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Hosted by jordan schneider
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4 episodes with jordan schneider
4 episodes with jordan schneider
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In this crossover episode from the China Talk podcast, Nathan Labenz shares a thought-provoking conversation between Jordan Schneider, Ilari Michaela, and Professor David C. Kang that challenges conventional Western perspectives on East Asian international relations. Professor Kang argues that studying East Asian history on its own terms reveals a remarkably stable geopolitical system spanning nearly a millennium, where China maintained regional dominance without conquest through compatible cultures and mutual understanding. This alternative framework offers valuable insights that question the seemingly inevitable US-China competition narrative dominating AI discourse, suggesting that internal challenges may be more significant than external threats for both China and the United States. SPONSORS: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers next-generation cloud solutions that cut costs and boost performance. With OCI, you can run AI projects and applications faster and more securely for less. New U.S. customers can save 50% on compute, 70% on storage, and 80% on networking by switching to OCI before May 31, 2024. See if you qualify at https://oracle.com/cognitive Shopify: Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive NetSuite: Over 41,000 businesses trust NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud ERP, to future-proof their operations. With a unified platform for accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR, NetSuite provides real-time insights and forecasting to help you make quick, informed decisions. Whether you're earning millions or hundreds of millions, NetSuite empowers you to tackle challenges and seize opportunities. Download the free CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at https://netsuite.com/cognitive PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:30) Introduction to East Asian Relations (04:41) Internal vs External Challenges (07:05) Song Dynasty's Fall (13:35) Western vs Eastern Frontiers (19:06) Shared Cultural Understanding (Part 1) (20:30) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | Shopify (23:45) Shared Cultural Understanding (Part 2) (25:57) Vietnam-China Relations (30:08) Korea's Diplomatic Strategy (Part 1) (32:19) Sponsors: NetSuite (33:52) Korea's Diplomatic Strategy (Part 2) (35:17) The Imjin War (43:36) Thucydides Trap Question (49:19) Power Transition Theory Debate (53:49) Expansion and Frontiers (01:02:00) Modern Implications (01:06:00) PRC and Imperial Legacy (01:13:16) Taiwan and Modern Challenges (01:25:42) US Role in East Asia (01:29:35) Concluding Thoughts (01:37:17) Outro
This week we go even deeper on DeepSeek. ChinaTalks' Jordan Schneider joins us to explain the Chinese A.I. industry and to break down the reaction inside of China to DeepSeek's sudden success. Then … hello, Operator! We put OpenAI's new agent software to the test. And finally, all aboard for another ride on the Hot Mess Express! Guest:Jordan Schneider, founder and editor in chief of ChinaTalk Additional Reading:Why DeepSeek Could Change What Silicon Valley Believes About A.I.OpenAI launches its agentFable, a Book App, Makes Changes After Offensive A.I. MessagesAmazon Pauses Drone Deliveries After Aircraft Crashed in Rain Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
While traveling to Taiwan, Noah Smith sat down with ChinaTalk's managing editor and Taipei correspondent Lily Ottinger to explore wide range of geopolitical and economic issues, including the potential impacts of a second Trump administration on Asia, where Elon Musk stands on Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, China's economic strategies, Taiwan's defense and diplomatic policies, and demographic shifts. --
In this episode of The Circuit, hosts Ben Bajarin and Jay Goldberg welcome Jordan Schneider, founder of China Talk, to discuss the evolving landscape of US-China technology relations, particularly focusing on semiconductor restrictions. Schneider provides insights into the recent regulations imposed by the Biden administration, the motivations behind these changes, and the potential effectiveness of these measures in slowing down China's technological advancements. The conversation also explores the challenges and workarounds that Chinese companies may employ to navigate these restrictions, as well as the implications for the future of AI and semiconductor innovation. In this conversation, the speakers discuss the evolving landscape of AI technology, focusing on the competition between the US and China, the implications of hardware and software advancements, and the regulatory challenges faced by companies like Nvidia. They explore the potential for new technological paradigms and the impact of corporate pushback against AI regulations, while also considering the future dynamics of AI on a global scale.
Episode 142Happy holidays! This is one of my favorite episodes of the year — for the third time, Nathan Benaich and I did our yearly roundup of all the AI news and advancements you need to know. This includes selections from this year's State of AI Report, some early takes on o3, a few minutes LARPing as China Guys……… If you've stuck around and continue to listen, I'm really thankful you're here. I love hearing from you. You can find Nathan and Air Street Press here on Substack and on Twitter, LinkedIn, and his personal site. Check out his writing at press.airstreet.com. Find me on Twitter (or LinkedIn if you want…) for updates on new episodes, and reach me at editor@thegradient.pub for feedback, ideas, guest suggestions. Outline* (00:00) Intro* (01:00) o3 and model capabilities + “reasoning” capabilities* (05:30) Economics of frontier models* (09:24) Air Street's year and industry shifts: product-market fit in AI, major developments in science/biology, "vibe shifts" in defense and robotics* (16:00) Investment strategies in generative AI, how to evaluate and invest in AI companies* (19:00) Future of BioML and scientific progress: on AlphaFold 3, evaluation challenges, and the need for cross-disciplinary collaboration* (32:00) The “AGI” question and technology diffusion: Nathan's take on “AGI” and timelines, technology adoption, the gap between capabilities and real-world impact* (39:00) Differential economic impacts from AI, tech diffusion* (43:00) Market dynamics and competition* (50:00) DeepSeek and global AI innovation* (59:50) A robotics renaissance? robotics coming back into focus + advances in vision-language models and real-world applications* (1:05:00) Compute Infrastructure: NVIDIA's dominance, GPU availability, the competitive landscape in AI compute* (1:12:00) Industry consolidation: partnerships, acquisitions, regulatory concerns in AI* (1:27:00) Global AI politics and regulation: international AI governance and varying approaches* (1:35:00) The regulatory landscape* (1:43:00) 2025 predictions * (1:48:00) ClosingLinks and ResourcesFrom Air Street Press:* The State of AI Report* The State of Chinese AI* Open-endedness is all we'll need* There is no scaling wall: in discussion with Eiso Kant (Poolside)* Alchemy doesn't scale: the economics of general intelligence* Chips all the way down* The AI energy wars will get worse before they get betterOther highlights/resources:* Deepseek: The Quiet Giant Leading China's AI Race — an interview with DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng via ChinaTalk, translated by Jordan Schneider, Angela Shen, Irene Zhang and others* A great position paper on open-endedness by Minqi Jiang, Tim Rocktäschel, and Ed Grefenstette — Minqi also wrote a blog post on this for us!* for China Guys only: China's AI Regulations and How They Get Made by Matt Sheehan (+ an interview I did with Matt in 2022!)* The Simple Macroeconomics of AI by Daron Acemoglu + a critique by Maxwell Tabarrok (more links in the Report)* AI Nationalism by Ian Hogarth (from 2018)* Some analysis on the EU AI Act + regulation from Lawfare Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe
Why do wars start? How can we avoid them? Do countries wage wars whenever it suits their own goals? Or are wars a product of failed understanding and military madmen? These are questions at the centre of the study of war and peace. But for too long, the field of international relations has answered them by scavenging data from European history alone. To better understand the human capacity for peace, we need to understand military history more broadly. Or so argues David C. Kang, a professor at the University of Southern California. A Korean American scholar of international relations, Kang argues that the histories of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam give us lessons that no reading of European countries could: lessons about neighbouring countries living in peace for centuries. Yes, there was violence. At times, there was war. But peace between these countries prevailed for stunningly long periods. And contrary to standard theories of war and peace, this wasn't achieved by a “balance of powers”, nor by an inability to sustain military operations. But is this too peaceful a picture of East Asian history? Didn't China keep up bullying Vietnam? What about the epic wars started by Japan? What about the Mongols, the Great Wall, and China's expansion on its Western frontier? And what, if anything, can this tell about war and peace in the 21st Century? Doesn't the “Thucydides trap” make a war between the US and China inevitable? We discuss these and many other questions in this fascinating episode. I am particularly glad to bring you this episode as it brings together two of the major themes on the show this fall: the study of war and peace and the study of Asian history. Co-hosting again was Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk. Check out also our “What About China” trilogy from September (episodes #44-36)! LINKS Kang's new book, co-authored with Xinru Ma, is Beyond Power Transitions. You can read my essays and get the On Humans newsletter at OnHumans.Substack.com. Feeling generous? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at Patreon.com/OnHumans, or get in touch for other ways to support! Email: makela dot ilari at outlook dot com MENTIONS Books Beyond Bronze Pillars by Liam Kelley Technical terms Thucydides trap | Westphalian system | Balance of powers | IR (=internationa relations) | keju civil service | Keywords War | Peace | International relations | China | Japan | Korea | Social science of war | History | Military history | Humanities | Vietnam | East Asia | Thucidides trap |
Where is China today? Will its rise continue to benefit the vast majority of its population? Or is Xi Jinping's increasingly repressive government committing one of the biggest blunders of modern history? This is the final episode in the China-trilogy, the product of hours of conversations I've had with ChinaTalk's Jordan Schneider and MIT professor Yasheng Huang. In part 1, we discussed the deep currents of Chinese history, shaping the country's destiny from its early technological lead to its more recent decline and stagnation. In part 2, we discussed China during and after Mao, trying our best to explain the Chinese economic miracle. In this final episode, we discuss questions about China's present and future, guided by lessons from its recent past. We touch upon issues such as: The causes and consequences of Xi Jinping's rise Why both Chinese leaders and Western observers misunderstand China's miracle – and why this matters for the future Why China is on course towards a sudden eruption of political chaos As always, we finish with my guest's reflections on humanity. LINKS You can read my essays and get the On Humans newsletter at OnHumans.Substack.com. Are you a long-term listener? Feeling generous today? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at Patreon.com/OnHumans! For other episodes on economic history, see my series on the Birth of Modern Prosperity, with Daron Acemoglu, Oded Galor, Brad DeLong, and Branko Milanovic. MENTIONS Scholars Gordon Tullock | Joseph Torigian CCP figures Hua Guofeng 华国锋 | "Gang of Four" 四人幫 | Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 | Zhao Ziyang 赵紫阳 | 习近平 China's history | Xi Jinping | Chinese miracle | China's political leadership | Xi Jinping reforms | Hu Jintao policies | China leadership generations | Chinese Communist Party | Deng Xiaoping reforms | Chinese economy | China's political control | Chinese corruption | Rural poverty in China | China's environmental policies | China economic inequality | Chinese rural income | Chinese political system | China's globalized economy | Chinese private sector | China geopolitical tensions | China-West relations | Chinese GDP growth | CCP succession | Xi Jinping succession | Autocracy in China | China's term limits | China's leadership transitions | Vietnam-China war | China's authoritarianism | Chinese economic growth | Xi Jinping's leadership style | Chinese politics and reforms | China's environmental issues | China's green policies | Urban-rural gap
China's rise has shook the world. It has changed the lives of over a billion people in China. It has flooded humanity with cheap goods, from single-use toys to high-tech solar panels. And it has changed the logic of war and peace in the 21st Century. But how to explain China's dramatic rise? Was it due to the wisdom of China's leaders after Mao? Or was it all about foreign investors searching for cheap labor? Both and neither, argues MIT professor Yasheng Huang. Yes, the Chinese leaders learned from the mistakes of Mao. And yes, foreign money made a difference. But there is a hidden story behind China's rise - a story which merits our attention. This is a story with deep roots in history, but with the main act being played in the Chinese countryside during 1980's. It is also a drama whose characters have never recovered from the tragedy that took place on the streets around Tiananmen Square during a warm summer night in 1989. This is part 2 of this 3-part mini-series "What About China", hosted by me, Ilari Mäkelä, together with ChinaTalk's Jordan Schneider. Part 1 looked at China's deep history. Part 3 will look at China's present and future. In this part 2, we sketch the story of China's rise, meeting many colorful characters and discussing fascinating themes, such as: How did Mao shape the direction of Chinese history? Why did China become richer than India? Why was 80's a golden era for liberal Chinese? How did the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen square paved the way for China today? MENTIONS Modern scholars Meijun Qian | Amartaya Sen | Branko Milanovic (ep. 32) | Zheng Wang (auth. Never Forget National Humiliation) CCP Old Guard Mao Zedong 毛泽东 | Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 | Xi Zhongxun 习仲勋 | Chen Yun 陈云 | Li Xiannian 李先念 CCP liberals of the 1980's Hu Yaobang 胡耀邦 | Zhao Ziyang 赵紫阳 CCP leaders after 1989 Jiang Zemin 江泽民 | Hu Jintao 胡锦涛 | Xi Jinping 习近平. LINKS You can read my essays and get the On Humans Newsletter at OnHumans.Substack.com. Are you a long-term listener? Join the wonderful group of patrons at Patreon.com/OnHumans. For other episodes on economic history, see my series on the Birth of Modern Prosperity, with Daron Acemoglu, Oded Galor, Brad DeLong, and Branko Milanovic.
