The Empire Strikes Again, at Elon – #historical past #conspiracy
If you’re on the lookout for the far fringe of the Institution’s Overton Window on China coverage, you can’t do higher than the U.S.-China Financial and Safety Overview Fee, a persistently China-skeptical however mainstream physique. Brian reprises the Fee’s newest report. Its headline is about Chinese language hacking, however the report doesn’t supply a lot hope of an answer to that drawback, apart from extra decoupling.
Chalk up another victory for Trump-Biden continuity, and another loss for the State Division. Michael Ellis reminds us that the Trump administration took a lot of Cyber Command’s cyber offense decisionmaking out of the Nationwide Safety Council and put it again within the Pentagon. This made it a lot more durable for the State Division to stall cyber offense operations. When it turned out that this made Cyber Command more practical and no extra irresponsible, the Biden Administration adopted its predecessor’s lead, getting ready a memo that may largely ratify Trump’s order, with a couple of tweaks.
I unpack Google’s costly (practically $400 million) settlement with 40 States over location historical past. Google’s promise to its customers that it will cease storing location historical past if the characteristic was turned off was poorly and misleadingly drafted, however I doubt there’s anybody who truly needed to maintain Google from utilizing location for many of the apps the place it remained operative, so the settlement is an efficient deal for the states, and a reminder of how unpopular Silicon Valley has change into in crimson and blue states alike.
Michael tells the doubly embarrassing story of an Iranian hack of the U.S. Advantage Methods Safety Board. It’s embarrassing sufficient for the board to be hacked utilizing a log4j exploit that ought to have been patched way back. However it’s worse that an Iranian authorities hacker acquired entry to a U.S. authorities community – and determined that its entry is greatest used for mining cryptocurrency.
Brian tells us that the U.S. aim of reshoring chip manufacturing is making progress, with Apple planning to make use of TSMC chips from a brand new fab in Arizona.
In a couple of updates and fast hits:
- I remind listeners that quite a lot of tech corporations are laying staff off, however that total Silicon Valley employment continues to be means up over the previous couple of years.
- I replace the mess at cryptocurrency alternate FTX, a large number which simply retains getting worse.
- Charles updates us on the subsequent U.S.-E.U. adequacy negotiations, and the prospects for Schrems 3 (and 4, and 5) litigation.
- And I sound a word of each admiration and warning about Australia’s plan to “unleash the hounds” – within the type of its personal Cyber Command equal – on ransomware gangs. As U.S. expertise reveals, it makes for a fantastic speech, however precise influence will be arduous to realize.
Obtain the 431st Episode (mp3)
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