"TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday about safety and national security concerns surrounding his social media behemoth," writes MSNBC, adding "He was not well received." Given what we know about how Big Tech abuses data, about how China's authoritarian government systematically embraces surveillance as a tool of social control, and about the increasingly adversarial geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China, it's not sinophobic to ask questions about how to guard against TikTok's misuse. It's common sense. While a ban is probably too drastic and may fail to solve all the issues at hand, regulating the company is sensible. Fortunately, one of the key ways to address some of the concerns posed by TikTok — restricting all companies' capacity to collect data on Americans — could help us solve problems with online life that extends well beyond this social media platform....

[Evan Greer, the director at Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization], believes members of Congress laser focused on TikTok are "on a sidequest" in the scheme of a bigger crisis of surveillance of online life; Greer points to the American Data Privacy and Protection Act as a potential solution. That law would put in place strong data minimization policies, strictly limiting how and how much data companies can collect on people online. It also would deal a huge blow to the power of the algorithms of TikTok and other social media apps because their content recommendation relies on collecting huge amounts of data about its users. The passage of that act would force any company operating in the U.S., not just TikTok, to collect far less data — and reduce all social media companies' capacities to shape the flow of information through algorithmic amplification.

In addition to privacy legislation, the Federal Trade Commission could play a more aggressive role in creating and enforcing rules around commercial surveillance, Greer pointed out. TikTok raises legitimately tricky questions about national security. But it's not the only social media company that does, and national security concerns aren't the only reason to rethink the freedom we've given to social media companies in our society. Any time a powerful actor has vast control over the flow of information, it should be scrutinized as a possible source of exploitation, censorship and manipulation — and, when appropriate, regulated. TikTok should serve as the springboard for that conversation, not the beginning and ending of it.
CNN points out that TikTok isn't the only Chinese-owned platform finding viral success in America. "Of the top 10 most popular free apps on Apple's U.S. app store, four were developed with Chinese technology." Besides TikTok, there's also shopping app Temu, fast fashion retailer Shein and video editing app CapCut, which is also owned by ByteDance.
Duncan Clark, chairman and founder of investment advisory BDA China, tells CNN that these apps could be next.

But writing in the New York Times, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia argues that "it's difficult to see how a ban could survive First Amendment review." The Supreme Court and lower courts have held repeatedly that the mere invocation of national security is insufficient to justify the suppression of First Amendment rights. In court, the government will have to introduce evidence that the threats it is addressing are real, not merely conjectural, and that the proposed ban would address those threats. The evidence assembled so far is not likely to be sufficient. All of this will no doubt be frustrating to some policymakers, including to some who are commendably focused on the very real risks that social media companies' practices pose to Americans' privacy and security. But the legitimacy of our democracy depends on the free trade of information and ideas, including across international borders.

400 undersea cables carry 95% of the world's international internet traffic, reports Reuters (citing figures from Washington-based telecommunications research firm TeleGeography).

But now there's "a growing proxy war between the United States and China over technologies that could determine who achieves economic and military dominance for decades to come." In February, American subsea cable company SubCom LLC began laying a $600-million cable to transport data from Asia to Europe, via Africa and the Middle East, at super-fast speeds over 12,000 miles of fiber running along the seafloor. That cable is known as South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6, or SeaMeWe-6 for short. It will connect a dozen countries as it snakes its way from Singapore to France, crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean on the way. It is slated to be finished in 2025.

It was a project that slipped through China's fingers....

The Singapore-to-France cable would have been HMN Tech's biggest such project to date, cementing it as the world's fastest-rising subsea cable builder, and extending the global reach of the three Chinese telecom firms that had intended to invest in it. But the U.S. government, concerned about the potential for Chinese spying on these sensitive communications cables, ran a successful campaign to flip the contract to SubCom through incentives and pressure on consortium members.... It's one of at least six private undersea cable deals in the Asia-Pacific region over the past four years where the U.S. government either intervened to keep HMN Tech from winning that business, or forced the rerouting or abandonment of cables that would have directly linked U.S. and Chinese territories....

Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told Reuters that undersea cables were "a surveillance gold mine" for the world's intelligence agencies. "When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition, when we talk about espionage and the capture of data, submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions," Sherman said.

Toronto-based Feroot Security "found that so-called tracking pixels from the TikTok parent company were present in 30 U.S. state-government websites across 27 states," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including some where the app has been banned from state networks and devices." The review was performed in January and February. The presence of that code means that U.S. state governments around the country are inadvertently participating in a data-collection effort for a foreign-owned company, one that senior Biden administration officials and lawmakers of both parties have said could be harmful to U.S. national security and the privacy of Americans.

Administrators who manage government websites use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok.... The presence of the TikTok tracking code on government websites underlines the challenge for those who deem the China-owned app a potential data-security threat. Lawmakers in both parties are considering a nationwide ban, but simply uprooting the app from U.S. smartphones wouldn't stop all data-tracking activities....

Feroot found that the average website it studied had more than 13 embedded pixels. Google's were far and away the most common, with 92% of websites examined having some sort of Google tracking pixel embedded. About 50% of the websites the firm examined had Microsoft Corp. or Facebook pixels. TikTok had a presence in less than 10% of sites examined.

Huawei has reportedly completed work on electronic design automation (EDA) tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes. The Register reports: Chinese media said the platform is one of 78 being developed by the telecoms equipment giant to replace American and European chip design toolkits that have become subject to export controls by the US and others. Huawei's EDA platform was reportedly revealed by rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun during a meeting in February, and later confirmed by media in China. [...] Huawei's focus on EDA software for 14nm and larger chips reflects the current state of China's semiconductor industry. State-backed foundry operator SMIC currently possesses the ability to produce 14nm chips at scale, although there have been some reports the company has had success developing a 7nm process node.

Today, the EDA market is largely controlled by three companies: California-based Synopsys and Cadence, as well as Germany's Siemens. According to the industry watchers at TrendForce, these three companies account for roughly 75 percent of the EDA market. And this poses a problem for Chinese chipmakers and foundries, which have steadily found themselves cut off from these tools. Synopsys and Cadence's EDA tech is already subject to several of these export controls, which were stiffened by the US Commerce Department last summer to include state-of-the-art gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. This January, the White House also reportedly stopped issuing export licenses to companies supplying the likes of Huawei.

This is particularly troublesome for Huawei, foundry operator SMIC, and memory vendor YMTC to name a few on the US Entity List, a roster of companies Uncle Sam would prefer you not to do business with. It leaves them unable to access recent and latest technologies, at the very least. So the development of a homegrown EDA platform for 14nm chips serves as insurance in case broader access to Western production platforms is cut off entirely.

France announced Friday it is banning the "recreational" use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees' phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures. Reuters reports: The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, said in a statement that ''recreational" apps aren't secure enough to be used in state administrative services and "could present a risk for the protection of data." The ban will be monitored by France's cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok.

Guerini's office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps. Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes, like public communication, they can request permission to do so. Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Jonathan M. Gitlin: A perennial question that has accompanied the spread of Android Automotive has been the question of support. A car has a much longer expected service life than a smartphone, especially an Android smartphone, and with infotainment systems so integral to a car's operations now, how long can we reasonably expect those infotainment systems to be supported? I got the chance to put this question to Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of CARIAD, Volkswagen Group's software division: Given the much longer service life of a car compared to a smartphone, how does VW plan to keep those cars patched and safe 10 or 15 years from now?

"We actually have a contract with the brands, which took a while to negotiate, but lifetime support was utterly important," Hilgenberg told me. The follow-up was obvious: How long is "lifetime"? "Fifteen years after service, and an extra option for brands who would like to have it even longer; you know, we have to guarantee updatability on all legal aspects," he said. "So that's why we are, as you can imagine, very cautious with branches of releases because every branch we need to maintain over this long time. So when you have end of operation and EOP [end of production] and it's 15 years longer, we still have to maintain that; plus, some brands actually said 'because my vehicle is a unicorn, it's something that people want even more, they only occasionally drive it but they want to be safe,'" Hilgenberg told me.

