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SUMMARY STARTUP LORDSTOWN MOTORS WARNS IT MAY NOT STAY IN BUSINESS

SCIENTISTS HAIL GOLDEN AGE TO TRACE BIRD MIGRATION WITH TECH

4 SMALL-BUSINESS INNOVATIONS THAT WILL OUTLAST THE PANDEMIC

FERRARI TAPS EUROPEAN CHIP-MAKER EXECUTIVE AS NEW CEO

GERMANY STARTS ROLLING OUT A DIGITAL EU VACCINATION PASS

NEW MEXICO BEGINS PUSH TO IMPROVE SPOTTY INTERNET ACCESS

CHINA SAYS US REVOKING OF CHINA APPS BAN A ‘POSITIVE STEP’

EYING DEAL, GM SOFTENS ON TOUGH STANDARDS FOR CAR POLLUTION

GLOBAL GLITCH: SWATHS OF INTERNET GO DOWN AFTER CLOUD OUTAGE

JUST HOW VULNERABLE IS THE INTERNET?

iOS 15: CONNECT, FOCUS, EXPLORE, AND DO MORE

OWN AN ECHO? AMAZON MAY BE HELPING ITSELF TO YOUR BANDWIDTH

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JEFF BEZOS WILL BLAST INTO SPACE ON ROCKET’S 1ST CREW FLIGHT

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GUCCI DIGITALLY OUTFITS GEN-Z IN METAVERSE FORAY WITH ROBLOX

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US INTEL REPORT ON UFOS: NO EVIDENCE OF ALIENS, BUT...

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ENERGY CHIEF CITES RISK OF CYBERATTACKS CRIPPLING POWER GRID

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GLOBAL WAR ON RANSOMWARE? HURDLES HINDER THE US RESPONSE

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GLOBAL STING BEGAN BY CREATING MESSAGE SERVICE FOR CROOKS

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THIRD CHAPTER OF ‘THE CONJURING’ FRANCHISE CREAKS

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SENATE PASSES BILL TO BOOST US TECH INDUSTRY, COUNTER RIVALS

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US DROPS TRUMP ORDER TARGETING TIKTOK, PLANS ITS OWN REVIEW

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FLORIDA TEACHER EMERGES AS TIK TOK STAR, EYES HOLLYWOOD

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AUTOMAKERS FACE A THREAT TO EV SALES: SLOW CHARGING TIMES

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CONSIDER LEASING WHEN NEW CAR PRICES SOAR

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EUROPEAN REGULATORS LAUNCH FRESH PROBES OF FACEBOOK, GOOGLE

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NBCUNIVERSAL WILL HAVE 7,000 HOURS OF TOKYO GAMES COVERAGE

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CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS HIT 50% HIGHER THAN PREINDUSTRIAL TIME

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STARTUP LORDSTOWN MOTORS WARNS IT MAY NOT STAY IN BUSINESS

Startup commercial electric vehicle maker Lordstown Motors says it may not be in business a year from now as it tries to secure funding to start full production of an electric pickup truck. In a quarterly regulatory filing Tuesday, Lordstown said the $587 million it had on hand as of March 31 isn’t enough to start commercial production and begin selling the full-size pickup, called the Endurance. “These conditions raise substantial doubt regarding our ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least one year,” the company said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Shares of the company, which is set up in a nowclosed General Motors plant east of Cleveland, fell 16.2% to close Tuesday at $11.22. The lost another 3% in after-hours trading. 08

SCIENTISTS HAIL GOLDEN AGE TO TRACE BIRD MIGRATION WITH TECH

A plump robin wearing a tiny metal backpack with an antenna hops around a suburban yard in Takoma Park, then plucks a cicada from the ground for a snack. Ecologist Emily Williams watches through binoculars from behind a bush. On this clear spring day, she’s snooping on his dating life. “Now I’m watching to see whether he’s found a mate,” she said, scrutinizing his interactions with another robin in a nearby tree. Once the bird moves on at season’s end, she’ll rely on the backpack to beam frequent location data to the Argos satellite, then back to Williams’ laptop, to track it. The goal is to unravel why some American robins migrate long distances, but others do not. With more precise information about nesting success and conditions in breeding and 15

wintering grounds, “we should be able to tell the relative roles of genetics versus the environment in shaping why birds migrate,” said Williams, who is based at Georgetown University. Putting beacons on birds is not novel. But a new antenna on the International Space Station and receptors on the Argos satellite, plus the shrinking size of tracking chips and batteries, are allowing scientists to remotely monitor songbird movements in much greater detail than ever before. “We’re in a sort of golden age for bird research,” said Adriaan Dokter, an ecologist at Cornell University who is not directly involved with Williams’ study. “It’s pretty amazing that we can satellite-track a robin with smaller and smaller chips. Ten years ago, that was unthinkable.” The device this robin is wearing can give precise locations, within about 30 feet (about 10 meters), instead of around 125 miles (200 kilometers) for previous generations of tags. That means Williams can tell not only whether the bird is still in the city, but on which street or backyard. Or whether it’s flown from the Washington, D.C., suburbs to land on the White House lawn. A second new tag, for only the heaviest robins, includes an accelerometer to provide information about the bird’s movements; future versions may also measure humidity and barometric pressure. These Icarus tags work with a new antenna on the International Space Station. That antenna was first turned on about two years ago, “but there were some glitches with the power-supply and the computer, so we had 16

