President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday banning transactions with ByteDance, the parent company of popular app TikTok . The White House also announced that he signed a similar order banning transactions with Tencent-owned WeChat, a messaging app that is ubiquitous in China, but has a much smaller presence than TikTok in the United States, where it is used mainly by members of the Chinese diaspora. Both orders will take effect in 45 days.

INBOX: @realDonaldTrump has signed an executive order to ban TikTok in 45 days. pic.twitter.com/1zR4HgCPVj

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) August 7, 2020

MORE: @realDonaldTrump has also signed a similar order banning transactions with WeChat. pic.twitter.com/Y4nVlCVBke

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) August 7, 2020

The orders cite the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act.  It is important to note that naming the apps’ operations in the United States as a national emergency is an act that is highly unprecedented and the legality of the orders will likely be challenged. ByteDance is currently pushing back against the Indian government’s July decision to ban TikTok along with 59 other apps; like the U.S., India also cited national security concerns around user data collection.

Microsoft announced over the weekend that it is in negotiations to buy TikTok from ByteDance, naming September 15 as a deadline for negotiations. The order would take affect shortly after the deadline set by Microsoft for the deal. ByteDance reportedly agreed to give up its entire ownership in the app even though it had previously wanted to maintain a minority stake.

Trump announced at the end of last month that he planned to ban TikTok through the use of an executive order. The president and government officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, have made escalating comments over the past few weeks alleging that TikTok is a threat to national security. While TikTok is owned by ByteDance, the Beijing-based company (which also operates a Chinese version of the app called Douyin) has taken steps to distance TikTok from its Chinese operations, and claims that its data is stored outside of China.

The executive order on ByteDance said that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China…continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. At this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, TikTok.”

In 45 days, transactions by any person or property subject to U.S. jurisdiction with ByteDance or any of its subsidiaries will be prohibited “to the extent that they are permitted under applicable law.” The order claims that TikTok’s access to user data including location, browsing and search histories “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to American’s personal and proprietary information–potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

Trump’s executive order on WeChat was less expected, but not a complete surprise because Pompeo named the messaging app earlier this week when he said Trump was planning to take action “shortly” on TikTok and other Chinese companies. Like ByteDance, Trump claims WeChat’s data collection is a national security threat and may give the Chinese Communist Party access to user information. The order also cites WeChat’s censorship of material deemed politically sensitive by the Chinese government.

TechCrunch has contacted ByteDance, TikTok, WeChat and Microsoft for comment.

This story is developing and will be updated.

TikTok, the Chinese video sharing app that’s found itself at the center of a geopolitical power struggle which threatens to put hard limits on its global growth this year, said today it will build its first data center in Europe.

The announcement of a TikTok data center in the EU also follows a landmark ruling by Europe’s top court last month that put international data transfers in the spotlight, dialling up the legal risk around processing data outside the bloc.

TikTok said the forthcoming data center, which will be located in Ireland, will store the data of its European users once it’s up and running (which is expected by early 2022) — with a slated investment into the country of around €420M (~$497M), according to a blog post penned by global CISO, Roland Cloutier.

“This investment in Ireland… will create hundreds of new jobs and play a key role in further strengthening the safeguarding and protection of TikTok user data, with a state of the art physical and network security defense system planned around this new operation,” Cloutier wrote, adding that the regional data centre will have the added boon for European users of faster load times, improving the overall experience of using the app.

The social media app does not break out regional users — but a leaked ad deck suggested it had 17M+ MAUs in Europe at the start of last year.

The flipside of TikTok’s rise to hot social media app beloved of teens everywhere has been earning itself the ire of US president Trump — who earlier this month threatened to use executive powers to ban TikTok in the US unless it sells its US business to an American company. (Microsoft is in the frame as a buyer.)

Whether Trump has the power to block TikTok’s app is debatable. Tech savvy teenagers will surely deploy all their smarts to get around any geoblocks. But operational disruption looks inevitable — and that has been forcing TikTok to make a series of strategic tweaks in a bid to limit damage and/or avoid the very worst outcomes.

Since taking office the US president has shown himself willing to make international business extremely difficult for Chinese tech firms. In the case of mobile device and network kit maker, Huawei, Trump has limited domestic use of its tech and leant on allies to lock it out of their 5G networks (with some success) — citing national security concerns from links to the Chinese Communist Party.

His beef with TikTok is the same stated national security concerns, centered on its access to user data. (Though Trump may have his own personal reasons to dislike the app.)

TikTok, like every major social media app, gathers huge amounts of user data — which its privacy policy specifies it may share user data with third parties, including to fulfil “government inquiries”. So while its appetite for personal data looks much the same as US social media giants (like Facebook) its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is subject to China’s Internet Security Law — which since 2017 has given the Chinese Chinese Communist Party sweeping powers to obtain data from digital companies. And while the US has its own intrusive digital surveillance laws, the existence of a Chinese mirror of the US state-linked data industrial complex has put tech firms right at the heart of geopolitics.

TikTok has been taking steps to try to insulate its international business from US-fuelled security concerns — and also provide some incentives to Trump for not quashing it — hiring Disney executive Kevin Mayer on as CEO of TikTok and COO of ByteDance in May, and promising to create 10,000 jobs in the U.S., as well as claiming US user data is stored in the US.

In parallel it’s been reconfiguring how it operates in Europe, setting up an EMEA Trust and Safety Hub in Dublin, Ireland at the start of this year and building out its team on the ground. In June it also updated its regional terms of service — naming its Irish subsidiary as the local data controller alongside its UK entity, meaning European users’ data no longer falls under its US entity, TikTok Inc.

