From 5G infrastructure to mobile phones and more, Chinese technologies are used in many parts of the world. It’s part of China’s Digital Silk Road initiative, which is getting mixed reviews: welcomed by some countries, while others are assessing the potential risks of Chinese technology. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains. Camera: Henry Ridgwell, Adam Greenbaum
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Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it would cut 10,000 jobs, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees, the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs. 

“We expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to staff.  

The layoffs are part of a wider restructuring at Meta that will see the company flatten its organizational structure, cancel lower priority projects and reduce its hiring rates as part of the move. The news sent Meta’s shares up 2% in premarket trading. 

The move underscores Zuckerberg’s push to turn 2023 into the “Year of Efficiency” with promised cost cuts of $5 billion in expenses to between $89 billion and $95 billion. 

A deteriorating economy has brought about a series of mass job cuts across corporate America: from Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to Big Tech firms including Amazon.com  and Microsoft.  

The tech industry has laid off more than 280,000 workers since the start of 2022, with about 40% of them coming this year, according to layoffs tracking site layoffs.fyi.  

Meta, which is pouring billions of dollars to build the futuristic metaverse, has struggled with a post-pandemic slump in advertising spending from companies facing high inflation and rising interest rates.  

Meta’s move in November to slash headcount by 13% marked the first mass layoffs in its 18-year history. Its headcount stood at 86,482 at 2022-end, up 20% from a year ago. 
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Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse rattled the technology industry that had been the bank’s backbone, leaving shell-shocked entrepreneurs thankful for the government reprieve that saved their money while they mourned the loss of a place that served as a chummy club of innovation.

“They were the gold standard, it almost seemed weird if you were in tech and didn’t have a Silicon Valley Bank account,” Stefan Kalb, CEO of Seattle startup Shelf Engine, said during a Monday interview as he started the process of transferring millions of dollars to other banks.

The Biden administration’s move guaranteeing all Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits above the insured limit of $250,000 per account resulted in a “palpable sigh of relief” in Israel, where its booming tech sector is “connected with an umbilical cord to Silicon Valley,” said Jon Medved, founder of the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.

But the gratitude for the deposit guarantees that will allow thousands of tech startups to continue to pay their workers and other bills was mixed with moments of reflection among entrepreneurs and venture capital partners rattled by Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall.

The crisis “has forced every company to reassess their banking arrangements and the companies that they work with,” said Rajeeb Dey, CEO of London-based startup Learnerbly, a platform for workplace learning.

Entrepreneurs who had deposited all their startups’ money in Silicon Valley Bank are now realizing it makes more sense to spread their funds across several institutions, with the biggest banks considered safer harbors.

Kalb started off Monday by opening an account at the largest in the U.S., JP Morgan Chase, which has about $2.4 trillion in deposits. That’s 13 times more than the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S.

Bank of America is getting some of the money that Electric Era had deposited at Silicon Valley Bank, and the Seattle startup’s CEO, Quincy Lee, expects having no difficulty finding other candidates to keep the rest of his company’s money as part of its diversification plan.

“Any bank is happy to take a startup’s money,” Lee said.

Even so, there are fears it will be more difficult to finance the inherently risky ideas underlying tech startups that became a specialty of Silicon Valley Bank since its founding over a poker game in 1983, just as the advent of the personal computer and faster microprocessors unleashed more innovation.

Silicon Valley quickly established itself as the “go-to” spot for venture capitalists looking for financial partners more open to unconventional business proposals than its bigger, more established peers who still didn’t have a good grasp of technology.

“They understood startups, they understood venture capital,” said Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, commercializing a process to make low-carbon cement. “They were woven into the fabric of the startup community that I’m part of, so banking with SVB was a no brainer.”

Venture capitalists set up their accounts at Silicon Valley Bank just as the tech industry started its boom and then advised the entrepreneurs that they funded to do the same.

That cozy relationship came to an end when the bank disclosed a $1.8 billion loss on low-yielding bonds that were purchased before interest rates began to spike last year, raising alarms among its financially savvy customer base who used the fruits of technology to spread warnings that turned into a calamitous run on deposits.

Bob Ackerman, founder and managing director of venture funder AllegisCyber Capital, likened last week’s flood of withdrawal demands from Silicon Valley Bank to a self-inflicted wound by “a circular firing squad” intent on “shooting your best friend.”

Many of Silicon Valley Bank’s roughly 8,500 employees now find themselves hanging in limbo, too, even though government regulators now overseeing the operations have told them they will be offered jobs at 1.5 times their salaries for 45 days, said Rob McMillan, who had worked there for 32 years.

“We don’t know who’s going to pay us when,” McMillan said. “I think we all missed a paycheck. We don’t know if we have benefits.”

Even though all of Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors are being made whole, its demise is expected to leave a void in the technology sector that may be difficult to fill. In an essay that he posted on his LinkedIn page, prominent venture capitalist Michael Moritz compared Silicon Valley Bank to a “cherished local market where people behind the counters know the names of their customers, have a ready smile but still charge the going price when they sell a cut of meat.”

Silicon Valley Bank is fading away at a time when startups were already having a tougher go at raising money, with a downturn in technology stock values and a steady ride in interest rates caused venture capitalists to retrench. The bank often helped fill the financial gaps with one of its specialties — loans known as “venture debt” because it was woven into the funding provided by its venture capitalist customers.

“There’s going to be a lot of great ideas, a lot of great teams that don’t get funding because the barriers to entry are too high or because there are not enough people who are willing to invest,” said William Lin, co-founder of cybersecurity startup Symmetry Systems and a partner at the venture capital firm ForgePoint.

With Silicon Valley Bank gone and venture capitalists pulling in their reins, Lin expects there will be fewer startups getting money to pursue ideas in the same fields of technology. If that happens, he foresees a winnowing of competition that will eventually make the biggest tech companies even stronger than they already are.

“There’s a real day of reckoning coming in the startup world,” predicted Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable.

