Tens of thousands of tech innovators and their fans are flocking to Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Deana Mitchell has spotted some up-and-coming tech trends.
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Amazon.com layoffs will now stretch to more than 18,000 jobs as part of a workforce reduction it previously disclosed, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a public staff note on Wednesday.

The layoff decisions, which Amazon will communicate starting January 18, will largely impact the company’s e-commerce and human-resources organizations, he said.

The cuts amount to 6% of Amazon’s roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce and represent a swift turn for a retailer that recently doubled its base pay ceiling to compete more aggressively for talent.

Jassy said in the note that annual planning “has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years.”

Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers including warehouse staff, making it America’s second-largest private employer after Walmart. It has braced for likely slower growth as soaring inflation encouraged businesses and consumers to cut back spending and its share price has halved in the past year.

Amazon began letting staff go in November from its devices division, with a source telling Reuters at the time it was targeting 10,000 job cuts.

In number, its layoffs now surpass the 11,000 job cuts at Facebook-parent Meta Platforms as well as reductions at other tech-industry peers.
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European Union regulators on Wednesday hit Facebook parent Meta with hundreds of millions in fines for privacy violations and banned the company from forcing users in the 27-nation bloc to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity. 

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission imposed two fines totaling 390 million euros ($414 million) in its decision in two cases that could shake up Meta’s business model of targeting users with ads based on what they do online. The company says it will appeal. 

A decision in a third case involving Meta’s WhatsApp messaging service is expected later this month. 

Meta and other Big Tech companies have come under pressure from the European Union’s privacy rules, which are some of the world’s strictest. Irish regulators have already slapped Meta with four other fines for data privacy infringements since 2021 that total more than 900 million euros and have a slew of other open cases against a number of Silicon Valley companies. 

Meta also faces regulatory headaches from EU antitrust officials in Brussels flexing their muscles against tech giants: They accused the company last month of distorting competition in classified ads. 

The Irish watchdog — Meta’s lead European data privacy regulator because its regional headquarters is in Dublin — fined the company 210 million euros for violations of EU data privacy rules involving Facebook and an additional 180 million euros for breaches involving Instagram. 

The decision stems from complaints filed in May 2018 when the 27-nation bloc’s privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, took effect. 

Previously, Meta relied on getting informed consent from users to process their personal data to serve them with personalized, or behavioral, ads, which are based on what users search for online, the websites they visit or the videos they click on. 

When GDPR came into force, the company changed the legal basis under which it processes user data by adding a clause to the terms of service for advertisements, effectively forcing users to agree that their data could be used. That violates EU privacy rules. 

The Irish watchdog initially sided with Meta but changed its position after its draft decision was sent to a board of EU data protection regulators, many of whom objected. 

In its final decision, the Irish watchdog said Meta “is not entitled to rely on the ‘contract’ legal basis” to deliver behavioral ads on Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta said in a statement that “we strongly believe our approach respects GDPR, and we’re therefore disappointed by these decisions and intend to appeal both the substance of the rulings and the fines.” 

Meta has three months to ensure its “processing operations” comply with the EU rules, though the ruling doesn’t specify what the company has to do. Meta noted that the decision doesn’t prevent it from displaying personalized ads, it only covers the legal basis for handling user data. 

Max Schrems, the Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who filed the complaints, said the ruling could deal a big blow to the company’s profits in the EU, because “people now need to be asked if they want their data to be used for ads or not” and can change their mind at any time. 

“The decision also ensures a level playing field with other advertisers that also need to get opt-in consent,” he said. 

Making changes to comply with the decision could add to costs for a company already facing rising business challenges. Meta reported two straight quarters of declining revenue as advertising sales dropped because of competition from TikTok, and it laid off 11,000 workers amid broader tech industry woes. 

 
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CES 2023 opens this week in Las Vegas. After an unusually low turnout last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues, organizers say the consumer electronics show is back in full swing. VOA’s Julie Taboh shows us some of what to expect.
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The Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest technology trade show in the world, is once again open for business.

After two challenging years coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, which was particularly difficult for the conference and trade show industry, CES is expected to welcome about 100,000 attendees this week in Las Vegas.

That’s down about 40% from CES 2020 but still a significant jump in the numbers who attended in 2022. Over the past two years, CES managed to put on its show, which was all digital in 2021 and a hybrid digital and in-person in 2022 amid the Omicron surge.

