French authorities plan to use an AI-assisted crowd control system to monitor people during the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a draft law seen by AFP on Thursday.

The system is intended to allow the security services to detect disturbances and potential problems more easily, but will not use facial recognition technology, the bill says.

The technology could be particularly useful during the highly ambitious open-air opening ceremony  with Olympians sailing down the river Seine in front of a crowd of 600,000 people.

French police and sports authorities faced severe criticism in May after shambolic scenes during the Champions League final in Paris when football fans were caught in a crowd crush and teargassed.

The draft law, which was presented to the cabinet on Thursday, proposes other security measures including the use of full-body scanners and increases the sentences for hooliganism.

Organizers and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin have both argued in favor of using so-called “intelligent” security camera software that scans images for suspect or dangerous behavior.

The use of such a system during the Olympics is an “experimentation”, the draft law says, but could be applied for future public events which face terrorism-related or crowd control risks.

“No biometric data is used, nor facial recognition technology and it does not enable any link or interconnection or automatic flagging with any other personal data system,” the bill states.

The games’ organizing committee said on November 21 that it needed to lift its budget estimate by 10 per cent from 3.98 billion euros to 4.48bn euros, partly as a result of inflation.

Rather than opening the games in an athletics stadium as is customary, organizers have planned a ceremony on July 26, 2024 with a flotilla of some 200 boats sailing down the river Seine.

The banks of the river can accommodate 100,000 people who will have to buy tickets, while another 500,000 are set to watch for free from the street level, according to government estimates.

The draft law is expected to be debated in parliament in January where the minority government of President Emmanuel Macron will need support from opposition groups to pass it.
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Between the close of this year’s climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh and the 2023 climate event slated for December 2023 in the UAE, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are all working to position themselves as new electric vehicle powerhouses.

Signaling an era where next-generation electric vehicles are made in a region most strongly associated with fossil fuels, manufacturers in the three countries are seeing new forms of government backing and technology-driven partnerships with international automotive companies.  

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has set the most ambitious targets for electric vehicle manufacturing.

Last month Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the first Saudi vehicle brand Ceer to design, manufacture, and sell sedans and sports utility vehicles targeting consumers in the kingdom and the broader Middle East.

Ceer is a joint venture between the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Chinese manufacturing conglomerate Foxconn, which will license component technology from BMW.

“Energy and transport developments are very close to the crown prince’s heart. that’s why he put the Ceer company under the umbrella of the Public Investment Fund, which he directly oversees,” said Joseph Salem, lead Travel & Transport partner at Arthur D. Little in Riyadh.

The country aims to manufacture more than 150,000 electric cars annually by 2026.

Today, every vehicle on the road in Saudi Arabia is an import.

“The crown prince approved the aggressive set targets for EV adoption,” said Salem.

Salem’s firm is working with Saudi officials to implement policies that incentivize replacing a fleet dominated by internal combustion engine cars and buses with electric vehicles.

The consultant said environmental imperatives and emissions commitments made by the Saudi government to the world are the main driver of the push to build EVs in the kingdom.

“However, there’s also an economic element that is related to the equation,” Salem explained. 

“Today the mobility sector is wholly driven by carbon-emission vehicles. To move these vehicles, you have to use oil which is currently sold locally at a price that is subsidized by the government.”

“By building electric vehicles locally, they can save the oil and export it to the external market. The same logic applies toward renewable energy production efforts in the kingdom,” Salem said.

Egypt

Past attempts to build so-called “national” cars in the region have faltered over quality issues and a lack of brand enthusiasm.

In the early 1960s, the Egyptian-built compact “Ramses” symbolized the county’s drive for self-sufficiency.

While promoted by Egypt’s post-colonial leader, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ramses’ five-to-six-cars per day assembly line and reputation for mechanical unreliability doomed the national brand.

Nasser kept his presidential vehicle, a 1962 Cadillac Fleetwood.

By 1972, the state-owned Al-Nasr Automotive factory discontinued Ramses’ production.

The Al-Nasr company switched to producing Fiat models licensed by Turkish manufacturer Tofaş.

In January, President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi reprised notes of Nasserist ambition, telling the World Youth Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh that he was personally committed to seeing EVs built in Egypt.

“We have moved quickly to establish a partnership with many companies to produce electric cars in Egypt,” El-Sisi said. “Starting in 2023, we will produce the first Egyptian electric car.”

