person’s skull shape and facial features indicate their character. Molavi described how the ideas had been discredited, but enjoyed a renaissance during the Nazi regime – this isn’t the first time that science and ideology have led each other up the garden path
Taipei urbanism – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – I had a disorienting sense of being back in Japan — so much so that I kept expecting people to drive on the left side of the street. So much of the infrastructure in Taiwan looks and feels Japanese — the pavement, the building materials, the signs at the airport. People cite this as a residue of the colonial period, but given that the colonial period ended 77 years ago, it’s probably more due to Taiwanese architects, urban planners, and engineers continuing to look to Japan for inspiration. After a few minutes, however, the sense of Japan-ness faded, crowded out by two key features of the Taipei landscape: lush greenery and shabby building facades
Mid afternoon Sunday saw an incident outside and inside the Manchester Chinese consulate. The Manchester Chinese consulate caters for the second largest Chinese community in the UK. Manchester airport before COVID had direct flights to China and Hong Kong. Given the large British Chinese population in the area, it also has a community of Hong Kongers who desire democracy.
My understanding of what happened:
Chinese diplomats didn’t want a protest right outside the Manchester Chinese consulate
On the first day of the party congress at home in Beijing, some staff emerged from the consulate wearing anti-stab vests and riot police helmets to smash protestor banners and drive them away. Police were slow to intervene
Protesters defended themselves
The Manchester Chinese consulate staff retreated to their grounds including the Consul General who has been out walking.
A protestor was dragged through their gates and given a beating, he was eventually extracted by police belatedly reacting to the fight
The Consul General was seen pulling the hair of the protestor as well and later admitted it
johnlsl Extradition law Protest at Admiralty, Hong Kong 反送中大遊行(金鐘段)
Business
Pfizer Executive: in-Person Work Is ‘Critical’ to Workplace Culture – Nearly 2 years after the company helped to develop the Covid vaccine, Pfizer’s Angela Hwang said it’s time to get back to the office. Though many worked from home during the vaccine’s development, Pfizer’s culture was “banked” from years of in-person work, she said. Some companies have recently faced backlash for requiring in-person work. – Not so sure how well this will go for them.
We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves
I know that the Elvis memorabilia dropped massively in price as his fans went into care homes or died off. Antiques and art go through cycles of ‘what’s in’ and out for that matter. Doug DeMuro asks a similar question about car collecting baby boomers. A lot of this is down to cultural relevance for collectors. DeMuro notes that ‘brass era’ cars from the 1910s onwards have already seen declines in price and demands.
The Covid-19 Baby Bump: The Unexpected Increase in U.S. Fertility Rates in Response to the Pandemic | NBER – Childbearing in the U.S. among foreign-born mothers declined immediately after lockdowns began—nine months too soon to reflect the pandemic’s effects on conceptions. We also find that the COVID pandemic resulted in a small “baby bump” among U.S.-born mothers. The 2021 baby bump is the first major reversal in declining U.S. fertility rates since 2007 and was most pronounced for first births and women under age 25, which suggests the pandemic led some women to start their families earlier. Above age 25, the baby bump was also pronounced for women ages 30-34 and women with a college education, who were more likely to benefit from working from home. The data for California track the U.S. data closely and suggest that U.S. births remained elevated through the third quarter of 2022
Letter from Hong Kong Advocacy Groups: U.S. Financial Institutions’ Planned Hong Kong Summit Will Undermine U.S. Foreign Policy – executives will meet with sanctioned government officials including Chief Executive John Lee as they help Hong Kong convince the world that it’s business as usual in the city—that despite the authoritarian crackdown of the past three years, investors should return. This financial summit is more than just a conference: it represents a watershed moment in our fight to hold Hong Kong officials accountable and deter others across the world who might seek to snuff out democratic rights and commit human rights abuses. If the U.S. Government takes no action to prevent even its own banks from undermining U.S. policy with respect to Hong Kong, then it will send a message to the world that the U.S. does not intend to defend the principles it espouses. Investment will return to the city, and the Hong Kong government, the CCP, and other authoritarian regimes will learn that human rights abuses are easily forgotten by the West—especially when lots of money is involved
Global cities are fragile by nature. Here are some on their way down | Financial Times – China’s Communist party distrusts global cities. It’s crushing Hong Kong, and people are fleeing. When a marquee 800-flat project opened last month, zero apartments sold. Hong Kong, fifth on Kearney’s global-city ranking in 2019, is regressing into what some call “just another Chinese city”. Beijing and Shanghai, among Kearney’s top 10 last year, have also lost access to the world, supposedly because of quarantine restrictions. Last month, China averaged about 100 international flights a day, down 96 per cent since 2020, says Variflight. After this week’s party congress, these cities may become global again, or perhaps those days are over
Clarifying Responsible Cyber Power: Developing Views in the U.K. Regarding Non-intervention and Peacetime Cyber Operations – Lawfare – the U.K. government’s strategic communication about cyber has included prominent speeches by successive foreign secretaries and attorneys general, as well as by senior securocrats such as the GCHQ director. This division of effort in the public communication about U.K. strategy makes sense, incorporating senior political leaders with responsibility for foreign policy and the law as well as leading securocrats who, as career officials rather than politicians, speak with a different kind of authority and independence from partisan politics. Cumulatively, this helps to advance the U.K.’s emerging narrative about the responsible, democratic use of cyber power by nation-states. Fleming’s remarks also emphasized that the U.K.’s cyber operations were “ethical, proportionate and legal.” As a proponent of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, it is not surprising that the U.K. twice (in 2018 and 2022) has used a major speech by its attorney general to develop the legal aspects of the case for responsible cyber power
Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career – Solomon’s suit is the latest in a series of legal actions that follows Reuters’ reporting about hired hackers operating out of India. In June, Reuters reported on the activities of several hack-for-hire shops, including Delhi area-companies BellTroX and CyberRoot, that were involved in a decade-long series of espionage campaigns targeting thousands of people, including more than 1,000 lawyers at 108 different law firms. At the time, Reuters reported that people who had become hacking targets while involved in at least seven different lawsuits had each launched their own inquiries into the cyberespionage campaign. That number has since grown. Azima, Solomon’s former source, is among those who have gone to court over the alleged hacking. His lawyers, like Solomon’s, allege that Dechert worked with BellTroX, CyberRoot and a slew of private investigators to steal his emails and publish them to the web. BellTroX and CyberRoot are not parties to the suit and could not immediately be reached. Executives at both firms have previously denied wrongdoing. Solomon and Azima allege that Dechert undertook the hack-and-leak operation in the interest of its client, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qasimi, ruler of the Middle Eastern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. Reuters has reported that lawyers for Ras Al Khaimah’s investment agency – RAKIA – used the emails to help win a fraud lawsuit filed against Azima in London in 2016
American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program – The Washington Post – “In this case the American technology is superior — we can’t do certain things without foreign technology,” said one Chinese scientist who works in a university lab that conducts testing for hypersonic vehicles. “There isn’t the same technical foundation.” Some of the U.S. firms whose products are reaching Chinese military research groups have been the beneficiaries of Defense Department grants to spur cutting-edge innovation, according to a federal program database, creating the specter of the Pentagon subsidizing Chinese military advances. “It’s very disturbing, because the bottom line is that technology that can be used for military hypersonics was funded by U.S. taxpayers, through the U.S. government, and ended up in China,” – war by other means….
Interesting take on how Singapore will evolve with a transition of power happening in Singapore away from the Lee family who have dominated the city state since independence.
Taiwan
Really good presentation on the international importance of Taiwan. Its not just about TSMC but also about the global supply lines that run through Taiwanese waters