This year, the Consumer Technology Association, the trade organization that puts on the annual event, says about one-third of the attendees are coming from outside the U.S.

“On the exhibitor side, a significant number come from outside of the U.S., making CES a truly global event,” said John Kelley, vice president and acting show director for CES, who spoke with VOA via Skype.

In fact, of the estimated 3,200 exhibitors who are expected to show off their wares, more than 1,400, or 43%, are coming from outside the U.S.

In the African pavilion, a dozen companies from the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be showcasing their homegrown innovations. The Ukraine pavilion will include technology firms from the Eastern European nation under siege by Russian forces.

Organizers also expect hundreds of Chinese firms to exhibit, despite recent COVID-related requirements for people traveling from China to the U.S.

“The Chinese presence at CES has always been quite pronounced and we’re starting to see it come back this year, which is quite exciting,” Kelley said.

Digital health, transportation technology and the metaverse are just a few of the latest technological innovations being showcased in Las Vegas.

Addressing global concerns

This year’s theme is technology helping to address the world’s greatest challenges, said Kelley.

“We’ve partnered with a U.N.-affiliated group, the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, to showcase how technology is supporting what we call human securities, or human rights,” he said, which includes food, political and environmental security, and mobility.

Show organizers expect increased focus on the metaverse — a shared digital reality connecting users — and on Web3, also known as Web 3.0, which proponents describe as the third generation of the World Wide Web.

CES has partnered with CoinDesk, a news site specializing in bitcoin and digital currencies, to build a studio on the show floor to showcase these types of Web3 applications, including blockchain and crypto.

Cool cars and trash-collecting sharks

From the internet highway to the interstate, automobiles have always had a major presence at the show, with more than 300 auto industry exhibitors showing off their latest products.

Organizers say there is also growth in marine technology, with boat manufacturers moving toward sustainable forms of energy.

The battery-operated WasteShark by the Dutch firm RanMarine Technology is an autonomous surface vessel designed to remove algae, biomass, and floating pollution such as plastics from lakes, ponds, and other coastal waterways.

“There’s a lot of people doing really great stuff out in the ocean and cleaning that up,” said company CEO Richard Hardiman, who spoke with VOA via Skype.

“Our mandate for our company is to clean it before it goes into the ocean,” he said. “So we’re trying to, sort of, what we call, ‘capture that waste at source,’ before it pollutes the ocean.”

Digital health

Another area that’s grown significantly at CES is digital health, CTA’s Kelley said. Dozens of exhibitors will be showcasing the latest health technologies, including new applications and diagnostic tools.

“What this does is give consumers access to their information, access to their data, and allows them to make decisions based on the data that they receive,” he said.

Canadian-based eSight Eyewear plans to display a headset designed to help people with visual impairments such as age-related macular degeneration, also known as AMD.

“When a person with AMD looks at your face, they wouldn’t see any distinct features; it would just be flesh tones,” explained Roland Mattern, eSight Eyewear’s director of marketing, who spoke with VOA via Skype.

Once the user puts on the device, they will be able to see distinct features such eyebrows, mouth and eyes, Mattern said.

“Users can literally see your entire face,” he said. “Your reaction. And that is an important feature because so much of communication is being able to see the other person’s reaction.”

It’s just one example of the many technologies on display this year at CES 2023, where companies from all corners of the world will come together to share their latest innovations.
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Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.

The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.

That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own.

Experts say it may be only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy them. The sense of inevitability extends to activists, who have tried for years to ban killer drones but now believe they must settle for trying to restrict the weapons’ offensive use.

Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine has been doing “a lot of R&D in this direction.”

“I think that the potential for this is great in the next six months,” Fedorov told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Ukrainian Lt. Col. Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the front that human war fighters simply cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines.

Ukrainian military leaders currently prohibit the use of fully independent lethal weapons, although that could change, he said.

“We have not crossed this line yet – and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what will happen in the future,” said Honchar, whose group has spearheaded drone innovation in Ukraine, converting cheap commercial drones into lethal weapons.

Russia could obtain autonomous AI from Iran or elsewhere. The long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones supplied by Iran have crippled Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians but are not especially smart. Iran has other drones in its evolving arsenal that it says feature AI.

