NATO Targets China, India's Engineering Gap, and More

NATO's China Warning, India's Tech Needs, and Abbott vs. Biden

NATO Singles Out China Over Its Support for Russia in Ukraine - Bloomberg

• NATO is set to issue a communique calling out China’s military support for Russia, describing China as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

• The draft document details China’s supply of dual-use materials that serve as inputs for Russia’s defense sector and poses a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security.”

• China is being briefed on China’s support in the run-up to the summit as part of efforts to cement shared concern over the burgeoning defense partnership between the US and its allies.

• Reports suggest that Chinese and Russian companies are developing an attack drone similar to an Iranian model deployed in Ukraine, which could signal an unprecedented escalation.

India Needs 1 Million High-Tech Engineers as Economy Expands - Bloomberg

• India’s technology sector needs more than 1 million engineers with advanced skills in AI and other capabilities over the next 2-3 years

• The sector needs to reskill more than half of its existing workforce to take up jobs in fields such as AI, big data analytics, and cyber-security

• New college graduates will only be able to fill a quarter of the advanced tech jobs needed

• IT businesses like Tata Consultancy Services and Larsen & Toubro Ltd. are struggling to fill positions due to a wide mismatch between the skills of the workforce and what they need on the job

• Poor schooling system is the root of India’s skill gap, and the demand supply gap for digital talent is expected to widen

• Economists warn that India’s poor schooling system will hinder growth prospects in a country with a population below the age of 30.

Abbott Rips Biden Over Beryl Call: ‘He Just Flat Out Made It Up’ - Bloomberg

• Texas Governor Greg Abbott denies President Joe Biden’s allegation that he had trouble tracking him down to free up emergency funds for hurricane relief

• Abbott claims Biden made up the allegation and has receipts to prove it

• Houston continues to reel from Hurricane Beryl, with widespread blackouts and economic losses estimated to reach $28-32 billion in the US

• Beryl has exposed weaknesses in the state of Texas’ infrastructure and highlighted the need for climate adaptation investments

• Federal funding is crucial for infrastructure development, which can be expensive

• The US Army Corps of Engineers recommended a $30 billion plan to reduce the cost of coastal storm damages on the Texas Gulf Coast

• Governor Abbott is not interested in a cabinet position if former President Donald Trump retakes the White House in this year’s election.

Ukraine Is Fighting Russia With Toy Drones and Duct-Taped Bombs - Bloomberg

• Thousands of deadly weapons were made on the top three floors of a residential high-rise in Kyiv

• Vyriy Drone, one of Ukraine’s five largest drone producers, produces over 6,000 exploding drones a month

• The facility is about to relocate to a larger space that would triple its capacity

• FPV drones have changed the economics of ground war and are the defining weapon of this war

• Ukrainian soldiers routinely record their successful strikes and share them with the world on social media

• Drone technology has gone from expensive assets accessible only to sophisticated militaries to affordable and widely available weapons

• Nonstate actors, such as Houthi rebels in Yemen and the group in Jordan that killed three American soldiers this year, increasingly rely on drones

• Drones have largely cost the Russian military $9 million, according to reports.

Elon Musk Says Second Neuralink Brain Implant About a Week Away - Bloomberg

-Brain-computer startup Neuralink aims to implant its device into a second human patient in a week or so and aim to have devices in patients in high single digits by the end of the year. The long-term goal is to mitigate the risk of AI and create a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence. In the short term, the company aims to help patients with brain and spinal injuries by enabling them to control phones and computers with their minds. The device is called Telepathy and has electrode threads attached to it that insert into the brain tissue. In upcoming surgeries, Neuralink will make changes to avoid setbacks that occurred in the first implantation. The team also discussed future generations of the device and the treatment of animals in the laboratory.

Archegos Founder Bill Hwang Found Guilty on 10 Charges - New York Times

• Investor Bill Hwang has been found guilty on charges arising from the collapse of his firm Archegos Capital Management in 2021.

• The collapse caused steep losses for some Wall Street banks, resulting in $10 billion in losses for the banks that facilitated his firm’s trading.

• Mr. Hwang, 60, was charged with 11 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, and market manipulation. He could spend the rest of his life in prison, and Patrick Halligan, the former chief financial officer, was also convicted on all three counts. The jury deliberated for nearly two days after a two-month trial that featured testimony from 21 prosecution witnesses. The impact of the collapse on the stock market was limited, but several banks suffered losses, including Credit Suisse, UBS, Nomura, and Morgan Stanley. financiers have agreed to pay nearly $400 million to regulators in the United States and Britain to compensate for risk failures in the Archegoshan affair. The case is religious-focused and Christian-focused, with no immediate comment on the verdict.

