Monthly Archives: September 2021

Hacker breaking into corporate data(gorodenkoff/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden recently met with Big Tech executives to discuss how to improve cybersecurity after recent cyberattacks in which government software contractor Solarwinds and oil pipeline Colonial Pipeline were targeted. Leading tech corporations, including IBM, Google, and Amazon, will all try to improve cybersecurity by investing in the training of personnel in this field and upgrading their respective encryption and security systems. Microsoft has also committed to investing $150 million in upgrades for cybersecurity systems of government agencies. Big Tech may not always do the right thing, but these plans to enhance cybersecurity are certainly something that we can all stand behind.

In recent years, as the Internet has become increasingly influential and indispensable, cybersecurity has, correspondingly, become an increasingly prominent threat to not only citizens privacy but also to national security. Former national-security adviser John Bolton explained the significance of cybersecurity to national defense in a recent National Review article, in which he characterized threats from cyberspace as a multiplicity of hidden, ever-changing threats. A recent report by the Heritage Foundation raised concern over espionage, trading of secrets, and the disruption of military commands and communication potentially being conducted in the cyber domain.

The effective regulation of cyberspace, a relatively new front for modern warfare characterized by its elusiveness and lack of boundaries, is sometimes challenging. Laxness in cybersecurity, however, has often led to catastrophic consequences. For instance, the WannaCry Ransomware Cyber Attack in 2017, in which files in affected computer systems were locked until ransom was paid for their decryption, affected approximately 200,000 computers in 150 countries and led to enormous financial costs. Victims of the cyber-extortion scheme included entities from government agencies such as the English National Health Service to major international corporates such as Boeing.

It is well established that both the state and leading tech corporations have a legitimate interest in enhancing cybersecurity. The government is responsible for engaging in national defense in the cyber domain and tech corporations are obligated to protect the privacy of their users, whose personal information is often entrusted to them.

Big Techs plans to cooperate with the government to improve cybersecurity through financial investments appears to be promising. While it may be difficult to predict the effectiveness of such investments, the fact that Big Tech and the government are placing the enhancement of cybersecurity close to the top of their agenda and are committing to coordinated efforts is good news. Big Tech, with its financial prowess derived from the sheer size of the industry, and a unique relationship with the use of cyberspace, is uniquely positioned to materially contribute to state-led efforts to secure cyberspace. Furthermore, investing in education on cybersecurity of employees may also be useful in raising awareness and amplifying the industrys collective concern over capacity to combat cyberattacks in the long run.

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Big Tech Is Doing the Right Thing on Cybersecurity - National Review

Heard of the metaverse lately? It has been hard not to.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg mentioned techs latest buzzword 16 times on his companys most recent earnings call last month. The future of Facebook, he said, is a metaversea virtual environment where you can be physically present to hang out, play games, work and create.

But he didnt coin the term. Tech companies ranging from Intel Corp. to Unity Software talked up the metaverse last year. And Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the the enterprise metaverse in his companys earnings release last montha day before Facebooks call.

Nvidia has been an especially loud proponent of the idea. Last year, the company launched a platform called Omniverse for connecting 3-D worlds into a shared virtual universe. Chief Executive Jensen Huang used the companys largest annual conference in October to publicly credit Neal Stephensons 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash as the original inspiration for the concept of a virtual reality successor to the Internet, noting the metaverse is coming.

Never mind that, in an interview for a 2017 article about his novel, Mr. Stephenson told Vanity Fair he was just making sht up. Decades after the book was published, technologys leaders are taking his ideas more seriously than ever.

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Big Tech Wants You to Live in a Virtual World. Prepare for Real Problems. - The Wall Street Journal

While watching a streamed Phish concert may not evoke all the nuanced sounds and sights (and smells) of the live performance, big tech is betting that music fans have a healthy appetite for virtual gigs.

Axios reported Tuesday that Amazon is investing heavily in a live audio feature with the goal of "disrupting traditional radio."

Hardly Amazon's first foray into audio the e-commerce giant is deep into investments in its podcast and music subscription buildout.

But with millions of Alexa and smart speaker devices deployed in people's homes, Amazon is planning to pay musicians, celebrities, and podcast hosts for the rights to beam live content into kitchens and basements across the country:

The live audio space is quickly getting crowded with many of tech's biggest names:

Refined Tastes: Along with the revelations of Amazon's increasing push into audio, today Apple announced an acquisition of Primephonic, a streaming service specializing in the classical genre. Primephonic's functionality and playlists will be adapted to Apple Music for a "significantly improved classical music experience," with a stand-alone classic music app due in '22.