Without a great deal of trouble, Ukraine could make its semi-autonomous weaponized drones fully independent in order to better survive battlefield jamming, their Western manufacturers say.

Those drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which both currently require a human to choose targets over a live video feed. AI finishes the job. The drones, technically known as “loitering munitions,” can hover for minutes over a target, awaiting a clean shot.

“The technology to achieve a fully autonomous mission with Switchblade pretty much exists today,” said Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, its maker. That will require a policy change — to remove the human from the decision-making loop — that he estimates is three years away.

Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that the machines don’t err and take the lives of noncombatants.

The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia if they have used autonomous weapons offensively – and whether they would agree not to use them if the other side similarly agreed. Neither responded.

If either side were to go on the attack with full AI, it might not even be a first.

An inconclusive U.N. report last year suggested that killer robots debuted in Libya’s internecine conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full-automatic mode killed an unspecified number of combatants.

A spokesman for STM, the manufacturer, said the report was based on “speculative, unverified” information and “should not be taken seriously.” He told the AP the Kargu-2 cannot attack a target until the operator tells it to do so.

Honchar thinks Russia, whose attacks on Ukrainian civilians have shown little regard for international law, would have used killer autonomous drones by now if the Kremlin had them.

“I don’t think they’d have any scruples,” agreed Adam Bartosiewicz, vice president of WB Group, which makes the Warmate.

AI is a priority for Russia. President Vladimir Putin said in 2017 that whoever dominates that technology will rule the world. In a December 21 speech, he expressed confidence in the Russian arms industry’s ability to embed AI in war machines, stressing that “the most effective weapons systems are those that operate quickly and practically in an automatic mode.” Russian officials already claim their Lancet drone can operate with full autonomy.

An effort to lay international ground rules for military drones has so far been fruitless. Nine years of informal United Nations talks in Geneva made little headway, with major powers including the United States and Russia opposing a ban. The last session, in December, ended with no new round scheduled.

Toby Walsh, an Australian academic who campaigns against killer robots, hopes to achieve a consensus on some limits, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people.

“If we are not careful, they are going to proliferate much more easily than nuclear weapons,” said Walsh, author of Machines Behaving Badly. “If you can get a robot to kill one person, you can get it to kill a thousand.”

Multiple countries, and every branch of the U.S. military, are developing drones that can attack in deadly synchronized swarms, according to Zachary Kallenborn, a George Mason University weapons innovation analyst.

So will future wars become a fight to the last drone?

That’s what Putin predicted in a 2017 televised chat with engineering students: “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”
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The latest leaps in artificial intelligence in everything from cars to robots to appliances will be on full display at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opening Thursday in Las Vegas.

Forced by the pandemic to go virtual in 2021 and hybrid last year, tens of thousands of show-goers are hoping for a return to packed halls and rapid-fire deal-making that were long the hallmark of the annual gadget extravaganza.

“In 2022, it was a shadow of itself — empty halls, no meetings in hotel rooms,” Avi Greengart, an analyst at Techsponential told Agence France-Presse. “Now, [we expect] crowds, trouble getting around and meetings behind closed doors — which is what a trade show is all about.”

The CES show officially opens Thursday, but companies will begin to vie for the spotlight with the latest tech wizardry as early as Tuesday.

CES will be spread over more than seven hectares, from the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center to pavilions set up in parking lots. Ballrooms and banquet rooms across Sin City will be used to hustle up business.

With transportation now computing’s new frontier, next generation autos, trucks, boats, farm equipment, and even flying machines are expected to grab attention, according to analysts.

“It’s going to feel almost like you’re at an auto show,” said Kevan Yalowitz, head of platform strategy at Accenture.

More than ever, cars now come with operating systems so much like a smartphone or laptop computer, Accenture expects that by 2040 about 40% of vehicles on the road will need software updated remotely.

And with connected cars come apps and online entertainment as developers battle to grab passenger attention with streaming or shopping services on board.

Electric vehicles enhanced with artificial intelligence will also be on display “in a big way,” Greengart said.

“What has really been the buzz is personalized flying machines,” said independent tech analyst Rob Enderle. “Basically, they are human-carrying drones.”

Led by Zuckerberg’s Meta, immersive virtual worlds referred to as the metaverse are seen by some as the future of the ever-evolving internet, despite widespread criticism that the billionaire CEO is over-investing in an unproven sector.