That may be true, but entrepreneurs like Lee and Kalb already feel like they had been through an emotional wringer after spending the weekend worrying that all their hard work would go down a drain if they couldn’t get their money out of Silicon Valley Bank.

“It was like being stuck inside a doomsday loop,” Lee said.

Even as he focuses on growing Shelf Engine’s business of helping grocers managing their food orders, he vowed not to forget “a very hard lesson.”

“I obviously now know banks aren’t as safe as I used to think they were,” he said.
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Boeing structural analysis engineer George Ndayizeye, who grew up in Burundi, has won a 2023 Black Engineer of the Year Legacy Award. He spoke with VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya outside Seattle.
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A global shortage of semiconductor chips in the automotive industry starting in 2020 has motivated many countries to increase their domestic manufacturing. The United States has allocated more than $50 billion to promote semiconductor production and research stateside as the global need for the chips is expected to double over the next decade. Keith Kocinski has more from New York.
Camera: Keith Kocinski and Rendy Wicaksana
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The Netherlands’ government on Wednesday said it planned new restrictions on exports of semiconductor technology to protect national security, joining the United States’ effort to curb chip exports to China. 

The U.S. in October imposed sweeping export restrictions on shipments of American chipmaking tools to China, but for the restrictions to be effective, they need other key suppliers in the Netherlands and Japan, who also oversee key chipmaking technology, to agree. The allied countries have been in talks on the matter for months. 

Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher announced the decision in a letter to parliament, saying the restrictions would be introduced before the summer. 

Her letter did not name China, a key Dutch trading partner, nor did it name ASML Holding NV, Europe’s largest tech firm and a major supplier to semiconductor manufacturers, but both will be affected. It specified one technology that would be affected: “DUV” lithography, the second-most advanced machines that ASML sells to computer chip manufacturers. 

“Because the Netherlands considers it necessary on national security grounds to get this technology into oversight with the greatest of speed, the Cabinet will introduce a national control list,” the letter said. 

ASML said in a response it expected to have to apply for licenses to export the most advanced segment among its DUV machines, but that would not affect its 2023 financial guidance. 

ASML dominates the market for lithography systems, multimillion-dollar machines that use powerful lasers to create the minute circuitry of computer chips. The company expects sales in China to remain about flat at $2.3 billion in 2023 – implying relative shrinkage as the company expects overall sales to grow by 25%. Major ASML customers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel are engaged in capacity expansion. 

ASML has never sold its most advanced “EUV” machines to customers in China, and the bulk of its DUV sales in China go to relatively less advanced chipmakers. Its biggest South Korean customers, Samsung and SK Hynix, both have significant manufacturing capacity in China. 

The Dutch announcement leaves major questions unanswered, including whether ASML will be able to service the more than $8 billion worth of DUV machines it has sold to customers in China since 2014. 

Schreinemacher said the Dutch government had decided on measures “as carefully and precisely as possible … to avoid unnecessary disruption of value chains.” 

“It is for companies of importance to know what they are facing and to have time to adjust to new rules,” she wrote.  

Japan is expected to issue an update on its chip equipment export policies as soon as this week.
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Drones are routinely used in warfare, law enforcement and agriculture. Now more and more U.S. businesses are using them to deliver cookies and coffee right to your front door. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. Camera: Adam Greenbaum, Chad Baugh 
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Add a top U.S. intelligence official to the list of Americans expressing concern about Chinese-made technology and Chinese social media platforms like TikTok. 

General Paul Nakasone, who heads both the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, told lawmakers Tuesday there are multiple reasons to be wary of China’s rapid expansion in cyberspace, calling Beijing “a very formidable foe.”

“TikTok concerns me for a number of different reasons,” Nakasone said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “One is that the data that they have. Secondly is the algorithm and the control. Who has the algorithm?”  

Third, he said, “is the broad platform” both for unleashing potential influence operations but also for the ability to give China a way to “turn off the message.” 

Last month, the United States moved forward with plans to ban TikTok — a social media app used by more than 100 million Americans — from government devices. Some U.S. lawmakers have called for giving U.S. President Joe Biden the ability to ban use of the social media app nationwide. 

Others, however, object to giving Biden the ability to issue a blanket nationwide ban, arguing TikTok is only a small part of a larger issue.  

“The threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner told reporters.”Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks. And before that, it was Russia’s Kaspersky Lab.”

“We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America,” he said.

The Restrict Act, being pushed by Warner and others, would establish a rule-based process — informed by the U.S. intelligence community and directed by the Department of Commerce — to identify and address foreign technological threats. 

For its part, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has dismissed concerns it would improperly use user data as “political theater.” 

But concerns about Chinese companies and Chinese technology keep growing. 

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. defense officials are worried that  Chinese-made ship-to-shore cranes used at many of America’s ports could be used to spy on materials being shipped in and out of the U.S. 

“Communist China has monopolized the port crane industry, and I will continue to spearhead efforts to decouple from the regime in Beijing and incentivize the near-shoring and reshoring of our strategic manufacturing capabilities,” Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez told VOA when asked about the potential for Chinese espionage at U.S. ports. “I will fight to protect our critical infrastructure from the CCP’s espionage tactics.”

Tensions also have been rising since the U.S. shot down what it identified as a Chinese spy balloon last month after it had traveled across much of the continental United States.

And Biden is expected to issue an executive order in the coming days that would tighten rules on the ability of U.S. companies to invest in China. 

China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang chastised the U.S. Tuesday, telling reporters in Beijing that Washington’s China policy has “entirely deviated from the rational.” 

But Nakasone told lawmakers that politicians and businesses alike would be smart to be careful about how they make use of Chinese-made platforms and technology. 

“What I would do is ensure that the areas that are most sensitive to our operations are well-sensored, and I have the confidence that’s what’s being utilized there. I understand where that information may be going,” the CYBERCOM commander said.  

