Howdy and welcome again to Citizen Tech, InformationWeek’s month-to-month coverage roundup. This month, we’ve got to speak about Elon Musk, who but once more, faces SEC costs over his compensation at Tesla; content material regulation on social media platforms across the US November elections; the fallout of FTX’s collapse, in Congress and within the European Parliament; desperation over a European Chips Act; and extra.
About Elon: Is He Too Wealthy?
Not an moral query: a authorized one. The New York Instances reported that the SEC is trying into Musk’s 2018 compensation package deal as CEO of Tesla. The package deal stipulated a package deal of choices that amounted to $50 billion. The SEC has advised the Delaware Courtroom of Chancery that the Tesla board bamboozled stockholders into approving this large compensation.
Nearly 5 years have handed for the reason that deal in query, and Musk’s share of Tesla’s inventory has fluctuated since then. In the mean time, in keeping with the Instances, he owns 14% of the corporate’s inventory, which quantities to virtually $90 billion. He bought off a couple of third of that sum final 12 months.
Tesla has advised the courtroom that the 2018 package deal was justified by Tesla’s efficiency, was not excessive given income within the years thereafter, and concerned no dishonesty with traders. Musk, on the stand, as Axios experiences, claims to “hate” being CEO of Tesla. The Biden administration on the whole and the SEC particularly have an apparent bone to select with Musk. They’re within the temper to slay giants: this month DOJ took on Adobe in an formidable antitrust case. We’ll see if their case towards Musk holds up.
Election Day Tech
US elections are technological affairs, and never simply on account of the machines that tally ballots, the topic of varied right-wing fever desires within the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat. The key social media platforms all labored furiously to include misinformation main as much as the November 2022 elections, with TikTok banning all political fundraising (through NYT). Meta, which owns WhatsApp, banned adverts that discouraged folks from voting. YouTube ramped up its marketing campaign towards misinformation, not solely within the US however in Brazil, forward of elections there. Gab, alternatively, defended free speech and refused to censor any political speech no matter.
The impact was laborious to learn. Trump took to Fb after the election to accuse Arizona Democrats of monkeying with poll machines, and the My Pillow CEO railed towards a presumed “Biden bump.” However the seething was telling. Nonetheless, a lot revanchist, MAGA propaganda slipped by the cracks — and nevertheless a lot progressive organizations like Media Issues whined about it — no actual pink wave arrived. There could also be limits to this sort of digital, election 12 months propaganda.
Battle Bulletin No. 10
Somebody ship that final level to the Kremlin. Russia, low on materiel, low on educated personnel, chased out of Kherson and ready for the winter freeze to catch their breath, are attempting what they contemplate different, subtler technique of profitable the Ukrainian Battle. Kremlin operatives focused American voters forward of this month’s elections with implicitly anti-Ukrainian messages, questioning concerning the large price of army help in a interval of inflation and precarity. Different messages took the roundabout path, lashing out at rising violent crime charges and Biden’s progressive excesses. It wasn’t surprising: FBI and CISA issued a warning final month about simply this sort of operation. The query is what made this operation so … lame. Now we have but to be taught whether or not the efforts of the legacy social media platforms are answerable for blunting Russian efforts, or whether or not the populations most weak to those overtures are saturated. In any occasion, the Kremlin will want a wiser technique if it desires to show People the best way it turns Europeans and Sahel Africans. Federal assist for Ukraine continues apace.
Is It The Finish of Crypto?