The West has ruled history — at least the way history has been written. This is a shame. To tell the story of humans, we must tell the story of us all. So what about the rest? What themes and quirks does their history hide? And what forces, if anything, prevented them of matching Europe's rise? I aim to cover these topics for several countries and cultures over the next year. But I wanted to start with China. To do so, I've teamed up with Jordan Schneider, the host of ChinaTalk. Our guest is MIT professor Yasheng Huang (黄亚生). Huang is the author of Rise and Fall of the EAST – one of my all-time favorite books on China's past and present. In this episode, we explore the deep currents shaping China's history. We trace the forces shaping China's early mastery of technology to its falling behind Europe in the modern era. We also discuss the surprising role that standardized exams have played in Chinese history, and why certain democratic elements in China's past actually bolstered the emperor's authority. The episode covers all of Chinese imperial history, ending with a brief note on the early 20th Century. In part 2, will zoom into China's economic miracle and its uncertain future. NOTES A Rough Timeline of Chinese history: Pre–221 BCE: Disunity (e.g. Warring States) 221 BCE – 220: Unity (Qin & Han dynasties) 220 – 581: Disunity (“Han-Sui Interregnum”) 581 – 1911: Unity (Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties) Historical figures Emperor Wanli 萬曆帝 | Shen Kuo 沈括 (polymath) | Zhu Xi 朱熹 (classical philosopher) | Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全 (leader of the Taiping Rebellion) | Yuan Shikai 袁世凯 (military leader) | Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 (military leader and statesman) Modern scholars Ping-ti Ho 何炳棣 (historian) | Clair Yang (economist) | Joseph Needham (scientist and historian) | Daron Acemoglu | James Robinson Historical terms Kējǔ civil service exams | Taiping Rebellion References For more links and some impressive graphs, see this article at OnHumans.Substack.com. LINKS Are you a long-term listener? Join the wonderful group of patrons at Patreon.com/OnHumans. For other episodes on economic history, see my series on the Birth of Modern Prosperity, with Daron Acemoglu, Oded Galor, Brad DeLong, and Branko Milanovic.
From September 28, 2020: It's been a wild few weeks with President Trump threatening to shut WeChat and TikTok out of the U.S. market and rip them out of the app stores. There have been lawsuits, a preliminary injunction—and a sudden deal to purchase TikTok and moot the issue out. To chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Lawfare co-founder Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and Jordan Schneider, the voice behind the podcast ChinaTalk. They talked about how we got here, whether the threat from these companies is real or whether this is more Trump nonsense, and whether the deal to save TikTok will actually work.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We're excited to bring you something special today! Our first cross over episode brings some fresh energy to the podcast. Tom and Nate are joined by Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk (A popular Substack-based publication covering all things China https://www.chinatalk.media/). We cover lots of great ground here, from the economics of Hirschman to the competition from France. All good Patriots should listen to this episode, as we give a real assessment of where competition lies on the U.S.'s path to commercializing AI. Enjoy our best effort at a journal club!
Paul Rosenzweig brings us up to date on the debate over renewing section 702, highlighting the introduction of the first credible “renew and reform” measure by the House Intelligence Committee. I'm hopeful that a similarly responsible bill will come soon from Senate Intelligence and that some version of the two will be adopted. Paul is less sanguine. And we all recognize that the wild card will be House Judiciary, which is drafting a bill that could change the renewal debate dramatically. Jordan Schneider reviews the results of the Xi-Biden meeting in San Francisco and speculates on China's diplomatic strategy in the global debate over AI regulation. No one disagrees that it makes sense for the U.S. and China to talk about the risks of letting AI run nuclear command and control; perhaps more interesting (and puzzling) is China's interest in talking about AI and military drones. Speaking of AI, Paul reports on Sam Altman's defenestration from OpenAI and soft landing at Microsoft. Appropriately, Bing Image Creator provides the artwork for the defenestration but not the soft landing. Nick Weaver covers Meta's not-so-new policy on political ads claiming that past elections were rigged. I cover the flap over TikTok videos promoting Osama Bin Laden's letter justifying the 9/11 attack. Jordan and I discuss reports that Applied Materials is facing a criminal probe over shipments to China's SMIC. Nick reports on the most creative ransomware tactic to date: compromising a corporate network and then filing an SEC complaint when the victim doesn't disclose it within four days. This particular gang may have jumped the gun, he reports, but we'll see more such reports in the future, and the SEC will have to decide whether it wants to foster this business model. I cover the effort to disclose a bitcoin wallet security flaw without helping criminals exploit it. And Paul recommends the week's long read: The Mirai Confession – a detailed and engaging story of the kids who invented Mirai, foisted it on the world, and then worked for the FBI for years, eventually avoiding jail, probably thanks to an FBI agent with a paternal streak. Download 482nd Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
Paul Rosenzweig brings us up to date on the debate over renewing section 702, highlighting the introduction of the first credible “renew and reform” measure by the House Intelligence Committee. I'm hopeful that a similarly responsible bill will come soon from Senate Intelligence and that some version of the two will be adopted. Paul is less sanguine. And we all recognize that the wild card will be House Judiciary, which is drafting a bill that could change the renewal debate dramatically. Jordan Schneider reviews the results of the Xi-Biden meeting in San Francisco and speculates on China's diplomatic strategy in the global debate over AI regulation. No one disagrees that it makes sense for the U.S. and China to talk about the risks of letting AI run nuclear command and control; perhaps more interesting (and puzzling) is China's interest in talking about AI and military drones. Speaking of AI, Paul reports on Sam Altman's defenestration from OpenAI and soft landing at Microsoft. Appropriately, Bing Image Creator provides the artwork for the defenestration but not the soft landing. Nick Weaver covers Meta's not-so-new policy on political ads claiming that past elections were rigged. I cover the flap over TikTok videos promoting Osama Bin Laden's letter justifying the 9/11 attack. Jordan and I discuss reports that Applied Materials is facing a criminal probe over shipments to China's SMIC. Nick reports on the most creative ransomware tactic to date: compromising a corporate network and then filing an SEC complaint when the victim doesn't disclose it within four days. This particular gang may have jumped the gun, he reports, but we'll see more such reports in the future, and the SEC will have to decide whether it wants to foster this business model. I cover the effort to disclose a bitcoin wallet security flaw without helping criminals exploit it. And Paul recommends the week's long read: The Mirai Confession – a detailed and engaging story of the kids who invented Mirai, foisted it on the world, and then worked for the FBI for years, eventually avoiding jail, probably thanks to an FBI agent with a paternal streak. Download 482nd Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
In this episode, Jordan Schneider interviews Markus Anderling and Anton Korinek, two of the coauthors of the paper 'Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety'. They discuss the need for regulation and oversight of advanced AI models, known as frontier models, that have the potential to pose significant risks to public safety and national security. Jordan came in as a skeptic. Will he be convinced? Here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03718 Here's Markus' song choice: - -- ・ -・・ ・ ・-・・ ・- https://open.spotify.com/album/1NogWso5ElfJe4n8qKSdy9?si=mD9j5WB3TWuFGVkJRBI_Jg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, Jordan Schneider interviews Markus Anderling and Anton Korinek, two of the coauthors of the paper 'Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety'. They discuss the need for regulation and oversight of advanced AI models, known as frontier models, that have the potential to pose significant risks to public safety and national security. Jordan came in as a skeptic. Will he be convinced? Here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03718 Here's Markus' song choice: - -- ・ -・・ ・ ・-・・ ・- https://open.spotify.com/album/1NogWso5ElfJe4n8qKSdy9?si=mD9j5WB3TWuFGVkJRBI_Jg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week Zoe teams up with Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk for a special crossover episode. They discuss the changing mood on China relations, AI competition, and TikTok. They also explored what it's like to be an independent researcher in the foreign policy space and the intellectual freedom it allows. You can hear more from Jordan at chinatalk.media. If you are under 40 and interested in being featured on the podcast, be sure to fill out this form: https://airtable.com/shr5IpK32opINN5e9. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week Zoe teams up with Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk for a special crossover episode. They discuss the changing mood on China relations, AI competition, and TikTok. They also explored what it's like to be an independent researcher in the foreign policy space and the intellectual freedom it allows. You can hear more from Jordan at chinatalk.media. If you are under 40 and interested in being featured on the podcast, be sure to fill out this form: https://airtable.com/shr5IpK32opINN5e9. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week Zoe teams up with Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk for a special crossover episode. They discuss the changing mood on China relations, AI competition, and TikTok. They also explored what it's like to be an independent researcher in the foreign policy space and the intellectual freedom it allows. You can hear more from Jordan at chinatalk.media. If you are under 40 and interested in being featured on the podcast, be sure to fill out this form: https://airtable.com/shr5IpK32opINN5e9. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week we discuss the launch of Threads, the battle for Enterprise Linux and Coté tries HEY again. Plus, plenty of thoughts on packing for a long weekend. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aW-9Zv1maQ) 423 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aW-9Zv1maQ) Runner-up Titles Capitalizing on Competitors Bring the Go Bag There are no backpacks in Gucci ads No bad vibes Rundown Threads Threads, Instagram's ‘Twitter Killer,' Has Arrived (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/technology/threads-app-meta-twitter-killer.html) Special Episode: Meta's Twitter Rival Arrives, with Adam Mosseri (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/podcasts/special-episode-metas-twitter-rival-arrives-with-adam-mosseri.html) Facebook's Threads is so depressing (https://jogblog.substack.com/p/facebooks-threads-is-so-depressing) Twitter, Threads, and the Great Social Implosion (https://staysaasy.com/product/2023/07/07/twitter-threads-social-implosion.html) Instagram's Threads app reaches 100 million users within just five days (https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/10/instagrams-threads-app-reaches-100-million-users-in-just-five-days/) How Threads' privacy policy compares to Twitter's (and its rivals') (https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/07/how-threads-privacy-policy-compares-to-twitters-and-its-rivals/) Instagram's Twitter rival is the latest in Meta's parade of copycat apps (https://www.axios.com/2023/07/06/metas-copycat-machine-threads?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmediatrends&stream=top) Linux Red Hat's open source rot began when IBM walked (https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/07/red_hat_open_source/) Keep Linux Open and Free—We Can't Afford Not To (https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/keep-linux-open-and-free-2023-07-10/) SUSE Preserves Choice in Enterprise Linux by Forking RHEL with a $10+ Million Investment (https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/) History Never Repeats. But Sometimes It Rhymes. (https://ciq.com/blog/history-never-repeats-but-sometimes-it-rhymes/) Oracle slams IBM's Red Hat over RHEL paywall (https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/10/oracle_ibm_rhel_code/?td=rt-3a) Automation at Scale: Migrating 200K Machines from CentOS 7 to RHEL 9 (https://engineering.salesforce.com/automation-at-scale-migrating-200000-machines-from-centos-7-to-rhel-9/) Shifting "Shift Left (and leave)" versus "Shift Left (and stay)" (https://newsletter.cote.io/p/shift-left-and-leave-versus-shift?