“I would take a very, very hard look at anything that would come from an adversarial nation,” Nakasone said, though he acknowledged it would be “very difficult” to proceed with an all-out ban of Chinese products. 

“So much of what we do is based upon international trade,” he said, “and China has the corner on some things.”
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U.S. National Security Agency director Paul Nakasone on Tuesday expressed concern about Chinese-owned video app TikTok’s data collection and potential to facilitate broad influence operations.

In response to a lawmaker’s question about any concerns he has on the influence of TikTok on American children, Nakasone told a Senate hearing, “TikTok concerns me for a number of different reasons.”

Nakasone said his concerns include “the data that they have.”

“Secondly is the algorithm and the control of who has the algorithm,” Nakasone added.

Nakasone ended his comments by asserting that the TikTok platform could enable sweeping influence operations. Nakasone said his concern is not only the fact that TikTok can proactively influence users, but also its ability to “turn off the message,” and noted its large number of users.

The app is used by more than 100 million Americans.

The NSA, part of the Defense Department, is the agency responsible for U.S. cryptographic and communications intelligence and security.

A TikTok representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

TikTok, a unit of China’s ByteDance, has come under increasing fire over fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before the U.S. Congress on March 23.

A bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators is set to introduce legislation on Tuesday that would give Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they are found to pose national security threats.

The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 unanimously recommended ByteDance divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government.
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Japan’s new medium-lift rocket failed on its debut flight in space on Tuesday after the launcher’s second-stage engine did not ignite as planned, in a blow to its efforts to cut the cost of accessing space and compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX. 

The 57-metre tall H3 rocket lifted off without a hitch from the Tanegashima space port, a live-streamed broadcast by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) showed. 

But upon reaching space, the rocket’s second-stage engine failed to ignite, forcing mission officials to manually destroy the vehicle. 

“It was decided the rocket could not complete its mission, so the destruct command was sent,” a launch broadcast commentator from JAXA said. “So what happened? It’s something we will have to investigate looking at all the data.” 

The failed attempt followed an aborted launch last month. 

“Unlike the previous cancellation and postponement, this time it was a complete failure,” said Hirotaka Watanabe, a professor at Osaka University with expertise in space policy. 

“This will have a serious impact on Japan’s future space policy, space business and technological competitiveness,” he added. 

Japan’s first new rocket in three decades was carrying the ALOS-3, a disaster management land observation satellite, which was also equipped with an experimental infrared sensor designed to detect North Korean ballistic missile launches. 

H3 builder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) said it was confirming the situation surrounding the rocket with JAXA and did not have an immediate comment. 

MHI has estimated that the H3’s cost per launch will be half that of its predecessor, the H-II, helping it win business in a global launch market increasingly dominated by SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket. 

A company spokesperson said earlier that it was also relying on the reliability of Japan’s previous rockets to gain business. 

In a report published in September, the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the cost of a Falcon 9 launch to low Earth orbit at $2,600 per kilogram. The equivalent price tag for the H-II is $10,500. 

A successful launch on Tuesday would have put the Japanese rocket into space ahead of the planned launch later this year of the European Space Agency’s new lower-cost Ariane 6 vehicle. 

Powered by a new simpler, lower-cost engine that includes 3D-printed parts, the H3 is designed to lift government and commercial satellites into Earth orbit and will ferry supplies to the International Space Station. 

As part of Japan’s deepening cooperation with the United States in space, it will also eventually carry cargo to the Gateway lunar space station that U.S. space agency NASA plans to build as part of its program to return people to the moon, including Japanese astronauts. 

Shares of MHI fell 1.8% in morning trade, while the broader Japanese benchmark index was up 0.4%.  
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A group of attorneys general from 45 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., demanded Monday that social media app TikTok produce materials as part of an investigation into its effect on young users’ mental health.   

“We know that social media is taking a devastating toll on young people’s mental health and well-being, and through our investigation we are getting a clearer sense of TikTok’s role,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.   

The investigation began last year when eight states, including California, Massachusetts and Tennessee, launched a bipartisan probe of TikTok, focusing on whether the popular video-sharing app is endangering young people and violating state consumer protection laws.    

On Monday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti asked a Tennessee court to order TikTok to produce subpoenaed materials sought by the investigation. Attorneys general from across the United States filed a brief in support of the motion to compel TikTok to hand over the information.    

The Tennessee court petition alleges that TikTok has failed to preserve potentially relevant evidence in the investigation, including internal employee chat messages.   

It says TikTok has shared some internal messages in response to its request but said the company has rendered them “unrecognizable and nearly incomprehensible.”   

TikTok has not commented on the case.   

“We need to know more about the company’s business practices so we can keep our kids safe,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement Monday.   

California’s Department of Justice said in a statement that heavy use of social media is “strongly associated with self-harm, depression, and low self-esteem in teens — and every additional hour young people spend on social media is associated with an increased severity of the symptoms of depression.”   

The latest court challenge comes as TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, faces security concerns. The United States, Canada and the European Union have all banned the use of the app on government-issued devices.    

Like other social media apps, TikTok has also received criticism that it is not doing enough to protect younger users from inappropriate content.   

Last week, TikTok said it was developing a tool that would allow parents to block certain content on the app. The company also said parents will now be able to set time limits on the app for their teens, depending on the day of the week.   

Some information in this report came from Reuters. 
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Twitter users reported a string of problems with the social media site on Monday, including broken links and images not loading.

The company’s tech support account said in a tweet, “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.”

Twitter’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, tweeted Monday: “This platform is so brittle (sigh). Will be fixed shortly.” 

The problems appeared to be resolved about an hour after they began.

“Things should now be working as normal,” the company tweeted around 1 p.m. Eastern time.

The glitches started around midday Monday, with users around the world saying they were unable to read links to articles from outside websites.

Internet observation group NetBlocks said the issue was also affecting image and video content.

Musk tweeted later Monday in response to another user, “A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite.”