to bring it down again with a Russian rocket, then transport it from Moscow to Germany to fix it,” said Martin Wikelski, director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, whose scientific team is honing the technology. After “the usual troubleshooting for space science,” the antenna was turned back on this spring. As researchers deploy precision tags, Wikelski envisions the development of “an ‘Internet of animals’ — a collection of sensors around the world giving us a better picture of the movement of life on the planet.” The American robin is an iconic songbird in North America, its bright chirp a harbinger of spring. Yet its migratory habits remain a bit mysterious to scientists. “It’s astounding how little we know about some of the most common songbirds,” said Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at Cornell University. “We have a general idea of migration, a range map, but that’s really just a broad impression.” An earlier study Williams worked on showed some robins are long-distance migrants — flying more than 2,780 miles (4,480 km) between their breeding area in Alaska and winter grounds in Texas — while others hop around a single backyard most of the year. What factors drive some robins to migrate, while others don’t? Does it have to do with available food, temperature fluctuations or success in mating and rearing chicks? Williams hopes more detailed data from satellite tags, combined with records of nesting success, will provide insights, and she’s working with 19

partners who are tagging robins in Alaska, Indiana and Florida for a three-year study. Scientists have previously put GPS-tracking devices on larger raptors, but the technology has only recently become small and light enough for some songbirds. Tracking devices must be less than 5% of the animal’s weight to avoid encumbering them. In a Silver Spring, Maryland, yard, Williams has unfurled nylon nets between tall aluminum poles. When a robin flies into the net, she delicately untangles the bird. Then she holds it in a “bander’s grip” — with her forefinger and middle finger loosely on either side of the bird’s neck, and another two fingers around its body. On a tarp, she measures the robin’s beak length, takes a toenail clipping and plucks a tail feather to gauge overall health. Then she weighs the bird in a small cup on a scale. This one is about 80 grams, just over the threshold for wearing the penny-sized Argos satellite tag. Williams fashions a makeshift saddle with clear jewelry cord looped around each of the bird’s legs. She then tightens the cord so the tag sits firmly on the bird’s back. When she opens her hand, the robin hops to the ground, then takes a few steps under a pink azalea shrub before flying off. In addition to providing very precise locations, the satellite tags transmit data that can be downloaded from afar onto Williams’ laptop. The data on older tags couldn’t be retrieved unless the same bird was recaptured the following year — a difficult and uncertain task. 21

Wikelski hopes the new technology will help scientists better understand threats birds and other creatures face from habitat loss, pollution and climate change. “It is detective work to try to figure out why a population is declining,” said Ben Freeman, a biologist at the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia. Better information about migration corridors “will help us look in the right places.” A 2019 study co-written by Cornell’s Rosenberg showed that North America’s population of wild birds declined by nearly 30%, or 3 billion, since 1970. He said tracking birds will help explain why: “Where in their annual cycles do migratory birds face the greatest threats? Is it exposure to pesticides in Mexico, the clearing of rainforests in Brazil, or is it what people are doing in their backyards here in the U.S.?”

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2. INVESTMENT IN DIGITAL TOOLS Prior to the pandemic, many small-business owners used technology as a secondary approach to business, according to Hall — but that shifted in 2020. A 2020 Salesforce report found that growing small businesses were more likely to accelerate the pace of investing in technology due to the pandemic. “Previously, we were a company that welcomed guests at our front counters with a handshake and a smile,” Clark Twiddy, president of Twiddy & Company, a family-owned vacation rental company in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, said via email. Twiddy said when the company closed its inperson counters due to COVID, investing in technology enabled them to “deliver Southern hospitality in a way never before imagined.” Twiddy & Company started using Salesforce for customer relationship management, scaled up its phone technology to Genesys, a cloud-based system, and introduced an AI chatbot to help customers on its website. 3. RECONNECTING WITH THE COMMUNITY Small businesses have long been an integral part of the communities they inhabit. And during the pandemic, Cruz says, business owners stepped up to help those communities, even when they were in difficult positions themselves. Cruz tells the story of Cardsmart Greetings, a small gift shop in Buffalo, New York, whose owner, Tracey Mangano, ran a hand sanitizer distribution event in her community, despite her business being closed. Cardsmart was recognized by the National Retail Federation 31

4 SMALLBUSINESS INNOVATIONS THAT WILL OUTLAST THE PANDEMIC

Small businesses that survived the COVID-19 pandemic still face a long road to recovery, but some of the innovations business owners adopted last year may outlast the pandemic itself. “If you make it through this, you ask, you learn, you adapt, and I think it only makes you stronger,” says Keith Hall, president and CEO of the National Association for the Self-Employed. Here are four ways small businesses adapted in response to the pandemic that may have long-lasting effects on future operations, according to industry experts and business owners themselves. 27

1. CREATIVE BUSINESS MODELS The pandemic forced businesses to find new ways to serve their customers — and quickly, says Meghan Cruz, director of grassroots advocacy at the National Retail Federation. Now, that small-business owners have built out new infrastructure, like curbside pickup and e-commerce operations, they can continue using the hybrid business models they adopted during the pandemic, she says. Within a few weeks of the pandemic shutdowns, Keith Wallace, founder of the Wine School of Philadelphia, was facing possible bankruptcy. Unable to open the doors of his business’s in-person-only classrooms, Wallace had to cancel wine classes for thousands of people. “The only way to survive was to pivot,” he said via email. “I realized this was the time to try something audacious.” Wallace repurposed his office into a recording studio, turned the main classroom into a video studio and taught himself how to produce and edit videos. By September 2020, the school launched its first onlineonly Level One Sommelier Course, an eight-week program. By December, Wallace was able to recoup about 30% of the business’s income through the online programs. Now, he is working on launching three additional online programs nationally within the next year. “This change is forever,” he said.