At the same event, Hisham Tawfiq, Minister for Public Enterprises, announced that military-owned Al-Nasr Automotive was negotiating with Chinese auto manufacturers to fulfill the presidential directive.

Meanwhile, in the country’s private sector, General Motors and its Egyptian partner Al Mansour Automotive are building a facility to roll out Cadillac’s all-electric midsize luxury SUV Lyriq in Egypt by the end of next year.

GM Middle East plans to launch 13 all-new EVs, building an EV line-up that includes the Chevrolet Bolt Electric Utility, a Hummer EV.

In the run-up to the locally hosted COP 27 conference, Egypt made visible strides in building a network of DC fast-charging charging stations required by an electric fleet.

Infinity Power- a joint venture between Egypt’s Infinity Energy company and the UAE firm Masdar- is already operating around 440 charging points across the country.

The company feeds the network electricity from the massive 37.2 square kilometer (14.4 square mile) Benban solar park in Aswan.

“We expect to see up to seven thousand more electrical vehicles on the road in 2023 with an annual 10% increase going forward,” said marketing director Karim El Gazzar.  “We are fulfilling the government’s plans to build a robust ecosystem for EVs.”

Turkey

In 1961 Turkish President Cemal Gürsel summoned a group of local engineers to build a car wholly designed and produced in Turkey called Devrim.

That vehicle barely made it through a Republic Day test run from Istanbul to Ankara -and clocked an even shorter production run than Egypt’s Ramses.

But five decades of steady partnerships with Fiat, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and Ford have helped Turkey rank at number thirteen in the world for automobile production.

Last year cars, trucks, motor vehicle parts, and accessories were the country’s top export earning $25 billion in revenue for Turkey.

Trucks, light commercial vehicles, and buses have been a particular stand out for Turkey, accounting for almost 40 percent of its automotive industry in 2020.

And 2022 has seen Turkish assembly lines producing and selling EVs in the truck and bus sector.  

Ford Otosan, a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and Koç Holding, shipped the all-electric E-Transit cargo van in April, just two months after customers in the U.S. started receiving orders from the company’s Kansas City plant in Missouri.

According to a company statement, Ford Otosan’s plant in Kocaeli, Turkey, plans to start production of the Transit Custom’s %100 electric version in the second half of 2023.

“Ford Otosan is investing more than two billion dollars and growing employment by around 3,000 to increase vehicle production capacity, including for the next-generation Transit Custom model,” said general manager Güven Özyurt.

Meanwhile, the Bursa-based manufacturer Karsan is leading in the electric minibus and bus field, accounting for 90% of Turkey’s exports.

The company’s electric buses are already on the roads in 16 countries, including the U.S.. Karsan operates its autonomous e-ATAK on a 4-kilometer route at Michigan State University just 140 km northwest of the American automobile capital of Detroit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is voicing his enthusiasm for the electric vehicle industry.

“With mass production, the name of our country and our brands in this sector will be well known. Erdoğan said. “The world is moving towards clean energy, and we will never fall behind in this field.”

Erdoğan is visibly associated with the new Turkish e-vehicle manufacturer Togg which aims to produce 175,000 midsize SUV’s a year at its 4,300-worker Gemlik Campus located about 125 km south of Istanbul.  

In an October echo of his predecessor Gürsel, the president took First Lady Emine Erdoğan along for a test drive of the Togg on Republic Day.

“Of course, Turkey has the engineering talent and manufacturing capacity to build a top-line electric car,” said Kaan Kurşun, an Istanbul entrepreneur and co-investor with Lorenzo Schmid in the Swiss “mindset” electric vehicle prototype built in 2008.

“I wish the team at Togg could have developed an authentic brand story instead of peddling it as President Erdoğan’s car. Yes, he has many supporters in Turkey, but I don’t think that will be compelling for consumers in Dubai or Dublin, “said Kurşun. 
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If not Elon, then who?

That’s a question many are contemplating since Elon Musk, Twitter’s CEO, said this week he was actively looking for a new leader to run the social media network.

Musk’s proclamation comes after more than 10 million respondents said in a Musk-created Twitter poll that he should resign. Musk followed up with a tweet that he would resign as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job.”

It was one of many twists in the company’s chaotic restructuring since Musk took over in late October, a period that has included mass layoffs and resignations, advertisers fleeing, policy changes and reversals, and the suspension of some journalists’ accounts.