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=50&post_id=134452721&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email) Richard Seroter on shifting down vs. shifting left (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-development/richard-seroter-on-shifting-down-vs-shifting-left) Matt's packing list (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VTSZKJ9FQsW70spJtSHwN7TkuFqQdEux/view?usp=share_link) Gmail brings in Calendly-style availability sharing from Google Calendar (https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/12/gmail-brings-in-calendly-style-availability-sharing-from-google-calendar/) Relevant to your Interests DigitalOcean acquires cloud computing startup Paperspace for $111M in cash (https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/digitalocean-acquires-cloud-computing-startup-paperspace-for-111m-in-cash/) Snowflake vs. Databricks (https://open.substack.com/pub/aspiringforintelligence/p/snowflake-vs-databricks?r=2l9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) WebAssembly runtimes will replace container-based runtimes by 2030 (https://changelog.com/posts/webassembly-runtimes-will-replace-container-runtimes-by-2030) Jordan Schneider is at SEMICON JULY 11-12 on Twitter (https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1678128857763950593?s=46&t=-2GRjYw3L96Jh3hL9tDPcg) Court filing shows Microsoft Azure generated lower-than-expected $34B in revenue in 2022 (https://siliconangle.com/2023/06/29/court-filing-shows-microsoft-azure-generated-lower-expected-34b-revenue-2022/?ck_subscriber_id=512840665) Smart guy from Google decides not to compete with Apple Vision (https://twitter.com/marklucovsky/status/1678465552988381185) 87% Missing: the Disappearance of Classic Video Games | Video Game History Foundation (https://gamehistory.org/87percent/) IBM watsonx (https://www.ibm.com/watsonx) ChatGPT's explosive growth shows first decline in traffic since launch (https://www.reuters.com/technology/booming-traffic-openais-chatgpt-posts-first-ever-monthly-dip-june-similarweb-2023-07-05/) Cloud Native Computing Foundation Reaffirms #Istio Maturity with Project (https://twitter.com/CloudNativeFdn/status/1679143862256951297?s=20) Early Google exec Urs Holzle to step down from executive management role amid cloud shakeup (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/12/google-cloud-shakeup-urs-holzle-to-step-down-from-executive-management.html) Being acquired from a smallish start-up into VMware (https://apps-cloudmgmt.techzone.vmware.com/blog/being-acquired-smallish-start-vmware) Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 16.6% in Second Quarter of 2023 (https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-07-11-gartner-says-worldwide--pc-shipments-declined-16-percent-in-second-quarter-of-2023) Microsoft's Cloud Server Business in 2022 Was Less Than Half of AWS, New Document Reveals (https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsofts-cloud-server-business-in-2022-was-less-than-half-of-aws-new-document-reveals) Microsoft confirms more job cuts on top of 10,000 layoffs announced in January (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/microsoft-confirms-more-job-cuts-on-top-of-10000-layoffs-in-january.html) Shopify deleted 12,000 meetings this year. (https://twitter.com/petergyang/status/1679130177819881475?s=20) Nonsense If you don't buy Jony Ive's $60,000 turntable, are you really a music fan? (https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/07/if-you-dont-buy-jony-ives-60000-turntable-are-you-really-a-music-fan/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJAa2W94DiGgNgW_6JYJlL5YfxUkrkPKqhok-JRQ7R9oVhR7RfppOcMzOmGT0a9ZAz5-Azv2dqgLtpchPjtcXX3gaH4jAqpgDPgaiAqQDjl2tqZwK5VnxICubA-JYISytIETZIZAiYbkVvkABjxuyQirthfmyE46rL3XWXEk94rv) Conferences August 8th Kubernetes Community Day Australia (https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-kcd-australia-presents-kubernetes-community-day-australia-2023/) in Sydney, Matt attending. August 21st to 24th SpringOne (https://springone.io/) & VMware Explore US (https://www.vmware.com/explore/us.html), in Las Vegas. Explore EU CFP is open. Sep 6th to 7th DevOpsDays Des Moines (https://devopsdays.org/events/2023-des-moines/welcome/), Coté speaking. Sep 18th to 19th SHIFT (https://shift.infobip.com/) in Zadar, Coté speaking. October 6, 2023, KCD Texas 2023 (https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-kcd-texas-presents-kcd-texas-2023/), CFP Closes: August 30, 2023 Jan 29, 2024 to Feb 1, 2024 That Conference Texas CFP Open 6/1 - 8/21 (https://that.us/call-for-counselors/tx/2024/) If you want your conference mentioned, let's talk media sponsorships. SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! 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Recommendations Brandon: Hijack (https://tv.apple.com/us/show/hijack/umc.cmc.1dg08zn0g3zx52hs8npoj5qe3) Matt: Murderbot Diaries (https://www.goodreads.com/series/191900-the-murderbot-diaries) Coté: Fantastical (https://flexibits.com/fantastical), read-out of second HEY try. Photo Credits Header (https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Is-the-enemy-of-my-enemy-my-friend--B78kG9125I6L26iQ7ANBrxDaAg-AymUiXqVRaytqe3gqMPDv) Artwork (https://labs.openai.com/e/MlTLNTDx8VvoCaCEiMc16oDi/oFNRSDbXIEng8pevJZCfCYnE)
Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has announced an ambitious plan to produce a bipartisan AI regulation program in a matter of months. Jordan Schneider admires the project; I'm more skeptical. The rest of our commentators, Chessie Lockhart and Michael Ellis, also weigh in on AI issues. Chessie lays out the case against panicking over existential AI threats, this week canvassed in the MIT Technology Review. I suggest that anyone complaining that the EU or China is getting ahead of the U.S. in AI regulation (lookin' at you, Sen. Warner!) doesn't quite understand the race we're running. Jordan explains the difficulty the U.S. faces in trying to keep China from surprising us in AI. Michael catches us up on Canada's ill-advised effort to force Google and Meta to pay Canadian media whenever a user links to a Canadian story. Meta has already said it would rather end such links. The end result could be that even more Canadian news gets filtered through American media, hardly a popular outcome north of the border. Speaking of ill-advised regulatory initiatives, Michael and I comment on Australia's threatening Twitter with a fine for allowing too much hate speech on the platform post-Elon. Chessie gives an overview of the Data Elimination and Limiting Extensive Tracking and Exchange Act or the DELETE Act, a relatively modest bipartisan effort to regulate data brokers' control of personal data. Michael and I talk about the growing tension between EU member states with real national security tasks to complete and the Brussels establishment, which has enjoyed a 70-year holiday from national security history and expects the next 70 to be more of the same. The latest conflict is over how much leeway to give member states when they feel the need to plant spyware on journalists' phones. Remarkably, both sides think the government should have such leeway; the fight is over how much. Michael and I are surprised that the BBC feels obliged to ask, “Why is it so rare to hear about Western cyber-attacks?” Because, BBC, the agencies carrying out those attacks are on our side and mostly respect rules we support. In updates and quick hits: I bring listeners up to date on how things turned out for the lawyers who filed a ChatGPT-hallucinated brief in federal court: Not well. Chessie flags the creation of a new Justice Department section in the National Security Division: Natsec Cyber Chessie also welcomes the growing recognition, some of it in cold, hard cash, for cyber security clinics. Download 464th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has announced an ambitious plan to produce a bipartisan AI regulation program in a matter of months. Jordan Schneider admires the project; I'm more skeptical. The rest of our commentators, Chessie Lockhart and Michael Ellis, also weigh in on AI issues. Chessie lays out the case against panicking over existential AI threats, this week canvassed in the MIT Technology Review. I suggest that anyone complaining that the EU or China is getting ahead of the U.S. in AI regulation (lookin' at you, Sen. Warner!) doesn't quite understand the race we're running. Jordan explains the difficulty the U.S. faces in trying to keep China from surprising us in AI. Michael catches us up on Canada's ill-advised effort to force Google and Meta to pay Canadian media whenever a user links to a Canadian story. Meta has already said it would rather end such links. The end result could be that even more Canadian news gets filtered through American media, hardly a popular outcome north of the border. Speaking of ill-advised regulatory initiatives, Michael and I comment on Australia's threatening Twitter with a fine for allowing too much hate speech on the platform post-Elon. Chessie gives an overview of the Data Elimination and Limiting Extensive Tracking and Exchange Act or the DELETE Act, a relatively modest bipartisan effort to regulate data brokers' control of personal data. Michael and I talk about the growing tension between EU member states with real national security tasks to complete and the Brussels establishment, which has enjoyed a 70-year holiday from national security history and expects the next 70 to be more of the same. The latest conflict is over how much leeway to give member states when they feel the need to plant spyware on journalists' phones. Remarkably, both sides think the government should have such leeway; the fight is over how much. Michael and I are surprised that the BBC feels obliged to ask, “Why is it so rare to hear about Western cyber-attacks?” Because, BBC, the agencies carrying out those attacks are on our side and mostly respect rules we support. In updates and quick hits: I bring listeners up to date on how things turned out for the lawyers who filed a ChatGPT-hallucinated brief in federal court: Not well. Chessie flags the creation of a new Justice Department section in the National Security Division: Natsec Cyber Chessie also welcomes the growing recognition, some of it in cold, hard cash, for cyber security clinics. Download 464th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
GPT-4's rapid and tangible improvement over ChatGPT has more or less guaranteed that it or a competitor will be built into most new and legacy information and technology (IT) products. Some applications will be pointless; but some will change users' world. In this episode, Sultan Meghji, Jordan Schneider, and Siobhan Gorman explore the likely impact of GPT4 from Silicon Valley to China. Kurt Sanger joins us to explain why Ukraine's IT Army of volunteer hackers creates political, legal, and maybe even physical risks for the hackers and for Ukraine. This may explain why Ukraine is looking for ways to “regularize” their international supporters, with a view to steering them toward defending Ukrainian infrastructure. Siobhan and I dig into the Biden administration's latest target for cybersecurity regulation: cloud providers. I wonder if there is not a bit of bait and switch in operation here. The administration seems at least as intent on regulating cloud providers to catch hackers as to improve defenses. Say this for China – it never lets a bit of leverage go to waste, even when it should. To further buttress its seven-dashed-line claim to the South China Sea, China is demanding that companies get Chinese licenses to lay submarine cable within the contested territory. That, of course, incentivizes the laying of cables much further from China, out where they're harder for the Chinese to deal with in a conflict. But some Beijing bureaucrat will no doubt claim it as a win for the wolf warriors. Ditto for the Chinese ambassador's statement about the Netherlands joining the U.S. in restricting chip-making equipment sales to China, which boiled down to “We will make you pay for that. We just do not know how yet.” The U.S. is not always good at dealing with its companies and other countries, but it is nice to be competing with a country that is demonstrably worse at it. The Security and Exchange Commission has gone from catatonic to hyperactive on cybersecurity. Siobhan notes its latest 48-hour incident reporting requirement and the difficulty of reporting anything useful in that time frame. Kurt and Siobhan bring their expertise as parents of teens and aspiring teens to the TikTok debate. I linger over the extraordinary and undercovered mess created by “18F”—the General Service Administration's effort to bring Silicon Valley to the government's IT infrastructure. It looks like they brought Silicon Valley's arrogance, its political correctness, and its penchant for breaking things but forgot to bring either competence or honesty. 18F lied to its federal customers about how or whether it was checking the identities of people logging in through login.gov. When it finally admitted the lie, it brazenly claimed it was not checking because the technology was biased, contrary to the only available evidence. Oh, and it refused to give back the $10 million it charged because the work it did cost more than that. This breakdown in the middle of coronavirus handouts undoubtedly juiced fraud, but no one has figured out how much. Among the victims: Sen. Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.), who used login.gov and its phony biometric checks as the “good” alternative that would let the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancel its politically inconvenient contract with ID.me. Really, guys, it's time to start scrubbing 18F from your LinkedIn profiles. The Knicks have won some games. Blind pigs have found some acorns. But Madison Square Garden (and Knicks) owner, Jimmy Dolan is still investing good money in his unwinnable fight to use facial recognition to keep lawyers he does not like out of the Garden. Kurt offers commentary, thereby saving himself the cost of Knicks tickets for future playoff games. Finally, I read Simson Garfinkel's explanation of a question I asked (and should have known the answer to) in episode 448.