This reflects distinct rules around personal data which apply across the European Union and European Economic Area. So while European political leaders have not been actively attacking TikTok in the same way as Trump, the company still faces increased legal risk in the region.

Last month CJEU judges made it clear that data transfers to third countries can only be legal if EU users’ data is not being put at risk by problematic surveillance laws and practices. The CJEU ruling (aka ‘Schrems II’) means data processing in countries such as China and India — and, indeed, the US — are now firmly in the risk frame where EU data protection law is concerned.

One way of avoiding this risk is to process European users’ data locally. So TikTok opening a data center in Ireland may also be a response to Schrems II — in that it will offer a way for it to ensure it can comply with requirements flowing from the ruling.

Privacy commentators have suggested the CJEU decision may accelerate data localization efforts — a trend that’s also being seen in countries such as China and Russia (and, under Trump, the US too it seems).

EU data watchdogs have also warned there will be no grace period following the CJEU invalidating the US-EU Privacy Shield data transfer mechanism. While those using other still valid tools for international transfers are bound to carry out an assessment — and either suspend data flows if they identify risks or inform a supervisor that the data is still flowing (which could in turn trigger an investigation).

The EU’s data protection framework, GDPR, bakes in stiff penalties for violations — with fines that can hit 4% of a company’s global annual turnover. So the business risk around EU data protection is no longer small, even as wider geopolitical risks are upping the uncertainty for global Internet players.

“Protecting our community’s privacy and data is and will continue to be our priority,” TikTok’s CISO writes, adding: “Today’s announcement is just the latest part of our ongoing work to enhance our global capability and efforts to protect our users and the TikTok community.”

As uncertainty swirls around TikTok’s future in the U.S., the company this morning announced new Community Guidelines focused on helping keep misleading and deceptive content off its platform. The new rules aim to better clarify what’s allowed and not allowed on TikTok, broaden the app’s fact-checking partnerships ahead of the U.S. election, and ban the use of “deepfakes” (manipulated content) designed to deceive. In addition, TikTok has added an in-app reporting option for election misinformation. It also claims to have worked with experts, including the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF), run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to help counter the threat of foreign influence on elections.

That latter item is a particularly clever spin on TikTok’s current situation, given that it’s the foreign interference of TikTok itself that the Trump Administration is concerned about, along with the potential security risk that comes from the possibility of China’s authoritarian government collecting massive amounts of data on TikTok’s American users.

TikTok, however, says it has worked with CFITF and other experts to help stop the dangers of foreign influence on U.S. elections. The task force shares insight about possible disinformation campaigns across the industry and connects local election officials with online platforms and law enforcement. TikTok didn’t clarify the extent of its work in this area, but CFITF has only existed since 2018 so these would be fairly recent efforts.

The company also says it’s expanding its relationships with PolitiFact and Lead Stories to fact check potential misinformation related to the 2020 U.S. election. The organizations were previously focused on other fact-checks, like those related to COVID-19 and climate change.

However, fact-check organizations’ ability to actually find and fact-check misleading content can be difficult as much of this content is framed by users as “just my opinion.” A quick search on TikTok this morning for “climate change hoax,” for example, pulled up videos with dissenting user opinions on the topic with no fact-check applied. This isn’t a problem unique to TikTok, of course. Social media platforms in general struggle the line between free speech and misinformation, especially when content goes viral that shares a viewpoint not held by a majority of the scientific or academic community.

TikTok also says today it will roll out an election misinformation option to its in-app reporting feature in the “coming weeks.” But it didn’t offer a clear launch date, despite elections now being months away.

The company says it’s clarifying its policy to ban the use of “synthetic or manipulated content,” too. This will now include deepfakes meant to deceive or distort the truth. The policy continues to be questionably enforced. For example, TikTok easily pulled up the recent viral video that claims to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi drunk — a video that has been manipulated from the original where she speaks normally. There is no fact-check applied. Facebook, by comparison, labeled the video “partly false,” given the digital slowing down of the original video.

None of these problems around fake content or attempts to deceive are unique to TikTok, of course. U.S. companies don’t have things under control, either.

TikTok, in addition, notes it releases Transparency Reports and recently added new Transparency webpage with information for lawmakers and users alike.

Its policy around “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” has also been restated to be clearer, TikTok says.

The new policy reads:

Do not engage in coordinated inauthentic activities (such as the creation of accounts) to exert influence and sway public opinion while misleading individuals, our community or the larger public about the account’s identity, location or purpose

The Trump administration has put the TikTok ban on hold for at least 45 days for now, ostensibly so TikTok could work out a deal with Microsoft. The U.S. government wants the company to spin out its U.S. operations to distance itself from China.

TikTok users, naturally, have their own theories about why Trump is coming down so hard on their prefered social app. Some number of TikTok teens pranked the Trump campaign over the rally in Tulsa, for starters. Other TikTok users pointed out that Trump’s real concern is that TikTok doesn’t allow political ads — and microtargeting voters on Facebook helped Trump win the last election.

These theories are interesting to debate (may not be entirely wrong!), but the reality is that the concerns over TikTok’s connection to China have some bipartisan support.

Today the President appeared to bless the budding Microsoft-TikTok deal, continuing his evolution on a possible transaction. After stating last Friday that he’d rather see TikTok banned than sold to a US-based company, Trump changed his tune over the weekend. TikTok is owned by China-based company ByteDance, which owns a portfolio of apps and services.

A weekend phone call between Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, and the American prime appeared to change his mind, leading to the software company sharing publicly on Sunday that it was pursuing a deal.

Then today the President, endorsing a deal between an American company and ByteDance over TikTok, also said that he expects a chunk of the sale price to wind up in the accounts of the American government.