API, or Application Programming Interface, refers to software that is made available to outside developers and defines how two software components — in this case, those of Twitter and those belonging to outside platforms — can communicate with each other.

Musk has held several rounds of layoffs at Twitter, letting go more than half of the company’s staff. Some former employees have raised concerns that the mass layoffs could lead to technical problems for the platform.

Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, following a deal to buy the company for $44 billion.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence-France Presse. 
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Only a third of people in the world’s poorest countries can connect to the internet, the U.N. telecoms agency said Sunday, but low-flying satellites could bring hope to millions, especially in remote corners of Africa.

Tech giants including Microsoft have pledged to help populations hobbled by poor internet services to “leapfrog” into an era of online connectivity, with satellites set to play a key role as rival firms send thousands of new generation transmitters into low level orbit.

At the moment just 36% of the 1.25 billion people in the world’s 46 poorest countries can plug into the internet, the International Telecommunication Union said. By comparison, more than 90 percent have access in the European Union.

The ITU condemned the “staggering international connectivity gap” that it said had widened over the past decade.

The divide has been a key complaint at a U.N. summit of Least Developed Countries in Doha, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told their leaders that “you are being left behind in the digital revolution.”

The digital dearth is particularly acute in some African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, where barely a quarter of the population of nearly 100 million can connect.

While internet access is easy in major DRC cities such as Kinshasa, huge rural zones and swathes of territory battled over by rival rebel groups for more than two decades are digital deserts.

The launch of thousands of Low-Earth Orbit satellites could bring speedy change and boost African hopes, tech experts promised at the Doha summit.

‘Leapfrog other nations’

Satellite coverage will play a key role in Microsoft’s vow to bring internet access to 100 million Africans by 2025, which was outlined ahead of the summit.

Microsoft announced a first phase for five million Africans in December and last week added a commitment to cover another 20 million people.

The initial five million will be served by Viasat, one of the companies sending constellations of satellites into space to compete with land-based fibre broadband.

Elon Musk’s Space X and Starlink are also putting thousands of satellites into an orbit between 400 and 700 kilometers (250 to 430 miles) above Earth.

Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP that when he first saw the 20 million figure proposed by his team last year, he asked “is this real?”, but that he was now convinced it is possible.

“The technology costs have come down substantially and will continue to drop,” he said. “That is part of what makes it possible to move this fast to reach this size of population.

“Countries in Africa have the opportunity to leapfrog other nations when it comes to the regulatory structure for something like wireless communications,” he added.

“We can reach many more people than we could with fixed line technologies five or 10 or 15 years ago.”

Bandwidth bonanza

Richer countries have already largely allocated the available bandwidth for telecoms and television.

“In Africa the spectrum isn’t being used and so it is available and the governments are moving faster to bring this connectivity to more people,” Smith said.

Microsoft is working with Africa telecoms specialist Liquid Intelligent Technologies to provide internet for the second segment of 20 million people.

Providing internet and digital skills training for thousands of Africans was part of an effort to provide a private-sector alternative to “foreign aid”, Smith said, declaring that “we are bullish on what we believe digital technology can do for development.”

But the Microsoft president acknowledged that the private sector is “woefully under-developed and under-invested” in many LDC economies.

Liquid Intelligent says it has 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) of land fibre across Africa but is building a major satellite footprint.

“In hard-to-reach areas,” said Nic Rudnick, its deputy chief executive, “satellite is often the only technology or the most reliable technology for fast broadband that always works.”

 
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The Biden administration is pushing for more comprehensive federal regulations to keep the online realm safer against hackers, including by shifting cybersecurity responsibilities away from consumers to industry and treating ransomware attacks as national security threats.

The plan is part of the National Cyber Strategy that the administration released Thursday, outlining long-range goals for how individuals, government and businesses can safely operate in the digital world. This includes placing the burden on the computer and software industry to develop “secure by design” products that are purposefully designed, built and tested to significantly reduce the number of exploitable flaws before they’re introduced into the market.

The strategy “fundamentally reimagines America’s cyber social contract” and will “rebalance the responsibility for managing cyber risk onto those who are most able to bear it,” Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden said Wednesday in a press briefing to preview the strategy.

Walden stressed that asking individuals, small businesses and local governments to shoulder the bulk of the cybersecurity burden “isn’t just unfair, it’s ineffective.”

“The biggest, most capable and best-positioned actors in our digital ecosystem can and should shoulder a greater share of the burden for managing cyber risks and keeping us all safe,” she added.

The administration’s strategy is organized around five pillars; defend critical infrastructure; disrupt and dismantle threat actors; shape market forces to drive security and resilience; invest in a resilient future; and forge international partnerships to pursue shared goals.

The strategy was crafted in the aftermath of a series of major cyberattacks including the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the Solar Winds cyberbreach of federal government agencies in 2019-20. Attackers in those incidents exploited vulnerabilities of companies central to a computer security ecosystem, allowing access to a large number of clients. By mandating greater security requirements on companies that are central to a cybersecurity system, the administration is hoping there will be less risk of security breaches affecting users and clients.

Previous administrations’ approaches to cybersecurity focused more on voluntary public-private partnerships and information-sharing practices. While the Biden White House strategy also seeks to enhance cooperation with the private sector, it’s the first one to push for more aggressive and comprehensive federal cybersecurity regulation.

Ransomware as national security threats

Pointing to the Iranian cyberattacks on Albania’s government networks in 2022, Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, warned that criminals and state actors have conducted destructive cyber and ransomware attacks across the globe.

Under the strategy, ransomware threats will be dealt with as national security problems rather than criminal activities.

“Americans must be able to have confidence that they can rely on critical services, hospitals, gas pipelines, air, water services, even if they are being targeted by our adversaries,” she said, underscoring the administration’s commitment to building a more resilient cyber infrastructure and strengthening international partnerships to deter cyberattacks.

The strategy lays the groundwork for a much more aggressive response from the federal government, including law enforcement and military authorities, to disrupt malicious cyber activity and pursue their perpetrators.

