U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday he is confident there will be effective 5G competitors to China’s Huawei from Western vendors at comparable costs, adding that he believes Western technologies will come to dominate telecommunications.
“I am confident that there will be a cost-effective deliverables from Western trusted vendors that can deliver the same services, or better services, at comparative cost,” Pompeo said during an Atlantic Council event.
In what some observers have compared to the Cold War arms race, the United States is worried 5G dominance would give China an advantage Washington is not ready to accept.
With U.S.-China relations at their worst in decades, Washington has been pushing governments around to world to squeeze out Huawei Technologies Co, arguing that the firm would hand over data to the Chinese government for spying.
Huawei, founded in 1987 by a former engineer in China’s People’s Liberation Army, denies it spies for Beijing and says the United States is trying to smear it because Western firms are falling behind in 5G technology.
Pompeo said countries had come to recognize the costs of putting “untrusted” vendors in their systems.
“Over time, I think the world will come to recognize that’s not the right path and you will see Western technologies that are verifiable, trustworthy and transparent come to dominate the telecommunications markets,” he said.
5G, which will offer much faster data speeds and become the foundation of many industries and networks, is seen as one of the biggest innovations since the birth of the internet itself a generation ago.
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Starting Sept. 15, China’s telecom giant Huawei — once a symbol of Chinese technology prowess — will be cut off from essential supplies of semiconductors. Without those chips, Huawei cannot make the smartphones or 5G equipment on which its business depends, business analysts say.The sanctions against one of China’s most successful technology companies were announced in August, when the United States introduced a new set of rules that prohibit foreign chipmakers that rely on U.S. technology from selling any chips to Huawei without first obtaining a special license.In recent weeks, suppliers from South Korea and Taiwan have all indicated they will comply with the sanctions and cease their supply of semiconductors to Huawei on Tuesday, the day the new moves against the Chinese company comes into force.“Unfortunately, in the second round of U.S. sanctions, our chip producers only accepted orders until May 15. Production of the chip will stop on Sept. 15,” Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business, said last month. “Because there is no Chinese chip manufacturing industry to support, Huawei is faced with the problem of no chips.”Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Technologies Consumer Business Group, holds a Huawei Mate Xs foldable smartphone, as he talks to the audience during Huawei stream product launch event in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 24, 2020.MicrochipsFor all of China’s efforts to become a global leader in high-technology, the factory of the world is yet not able to manufacture top-level contenders in one crucial area — the microchip, the nervous system that runs just about every electronic device.An important mark of a microchip’s level of sophistication is how many transistors can be placed on its surface. The smaller the size, measured in nanometers, the more advanced the microchip.China’s best manufacturing process is believed to be able to make 14-nanometer microchips, which are several generations behind Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Samsung reached this standard in 2014. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is already making 5-nanometer chips.Kunpeng 920 chipset is on display at Huawei’s booth during the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, Sept. 4, 2020.While some of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturers are based outside the U.S., the industry is heavily dependent upon U.S. suppliers to provide everything from design software to manufacturing equipment.Washington first placed Huawei on a trade blacklist in May 2019, citing national security concerns. However, this ban did not include most foreign-produced chips. In May, the U.S. extended the ban to cut off Huawei from its non-American suppliers, which affects China’s own semiconductor companies whose market is in China.Early last month, China’s leading chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), indicated it will abide by the U.S. rules and stop selling chips to Huawei. Like all of the semiconductor foundries, SMIC relies on U.S.-based companies to obtain key production equipment.”The dominance of U.S.-origin technology in upstream sectors of the global semiconductor supply chain means that Chinese ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) firms across the board are exposed to U.S. export controls, regardless of what happens to SMIC or Huawei as individual companies,” John Lee, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), told VOA.China’s failed attemptsBeijing has a long history of angst about the country’s dependence on foreign semiconductors. Its strategic planning related to this key industry dates back to the 1950s, when the State Council convened a group of scientists to develop an “Outline for Science and Technology Development, 1956–1967,” which identified semiconductor technology as a “key priority.”In recent decades, from the “531 Development Plan” launched in 1986 to the multibillion-dollar National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund that was explicitly established for the chip sector in 2014, the country has poured considerable state resources into its semiconductor aspirations.A report released in July 2019 by U.S. International Trade Commission said the fund, along with provincial and municipal Integrated Circuit-related funds, are well on their way to reaching the goal of $150 billion.James Andrew Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Technology Policy Program at CSIS, told CNBC last week that China might outspend the U.S. “1,000 to 1″ when it comes to investing in semiconductors.In 2016, China’s President Xi Jinping noted, “The fact that core technology is controlled by others is our greatest hidden danger.”Xi emphasized the point again last Friday when chairing a symposium of scientists on the development of science and technology during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period.“Some key core technologies are subject to others,” he said.Last week, in response to the new U.S. restrictions on Huawei, China announced a sweeping new set of government policies to expand its domestic semiconductor industry by providing extensive support for the next generation of semiconductors in the 14th Five-Year Plan.In hopes that key technologies from the foreign firms will get transferred to Chinese companies, Beijing has also encouraged U.S. chipmakers to form joint ventures with domestic firms. According to MERICS, the think tank based in Germany, China’s quest for foreign technology at times even targets entire industries.A visitor is seen at a Huawei P40 Pro+ stand at the IFA consumer technology fair in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 3, 2020.“Almost all of the large semiconductor enterprises in the United States have received investment offers from Chinese state actors,” a research report by MERICS said.On the other hand, Douglas Fuller, a professor at City University of Hong Kong who studies the technology industry, said China should not be viewed as a failure.”There are only four firms ahead of SMIC in foundry services — two from Taiwan (TSMC and UMC), Korea’s Samsung, and U.S./UAE’s GloFo,” Fuller told VOA in an email.As for mass manufacturing, there are only two places with the leading technology —- TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in Korea, he said.”Intel is even playing catch-up. Thus, other than Taiwan and Korea, the whole rest of the world is behind the cutting edge of manufacturing tech in this industry, including the U.S., Japan, Israel and all of Europe,” said Fuller.Will Huawei survive?It remains unclear where Huawei will be able to buy its chips. Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek said last month it had applied to the U.S. government for permission to continue supplying Huawei after new U.S. rules take effect. In the meantime, Huawei has reportedly stockpiled up to two years’ worth of silicon to keep its business running.”In the short term, it is difficult to see any effective options available to Chinese firms targeted by U.S. export controls on semiconductors,” said Lee, whose research focuses on the rise of Chinese digital technology.As for the future, analysts say the U.S. will unlikely be able to stop China from making basic semiconductors. Given enough time, the country’s vast consumer market for electronics and decades of investment will eventually make it a chip producer.”In the medium to long term, China will probably be able to substitute U.S. technology and develop a complete domestic semiconductor supply chain (though whether it can catch up to foreign firms at the technological cutting edge is another issue).” Lee said in an email.James Lewis, director of the Technology Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote in May that Huawei has been harmed by the U.S. effort, “but the Chinese government will not allow it to collapse — Huawei is too important.” 
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Some people stuck inside during coronavirus lockdown are playing video games. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, entrepreneurs are catering to young people who want to share the gaming experience. From Kinshasa, Anasthasie Tudieshe has the story.
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ByteDance, the Chinese company behind the wildly popular video sharing app TikTok, has rejected Microsoft’s bid to buy the app and appears to be leaning toward a deal with investors led by Oracle.  The Trump administration has given ByteDance until September 20 to make a deal or stop operating inside the U.S.  On Sunday, the Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)In a statement, Microsoft said its proposal “would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation.”The fate of TikTok in the U.S. hangs in the balance as it approaches the Trump administration deadline. In recent months, the video app has become a focus of U.S.-China tensions with the administration accusing the company of being answerable to the Chinese government, a claim that TikTok has denied. In August, President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning TikTok and WeChat, the Chinese messaging app. But even with security concerns about TikTok, Americans have continued to download the app. By end of first quarter 2020, TikTok saw more than 300 million downloads in the U.S., according to Go.Verizon’s data.  Microsoft together with Walmart pursued a deal with ByteDance. A second group of investors led by Oracle emerged as a possible bidder. Oracle is one of the few Silicon Valley firms with top executives who have held fundraisers for President Trump. As the negotiations progressed, the Chinese government changed its export rules stopping TikTok from selling its valuable recommendation algorithm, dubbed “For You,” which queued up the next video for a user to watch. It’s unclear if any deal with Oracle would involve the algorithm. 