(The unicorn reference should make sense in the context of VW Group owning Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche, whose cars are often collected and can be on the road for many decades.) In those cases, CARIAD would provide continued support, Hilgenberg said. "Especially as cybersecurity, all the legal things are concerned, you see that already. Now we do upgrades and releases, whether it's in China, whether it's in the US, whether it's in Europe, we take very cautious steps. Security and safety has, in the Volkswagen group, you know, the utmost importance, and we see it actually as an opportunity to differentiate," he said. In an update to the article, Ars said CARIAD got in touch with them to add some clarifications. "As part of its development services to Volkswagen's automotive brands, CARIAD provides operational services, updates, upgrades and new releases as well as bug fixes and patches relating to its hardware- and software-products. We usually support our hard- and software releases for extended periods of time. In some cases this can be up to 15 years after the end of production ('EOP') for hardware and 10 years after EOP for software releases. Moreover, there are legally mandatory periods we comply with, e.g. cybersecurity as well as safety updates and patches are provided for as long as a function is available. In addition, there may be individual agreements with brands for longer support periods to specifically satisfy their customers' needs," wrote a CARIAD spokesperson.

Ars notes: "there's no guarantee that OEMs can make the business model work for this long-term support."

A Chinese startup has invented a long-distance kissing machine that transmits users' kiss data collected through motion sensors hidden in silicon lips, which simultaneously move when replaying kisses received. From a report: MUA -- named after the sound people commonly make when blowing a kiss -- also captures and replays sound and warms up slightly during kissing, making the experience more authentic, said Beijing-based Siweifushe. Users can even download kissing data submitted via an accompanying app by other users. The invention was inspired by lockdown isolation. At their most severe, China's lockdowns saw authorities forbid residents to leave their apartments for months on end. "I was in a relationship back then, but I couldn't meet my girlfriend due to lockdowns," said inventor Zhao Jianbo.

Then a student at the Beijing Film Academy, he focused his graduate project on the lack of physical intimacy in video calls. He later set up Siweifushe which released MUA, its first product, on 22 January. The device is priced at 260 yuan ($38). In the two weeks after its release, the firm sold over 3,000 kissing machines and received about 20,000 orders, he said. The MUA resembles a mobile stand with colourless pursed lips protruding from the front. To use it, lovers must download an app on to their smartphones and pair their kissing machines. When they kiss the device, it kisses back.

Land reclamation is nothing new, but during this century there has been a significant rise in the creation of artificial land by humans, with a recent study showing that developers have added more than 2,500 sq km -- an area equivalent to the size of Luxembourg -- to coastlines since 2000. The Guardian reports: Using satellite imagery, Dhritiraj Sengupta, from the University of Southampton, and his colleagues analysed land changes in 135 large cities. Their results, published in the journal Earth's Future, show that much of the recent land reclamation has occurred in the global south, with China, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates leading the way. Shanghai alone has added about 350 sq km of land. Most of the projects were driven by port expansion, a need for urban space and industrialization, while a small handful were "prestige" projects such as the palm tree-shaped islands of Dubai.

China pushed back against the U.S. government's proposal to force a sale of TikTok on Thursday, rejecting the possible solution to ongoing national security concerns around the app. From a report: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress on Thursday morning, facing questions from U.S. lawmakers that centered around concerns that the Chinese government could leverage the app's data to surveil American citizens or otherwise undermine national interests. In a press conference hours before the hearing began, China's Commerce Ministry spokesperson Shu Jueting weighed in with Beijing's opposition to the Biden administration's proposal. "...Forcing a sale of TikTok will seriously damage the confidence of investors from all over the world, including China, to invest in the United States," she said. "If the news is true, China will firmly oppose it."