“We are certainly in a more forward-leaning position to make sure that we’re protecting the American people from these threats,” a senior administration official said, adding that the administration will take diplomatic and intelligence actions and financial sanctions as necessary.

“And military tools as necessary. These are options that the president has, and we’re certainly open to using all of them,” the official said.

The White House did not respond to VOA’s query on whether the options would include hack-back operations against criminals or foreign governments.

The strategy calls out China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and “other autocratic states with revisionist intent,” accusing them of “aggressively using advanced cyber capabilities” to pursue objectives that run counter to U.S. interests and international norms. It singles out China as the country presenting the “broadest, most active and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks.”

Investments in cyber infrastructure

The strategy also calls for long-term investments in the U.S. cyber workforce, infrastructure and digital ecosystems, and underlining technologies to improve national resilience and economic competitiveness.

However, the White House will be implementing the strategy without a national cyber director. Christopher Inglis, who led the Office of the National Cyber Director established by Congress in 2021, stepped down in mid-February. His deputy Kemba Walden is acting national cyber director until a new one is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The director’s role is to coordinate the numerous agencies and departments in charge of protecting the nation’s digital infrastructure and engage with industry and international stakeholders.
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Ethiopia’s hydropower dam on the Blue Nile River has angered downstream neighbors, especially Sudan, where people rely on the river for farming and other livelihoods. To reduce the risk of conflict, a group of scientists has used artificial intelligence, AI, to show how all could benefit. But getting Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt to agree on an AI solution could prove challenging, as Henry Wilkins reports from Khartoum, Sudan.
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The Biden administration approved more than $23 billion worth of licenses for companies to ship U.S. goods and technology to blacklisted Chinese companies in the first quarter of 2022, a Republican lawmaker said Tuesday.

The data comes amid growing pressure on the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden to further expand a broad crackdown on shipments of sensitive U.S. technology to China from Republican lawmakers, who now control the House of Representatives.

“Overwhelmingly, [the Commerce Department] continues to grant licenses that allow critical U.S. technology to be sold to our adversaries,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said at a hearing on combating the generational challenge of Chinese aggression, as he grilled U.S. officials for allowing the licenses to be approved.

“How does this align with your statement that ‘we’re doing everything within [the Commerce Department’s] power to prevent sensitive U.S. technologies from getting in the hands of [Chinese] military, intelligence services or other parties?’”

McCaul said the Commerce Department, which oversees export controls, denied only 8% of license requests to sell to companies on the U.S. trade blacklist during the January to March period last year.

Commerce Department official Alan Estevez, who oversees U.S. export policy, told the hearing that a Trump-era policy that allows China’s blacklisted telecommunications equipment maker Huawei to receive some U.S. technology below the “5G level” is “under assessment.”

Estevez also described TikTok as a “threat,” noting that a powerful committee that reviews foreign investments in the United States was dealing with how to handle the popular Chinese-owned social media app.

TikTok said in a statement the company has been working with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States “for over two years on a plan to address national security concerns about TikTok in the U.S.”

Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks cautioned against reading too much into the licensing numbers, noting that the approval and denial data provides no information about the transactions.

The data comes a week after the Biden administration added new Chinese companies to the trade blacklist for aiding Russia’s military and months after announcing a sweeping new policy aimed at dramatically curbing shipments of chips and chipmaking tools to China.

Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. was added to a trade blacklist known as the entity list by former Republican President Donald Trump in 2019, amid allegations of sanctions violations, spying capabilities, and intellectual property theft.

Suppliers of most companies added to the entity list see their requests to ship to the targeted firms denied, but the Trump administration implemented a special policy for Huawei, pledging to deny it access to some things like 5G chips but allow it to receive other items, such as 4G chips.
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Mexico’s president announced Tuesday that electric car company Tesla has committed to building a major plant in the industrial hub of Monterrey in northern Mexico.

President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said the promise came in phone calls he had Friday and Monday with Tesla head Elon Musk. It would be Tesla’s third plant outside the U.S., after one in Shanghai and one near Berlin.

Lopez Obrador had previously ruled out such a plant in the arid northern state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is the capital, because he didn’t want water-hungry factories in a region that suffers water shortages. But he said Musk’s company had offered commitments to address those concerns, including using recycled water.

“There is one commitment that all the water used in the manufacture of electric automobiles will be recycled water,” Lopez Obrador said.

The president said it would be a large investment without giving a dollar amount and did not specify what the plant would produce. He said it was unclear if it would produce batteries, an industry Mexico desperately wants despite not having a current domestic supply of lithium.

Lopez Obrador said the company planned to release details on Wednesday.

“This is going to mean a considerable investment and many, many jobs,” he said. “My understanding is that it will be very big.”

Investment estimated to be $10 billion

Monterrey is highly industrialized and close to the U.S. border and had long been considered the frontrunner for any Tesla investment.

But the city suffered water shortages in 2022 that were so severe that many homes went weeks with intermittent or no water supply. The government is building a 100-kilometer pipeline to bring in water from a dam.

Lopez Obrador had previously said his government “simply won’t grant permits” for any new plants there. Apparently Musk’s proposal overrode the president’s stance.

Gabriela Siller, chief economist at Nuevo Leon-based Banco Base, said the Tesla investment — which she estimated could be worth $10 billion — represented such a large amount that it trumped any of the president’s objections.

Lopez Obrador “could not turn this down. It would have had a very big political cost for him,” said Siller.

The announcement was a disappointment for more water-rich southern states that had begun jockeying for the Tesla plant after Lopez Obrador’s comments last week.

‘WE ALL WIN!’

The governor of Nuevo Leon state, where billboards went up last year saying, “Welcome Tesla,” crowed about Tuesday’s announcement.

“Mexico won, Nuevo Leon (NL) won, WE ALL WIN!” Governor Samuel García wrote on his Twitter account.