GPT-4's rapid and tangible improvement over ChatGPT has more or less guaranteed that it or a competitor will be built into most new and legacy information and technology (IT) products. Some applications will be pointless; but some will change users' world. In this episode, Sultan Meghji, Jordan Schneider, and Siobhan Gorman explore the likely impact of GPT4 from Silicon Valley to China. Kurt Sanger joins us to explain why Ukraine's IT Army of volunteer hackers creates political, legal, and maybe even physical risks for the hackers and for Ukraine. This may explain why Ukraine is looking for ways to “regularize” their international supporters, with a view to steering them toward defending Ukrainian infrastructure. Siobhan and I dig into the Biden administration's latest target for cybersecurity regulation: cloud providers. I wonder if there is not a bit of bait and switch in operation here. The administration seems at least as intent on regulating cloud providers to catch hackers as to improve defenses. Say this for China – it never lets a bit of leverage go to waste, even when it should. To further buttress its seven-dashed-line claim to the South China Sea, China is demanding that companies get Chinese licenses to lay submarine cable within the contested territory. That, of course, incentivizes the laying of cables much further from China, out where they're harder for the Chinese to deal with in a conflict. But some Beijing bureaucrat will no doubt claim it as a win for the wolf warriors. Ditto for the Chinese ambassador's statement about the Netherlands joining the U.S. in restricting chip-making equipment sales to China, which boiled down to “We will make you pay for that. We just do not know how yet.” The U.S. is not always good at dealing with its companies and other countries, but it is nice to be competing with a country that is demonstrably worse at it. The Security and Exchange Commission has gone from catatonic to hyperactive on cybersecurity. Siobhan notes its latest 48-hour incident reporting requirement and the difficulty of reporting anything useful in that time frame. Kurt and Siobhan bring their expertise as parents of teens and aspiring teens to the TikTok debate. I linger over the extraordinary and undercovered mess created by “18F”—the General Service Administration's effort to bring Silicon Valley to the government's IT infrastructure. It looks like they brought Silicon Valley's arrogance, its political correctness, and its penchant for breaking things but forgot to bring either competence or honesty. 18F lied to its federal customers about how or whether it was checking the identities of people logging in through login.gov. When it finally admitted the lie, it brazenly claimed it was not checking because the technology was biased, contrary to the only available evidence. Oh, and it refused to give back the $10 million it charged because the work it did cost more than that. This breakdown in the middle of coronavirus handouts undoubtedly juiced fraud, but no one has figured out how much. Among the victims: Sen. Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.), who used login.gov and its phony biometric checks as the “good” alternative that would let the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancel its politically inconvenient contract with ID.me. Really, guys, it's time to start scrubbing 18F from your LinkedIn profiles. The Knicks have won some games. Blind pigs have found some acorns. But Madison Square Garden (and Knicks) owner, Jimmy Dolan is still investing good money in his unwinnable fight to use facial recognition to keep lawyers he does not like out of the Garden. Kurt offers commentary, thereby saving himself the cost of Knicks tickets for future playoff games. Finally, I read Simson Garfinkel's explanation of a question I asked (and should have known the answer to) in episode 448.
Xi Jinping spent spent three days in Russia in a highly touted visit that included hours of direct talks with Vladimir Putin. The visit comes amid Putin's growing international isolation and heightening tensions between China and the United States. So what did Xi hope to accomplish with this major diplomatic summit? Joining me to answer that question and more is Jordan Schneider, founder of the podcast and newsletter China Talk. We kick off discussing the evolution of Chinese-Russian relations since the invasion of Ukraine and then discuss some of the key takeaways from the Xi Jinping-Vladimir Putin summit.
How will GPT4 change the world? How will US-China 'racing dynamics' play out and what are the implications for AI safety? Nathan Labenz was invited to record a special "emergency" episode of ChinaTalk podcast this week to discuss the implications GPT4 will have for policy, economics, and society. Thanks to Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk, and fellow "AI justice league" guests Zvi Mowshowitz of 'Don't Worry About the Vase' and Matthew Mittelsteadt of Mercatus. (0:00) Intro (2:09) GPT-4 emergency podcast (9:26) GPT-4 use cases (22:51) What GPT-4 can and can't do (35:50) AI safety (45:38) OpenAI v. Anthropic (48:54) Governments' role in AI (55:50) AI will improve physical health and healthcare the most (59:19) Facebook's LLaMA model (01:05:55) VR/AR (01:08:59) Concerns with GPT4 (01:15:26) GPT-5 and GPT-6 (01:18:45) Optimism in the AI revolution Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real time advertising data, to generate personalized experiences at scale. Twitter: @CogRev_Podcast @labenz (Nathan) @jordanschnyc (Jordan) Websites: cognitivervolution.ai RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix's culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics
This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is dominated by stories about possible cybersecurity regulation. David Kris points us first to an article by the leadership of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration in Foreign Affairs. Jen Easterly and Eric Goldstein seem to take a tough line on “Why Companies Must Build Safety Into Tech Products.“ But for all the tough language, one word, “regulation,” is entirely missing from the piece. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity strategy that the White House has been reportedly drafting for months seems to be hung up over how enthusiastically to demand regulation. All of which seems just a little weird in a world where Republicans hold the House. Regulation is not likely to be high on the GOP to-do list, so calls for tougher regulation are almost certainly more symbolic than real. Still, this is a week for symbolic calls for regulation. David also takes us through an National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) report on the anticompetitive impact of Apple's and Google's control of their mobile app markets. The report points to many problems and opportunities for abuse inherent in their headlock on what apps can be sold to phone users. But, as Google and Apple are quick to point out, they do play a role in regulating app security, so breaking the headlock could be bad for cybersecurity. In any event, practically every recommendation for action in the report is a call for Congress to step in—almost certainly a nonstarter for reasons already given. Not to be outdone on the phony regulation beat, Jordan Schneider and Sultan Meghji explore some of the policy and regulatory proposals for AI that have been inspired by the success of ChatGPT. The EU's AI Act is coming in for lots of attention, mainly from parts of the industry that want to be regulation-free. Sultan and I trade observations about who'll be hollowed out first by ChatGPT, law firms or investment firms. Sultan also tells us why the ION ransomware hack matters. Jordan and Sultan find a cybersecurity angle to The Great Chinese Balloon Scandal of 2023. And I offer an assessment of Matt Taibbi's story about the Hamilton 68 “Russian influence” reports. If you have wondered what the fuss was about, do not expect mainstream media to tell you; the media does not come out looking good in this story. Unfortunately for Matt Taibbi, he does not look much better than the reporters his story criticizes. David thinks it is a balanced and moderate take, for which I offer an apology and a promise to do better next time.
This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast is dominated by stories about possible cybersecurity regulation. David Kris points us first to an article by the leadership of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration in Foreign Affairs. Jen Easterly and Eric Goldstein seem to take a tough line on “Why Companies Must Build Safety Into Tech Products.“ But for all the tough language, one word, “regulation,” is entirely missing from the piece. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity strategy that the White House has been reportedly drafting for months seems to be hung up over how enthusiastically to demand regulation. All of which seems just a little weird in a world where Republicans hold the House. Regulation is not likely to be high on the GOP to-do list, so calls for tougher regulation are almost certainly more symbolic than real. Still, this is a week for symbolic calls for regulation. David also takes us through an National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) report on the anticompetitive impact of Apple's and Google's control of their mobile app markets. The report points to many problems and opportunities for abuse inherent in their headlock on what apps can be sold to phone users. But, as Google and Apple are quick to point out, they do play a role in regulating app security, so breaking the headlock could be bad for cybersecurity. In any event, practically every recommendation for action in the report is a call for Congress to step in—almost certainly a nonstarter for reasons already given. Not to be outdone on the phony regulation beat, Jordan Schneider and Sultan Meghji explore some of the policy and regulatory proposals for AI that have been inspired by the success of ChatGPT. The EU's AI Act is coming in for lots of attention, mainly from parts of the industry that want to be regulation-free. Sultan and I trade observations about who'll be hollowed out first by ChatGPT, law firms or investment firms. Sultan also tells us why the ION ransomware hack matters. Jordan and Sultan find a cybersecurity angle to The Great Chinese Balloon Scandal of 2023. And I offer an assessment of Matt Taibbi's story about the Hamilton 68 “Russian influence” reports. If you have wondered what the fuss was about, do not expect mainstream media to tell you; the media does not come out looking good in this story. Unfortunately for Matt Taibbi, he does not look much better than the reporters his story criticizes. David thinks it is a balanced and moderate take, for which I offer an apology and a promise to do better next time.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA should help Tyler Cowen publish his drafted book in China, published by Matt Brooks on January 14, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Tyler Cowen was on the Jan 9th episode of ChinaTalk, a podcast hosted by Jordan Schneider. Podcast: China Talk Substack: At 39:45 Tyler mentions writing a book to improve US relations with China that will likely never be published. We should help him publish it!Edit: Tyler is interested although worried about censorship I transcribed this part of the podcast with Whisper, so there may be mistakes. Go listen to the entire episode anyway, it's worth a listen. Transcription JordanSo shortly, millions of Chinese nationals who've been playing World of Warcraft their entire lives will no longer be able to. I'm curious, how important shared cultural touchstones, like video games, the NBA and Marvel movies are to keeping the peace? Tyler I don't know, we had plenty such touchstones with, say, Germany before World War I, World War II, it didn't matter. But certainly worth trying, you know, I had my own project to improve relations with China, which failed, by the way. I wrote a manuscript for a book, and my plan was to publish it only in China. And it was a book designed to explain America to the Chinese, and make it more explicable, more understandable. So I wrote the book, I submitted it to Xinhua, which gave me a contract, even paid me in advance. But then a number of events came along, most specifically the Trump trade wars, and the book never came out. They're still sitting on it. I don't think it will ever come out. That was my, you know, you could call it, misguided project, to just do a very small amount to help the two countries get along better. Jordan Wow, what were your, what were your themes? Tyler Well, if you think of Tokvill, he wrote democracy in America, so that Europeans would understand America better, right? So I thought, well, if we're trying to explain America to Chinese people, it's a really very different set of questions, especially in the 21st century. Though I covered a lot of basic differences across the economies, the policies, why are the economies different? Why is there so little state ownership in America? Why are so many parts of America so bad at infrastructure? Why do Americans save less? How is religion different in America? That was, I think, an especially sensitive topic. And just try to make sense of America for Chinese readers, but not defending it. Just some kind of, all of branch of understanding. Here's how we are. And I don't know. I don't think they'll ever put the book out. And of course, by now, it's out of date. Jordan Yeah, but there's, I mean, there's plenty of other people. Other like countries on the planet who could use a little, you know, a civics 101. Tyler They could. I mean, this is a book written for Chinese people with the contrasts and data comparisons to China. So to sort of send the same book to, you know, Senegal, I don't think would really make sense. Jordan Yeah, but if you publish it in the US, it will like, you know, Osmos out. I don't think it needs to be published by Xinhua for Chinese people to read it, Tyler. Tyler I've thought of having it translated into Chinese distributed Somersault in some way. Haven't ruled that out. No downside for me, but you want to do things right. And I kept on waiting for Xinhua. And now I've really completely given up. The book is out of date with facts. That's not a big problem. Facts you can update, but it's very out of date with respect to tone. So right now, everyone feels you need to be tough with China. You can't sort of say nice things to China about China, you're pandering. You look like LeBron James or you're afraid to speak up. And the book would have made a lot of sense, say in 2015 that its current tone doesn't make sense in ...