Musk’s management style is “break-it-to-build it,” said Andrew Miller, chief growth officer at Interbrand North America, a global brand consultancy.

Not a typical turnaround

The new Twitter CEO search has many wondering who could possibly do it. Musk would remain Twitter’s owner, and the task of turning around a beleaguered, long-underperforming company would be daunting.

“There’s a fairly large risk of being terminated or being forced to resign,” said Andy Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who researches tech entrepreneurship and strategy. “So it’s got to be someone comfortable with that outcome.”

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, the electric vehicle firm, had reportedly planned to be in the Twitter CEO position for only a few months. In recent weeks, Tesla investors have clamored for Musk to devote more time to the car company.

Some industry observers see Musk’s poll as a way to prime the public for a planned passing of the Twitter leadership baton.

“I think he was ready to do that, and he wanted to do it with a dramatic flair,” said Richard Hagberg, a leadership coach and psychologist who has worked with Silicon Valley CEOs and entrepreneurs.

Doing damage control

“He would never admit defeat, but maybe he recognizes that the problems he’s having with the Tesla board and some of the bad PR that’s coming his way is damaging his brand,” Hagberg added.

In addition to Tesla and Twitter, Musk is also the CEO of SpaceX, the satellite and rocket manufacturer.

Whoever takes on the role of Twitter CEO will have to share Musk’s vision for the company and contend with his involvement. Musk has a history of not relinquishing control at his other firms, Wu said.

“Elon Musk was supposed to just be an investor of Tesla, he’s actually not a founder, and he couldn’t hold himself back and had to make himself CEO,” said Wu, of the Harvard Business School. “If that’s any precedent, then this is a situation where his bias would be to hold onto power.”

Musk’s apparent fixation with creating headlines and causing a public stir also might make it harder to step down entirely from Twitter, some observers say. Musk is expected to be Twitter’s top influencer sometime in January, set to pass @BarackObama, the former U.S. president’s account, which is currently No. 1 at 130 million Twitter followers.

“Elon Musk is certainly conscious of his public persona, and this is one channel by which he directly impacts his own public persona,” Wu said. “This is one that will be especially difficult for him to step away from.”

Whether Musk stays involved in Twitter’s day-to-day operations or becomes a quiet owner, his potential CEO replacement will have other big tasks — cost cutting, revenue generating, and putting Twitter on a course to succeed.

For that, a cooler, more dispassionate temperament than Musk’s can be useful, Wu said.

“A lot of these cuts that they’re going through right now are financially necessary, and so we need someone that’s prepared to be in that position,” he said.

Some industry observers point to Musk’s inner circle for possible successors, such as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey or venture capitalist David Sacks. Others speculate it could be a seasoned tech executive from the outside, such as former chief operating officer of Facebook — now Meta — Sheryl Sandberg.

Inspiring with a higher purpose

Whoever it is, the new leader of Twitter will need to appeal to employees’ sense of a higher purpose.

“They need to believe in the mission that overcomes the daily practicalities of the lives that we live, otherwise that style is not going to work, because you’re asking people to go well beyond what any manager should ask of its employees. And it has to start from within,” said Miller at Interbrand.

Musk has had some success doing this, rallying Tesla employees around the idea of a climate change solution vis-a-vis electric vehicles, or inspiring SpaceX workers with the dream of going to Mars. Musk also tried to rally Twitter employees around the idea of broadening free speech on Twitter, with mixed results.

Hagberg classifies Musk as a “visionary evangelist,” which he defines as a leader with a vision for the future who also can be egocentric. It’s hard to imagine two visionary evangelist leaders at Twitter. Regardless, the new CEO will have some work to do to woo what may be a rattled workforce, observers say.

“If you want people to support you,” Hagberg said, “you need to understand how to systematically get them to buy into what you’re trying to do.”
…

Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. 

Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by. 

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.” 

Since taking over San Francisco-based Twitter in late October, Musk’s run as CEO has been marked by quickly issued rules and policies that have often been withdrawn or changed soon after being made public. 

He has also alienated some investors in his electric vehicle company Tesla who are concerned that Twitter is taking too much of his attention. 

Some of Musk’s actions have unnerved Twitter advertisers and turned off users. They include laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, letting go contract content moderators and disbanding a council of trust and safety advisors that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform. 