FERRARI TAPS EUROPEAN CHIP-MAKER EXECUTIVE AS NEW CEO

Luxury sports carmaker Ferrari has tapped Benedetto Vigna, an Italian executive at Europe’s largest semiconductor chipmaker, as its new CEO, the company announced this week. Vigna, 52, will join Ferrari in September from Geneva-based STMicroelectronics, where he has worked for 26 years, most recently running the most profitable operating business, its analog, micro-electromechanical systems and sensors group. The appointment signals Ferrari’s focus on new technologies shaping an automotive world 37

and the Qurate Retail Group as part of their Small Business Spotlight series. Small businesses, Cruz says, “were able to be there for their communities when the communities needed them the most. And I think that trend will stay.”

4. NEW OPPORTUNITIES An April 2021 Federal Reserve report concludes that we’re unlikely to understand exactly how many small businesses have closed their doors since the start of the pandemic until it’s long behind us. But on the other side of that coin: 4.3 million businesses were formed in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That represents a 24% increase in new businesses from 2019. Not all of the growth over the past year can be attributed to people finding their entrepreneurial spirit, Hall says. Many employees who were laid off continued to work in their industry, such as real estate, marketing or accounting. But out of necessity, they became self-employed business owners, Hall says. These self-employed professionals have found opportunities by connecting with other smallbusiness owners looking to outsource backoffice work they traditionally did themselves. “There’s a fundamental shift in opportunity,” Hall says. “A fundamental shift in the demand curve for new small businesses. And I think millions of people are going to benefit from that.”

FERRARI TAPS EUROPEAN CHIP-MAKER EXECUTIVE AS NEW CEO

Image: Michael Kappeler/

GERMANY STARTS ROLLING OUT A DIGITAL EU VACCINATION PASS

Image: Michael Kappeler

Germany on Thursday started rolling out a digital vaccination pass that can be used across Europe as the continent gets ready for the key summer travel season. The country’s health minister said starting this week vaccination centers, doctors practices and pharmacies will gradually start giving out digital passes to fully vaccinated people. The CovPass will let users download proof of their coronavirus vaccination status onto a smartphone app, allowing them easy access to restaurants, museums or other venues that require proof of immunization. The vaccination passport should be available to everyone in Germany who is fully vaccinated by the end of this month, Health Minister Jens Spahn said. “The goal is that this certificate can also be used in Helsinki, Amsterdam or Mallorca,” Spahn told reporters in Berlin. People who have already been fully vaccinated in recent weeks will either get a letter with a QR-code they can scan with their phones, or they can contact their doctors or pharmacies to retroactively get the digital pass. “By doing so, we in the European Union are setting a cross-border standard that doesn’t exist elsewhere in the world yet,” he said, adding that digital vaccination pass is an important step for the revival of international tourist travel.

NEW MEXICO BEGINS PUSH TO IMPROVE SPOTTY INTERNET ACCESS

A nationwide search is underway for an administrator to guide New Mexico’s expansion of high-speed internet, with an appointment expected in July. Details of the talent search are part of a progress report by state information technology officials, scheduled for discussion Thursday at a legislative hearing. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham expanded the search for a state director of broadband internet after vetting six candidates and holding a pair of interviews. She has tasked a retired Boeing engineer with outlining a statewide technology strategy for the future. The Legislature and governor recently approved $133 million in spending to expand high-speed internet access during the coming fiscal year 48

that starts July 1. They also called for the creation of a new state office dedicated to improving internet access, attached to the Department of Information Technology. The COVID-19 pandemic and a year-long pivot to online learning have exposed gaps in internet access across large swaths of the state. And a state district court judge has directed the state to move quickly to improve student access to equipment and infrastructure for online learning. New Mexico has hired a consultant to study existing internet infrastructure programs in comparable states, including Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota and Montana.

EYING DEAL, GM SOFTENS ON TOUGH STANDARDS FOR CAR POLLUTION

and trade issues,” ministry spokesperson Gao Feng said at a regular news briefing Thursday. Gao said the U.S. move to revoke previous government actions against apps such as TikTok and WeChat was a “positive step in the right direction.” The White House on Wednesday revoked some blanket-style orders made under former President Donald Trump against Chinese apps including the messenging app WeChat, short video app TikTok and the Alipay payments app. A new executive order from President Joe Biden said the U.S. would conduct an “evidence-based” analysis of transactions involving apps that are created, supplied or controlled by China. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated at a daily news briefing that China will continue to defend its interests. It urged the U.S. “to stop generalizing the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress Chinese technology enterprises.” Courts blocked the Trump administration’s efforts last year to ban TikTok and WeChat, but the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is still conducting a national-security review of TikTok. The Biden administration’s stance reflects concern that users’ personal data could be exposed by popular apps tied to China if the ruling Communist Party pressures companies to share data. The administration said in February that it was replacing Trump’s approach with a more targeted strategy. It has not actually weighed in yet on whether TikTok and other apps pose a danger to Americans. Image: Kevin Frayer