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:03:36 - TSM's business model and competitive advantages.07:13 - All about the critical role semiconductors play in our overall economy.17:15 - Potential risks of investing in TSM.18:11 - The geopolitical tensions that are brewing with the US restricting China's access to the global semiconductor market.31:00 - What drives the stock's return in the long run.31:42 - The highlights from the Graham and Dodd Annual Breakfast.37:01 - Why Intel and Meta's stock might be undervalued.Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESTune into the recent We Study Billionaire's episode covering How Jeff Bezos Built Amazon.Learn about the Story of Airbnb.Jordan Schneider's Article: Choking Off China's AI Access.ValueStockGeek's writeup on Intel.Aswath Damodaran's analysis on Meta.Write-up on the Graham and Dodd Annual Breakfast.NEW TO THE SHOW?Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. P.S The Investor's Podcast Network is excited to launch a subreddit devoted to our fans in discussing financial markets, stock picks, questions for our hosts, and much more! Join our subreddit r/TheInvestorsPodcast today!SPONSORSInvest in high-quality, cash-flowing real estate without all of the hassle with Passive Investing.Have gold and silver shipped directly to your door for you to hold at your home. Get BullionMax's Gold Investor Kit today – 3 ounces of the world's most desirable gold coins, including the Gold American Eagle and Canadian Maple Leaf.Get position and investment info for nearly 6,000 Asset Management Companies with Moomoo, Australia's first A.I. powered trading platform. Sign up and fund your moomoo account before October 31 and get $10 for every $100 you deposit. All investment carries risk. AFSL 224 663. T&Cs apply.Enjoy 10% off your first booking in Viator's world of over 300,000 experiences you'll remember. Download the Viator app now and use code VIATOR10.In a world of probabilities, trade the possibilities with Pepperstone.Start building a portfolio of alternative farm and timberland assets with AcreTrader.If you're aware you need to improve your bitcoin security but have been putting it off, Unchained Capital‘s Concierge Onboarding is a simple way to get started—sooner rather than later. Book your onboarding today and at checkout, get $50 off with the promo code FUNDAMENTALS.Guess less and sell more with the Number 1 email marketing and automation brand, Intuit Mailchimp.Thanks to rising interest rates artificially driving down the prices of even the best assets, Fundrise expects 2023 to be one of the most opportune real estate investing environments of the last decade. Take advantage of this unique investing environment.Send, spend, and receive money around the world easily with Wise.Ship with FedEx and be ready for this holiday season with picture proof of delivery.Monitor your recovery, sleep, training, and health, with personalized recommendations and coaching feedback with WHOOP. Use code WSB to save 10% off your order today.Give your family and friends Omaha Steaks, a gift that will be remembered with every unforgettable bite. Use promo code WSB at checkout to get that EXTRA $30 OFF your order.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.HELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Next Level Seinfeld, published by Zvi on December 19, 2022 on LessWrong. Thanks to Jordan Schneider gifting a last minute ticket for an amazing seat, serendipity led me to go to Friday night's performance by Jerry Seinfeld at the Beacon Theater. If I had to describe the show in one word, I'd say it was unsurprising. Jerry was Jerry. He had thoughts. Mostly he had complaints. They were all Very Seinfeld. If I had two words I might say mildly amusing. Which was good enough for a worthwhile evening. Live performances are something special. Every time I've gone out to a comedy show, even if a bunch of it was kind of lame, I have been happy I came. The correct bar for worth watching is actually lower in person than at home. The thought I couldn't shake as I went home was, what GPT level was that on? This first came to me during the opening act. His opening act was if anything too on the nose. Very Jerry. Much Seinfeld. It felt very much like he had GPT-X put together a package of Standard Mildly Amusing Jokes and Perspectives, with the prompt that the performer was black, old, male, never married and the opening act for Jerry Seinfeld. Given the material, delivery was solid. The question was, what was the X in GPT-X? I am confident our current incarnation, which is GPT-3.5 or so, can't do it. What about GPT-4? Could go either way, if you could try out bits and select winners. What about GPT-5? Yes, absolutely, if it is what I'd expect, that should work. So I'd give that act a GPT-level rating of 4.25. Jerry himself was on a higher level. Not as high as his peak. I'd give him a 5. What about the best stand-up shows and specials? I've seen 6s. I worry I may have never seen a 7. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.
Timestamps:(00:00:00) - Intro(00:03:06) - China Protests & History(00:23:15) - Steelman China Perspective(00:28:21) - Predictions Looking Forward(00:44:29) - Apple vs. TwitterWatch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/t4qZWAz_jL0What Is Not Investment Advice?Every week, Jack Butcher, Bilal Zaidi & Trung Phan discuss what they're finding on the edges of the internet + the latest in business, technology and memes.Watch + Subscribe on YouTube:Join our group chat on Telegram:https://t.me/notinvestmentadviceLet us know what you think on Twitter:@bzaidi@trungtphan@jackbutcher@niapodcastLinks Mentioned:https://www.chinatalk.media/https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
You heard it on the Cyberlaw Podcast first, as we mash up the week's top stories: Nate Jones commenting on Elon Musk's expected troubles running Twitter at a profit and Jordan Schneider noting the U.S. government's creeping, halting moves to constrain TikTok's sway in the U.S. market. Since Twitter has never made a lot of money, even before it was carrying loads of new debt, and since pushing TikTok out of the U.S. market is going to be an option on the table for years, why doesn't Elon Musk position Twitter to take its place? It's another big week for China news, as Nate and Jordan cover the administration's difficulties in finding a way to thwart China's rise in quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Jordan has a good post about the tech decoupling bombshell. But the most intriguing discussion concerns China's remarkably limited options for striking back at the Biden administration for its harsh sanctions. Meanwhile, under the heading, When It Rains, It Pours, Elon Musk's Tesla faces a criminal investigation over its self-driving claims. Nate and I are skeptical that the probe will lead to charges, as Tesla's message about Full Self-Driving has been a mix of manic hype and lawyerly caution. Jamil Jaffer introduces us to the Guacamaya “hacktivist” group whose data dumps have embarrassed governments all over Latin America—most recently with reports of Mexican arms sales to narco-terrorists. On the hard question—hacktivists or government agents?—Jamil and I lean ever so slightly toward hacktivists. Nate covers the remarkable indictment of two Chinese spies for recruiting a U.S. law enforcement officer in an effort to get inside information about the prosecution of a Chinese company believed to be Huawei. Plenty of great color from the indictment, and Nate notes the awkward spot that the defense team now finds itself in, since the point of the operation seems to have been, er, trial preparation. To balance the scales a bit, Nate also covers suggestions that Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt, who headed an AI advisory committee, had a conflict of interest because he also invested in AI startups. There's no suggestion of illegality, though, and it is not clear how the government will get cutting edge advice on AI if it does not get it from investors like Schmidt. Jamil and I have mildly divergent takes on the Transportation Security Administration's new railroad cybersecurity directive. He worries that it will produce more box-checking than security. I have a similar concern that it mostly reinforces current practice rather than raising the bar. And in quick updates: The Federal Trade Commission has made good on its promise to impose consent decree obligations on CEOs as well as companies. The first victim is the CEO of Drizly. France has fined Clearview AI the maximum possible fine for not defending a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) case – unsurprisingly, because Clearview AI does no business in France. I offer this public service announcement: Given the risk that your Prime Minister's phone could be compromised, it's important to change them every 45 days.
You heard it on the Cyberlaw Podcast first, as we mash up the week's top stories: Nate Jones commenting on Elon Musk's expected troubles running Twitter at a profit and Jordan Schneider noting the U.S. government's creeping, halting moves to constrain TikTok's sway in the U.S. market. Since Twitter has never made a lot of money, even before it was carrying loads of new debt, and since pushing TikTok out of the U.S. market is going to be an option on the table for years, why doesn't Elon Musk position Twitter to take its place? It's another big week for China news, as Nate and Jordan cover the administration's difficulties in finding a way to thwart China's rise in quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Jordan has a good post about the tech decoupling bombshell. But the most intriguing discussion concerns China's remarkably limited options for striking back at the Biden administration for its harsh sanctions. Meanwhile, under the heading, When It Rains, It Pours, Elon Musk's Tesla faces a criminal investigation over its self-driving claims. Nate and I are skeptical that the probe will lead to charges, as Tesla's message about Full Self-Driving has been a mix of manic hype and lawyerly caution. Jamil Jaffer introduces us to the Guacamaya “hacktivist” group whose data dumps have embarrassed governments all over Latin America—most recently with reports of Mexican arms sales to narco-terrorists. On the hard question—hacktivists or government agents?—Jamil and I lean ever so slightly toward hacktivists. Nate covers the remarkable indictment of two Chinese spies for recruiting a U.S. law enforcement officer in an effort to get inside information about the prosecution of a Chinese company believed to be Huawei. Plenty of great color from the indictment, and Nate notes the awkward spot that the defense team now finds itself in, since the point of the operation seems to have been, er, trial preparation. To balance the scales a bit, Nate also covers suggestions that Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt, who headed an AI advisory committee, had a conflict of interest because he also invested in AI startups. There's no suggestion of illegality, though, and it is not clear how the government will get cutting edge advice on AI if it does not get it from investors like Schmidt. Jamil and I have mildly divergent takes on the Transportation Security Administration's new railroad cybersecurity directive. He worries that it will produce more box-checking than security. I have a similar concern that it mostly reinforces current practice rather than raising the bar. And in quick updates: The Federal Trade Commission has made good on its promise to impose consent decree obligations on CEOs as well as companies. The first victim is the CEO of Drizly. France has fined Clearview AI the maximum possible fine for not defending a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) case – unsurprisingly, because Clearview AI does no business in France. I offer this public service announcement: Given the risk that your Prime Minister's phone could be compromised, it's important to change them every 45 days.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The US expands restrictions on AI exports to China. What are the x-risk effects?, published by Stephen Clare on October 14, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Late last week, the Biden administration announced a new set of regulations that make it illegal for US companies to export a range of AI-related products and services to China (Financial Times coverage here (paywalled
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Cause Exploration Prizes: Announcing our prizes, published by ChrisSmith on September 9, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We were gratified to receive over 150 good-faith submissions to Open Philanthropy's Cause Exploration Prizes, where we invited people to suggest a new area for us to support or respond to our suggested questions. We hoped that these submissions would help us find new ways to carry out our mission — helping others as much as possible with the resources available to us. You can read them on the EA Forum. Below, we highlight the submissions to which we are awarding major prizes and honorable mentions. We're awarding these prizes to entries that we thought engaged well with our prompts and helped us to better understand the questions and issues they addressed. We have not investigated each and every claim made in these entries, and the awarding of a prize does not imply that we necessarily endorse their claims or arguments as correct. Our top prize We are awarding our top prize ($25,000) to: Organophosphate pesticides and other neurotoxicants by Ben Stewart. Second prizes We are awarding three second-place prizes ($15,000) for the following submissions. These are listed in no particular order. Violence against women and girls by Akhil Sickle Cell Disease by anonymous Shareholder activism by sbehmer Honorable mentions We are awarding $500 to the authors of the following entries. These are listed in no particular order. Expanding access to infertility services in Low- and Middle-Income Countries by Soleine Scotney Maternal morbidity by alexhill Farmed Animal Welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa by anonymous Indoor Air Quality to Reduce Infectious Respiratory Disease by Gavriel Kleinwaks, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, and joshcmorrison To WELLBY or not to WELLBY? Measuring non-health, non-pecuniary benefits using subjective wellbeing by JoelMcGuire, Samuel Dupret, and MichaelPlant Tobacco harm reduction by kristof Climate adaptation in low-income countries by Karthik Tadepalli Social and behavioral science R&D by Anna Harvey and Stuart Buck Family Planning: A Significant Opportunity for Impact by Sarah H and Ben Williamson Improving diagnosis and treatment of bipolar spectrum disorders by Karolina Soltys War between the US and China: A case study for epistemic challenges around China-related catastrophic risk by Jordan_Schneider and pradyusp Improved quality control in science by Sophie Schauman More animal advocacy R&D by anonymous Adapting to Extreme Heat Exposure in South Asia by Surbhi B Rich to Poor Country Spillovers by anonymous Large-scale International Educational Migration: A shallow investigation by Jasmin Baier, Johannes Haushofer, and Hannah Lea Shaw Training health workers to prevent newborn deaths by Marshall Developmental Cognitive Neuroepidemiology by Hauke Hillebrandt Differential Neurotechnology Development by mwcvitkovic Short sleeper genes by JohnBoyle We are contacting all prize recipients by email. Good-faith submissions Next week we will begin the process of emailing everyone who submitted a good-faith submission in order to offer them participation awards of $200. Future plans As we stated in our announcement, this was a trial process for us. We're grateful to those who sent us feedback and suggestions for how to improve. At this stage, we don't know if or when we will repeat a process like this. We might write a public update later this year on what we have learned from this exercise and any plans to repeat this or a similar exercise again. Thank you We are grateful to Lizka and the other operators of the EA Forum, and to everyone who engaged with or submitted an entry to the Cause Exploration Prizes for making this possible. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.