Lopez Obrador said Mexico wouldn’t match any U.S. subsidies to win the Tesla plant, referring to U.S. incentives under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

“We cannot give subsidies like that,” the president said, adding “Mr. Musk was very attentive, respectful” of Mexico’s position.

Tesla is expected to announce plans for its “Gen 3” vehicle platform on Wednesday at its annual investor day at a factory near Austin, Texas.

Musk previously has floated the idea of building a $25,000 electric vehicle, which would cost about $20,000 less than the current Model 3, now Tesla’s least-expensive car. Many automakers build lower-cost models in Mexico to save on labor costs and protect profit margins.

Musk also is expected to show off the company’s production line at the Austin plant, as well as discuss long-term expansion plans, how it will spend capital investment dollars, and other subjects.
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Holding the bulky brick cellphone he’s credited with inventing 50 years ago, Martin Cooper thinks about the future.

Little did he know when he made the first call on a New York City street from a thick gray prototype that our world — and our information — would come to be encapsulated on a sleek glass sheath where we search, connect, like and buy.

He’s optimistic that future advances in mobile technology can transform human lives but is also worried about risks smartphones pose to privacy and young people.

“My most negative opinion is we don’t have any privacy anymore because everything about us is now recorded someplace and accessible to somebody who has enough intense desire to get it,” the 94-year-old told The Associated Press at MWC, or Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest wireless trade show where he was getting a lifetime award this week in Barcelona.

Besides worrying about the erosion of privacy, Cooper also acknowledged the negative side effects that come with smartphones and social media, such as internet addiction and making it easy for children to access harmful content.

But Cooper, describing himself as a dreamer and an optimist, said he’s hopeful that advances in cellphone technology have the potential to revolutionize areas like education and health care.

“Between the cellphone and medical technology and the Internet, we are going to conquer disease,” he said.

It’s a long way from where he started.

Cooper made the first public call from a handheld portable telephone on a Manhattan street on April 3, 1973, using a prototype device that his team at Motorola had started designing only five months earlier.

Cooper used the Dyna-TAC phone to famously call his rival at Bell Labs, owned by AT&T. It was, literally, the world’s first brick phone, weighing 2.5 pounds and measuring 11 inches. Cooper spent the best part of the next decade working to bring a commercial version of the device to market.

The call help kick-start the cellphone revolution, but looking back on that moment 50 years later, “we had no way of knowing this was the historic moment,” Cooper said.

“The only thing that I was worried about: ‘Is this thing going to work?’ And it did,” he said Monday.

While blazing a trial for the wireless communications industry, he hoped that cellphone technology was just getting started.

Cooper said he’s “not crazy” about the shape of modern smartphones, blocks of plastic, metal and glass. He thinks phones will evolve so that they will be “distributed on your body,” perhaps as sensors “measuring your health at all times.”

Batteries could even be replaced by human energy.

“The human body is the charging station, right? You ingest food, you create energy. Why not have this receiver for your ear embedded under your skin, powered by your body?” he imagined.

Cooper also acknowledged there’s a dark side to advances — the risk to privacy and to children.

Regulators in Europe, where there are strict data privacy rules, and elsewhere are concerned about apps and digital ads that track user activity, allowing tech and digital ad companies to build up rich profiles of users.

“It’s going to get resolved, but not easily,” Cooper said. “There are people now that can justify measuring where you are, where you’re making your phone calls, who you’re calling, what you access on the Internet.”

Smartphone use by children is another area that needs limits, Cooper said. One idea is to have “various internets curated for different audiences.”

Five-year-olds should be able to use the internet to help them learn, but “we don’t want them to have access to pornography and to things that they don’t understand,” he said.

The inspiration for Cooper’s cellphone idea was not the personal communicators on Star Trek, but comic strip detective Dick Tracy’s radio wristwatch. As for his own phone use, Cooper says he checks email and does online searches for information to settle dinner table arguments.

However, “there are many things that I have not yet learned,” he said. “I still don’t know what TikTok is.”
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The big beasts of the telecom industry kicked off their most important annual get-together in Barcelona on Monday, promising to lead a “tsunami of innovation”, as they try to shrug off a major slump across the technology sector.

Some 80,000 delegates are expected at the four-day Mobile World Congress (MWC), which is back to near full strength following years of pandemic-related disruption.

Industrial titans like Huawei, Nokia and Samsung are set to showcase their latest innovations, flanked by smartphone makers like Oppo and Xiaomi and network operators like Orange, Verizon and China Mobile.

“We are at the doors of a new change of era driven by the intersection of Telco, Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Web3,” said Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, boss of Spanish operator Telefonica and current chairman of industry body GSMA, which organizes the Barcelona event.

He promised the telecoms industry would be at the forefront of the “tsunami of innovation”, adding: “Without telcos there is no digital future.”

But many of the firms are more concerned with finding a path back to profit as the global economy stutters and the wider tech sector slashes thousands of jobs.

In the first clear sign that the ills of the wider tech sector are reaching telecoms, equipment maker Ericsson announced 8,500 layoffs last week.

Overall sales of smartphones last year slumped by 11.3 percent compared with 2021, according to the IDC consultancy.

Research firm Gartner reckons sales of smartphones, tablets and computers will fall again by four percent this year.

And network operators are still struggling to make 5G pay, years after they spent billions in government auctions for the right to use the bandwidth.

‘Unsustainable situation’ 

A hugely popular idea for many at the show is to get the owners of bandwidth-hungry platforms like YouTube, Netflix and Facebook to pay network operators a “fair share”.

Christel Heydemann, boss of French operator Orange, said the five largest users — which she did not name — account for 55% of daily traffic on European networks, costing telecoms firms 15 billion euros ($16 billion) a year.

She said it was an “unsustainable situation” and welcomed a public consultation launched by EU commissioner Thierry Breton last week.

But Breton told the MWC on Monday that it was not a “binary choice” or a battle between telecoms and big tech.