release of its proposed tailpipe-pollution and fuel-economy standards, set for July. Regan discussed the standards with GM CEO Mary Barra, and he also talked with Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) and Toyota officials this week, the EPA said. More meetings with automakers are coming. An EPA spokesman said Wednesday that negotiations with automakers remained fluid but constructive as the agency seeks to meet the July goal set by President Joe Biden for emissions standards. There still are wide differences in what automakers will agree to as the Biden administration moves to reverse former President Donald Trump’s rollback of pollution and gas mileage standards enacted before he took office. In her letter to Regan dated Tuesday, Barra wrote that GM now supports the requirements in a 2019 deal between California and five of its competitors: Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, BMW and Volvo. The Trump administration moved to end California’s ability to set its own standards, and GM had backed Trump in subsequent court challenges. Biden is moving to restore California’s standards, which are followed by at least 13 other states. Barra said GM favors the emission reduction goals of the California deal through the 2026 model year, but “believes that the same environmental benefits can and should be achieved through a high-volume electric vehicle pathway.” Her letter said that more electric vehicles on the road would bring further pollution reductions in later years. Automakers have different views on meeting the standards, and environmental groups 66

want requirements that are more stringent than those enacted under former President Barack Obama. For instance, Toyota maintains that in states where coal is primarily used to generate electricity, its lineup of plug-in gaselectric hybrids is actually cleaner than fully electric vehicles. GM’s proposal also is far less stringent than what Sen. Tom Carper, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has proposed to the EPA to achieve climate goals. The Delaware Democrat urged the agency in April to follow the California deal through the 2026 model year, then set targets to end sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Carper supports giving automakers credits toward meeting the requirements for selling zeroemissions battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. But he stresses the need for aggressive action on tailpipe emissions to help spur a shift to electric vehicles and ensure that the U.S. positions itself as a top player in auto manufacturing over foreign competitors such as China. The move toward electric vehicles already is happening, but slowly. Experts have said it will be difficult to replace the 279 million passenger vehicles now on U.S. roads — most of which burn gasoline — with electric vehicles in less than 15 years. The average U.S. vehicle is now nearly 12 years old, so they stay on the roads longer than in the past. And without an immediate change, the number of gasolinepowered vehicles will continue to grow. IHS Markit predicts it will be 284 million by 2025.

GLOBAL GLITCH: SWATHS OF INTERNET GO DOWN AFTER CLOUD OUTAGE

Dozens of websites went down briefly around the globe Tuesday, including CNN, The New York Times and Britain’s government home page, after an outage at the cloud computing service Fastly, illustrating how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet. The sites that could not be reached also included some Amazon pages, the Financial Times, Reddit, Twitch and The Guardian. San Francisco-based Fastly acknowledged a problem just before 6 a.m. Eastern. About an hour later, the company said: “The issue has been identified and a fix has been applied.” Most of the sites soon appeared to be back online. The company said in an emailed statement that it was a “technical issue” and “not related to a cyber attack.” 71

The nation’s largest automaker said Wednesday it can support greenhouse gas emissions limits that other car manufacturers negotiated with California — if they are achieved mostly by promoting sales of fully electric vehicles. It is a new stance for General Motors, which had supported the Trump administration’s efforts to end California’s ability to set its own limits. The shift brings GM closer to the 2019 California deal signed onto by five other automakers, offering hope for a breakthrough on an industrywide deal. But GM’s proposal of an accelerated transition to electric vehicles — in the last year, fully electric vehicles accounted for less than 2% of U.S. new vehicle sales — falls short of more strict emissions reductions for gas-powered vehicles being urged by a top Senate Democrat. Details of GM’s shifted stance came in a letter from CEO Marry Barra to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who has been meeting with auto companies this week in advance of the agency’s

“Even the biggest and most sophisticated companies experience outages. But they can also recover fairly quickly,” Madory said. When the outage hit, some visitors trying to access CNN.com got a message that said: “Fastly error: unknown domain: cnn.com.” Attempts to access the Financial Times website turned up a similar message, while visits to The New York Times and U.K. government’s gov.uk site returned an “Error 503 Service Unavailable” message, along with the line “Varnish cache server,” which is a technology that Fastly is built on. Down Detector, which tracks internet outages, posted reports on dozens of sites going down.

JUST HOW VULNERABLE IS THE INTERNET?

An outage at a little-known firm that speeds up access to websites knocked a lot of top internet destinations offline this week, disrupting business and leisure for untold millions globally. The problem was quickly resolved. The company, Fastly, blamed a configuration error in its technology. But the incident — Fastly’s traffic dropped 75% for about an hour just as the U.S. East Coast was beginning to stir —raises questions about how vulnerable the global internet is to more serious disruption. 77