Musk, who also helms the SpaceX rocket company, has previously acknowledged how difficult it will be to find someone to take over as Twitter CEO. 

Bantering with Twitter followers last Sunday, he said that the person replacing him “must like pain a lot” to run a company that he said has been “in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” 

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted. 

As things stand, Musk would still retain overwhelming influence over platform as its owner. He fired the company’s board of directors soon after taking control. 
…

Elon Musk had an eventful year, capping 2022 with a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, a takeover that almost didn’t happen. The controversial CEO has brought changes and disruptions, layoffs and resignations that put Twitter’s fate into question. VOA’s Tina Trinh has more.
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More than half of 17.5 million users who responded to a poll that asked whether billionaire Elon Musk should step down as head of Twitter voted yes when the poll closed on Monday. 

There was no immediate announcement from Twitter, or Musk, about whether that would happen, though he said that he would abide by the results. 

Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday, he asked Twitter users to decide if he should stay in charge of the social media platform after acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media websites. 

In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.” 

But that decision generated so much immediate criticism, including from past defenders of Twitter’s new billionaire owner, that Musk promised not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users. 

The action to block competitors was Musk’s latest attempt to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet. 

The banned platforms included mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn. 

Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile — a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter’s millions of users around the world. Not only links but attempts to bypass the ban by spelling out “instagram dot com” could have led to a suspension, the company said. 

A test case was the prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who in the past has praised Musk but on Sunday told his 1.5 million Twitter followers that this was the “last straw” and to find him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended, and soon after restored as Musk promised to reverse the policy implemented just hours earlier. 

Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts according to the policy but “only when that account’s (asterisk)primary(asterisk) purpose is promotion of competitors.” 

Twitter previously took action to block links to Mastodon after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week. Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users who are unhappy with Musk’s overhaul of Twitter since he bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that ran afoul of the previous Twitter leadership’s rules against hateful conduct and other harms. 

Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.” 

He used that to justify Twitter’s moves last week to suspend the accounts of numerous journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk. 

Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview. 

Sally Buzbee, The Washington Post’s executive editor, called it an “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist” that further undermined Musk’s promise to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech. 

“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she thought had triggered her suspension. 

Musk’s promise to let users decide his future role at Twitter through an unscientific online survey appeared to come out of nowhere Sunday, though he had also promised in November that a reorganization was happening soon. 

Musk was questioned in court on Nov. 16 about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company. 

Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer instead. Musk also said he expected an organizational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been more than a month since he said that. 

In public banter with Twitter followers Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” 

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted. 
…

Twitter users will no longer be able to link to certain rival social media websites, including what the company described Sunday as “prohibited platforms” Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon.

It’s the latest move by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet.

“We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter,” the company said in a statement.

The banned platforms include mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn.

Twitter is also banning promotions of third-party social media link aggregators such as Linktree, which some people use to show where they can be found on different websites.

Twitter previously took action against one of the rivals, Mastodon, after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week. Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users who are unhappy with Musk’s overhaul of Twitter since he bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that ran afoul of the previous Twitter leadership’s rules against hateful conduct and other harms.

Some Twitter users have included links to their new Mastodon profile and encouraged followers to find them there. That’s now banned on Twitter, as are attempts to bypass restrictions such as by spelling out “instagram dot com” and a username instead of a direct website link.

Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta didn’t immediately return a request for comment Sunday.

Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other sites including Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram and Truth Social, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.”

Twitter last week suspended the accounts of numerous journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk.

Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned from Twitter.

Lorenz said she and another Post technology reporter were researching an article concerning Musk. She had tried to communicate with the billionaire but the attempts went unanswered, so she tried to contact him Saturday by posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview.

The specific topic was not disclosed in the tweet, although it was in response to Musk tweeting about an alleged incident earlier in the week involving a “violent stalker” in Southern California and Musk’s complaints about journalists allegedly revealing his family’s location by referencing the jet-tracker account.

When she went back later Saturday to check whether there was a response on Twitter, Lorenz was met with a notification that her account was “permanently suspended.”

“I won’t say I didn’t anticipate it,” Lorenz said in a phone interview early Sunday with The Associated Press. She said she wasn’t given a specific reason for the ban.

Sally Buzbee, The Washington Post’s executive editor, said in a written statement Sunday that the “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist further undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.