He said the idea was for everyone to make sure Europe had the best possible network by 2030 and warned that telecoms firms “will have to adapt to survive”.

Critics of the “fair share” narrative point out that customers already pay the operators for use of their networks.

Netflix boss Greg Peters, who is unlikely to be enthusiastic about the fair share proposal, is expected at the MWC on Tuesday.

Huawei center stage 

The organizers are trumpeting the return of Chinese delegates as a vital boon to the event.

Chinese firms heavily sponsor the MWC and Huawei is once again getting pride of place, this time hosting the biggest dedicated pavilion in the event’s decades-long history.

The Chinese tech giant was the second biggest smartphone maker in the world in 2020 but retreated after US regulators accused it of being controlled by Beijing.

The firm is now under pressure in Europe, where Breton and other commissioners are pushing for its equipment to be removed from 5G network infrastructure.

Huawei boss Eric Xu said before the event he would use the MWC to display products that would “help carriers meet evolving demand and unleash more opportunities for new growth”.

In total, GSMA said the four-day show would host almost 750 operators and manufacturers and 2,000 exhibitors.
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Twitter Inc has laid off at least 200 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, the New York Times reported late on Sunday, in its latest round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over the micro-blogging site last October. 

The layoffs on Saturday night impacted product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which helps keep Twitter’s various features online, the NYT report said, citing people familiar with the matter. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. 

The company has a headcount of about 2,300 active employees, according to Musk last month. 

The latest job cuts follow a mass layoff in early November, when Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees in a cost-cutting measure by Musk, who had acquired the company for $44 billion. 

Musk said in November that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation. 

Twitter recently started sharing revenue from advertisements with some of its content creators. 

Earlier in the day, The Information reported that the social media platform laid off dozens of employees on Saturday, aiming to offset a plunge in revenue. 
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NASA and SpaceX postponed a planned Monday launch of a four-member crew to the International Space Station due to a ground systems issue.

The decision came less than three minutes before the spacecraft was due to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A backup launch date had been set for Tuesday, but NASA said due to expected unfavorable weather conditions the next launch attempt will be March 2. 

The four-person crew includes two Americans, one Russian and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.

NASA said their planned six-month mission includes a range of scientific experiments including studying how materials burn in microgravity, collecting microbial samples from outside the space station and “tissue chip research on heart, brain, and cartilage functions.”
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Mexico is undergoing a fevered competition among states to win a potential Tesla facility in jostling reminiscent of what happens among U.S. cities and states vying to win investments from tech companies.

Mexican governors have gone to extremes, like putting up billboards, creating special car lanes or creating mock-ups of Tesla ads for their states.

And there’s no guarantee Tesla will build a full-fledged factory. Nothing is announced, and the frenzy is based mainly on Mexican officials saying Tesla boss Elon Musk will have a phone call with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The northern industrial state of Nuevo Leon seemed to have an early edge in the race.

It painted the Tesla logo on a lane at the Laredo-Colombia border crossing into Texas last summer and is erecting billboards in December in the state capital, Monterrey, that read “Welcome Tesla.”

The state governor’s influencer wife, Mariana Rodriguez, was even shown in leaked photos at a get-together with Musk.

However, López Obrador appeared to exclude the semi-desert state from consideration Monday, arguing he wouldn’t allow the typically high water use of factories to risk prompting shortages there.

That set off a competitive scramble among other Mexican states. The governors’ offers ranged from crafty proposals to near-comic ones.

“Veracruz is the only state with an excess of gas,” quipped Gov. Cuitláhuac García of the Gulf Coast state, before quickly adding “gas … for industrial use, for industrial use!”

A latecomer to the race, García had to try harder: He noted Veracruz was home to Mexico’s only nuclear power plant. And he claimed Veracruz had 30% of Mexico’s water, though the National Water Commission puts the state’s share at around 11%.

The governor of the western state of Michoacan wasn’t going to be left out. Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla quickly posted a mocked-up ad for a Tesla car standing next to a huge, car-sized avocado — Michoacan’s most recognizable product — with the slogan “Michoacan — The Best Choice for Tesla.”

“We have enough water,” Ramírez Bedolla said in a television interview he did between a round of meetings with auto industry figures and international business representatives.

Michoacan also has an intractable problem of drug cartel violence. But similar violence in neighboring Guanajuato state hasn’t stopped seven major international automakers from setting up plants there.

Nuevo Leon Gov. Samuel García had to think fast to avoid being shut out entirely.

García reached out to the western state of Jalisco, whose governor, Enrique Alfaro, belongs to the same small Citizen’s Movement party. Together, the two came up with an alliance Thursday that would allow trucks from Jalisco preferential use of Nuevo Leon’s border crossing, the same one where a “Tesla” lane appeared last year.

Jalisco has a healthy foreign tech sector, but most importantly, it has more water than Nuevo Leon.

López Obrador’s focus on water might be more about politics than about droughts, said Gabriela Siller, chief economist at Nuevo Leon-based Banco Base. She said the president appeared to be trying to steer Tesla investment to a state governed by his own Morena party, like Michoacan or Veracruz.

That could be a dangerous game, Siller said.

“Tesla could say it’s not somebody’s toy to be moved around anywhere, and it could decide not to come to Mexico,” she said.

There are doubts that whatever Musk eventually does announce will be an auto assembly plant. Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said his understanding is that it won’t be a plant, but rather an ecosystem of suppliers.

Musk at times has floated the idea of building a $25,000 electric vehicle that would cost about $20,000 less than the current Model 3, now Tesla’s least-expensive car. Many automakers build lower-cost models in Mexico to save on labor costs and protect profit margins.

A Tesla investment could be part of “near shoring” by U.S. companies that once manufactured in China but now are leery of logistical and political problems there. That those companies will now turn to Mexico represents the Latin American country’s biggest foreign investment hope.

“The fight among states to attract investments from this nearshoring phenomenon is going to be tough, complicated,” Michoacan’s Ramírez Bedolla said.