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The same Russian military intelligence outfit that hacked the Democrats in 2016 has renewed vigorous U.S. election-related targeting, trying to breach computers at more than 200 organizations including political campaigns and their consultants, Microsoft said Thursday.The intrusion attempts reflect a stepped-up effort to infiltrate the U.S. political establishment, the company said.”What we’ve seen is consistent with previous attack patterns that not only target candidates and campaign staffers but also those who they consult on key issues,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, said in a blog post. U.K. and European political groups were also probed, he added.Most of the hacking attempts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian agents were halted by Microsoft security software and the targets notified, he said. The company would not comment on who may have been successfully hacked or the impact.Although U.S. intelligence officials said last month that the Russians favor President Donald Trump and the Chinese prefer his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, Microsoft noted Thursday that Chinese state-backed hackers have targeted “high profile individuals associated with the election,” including people associated with the Biden campaign.China’s hackers largely gather intelligence for economic and political advantage, while Russia tends to weaponize stolen data to destabilize other governments.Microsoft did not assess which foreign adversary poses the greater threat to the integrity of the November presidential election. The consensus among cybersecurity experts is that Russian interference is the gravest. Senior Trump administration officials have disputed that, although without offering any evidence.”This is the actor from 2016, potentially conducting business as usual,” said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm FireEye. “We believe that Russian military intelligence continues to pose the greatest threat to the democratic process.”Fancy BearThe Microsoft post shows that Russian military intelligence continues to pursue election-related targets undeterred by U.S indictments, sanctions and other countermeasures, Hultquist said. It interfered in the 2016 campaign seeking to benefit the Trump campaign by hacking the Democratic National Committee and emails of John Podesta, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and dumping embarrassing material online, congressional and FBI investigators have found.The same GRU military intelligence unit, known as Fancy Bear, that Microsoft identifies as being behind the current election-related activity also broke into voter registration databases in at least three states in 2016, though there is no evidence it tried to interfere with voting.Microsoft, which has visibility into these efforts because its software is both ubiquitous and highly rated for security, did not address whether U.S. officials who manage elections or operate voting systems have been targeted by state-backed hackers this year. U.S. intelligence officials say they have so far seen no evidence of infiltrations.Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins University geopolitics expert, said he was disappointed by Microsoft’s refusal to differentiate threat level by state actor.”They’re lumping in actors that operate in a very different fashion, probably to make this sound more bipartisan,” he said. “I just don’t understand why.”Microsoft said in the past year it has observed attempts by Fancy Bear to break into the accounts of people directly and indirectly affiliated with the U.S. election, including consultants serving Republican and Democratic campaigns and national and state party organizations — more than 200 groups in all.Also targeted was the center-right European People’s Party, the largest grouping in the European Parliament. A party spokesperson said the hacking attempts were unsuccessful. The German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank, was another target. A spokesperson said there was no evidence of intrusion.Hurricane PandaMicrosoft did not say whether Russian hackers had attempted to break into the Biden campaign but did say that Chinese hackers from the state-backed group known as Hurricane Panda “appears to have indirectly and unsuccessfully” targeted the Biden campaign through non-campaign email accounts belonging to people affiliated with it.The Biden campaign did not confirm the attempt, although it said in a statement that it was aware of the Microsoft report.Iranian state-backed hackers unsuccessfully tried to log into accounts of Trump campaign and administration officials between May and June of this year, the blog said.”We are a large target, so it is not surprising to see malicious activity directed at the campaign or our staff,” Trump campaign deputy press secretary Thea McDonald said. She declined further comment.Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, said: “President Trump will beat Joe Biden fair and square and we don’t need or want any foreign interference.”In June, Google disclosed that Hurricane Panda had targeted Trump campaign staffers while Iranian hackers tried to breach accounts of Biden campaign workers. Such phishing attempts typically involve forged emails with links designed to harvest passwords or infect devices with malware.Although both Attorney General William Barr and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien have said China represents the greatest threat to U.S. elections, Microsoft’s only mention of a Trump administration official targeted by Chinese hackers is “at least one prominent individual formerly associated” with the administration.Disinformation campaignsGraham Brookie, director of digital forensic research at The Atlantic Council, disputes the claim made by Barr and O’Brien that China poses the greater threat to this year’s election. Brookie’s lab is at the forefront of unearthing and publicizing Russian disinformation campaigns.Brookie confirmed that his employer was among targets of Hurricane Panda but said there was no evidence the hacking attempts, which he said were unsuccessful, had anything to do with the 2020 election.”We have every indication that this was an instance of cyber-espionage, information gathering, as opposed to electoral interference,” he said.By contrast, Brookie said, “it’s pretty evident that the Russian attempts (Microsoft disclosed) were focused on electoral processes and groups working on that.”Microsoft noted a shift toward greater automation in Fancy Bear methods for trying to steal people’s log-in credentials, which previously largely relied on phishing. In recent months, the group has employed so-called brute-force attacks that barrage an account login with short rapid bursts of potential passwords. It has also used a different method that makes only intermittent login attempts to avoid detection.Fancy Bear has also stepped up its use of the Tor anonymizing service to hide its hacking, Microsoft said.  
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Bingo is back, this time among millennials and Gen Zers. To stave off boredom caused by the coronavirus quarantine and connect with others, millions of global millennials and Gen Zers are issuing challenges to each other on social media.  Challenges have gotten so popular that social media giant Instagram added a “challenge” story sticker to make it easier for users to create their own or nominate others.  Challenges and tags flooding social media range from drawing random oranges and tagging friends, to perfecting 15-second dances on TikTok to keep people busy, connected and entertained.  Here are some of the biggest social media trends and challenges that have gone viral.Bingo  People are making bingos about everything, whether it’s a university, zodiac sign or ethnicity. Bingo questions usually follow a “never have I ever” format that users cross off until they eliminate all the spaces on a card to make bingo. Users tag friends and post to their social media. (Courtesy of @eggtaurus via Instagram)Workout challenges The rules are simple: Film yourself doing 10 or more pushups and tag as many people as you want to challenge them to do the same. The first was the #see10do10 pushup challenge. Workout challenges include the plank challenge, the (Courtesy of Madeline Joung)Drawing challenge  Users draw digital paintings of random objects on Instagram and tag their friends to continue the chain.  Toilet paper challenge  This challenge is popular among pet owners, seeing how many stacks of toilet paper a pet can jump over, leaping over several stacks or sometimes crashing through a wall of toilet paper. 
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A teacher in Nigeria is offering free mathematics classes via Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram to help struggling students affected by the coronavirus lockdown. After almost six months, more than 1,000 students are taking her online classes, across Nigeria and even internationally. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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China’s foreign minister announced Tuesday the start of a global data security initiative, outlining principles that should be followed in areas ranging from personal information to espionage.Wang Yi announced the initiative in a video as part of conference on international cooperation. The initiative comes as the U.S. continues to put pressure on China’s largest technology companies and tries to convince countries around the world to block them.  China’s initiative has eight key points including not using technology to impair other countries’ critical infrastructure or steal data and making sure service providers don’t install backdoors in their products and illegally obtain user data.Wang, speaking in Beijing, also said the initiative seeks an end to activities that “infringe upon personal information” and opposes using technology to conduct mass surveillance against other states.The initiative says companies should also respect the laws of host countries and stop coercing domestic firms to store data generated overseas in their own territory.  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month unveiled the “Clean Network” program, saying it is aimed at protecting citizen privacy and sensitive information from “malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.”  Many points of the initiative appear to address some of those accusations.  In an apparent reference to Pompeo’s comments, Zhao said,” China has always been broad and level, open and cooperative. If all countries, especially those intentionally smearing and slandering China with wild allegations, could make such a promise like China, it will be beneficial to the mutual trust and cooperation on digital security issues among all countries.”The U.S. has accused China’s technology companies of posing national security threats by collecting user data and sending it back to Beijing. Companies, including Huawei and ByteDance, have denied those allegations.It is unclear if any other countries have signed on to China’s initiative and how it will be implemented and policed. 
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Many robots are being developed and used these days to maximize speed so factories can efficiently make more products.  One robot developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology is celebrated for how slow it is.  It’s called a SlothBot and visitors can see it working at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Camera: Carlos Andres Cuervo
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Facebook Inc on Friday removed the pages of U.S. right-wing group Patriot Prayer and its founder Joey Gibson, a company spokesman told Reuters.Patriot Prayer has hosted dozens of pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies. Attendees have repeatedly clashed with left-wing groups around Portland, Oregon, where one group supporter was killed this week.The victim, 39-year-old Aaron Danielson, was walking home on Saturday night after a pro-Trump demonstration in the city when he was shot.A Facebook logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken Jan. 6, 2020.Facebook took down the pages as part of efforts to remove “violent social militias” from its social networks, spokesman Andy Stone said.The company updated its policies last month to ban groups that demonstrate significant risks to public safety.Its dangerous organizations policy now includes groups that celebrate violent acts or suggest they will use weapons, even if they are not directly organizing violence.In a statement posted on Patriot Prayer’s website, Gibson accused Facebook of a double standard.”Antifa groups murdered my friend while he was walking home, and instead of the multibillion dollar company banning Portland Antifa pages they ban Patriot Prayer, Joey Gibson and several other grandmas that are admins,” he wrote.Antifa is a largely unstructured, far-left movement whose followers broadly aim to confront those they view as authoritarian or racist.Gibson espouses non-violence but is accused by anti-fascist groups of provoking confrontations.After the shooting of Danielson he cautioned supporters not to seek revenge, but rather “push back politically, spiritually.”As of earlier this week, the Patriot Prayer page had nearly 45,000 followers on Facebook. It was created in 2017.Facebook last week removed content associated with the Kenosha Guard, a group which had posted a “call to arms” in Kenosha, Wisconsin.The company acted the day after two people were shot and killed at protests in the city, which broke out in response to the police shooting of a Black man earlier that week.Users had flagged the material to Facebook 455 times but were told initially it did not violate the company’s policies, BuzzFeed reported.
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Twitter confirmed on Thursday that an account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website was hacked with a series of tweets asking its followers to donate to a relief fund through cryptocurrency.
The incident comes after several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities were hacked in July.
Twitter said it was aware of the activity with Modi’s website account and has taken steps to secure it.
“We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted,” a Twitter spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
Modi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the tweets posted on the account @narendramodi_in.
The account, with over 2.5 million followers, is the official Twitter handle for Modi’s personal website and the Narendra Modi mobile application.
Modi’s personal Twitter account, which was unaffected by this incident, has over 61 million followers.
The tweets, which have since been taken down, asked the followers to donate to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency.
Hackers had in July accessed Twitter’s internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk, and used them to solicit digital currency. 
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Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before the U.S. presidential election in November, bowing to concern that its loose approach to free speech could once again be exploited to interfere with the vote.
 