This is our return-from-hiatus episode. Jordan Schneider kicks things off by recapping passage of a major U.S. semiconductor-building subsidy bill, while new contributor Brian Fleming talks with Nick Weaver about new regulatory investment restrictions and new export controls on (artificial Intelligence (AI) chips going to China. Jordan also covers a big corruption scandal arising from China's big chip-building subsidy program, leading me to wonder when we'll have our version. Brian and Nick cover the month's biggest cryptocurrency policy story, the imposition of OFAC sanctions on Tornado Cash. They agree that, while the outer limits of sanctions aren't entirely clear, they are likely to show that sometimes the U.S. Code actually does trump the digital version. Nick points listeners to his bracing essay, OFAC Around and Find Out. Paul Rosenzweig reprises his role as the voice of reason in the debate over location tracking and Dobbs. (Literally. Paul and I did an hour-long panel on the topic last week. It's available here.) I reprise my role as Chief Privacy Skeptic, calling the Dobb/location fuss an overrated tempest in a teapot. Brian takes on one aspect of the Mudge whistleblower complaint about Twitter security: Twitter's poor record at keeping foreign spies from infiltrating its workforce and getting unaudited access to its customer records. In a coincidence, he notes, a former Twitter employee was just convicted of “spying lite”, proves it's as good at national security as it is at content moderation. Meanwhile, returning to U.S.-China economic relations, Jordan notes the survival of high-level government concerns about TikTok. I note that, since these concerns first surfaced in the Trump era, TikTok's lobbying efforts have only grown more sophisticated. Speaking of which, Klon Kitchen has done a good job of highlighting DJI's increasingly sophisticated lobbying in Washington D.C. The Cloudflare decision to deplatform Kiwi Farms kicks off a donnybrook, with Paul and Nick on one side and me on the other. It's a classic Cyberlaw Podcast debate. In quick hits and updates: Nick and I cover the sad story of the Dad who photographed his baby's private parts at a doctor's request and, thanks to Google's lack of human appellate review, lost his email, his phone number, and all of the accounts that used the phone for 2FA. Paul brings us up to speed on the U.S.-EU data fight: and teases tomorrow's webinar on the topic. Nick explains the big changes likely to come to the pornography world because of a lawsuit against Visa. And why Twitter narrowly averted its own child sex scandal. I note that Google's bias against GOP fundraising emails has led to an unlikely result: less spam filtering for all such emails. And, after waiting too long, Brian Krebs retracts the post about a Ubiquity “breach” that led the company to sue him.
This is our return-from-hiatus episode. Jordan Schneider kicks things off by recapping passage of a major U.S. semiconductor-building subsidy bill, while new contributor Brian Fleming talks with Nick Weaver about new regulatory investment restrictions and new export controls on (artificial Intelligence (AI) chips going to China. Jordan also covers a big corruption scandal arising from China's big chip-building subsidy program, leading me to wonder when we'll have our version. Brian and Nick cover the month's biggest cryptocurrency policy story, the imposition of OFAC sanctions on Tornado Cash. They agree that, while the outer limits of sanctions aren't entirely clear, they are likely to show that sometimes the U.S. Code actually does trump the digital version. Nick points listeners to his bracing essay, OFAC Around and Find Out. Paul Rosenzweig reprises his role as the voice of reason in the debate over location tracking and Dobbs. (Literally. Paul and I did an hour-long panel on the topic last week. It's available here.) I reprise my role as Chief Privacy Skeptic, calling the Dobb/location fuss an overrated tempest in a teapot. Brian takes on one aspect of the Mudge whistleblower complaint about Twitter security: Twitter's poor record at keeping foreign spies from infiltrating its workforce and getting unaudited access to its customer records. In a coincidence, he notes, a former Twitter employee was just convicted of “spying lite”, proves it's as good at national security as it is at content moderation. Meanwhile, returning to U.S.-China economic relations, Jordan notes the survival of high-level government concerns about TikTok. I note that, since these concerns first surfaced in the Trump era, TikTok's lobbying efforts have only grown more sophisticated. Speaking of which, Klon Kitchen has done a good job of highlighting DJI's increasingly sophisticated lobbying in Washington D.C. The Cloudflare decision to deplatform Kiwi Farms kicks off a donnybrook, with Paul and Nick on one side and me on the other. It's a classic Cyberlaw Podcast debate. In quick hits and updates: Nick and I cover the sad story of the Dad who photographed his baby's private parts at a doctor's request and, thanks to Google's lack of human appellate review, lost his email, his phone number, and all of the accounts that used the phone for 2FA. Paul brings us up to speed on the U.S.-EU data fight: and teases tomorrow's webinar on the topic. Nick explains the big changes likely to come to the pornography world because of a lawsuit against Visa. And why Twitter narrowly averted its own child sex scandal. I note that Google's bias against GOP fundraising emails has led to an unlikely result: less spam filtering for all such emails. And, after waiting too long, Brian Krebs retracts the post about a Ubiquity “breach” that led the company to sue him.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: War Between the US and China: A case study for epistemic challenges around China-related catastrophic risk, published by Jordan Schneider on August 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR China has a critical role to play in addressing the 21st century's most pressing catastrophic risks. In particular, the risk of a US-China war in the coming decades is real (Metaculus gives 50/50 odds of a conflict with >100 deaths by 2050, and there's perhaps a 15% chance of a war of the scale we're considering for this post). A conventional conflict could cost over 2 billion life years in the combatant countries even before taking into account nuclear escalation. Even less horrific wartime scenarios would reduce global GDP by double digits and plunge perhaps 5% of the world's population back into extreme poverty. Analysis of modern China is very neglected relative to its scale. Only ~600 people in the United States conduct research on anything PRC-related for a living outside the US government. The US Intelligence Community does not have it covered, and a vanishing percentage of the 600 are oriented towards reducing catastrophic risk. Even more concerning is that the flow of researchers into the space has not increased even as US-China tensions have heightened (in fact, the early career talent pipeline is broken). Thankfully, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit! Funding Ideas include Money to increase the pool of early career jobs, including direct funding for early career positions at think tanks A survey that explores the state of research and talent challenges, culminating in a roadmap to improve the quality of US policy debate around China more oriented around catastrophic risks. Epistemic tools like a giant centralized repository of Chinese government documents and translation algorithms tuned for government documents Philanthropically-funded research organizations built off CSET's model that could inspire Congress to fund more impactful analysis Along with reducing the chances of a US-China war, an improved understanding of the PRC could prove invaluable for working on other catastrophic risks like AI safety and biosecurity. A Word from the Authors Jordan Schneider: I was the lead author of this report. For the past five years, I've run the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter. I've interviewed more than 250 China-focused journalists, academics, and policymakers based outside of the PRC in recorded conversations for podcast episodes, and 150 more casual conversations. I have also worked for six years in the think tank field on China-focused work, spent two years in grad school in Beijing, and another two years in a macro-focused role at a hedge fund with significant investments in China. I have also interacted over a hundred students who have reached out to me for career advice. The claims that follow build off those conversations, my work experience, and countless hours reading China-focused academic literature as well as think tank and government reports. I have scoped this paper to focus specifically on great power war in the next fifty years as it's the topic where I have the deepest expertise. However, practically every major shortermist and longtermist risk area (biorisk, global economic growth prospects, space governance, geoengineering, AI safety) is intimately tied to China, plagued by the same analytical deficiencies in the English-speaking world, and could be served by interventions analogous to the ones proposed below. Pradyumna Prasad: I was the supporting author. I run the Bretton Goods blog and podcast, helped write the sections on estimating the mortality and economic costs of a US China war, and graduated high school last year. Summary What's the problem? In 1948, two years after Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech, the CIA had 12 Russian speakers on s...