GLOBAL GLITCH: SWATHS OF INTERNET GO DOWN AFTER CLOUD OUTAGE

Still, major futures markets in the U.S. dipped sharply minutes after the outage, which came a month after hackers forced the shutdown of the biggest fuel pipeline in the U.S. Fastly is a content-delivery network, or CDN. It provides vital but behind-the-scenes cloud computing “edge servers” to many of the web’s popular sites. These servers store, or “cache,” content such as images and video in places around the world so that it is closer to users, allowing them to fetch it more quickly and smoothly. Fastly says its services mean that a European user going to an American website can get the content 200 to 500 milliseconds faster. Internet traffic measurement by Kentik showed that Fastly began to recover from the outage roughly an hour after it struck at mid-morning European time, before most Americans were awake. “Looks like it is slowly coming back,” said Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure expert at Kentik. He said “it is serious because Fastly is one of the world’s biggest CDNs and this was a global outage.” Brief internet service outages are not uncommon and are only rarely the result of hacking or other mischief. Fastly stock jumped almost 11% on Tuesday as investors shrugged off the problem. Still, the incident highlighted the relative fragility of the internet’s architecture given its heavy reliance on Big Tech companies — such as Amazon’s AWS cloud services — as opposed to a more decentralized array of companies. 73

iOS 15: CONNECT, FOCUS, EXPLORE, AND DO MORE

After making some significant leaps forward with iOS and iPadOS in 2020, it was only right that this year’s updates would be more understated, but it didn’t stop Apple from announcing some exciting new additions to its popular operating systems. From SharePlay and an Apple Maps overhaul to an all-new Weather app, attractive notifications, and iPad enhancements.

LEAPING FURTHER FORWARD ON iOS As Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering took to the virtual stage at this year’s WWDC 2021, it was clear that he and his team had worked to develop exciting new features for the iPhone and iPad in what has been one of the most challenging years on record. Apple staff continue to work from home, though are expected to return to the office soon, and whilst the number of new features and optimizations is lesser than in some previous years, both iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 still pack their punch with exciting changes. Speaking of the new version of iOS, Federighi acknowledged that the “iPhone has become indispensable, and this year we’ve created even more ways it can enhance our daily lives. iOS 15 helps users stay connected while sharing experiences in real-time, gives them new tools to help reduce distraction and find focus, uses intelligence to enhance the photos experience, and, with huge upgrades to Maps, brings new ways to explore the world. We can’t wait for customers to experience it.”

“You can’t switch quickly to another service unless you had it set up ahead of time,” said Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure expert with the traffic-measuring company Kentik. “If Fastly were down for a day, that would be pretty bad.” Even if they do have an alternative provider, engineering a smooth switchover from one to another is not for the faint of heart, said Ben April, chief technical officer of Farsight Security. Madory and other experts said Fastly and its competitors spend heavily and devote major engineering resources to reducing the possibilities of such outages and ensuring they can recover as quickly as Fastly did on Tuesday. Such outages are not new — but not at all common. “There may be years between when a company has an outage like this,” Madory added. “I think we are going to have these very rare but probably impactful short outages for the foreseeable future.”

ARE OTHER PARTS OF THE INTERNET SIMILARLY VULNERABLE? Like the content distribution network world, cloud computing — when computing services are entrusted to a remote provider — is dominated by just a few major players led by Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft. Amazon, the biggest cloud provider, periodically has brief outages, which are a big deal for customers. “And if it became a major outage of, say, more than six, eight hours — but days — it could put companies out of business,” said Josh Chessman, an analyst with the tech market researcher Gartner Inc.

The question is: What could cause such a serious outage that might destroy customer data? A major cyberattack is one possibility. Another is fire or catastrophic natural disaster. These businesses, after all, are based in datacenters. In March, a fire at a datacenter in Strasbourg, France, owned by a major cloud computing firm knocked out service to millions of websites.

SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT REGULATE THESE FIRMS? WHAT CAN COMPANIES AND INDIVIDUALS DO TO PROTECT THEMSELVES? “I don’t know that we need regulation,” Chessman said. Suppose Congress proposed to mandate additional cloud providers to increase competition. “How do you do that?” he asked. Of course, the federal government can set new standards for security at companies that control vast data resources online. It’s already beginning to tighten up cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure in the energy sector following last month’s cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline, he said. In a regulatory filing last year, Fastly said it had been subject to “cyber-attacks from third parties — including parties who we believe are sponsored by government actors.” Those attacks “have strained our network” and could harm it in the future, it said. Businesses and consumers, meanwhile, should be thinking seriously about how much they should rely on the cloud for their most valuable data. “If there’s an outage, what’s the impact on our business?” Chessman asked. 83

Perhaps it makes sense not to rely on a cloud-based service for your company’s email if you’d go bankrupt without it during a two-week outage. But running your own email and backup services is complicated and costly — one reason companies turned to the cloud in the first place. David Vaskevitch, a former Microsoft chief technical officer and CEO of the photo management app Mylio, said people have grown so accustomed to the always-on internet — everywhere we go, we carry a pocket computer with us — that we wrongly assume it will be available 24/7/365. “It’s not very realistic and it’s not a good way to live,” said Vaskevitch, who at 67 grew up in a pre-digital world. “The internet is always there — until it isn’t.” Despite the vast interconnectedness of the world, it can still be wise to store some data locally, said Vaskevitch. Instead of streaming all our music, we should think about saving some locally. Same goes for email — for instance, in an arrangement where you store it on the computing device you use most. “Your device is both the best friend of the internet and the best insurance policy,” he said. “When the internet goes down, if you arrange things carefully, you can still do most of the things you need to do.”

iOS 15: CONNECT, FOCUS, EXPLORE, AND DO MORE

Perhaps one of the most relevant and topical changes coming to iOS 15 is FaceTime improvements, which introduce spatial audio for the first time. Apple says that this means voices will sound “as if they are coming from where the person is positioned on the screen,” and new microphone modes have been developed to separate voices from the background noise, all without requiring new hardware. For the first time, Portrait Mode arrives on