The world’s biggest social network also said it was creating a label for posts by candidates or campaigns that try to claim victory before the election results are official, and widening the criteria for content to be removed as voter suppression.
 
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the changes that he was concerned about the unique challenges voters would face due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has prompted a surge in voting by mail.
 
 “I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” he said.
 
 Zuckerberg has previously defended his decision to allow for a freewheeling political conversation on Facebook, including through paid ads, which the company exempts from its fact-checking program with external partners, including Reuters.
 
 He said in his post he continued to believe that the “best antidote to bad speech is more speech,” but acknowledged that in the final days of an election, “there may not be enough time to contest new claims.”
 
 Facebook will continue to allow campaigns and others to run political ads that are already in the system, and will permit them to change spending amounts and user targeting, but will block adjustments to the ads’ content or design.
 
 Facebook has been battered by criticism, including from its own employees, since allowing several inflammatory posts by President Donald Trump to remain untouched earlier this summer, including one which contained misleading claims about mail-in ballots.
 
 Disinformation experts have also raised the alarm, echoed in threat assessments by Facebook executives, about false claims and conspiracy theories spreading in the increasingly likely scenario that official results are not immediately available on election night.
 
 Zuckerberg said Facebook was “increasingly seeing attempts to undermine the legitimacy of our elections from within our own borders” in addition to foreign influence campaigns, like the one it and U.S. intelligence agencies determined Russia carried out to meddle in the 2016 vote.
 
 Moscow has denied the allegations.
 
 To address those threats, Facebook will label any posts seeking to delegitimize the outcome of the election, he wrote. The company also will remove posts with misinformation about COVID-19 and voting, which Zuckerberg said could be used to scare people away from exercising their right to vote.
 
 Seeking to boost credible information in addition to tamping down misleading posts, Facebook will partner with Reuters to provide news in the social network’s Voting Information Center about official results.
 
 Zuckerberg said the company would not plan to make any further changes to its election policies beyond those listed in his post before the official declaration of the result.
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Pakistan has blocked access to five dating apps for their delivery of “immoral/indecent content” in the majority-Muslim nation. The state regulator, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, PTA, identified the platforms as Tinder, Grindr, Tagged, Skout and SayHi.”PTA issued notices to the above-mentioned platforms for the purpose of removing dating services and to moderate livestreaming content in accordance with the local laws of Pakistan,” PTA said Tuesday. It did not elaborate on the ban, but the country’s laws prohibit homosexuality and extra-marital relationships. The PTA statement noted that the five companies failed to respond to its directive within the stipulated time, prompting the authority to block their services in Pakistan. The statement did not elaborate on the time frame. Officials at the five companies have not commented on PTA’s action, which has been criticized at home. “PTA, deciding what adults should watch privately or not, is itself “immoral” if “morality” or “moral order” could be understood as a term in Islamic Pakistan! PTA is creating undemocratic trends; courts need to stop PTA!,” tweeted Moeed Pirzada, a prime-time TV news anchor in Pakistan.Tinder is globally popular and owned by Match Group.  FILE – A woman checks the Grindr app on her mobile phone, May 29, 2019.Grindr, which has a large following in the United States, describes itself as a social network “for gay, bi, trans, and queer people.” The PTA directive noted, however, that the authority can unblock the services if the management of their companies “assures adherence to the local laws with respect to moderating the indecent/immoral content through meaningful engagement.”Data from analytics firm Sensor Tower shows Tinder has been downloaded more than 440,000 times in Pakistan within the last 12 months, the Reuters news agency reported. Grindr, Tagged and SayHi have each been downloaded about 300,000 times. Skout has been downloaded 100,000 times during the same period, according to the data.   Last week, PTA formally asked video sharing platforms YouTube and TikTok to immediately block what PTA denounced as “vulgar, indecent, nude and hate speech content for viewing in Pakistan.”   The authorities directed both companies to tighten its content monitoring and moderation mechanism to block access to “the unlawful material” and “objectionable” content. 
 