Is the European Union (EU) about to rescue the FBI from Going Dark? Jamil Jaffer and Nate Jones tell us that a new directive aimed at preventing child sex abuse might just do the trick, a position backed by people who've been fighting the bureau on encryption for years. The Biden administration is prepping to impose some of the toughest sanctions ever on Chinese camera maker Hikvision, Jordan Schneider reports. No one is defending Hikvision's role in China's Uyghur policy, but I'm skeptical that we should spend all that ammo on a company that probably isn't the greatest national security threat we face. Jamil is more comfortable with the measure, and Jordan reminds me that China's economy is shaky enough that it may not pick a fight to save Hikvision. Speaking of which, Jordan schools me on the likelihood that Xi Jinping's hold on power will be loosened by the plight of Chinese tech platforms, harsh pandemic lockdowns or the grim lesson provided by Putin's ability to move without check from tactical error to strategic blunder and on to historic disaster. Speaking of products of more serious national security than Hikvision, Nate and I try to figure out why the effort to get Kaspersky software out of U.S. infrastructure is still stalled. I think the Commerce Department should take the fall. In a triumph of common sense and science, the wave of laws attacking face recognition may be receding as lawmakers finally notice what's been obvious for five years: The claim that face recognition is “racist” is false. Virginia, fresh off GOP electoral gains, has revamped its law on face recognition so it more or less makes sense. In related news, I puzzle over why Clearview AI accepted a settlement of the ACLU's lawsuit under Illinois's biometric law. Nate and I debate how much authority Cyber Command should have to launch actions and intrude on third country machines without going through the interagency process. A Biden White House review of that question seems to have split the difference between the Trump and Obama administrations. Quelle surprise! Jamil concludes that the EU's regulation of cybersecurity is an overambitious and questionable expansion of the U.S. approach. He's more comfortable with the Defense Department's effort to keep small businesses who take its money from decamping to China once they start to succeed. Jordan and I fear that the cure may be worse than the disease. I get to say I told you so about the unpersuasive and cursory opinion by United States District Judge Robert Pitman, striking down Texas' social media law. The Fifth Circuit has overturned his injunction, so the bill will take effect, at least for a while. In my view some of the provisions are constitutional and others are a stretch; Judge Pitman's refusal to do a serious severability analysis means that all of them will get a try-out over the next few weeks. Jamil and I debate geofenced search warrants and the reasons why companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo want them restricted. In quick hits, Jamil and I trade views on whether the Biden White House has effectively managed the lagging implementation of its landmark cybersecurity executive order. I note the important new protocol for implementing the Budapest Convention. On the principle that you can judge a policy by its enemies, this protocol is looking pretty good. Jamil highlights a study—by Europeans, no less—that suggests that General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is killing innovation in the Android app market. Jamil also flags a new study of the Chinese Offensive Cyber Landscape. And I suggest that the event with the biggest tech policy impact last week may have been none of these things; the real impact may be the meltdown in tech stocks generally and in cryptocurrency values in particular. Download the 407th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
Is the European Union (EU) about to rescue the FBI from Going Dark? Jamil Jaffer and Nate Jones tell us that a new directive aimed at preventing child sex abuse might just do the trick, a position backed by people who've been fighting the bureau on encryption for years. The Biden administration is prepping to impose some of the toughest sanctions ever on Chinese camera maker Hikvision, Jordan Schneider reports. No one is defending Hikvision's role in China's Uyghur policy, but I'm skeptical that we should spend all that ammo on a company that probably isn't the greatest national security threat we face. Jamil is more comfortable with the measure, and Jordan reminds me that China's economy is shaky enough that it may not pick a fight to save Hikvision. Speaking of which, Jordan schools me on the likelihood that Xi Jinping's hold on power will be loosened by the plight of Chinese tech platforms, harsh pandemic lockdowns or the grim lesson provided by Putin's ability to move without check from tactical error to strategic blunder and on to historic disaster. Speaking of products of more serious national security than Hikvision, Nate and I try to figure out why the effort to get Kaspersky software out of U.S. infrastructure is still stalled. I think the Commerce Department should take the fall. In a triumph of common sense and science, the wave of laws attacking face recognition may be receding as lawmakers finally notice what's been obvious for five years: The claim that face recognition is “racist” is false. Virginia, fresh off GOP electoral gains, has revamped its law on face recognition so it more or less makes sense. In related news, I puzzle over why Clearview AI accepted a settlement of the ACLU's lawsuit under Illinois's biometric law. Nate and I debate how much authority Cyber Command should have to launch actions and intrude on third country machines without going through the interagency process. A Biden White House review of that question seems to have split the difference between the Trump and Obama administrations. Quelle surprise! Jamil concludes that the EU's regulation of cybersecurity is an overambitious and questionable expansion of the U.S. approach. He's more comfortable with the Defense Department's effort to keep small businesses who take its money from decamping to China once they start to succeed. Jordan and I fear that the cure may be worse than the disease. I get to say I told you so about the unpersuasive and cursory opinion by United States District Judge Robert Pitman, striking down Texas' social media law. The Fifth Circuit has overturned his injunction, so the bill will take effect, at least for a while. In my view some of the provisions are constitutional and others are a stretch; Judge Pitman's refusal to do a serious severability analysis means that all of them will get a try-out over the next few weeks. Jamil and I debate geofenced search warrants and the reasons why companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo want them restricted. In quick hits, Jamil and I trade views on whether the Biden White House has effectively managed the lagging implementation of its landmark cybersecurity executive order. I note the important new protocol for implementing the Budapest Convention. On the principle that you can judge a policy by its enemies, this protocol is looking pretty good. Jamil highlights a study—by Europeans, no less—that suggests that General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is killing innovation in the Android app market. Jamil also flags a new study of the Chinese Offensive Cyber Landscape. And I suggest that the event with the biggest tech policy impact last week may have been none of these things; the real impact may be the meltdown in tech stocks generally and in cryptocurrency values in particular. Download the 407th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
Retraction: An earlier episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast may have left the impression that I think Google hates mothers. I regret the error. It appears that, in reality, Google only hates Republican mothers who are running for office. But to all appearances, Google really, really hates them. A remarkable, and apparently damning study disclosed that during the most recent federal election campaign, Google's Gmail sent roughly two-thirds of GOP campaign emails to users' spam inboxes while downgrading less than ten percent of the Dems' messages. Jane Bambauer lays out the details, which refute most of the excuses Google might offer for the discriminatory treatment. Notably, neither Outlook nor Yahoo! mail showed a similar pattern. Tatyana thinks we should blame Google's algorithm, not its personnel, but we're all eager to hear Google's explanation, whether it's offered in the press, Federal Election Commission (FEC), in court, or in front of Congressional investigators after the next election. Jordan Schneider helps us revisit China's cyber policies after a long hiatus. Things have NOT gotten better for the Chinese government, Jordan reports. Stringent lockdowns in Shanghai are tanking the economy and producing a surprising amount of online dissent, but with Hong Kong's death toll in mind, letting omicron spread unchecked is a scary prospect, especially for a leader who has staked his reputation on dealing with the virus better than the rest of the world. The result is hesitation over what had been a strong techlash regulatory campaign. Tatyana Bolton pulls us back to the Russian-Ukrainian war. She notes that Russia Is not used to being hacked at anything like the current scale, even if most of the online attacks are pinpricks. She also notes Microsoft's report on Russia's extensive use of cyberattacks in Ukraine. All that said, cyber operations remain a minor factor in the war. Michael Ellis and I dig into the ODNI's intelligence transparency report, which inspired several differed takes over the weekend. The biggest story was that the FBI had conducted “up to” 3.4 million searches for U.S. person data in the pool of data collected under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FSA). Sharing a brief kumbaya moment with Sen. Ron Wyden, Michael finds the number “alarming or meaningless,” probably the latter. Meanwhile, FISA Classic wiretaps dropped again in the face of the coronavirus. And the FBI conducted four searches without going to the FISA court when it should have, probably by mistake. We can't stay away from the pileup that is Elon Musk's Twitter bid. Jordan offers views on how much leverage China will have over Twitter by virtue of Tesla's dependence on the Chinese market. Tatyana and I debate whether Musk should have criticized Twitter's content moderators for their call on the Biden laptop story. Jane Bambauer questions whether Musk will do half the things that he seems to be hinting. I agree, if only because European law will force Twitter to treat European sensibilities as the arbiter of what can be said in the public square. Jane outlines recent developments showing, in my view, that Europe isn't exactly running low on crazy. A new court decision opens the door to what amounts to class actions to enforce European privacy law without regard for the jurisdictional limits that have made life easier for big U.S. companies. I predict that such lawsuits will also mean trouble for big Chinese platforms. And that's not half of it. Europe's Digital Services Act, now nearly locked down, is the mother lode of crazy. Jane spells out a few of the wilder provisions – only some of which have made it into legal commentary. Orin Kerr, the normally restrained and professorial expert on cyber law, is up in arms over a recent 9th Circuit decision holding that a preservation order is not a seizure requiring a warrant. Michael, Jane, and I dig into Orin's agita, but we have trouble sharing it. In quick hits: Jane looks at a report expressing shock that Amazon uses data from Alexa smart speakers pretty much exactly the way you'd expect it to. Michael and I unpack the latest move in the prosecution of Uber's former Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan. Jane lays out what's different in Colorado‘s new privacy law. Spoiler: Just enough to make the likelihood of a federal privacy law with preemption look good to business. Michael and I wish the Biden administration well in its effort to get much-needed new authorities to address the risks of drone attacks here at home. Download the 405th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
Retraction: An earlier episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast may have left the impression that I think Google hates mothers. I regret the error. It appears that, in reality, Google only hates Republican mothers who are running for office. But to all appearances, Google really, really hates them. A remarkable, and apparently damning study disclosed that during the most recent federal election campaign, Google's Gmail sent roughly two-thirds of GOP campaign emails to users' spam inboxes while downgrading less than ten percent of the Dems' messages. Jane Bambauer lays out the details, which refute most of the excuses Google might offer for the discriminatory treatment. Notably, neither Outlook nor Yahoo! mail showed a similar pattern. Tatyana thinks we should blame Google's algorithm, not its personnel, but we're all eager to hear Google's explanation, whether it's offered in the press, Federal Election Commission (FEC), in court, or in front of Congressional investigators after the next election. Jordan Schneider helps us revisit China's cyber policies after a long hiatus. Things have NOT gotten better for the Chinese government, Jordan reports. Stringent lockdowns in Shanghai are tanking the economy and producing a surprising amount of online dissent, but with Hong Kong's death toll in mind, letting omicron spread unchecked is a scary prospect, especially for a leader who has staked his reputation on dealing with the virus better than the rest of the world. The result is hesitation over what had been a strong techlash regulatory campaign. Tatyana Bolton pulls us back to the Russian-Ukrainian war. She notes that Russia Is not used to being hacked at anything like the current scale, even if most of the online attacks are pinpricks. She also notes Microsoft's report on Russia's extensive use of cyberattacks in Ukraine. All that said, cyber operations remain a minor factor in the war. Michael Ellis and I dig into the ODNI's intelligence transparency report, which inspired several differed takes over the weekend. The biggest story was that the FBI had conducted “up to” 3.4 million searches for U.S. person data in the pool of data collected under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FSA). Sharing a brief kumbaya moment with Sen. Ron Wyden, Michael finds the number “alarming or meaningless,” probably the latter. Meanwhile, FISA Classic wiretaps dropped again in the face of the coronavirus. And the FBI conducted four searches without going to the FISA court when it should have, probably by mistake. We can't stay away from the pileup that is Elon Musk's Twitter bid. Jordan offers views on how much leverage China will have over Twitter by virtue of Tesla's dependence on the Chinese market. Tatyana and I debate whether Musk should have criticized Twitter's content moderators for their call on the Biden laptop story. Jane Bambauer questions whether Musk will do half the things that he seems to be hinting. I agree, if only because European law will force Twitter to treat European sensibilities as the arbiter of what can be said in the public square. Jane outlines recent developments showing, in my view, that Europe isn't exactly running low on crazy. A new court decision opens the door to what amounts to class actions to enforce European privacy law without regard for the jurisdictional limits that have made life easier for big U.S. companies. I predict that such lawsuits will also mean trouble for big Chinese platforms. And that's not half of it. Europe's Digital Services Act, now nearly locked down, is the mother lode of crazy. Jane spells out a few of the wilder provisions – only some of which have made it into legal commentary. Orin Kerr, the normally restrained and professorial expert on cyber law, is up in arms over a recent 9th Circuit decision holding that a preservation order is not a seizure requiring a warrant. Michael, Jane, and I dig into Orin's agita, but we have trouble sharing it. In quick hits: Jane looks at a report expressing shock that Amazon uses data from Alexa smart speakers pretty much exactly the way you'd expect it to. Michael and I unpack the latest move in the prosecution of Uber's former Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan. Jane lays out what's different in Colorado‘s new privacy law. Spoiler: Just enough to make the likelihood of a federal privacy law with preemption look good to business. Michael and I wish the Biden administration well in its effort to get much-needed new authorities to address the risks of drone attacks here at home. Download the 405th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