FaceTime video calls, so that users can blur their background and make themselves the focus when catching up with loved ones or speaking to colleagues over a virtual meeting. For corporate customers, a new grid view allows users to see more faces at the same time, and for the first time, FaceTime calls go beyond the Mac, with users able to share links to FaceTime calls and video chats via Messages, mimicking Zoom’s ability to link to meetings. For those who are still unable to see friends and family in the flesh due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, users will be able to share more experiences over SharePlay, so that movies, TV shows, and the music stays

in sync, with shared playback controls. This service goes beyond Apple TV+ and is available for users who have Disney+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Paramount+, Pluto TV, TikTok, Twitch, and other streaming services, too. It’s an alternative to apps like WatchParty, ideal for families, friends, and virtual get-togethers.

REDUCING INFORMATION OVERLOAD With consumers spending more time on their devices than ever before, Apple made an effort to help reduce distractions and information overload in this year’s release. A new feature on iOS is Focus, which filters notifications and apps based on what a user wants to focus on. For example, if you’re at work, you can set up a Focus that will prioritize notifications from productivity apps like Calendar, Mail, and Slack, and have notifications from friends on Facebook deliver silently or not at all. What’s more, it’s possible to create Home Screen pages with apps and widgets that apply to moments of focus, which reduces the temptation of clicking onto Twitter when you should be working on an important business pitch. Focus is even more important when paired with a refreshed notifications experience on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, making important messages easier than ever to identify and sort between. Apple has added contact photos for people as well as larger icons for apps that make them even easier to identify, and summarizes notifications to deliver them at a more convenient time for users, such as in the morning or in the evening. Urgent or important messages will rise to the top and be delivered immediately, whereas lesser important notifications from apps you don’t use regularly, 92

for instance, won’t display all, reducing clutter and saving you some time. Taking a leaf out of Google’s book is Live Text, a new service that uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in a photo and allow users to take action. For instance, if you take a picture of a menu at a restaurant, you can search for a particular dish and Apple will use intelligent data to find the image. You can also utilize the Apple Neural Engine to take a picture of a document and copy and paste the text from that document onto iMessage or Mail, whilst Visual Look Up allows users to learn about artists in restaurants, discover a plant, or make a note of something for future reading or reference. To accommodate this newfound intelligence, Spotlight has been improved to search for photos by location, scenes, objects, and Live Text, and enhanced results for contacts will show conversations, shared photos, and even their location. In Photos, Apple has bolstered Memories with a new look and an interactive interface, and for the first time, it integrates with Apple Music to personalize song suggestions and bring your moments and memories to life, every day.

IMPROVEMENTS TO APPLE’S CORE APPS Apple has worked extremely hard in recent years to make Apple Maps as compelling as its rivals’ alternatives, and this year it takes a major leap forward. Users can now experience significantly enhanced details in cities for neighborhoods, commercial districts, elevation, and buildings, new road colors and labels, custom-designed landmarks, and a new night-time mode with a moonlit glow, and whether you’re navigating a 96

journey on iPhone or using CarPlay, Apple will now show you a stunning three-dimensional city-driving experience with more road details such as turn lanes, medians, bike lanes, and pedestrian crosswalks. For those on foot, users can hold up their iPhone and Maps will generate an accurate position to deliver detailed walking directions in augmented reality, saving people the stress and confusion of finding the right way to go. Combined, these features make Apple Maps even more attractive and will no doubt encourage users to make the switch back to Maps. On Apple Wallet, Apple is introducing support for new types of keys, following on from its successful launch of adding car keys to the Wallet app. Apple will utilize Ultra-Wideband

technology even further in iOS 15, allowing users to unlock their home, office, and hotel room, and later in the year, users in the United States will be able to add their driver’s license or state IDs to their Wallet app, with further countries expected to add features too. Safari has been handed an update with controls that are easier to reach with one hand, and a new tab bar that’s lighter and more compact than before. Tab Groups are also coming, which allow users to access groups of websites at any time across iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Weather has been given some attention following Apple’s acquisition of Dark Sky, with more attractive graphical displays of weather data, as well as full-screen maps and

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a dynamic layout that will change based on weather conditions and data availability. The Notes app has added Tags so that notes and memos can be categorized, Siri will announce notifications on AirPods, iCloud+ launches to offer a new internet privacy service known as iCloud Private Relay without reducing speeds, the Health app allows users to share data with friends, family, and caregivers, Find My supports device location even when it’s turned off, and the Translate app adds a new Live Translate feature that makes conversation flow naturally across languages. Apple has added a For All of You tab to Apple TV, which showcases a collection of shows and movies based on the interests of selected people or an entire household, and the Set-up process has been overhauled on iOS, offering users the ability to temporarily back up data to iCloud, even when they don’t have a subscription, to make the process more streamlined.