The American President has long struggled with basic economic concepts. For example, who pays tariffs. But to see Trump state that he expects a chunk of a deal between two private companies that he is effectively forcing to the altar is surreal. To fully grok his take, we’ve roughly transcribed the pertinent few minutes of his explanation from this morning, when asked about the weekend call with Microsoft’s Nadella. It’s worth a read (bold highlights are TechCrunch’s):

We had a great conversation, uh, he called me, to see whether or not, uh, how I felt about it. And I said look, it can’t be controlled, for security reasons, by China. Too big, too invasive. And it can’t be. And here’s the deal. I don’t mind if, whether it’s Microsoft or somebody else — a big company, a secure company, a very American company — buy it.

It’s probably easier to buy the whole thing than to buy 30% of it. ‘Cause I say how do you do 30%? Who’s going to get the name? The name is hot, the brand is hot. And who’s going to get the name? How do you do that if it’s owned by two different companies? So, my personal opinion was, you are probably better off buying the whole thing rather than buying 30% of it. I think buying 30% is complicated.

And, uh, I suggested that he can go ahead, he can try. We set a date, I set a date, of around September 15th, at which point it’s going to be out of business in the United States. But if somebody, whether it’s Microsoft or somebody else, buys it, that’ll be interesting.

I did say that if you buy it, whatever the price is, that goes to whoever owns it, because I guess it’s China, essentially, but more than anything else, I said a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States. Because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen. Right now they don’t have any rights, unless we give it to ’em. So if we’re going to give them the rights, then it has to come into, it has to come into this country.

It’s a little bit like the landlord-tenant [relationship]. Uh, without a lease, the tenant has nothing. So they pay what is called “key money” or they pay something. But the United States should be reimbursed, or should be paid a substantial amount of money because without the United States they don’t have anything, at least having to do with the 30%.

So, uh, I told him that. I think we are going to have, uh, maybe a deal is going to be made, it’s a great asset, it’s a great asset. But it’s not a great asset in the United States unless they have the approval of the United States.

So it’ll close down on September 15th, unless Microsoft or somebody else is able to buy it, and work out a deal, an appropriate deal, so the Treasury of the–, really the Treasury, I suppose you would say, of the United States, gets a lot of money. A lot of money.

Intel and Boeing, two of the pillars of American industry.

Intel makes some of the most impressive chips in the world and has for decades, driving high-performance computing to its limits while supporting a company with a market cap today of $200 billion and supporting more than 110,000 employees. Meanwhile, Boeing remains a global leader in aviation despite retiring the 747, with $66 billion in revenue backing a market cap of $90 billion and hosting more than 153,000 workers.

Like pillars of classic Rome though, they exist merely as a shell of their former function. They are weathered, tired, and crumbling, and it doesn’t seem likely that they can hold up the American economy the way they have over the past generation, nor keep the country on the frontier of innovation any longer in their critical industries.

Deindustrialization has swept through the United States for decades of course. It started with the easy stuff — textiles, consumer widgets, appliances — but the sophistication of export-driven economies like Korea, Germany, Taiwan, China, Thailand, Turkey and others has pushed more and more of the manufacturing stack overseas.

Now, even the absolute finest pillars of American exceptionalism in industry are under deep threat. Intel is in the worst position between the two. The company’s bombshell announcement that it is delaying its next-generation 7nm node and would also begin outsourcing some of its manufacturing caused waves on Wall Street, with the stock down nearly 20% in just two weeks. Analysts increasingly believe that Taiwan contract fab TSMC is taking a multi-year lead over Intel’s technology.

Meanwhile, Boeing had and continues to have that whole 737 MAX debacle since the plane model’s first crash in October 2018. That was debilitating enough, but then you add coronavirus and the global collapse of travel on top of it, and the company’s very prospects are looking quite a bit more endangered than anyone could have anticipated two years ago.

For the United States, the first step in ameliorating these slow-motion train wrecks has been the classic policy crisis tool of the bailout. Intel is maybe the most prominent example of America’s death in semiconductors, but it is hardly alone. So Congress is targeting the industry for heavy incentives to try to bridge the gap. Two weeks ago, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) got widespread bipartisan support for his amendment to this year’s defense budget bill that would appropriate billions of dollars of funding and incentives to propel American chipmaking.

Meanwhile, Boeing sought a $60 billion government bailout, before finding a debt consortium of private investors to fund operations. Yet, Boeing gets a different kind of support from the U.S. government, given that a third of its revenues from defense sales, which is obviously heavily driven by the Pentagon. A government bailout for the manufacturer this year is still not out of the question.

Smothering dollars on these companies isn’t going to change the rot that is spreading within. Both companies have transformed engineering-focused cultures to profit-driven maximization, while facing keen global competition that has chipped away at their advantages. Boeing is again safer than Intel — Airbus hasn’t been much better when it comes to innovation and bad strategic decisions like the A380, and China’s airframe manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China isn’t really ready for primetime although it is certainly progressing.

It’s not that industrial policy fails, it’s that American industrial policy seems flagrantly incompetent.

Taiwan has made semiconductor excellence a critical aspect of its national economy. Korea has made cultural productions like K-pop and K-drama a top government priority, now a massive growing global industry. China has perhaps most notoriously made supporting flagship industries a key bedrock of its economic development, to much success over the past three decades. And the list continues.

What’s the difference? In one word: strategy. In each of these successful cases, governments spurred the creation of new industries through incentives and policy changes, while ensuring that these industries built up differentiated intellectual property that would pay back those incentives in spades.

The United States on the other hand always jumps in with the handouts at precisely the wrong time. Rather than incentivizing the creation of new industries, it runs to the industries in decline and sprays that cash fertilizer across the weeds and deadwood.