After being a major theme at CES last year, virtual reality headgear aimed at transporting people to the metaverse is expected to again figure prominently. 

Formerly known as Facebook, Meta will be allowing selected guests to try its latest Oculus Quest virtual reality headset, trying to persuade doubters that the company’s pivot to the metaverse was the right one.

Web 3

Gadgets or services pitched as being part of the next-generation of the internet — or “Web 3” — are also expected to include mixed reality gear as well as blockchain technology and NFTs.

Web 3 promises a more decentralized internet where tech giants, big business or governments no longer hold all the keys to life online.

“The idea of how we are going to connect is going to be part of the big trend at CES,” said Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi.

Analysts had expected cryptocurrencies to be touted among Web 3 innovations at the show, but there “could be pullback” because of the implosion of cryptocurrency platform FTX and the arrest of its boss Sam Bankman-Fried, according to Milanesi.

CES offerings will likely show effects of the pandemic, since products designed during a time of lockdowns and remote work will now be heading for market even if lifestyles are returning to pre-COVID habits, noted Greengart.

Health, environment

Tech designed to better assess health and connect remotely with care providers will also be strong at CES.

And though the show is unabashedly devoted to consumerism, the environment will also be a theme from gadgets designed to scoop trash from waterways to apps that help people cut down on energy use.

A lot of companies are eliminating plastic from packaging and shifting to biodegradable materials, while also trying to reduce carbon emissions, according to analysts.

“If you are the kind of person who is off the grid growing vegetables, then CES is not for you,” Greengart said. “But I do commend companies that find ways to make their products and the supply chain more sustainable.” 

 
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Marie Rodriguez of Bountiful, Utah, began using social media when she enlisted in the U.S. Navy. At first, she saw it as a positive thing.

“It helped me to really keep in touch with people at home while I was deployed and living overseas,” she told VOA.

However, in the two months since Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Rodriguez and many of its hundreds of millions of users have been forced to reevaluate their feelings about the platform and about social media in general.

“I don’t think he’s been positive at all,” Rodriguez said. “He’s allowing all of these previously banned accounts back on the platform, and I’m seeing more offensive Tweets — more anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ hate speech.”

“Some social media platforms over-patrol,” she added, “but Twitter isn’t patrolling enough. The result is more trolling, more bots and more hate. I’ve definitely been using the platform less because of it.”

Musk is a polarizing figure among Americans. In his own self-created poll on the platform, 57.5% of respondents said he should resign as Twitter chief, compared to 42.5% who said he should stay. (Musk has said he will abide by the poll’s results and resign his post as soon as a replacement is hired.)

Independent surveys, however, have shown Musk’s actions to be less unpopular than his Twitter poll indicated. A Quinnipiac University survey from earlier this month, for example, found that Americans’ opinions are more evenly split, with 37% saying they approved of the way he’s operating Twitter, 37% disapproving and 25% offering no opinion.

“I’m generally critical of billionaires,” said Avi Gupta, a neurobiologist in the nation’s capital, “but I’m so far supportive of what Musk has done for Twitter. As far as free speech is concerned, definitely, but also the platform’s just a lot more exciting to follow.”

A new Twitter

Gupta said he became disenchanted with rival social media platform Instagram when he posted a photo of Ukrainian soldiers who appeared to be wearing patches containing Nazi symbols. The post was promptly removed by administrators.

“To me, in that example, what Instagram is saying is that reporting on Nazism is no different than glorifying it,” Gupta explained. “It’s a form of censorship, but it was happening in pre-Musk Twitter, too. They were too quick to suspend accounts when they challenged mainstream thinking — whether it be about the Ukraine war, U.S. military interventions or COVID.”

“Since Musk,” he added, “I don’t have to censor myself as much, and you’re seeing previously banned accounts from politicians and scientists welcomed back. You have to balance that with stopping dangerous hate speech, of course — which I think they’re doing OK with — but overall, I think it’s been a good thing.”

According to University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication Professor Damian Radcliffe, Musk arrived at Twitter with an entrepreneurial reputation and a desire to grow the platform that appealed to many users.

Others, however, expressed concerns about what Musk’s commitment to freedom of speech and a scaling back of platform moderation might mean, as well as the implications of users now being able to purchase a verified “blue check” account.