“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. “Post journalists should be reinstated immediately, without arbitrary conditions.”

By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she thought had triggered her suspension.
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A prominent video game creator who helped lead Facebook’s expansion into virtual reality has resigned from the social networking service’s corporate parent after becoming disillusioned with the way the technology is being managed.

John Carmack cut his ties with Meta Platforms, a holding company created last year by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a Friday letter that vented his frustration as he stepped down as an executive consultant in virtual reality.

“There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy,” Carmack wrote in the letter, which he shared on Facebook. “”Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say, ‘Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!'”

In response to an inquiry about Carmack’s resignation and remarks, Meta on Saturday directed The Associated Press to a tweet from its chief technology officer and head of its reality labs, Andrew Bosworth. “”It is impossible to overstate the impact you’ve had on our work and the industry as a whole,” Bosworth wrote in his grateful tweet addressed to Carmack.

Carmack’s departure comes at a time that Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has been battling widespread perceptions that he has been wasting billions of dollars trying to establish the Menlo Park, California, company in the “metaverse” — an artificial world filled with avatars of real people.

While the metaverse losses have been mounting, Facebook and affiliated services such as Instagram have been suffering a downturn in advertising that brings in most of the company’s revenue. The decline has been brought on by a combination of recession fears, tougher competition from other social networking services such as TikTok and privacy controls on Apple’s iPhone that have made it tougher to track people’s interests to help sell ads.

Those challenges have caused Meta’s stock to lose nearly two-thirds of its value so far this year, wiping out about $575 billion in shareholder wealth.

Although Carmack had only been working part time at Meta, the dismay that he expressed seems likely to amplify the questions looming over Zuckerberg’s efforts to become as dominant in virtual reality as Facebook has been in social networking since he started the service nearly 20 years ago while attending Harvard University.

Zuckerberg began to explore virtual reality in earnest in 2014 with Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of headset maker Oculus. At the time, Carmack was Oculus’ chief technology officer and then joined Facebook after the deal closed. Before joining Oculus, Carmack was best known as the co-creator of the video game Doom.

Federal regulators are now trying to limit Zuckerberg’s sway in virtual reality by preventing his attempt to buy Within Unlimited, which makes a fitness app designed for the metaverse.

Carmack testified earlier this week in a trial pitting the Federal Trade Commission against Meta over the fate of the deal. Zuckerberg is expected to testify at some point in the trial, which is scheduled to resume Monday in San Jose, California.

Despite his frustration with the way things have been going at Meta, Carmack praised its latest virtual reality headset, the Quest 2, in his resignation letter. He described the headset as “almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning” of his Oculus tenure.

“It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place,” Carmack said of the Quest 2. “It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.”

But Carmack ended his letter with this entreaty: “Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement. Make better decisions and fill your products with ‘Give a Damn!'” 
…

Taiwan’s government said on Saturday it would fine Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, for an unauthorized investment in a Chinese chip maker even after the Taiwanese firm said it would be selling the stake.

Taiwan has turned a wary eye on China’s ambition to boost its semiconductor industry and is tightening legislation to prevent what it says is China stealing its chip technology.

Foxconn, a major Apple Inc. supplier and iPhone maker, disclosed in July it was a shareholder of embattled Chinese chip conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup.

Late Friday, Foxconn said in a filing to the Taipei stock exchange its subsidiary in China had agreed to sell its entire equity stake in Tsinghua Unigroup.

Taiwan’s Economy Ministry said in response that its investment commission, which has to approve all foreign investments, will ask Foxconn on Monday for a “complete explanation” about the investment. 

“As for the fact that the investment was not declared beforehand, the amount will still be calculated in accordance with the formula and the penalty will be imposed in accordance with the law,” it said, without giving details. 

Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

People familiar with the matter have previously told Reuters that Foxconn did not seek approval from the Taiwan government before the investment was made and authorities believe it violated a law governing self-ruled Taiwan’s relations with China, which claims the island as its own. 

In a statement on Saturday before the economy ministry’s, Foxconn said as the year-end approached the original investment had “remained unfinalized.” 

Foxconn said that Xingwei, 99% controlled by its China-listed unit Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd., had agreed to sell its holdings for at least $772 million to a Chinese company called Yantai Haixiu. 

Xingwei controls a 48.9% stake in a different entity that holds a 20% stake in the vehicle owning all of Unigroup. 