The idea to force the company to divest itself of Chinese ownership first surfaced during the Trump administration, culminating in a deal for TikTok to sell its U.S. operations to Oracle in late 2020. At the time, TikTok also rejected an acquisition offer from Microsoft, though ultimately neither company succeeded and the strange arrangement fizzled after a series of successful legal challenges. The deal was shelved indefinitely when the Biden took office the following year, but in recent days the administration has picked up the languishing mission to force a sale. In rejecting the U.S. proposal, which the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) would spearhead, China is reiterated a point it made during the Trump administration. Further reading: TikTok CEO says China-based ByteDance employees still have access to some U.S. data.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Google says it has suspended the app for the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo after malware was found in versions of the app. The move comes just weeks after Chinese security researchers published an analysis suggesting the popular e-commerce app sought to seize total control over affected devices by exploiting multiple security vulnerabilities in a variety of Android-based smartphones. In November 2022, researchers at Google's Project Zero warned about active attacks on Samsung mobile phones which chained together three security vulnerabilities that Samsung patched in March 2021, and which would have allowed an app to add or read any files on the device. Google said it believes the exploit chain for Samsung devices belonged to a "commercial surveillance vendor," without elaborating further. The highly technical writeup also did not name the malicious app in question.

On Feb. 28, 2023, researchers at the Chinese security firm DarkNavy published a blog post purporting to show evidence that a major Chinese ecommerce company's app was using this same three-exploit chain to read user data stored by other apps on the affected device, and to make its app nearly impossible to remove. DarkNavy likewise did not name the app they said was responsible for the attacks. In fact, the researchers took care to redact the name of the app from multiple code screenshots published in their writeup. DarkNavy did not respond to requests for clarification. "At present, a large number of end users have complained on multiple social platforms," reads a translated version of the DarkNavy blog post. "The app has problems such as inexplicable installation, privacy leakage, and inability to uninstall."

On March 3, 2023, a denizen of the now-defunct cybercrime community BreachForums posted a thread which noted that a unique component of the malicious app code highlighted by DarkNavy also was found in the ecommerce application whose name was apparently redacted from the DarkNavy analysis: Pinduoduo. A Mar. 3, 2023 post on BreachForums, comparing the redacted code from the DarkNavy analysis with the same function in the Pinduoduo app available for download at the time. On March 4, 2023, e-commerce expert Liu Huafang posted on the Chinese social media network Weibo that Pinduoduo's app was using security vulnerabilities to gain market share by stealing user data from its competitors. That Weibo post has since been deleted. On March 7, the newly created Github account Davinci1010 published a technical analysis claiming that until recently Pinduoduo's source code included a "backdoor," a hacking term used to describe code that allows an adversary to remotely and secretly connect to a compromised system at will. That analysis includes links to archived versions of Pinduoduo's app released before March 5 (version 6.50 and lower), which is when Davinci1010 says a new version of the app removed the malicious code. Pinduoduo boasts approximately 900 million monthly active users in China. In August of last year, the Guardian published an article covering the company's plans to expand to the U.S. and take on Amazon.

An ongoing internet disruption on one of Taiwan's islands is accelerating the self-governed territory's plans to launch an independent satellite network like SpaceX's Starlink, which would help ensure it remains connected in a potential Chinese invasion. From a report: Taiwan's National Communication Commission blamed Chinese vessels last month for cutting two undersea cables providing high-speed internet to Matsu, a Taiwanese island located only a few nautical miles off the coast of China's Fujian province. The cables have yet to be repaired; Matsu residents are currently relying on a microwave backup system and other fixes, such as using SIM cards from China. [...] Taiwan's Digital Minister Audrey Tang said last week that the territory would prioritize testing its satellite internet capabilities in outlying islands such as Matsu. She first announced in September that Taiwan was aiming to build a satellite system similar to the Starlink network run by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has become instrumental to Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Top tech companies are mounting a push to limit how US intelligence agencies collect and view texts, emails and other information about their users, especially American citizens. From a report: The companies, including Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms and Apple, want Congress to limit Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as they work to renew the law before it expires at the end of the year, according to three people familiar with the discussions. There is a growing bipartisan consensus in Congress to not only renew the law but to make changes in response to a series of reports and internal audits documenting abuses. That's left the tech industry optimistic that broader reforms will get through Congress this time, according to two lobbyists who asked not to be identified relaying internal discussions.