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Facebook said Tuesday that it removed a small network of accounts and pages linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” that has used social media accounts to sow political discord in the U.S. since the 2016 presidential election.  Twitter also suspended five related accounts. The company said the tweets from these Russia-linked accounts “were low quality and spammy” and that most received few, if any, likes or retweets. The people behind the accounts recruited “unwitting” freelance journalists to post in English and Arabic, mainly targeting left-leaning audiences. Facebook said Tuesday the network’s activity focused on the U.S., U.K., Algeria and Egypt and other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.  The company said it started investigating the network based on information from the FBI about its off-Facebook activities. The network was in the early stages of development, Facebook added, and saw “nearly no engagement” on Facebook before it was removed. The network consisted of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages. About 14,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, though the English-language page had a little over 200 followers, Facebook said.FILE – An man looks at a Facebook app on his smartphone in Amritsar, India, March 22, 2018.Still, its presence points to ongoing Russian efforts to disrupt the U.S. election and sow political discord in an already divided country. To evade detection, the people behind the network recruited Americans to do their bidding, likely unknowingly, both as journalists and as people authorized to purchase political advertisements in the U.S. Facebook said the people behind the network posted about global events ranging from racial justice in the U.S. and the U.K., NATO, the QAnon conspiracy, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The network spent about $480 on advertising on Facebook, primarily in U.S. dollars. However, Facebook said less than $2 worth of those ads targeted the U.S. The network’s posts directed people to a website called PeaceData, which claims to be a global news organization that, according to a  report by research firm Graphika, “took a left-wing stance, opposing what it portrayed as Western imperialism and the excesses of capitalism.” The FBI said in a statement Tuesday that it provided information to the platforms “to better protect against threats to the nation’s security and our democratic processes.” “While technology companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their platforms and the safety of their members, the FBI is actively engaged with our federal partners, election officials, and the private sector to mitigate foreign threats to our nation’s security and our elections,” the statement said.  Separately, Twitter said Tuesday it will start adding context to its trending section, which shows some of the most popular topics on the service at any given moment. Experts and even Twitter’s own employees have expressed concerns that the trending section can be gamed to spread misinformation and abuse. Twitter uses algorithms and human employees to determine what topics are trending — it is not simply the most popular topics, but topics that are newly popular at any given time. But it’s not difficult to artificially elevate trends.  In the coming weeks, Twitter said, users in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, India and several other countries will see brief descriptions added to some trends to add context. “To be clear, we know there is more work to do to improve trends and the context updates we’re announcing today are just a small step in the right direction,” said Liz Lee, a product trust partner and Frank Oppong, a product manager, in a blog post. “We need to make trends better and we will.” 
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Getting an Amazon package delivered from the sky is closer to becoming a reality.The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it had granted Amazon approval to deliver packages by drones.Amazon said that the approval is an “important step,” but added that it is still testing and flying the drones. It did not say when it expected drones to make deliveries to shoppers.The online shopping giant has been working on drone delivery for years, but it has been slowed by regulatory hurdles. Back in December 2013, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said in a TV interview that drones would be flying to customer’s homes within five years.Last year, Amazon unveiled self-piloting drones that are fully electric, can carry 5 pounds of goods and are designed to deliver items in 30 minutes by dropping them in a backyard. At the time, an Amazon executive said deliveries to shoppers would be happening “within months,” but more than 14 months have passed since then.Seattle-based Amazon is the third drone delivery service to win flight approval, the FAA said. Delivery company UPS and a company owned by search giant Google won approval last year.
 