“In order to avoid uncertainties from further delays or impact to investment planning and the flexible deployment of capital, the Xingwei Fund will transfer its entire holding in Shengyue Guangzhou to Yantai Haixiu,” it said. “After the transfer is completed, FII will no longer indirectly hold any equity in Tsinghua Unigroup.” 

Tsinghua Unigroup did not respond to a request for comment. 

Taiwanese law states the government can prohibit investment in China “based on the consideration of national security and industry development.” Violators of the law could be fined repeatedly until corrections are made. 

Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., is keen to make auto chips, in particular, as it expands into the electric vehicle market. 

The company has been seeking to acquire chip plants globally as a worldwide chip shortage rattles producers of goods from cars to electronics. 

Taipei prohibits companies from building their most advanced foundries in China to ensure they do not site their best technology offshore. 

 
…

China is spending $143 billion to combat U.S. moves to cut off its supply of semiconductor technology. 

The funds will be used to provide financial subsidies and incentives to help China’s chipmakers develop and acquire semiconductor technology to withstand the U.S. move. 

This is one of three measures, analysts say, taken by Beijing to protect semiconductor companies supporting its vast electronics, automotive and military hardware industries.  

“China views semiconductors as a strategic resource. Therefore, it wants to become self-sufficient in all aspects of advanced chip design and manufacturing,” said Lourdes S. Casanova, director of the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell University. “These funds are meant to build China’s capabilities towards this goal.”

Washington issued an order in October barring U.S. companies from supplying semiconductor chips, chipmaking devices, and updates for past sales to Chinese companies. It also prohibited American citizens from working for Chinese semiconductor firms.  

The U.S. government Thursday broadened its crackdown on China’s chip industry by adding memory chipmaker YMTC and 21 “major” Chinese players in the artificial intelligence chip sector to a Commerce Department trade blacklist. YMTC’s suppliers will now be prevented from shipping U.S. goods to it without a license.  

The U.S. move is likely to hit not just China’s semiconductor industry, but dozens of other businesses as well, such as electronics, artificial intelligence, and automobile manufacturing that depend on U.S.-made chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD. The stakes are high. For instance, Chinese electrical vehicle makers controlled 56% of the global market in the first half of 2022. Such vehicles depend heavily on semiconductor chips. 

Analysts said the U.S. order may also force non-U.S. companies using American technology to cut off support for China’s leading factories and chip designers.  

China has initiated the process of challenging the U.S. order at the World Trade Organization.  Its Commerce Ministry has accused the United States of “generalizing the concept of national security and abusing export control measures, which hinders the normal international trade in chips and other products.” 

Non-US support 

The U.S. move would be much less effective if chipmakers in other countries, particularly in Japan and the Netherlands, take advantage of the market vacuum and step up their supplies to China. This is possible because the new $143 billion package will make it possible for Chinese firms to offer higher prices. The United States is lobbying both these countries to refuse Chinese purchase orders. 

China is likely to raise this issue during the expected visit of Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi to China later this month. This will be the first visit by the Japanese foreign minister to China.  

“Beijing will very likely discuss the issue. It will make it clear that stopping the supply of semiconductor technology would damage China-Japan relations,” said Dexter Roberts, author, and principal of Cold Mountain, an investment management company. 

Casanova said the Netherlands and other European countries will likely follow U.S. policy. “However, other countries have been more reluctant. For instance, both Mexico and Brazil did not ban Huawei as a possible supplier of telecom equipment in the 5G auctions in both countries,” she said.  

It is difficult to predict Japan’s response to the U.S. request, she said. China is Japan’s No. 1 trade partner, with 22%, followed by the U.S. with 18.5%. 

There are no reports of the United States trying to restrict Taiwan, its close ally, from dealing with the Chinese semiconductor industry. TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor company, is based in Taiwan.   

“China is the world’s largest importer of semiconductors since 2005 and China’s semiconductor industry relies mainly on imports from the Taiwanese TSMC,” Casanova said. 

Decoupling China’s semiconductor industry from the global supply chain may hurt U.S. consumers, besides taking away business from American companies that supply chips to Chinese firms.  

“As the U.S. continues to ratchet up efforts to slow the development of China’s advanced chips sector, there will be an impact on global and U.S. consumers who will inevitably pay higher prices. There may be supply shortages of the many products that use chips, from autos to mobile phones and electronic devices,” Roberts said. 