While Congress spends billions to try to salvage the chip industry, the Trump Administration announced a $75 million quantum computing initiative aimed at spurring America to the frontiers of advanced computing. While China is investing billions in 5G wireless technologies, America is offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to start rural testbeds.

As an economic superpower, the United States has lived in a world where it was simply, by default, the best at whatever it and its citizens wanted to be. Industries could be fragmented, government policy could be out-of-whack, schools and universities could be horrifically inefficient in training, but none of that mattered since few other countries could compete across such a breadth of industry.

Today, plenty of countries can compete in manufacturing and cultural production. And not only can they compete, but they are willing to go all-in to ensure that they succeed in these endeavors. Taiwan is not great at semiconductors because of a random constellation of factors, it’s great because it pushed its entire economy, education system, and government to prioritize its excellence on top of changes like the opening of the global economy and the rise of China.

Intel and Boeing still have a chance of course, they are still massive companies with cash and talent. Yet, one can’t help look at the history of every other collapsed manufacturing company in the U.S. and not feel a startling sense of déjà vu. We didn’t get it right those times — do we have it in us to do it right this time?

Days after President Donald Trump announced he could use an executive order to ban TikTok from the United States, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the administration is “closing in on a solution and I think you’ll see the president’s announcement shortly.”

In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo, Pompeo also said that the Trump administration may take action against other Chinese tech companies doing business in the U.S., claiming that some are “feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Beijing-based ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, is currently in talks with Microsoft to sell its TikTok business in the U.S. and several other countries to the U.S. tech giant. The negotiations have taken on extra urgency over the last two weeks as U.S. scrutiny of TikTok increased.

Microsoft said on Sunday that it is in discussions to buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand by September 15, and that its chief executive officer, Satya Nadella had talked to Trump about the president’s security concerns.

The company’s announcement came after reports that a potential Microsoft-TikTok deal would put Microsoft in charge of protecting U.S.-based users’ data. Reuters reported last week that ByteDance will completely relinquish control to Microsoft, even though it had previously wanted to hold onto a minority stake in the U.S. TikTok business.

Notably, Microsoft didn’t mention India in its statement, even though TikTok was banned there in June, along with 58 other apps developed by Chinese companies that the Indian government deemed potential threats to national security.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last Wednesday that TikTok is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). This follows an earlier investigation by the CFIUS into whether ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly in 2018, which it merged with TikTok, constitutes a national security threat. A decision on the TikTok-Musical.ly review still hasn’t been released.

When asked by Bartiromo if a sale would be enough to placate the U.S. government, Pompeo said the Trump administration would “make sure that everything we have done drives us as close to zero risk for the American people.”

But several Republican lawmakers have said that a sale would not be enough. Marc Rubio, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Financial Times last week that TikTok still needs to answer questions about where its data is store and how it is protected.

“Until TikTok’s owners—regardless of who that might be—can answer these basic questions and get its story straight, I remain concerned about the company’s activities and reported ties to China,” Rubio said.

Beyond TikTok

The day before Pompeo’s Fox News interview, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News that the Trump administration is also reviewing “any kind of software that sends the information for Americans back to servers in China.”

Pompeo also suggested that the U.S. government may take action against more Chinese technology companies. “These Chinese software companies doing business in the United States, whether it’s TikTok or WeChat—there are countless more, as Peter Navarro said, are feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, their national security apparatus, could be their facial recognition pattern, information about their residence, their phone numbers, their friends,” he alleged.

Pompeo added that Trump will “take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” but did not elaborate on what that will entail or what companies might be affected.

The U.S. government said last month that it may restrict WeChat in China, even though the version of WeChat available in the U.S. has far less features than the one in China, where it is used for payments, bookings e-commerce and other functions in addition to messaging. While WeChat is ubiquitous in China, its user base in the U.S. is much smaller, and it is primarily used by members of the Chinese diaspora and foreign businesses that have operations or a connection in China.

As TikTok’s existential rollercoaster ride continues to rattle on, the company is trying to sway regulators and the public with a flood of dollars and arguments wrapped in free enterprise and free speech to ensure that its parent company Bytedance can retain control of its operations.

The push to validate its business comes as reports swirl around a potential Presidential ban and bid from Microsoft to take over the company’s business in the U.S.

As it confronts domestic competitors and political attacks, TikTok and its parent company Bytedance have picked up some defenders from the American civil rights movement.

Late last night, the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted its objections to the proposed ban by President Trump.

“With any Internet platform, we should be concerned about the risk that sensitive private data will be funneled to abusive governments, including our own,” the ACLU wrote in a subsequent statement. “But shutting one platform down, even if it were legally possible to do so, harms freedom of speech online and does nothing to resolve the broader problem of unjustified government surveillance.”

m.weibo.cn

微博

随时随地发现新鲜事！微博带你欣赏世界上每一个精彩瞬间，了解每一个幕后故事。分享你想表达的，让全世界都能听到你的心声！

Even as ownership of the service remains an open question, the company moved quickly to reassure its users that TikTok would continue to operate in the U.S.

The company is also redoubling its efforts to appeal to creators even as it faces defections over its potential mishandling of user data.

On Tuesday, a clutch of the company’s largest celebrities, with a collective audience of some 47 million viewers, abandoned the platform for its much smaller competitor, Triller.

Founded in 2015, two years before TikTok began its explosive rise to prominence, Triller is backed by some of the biggest names in American music and entertainment including Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd,  Marshmello, Lil Wayne, Juice WRLD, Young Thug, Kendrick Lamar, Baron Davis, Tyga, TI, Jake Paul and Troy Carter. 