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After years of planning, China now dominates the world’s production of new generation batteries that are key to transitioning away from fossil fuels. These new batteries are essential for electric vehicles and most portable consumer electronics such as cell phones and laptops.  By 2040, energy analysts estimate over half of all passenger vehicles sold worldwide could be electric, according to 2019 report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. They expect a similar percentage of light commercial vehicles in the U.S., Europe and China sales will be electric within that time, BNEF predicts. If current trends continue, most of them will likely use Chinese batteries, a key element for transitioning away from fossil fuels, and most of those batteries will be lithium ion, which are also popular for cellphones and laptops because of their high energy per unit mass relative to other electrical energy storage systems, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.“Looking at the global automotive industry chain, China, for the first time, has taken the lead in the world in the manufacturing of key parts,” state media Xinhua said in August in a report titled “China’s dominant position in batteries needs to be further consolidated.”  Switching from oil As the United States and China face off over advanced communication technologies like 5G, the world’s battery supply is not yet a major issue. But it will likely grow in importance if the U.S. continues to transition away from fossil fuel energy sources for items such as vehicles, power grids, mobile phones and laptop computers. And that could make the global battery supply an issue of national security.  For nearly half a century, American politicians have sought to protect the country from disruptions caused by foreign oil producers.  “All of our national security decisions were set against the backdrop of what they might mean to our energy security, following the 1973 Yom Kippur war when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel and the Arab nations cut off supplies to the US and allies who helped Israel.” Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the American Energy Alliance, a not-for-profit energy advocacy organization, told VOA. In 2019, the U.S. achieved its long-held goal of energy independence” producing enough oil and gas for its domestic needs. The achievement points to the challenge of controlling the raw materials that will power the world’s next energy revolution. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), last year the U.S. imported 78% of its cobalt, and all of its graphite. For the foreseeable future, the country will likely need to depend on Chinese supply chains to produce the batteries that help power America’s economy.  Graphite, cobalt, lithium According to data released from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a London-based research firm for the lithium-ion battery industry, in 2019, Chinese chemical companies accounted for 80% of the world’s total output of raw materials for advanced batteries.  “Of the 136 lithium-ion battery plants in the pipeline to 2029, 101 are based in China,” the firm said in May. “China controls the processing of pretty much all the critical minerals, whether it’s rare earth, lithium, cobalt or graphite,” Pini Althaus, the chief executive of USA Rare Earth, said in a telephone interview with VOA.  A little-known Chinese company that was founded in 2011 is now the world’s biggest maker of electric vehicle batteries.  For three consecutive years ending in 2019, South Korea’s market tracker SNE Research has ranked China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) as No. 1 in the electric vehicle battery production, with a 27.9% market share. CATL makes electric-car batteries for Tesla. CATL hairman Zeng Yuqun told Bloomberg last month that they have developed a power pack that lasts more than a million miles. Among their top customers are Daimler AG, BMW and Toyota.  Battery supply chain China has focused on building capacity at every stage of the battery supply chain.  In addition to rare earths, the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries depends on some key materials like graphite, the material used in pencil tips. In 2019, China produced more than 60% of the world’s graphite, according to U.S. government research. That means Beijing can set world prices. “This is a completely untenable situation,” said Althaus, whose company has a pilot project in Colorado with the goal of producing a full range of rare earths as well as lithium.   He said that it could take the U.S. 20 to 30 years to catch up with China. “It does not matter whether it is China or any other country. It is very dangerous if the world only depends on one country to provide key raw materials.  African cobalt, Chinese factories  Cobalt has emerged as one of the hottest commodities in the new energy revolution because it is widely used in electric vehicles as well as computer and consumer electronics. But unlike graphite, which China has significant natural reserves, the country’s cobalt reserves accounts for only about 1% of the world’s total. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces more than 60% of the world’s mined cobalt.  But Beijing controls the global supply of this silvery-blue metal.  According to a working paper published last year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), eight of the 14 largest cobalt mines in the DRC are Chinese-owned and account for almost half of the country’s output.    DRC mining ownership was not always controlled by China. For example, the largest mine in DRC, the Tenke Fungurume Mine where cobalt is a by-product of its copper mining, was owned by an American company until 2016. That year, for $2.65 billion, Freeport-McMoRan Inc., a leading international mining company with headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, sold its mine to China Molybdenum. China’s influence dominates cobalt processing with Chinese companies controlling about 80% of the cobalt refining industry, where it is turned into commercial-grade cobalt metal and power, according to Benchmark Minerals. World lithium reserves China is among the five top countries with the most lithium resources, according to the 2020 USGS, but it has been buying stakes in mining operations in Australia and South America where most of the world’s lithium reserves are found.  China’s Tianqi Lithium now owns 51% of the world’s largest lithium reserve, Australia’s Greenbushes lithium mine. In 2018, the same company also paid about $4 billion to become the second-largest shareholder in Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM), the largest lithium producer in Chile.  Another Chinese company, Ganfeng Lithium, now has a long-term agreement to underwrite all lithium raw materials produced by Australia’s Mount Marion mine, the world’s second-biggest, high-grade lithium reserve.  
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Facebook Inc said it would block news publishers and people in Australia from sharing news on Facebook and Instagram if a proposal to force the U.S. tech giant to pay local media outlets for content becomes law. The Australian government said in July it would require tech giants Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google to pay for news provided by media companies under a royalty-style system that is scheduled to become law this year. “This is not our first choice – it is our last. But it is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector,” Facebook Australia managing director Will Easton said in a statement published on Tuesday. Following an inquiry into the state of the media market and the power of the U.S. platforms, the Australian government late last year told Facebook and Google to negotiate a voluntary deal with media companies to use their content. After those negotiations failed, Australia’s competition regulator drafted laws that it said would allow news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists’ work. Easton said the proposed legislation misunderstands the dynamic of the internet and will damage news organizations. Australia’s Ministry for Communications did not immediately respond to questions on Tuesday.  
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Forty percent of Americans back President Donald Trump’s threat to ban videosharing app TikTok if it is not sold to a U.S. buyer, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national poll, suggesting that many support the effort to separate the social media upstart from its Chinese parent.The poll published Monday, which surveyed 1,349 adult respondents across the United States, found that 40% backed Trump’s recent executive order forcing China’s ByteDance to sell its TikTok operations in the United States by Sept. 15. Thirty percent of the respondents said they opposed the move, while another 30% said they didn’t know either way.The responses were largely split along party lines, and many of those who agreed with Trump’s order said they do not know much about TikTok. Among Republicans, for example, 69% said they supported the president’s order while only 32% said they were familiar with the app. Twenty-one percent of Democrats also supported Trump’s order and 46% said they were familiar with TikTok.The figures suggest most Americans had only “a fleeting knowledge of the brand,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Chatterjee said the negative attitudes were likely the result of the public rhetoric around TikTok – and increasing tensions with Beijing.”Clearly there’s been a politicization of TikTok,” he said.TikTok users have captured the teenage zeitgeist with catchy song-and-dance videos in the United States and elsewhere, but its parent company’s ties to Beijing have been the subject of bipartisan concern as relations with China deteriorate.Those worries culminated earlier this month in a do-or-die order from Trump to ByteDance, with the Trump administration saying that TikTok is a potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on U.S. consumers. TikTok claims about 100 million monthly active users in the U.S.The Chinese company must now divest TikTok in the United States. Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp are among U.S. companies fighting to snap up its assets.The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 38% of respondents said they were either very or somewhat familiar with the app and 25% said they had watched a video on the platform. Thirty-five percent agreed with the statement that they had “heard of it, but that’s about it.”Americans also appeared to be more critical of the Chinese company than they were of American-based technology companies: 47% of respondents said they either held very unfavorable, somewhat unfavorable, or “lean towards unfavorable” attitudes toward TikTok. By contrast, just 11% said they had similarly unfavorable impressions of Seattle-based Amazon – the world’s largest online retailer which is facing allegations of monopolistic behavior from both sides of the U.S. political aisle. 