At the same time, the United States has realized that starving China of semiconductor technology will not be easy unless it is backed by other countries. In October, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, a Washington-based economic research organization, said semiconductor-producing countries are closely linked to each other in a supply chain. 

“Each of the five major global semiconductor producers—China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States—is also a large chip importer. Not all chips are equal, and no producer specializes in every chip category, leaving even the largest exporters reliant on imports,” it said.  

Despite the odds, the Biden administration has shown it is determined to delink the Chinese semiconductor industry from the global supply zone. The trade war in the chip industry is set to intensify because chips are central to China’s security and industrial growth plans, analysts said. 
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VOA chief national correspondent Steve Herman was among several journalists to be suspended from Twitter late Thursday.

Followers of the former White House bureau chief’s Twitter account were greeted with a blank screen and message saying, “Account suspended.”

Accounts for journalists from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as some independent journalists, showed similar messages.

It was not immediately clear why those accounts were suspended. VOA’s email requesting comment from the media contact listed on Twitter’s company website was returned with a “delivery failure” message.

Many of the reporters have written articles or posted about changes made to Twitter by its new owner, Elon Musk.

In replies to tweets late Thursday, Musk said on the platform: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

Musk added: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” a reference to Twitter rules banning sharing of personal information, called doxxing.

Reuters reported that Twitter earlier suspended @elonjet, an account tracking Musk’s private jet in real time, a month after he said his commitment to free speech extended to not banning the account.

A spokesperson for the Times said: “Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate. Neither the Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

CNN in a statement described the suspensions as “impulsive and unjustified” and said it had asked Twitter for an explanation. The broadcaster said it would reevaluate its relationship with the platform based on that response.

Twitter is more heavily using automation to moderate content, over manual reviews, its new head of trust and safety, Ella Iwin, told Reuters this month.

At the time of Herman’s suspension, the veteran broadcast journalist had about 112,000 followers. In the hour or so prior to his account being suspended, Herman had been posting about other journalists being removed from the site.

Some information for this article came from Reuters.
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A hacker who reportedly posed as the chief executive of a financial institution claims to have obtained access to the more than 80,000-member database of InfraGard, an FBI-run outreach program that shares sensitive information on national security and cybersecurity threats with public officials and private sector individuals who run U.S. critical infrastructure.

The hacker posted samples purportedly from the database to an online forum popular with cybercriminals last weekend and said the asking price for the entire database was $50,000. 

The hacker made the disclosures to independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, who broke the story. The hacker called the vetting process surprisingly lax. 

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Krebs reported that the agency told him it was aware of a potential false account and was looking into the matter. 

InfraGard’s members include business leaders, information technology professionals, and officials of the military, state and local law enforcement, and the government who are involved in overseeing the safety of such things as the electrical grid, transportation, health care, pipelines, nuclear reactors, the defense industry, dams, water plants and financial services. Founded in 1996, it is the FBI’s largest public-private partnership, with local alliances affiliated with all its field offices. It regularly shares threat advisories from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and serves as a behind-closed-doors social media site for select insiders. 

The database has the names, affiliations and contact information of tens of thousands of InfraGard users. Krebs first reported its theft on Tuesday. 

The hacker, going by the username USDoD on the BreachForums site, said on the site that records of only 47,000 of the forum’s members — slightly more than half — include unique emails. The hacker also posted that the data contained neither Social Security numbers nor dates of birth. Although fields existed in the database for that information, InfraGard’s security-conscious users had left them blank. 

However, the hacker, according to Krebs, claimed to have been messaging InfraGard members, posing as the financial institution’s CEO, to try to obtain more personal data that could be criminally weaponized. 

The AP reached the hacker on the BreachForums site via private message. The person would not say whether a buyer for the records had been found or answer other questions, but did say that Krebs’ article “was 100% accurate.” 

The FBI did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on how the hacker was able to trick it into approving the InfraGard membership. Krebs reported that the hacker had included a contact email address under the person’s control, as well as the CEO’s real mobile phone number, when applying for InfraGard membership in November. 

Krebs quoted the hacker as saying InfraGard approved the application in early December and the email account was used to receive a one-time authentication code. 

Once inside, the hacker said, the database information was easy to obtain with simple software script.
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