REFINING iPadOS What’s great about an iPadOS release is that, as well as all of the new features coming to iOS, there are additional options for those with an iPad. The new multitasking feature on the latest release demonstrates that, with a new way to let users go into Split View or Slide Over with just a tap. Thanks to a new Shelf users can multitask with apps that have multiple windows like Safari and Pages, and when using an External Keyboard, new shortcuts and a redesign of the menu bar make using an iPad even more like a Mac - ideal for professionals. Although we didn’t quite get an entirely new Home Screen, Apple has allowed users to 101

place widgets among apps on Home Screen pages, providing more information at a glance and offering a more personalized experience. Stunning new widget sizes have also been introduced, for showcasing videos, music, games, photos, and more. New widgets have also been added for the App Store, Find My, Game Center, Mail, and Contacts, and the App Library has been added to the iPad dock - a similar experience to Launchpad on the Mac. Translate finally arrives on the iPad offering users new ways to communicate, and for the first time, users can build apps inside of Swift Playgrounds on the iPad and submit them to the App Store, all without having to download additional software on their Mac or Windows PC. Code is immediately reflected in the live preview while building apps, and users can run their apps full screen to test them out, whilst Universal Control comes to iPad, allowing users to work with a single mouse and keyboard to move between iPad and Mac for a seamless experience, with no setup required - there’s never been a better time to have an iPad! Although this year’s updates might not be as hard-hitting as some previous iterations of iOS and iPadOS, they still represent a major leap forward and take iPhone and iPad even further. Apple will release iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS later this year.

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OWN AN ECHO? AMAZON MAY BE HELPING ITSELF TO YOUR BANDWIDTH

Do you own an Amazon smart device? If so, odds are good that the company is already sharing your internet connection with your neighbors unless you’ve specifically told it not to. On Tuesday, the company launched a program that forces users of many Echo smart speakers and Ring security cameras to automatically share a small portion of their home wireless bandwidth with neighbors. The only way to stop it is to turn it off yourself. Amazon says the program, called Amazon Sidewalk, is a way to make sure lights, smart locks and other gadgets outside the home and out of reach of a Wi-Fi connection stay working. 104

Blue Origin’s debut flight with people aboard — after 15 successful test flights of its reusable New Shepard rockets — will take place on July 20, a date selected because it is the 52nd anniversary of the first moon landing by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The Bezos brothers will launch from remote West Texas alongside the winner of an online charity auction. There’s no word yet on who else might fill the six-person capsule during the 10-minute flight that will take its passengers to an altitude of about 65 miles (105 kilometers), just beyond the edge of space, and then return to Earth without going into orbit. Bezos said he has dreamed of traveling to space since he was 5. “To see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth,” Bezos said in an Instagram post. “I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.” Added his brother: “I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going to be on the first flight, and then when he asked me to go along, I was just awestruck.” Bezos will step down as Amazon’s CEO 15 days before liftoff. He announced months ago that he wants to spend more time on his rocket company as well as his newspaper, The Washington Post. His stake in Amazon stands at $164 billion, which will make him by far the wealthiest person to fly to space.

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Until now, thrill-seeking billionaires have had to buy capsule seats from the Russian space program or, more recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which plans its first private flight in September. These orbital trips, generally lasting several days, with visits to the International Space Station, have cost tens of millions of dollars per person. The flight by Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule, named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, will last five minutes less than Shepard’s history-marking suborbital ride aboard a Mercury capsule in 1961. But Blue Origin’s capsule is 10 times roomier with a huge window at every seat — the biggest windows ever built for a spacecraft, in fact. The company, based in Kent, Washington, is working to develop an orbital rocket named after John Glenn, the first American to circle the Earth. The Bezos flight will officially kick off the company’s space tourism business. The company has yet to start selling seats to the public or even to announce a ticket price for the short trips, which provide about three minutes of weightlessness. Blue Origin’s launch and landing site is 120 miles southeast of El Paso, close to the Mexican border. After the capsule separates, the rocket returns to Earth and lands upright, to be used again. The capsule, also reusable, descends under parachutes. Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson — a “tieloathing,” mountain-climbing, hot-air-ballooning daredevil — also plans to ride into space aboard his own airplane-launched rocketship later this year after one more test flight over New Mexico. 118

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Virgin Galactic completed its third test flight into space with a crew two weeks ago; the company doesn’t want him climbing aboard until the craft is thoroughly proven. The 70-year-old Branson offered congratulations to Bezos, a tame, bookish Wall Streeter by comparison. Branson tweeted that their two companies “are opening up access to space — how extraordinary!” Like Blue Origin, Branson’s company will send paying customers to the lower reaches of space on up-and-down flights, not Earthorbiting rides. Musk’s SpaceX already has transported 10 astronauts to the space station for NASA and sold several seats on private flights. Musk himself has yet to commit to going into space, though he has repeatedly said he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact. Until recently, Blue Origin had been criticized by some for proceeding too slowly, especially when compared with SpaceX. Bezos adopted as the company’s motto “Gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “Step by step, ferociously,” and had it emblazoned on the so-called lucky cowboy boots he wears to his company’s space launches. “Blue Origin, admirably, has gone about it carefully and has built a reliable and less ambitious vehicle and is likely to succeed,” the director of Vanderbilt University’s aerospace design lab, Amrutur Anilkumar, said in an email. “It is noteworthy that Bezos feels comfortable taking his brother for a ride; that is probably the best exclamation for safety and reliability.”