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China’s new rules around tech exports mean ByteDance’s sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations could need Beijing’s approval, a Chinese trade expert told state media, a requirement that would complicate the forced and politically charged divestment.ByteDance has been ordered by President Donald Trump to divest short video app TikTok — which is challenging the order — in the United States amid security concerns over the personal data it handles.Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp are among the suitors for the assets, which also includes TikTok’s Canada, New Zealand and Australia operations.However, China late on Friday revised a list of technologies that are banned or restricted for export for the first time in 12 years and Cui Fan, a professor of international trade at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said the changes would apply to TikTok.”If ByteDance plans to export related technologies, it should go through the licensing procedures,” Cui said in an interview with Xinhua published on Saturday.China’s Ministry of Commerce added 23 items –- including technologies such as personal information push services based on data analysis and artificial intelligence interactive interface technology — to the restricted list.It can take up to 30 days to obtain preliminary approval to export the technology.TikTok’s secret weapon is believed to be its recommendation engine that keeps users glued to their screens. This engine, or algorithm, powers TikTok’s “For You” page, which recommends the next video to watch based on an analysis of your behavior.Cui noted that ByteDance’s development overseas had relied on its domestic technology that provided the core algorithm and said the company may need to transfer software codes or usage rights to the new owner of TikTok from China to overseas.”Therefore, it is recommended that ByteDance seriously studies the adjusted catalog and carefully considers whether it is necessary to suspend” negotiations on a sale, he added.ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.China’s foreign ministry has said that it opposes the executive orders Trump has placed on TikTok and that Beijing will defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses.
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Facebook made a mistake in not removing a militia group’s page earlier this week that called for armed civilians to enter Kenosha, Wisconsin, amid violent protests after police shot Jacob Blake, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.The page for the “Kenosha Guard” violated Facebook’s policies and had been flagged by “a bunch of people,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted Friday on Facebook. The social media giant has in recent weeks adopted new guidelines removing or restricting posts from groups that pose a threat to public safety.Facebook took down the page Wednesday, after an armed civilian allegedly killed two people and wounded a third Tuesday night amid protests in Kenosha that followed the shooting of Blake, who is Black.”It was largely an operational mistake,” Zuckerberg said. “The contractors, the reviewers, who the initial complaints were funneled to, didn’t, basically didn’t pick this up.”Zuckerberg did not apologize for the error and said that so far, Facebook hasn’t found any evidence that Rittenhouse was aware of the Kenosha Guard page or the invitation it posted for armed militia members to go to Kenosha.Facebook is now taking down posts that praise the shooting or shooter, Zuckerberg said. Yet a report Thursday by The Guardian newspaper found examples of support and even fundraising messages still being shared on Facebook and its photo-sharing service, Instagram.Zuckerberg also contrasted the treatment of Blake, who was shot in the back by Kenosha police, and the white 17-year-old now charged in Tuesday’s slayings, Kyle Rittenhouse, who carried an AR-15-style rifle near police without being challenged. Zuckerberg also acknowledged the civil rights demonstration Friday in Washington, D.C.”There’s just a sense that things really aren’t improving at the pace that they should be, and I think that’s really painful, really discouraging,” Zuckerberg said.Zuckerberg also said the company is working on improving its execution, though he did not provide details. He acknowledged that the approaching presidential election would present greater challenges around polarizing content.”There is a real risk and a continued increased risk through the election during this very sensitive and polarized and highly charged time,” he said.
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Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s neuroscience startup Neuralink on Friday unveiled a pig named Gertrude that has had a coin-sized computer chip in her brain for two months, showing off an early step toward the goal of curing human diseases with the same type of implant.Co-founded by Tesla Inc and SpaceX CEO Musk in 2016, San Francisco Bay Area-based Neuralink aims to implant wireless brain-computer interfaces that include thousands of electrodes in the most complex human organ to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries and ultimately fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.”An implantable device can actually solve these problems,” Musk said on a webcast Friday, mentioning ailments such as memory loss, hearing loss, depression and insomnia.Musk did not provide a timeline for those treatments, appearing to retreat from earlier statements that human trials would begin by the end of this year. Neuralink’s first clinical trials with a small number of human patients would be aimed at treating paralysis or paraplegia, the company’s head surgeon, Dr. Matthew MacDougall, said.Neuroscientists unaffiliated with the company said the presentation indicated that Neuralink had made great strides but cautioned that longer studies were needed.Musk presented what he described as the “three little pigs demo.” Gertrude, the pig with a Neuralink implant in the part of the brain that controls the snout, required some coaxing by Musk to appear on camera, but eventually began eating off of a stool and sniffing straw, triggering spikes on a graph tracking the animal’s neural activity.Musk said the company had three pigs with two implants each, and also revealed a pig that previously had an implant. They were “healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig,” Musk said. He said the company predicted a pig’s limb movement during a treadmill run at “high accuracy” using implant data.Musk described Neuralink’s chip, which is roughly 23 millimeters in diameter, as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.””I could have a Neuralink right now and you wouldn’t know,” Musk said. “Maybe I do.”One comment from a webcast viewer described the animals as “Cypork.”Graeme Moffat, a University of Toronto neuroscience research fellow, said Neuralink’s advancements were “order of magnitude leaps” beyond current science thanks to the novel chip’s size, portability, power management and wireless capabilities.Stanford University neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky said the company had made substantial and impressive progress since an initial demonstration of an earlier chip in July 2019.”Going from that to the fully implanted system in several pigs they showed is impressive and, I think, really highlights the strengths of having a large multidisciplinary team focused on this problem,” Stavisky said.Some researchers said longer studies would be required to determine the longevity of the device.Neuralink’s chip could also improve the understanding of neurological diseases by reading brain waves, one of the company’s scientists said during the presentation.Recruiting, not fundraisingMusk said the focus of Friday’s event was recruiting, not fundraising. Musk has a history of bringing together diverse experts to drastically accelerate the development of innovations previously limited to academic labs, including rocket, hyperloop and electrical vehicle technologies through companies such as Tesla and SpaceX.Neuralink has received $158 million in funding, $100 million of which came from Musk, and employs about 100 people.Musk, who frequently warns about the risks of artificial intelligence, said the implant’s most important achievement beyond medical applications would be “some kind of AI symbiosis where you have an AI extension of yourself.”Small devices that electronically stimulate nerves and brain areas to treat hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease have been implanted in humans for decades. Brain implant trials have also been conducted with a small number of people who have lost control of bodily functions due to spiral cord injuries or neurological conditions like strokes.Startups such as Kernel, Paradromics and NeuroPace also are trying to exploit advancements in material, wireless and signaling technology to create devices similar to Neuralink. In addition, medical device giant Medtronic PLC produces brain implants to treat Parkinson’s disease, essential tremors and epilepsy.  
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The head of TikTok resigned Wednesday as tensions mount between the Chinese-owned video platform and the White House, which contends TikTok is a security risk in the U.S.
 