As Ramírez Bedolla put it, “wherever Tesla sets up, it is going to be big news in Mexico.”
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The latest folding-screen smartphones, immersive metaverse experiences, AI-powered chatbot avatars and other eye-catching technology are set to wow visitors at the annual MWC wireless trade fair that kicks off Monday.

The four-day show, held in a vast Barcelona conference center, is the world’s biggest and most influential meeting for the mobile tech industry. The range of technology set to go on display illustrates how the show, also known as Mobile World Congress, has evolved from a forum for mobile phone standards into a showcase for new wireless tech.

Organizers are expecting as many as 80,000 visitors from as many as 200 countries and territories as the event resumes at full strength after several years of pandemic disruptions.

Here’s a look at what to expect:

Metaverse

There was a lot of buzz around the metaverse at last year’s MWC and at other recent tech fairs like last month’s CES in Las Vegas. Expect even more at this event.

Several companies are planning to show off their metaverse experiences that will allow users to connect with each other, attend events far away, or enter fantastical new online worlds.

Software company Amdocs will use virtual and augmented reality to give users a “metatour” of Dubai. Other tech and telecom companies promise metaverse demos to help with physical rehab, virtually try on clothes, or learn how to fix aircraft landing gear.

The metaverse’s popularity exploded after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in late 2021 exalted it as the next big thing for the internet and his company. Lately, though, doubts have started to creep in.

“All the business models around the metaverse are a big question mark right now,” said John Strand, a veteran telecom industry consultant.

Artificial intelligence

AI has caught the tech world’s attention thanks to the dramatic advances in new tools like ChatGPT that can hold conversations and generate readable text. Expect artificial intelligence to be deployed as an “overused buzzword” at MWC, said Ben Wood, principal analyst at CCS Insight.

Companies are promising to show how they’re using AI to make home Wi-Fi networks more energy efficient or sniff out fakes.

Microsoft’s press representatives have hinted that they might have a demonstration of ChatGPT but haven’t provided any details. The company added AI chatbot technology to its Bing search engine but scrambled to make fixes after it responded with insults or wrong answers to some users who got early access.

Startups will demo their own AI-powered chat technology: D-ID will show off their eerie “digital human” avatars, while Botslovers says its service promises to “free humans from boring tasks.”

Not just smartphones

MWC hit its stride in the previous decade as the smartphone era boomed, with device makers competing for attention with glitzy product launches. Nowadays, smartphone innovation has hit a plateau and companies are increasingly debuting phones in other ways.

Attention at the show is focusing on potential uses for 5G, the next generation of ultrafast wireless technology that promises to unlock a wave of innovation beyond just smartphones, such as automated factories, driverless cars and smart cities.

“Mobile phones will still be a hot topic at MWC, but they’ve become a mature, iterative and almost boring category,” Wood said. “The only excitement will come from the slew of foldable designs and prototypes, but the real size of the market for these premium products remains unclear.”

Device launches will be dominated by lesser-known Chinese brands such as OnePlus, Xiaomi, ZTE and Honor looking to take market share from the market leaders, Apple and Samsung.

Chinese presence

Chinese technology giant Huawei will have a major presence at MWC, despite being blacklisted by the Western governments as part of a broader geopolitical battle between Washington and Beijing over technology and security.

Organizers say Huawei will have the biggest presence at the show among some 2,000 exhibitors. That’s even after the U.S. pushed allies to get their mobile phone companies to block or restrict Huawei’s networking equipment over concerns Beijing could induce the company to carry out cybersnooping or sabotage critical communications infrastructure.

Huawei, which has repeatedly denied those allegations, also has been squeezed by Western sanctions aimed at starving it of components like microchips.

Analysts say one message that Huawei could be sending with its oversized display is defiance to the West.
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Google is blocking some Canadian users from viewing news content in what the company said is a test run of a potential response to a Canadian government’s online news bill.

Bill C-18, the Online News Act, would require digital giants such as Google and Meta, which owns Facebook, to negotiate deals that would compensate Canadian media companies for republishing their content on their platforms.

The company said it is temporarily limiting access to news content for under 4% of its Canadian users as it assesses possible responses to the bill. The change applies to its ubiquitous search engine as well as the Discover feature on Android devices, which carries news and sports stories.

All types of news content are being affected by the test, which will run for about five weeks, the company said. That includes content created by Canadian broadcasters and newspapers.

“We’re briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very small percentage of Canadian users,” Google spokesman Shay Purdy said in a written statement on Wednesday in response to questions from The Canadian Press.

The company runs thousands of tests each year to assess any potential changes to its search engine, he added.

“We’ve been fully transparent about our concern that C-18 is overly broad and, if unchanged, could impact products Canadians use and rely on every day,” Purdy said.

A spokeswoman for Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said Canadians will not be intimidated and called it disappointing that Google is borrowing from Meta’s playbook. Last year, that company threatened to block news off its site in response to the bill.

“This didn’t work in Australia, and it won’t work here because Canadians won’t be intimidated. At the end of the day, all we’re asking the tech giants to do is compensate journalists when they use their work,” spokeswoman Laura Scaffidi said in a statement Wednesday.

“Canadians need to have access to quality, fact-based news at the local and national levels, and that’s why we introduced the Online News Act. Tech giants need to be more transparent and accountable to Canadians.”

Rodriguez has argued the bill, which is similar to a law that Australia passed in 2021, will “enhance fairness” in the digital news marketplace by creating a framework and bargaining process for online behemoths to pay media outlets.

But Google expressed concerns in a Parliament committee that the prospective law does not require publishers to adhere to basic journalistic standards, that it would favor large publishers over smaller outlets and that it could result in the proliferation of “cheap, low quality, clickbait content” over public interest journalism.

The company has said it would rather pay into a fund, similar to the Canada Media Fund, that would pay news publishers indirectly.

The bill passed the Canadian House of Commons in December and is set to be studied in the Senate in the coming months.
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