Now, TikTok stars Josh Richards, Griffin Johnson, Noah Beck and Anthony Reeves are joining their ranks as investors and advisors. Richards, Johnson, Beck and Reeves are also being compensated by Triller, but the reason they cited for leaving the service are the security concerns from governments.

Triller is compensating Richards, Johnson, Beck, and Reeves, though the details of the deals are undisclosed. Despite that, the creators say they’re leaving TikTok because they’ve grown wary of the Chinese-owned company’s security practices.

“After seeing the U.S. and other countries’ governments’ concerns over TikTok—and given my responsibility to protect and lead my followers and other influencers—I followed my instincts as an entrepreneur and made it my mission to find a solution,” Richards, who’s assuming the title of chief strategy officer, told the LA Times. 

TikTok has responded by announcing a dramatic increase in the company’s creator fund. Initially set at $200 million, in a blog post earlier this week, TikTok chief executive Kevin Mayer announced that the fund would reach $1 billion over the next three years.

TikTok’s charm offensive may stave off the assaults, but the company will need to address concerns around user data. It’s the most pressing threat to the company and the one it’s least equipped to deal with.

The U.S. Space Command has released details about an alleged anti-satellite weapons test it suspects Russian of conducting using an existing probe already on orbit, The Verge reports. The Russian satellite in question is the same one that made headlines back at the beginning of 2020 when it seemed to be tailing an existing orbital U.S. spy satellite. That same spacecraft appears to have deployed some kind of projectile according to Space Command, which monitors objects currently in orbit around Earth.

General John Raymond of U.S. Space Command told the Verge that this represents “further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems,” and pursing a strategy that could but U.S. and allied in-space assets at risk.

The militarization of space isn’t new, and parties on all sides have been pursuing development of both offensive and defensive in-space weapons technologies. One of the biggest potential risks lies in weapons that, like this one in theory, could be deployed from satellites to destroy others – potentially disabling key ground communications, intelligence or observation space-based infrastructure that is used to support command and control operations on terrestrial battlegrounds and in the defense or observation of key military assets.

Russia isn’t the only global power unnerving the U.S. when it comes to the militarization of space: An April test by India saw that nation demonstrate a ground-to-orbit anti-satellite missile system, which NASA Administrator denied as being “not compatible with human spaceflight.” India is hardly the first country to demonstrate this kind of capability, however, as the U.S., China and Russian have all performed similar tests.

The growing risk of orbit-to-orbit offensive weapons has had a dramatic effect on how militaries including that of the U.S. has changed its priorities for in-space assets. For instance, the Department of Defense and other U.S. defense and intelligence agencies appear to be shifting focus away from the large, geosynchronous satellites that were massively costly and relatively unique upon which they used to rely, and towards smaller, more nimble satellites that might operate in low Earth orbit and consist of constellations with built-in redundancy. They’ve also been actively funding the development of commercial small-scale launcher startups, which can offer more response orbital launch services even than SpaceX and other existing providers.

While there are obviously many vocal detractors regarding the militarization of space, the fact remains that it’s an area where a number of global superpowers have spent billions, since the potential tactical advantage it provides is immense. Based on the increasing frequency and more public nature of tests like this one, it’s a segment where the U.S. in particular will be only too happy to look for support from the private sector, including technology startups, that can provide creative and advanced solutions.

China successfully launched a combination Mars orbiter and rover early this morning, using a Long March 5 rocket that took off from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island at 12:41 AM EDT. The Tianwen-1 payload it carries represents China’s first full-scale Mars exploration mission, after a prior partial attempt with a orbital Mars satellite called Yinghuo-1 failed to leave Earth’s orbit in 2011.

This is a major effort not just for China, but also for extra-terrestrial planetary exploration in general, because it includes the combination effort of both the lander and rover in one combined mission, with the plan to deploy the rover on land and have it communicate with the orbiter as it makes its way around Mars all in one trip.

Tianwen-1 is the second Mars mission to take off this month, following a successful launch earlier this week by the UAE from Japan atop a Japanese MHI rocket. That mission, ‘Hope,’ carried an orbiter designed to take atmospheric readings of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

China’s mission includes a planned 90-day excursion for the solar-powered rover it carries, which will employ various instruments on board to take samples and readings including multispectral photography, surface composition, weather readings and magnetic field information. The orbiter will also use its own cameras and instruments to gather info, including spectrometer readings, radar and photography, and will also act as a relay station to get data from the rover back to Earth.

There’s still one more mission to Mars yet to go before this year’s close approach (the time when Earth and Mars are closest to each other in their relative solar orbits) ends: NASA’s Perserverance Mars rover launch. That’s set to take off on July 30, weather and conditions permitting. Perseverance is the successor to NASA’s Curiosity rover, and includes a number of new scientific instruments to seek evidence of ancient life, and attempt to gather samples to actually return to Earth. It’ll also carry a small autonomous helicopter, which will hopefully become the first powered aircraft to take off from the surface of Mars when it reaches the red planet.

Tianwen-1 is expected to reach Mars next February, after a multi-month passage, which is the shortest trip possible between the two planets based on their relative orbits.

When big platforms have carved out large swaths of the delivery market, the best thing for an upstart company to do is to specialize.

For Chowbus, that meant building a food-delivery business that finds restaurants whose cuisines specialize in regional cuisines from Northern and Southern China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

It’s a strategy that has now netted the company $33 million in financing led by the Silicon Valley-based investment firm Altos Ventures and New York’s Left Lane Capital. Hyde Park Angels, Fika Ventures, FJ Labs and Silicon Valley Bank also participated in the round.