Not for nothing: radio revenues dropped nearly 25% last year during the pandemic.

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Amazon (Along with Practically Every Other Tech Giant) is Building Up its Live Audio Portfolio - Motley Fool

In the span of a decade, subdued Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and the Persian Empire. Like the Macedonian, Big Tech has evinced a rapacious and relentless appetite. Through technology acquisition and partnership, Amazon monopolises digital sales, while Google and Facebook control, where they do not dominate, the advertising space. Will consumer finance also go the way of brick-and-mortar stores and newspapers?

In a Bloomberg column reproduced in ET (bit.ly/3gMnUNw), Andy Mukherjee certainly thinks so. But his principal assertion - that fintech, riding on the back of Big Tech, could challenge banks - seems something of a non sequitur.

Three disparate examples are furnished to prove the existential threat posed by Big Tech. First, Google's latest announcement that it has partnered with Setu to offer its Google Pay customers a preferred fixed deposit (FD) rate from Equitas Small Finance Bank (up to 6.35% annually) 'shows the tenuous nature of the hold' banks have on activities like attracting deposits.

Each example is memorable for its siege imagery and could provide banks a much-needed wake-up call. But, together, they fall short of making a definitive argument.

For starters, banks are more than transaction houses for their customers. There is a deep psychology behind the idea of trust, which has nothing to do with published returns and everything to do with credibility. Even if one were to discount the fact that Equitas' FD rate is reminiscent of the rate offered by banks till 2019, and that the current differential could soon disappear when RBI tightens liquidity, most people would be loath to invest in an unknown bank, even if it is endorsed by Google.

In a country where deposits are not insured against default (Rs 5 lakh per account hardly inspires confidence), the average consumer who has, at least vicariously, experienced some suffering at the hands of a failing bank, will think twice about such a transaction.

Second, banking's historic moat does not consist of KYC rules alone. More than anything else, banks are straddled by an ever-increasing list of directives and statutes that complicate basic operations, and leave no time for process and product innovation. The landscape for online sales and advertising was (until recently) as unrestricted as that of financial services is tightly controlled.

For non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) and fintechs to challenge banks in their core activities - loans and the sale of certain regulated products like insurance - they need to be willing to come under the regulator's lens. There's a good reason for this. Truth in advertising, product reliability and security are still more important than technological convenience. As technology intermediaries foray deeper into banking territory - if the recent experience of the Chinese crackdown is anything to go by - it is only a matter of time before RBI comes out with a set of rules to govern these challengers.

Which brings us to the place where many fintechs are currently situated: payments. It is clear there is no money to be made in consumer payments, beyond the potential to convert some of these transactions into loans (the whole premise behind credit cards). So, when Google Pay and PhonePe process the majority of UPI transactions, they do not deny banks.

Even if one were to consider the monetisation value of data that results from these transactions, the principal owner (other than the consumer) of transaction data is the bank, not the wallet. And even when a wallet may legally harvest this data, there is no guarantee - as the US experience has shown - that real-time data harvesting by new-age fintech improves the sales performance of financial products.

More than threatening banks in the near future, Big Tech can provide financial institutions the advantages of access, convenience and speed. A partnership, with a clear division of labour, where banks earn more because they carry performance and financial risk, may be fruitful. An open contest less so.

Even Alexander stopped short of an assault on India because Magadha had three advantages: numbers, war- elephants and terrain. The Greeks wisely withdrew. The outcome of a hypothetical Indo-Hellenic confrontation on the ringing Indian plains can only be the stuff of conjecture. For now, I'd put my money on the Nandas.

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View: Big Tech's increasing influence in finance is an opportunity for banks, not a threat - Economic Times

Heard of the metaverse" lately? It has been hard not to.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg mentioned techs latest buzzword 16 times on his companys most recent earnings call last month. The future of Facebook, he said, is a metaversea virtual environment where you can be physically present to hang out, play games, work and create.

But he didnt coin the term. Tech companies ranging from Intel Corp. to Unity Software talked up the metaverse last year. And Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the the enterprise metaverse" in his companys earnings release last montha day before Facebooks call.

Nvidia has been an especially loud proponent of the idea. Last year, the company launched a platform called Omniverse for connecting 3-D worlds into a shared virtual universe." Chief Executive Jensen Huang used the companys largest annual conference in October to publicly credit Neal Stephensons 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash" as the original inspiration for the concept of a virtual reality successor to the Internet, noting the metaverse is coming."