Chief Executive Officer Kevin Mayer announced his resignation days after the company filed a lawsuit challenging a U.S. government crackdown on the company over claims the social media app can be a tool to spy on U.S. citizens.
 
Mayer, a former Disney executive who joined the company in May, said in letter to employees his decision to quit came after the “political environment has sharply changed” in recent weeks.
 
“I understand that the role that I signed up for, including running TikTok globally, will look very different as a result of the U.S. administration’s action to push for a sell-off of the U.S. business.”
 
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 banning TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells its U.S. operations to an American company within 90 days.FILE – The logo of the TikTok application is seen on a screen in this picture illustration taken Feb. 21, 2019. Computer software firm Microsoft, headquartered in the northwestern U.S. city of Redmond, Washington, has confirmed it is negotiating to purchase TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Bloomberg News has reported that technology business Oracle Corp., based in the western U.S. city of Redwood City, California, is also entertaining a bid for the company.
 
TikTok argues in its lawsuit that Trump’s executive order was an abuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act because it is not “an unusual and extraordinary threat.”
 
The company provides a platform on which short videos are shared. Since its launch in 2017, TikTok has become very popular, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide, many of them teens.
 
U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore.
 
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Tax officials in Africa estimate that government revenues will drop between 10 and 30 percent in 2020 as a result of the economic fallout stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. But while businesses in the hospitality, construction and retail sectors have suffered, digital companies have boomed as more people stay home and conduct their activities online.This is driving talks in Africa about how to make sure big multinationals such as Google and Facebook, which do not always have a physical presence in the countries where they make a profit, can be taxed.Logan Wort, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum, was among government officials, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and African Union who gathered virtually Wednesday to address the issue.FILE – A worker sorts online orders before they are delivered to customers from a Checkers store, amid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, in Johannesburg, South Africa, July 14, 2020.Wort said that due to the coronavirus pandemic, businesses in the sectors of e-commerce, online transactions and other digital services have experienced a boom. The e-commerce sector alone is projected to increase its revenues by 41 percent, according to the African Tax Administration Forum.  “Question: Are we collecting better on these transactions? Are we aware of these transactions? Are the businesses doing these transactions, do they have a physical presence in our countries and, if not, do our regulations provide for them to be taxed?” Wort asked.Talks about how to roll out harmonized laws to allocate tax rights in cross-border transactions are currently under way among members of the OECD. This is because governments across the world are concerned there is a misalignment between the location where profits are reported and the location where economic activities occur.Victor Harison, the commissioner of economic affairs for the African Union, said the tax-to-GDP ratio in 26 African countries reporting to the AU is just 17.2 percent, compared to 32.2 percent in developed countries that belong to the OECD.He called on more African countries to participate in talks on a global level about how to tax multinational companies so the profits from their wealth can be shared more equitably. “So far, only 25 African countries are part of this initiative, which is a cause of concern for the African Union,” Harison said. “Corporate income tax is a substantial source of taxation in Africa, amounting to more than 25 percent of total revenues in most countries.”  FILE – A schoolgirl receives online lessons in the district of Port Bouet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, April 21, 2020.David Masondo, deputy minister of finance of South Africa, said Africa needs a central body within the African Union to speak with one voice on tax policies. “These unified policies should include or focus on improving the allocation of tax rights in cross-border transactions, including the digital transactions of multinational enterprises,” Masondo said.The U.S. has pushed for its companies to be able to opt in and out of the global rules on taxing multinational companies, as long as they adhere to certain basic principles.Annet Oguttu, a member of the high-level panel on financial accountability and transparency, said while Europe was at loggerheads with the U.S. over the matter, African countries also have a role to play in the discussion. “The focus of the discussion seems to be about the U.S. protecting its multinationals and the European countries trying to get the best out of it,” she said. “The question then is, where do we stand as developing countries in Africa? Perhaps coming together under the platform of ATAF could bring together a more united front that could be able to address these issues.” Talks at a global level are due to reconvene in October, now that proposals about how to tax digital multinationals have been shared among governments. 
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U.S. forces are taking an aggressive approach in cyberspace ahead of November’s presidential election, aiming to wipe out threats from foreign countries and other actors before they have a chance to disrupt voting or other critical, election-related systems. “Cyber Command needs to do more than prepare for a crisis in the future; it must compete with adversaries today,” Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of U.S. Central Command, and senior adviser Michael Sulmeyer said in a piece published Tuesday in FILE – National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 29, 2019.“U.S. forces must compete with adversaries on a recurring basis, making it far more difficult for them to advance their goals over time,” the officials wrote, outlining the strategy for the public with the presidential election now less than three months away. “Additionally, cyber effects operations allow Cyber Command to disrupt and degrade the capabilities our adversaries use to conduct attacks.” Nakasone and Sulmeyer say the more proactive approach to protecting the upcoming U.S. election began, in part, in October 2019, after a team from Cyber Command traveled to Podgorica, Montenegro, to investigate attempts, possibly by Russia, to infiltrate that country’s networks. In the process, the Cyber Command team “saw an opportunity to improve American cyber defenses ahead of the 2020 election,” they said in the article. Nakasone and Sulmeyer also say they are building on efforts from 2018, when Cyber Command joined with the National Security Agency to form the Russia Small Group (RSG) to help protect the congressional mid-term elections, shoring up vulnerabilities within the U.S. election infrastructure, sounding alarms about Russian disinformation campaigns, and hunting for malware. “Thanks to these and other efforts, the United States disrupted a concerted effort to undermine the midterm elections,” they wrote. “Together with its partners, Cyber Command is doing all of this and more for the 2020 elections.” Managing riskCritics point out that the more aggressive approach to cyber defense carries risks. Namely, they worry that whether due to a miscalculation or an accident, a confrontation in cyberspace could escalate and lead to all-out war. But U.S. Cyber Command officials argue the risk is manageable and that the “hunt forward” strategy allows them to impose necessary costs on adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. “Inaction poses its own risks: that Chinese espionage, Russian intimidation, Iranian coercion, North Korean burglary, and terrorist propaganda will continue unabated,” Nakasone and Sulmeyer wrote in the magazine. “So, the question is how, not whether, to act.” Determining whether Cyber Command’s “hunt forward” approach is paying off may be difficult. U.S. officials charged with protecting key voting-related systems said at least so far, there are no signs of any country-directed attacks on the United States. FILE – Senior Cybersecurity Adviser at the Department of Homeland Security Matthew Masterson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 22, 2019.“We are not and have not seen specific targeting of those election systems that has been attributable to nation-state actors at this time,” Matthew Masterson, senior cybersecurity adviser for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told the Atlantic Council on Tuesday. “(We) aren’t seeing a broad campaign in that way,” he said, adding, “We’re cognizant that’s in the playbook.” Evidence of meddlingEarlier this month, U.S. counterintelligence officials warned they have evidence that Russia, China and Iran are trying to meddle with the November election. “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President (Joe) Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment,’” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said in a statement.  “Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President (Donald) Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” he added. China and Iran, according to Evanina, appear to prefer a Biden presidency.  Official: US Adversaries Taking Sides, Wielding Influence Ahead of Election  US counterintelligence officials, splitting with President Trump, warn Russian-linked actors are pulling for his reelection as China and Iran aim to put Democrat Joe Biden in the White HouseBut for now, descriptions by counterintelligence officials portray such efforts by Russia, as well as by China and Iran, more as disinformation campaigns as opposed to attacks on computer systems and networks that could play a key role in collecting and tabulating votes. Most of the activity on that front, for the time being, appears to be coming from criminal actors with no definitive ties to Russia, China or other U.S. adversaries. “We do see regular scanning, regular probing of election infrastructure as a whole, what you’d expect to see as you run IT systems,” said CISA’s Masterson, citing the use of ransomware as a top concern.  “What we see is an ability to shut down county (local government) networks as a whole, which obviously has an impact on the election office to operate,” he said. Still, U.S. election security officials are optimistic that measures put in place since 2016 will be enough to ward off any attacks. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The 2020 election will be the most secure election in modern history,” CISA Director Chris Krebs told reporters last month. US Officials Promising ‘Most Secure Election in Modern History’The officials say while the November presidential election will not be risk free, defense and back-up systems should guarantee a free and fair result 
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While most parents are stressed about kids and remote online learning, some experts say expect more of that in the future, and that that may be a good thing. Deana Mitchell reports.
Camera, Producer: Deana Mitchell
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While most parents are stressed about kids and remote online learning, some experts say expect more of that in the future, and that that may be a good thing. Deana Mitchell reports.
Camera, Producer: Deana Mitchell
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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was a tough act to follow. But Tim Cook seems to be doing so well at it that his eventual successor may also have big shoes to fill.
Initially seen as a mere caretaker for the iconic franchise that Jobs built before his 2011 death, Cook has forged his own distinctive legacy. He will mark his ninth anniversary as Apple’s CEO Monday — the same day the company will split its stock for the second time during his reign, setting up the shares to begin trading on a split-adjusted basis beginning August 31.
Grooming Cook as heir apparent was “one of Steve Jobs’ greatest accomplishments that is vastly underappreciated,” said longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster, who is now managing partner of Loup Ventures.
The upcoming four-for-one stock split, a move that has no effect on share price but often spurs investor enthusiasm, is one measure of Apple’s success under Cook. The company was worth just under $400 billion when Cook the helm; it’s worth five times more than that today, and has just become the first U.S. company to boast a market value of $2 trillion. Its share performance has easily eclipsed the benchmark S&P 500, which has roughly tripled in value during the past nine years.
But it hasn’t always been easy. Among the challenges Cook has faced: a slowdown in iPhone sales as smartphones matured, a showdown with the FBI over user privacy, a U.S. trade war with China that threatened to force up iPhone prices and now a pandemic that has closed many of Apple’s retail stores and sunk the economy into a deep recession.
Cook, 59, has also struck out into novel territory. Apple now pays a quarterly dividend, a step Jobs resisted partly because he associated shareholder payments with stodgy companies that were past their prime. Cook also used his powerful perch to become an outspoken advocate for civil rights and renewable energy, and on a personal level came out as the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 2014.