A special reminder that we will be doing episode 400 live on video and with audience participation on March 28, 2022 at noon Eastern daylight time. So, mark your calendar and when the time comes, use this link to join the audience: https://riverside.fm/studio/the-cyberlaw-podcast-400 See you there! There's nothing like a serious shooting war to bring on paranoia and mistrust, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is generating mistrust on all sides. Everyone expected a much more damaging cyberattack from the Russians, and no one knows why it hasn't happened yet. Dave Aitel walks us through some possibilities. Cyberattacks take planning, and Russia's planners may have believed they wouldn't need to use large-scale cyberattacks—apart from what appears to be a pretty impressive bricking of Viasat terminals used extensively by Ukrainian forces. Now that the Russians could use some cyber weapons in Ukraine, the pace of the war may be making it hard to build them. None of that is much comfort to Western countries that have imposed sanctions, since their infrastructure makes a nice fat sitting-duck target, and may draw fire soon if American intelligence warnings prove true. Meanwhile, Matthew Heiman reports, the effort to shore up defenses is leading to a cavalcade of paranoia. Has the UK defense ministry banned the use of WhatsApp due to fears that it's been compromised by Russia? Maybe. But WhatsApp has long had known security limitations that might justify downgrading its use on the battlefield. Speaking of ambiguity and mistrust, Telegram use is booming in Russia, Dave says, either because the Russians know how to control it or because they can't. Take your pick. Speaking of mistrust, the German security agency has suddenly discovered that it can't trust Kaspersky products. Good luck finding them, Dave offers, since many have been whitelabeled into other company's software. He has limited sympathy for an agency that resolutely ignored U.S. warnings about Kaspersky for years. Even in the absence of a government with an interest in subverting software, the war is producing products that can't be trusted. One open-source maintainer of a popular open-source tool turned it into a data wiper for anyone whose computer looks Belarussian or Russian. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? Meanwhile, people who've advocated tougher cybersecurity regulation (including me) are doing a victory lap in the press about how it will bolster our defenses. It'll help, I argue, but only some, and at a cost of new failures. The best example being TSA's effort to regulate pipeline security, which has struggled to avoid unintended consequences while being critiqued by an industry that has been hostile to the whole effort from the start. The most interesting impact of the war is in China. Jordan Schneider explores how China and Chinese companies are responding to sanctions on Russia. Jordan thinks that Chinese companies will follow their economic interests and adhere to sanctions—at least where it's clear they're being watched—despite online hostility to sanctions among Chinese digerati. Matthew and I think more attention needs to be paid to Chinese government efforts to police and intimidate ethnic Chinese, including Chinese Americans, in the United States. The Justice Department for one is paying attention; it has arrested several alleged Chinese government agents engaged in such efforts. Jordan unpacks China's new guidance on AI algorithms. I offer grudging respect to the breadth and value of the topics covered by China's AI regulatory endeavors. Dave and I are disappointed by a surprise package in the FY 22 omnibus appropriations act. Buried on page 2334 is an entire smorgasbord of regulation for intelligence agency employees who go looking for jobs after leaving the intelligence community. This version is better than the original draft, but mainly for the intelligence agencies; intelligence professionals seem to have been left out in the cold when revisions were proposed. Matthew does an update on the peanut butter sandwich spies who tried to sell nuclear sub secrets to a foreign power that the Justice Department did not name at the time of their arrest. Now that country has been revealed. It's Brazil, apparently chosen because the spies couldn't bring themselves to help an actual enemy of their country. And finally, I float my own proposal for the nerdiest possible sanctions on Putin. He's a big fan of the old Soviet empire, so it would be fitting to finally wipe out the last traces of the Soviet Union, which have lingered for thirty years too long in the Internet domain system. Check WIRED magazine for my upcoming op-ed on the topic. Download the 399th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
A special reminder that we will be doing episode 400 live on video and with audience participation on March 28, 2022 at noon Eastern daylight time. So, mark your calendar and when the time comes, use this link to join the audience: https://riverside.fm/studio/the-cyberlaw-podcast-400 See you there! There's nothing like a serious shooting war to bring on paranoia and mistrust, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is generating mistrust on all sides. Everyone expected a much more damaging cyberattack from the Russians, and no one knows why it hasn't happened yet. Dave Aitel walks us through some possibilities. Cyberattacks take planning, and Russia's planners may have believed they wouldn't need to use large-scale cyberattacks—apart from what appears to be a pretty impressive bricking of Viasat terminals used extensively by Ukrainian forces. Now that the Russians could use some cyber weapons in Ukraine, the pace of the war may be making it hard to build them. None of that is much comfort to Western countries that have imposed sanctions, since their infrastructure makes a nice fat sitting-duck target, and may draw fire soon if American intelligence warnings prove true. Meanwhile, Matthew Heiman reports, the effort to shore up defenses is leading to a cavalcade of paranoia. Has the UK defense ministry banned the use of WhatsApp due to fears that it's been compromised by Russia? Maybe. But WhatsApp has long had known security limitations that might justify downgrading its use on the battlefield. Speaking of ambiguity and mistrust, Telegram use is booming in Russia, Dave says, either because the Russians know how to control it or because they can't. Take your pick. Speaking of mistrust, the German security agency has suddenly discovered that it can't trust Kaspersky products. Good luck finding them, Dave offers, since many have been whitelabeled into other company's software. He has limited sympathy for an agency that resolutely ignored U.S. warnings about Kaspersky for years. Even in the absence of a government with an interest in subverting software, the war is producing products that can't be trusted. One open-source maintainer of a popular open-source tool turned it into a data wiper for anyone whose computer looks Belarussian or Russian. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? Meanwhile, people who've advocated tougher cybersecurity regulation (including me) are doing a victory lap in the press about how it will bolster our defenses. It'll help, I argue, but only some, and at a cost of new failures. The best example being TSA's effort to regulate pipeline security, which has struggled to avoid unintended consequences while being critiqued by an industry that has been hostile to the whole effort from the start. The most interesting impact of the war is in China. Jordan Schneider explores how China and Chinese companies are responding to sanctions on Russia. Jordan thinks that Chinese companies will follow their economic interests and adhere to sanctions—at least where it's clear they're being watched—despite online hostility to sanctions among Chinese digerati. Matthew and I think more attention needs to be paid to Chinese government efforts to police and intimidate ethnic Chinese, including Chinese Americans, in the United States. The Justice Department for one is paying attention; it has arrested several alleged Chinese government agents engaged in such efforts. Jordan unpacks China's new guidance on AI algorithms. I offer grudging respect to the breadth and value of the topics covered by China's AI regulatory endeavors. Dave and I are disappointed by a surprise package in the FY 22 omnibus appropriations act. Buried on page 2334 is an entire smorgasbord of regulation for intelligence agency employees who go looking for jobs after leaving the intelligence community. This version is better than the original draft, but mainly for the intelligence agencies; intelligence professionals seem to have been left out in the cold when revisions were proposed. Matthew does an update on the peanut butter sandwich spies who tried to sell nuclear sub secrets to a foreign power that the Justice Department did not name at the time of their arrest. Now that country has been revealed. It's Brazil, apparently chosen because the spies couldn't bring themselves to help an actual enemy of their country. And finally, I float my own proposal for the nerdiest possible sanctions on Putin. He's a big fan of the old Soviet empire, so it would be fitting to finally wipe out the last traces of the Soviet Union, which have lingered for thirty years too long in the Internet domain system. Check WIRED magazine for my upcoming op-ed on the topic. Download the 399th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, Lawfare's miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Quinta Jurecic sat down with Lawfare's deputy managing editor Jacob Schulz, and Jordan Schneider, host of the ChinaTalk podcast, to talk about Substack. The newsletter service is the new cool thing in the journalism world—and, like any newly popular online service, it is already running into questions around content moderation.Jacob wrote about Substack's content moderation policy earlier this month, and Jordan uses Substack to send out his ChinaTalk newsletter, so he filled us in on the platform's nuts and bolts. Why is Substack so popular right now, anyway? Does it help writers step outside the unhealthy dynamics that help spread disinformation and discontent on social media, or does it just play into those dynamics further? And what might the platform's content moderation policies leave to be desired? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
That's the question I had after reading Law and Policy for the Quantum Age, by Chris Hoofnagle and Simson Garfinkel. It's a gracefully written and deeply informative look at the commercial and policy prospects of quantum computing and several other (often more promising) quantum technologies, including sensing, communications, and networking. And it left me with the question that heads this post. So, I invited Chris Hoofnagle to an interview and came away thinking the answer is “close to half – and for sure all the quantum projects grounded in fear and envy of the presumed capabilities of the National Security Agency of the United States.” My exchange with Chris makes for a bracing and fast-paced half hour of futurology and policy and not to be missed. Also, not to be missed: Conservative Catfight II—Now With More Cats. That's right, Jamil Jaffer and I reprise our past debate over Big Tech regulation, this time focusing on S.2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, just voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a bipartisan set of supporters and detractors. In essence, the bill would impose special “no self-preferencing” obligations on really large platforms. Jamil, joined by Gus Hurwitz, thinks this is heavy handed government regulation for a few unpopular companies, and completely unmoored from any harm to consumers. Jordan Schneider weighs in to point out that it is almost exactly the solution chosen by the Chinese government in its most recent policy shift. I argue that platforms are usually procompetitive when they start but inherently open to a host of subtle abuses once entrenched, so only a specially crafted rule will prevent a handful of companies achieving enormous economic and political power. Doubling down on controversy, I ask Nate Jones to explain Glenn Greenwald's objections to the subpoena practices of Congress's Jan. 6 Committee. I conclude that the committee's legal arguments boil down to “When Congress wrote rules for government, it clearly didn't intend for the rules to apply to Congress.” And that Greenwald is right in arguing that the Supreme Court in the 1950s insisted that Communists be treated better than the Jan. 6 Committee is treating anyone even tangentially tied to the attack on the Capitol. Nate and I try to figure out what Forbes was smoking when it tried to gin up a scandal from a standard set of metadata subpoenas to WhatsApp. Whatever it was, Forbes will need plenty of liquids and a few hours in a dark quiet room to recover. In quick hits, Gus explains what it means that the Biden administration is rewriting the Department of Justice/Federal Trade Commission merger guidelines: essentially, the more the administration tries to make them mean, the less deference they'll get in court. And Jordan and I puzzle over the emphasis on small and medium business in China's latest five-year plan for the digital economy. Download the 391st Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
Article Attached To This Podcast!
Article Attached To This Podcast!
Welcome to the Policy People Podcast. In this conversation, I explore the world of environmental security with Dimitrios Kantemnidis. We explore emerging maritime threats in the Mediterranean sea, how naval officers may deescalate standoffs at sea, the implications and real world scope of environmental security, how climate change amplifies conflicts, the difference between nature and the environment, the culture gap between the environmental and security policy communities, Dimitrios’ vision for an integrated European environmental security policy, and many more topics. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the show’s feed. Alternatively, you can click the icons below to listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you enjoy this conversation and would like to help the show, sharing this episode’s LinkedIn post is the easiest way to do so. I will personally thank you for sharing at the start of the next episode.Thank you to Rasheed Griffith, Jordan Schneider, Ernest Doc Gunasekara-Rockwell, Ana Sofia Cabral and the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs for sharing our last episode.Dimitrios Kantemnidis currently serves as lieutenant commander in the Greek navy and is an expert on environmental security. He is also a Fellow at the European Security and Defense College where he is concluding his research for his PhD thesis on how environmental security relates the EU’s Common Security and Defense and Security Policy. Dimitrios has produced numerous academic publications and has a forthcoming article to be published by the Brussels-based think tank Friends of Europe titled, “Environmental security and the EU’s Strategic Compass: Realizing Solana’s Vision”. You can connect with Dimitrios on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at the handle @dkantemnidis. Subscribe at policypeople.substack.com
In this conversation, I discuss the power of podcasting and the challenges of China watching with Jordan Schneider. We discuss what has made his ‘pod-letter’ a success, the personal and career benefits of podcasting, why think tanks struggle to build great podcasts, common blind spots in the China watcher community, tech competition between the US and China, Biden’s China strategy and many more topics.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the show’s feed. Alternatively, you can click the icons below to listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you enjoy this conversation and would like to help the show, sharing this episode’s LinkedIn post is the easiest way to do so. I will personally thank you for sharing at the start of the next episode.Thank you to Nizar Farsakh, Merissa Khurma, Nikola Ilic, ChangeLab Global, Talking with the Experts and Neha Singh for sharing our last episode.Jordan Schneider is a China tech policy analyst and editor of the newsletter and host of the podcast China Talk. Jordan is currently a senior analyst at the independent research firm, Rhodium Group, and an adjunct fellow at the Center for New American Security. Jordan was previously a research analyst at Bridgewater Associates and a research intern at the Brookings Institution. You can subscribe to his newsletter at chinatalk.substack.com, connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at the handle @jordschneider1. Subscribe at policypeople.substack.com
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