Never mind that, in an interview for a 2017 article about his novel, Mr. Stephenson told Vanity Fair he was just making sht up." Decades after the book was published, technologys leaders are taking his ideas more seriously than ever.

And why wouldnt they? A virtual world featuring avatars, digital objects and functioning economies is a world where technology is all encompassing and not simply a discrete tool. So naturally, the worlds largest technology companies want to play a rolepreferably a leading one. Facebook sells virtual reality headsets, while Microsoft sells augmented reality devices designed for business use. Apple Inc. is widely reported to be working on AR devices of its own. Nvidias vast library of artificial intelligence chips and the software required to run them would also have a key place in a so-called metaverse.

This vision of the future is especially compelling for a company like Facebook, which still generates nearly all of its revenue from advertising. Put a sign on the main street of the metaverse, Mr. Stephenson wrote, and the hundred million richest, hippest, best connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives."

As a platform already created to consume peoples time and attention, Facebook would face an existential threat from a competing virtual world designed to do the same. Thus explains Mr. Zuckerbergs fervor. He told investors last month that the metaverse will require very significant investment over many years." And that is on top of the $2 billion the company laid out to acquire VR headset maker Oculus in 2014.

Virtual and augmented reality are the key technologies to enabling an immersive metaverse. They are still a work in progress, but Facebook is moving the ball forward. Oculus, which has focused mainly on the videogame market so far, sold nearly 3.5 million VR headsets last yearmore than double its level from last year, according to estimates from IDC. That was credited mostly to the success of the new Quest 2 headset that went on sale in October. But VR is still a niche even within gaming. Sales for Oculus headsets since their first launch in 2016 have totaled 9.4 million units through the second quarter, according to IDC. Sony and Nintendo have sold more than 86 million units each of their respective PlayStation and Switch consoles in that time.

But visions for the metaverse go well beyond gaming. Facebook gave a peek of this last week, with an open beta" test of its Horizon Workrooms essentially, a virtual reality workspace using its Oculus Quest headsets. Mr. Zuckerberg reportedly dropped into a few demos himselfjoining journalists as floating digital avatars without legs. The impetus behind the service after 18 months of pandemic-driven lockdowns seems sensible enough: Working remotely without colleagues can feel isolating, and brainstorming with others doesnt feel the same if youre not in the same room.

But a world through VR also has plenty of drawbacks. For many, the experience can be hot, sweaty, and even nauseating. Even the popular Oculus Quest 2 has drawn complaints for its foam face pad insert that makes users faces red and itchy. Real world hair and makeup are frequently compromised. And much like social media itself, there is still ongoing debate as to whether prolonged use of VR is physically safeespecially for children whose eyes are still developing. Plus, theres simply the weirdness factor for many: The percentage of the population keen to strap a device to their faces in order to interact with cartoon-versions of co-workers and friends is likely limited.

Mostly, though, a virtual world hands even more power to technology giants that many argue have already amassed too much. The last few years have laid bare the dark side to mobile computing and social networking. The contrast to tech executives sunny visions of the metaverse with the dystopian take of the source novel are telling: In the book, social status in the metaverse can be enhanced by coding skills, and Snow Crash is something peddled in the metaverse like a drug that can cause brain damage to users. Even while the protagonist is collecting marketable information for money.

Big tech can probably build the metaverse. But consumers will have to think hard about whether they want to be there.

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Big Tech wants you to live in a virtual world. Prepare for real problems - Livemint

House Democrats recently unveiled anti-trust bills designed to target and curb the power of big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. However, in practice, these bills are not only a threat to the Silicon Valley powerhouses but also to Americas national security.

The problem is that they are narrowly focused on Americas most competitive and innovative companies. Breaking up the power of these tech leaders will not only weaken their standing in the global market but it will also make room for foreign tech companies, like those in China, to grow even larger and more powerful.

Currently, China is the only nation projected to match the United States cyber powers with numerous domestic companies dedicated to developing cyber capabilities. Breaking up Americas tech companies would hinder our ability to compete with these firms and increase our vulnerability to foreign cyberattacks. Lets not compromise our national security and global standing as a tech leader. We need our representatives in Congress to vote against these antirust bills and keep our country safe.

Brianna Kreisel

Lehi

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Breaking up big tech companies would give an advantage to China |Opinion - Deseret News