Apple declined to make Cook available for an interview. But it did point to 2009 comments Cook made to financial analysts when he was running the company while Jobs battled pancreatic cancer.
Asked what the company might look like under his management, Cook said that Apple needs “to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make.” It has doubled down on that commitment, becoming a major chip producer in order to supply both iPhones and Macs. He added that Apple would resist exploring most projects “so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.”
That laser focus has served Apple well. At the same time, though, under Cook’s stewardship, Apple has largely failed to come up with breakthrough successors to the iPhone. Its smartwatch and wireless ear buds have emerged as market leaders, but not game changers.
Cook and other executives have dropped hints that Apple wants make a big splash in the field of augmented reality, which uses phone screens or high-tech eyewear to paint digital images into the real world. Apple has yet to deliver, although neither have other companies that have hyped the technology.
Apple also remains a laggard in artificial intelligence, particularly in the increasingly important market for voice-activated digital assistants. Although Apple’s Siri is widely used on Apple devices, Amazon’s Alexa and Google”s digital assistant have made major inroads in helping people manage their lives, particularly in homes and offices.
Apple also has stumbled a few times under Cook’s leadership.
In 2017, it alienated customers by deliberately but quietly slowing the performance of older iPhones via a software update, ostensibly to spare the life of aging batteries. Many consumers, though, viewed it as a ploy to boost sales of newer and more expensive iPhones. Amid the furor, Apple offered to replace aging batteries at a steep discount; later it paid $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over the matter.
Apple has also faced government investigations into its aggressive efforts to minimize its corporate taxes and complaints that it has abused control of its app store to charge excessive fees and stifle competition to its own digital services. On the tax front, a court ruled in July that Apple did nothing wrong.
Cook has turned the app store into the cornerstone of a services division that he set out to expand four years ago. At the time, it was growing clear that sales of the iPhone — Apple’s biggest money maker — were destined to slow down as innovations grew sparse and consumers kept their old devices for longer.
To help offset that trend, Cook began to emphasize recurring revenue from app commission, warranty programs and streaming subscriptions to music, video, games and news sold for the more 1.5 billion devices already running on the company’s software.
After doubling in size in less than four years, Apple’s services division now generates $50 billion in annual revenue, more than all but 65 companies in the Fortune 500. Ives estimates Apple’s services division by itself is worth about $750 billion — about the same as Facebook currently is in its entirety.
That division could be worth even more now had Cook done something many analysts believe Apple should have done at least five years ago by dipping into a hoard of cash that at one point surpassed $260 billion to buy Netflix or a major movie studio to fuel its video streaming ambitions.
Buying Netflix seemed within the realm of possibility five years ago when the video streaming service was valued at around $40 billion. Now that Netflix is worth more than $200 billion today, that idea seems off the table, even for a company with Apple’s vast resources.
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Videoconferencing platform Zoom experienced worldwide outages Monday morning, coinciding with the first day of remote classes for many schools and universities. On its status page, Zoom reported partial outages for its website, meetings and webinars. By Monday afternoon, all systems were reported as operational. Downdetector recorded a spike in issue reports, mostly from North America and western Europe, which peaked at nearly 17,000 complaints at 9 a.m. EST. Lighter areas on Downdetector’s map Monday morning also showed complaints in China, India, Mexico and other countries, although most had faded by the afternoon. The company’s Twitter mentions were flooded with concerned and panicked users, including professors and students. “Please fix the system — we depend on your availability,” wrote Janine M. Ziermann, an assistant professor at Howard University’s College of Medicine in Washington. “Half of my student’s [sic] don’t get emails due to server failure … Zoom seems down … my lecture starts in 43 minutes,” she wrote, alongside an animated image from TV show The Big Bang Theory of a character hyperventilating into a paper bag. Half of my student’s don’t get emails due to server failure … Zoom seems down …
my lecture starts in 43 minutes pic.twitter.com/OY2sPRyx5g
— Janine M. Ziermann, PhD (@JMZiermann) August 24, 2020“My laptop is buzzing, phone melting down,” wrote Florida State University professor Mark Zeigler. “I would cry, but I decided to laugh and have a cup of tea.” So ZOOM is out campus wide. My laptop is buzzing, phone melting down….I would cry, but I decided to laugh and have a cup of tea.
— Mark Zeigler (@fsuzeigler) August 24, 2020Students were quick to make jokes on the widespread outages. “And like clockwork both Zoom and Canvas crash the first morning back to school,” wrote Lauren Gruber, a graduate student at Indiana University, alongside an image of a flaming Elmo figure. The meme is used to denote chaotic situations. “You really, really can’t make this stuff up.” And like clockwork both Zoom and Canvas crash the first morning back to school. You really, really can’t make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/u3SCCjIliZ
— Lauren Gruber (@GrubersOrch) August 24, 2020Canvas is a program that supports online learning by allowing users to submit homework assignments and view their grades. Zoom announced it was investigating the problems at 8:51 a.m. EST and said by 11:30 a.m. it had rolled out a fix for most users. “Everything should be working properly now!” the company tweeted, offering its “sincere apologies” to customers. Everything should be working properly now! We are continuing to monitor the situation. Thank you all for your patience and our sincere apologies for disrupting your day.
— Zoom (@zoom_us) August 24, 2020Users in California, Mexico and elsewhere replied saying they were still experiencing issues. Others, seemingly students, jokingly asked Zoom to shut down again. Billionaire businessman Eric Yuan started Zoom in 2011, originally under the name Saasbee. By the end of its first month, the California-based company had more than 400,000 users, and by 2017 was valued at $1 billion. The company remained little known outside its base of mostly business users, but when the coronavirus pandemic began in early 2020, Zoom saw its usage rates surge. Schools, universities and other organizations took their operations to Zoom, kicking off heightened scrutiny of the software’s security and privacy features, and connections to China. In June, the company acknowledged closing three accounts belonging to U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held a Zoom event to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Axios reported. Zoom has also been plagued by reports of unwanted guests intruding on video meetings, an event so common it has its own name: Zoom-bombing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a press release in March warning the public of the practice after two schools said their online classes were hacked. The widespread crashes Monday morning underscored the problems of online learning, even as schools kick off another year.Students Give Online Learning Low MarksMany call on universities to end the semester early  
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Some U.S.-based users of WeChat are suing President Donald Trump in a bid to block an executive order that they say would effectively bar access in the U.S. to the hugely popular Chinese messaging app.The complaint, filed Friday in San Francisco, is being brought by the nonprofit U.S. WeChat Users Alliance and several people who say they rely on the app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China. The plaintiffs said they are not affiliated with WeChat, nor its parent company, Tencent Holdings.In the lawsuit, they asked a federal court judge to stop Trump’s executive order from being enforced, claiming it would violate its U.S. users’ freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and other constitutional rights.“We think there’s a First Amendment interest in providing continued access to that app and its functionality to the Chinese-American community,” Michael Bien, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said Saturday.Trump on August 6 ordered sweeping but vague bans on transactions with the Chinese owners of WeChat and another popular consumer app, TikTok, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy.The twin executive orders — one for each app — are expected to take effect September 20, or 45 days from when they were issued. The orders call on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who is also named as a defendant in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance lawsuit, to define the banned dealings by that time.It remains unclear what the orders will mean for the apps’ millions of users in the U.S., but experts have said the orders appear intended to bar WeChat and TikTok from the app stores run by Apple and Google. That would make them more difficult to use in the U.S.“The first thing we’re going to seek is a postponement of the implementation of the penalties and sanctions – a reasonable period of time between explaining what the rules are and punishing people for not complying with them,” Bien said.TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said Saturday saying it plans to mount a legal challenge against the executive order that President Trump issued against the popular video app.WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, is less well-known than TikTok to Americans without a connection to China.Mobile research firm Sensor Tower estimates about 19 million U.S. downloads of the app. But it is crucial infrastructure for Chinese students and residents in the U.S. to connect with friends and family in China and for anyone who does business with China.Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to adhere to content restrictions set by authorities. The Citizen Lab internet watchdog group in Toronto have said WeChat monitors files and images shared abroad to aid its censorship in China.Even so, the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance complaint argued that losing access to the app would harm millions of people in the U.S. who rely on it, noting it is the only app with an interface designed for Chinese speakers.“Since the executive order, numerous users, including plaintiffs, have scrambled to seek alternatives without success. They are now afraid that by merely communicating with their families, they may violate the law and face sanctions,” according to the complaint. 
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Video app TikTok said Saturday it will challenge in court a Trump administration crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned platform, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat.As tensions soar between the world’s two biggest economies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance — effectively setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of the app to a U.S. company.”To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system,” TikTok said in a statement.”Even though we strongly disagree with the administration’s concerns, for nearly a year we have sought to engage in good faith to provide a constructive solution,” it said.”What we encountered instead was a lack of due process as the administration paid no attention to facts and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”ByteDance said in a separate statement that the suit would be filed on Monday, U.S. time.TikTok’s kaleidoscopic feeds of short clips feature everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics. It has been downloaded 175 million times in the U.S. and more than a billion times around the world.Trump claims TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.The company has said it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump’s crackdown as political.The U.S. measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaigning hard on an increasingly strident anti-Beijing message.Trump and ChinaTrump has increasingly taken a confrontational stance on China, challenging it on trade, military and economic fronts.Shortly after Trump announced his moves against TikTok this month, the United States slapped sanctions on Hong Kong’s leader over the Chinese security clampdown after last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations.Microsoft and Oracle are possible suitors for TikTok’s U.S. operations.Reports have said Oracle — whose chairman Larry Ellison has raised millions in campaign funds for Trump — was weighing a bid for TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.The Trump administration has also given ByteDance a 90-day deadline to divest in TikTok before the app is banned in the United States.The measures move away from the long-promoted American ideal of a global, open internet and could invite other countries to follow suit, analysts told AFP previously.”It’s really an attempt to fragment the internet and the global information society along U.S. and Chinese lines, and shut China out of the information economy,” Milton Mueller, a Georgia Tech professor and founder of the Internet Governance Project said previously. 
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