The law, passed by Congress in 2008 in response to revelations of warrantless spying on US citizens by the Bush administration, granted sweeping powers that have been criticized over the years for different reasons. Civil liberties groups think more privacy protections are needed. Former President Donald Trump and his allies claim that spying powers enable intelligence agencies to conspire against conservatives. "Reforms are needed to ensure dragnet surveillance programs operate within constitutional limits and safeguard American users' rights, through appropriate transparency, oversight and accountability," said Matt Schruers, president of the tech trade group Computer & Communications Industry Association, which counts Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon among its members. Intelligence agencies say Section 702 is an essential tool that has generated critical information on the espionage and hacking activities of countries such as China and contributed to the successful drone strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last year.

By the end of 2022, global renewable generation capacity amounted to 3,372 gigawatts (GW), growing the stock of renewable power by 295 GW or 9.6%, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Renewables produced an overwhelming 83% of all power capacity added last year. Electrek reports: Renewable Capacity Statistics 2023, released today by IRENA, shows that renewable energy continues to grow at record levels despite global uncertainties, confirming the downward trend of fossil fuels. While many countries increased their renewable capacity in 2022, the significant growth of renewables is concentrated in Asia, the US, and Europe. IRENA reports that almost half of all new capacity in 2022 was added in Asia, resulting in a total of 1.63 terawatts (TW) of renewable capacity by 2022. China was the largest contributor, adding 141 GW to Asia's new capacity.

Renewables in Europe and North America grew by 57.3 GW and 29.1 GW, respectively. Africa saw an increase of 2.7 GW, slightly above 2021. Oceania continued its double-digit growth with an expansion of 5.2 GW, and South America had a capacity expansion of 18.2 GW. The Middle East recorded its highest increase in renewables on record, with 3.2 GW of new capacity added in 2022, an increase of 12.8%. Although hydropower accounted for the largest share of the global total renewable generation capacity with 1,250 GW, solar and wind continued to dominate new generating capacity. Together, both technologies contributed 90% to the share of all new renewable capacity in 2022. Solar led with a 22% (191 GW) increase, followed by wind, which increased its generating capacity by 9% (75 GW).

The BBC has advised staff to delete TikTok from corporate phones because of privacy and security fears. From a report: The BBC seems to be the first UK media organisation to issue the guidance - and only the second in the world after Denmark's public service broadcaster. The BBC said it would continue to use the platform for editorial and marketing purposes for now. [...] The big fear is that data harvested by the platform from corporate phones could be shared with the Chinese government by TikTok's parent company ByteDance, because its headquarters are in Beijing.

In an email to staff on Sunday, it said: "The decision is based on concerns raised by government authorities worldwide regarding data privacy and security. If the device is a BBC corporate device, and you do not need TikTok for business reasons, TikTok should be deleted from the BBC corporate mobile device." Staff with the app on a personal phone that they also use for work have been asked to contact the corporation's Information Security team for further discussions, while it reviews concerns around TikTok. Dominic Ponsford, editor-in-chief of journalism industry trade publication the Press Gazette, said it would be interesting to see what other media organizations decide to do. He told the BBC: "I suspect everyone's chief technical officer will be looking at this very closely. Until now, news organizations have been very keen to use TikTok, because it's been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms for news publishers over the last year, and it's been a good source of audience and traffic. So most of the talk in the news media has been around encouraging TikTok rather than banning it."

"The World Health Organization on Friday called on China to release new data linking the Covid pandemic's origins to animal samples at Wuhan Market after the country recently took down the research," reports CNBC.

The existence of the new data was revealed by the Atlantic earlier this week, in an article reporting that the newly-discovered samples showed the virus was present in creatures for sale there near the very beginning of the pandemic: A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It's some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses....

The genetic sequences were pulled out of swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic's start. They represent the first bits of raw data that researchers outside of China's academic institutions and their direct collaborators have had access to. A few weeks ago, the data appeared on an open-access genomic database called GISAID, after being quietly posted by researchers affiliated with the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. By almost pure happenstance, scientists in Europe, North America, and Australia spotted the sequences, downloaded them, and began an analysis.