They Hit Their Health Care Deductible. It Was Time to Party. - New York Times

• Some people are finding ways to celebrate small wins and build a sense of community around high healthcare costs.

• Meeting a deductible or paying off a medical bill are sufficient reasons to party for some people dealing with high health care costs

• Ian Goldstein, a comedian and writer, hosted a party to celebrate meeting his health insurance deductible

• Many Americans have inadequate health insurance coverage that has led to delayed or forgone care, significant medical debt, and worsening health problems

• Celebrations, even if done in jest, can provide relief and relief around something that can feel heavy

• Others have had to declare bankruptcy because of medical costs or argue with insurers for more than a year over bills that should have been covered

• The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group that focuses on health care issues, has released a survey on the issue.

How Beautycounter Fell Apart, Sinking Almost $700 Million With It - New York Times

• Private equity firm Carlyle bought Beautycounter, a skin care brand that people sold at kitchen tables

• Renee Hill earned $177,000 a year through her network of 400 Beautycounter sellers

• Beautycounter faced one of its biggest failures this year due to little bottles of cleansing scrubs and vitamin C serums sold in people’s living rooms

• Carlyle invested roughly $600 million in Beautycounter in May 2021

• The founder, Gregg Renfrew, had built the company around a mission of making cosmetic products without commonly used chemicals

• Within three years, Beautycounter was shut down, and Carlyle lost all the money invested

• Multilevel marketing companies typically have a strong founder that defines the culture, and that culture is hard to change.

Britain Has Huge Clean Energy Ambitions, but Are They Realistic? - New York Times

• Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull produces wind turbine blades

• The factory has already invested 500 million pounds or $630 million

• Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledges to quadruple Britain’s offshore wind capacity by 2030

• Wind is the largest source of power generation in Britain

• Clean energy operators and environmentalists are pleased with the vision.

Samsung Union Workers Launch Indefinite Strike - New York Times

• Unionized workers at Samsung Electronics went on an indefinite strike over pay and working policies

• An estimated 6,500 workers walked off the job for a planned three-day strike over working conditions

• Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest maker of memory chips and logic chips

• The union has been negotiating with Samsung since January over vacation days and wages

• Workers are demanding a wage increase by 3.5%, improved bonus policies, and an extra day of paid vacation

• Entry-level Samsung employees typically get over two weeks a year of vacation, some paid and some unpaid

• Union workers want Samsung to compensate workers for any lost wages during the strike.

Chinese social media sensation Xiaohongshu wins major foreign VC backing - Financial Times

• Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu has gained the backing of venture capital firm DST Global in a rare foreign investment.

• The photo and video-sharing platform arranged stake sales of existing shares to current and new investors valued at $17bn

• DST, founded by Yuri Milner and a past investor in Facebook, took part in the round along with HongShan, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Investment, Boyu Capital, and Citic Capital

• China has largely shunned the tech sector due to Beijing’s crackdown on the sector since a Beijing crackdown in the early 2020s

• Xiaomi turned profitable in 2023, making $500mn in net profit on revenues of $3.7bn, up 20% from the previous year’s $200mn loss

• It is unlikely to be an acquisition target for Tencent and Alibaba due to its strong financial performance and support from both parties

• Investors are betting on its potential for a blockbuster IPO after delivering strong growth and expanding its overseas business development team.

Chinese equities rise on first day of new short-selling restrictions - Financial Times

• S&P 500 hits sixth straight record high

• Materials and technology sectors lead gains

• Costco raises membership fee for first time since 2017

• Citigroup fined $136mn for failing to fix risk control issues

Big Tech feels the heat over AI concerns - Financial Times

• Nancy Pelosi calls on Joe Biden to decide whether to continue his quest for re-election

• Russian missile that destroyed a Kyiv children’s hospital relies on western-designed components

• US antitrust enforcer examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape”

• Big Tech turning its attention to the problems caused by the huge power demands of AI

• AMD acquires Finnish start-up Silo AI

Microsoft and Apple drop OpenAI seats amid antitrust scrutiny - Financial Times

• Microsoft has withdrawn from its observer role on the board of OpenAI, amid scrutiny by global regulators of Big Tech’s investments in AI start-ups.