Founded four years ago in Chicago by Suyu Zhang and Linxin Wen, the company said that its goal was to connect people with authentic Asian food that’s not easy to find on delivery apps. Over the past year, the company touted significant growth in its business, a traction that can be reflected in its decision to bring on the former chief operating officer of Jump Bikes, Kenny Tsai, as its chief operating officer, and Jieying Zheng, a former Groupon product leader as its head of product.

“When we say we’re true partners to the restaurants we work with, we mean it. By eliminating hidden fees, helping them showcase their best dishes, and other efforts we make on their behalf, we really go the extra mile to help our restaurant partners succeed,” said Wen, Chowbus’ chief executive, in a statement. “We only succeed if they do.”

And seemingly, Chowbus is succeeding. The company raised $4 million in its first round of institutional funding just last year and its rise has been precipitous since then.

The Chicago-based company said it would use its new funding to expand to more cities across the US and add new products like a “dine-in” feature allowing diners to order and pay for their meals on their phone for a contactless experience at restaurants in cities that have flattened the curve of COVID-19 infections and are now reopening. 

Chowbus pitches its lack of hidden fees and footprint across 20 cities in North America including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, and many other cities across North America. In Los Angeles, the company offers menus in Mandarin and Cantonese and allows its users to bundle dishes from multiple restaurants in a single delivery.

Other companies are experimenting with specialization as a way to differentiate from the major delivery services that are on the market. Black and Mobile, which launched in Philadelphia but is in the process of expanding across the country, is a delivery service focused on Black-owned restaurants and food stores.

Founded by David Cabello, Black and Mobile was started in 2017 by the 22 year-old college dropout. The company launched its first operations outside of Atlanta earlier this month and is available on iOS.

“The market is experiencing a permanent shift from offline to online ordering, a trend that Chowbus is actively driving,” said Harley Miller, Managing Partner at Left Lane Capital . “Focusing on this large and loyal constituency with a vertical-approach to supporting Asian restaurants and food purveyors has allowed Chowbus to differentiate itself on both sides of the marketplace. The capital efficiency with which they have operated, relative to the scale achieved, is extraordinarily impressive, and not something we often see.”

The UK lacks a comprehensive and cohesive high level strategy to respond to the cyber threat posed by Russia and other hostile states using online disinformation and influence ops to target democratic institutions and values, a parliamentary committee has warned in a long-delayed report that’s finally been published today.

“The UK is clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts,” the committee warns, calling for legislation to tackle the multi-pronged threat posed by hostile foreign influence operations in the digital era.

The report also urges the government to do the leg work of attributing state-backed cyber attacks — recommending a tactic of ‘naming and shaming’ perpetrators, while recognizing that UK agencies have, since the WannaCry attack, been more willing to publicly attribute a cyber attack to a state actor like Russia than they were in decades past. (Last week the government did just that in relation to COVID-19 vaccine R&D efforts — attacking Russia for targeting the work with custom malware, as UK ministers sought to get out ahead of the committee’s recommendations.)

“Russia’s cyber capability, when combined with its willingness to deploy it in a malicious capacity, is a matter of grave concern, and poses an immediate and urgent threat to our national security,” the committee warns.

On the threat posed to democracy by state-backed online disinformation and influence campaigns, the committee also points a finger of blame at social media giants for “failing to play their part”.

“It is the social media companies which hold the key and yet are failing to play their part,” the committee writes, urging the government to establish “a protocol” with platform giants to ensure they “take covert hostile state use of their platforms seriously, and have clear timescales within which they commit to removing such material”.

“Government should ‘name and shame’ those which fail to act,” the committee adds, suggesting such a protocol could be “usefully expanded” to other areas where the government is seeking action from platforms giants.

Russia report

The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) prepared the dossier for publication last year, after conducting a lengthy enquiry into Russian state influence in the UK — including examining how money from Russian oligarchs flows into the country, and especially into London, via wealthy ex-pats and their establishment links; as well as looking at Russia’s use of hostile cyber operations to attempt to influence UK elections.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson blocked publication ahead of last year’s general election — meaning it’s taken a full nine months for the report to make it into the public domain, despite then committee chair urging publication ahead of polling day. The UK’s next election, meanwhile, is not likely for some half a decade’s time. (Related: Johnson was able to capitalize on unregulated social media ads during his own election campaign last year, so, er… )

The DCMS committee, which was one of the bodies that submitted evidence to the ISC’s inquiry, has similarly been warning for years about the threats posed to democracy by online disinformation and political targeting — as have the national data watchdog and others. Yet successive Conservative-led governments have failed to act on urgent recommendations in this area.

Last year ministers set out a proposal to regulate a broad swathe of ‘online harms’, although the focus is not specifically on political disinformation — and draft legislation still hasn’t been laid before parliament.

“The clearest requirement for immediate action is for new legislation,” the ISC committee writes of the threat posed by Russia. “The Intelligence Community must be given the tools it needs and be put in the best possible position if it is to tackle this very capable adversary, and this means a new statutory framework to tackle espionage, the illicit financial dealings of the Russian elite and the ‘enablers’ who support this activity.”

The report labels foreign disinformation operations and online influence campaigns something of a “hot potato” no UK agency wants to handle. A key gap the report highlights is this lack of ministerial responsibility for combating the democratic threat posed by hostile foreign states, leveraging connectivity to spread propaganda or deploy malware.

“Protecting our democratic discourse and processes from hostile foreign interference is a central responsibility of Government, and should be a ministerial priority,” the committee writes, flagging both the lack of central, ministerial responsibility and a reluctance by the UK’s intelligence and security agencies to involve themselves in actively defending democratic processes.