“Those worries seem to have been justified,” Radcliffe told VOA. “I personally have seen a lot of people I follow leave the platform. They’re pointing to a less civil discourse, as well as a greater prevalence of misinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories in their feed as the main reasons they’re departing.”

In the two months since he took over, Musk has reinstated several previously banned Twitter accounts — most notably that of former U.S. President Donald Trump, though Trump eschewed the platform after his reinstatement. Musk has also banned (and sometimes reinstated) the accounts of several journalists.

“It’s been wild to watch as he came in talking about free speech,” said Ron Gubitz, executive director of a New Orleans nonprofit organization. “But then, all of a sudden, he’s suspending journalists’ accounts, banning an account tracking his jet, and — albeit temporarily — saying we couldn’t post links to other social media.”

Gubitz is a self-described “Twitter head,” having been on the platform for more than 14 years. He said he’s been disappointed in how it has operated since Musk’s purchase.

“Initially it was annoying because the discourse was all about Musk,” he said to VOA. “What is Musk saying? What is he going to do? It felt middle-school gossipy.”

“But the user interface has also actually gotten worse since he took over,” Gubitz added. “The platform isn’t updating well for me, it’s not adding enough new tweets, there are ads at the top of the screen every time I refresh and the whole thing just feels less secure. I’m cool with change, but this is going in the wrong direction.”

America’s relationship with social media

“I use Twitter less and less every day and I’ve actually removed the app from my phone,” said Kimm Rogers, a musician from San Diego, California. “I used to see tweets from the people I follow, but now my feed shows me [acquitted Wisconsin shooter] Kyle Rittenhouse, Elon Musk and [Texas Republican Senator] Ted Cruz. There’s a lot more hate especially towards black people, LGBTQ and Jewish people. There’s also more porn showing up in my feed as well as lots of disinformation over vaccines and the war in Ukraine.”

“It’s just hard on my psyche to see the lack of common decency and the cruelty often inflicted on others on this site,” Rogers added, “It diminishes my view of humanity.”

Polls show opinions on the direction of Twitter are often connected to political leanings. Quinnipiac’s December poll showed that 63% of Republican respondents said they viewed Musk favorably, while only 9% of Democrats said the same.

Many left-leaning users have threatened to leave the platform entirely. According to information from the Twitter analytics firm Bot Sentinel, approximately 877,000 accounts were deactivated in the week after Musk purchased Twitter. Nearly 500,000 were temporarily suspended. In total, that’s more than double the usual number and has included prominent celebrities who cited a rise in hate speech and the banning of journalists as their reason for leaving.

More recently, some users have organized “Twitter Walk-out Days” in which they log off for a period of time in protest. Others have threatened to move to other social media platforms that better align with their values.

If those users do move on, Nicole Dahmen, professor at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, says it won’t be the first time users shifted away from a form of technology.

“Leaving Twitter is the latest iteration of unfriending Facebook a decade ago or killing your television in the 1980s,” Dahmen told VOA. “There are valid reasons to consume and participate with these mediums and there are even more valid reasons to leave them. They’ve ultimately trivialized American discourse, and our political, social and emotional health has suffered.”

But it’s not just Twitter that appears to be experiencing a plateauing of popularity around the world. From 2018 to 2022, average daily social media use increased by only five minutes — from 142 minutes to 147 minutes — according to Statista.com. During the previous four years, average social media use increased by a whopping 38 minutes per day.

Sense of community

“Social media can be a great thing in how it creates a sense of community and allows us to find commonalities,” said Ivory Burnett of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Burnett said she prefers Twitter over other platforms because it encourages what she sees as more authentic, “less cosmetic” interactions.

“When used for good, it’s the megaphone for an entire generation,” she told VOA. “But it also results in bullying, misunderstanding and crowd-thinking that makes it easier to spread hate and harm.”

But, like so many who, despite their frustrations with the platform, say they don’t want to start over elsewhere after dedicating so many years to building a following on Twitter, Burnett said she has no intention of leaving.