The samples were already known to be positive for the coronavirus, and had been scrutinized before by the same group of Chinese researchers who uploaded the data to GISAID. But that prior analysis, released as a preprint publication in February 2022, asserted that "no animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced...." The new analysis, led by Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, and Michael Worobey — three prominent researchers who have been looking into the virus's roots — shows that that may not be the case. Within about half a day of downloading the data from GISAID, the trio and their collaborators discovered that several market samples that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were also coming back chock-full of animal genetic material — much of which was a match for the common raccoon dog. Because of how the samples were gathered, and because viruses can't persist by themselves in the environment, the scientists think that their findings could indicate the presence of a coronavirus-infected raccoon dog in the spots where the swabs were taken....

The new analysis builds on extensive previous research that points to the market as the source of the earliest major outbreak of SARS-CoV-2: Many of the earliest known COVID-19 cases of the pandemic were clustered roughly in the market's vicinity. And the virus's genetic material was found in many samples swabbed from carts and animal-processing equipment at the venue, as well as parts of nearby infrastructure, such as storehouses, sewage wells, and water drains. Raccoon dogs, creatures commonly bred for sale in China, are also already known to be one of many mammal species that can easily catch and spread the coronavirus. All of this left one main hole in the puzzle to fill: clear-cut evidence that raccoon dogs and the virus were in the exact same spot at the market, close enough that the creatures might have been infected and, possibly, infectious.

That's what the new analysis provides. Think of it as finding the DNA of an investigation's main suspect at the scene of the crime.
The article also notes that the genetic sequences "also vanished from the database shortly after the international team of researchers notified the Chinese researchers of their preliminary findings, without explanation." And it adds that all along China has "vehemently" fought the theory that Covid-19 originated from live animals being sold at Wuhan market. Although "in June 2021, a team of researchers published a study documenting tens of thousands of mammals for sale in wet markets in Wuhan between 2017 and late 2019, including at Huanan."

"The animals were kept in largely illegal, cramped, and unhygienic settings — conditions conducive to viral transmission — and among them were more than 1,000 raccoon dogs." And there's even photos of raccoon dogs for sale at the market in December of 2019.


More coverage of the newly-discovered data is now appearing in numerous news outlets, including the New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, the Guardian, PBS, and Science.

New Zealand will ban TikTok on devices with access to the parliamentary network because of cybersecurity concerns, a government official said on Friday. CNBC reports: TikTok will be banned on all devices with access to New Zealand's parliamentary network by the end of March, said Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero. Gonzalez-Montero, in an email to Reuters, said the decision was taken after advice from cybersecurity experts and discussions within government and with other countries.

"Based on this information the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment," he said. Special arrangements can be made for those who require the app to do their jobs, he added.

A group of Silicon Valley executives, including investor Peter Thiel, and Washington lawmakers are quietly mobilizing against China's involvement in the U.S. tech industry ahead of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's Capitol Hill testimony next week. From a report: They plan to meet for a private dinner on Wednesday to discuss China, national security and the intensifying competition between the tech sectors of the U.S. and China. Mr. Chew is scheduled to testify the following day. Momentum against TikTok is building. The U.S. government and a succession of other Western countries have blocked TikTok on government-issued devices. The Biden administration has demanded that TikTok's Chinese owners sell their stakes in the video-sharing app or face a possible U.S. ban, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Mr. Chew said in an interview with the Journal that divesting TikTok from its Chinese owners doesn't offer any more protection than the plans TikTok has already proposed. Spearheading the effort to create the bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks is Jacob Helberg, a former Google policy adviser who is the newest member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional research and advisory panel. Mr. Helberg also serves as an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank that specializes in national-security issues, and a senior adviser at the Stanford University Center on Geopolitics and Technology, which is dedicated to research on global competition. One of Mr. Helberg's priorities has been to meet with lawmakers in Congress every couple of weeks to urge them to ban TikTok. The group is calling itself the Hill & Valley Forum, and plans to speak about its concerns about China at the coming dinner, which is expected to draw approximately 200 attendees. The dinner was paid for by venture-capital firms 137 Ventures and Founders Fund, as well as Mr. Helberg.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: China's annual, week-long parliamentary meeting just ended on Monday. Apart from confirming President Xi Jinping for a historic third term and appointing a new batch of other top leaders, the government also approved a restructuring plan for national ministries, as it typically does every five years. Among all the changes, there's one that the tech world is avidly watching: the creation of a new regulatory body named the National Data Administration. According to official documents, the NDA will be in charge of "advancing the development of data-related fundamental institutions, coordinating the integration, sharing, development and application of data resources, and pushing forward the planning and building of a Digital China, the digital economy and a digital society, among others." In plain words, the NDA will help build smart cities in China, digitize government services, improve internet infrastructure, and make government agencies share data with each other.