The Economist requested that very query. This month, the cryptocurrency trade FTX collapsed. NBC lays out the entire story of the implosion. FTX was a sort of moneychanger for the varied cryptocurrencies, however it functioned as a sort of various financial institution as nicely, and plenty of customers believed the upper curiosity good points on their investments in FTX’s digital pockets would all the time be superior to the charges of their conventional financial savings accounts. Reader, they weren’t. FTX filed for Chapter 11 chapter this month. On the sixteenth, 30-year-old CEO, crypto-lobbyist Sam Bankman-Fried — what a brutal, becoming identify! — advised Vox through Twitter DM that he wanted a staggering $8 billion “to make account holders complete.” He additionally admitted that shortly after submitting, somebody, maybe a employees member, hacked FTX and made off with a whole bunch of tens of millions. It’s a nasty look, significantly for a lobbyist with a notable disdain for the sort of regulation that central banks and governments the world over would like to throw on the crypto bros if they might. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee tasked with treating with FTX, expressed a mix of embarrassment and quiet triumph in a press memo. “The Committee stays dedicated to advancing the Digital Commodities Shopper Safety Act to convey vital safeguards to the digital commodities market,” she mentioned. It should even be embarrassing for the Committee’s rating member, John Boozman (R-Nebraska), lengthy seen as sympathetic towards crypto; she mentions him by identify as “working carefully” along with her.
Maxine Waters (D-California), chair of the Home Monetary Companies Committee, mentioned that FTX’s collapse prompted “great hurt” and that Bankman-Fried would seem earlier than her in a listening to.
In the meantime, over the water, the European Fee is contemplating a brand new crypto tax. Confidential sources advised POLITICO that after the $2 trillion losses in Europe’s crypto market over the previous 12 months, a single, bloc-wide tax regime is being mentioned. In reality, the FTX scare and the 2022 losses are simply the most recent justification for this: secret talks started in Toulouse, apparently, in 2021. At present, each EU member state units its personal tax charges and circumstances for cryptocurrency; a spokesman for dealer Crypto.com advised POLITICO {that a} new, consolidated tax may “convey financial profit” to the business.
Can Europe Afford Chips?
The European Chips Act, which might theoretically repeat or higher Biden’s CHIPS Act, languishes in committee within the European Parliament; within the meantime, down the Rhine, the Fee can’t afford to maintain funding semiconductor manufacturing. POLITICO means that the framework, which might disperse some 43 billion euro in public funds to authorities and personal entities, might have been rushed too quick previous lawmakers, and is now dealing with an agonizing scrutiny within the numerous our bodies of the EU, from the Council to Parliament. Member state governments are stirring too, particularly the smaller nations within the bloc. Large manufacturing contracts inevitably go to huge manufacturing nations, like Germany and France (and Italy, the place stunning Catania will quickly be dwelling to an enormous silicon carbide wafer plant). However Czechia, amongst others, is dissatisfied: absolutely a serious European initiative ought to profit the whole European Union?
Plenty of voices have additionally identified that even when the European Chips Act clears committee in report time, it’s nonetheless quite underwhelming. It guarantees 11 billion euro towards R&D; Biden’s plan gave $13.2 billion.
Biden within the Pacific
Biden has met with a lot of Asia-Pacific chief through the G20 summit in Bali. On the thirteenth, he met with the prime minister of Japan and the president of South Korea to debate (amongst different issues) provide chains. Nothing got here out of the bulletins besides platitudes and oblique warnings towards North Korea, however semiconductors can’t be removed from his thoughts. South Korea produces virtually a fifth of all semiconductors worldwide, regardless of latest drops in productiveness (through InvestKorea).
A extra fascinating announcement got here just a few days later, when he met with Australia and Japan’s respective prime ministers to talk about financing telecommunications throughout the Pacific rim. The US Worldwide Growth Finance Company and Japan Financial institution for Worldwide Cooperation invested $50 million every within the Australian telecoms kind Telstra’s acquisition of Digicel Pacific. Telstra is a former state-owned Australian firm; Digicel, primarily based in Jamaica, is likely one of the largest cell phone networks on the planet. Telstra stands to realize about 2.5 million new subscribers throughout the Pacific islands. The unseen actor on this drama is China. All of the speak about “a stronger Pacific area” boils right down to warding off Chinese language overtures, which could in any other case tempt lawmakers in Samoa, Fiji or elsewhere.
Beneficial Studying
Wired is working a sequence concerning the hunt for notorious cybercriminal referred to as Alpha02. It’s a riveting story, with lurid villains and many drama, however you’ll want Wired credentials. Possibly yow will discover some on the Darkish Net…
What to Learn Subsequent:
From Twitter’s New Administration to Large Tech Lobbying Scandals