• Apple will not take up a similar position on OpenAI’s board as part of a deal to integrate ChatGPT into their devices, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter

• OpenAI will host regular meetings with partners such as Microsoft and Apple and investors Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures

• The move comes as antitrust authorities in the EU and US examine the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI due to concerns about competition in the sector

• Microsoft does not have a conventional equity stake in the start-up, but has an entitlement to a share of profits from a subsidiary up to a certain limit

• Investing in OpenAI has been critical to its success, with Microsoft providing computing power and cloud storage worth billions of dollars

• Windows has played down its ties with OpenAI as antitrust concerns have grown

CNN cuts jobs as part of digital overhaul - Financial Times

• CNN is cutting about 100 jobs, or 3% of its staff, as it consolidates its newsrooms and plans to create a billion-dollar digital business.

• Chief executive Sir Mark Thompson is merging CNN’s US, international, and digital newsrooms to create an integrated and streamlined multimedia news operation and a bold new digital strategy.

• CNN will launch a digital subscription service before the end of 2024 to reach audiences that consume news online and halt the decline of CNN’s traditional cable news business. - Around 100 out of a workforce of more than 3,500 jobs will be cut, while other roles will be created under the new structure. 10-year video archive holder Warner Brothers Discovery has signed a multimillion-dollar licensing deal to drive value from its video archive. 11- CNN’s previous digital service, CNN+, was closed after just a month as new owners focused on its Max streaming service. 12-year-old service was abandoned briskly in 2022.

Microsoft Quits OpenAI’s Board Amid Antitrust Scrutiny - Wall Street Journal

• Microsoft has resigned its partnership with OpenAI due to concerns over the stability of the AI company’s board.

• The involvement of Microsoft in OpenAI is facing scrutiny in both the US and Europe.

For AI Giants, Smaller Is Sometimes Better - Wall Street Journal

• Tech giants and startups are using small or medium language models to make AI software cheaper, faster, and more specialized. These models are trained on less data and often designed for specific tasks. Smaller models cost less than $10 million to train and use fewer than 10 billion parameters. Microsoft, Google, and Apple have all released smaller models this year. OpenAI recently released a version of its flagship model that it says is cheaper to operate. Businesses and consumers are looking for ways to run generative AI-based technology more cheaply. Small models can answer questions for as little as one-sixth the cost of large language models in many cases. Fine-tuning small models on specific sets of data allows them to perform as effectively as large models at a fraction of the cost.

In an Era of Fakes, How to Know When Someone Online Is Real - Wall Street Journal

• Personalized schemes to dupe internet users are on the rise

• The single best step to determine someone’s identity online and protect yourself is to slow down

• Tech companies are beginning to help, with Google, LinkedIn and Bumble introducing features to detect suspicious messages and users

• Guidelines for operating online are changing, some old rules still apply

• Before transferring funds, ask for your prearranged secret word.

Sam Altman Startup Names Former X Executive as First Head of Privacy - Wall Street Journal

• Tools for Humanity has appointed Damien Kieran as its first head of privacy as the company faces regulatory scrutiny over its Worldcoin venture. Kieran left his job as chief privacy officer at Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social-media platform.- Worldcoin lets users download a wallet app that supports a digital identity known as World ID, which scans people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency tokens.

• Kieran faces the task of liaising with regulators globally and addressing concerns over how Worldcoin handles biometric data, which has raised eyebrows in countries such as Spain and Germany.

• The Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision launched a review of Worldcoin last year, citing the high sensitivity of the biometrically data it processes. Worldcoin tokens are distributed to users in countries where they are legally available, and nearly 6 million users across more than 160 countries have signed up for World ID.

How the Kindle Became a Must-Have Accessory (Again) - Wall Street Journal

• TikTok’s literary subculture, BookTok, is giving e-readers the Stanley cup treatment. Kindle has become the gadget of choice among the community of book lovers. Kindle sales have grown in double-digit percentages for each of the past two years and are on track for similar gains this year. People under 45 are Kindle’s fastest-growing customer segment. BookTokkers share reading habits, book clubs, book challenges, library cards, and people’s reading setups. Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s $12-a-month subscription service allows customers to borrow more than four million digital books. Kindle newbies are driving the sales growth, with about 60% of Kindle sales growth coming from people who’ve never owned one of the devices before. Print and ebook sales rose during the pandemic but have declined since, according to market-research firm Circana. Library checkouts have jumped 75% since 2019, reaching 370 million ebooks last year.