The big question mark is how much regulatory authority it will exert. At the moment, many different governmental groups in China have a hand in data regulation (last year, one political representative counted 15), and there is no government body that has an explicit mission to protect data privacy. The closest the country has is the Cyberspace Administration of China, which was originally created to police online content and promote party propaganda. "It makes sense to set something [like NDA] up, given how important data is," says Jamie Horsley, a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, who studies regulatory reforms in China. "But the problem anytime you try to streamline government is that you realize every issue impacts other issues. It's very hard to just carve out something that's only going to be regulated by this one entity." For now, it seems this new department is part of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to drum up a "digital economy" around collecting, sharing, and trading data.

In fact, the new national administration greatly resembles the Big Data Bureaus that Chinese provinces have been setting up since 2014. These local bureaus have built data centers across China and set up data exchanges that can trade data sets like stocks. The content of the data is as varied as cell phone locations and results from remote sensing of the ocean floor. The bureaus have even embraced and invested in the questionable concept of the metaverse. Those bureaus tend to view data as a promising economic resource rather than a Pandora's box full of privacy concerns. Now, these local experiments are being integrated and elevated to a national-level agency. And that explains why the new NDA is set up under China's National Development and Reform Commission, an office mostly responsible for drawing broad economic blueprints for the country. We may not get clarity on NDA's full scope of authority until the summer, when its organizational structure, personnel, and regulatory responsibilities are expected to be put down in writing. But analysts think that it's not likely to replace the Cyberspace Administration of China, which has risen up in recent years to become the "super regulator" of the tech industry.

The retired founder of TSMC said on Thursday that even as he supported U.S. efforts to slow China's advances in the semiconductor industry, the "bifurcation" of the global supply chain and the reversal of globalisation would increase prices and reduce the ubiquity of chips that power the modern world. From a report: "There's no question in my mind that, in the chip sector, globalisation is dead. Free trade is not quite that dead, but it's in danger," Morris Chang said, speaking at an event hosted by Taiwan's CommonWealth Magazine. "When the costs go up, the pervasiveness of chips will either stop or slow down considerably," said Chang, who at 91 remains an influential voice in Taiwan's chip industry. "We are going to be in a different game." In Taiwan, TSMC, Asia's most valuable listed company and a major Apple supplier, is widely regarded as the "sacred mountain protecting the country," because of its economic importance. [...] U.S. "onshoring" and "friendshoring" efforts to boost chip manufacturing stateside or in allied countries present a predicament for Taiwan. "Friendshore does not include Taiwan. In fact, the commerce secretary has said repeatedly that Taiwan is a very dangerous place, we cannot - America cannot - rely on Taiwan for chips," Chang said. "Now that, of course, is I think Taiwan's dilemma."

Shares of Baidu fell as much as 10 percent on Thursday after the web search company showed only a pre-recorded video of its AI chatbot Ernie in the first public release of China's answer to ChatGPT. From a report: The Beijing-based tech company has claimed Ernie will remake its business and for weeks talked up plans to incorporate generative artificial intelligence into its search engine and other products. But on Thursday, millions of people tuning in to the event were left with little idea of whether Baidu's chatbot could compete with ChatGPT.

During the highly publicized and eagerly anticipated news conference for Ernie, Baidu founder Robin Li stood beside an open chat screen, narrating questions that had earlier been typed into the chatbot. He admitted the company was only showing a demo of the technology that it had prepared earlier. Li said some users would soon be able to test out Ernie on their own but did not provide a timeline for a full public rollout. The company is starting with a limited public release to business partners. Ernie's planned launch comes as US groups such as OpenAI and Google continue making strides in pushing forward their development of generative AI. OpenAI this week released GPT-4, its latest AI model that it claims can beat some humans on tough professional tests such as the US bar exam.