“Leave? I’ve never considered leaving,” she said and laughed. “I’ll be here until my login stops working.”
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Taking to the air could be one solution to help get around traffic jams on city highways. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles on plans to get air taxis flying in time for the city’s 2028 Summer Olympics.
…

The end of 2022 saw major layoffs at Twitter, Amazon, Salesforce and Snap. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, had its first layoffs ever, cutting about 13% of its staff. Deana Mitchell looks at what the tech job losses mean for the future.
…

Virtual reality, an immersive technology embraced by gamers, has moved into medicine, where it is used for stress relief, physical therapy, pain management and other applications. Mike O’Sullivan has more.

 
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Nearly a week after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said that the accounts of suspended journalists would be reinstated, at least six remain blocked.

Voice of America’s chief national correspondent, Steve Herman, is among them. Twitter suspended the accounts Dec. 15 over posts about another removed account — @Elonjet — which uses public data to track Musk’s private jet and other aircraft.

On Thursday, the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington-based whistleblower protection and advocacy organization, filed a complaint to Congress over the suspension of Herman and other journalists.

“All of this is disturbing,” GAP’s Senior Counsel David Seide wrote in a letter addressed to the House and Senate commerce committees. “For no rational reason, Twitter and Mr. Musk wrongly muzzled and continue to muzzle Voice of America’s reporter and at least five other journalists. We ask you to continue to review this mistreatment and, if you believe warranted, investigate further.”

The letter, shared with VOA, said that Musk “abused his authority by acting arbitrarily and capriciously” in suspending and continuing to block several prominent journalists from the social media platform.

Twitter did not immediately respond to VOA’s request for comment, sent in a direct message via the platform.

Twitter appeals

Early Saturday morning, Musk announced on Twitter that the “accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”

To other Twitter users, Herman’s account looked as if it were back to normal.

But when Herman opened the app later that day, he was met with a notification saying he could regain access only if he deleted three tweets that referenced the @Elonjet account — or he could file an appeal.

Herman chose the latter option, he told VOA, “not realizing that put me in an even deeper level of purgatory.”

Making it seem as if his account was reactivated was “disingenuous at best,” Herman said.

Other journalists had similar experiences, including Matt Binder of Mashable, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN and freelance reporters Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster.

VOA spoke with several of these reporters, who all said they were not surprised at being suspended.

Rupar and Webster told VOA they opted to delete the tweets in question to regain full access to their accounts, but the other six refused, so remain locked out.

Twitter told them they will be barred until specified posts are deleted.

“I will not delete the tweets because I feel there was nothing wrong with those tweets, and deleting them would be an admission that I did something wrong,” Herman said. “The only way I will tweet again is if my account is reinstated unconditionally.”

Mashable’s Binder was briefly unsuspended Saturday, but he says he was locked out again after asking a Twitter official which company policy he had broken.

He appealed the ruling instead of deleting the offending tweet but said that Twitter denied the request.

Now journalists are “going to have to be cautious about how they disseminate their reporting on Twitter because Elon Musk can just choose on a whim to change policy,” Binder told VOA in an interview. “We’ve seen it already.”

GAP’s Seide said suspensions over @Elonjet tweets do not bode well for press freedom on Twitter.

“It’s especially concerning because it’s so arbitrary and innocuous,” he told VOA. “If they can force journalists to censor themselves on innocuous issues, they plainly do that on other issues, too.”

Webster, a freelance reporter based in Minneapolis, said Twitter has played a big role in building an audience for his work. Because of that, he deleted the requested tweets to regain access.

Still, getting suspended has changed how he engages with the platform, he told VOA.

“It’s really chilling to have to be so careful about what to say,” he said. “You just worry about what might happen in the future if you say something that might be upsetting to Elon Musk.”

Even though Webster is back on Twitter, he said he no longer trusts the platform and plans to use the social media platform Mastodon more.

The Intercept’s Lee told VOA he will not delete the tweet that got him suspended.

That journalists now risk facing arbitrary censorship “basically just proves that Twitter is no longer a viable platform,” he said, adding that he believes it is important to “diversify what social media you use.”

VOA’s public relations team on Thursday confirmed Herman’s account had not been reinstated.

In an emailed statement when Herman was first suspended, VOA spokesperson Nigel Gibbs said, “As Chief National Correspondent, Mr. Herman covers international and national news stories, and this suspension impedes his ability to perform his duties as a journalist.”

Musk had said on Twitter that the @Elonjet account and any accounts that linked to it were suspended because they violated Twitter’s anti-doxxing policy.