“Whilst we understand the nervousness around any suggestion that the intelligence and security Agencies might be involved in democratic processes – certainly a fear that is writ large in other countries – that cannot apply when it comes to the protection of those processes. And without seeking in any way to imply that DCMS [the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport] is not capable, or that the Electoral Commission is not a staunch defender of democracy, it is a question of scale and access. DCMS is a small Whitehall policy department and the Electoral Commission is an arm’s length body; neither is in the central position required to tackle a major hostile state threat to our democracy.”

Last July the government did announce what it called its Defending Democracy programme, which — per the ISC committee report — is intended to “co-ordinate work on protecting democratic discourse and processes from interference under the leadership of the Cabinet Office, with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Deputy National Security Adviser holding overall responsibility at ministerial and official level respectively”.

However the committee points out this structure is “still rather fragmented”, noting that at least ten separate teams are involved across government.

It also questions the level of priority being attached to the issue, writing that: “It seems to have been afforded a rather low priority: it was signed off by the National Security Council only in February 2019, almost three years after the EU referendum campaign and the US presidential election which brought these issues to the fore.”

“In the Committee’s view, a foreign power seeking to interfere in our democratic processes – whether it is successful or not – cannot be taken lightly; our democracy is intrinsic to our country’s success and well-being and any threat to it must be treated as a serious national security issue by those tasked with defending us,” it adds.

The lack of an overarching ministerial body invested with central responsibility to tackle online threats to democracy goes a long way to explaining the damp squib of a response around breaches of UK election law which relate to the Brexit vote — when social media platforms were used to funnel in dark money to fund digital ads aimed at influencing the outcome of what should have been a UK-only vote.

(A redacted footnote in the report touches on the £8M donation by Arron Banks to the Leave.EU campaign — “the biggest donor in British political history”; noting how the Electoral Commission, which had been investigating the source of the donation, referred the case to the National Crime Agency — “which investigated it ***” [redacting any committee commentary on what was or was not found by the NCA]; before adding: “In September 2019, the National Crime Agency announced that it had concluded the investigation, having found no evidence that any criminal offences had been committed under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 or company law by any of the individuals or organisations referred to it by the Electoral Commission.”)

“The regulation of political advertising falls outside this Committee’s remit,” the ISC report adds, under a brief section on ‘Political advertising on social media’. “We agree, however, with the DCMS Select Committee’s conclusion that the regulatory framework needs urgent review if it is to be fit for purpose in the age of widespread social media.

“In particular, we note and affirm the Select Committee’s recommendation that all online political adverts should include an imprint stating who is paying for it. We would add to that a requirement for social media companies to co-operate with MI5 where it is suspected that a hostile foreign state may be covertly running a campaign.”

On Brexit itself, and the heavily polarizing question of how much influence Russia was able to exert over the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, the committee suggests this would be “difficult” or even “impossible” to assess. But it emphasizes: “it is important to establish whether a hostile state took deliberate action with the aim of influencing a UK democratic process, irrespective of whether it was successful or not.”

The report then goes on to query the lack of evidence of an attempt by the UK government or security agencies to do just that.

In one interesting — and heavily redacted paragraph — the committee notes it sought to ascertain whether UK intelligence agencies hold “secret intelligence” that might support or supplement open source studies that have pointed to attempts by Russia to influence the Brexit vote — but was sent only a very brief response.

Here the committee writes:

In response to our request for written evidence at the outset of the Inquiry, MI5 initially provided just six lines of text. It stated that ***, before referring to academic studies. This was noteworthy in terms of the way it was couched (***) and the reference to open source studies ***. The brevity was also, to us, again, indicative of the extreme caution amongst the intelligence and security Agencies at the thought that they might have any role in relation to the UK’s democratic processes, and particularly one as contentious as the EU referendum. We repeat that this attitude is illogical; this is about the protection of the process and mechanism from hostile state interference, which should fall to our intelligence and security Agencies.

The report also records a gap in the government’s response on this issue — with the committee being told of no active attempt by government to understand whether or not UK elections have been targeted by Russia.

“The written evidence provided to us appeared to suggest that HMG had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on an election, for example influencing results,” it writes.

A later redacted paragraph indicates an assessment by the committee that the government failed to fully take into account open source material which had indicated attempts to influence Brexit (such as the studies of attempts to influence the referendum using Russia state mouthpieces RT and Sputnik; or via social media campaigns).

“Given that the Committee has previously been informed that open source material is now fully represented in the Government’s understanding of the threat picture, it was surprising to us that in this instance it was not,” the committee adds.

The committee also raises an eyebrow at the lack of any post-referendum analysis of Russian attempts to influence the vote by UK intelligence agencies — which it describes as in “stark contrast” to the US agency response following the revelations of Russian disops targeted at the 2016 US presidential election.

“Whilst the issues at stake in the EU referendum campaign are less clear-cut, it is nonetheless the Committee’s view that the UK Intelligence Community should produce an analogous assessment of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary of it be published,” it suggests.

In other recommendations related to Russia’s “offensive cyber” capabilities, the committee reiterates that there’s a need for “a common international approach” to tackling the threat.

“It is clear there is now a pressing requirement for the introduction of a doctrine, or set of protocols, to ensure that there is a common approach to Offensive Cyber. While the UN has agreed that international law, and in particular the UN Charter, applies in cyberspace, there is still a need for a greater global understanding of how this should work in practice,” it writes, noting that it made the same recommendation in its 2016-17 annual
report.

“It is imperative that there are now tangible developments in this area in light of the increasing threat from Russia (and others, including China, Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). Achieving a consensus on this common approach will be a challenging process, but as a leading proponent of the Rules Based International Order it is essential that the UK helps to promote and shape Rules of Engagement, working
with our allies.”