Doxxing is when someone maliciously publishes private or identifying information about someone — like their phone number or address — on the internet, according to Clayton Weimers, executive director of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) U.S. office.

The @Elonjet Twitter account, however, used publicly available data. Additionally, none of the journalists who had tweeted about Musk and his shutdown of the account had tweeted location information for his plane.

Doxxing is an increasingly common intimidation tactic to target journalists over their coverage, Weimers said.

“The risk here is that [Musk is] really lowering the barrier for what we’re considering doxxing and weaponizing it against journalists in a way that doesn’t make journalists or other public officials any safer on the platform,” Weimers said.

Twitter has historically been slow to respond to genuine doxxing attacks, Weimers said.

Musk also dissolved Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, of which RSF was a longtime member. Made up of human and civil rights groups, the 100-member advisory group advised on policies to respond to hate speech and other issues on Twitter.

Since Twitter is Musk’s private company, “there’s an argument to be made that it’s his $44 billion plaything, and he can make the rules as he sees fit,” Herman acknowledged. “And if he wants to turn it into the online equivalent of a private country club, then he probably legally can.”

Herman said he has not spoken with any of the other journalists in the suspended-from-Twitter club.

“I’ve been pretty busy,” he said. “But I think some of us are following each other on Mastodon now.”
…

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.
…

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.
…

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. 
…

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.
…

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.
…

Two Ethiopians have filed a lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, over hate speech they say was allowed and even promoted on the social media platform amid heated rhetoric over their country’s deadly Tigray conflict.

Former Amnesty International human rights researcher Fisseha Tekle is one petitioner in the case filed Wednesday and the other is the son of university professor Meareg Amare, who was killed weeks after posts on Facebook inciting violence against him.

The case was filed in neighboring Kenya, home to the platform’s content moderation operations related to Ethiopia. The lawsuit alleges that Meta hasn’t hired enough content moderators there, that it uses an algorithm that prioritizes hateful content and that it acts more slowly to crises in Africa than elsewhere in the world.

The lawsuit, also backed by Kenya-based legal organization the Katiba Institute, seeks the creation of a $1.6 billion fund for victims of hate speech.

A Facebook spokesman, Ben Walters, told The Associated Press they could not comment on the lawsuit because they haven’t received it. He shared a general statement: “We have strict rules which outline what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram. Hate speech and incitement to violence are against these rules and we invest heavily in teams and technology to help us find and remove this content.” Facebook continues to develop its capabilities to catch violating content in Ethiopia’s most widely spoken languages, it said.

Ethiopia’s two-year Tigray conflict is thought to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The warring sides signed a peace deal last month.

“This legal action is a significant step in holding Meta to account for its harmful business model,” said Flavia Mwangovya of Amnesty International in a statement pointing out that the Facebook posts targeting its former researcher and the professor were not isolated cases.

The AP and more than a dozen other media outlets last year explored how Facebook had failed to quickly and effectively moderate hate speech in cases around the world, including in Ethiopia. The reports were based on internal documents obtained by whistleblower Frances Haugen.
…

Law enforcement officials and financial services regulators have filed a raft of criminal and civil charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange company FTX, alleging wide-ranging fraud that eventually brought down the company, which was valued at $32 billion earlier this year.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday morning unsealed an indictment charging Bankman-Fried with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, actual wire fraud, money laundering, and violation of laws governing donations to politicians and political parties.

At the request of U.S. prosecutors, Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested on Monday evening at his home in the Bahamas, where the headquarters of FTX is located. The U.S. and the Bahamas have an extradition treaty, and Bankman-Fried is expected to be transferred to U.S. custody in the near future.

‘House of cards’

Earlier Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued its own set of civil charges, also accusing Bankman-Fried of “years-long fraud” that included hiding information from investors, diverting customer funds to a hedge fund he owned, using other customer funds to make political donations, and to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate.

“We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws.”

Also on Tuesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Bankman-Fried.

Rapid rise, rapid fall

In the short time since its founding in 2019, FTX grew to be one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, and Sam Bankman-Fried — often referred to as “SBF” — became one of the industry’s most recognizable figures. He was a regular speaker at business conferences, gave testimony before Congress, and was seen by many as a model cryptocurrency executive.