The security-cleared committee notes that the public report is a redacted summary of a more detailed dossier it felt unable to publish on account of classified information and the risk of Russia being able to use it to glean too much intelligence on the level of UK intelligence of its activities. Hence opting for a more truncated (and redacted) document than it would usually publish — which again raises questions over why Johnson sought repeatedly to delay publication.

Plenty of sections of the report contain a string of asterisk at a crucial point, eliding strategic specifics (e.g. this paragraph on exactly how Russia is targeting critical UK infrastructure: “Russia has also undertaken cyber pre-positioning activity on other nations’ Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has advised that there is *** Russian cyber intrusion into the UK’s CNI – particularly marked in the *** sectors.)”)

Most recently Number 10 sought to influence the election of the ISC committee chair by seeking to parachute a preferred candidate into the seat — which could have further delayed publication of the report. However the attempt at stacking the committee was thwarted when new chair, Conservative MP Julian Lewis, sided with opposition MPs to vote for himself. After which the newly elected committee voted unanimously to release the Russia report before the summer recess of parliament, avoiding another multi-month delay.

Another major chunk of the report, which tackles the topic of Russian expatriate oligarchs and their money; how they’ve been welcomed into UK society with “open arms”, enabling their illicit finance to be recycled through “the London ‘laundromat’, and to find its way inexorably into political party coffers, may explain the government’s reluctance for the report to be made public.

The committee’s commentary here makes particularly awkward reading for a political party with major Russian donors. And a prime minister with Russian oligarch friends…

“It is widely recognised that the key to London’s appeal was the exploitation of the UK’s investor visa scheme, introduced in 1994, followed by the promotion of a light and limited touch to regulation, with London’s strong capital and housing markets offering sound investment opportunities,” the committee writes, further noting that Russian money was also invested in “extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment – PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money, contributing to a ‘reputation laundering’ process”.

“In brief, Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth,” it adds.

You can read the full report here.

In what could be a starting gun for the commercialization of the cell-based meat business, upstart cultivated meat company Higher Steaks said it has managed to produce samples of its first products — bacon strips and pork belly made in a lab from cellular material.

With the revelation, Higher Steaks, a bootstrapped Cambridge, UK-based company, leapfrogs into a competitive position with a number of far larger companies that have raised far more capital.

“There’s still a lot of work until it’s commercial,” said Higher Steaks chief executive Benjamina Bollag, but the revelation of a pork belly product that’s made from 50 percent cultivated cells and a bacon product which contains 70 percent meat grown from a cell material in a laboratory is something of a milestone for the industry.  

The remaining ingredients in Higher Steaks bacon and pork belly are a mixture of plant based, proteins, fats, and starches to bind the cellular material together. To achieve this first step on its road to commercialization, HIgher Steaks tapped the expertise of an undisclosed chef to formulate the meat into an approximation of the pork belly and bacon.

Higher Steaks head of research and development, Ruth Helen Faram and chief executive Benjamina Bollag Image Credits: Higher Steaks (opens in a new window)

At this stage, the pilot was more to show what Higher Steaks can do rather than what the company will do, said Bollag.

“In the future it will be scaffolding,” said Bollag. “It’s more showing what our meat can do and what we’re working on. In the future it will be with scaffolding.”

A number of companies including Tantti Laboratories, Matrix Meats, and Prellis Biologics all make the kind of biomaterial nano-scale scaffolding that could be used as a frame on which to grow structures equivalent to the fibrous textures of muscle.

The commercial viability of products from companies like Higher Steaks, Memphis Meats, Aleph Farms, Meatable, Integriculture, Mosa Meat and Supermeat, depends on more than just companies like Tantti and Matrix. but also on the ability of Thermo Fisher, Future Fields, and Merck to bring down the cost of the cell cultures that are required to grow the animal cells.

In all, some thirty cell-based meat startups have launched globally since 2014 and they’re all looking for a slice of the $1.4 trillion meat market.

Meanwhile demand for pork continues to rise even as supplies have been decimated by an outbreak of African Swine Fever that could have killed as much as 40 percent of China’s population of pigs in 2019.

“Our mission is to provide meat that is healthy and sustainable without the consumer making any sacrifices on taste,” said Bollag in a statement. “The production of the first ever cultivated bacon and pork belly is proof that new techniques can help meet overwhelming demand for pork products globally.”

Given the highly capitalized competitors that Higher Steaks faces off against, the company is looking for industry partners to help commercialize its technology.

To improve its competitive position, Higher Steaks recently hired Dr. James Clark, the former chief technology officer of PredictImmune.

“I was always quite intrigued by cultured meat production, a mix of both science and food production. In 2013 I watched the first cultured meat burger from Mark Post costing £250k, cooked on the BBC,” said Clark. “I was approached about joining Higher Steaks earlier this year and was attracted to joining primarily by the science along with the ambition and energy of the Higher Steaks founder Benjamina Bollag. I believe Higher Steaks is a company with a technology to be disruptive in the cultured meat area and at my career stage I was looking for a challenge.”

Brought in to scale the cultivated meat process at Higher Steaks, Clark has led the development of biotech and pharma products at early stage and publicly traded companies.

“The addition of Dr James Clark to the team gives Higher Steaks a significant advantage,” said Dr. Ruth Helen Faram, Head of R&D. “Cultivated pork belly and bacon have never been demonstrated before and Higher Steaks is the first to develop a prototype containing over 70% cultivated pork muscle, without the use of bovine serum.”

Consumers shouldn’t expect to see Higher Steaks’ pork belly on store shelves or in restaurants anytime soon, Bollag cautioned. “We’re still in the thousands of pounds per kilogram.”

The company does expect to have a larger tasting event later this year.