The list of investors who plowed billions of dollars into FTX is long and distinguished, including Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, Tiger Global Management, and Third Point Ventures.

Earlier this year, Bankman-Fried positioned his company as a savior for the broader crypto industry when a broad selloff of cryptocurrencies left many firms in the space reeling. FTX extended lines of credit to crypto lender BlockFi and crypto broker Voyager Digital in an effort to help them weather the storm. Both BlockFi and Voyager eventually filed for bankruptcy protection.

Signs of trouble

In September, news reports began raising questions about the relationship between FTX and Alameda Research, a hedge fund owned by Bankman-Fried which was supposed to be a completely separate corporate entity from FTX.

However, it gradually became clear that the two companies were actually closely connected. Media reports began to reveal that a large share of Alameda’s assets was tied up in an illiquid crypto token called FTT, which was issued by FTX. Over several days in early November, customers rushed to pull their money from accounts with FTX, sending the company into a massive liquidity crisis and forcing it to stop processing customer withdrawals.

After several days of attempts to arrange a rescue package, including a briefly considered sale of FTX to Binance, its largest competitor, FTX, Alameda, and more than 100 affiliated companies filed for bankruptcy.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department and the SEC alleged that Alameda actually had “virtually unlimited” access to funds held by FTX on behalf of its customers.

The charges against Bankman-Fried claim that Alameda illegally used those funds to invest in highly illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, as well as to make “undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.”

Before its collapse, cryptocurrency investors around the world had placed billions of dollars in their accounts with FTX. In large part because of transfers to Alameda, FTX is facing an estimated shortfall of $8 billion.

‘I made a lot of mistakes’

Against the advice of his attorneys, Bankman-Fried has given a number of interviews to news organizations since his company declared bankruptcy. His contention has been that, while he may have made mistakes, he never intended to defraud anyone.

In early December, Bankman-Fried told The Wall Street Journal that he could not account for money that FTX customers transferred to Alameda Research.

In an appearance at a conference sponsored by The New York Times, he said, “Clearly I made a lot of mistakes. There are things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I did not ever try to commit fraud on anyone. I was excited about the prospects of FTX a month ago. I saw it as a thriving, growing business. I was shocked by what happened [in November.]”

His claims contradict the allegations leveled by prosecutors in the indictment unsealed Tuesday, which accuse Bankman-Fried of “willfully and knowingly” defrauding investors and customers.

‘Utter failure’ of controls

Last month, control of FTX and its constituent companies was turned over to John Ray III, an attorney and corporate insolvency specialist who has been brought on to manage multiple companies facing bankruptcy, including the failed energy giant Enron in the early 2000s. His primary task will be to assemble all the remaining assets of FTX in an effort to recover some of the money its customers lost in the exchange’s collapse.

Ray appeared at a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, during which he described a company that lacked even the most basic corporate governance structures and was run by a small cabal ill-equipped for the job of running a multi-billion dollar corporation.

In prepared testimony, Ray said, “[N]ever in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever.”

In the broadest sense, Ray said, the company’s failure was the result of the “absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company that is entrusted with other people’s money or assets.”

Under questioning, Ray said that the asset recovery process will take months to complete, and will not make FTX customers whole. “At the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to recover all the losses here,” he said.

The committee had also expected to hear from Bankman-Fried on Tuesday, but the FTX founder’s arrest on Monday made that impossible.

Lawmakers angry

The allegations of fraud and mismanagement at FTX have raised calls in Washington for action by Congress to rein in the cryptocurrency industry, which operates under a poorly defined set of regulatory rules.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters on Tuesday said that she was “deeply troubled” by the revelations coming out about FTX. At the same hearing, U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, who will take over the chairmanship when Republicans assume control of the House next month, criticized Bankman-Fried but said that he still sees “promise” in digital assets.

Others were less tolerant of the industry, with Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat, calling the entire industry “a garden of snakes.”

Industry representatives urged lawmakers to tread carefully when it comes to establishing new rules for cryptocurrencies.

“Following the failure of FTX International, it’s understandable that lawmakers want to do something, but they should be wary of passing legislation in haste that would do more harm than good,” Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association, wrote on Monday. “Instead, Congress should take its time to investigate the issues we’ve seen and work closely with the crypto industry to find solutions that benefit everyone.”
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