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While Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s capsules are fully automated, Virgin Galactic has two pilots in the cockpit for every spaceflight. A 2014 accident left one pilot dead and the other seriously injured. As for the seat that is being auctioned off, Blue Origin opened online bidding on May 5, the 60th anniversary of Shepard’s flight. It’s up to $2.8 million. The auction will conclude Saturday, with the winning amount donated to Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s education foundation, which encourages youngsters to pursue careers in science. Nearly 6,000 people from 143 countries have taken part in the auction. In an Instagram video posted by Bezos, Mark Bezos’ reaction when his brother invited him on the flight was: “Are you serious? ... Seriously? My God!” “What a remarkable opportunity not only to have this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend,” the younger brother said. 122

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GUCCI DIGITALLY OUTFITS GEN-Z IN METAVERSE FORAY WITH ROBLOX

Anyone whose virtual alter ego is wandering around the Roblox online game platform these days might run into other avatars sporting Gucci handbags, sunglasses or hats. The digital-only items were part of a limited Gucci collection for Roblox, a step by the fashion house that prides itself on Italian craftsmanship to enter an expanding virtual space where many of its youngest admirers already are at home. Players in the metaverse — where virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet meet — say the big-name fashion collaboration represents a new era of virtual-real world interplay, a space in which smart product placement meets the desire of consumers to express their personalities in the virtual world. 125

JEFF BEZOS WILL BLAST INTO SPACE ON ROCKET’S 1ST CREW FLIGHT

Outdoing his fellow billionaires in daredevilry, Jeff Bezos will blast into space next month when his Blue Origin company makes its first flight with a crew. The 57-year-old Amazon founder and richest person in the world by Forbes’ estimate will become the first person to ride his own rocket to space. Bezos announced his intentions and, in an even bolder show of confidence, said he will share the adventure with his younger brother and best friend, Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter. He said that will make it more meaningful. 115

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The report also doesn’t rule out that what pilots have seen may be new technologies developed by other countries. One of the officials said there is no indication the unexplained phenomena are from secret U.S. programs. The officials were not authorized to discuss the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Findings of the report were first published by The New York Times. The report examines multiple unexplained sightings from recent years that in some cases have been captured on video of pilots exclaiming about objects flying in front of them. Congress in December required the Director of National Intelligence to summarize and report on the U.S. government’s knowledge of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs — better known to the public as unidentified flying objects or UFOs. The effort has included a Defense Department UAP task force established last year. The expected public release of an unclassified version of the report this month will amount to a status report, not the final word, according to one official. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sue Gough, declined to comment on news stories about the intelligence report. She said the Pentagon’s UAP task force is “actively working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the report, and DNI will provide the findings to Congress.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, when asked about the report, said of the question at first, “It’s always a little wacky.” But she added, “I will say that we take reports of incursions into our airspace by any aircraft — identified or unidentified — very seriously and investigate each one.” Image: Saul Loeb

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While the Gucci Garden space on Roblox was open for two weeks last month, the platform’s 42 million users could spend from $1.20 to $9 on collectible and limited-edition Gucci accessories. Items were hidden in the virtual Gucci Garden, which echoed real-world Gucci Garden exhibitions in Florence and other global cities. Some items were offered for free, and the exclusivity was underlined with limited time releases. The experience allowed Roblox’s core demographic — roughly ages 9 to 15 — a digital entrée to the rarified world of luxury goods that few can dream of in the real world. Now that the space is closed, the limited edition items have even greater cachet. According to the developer, more than 4.5 million items were “won.” Many parents may scratch their heads at paying real money to accessorize an avatar, but Generation Z players have long been prepped for this evolution. They ran through physical streets and parks to intercept and capture Pokemon Go characters, part of an augmented reality mobile game that launched in 2016. Many took the edge off pandemic lockdown by playing with real-world friends over gaming platforms. On Roblox, dressing up avatars is old hat. “Gen Z, they sometimes see virtual products as more valuable than physical products,” Christina Wootton, the vice president for brand partnerships at Roblox, said. “We are definitely seeing that on Roblox, where it is all about storytelling and self-expression. There are so many people who come together and social and connect with their friends, and they want to represent their digital selves through fashion.” 126

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While the Gucci items users bought only can be “worn” on the Roblox platform, it is just the tip of the metaverse iceberg. Similar items made and traded in the metaverse are known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — digital objects backed by blockchain technology certifying their authenticity, and often uniqueness. NFTs, which might be anything from personalized “skins,” or costumes, for avatars to digital art, can be traded ad-infinitum, potentially growing in value with each trade. Their ownership is not limited to any single platform. Even on Roblox, which has its own marketplace where items can be traded, the Gucci Dionysus Bag with Bee was resold for over $4,100 worth of Robux — exceeding the price of a real Gucci Dionysus bag and a huge premium of the original price of 475 Roblox, roughly $4.75. Only 851 of the bags were available during two releases, making it the rarest piece in the collection, compared with the 2.6 million wide-brim denim hats that were snapped up. Unlike NFTs, the astronomically priced Dionysus bag cannot be traded outside of the Roblox platform, making it seemingly a vanity investment for a super-fan. The metaverse’s potential for the fashion world goes well beyond the world of gaming and extends into digital ecosystems that are still under construction. So-called decentralized worlds are seeing a huge influx of money, with billions being spent to iron out technical issues. Boson Protocol, a technology company, is bridging the gap between the metaverse and physical world with a new venture designed to allow consumers to purchase fashion NFTs for their avatars from a platform, Decentraland. 128

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NFTs, in turn, will contain vouchers redeemable for corresponding real-world items. The project is expected to launch in two months. “If we increasingly are going to exist in these digital spaces, then objects that are scarce, unique and ownable, of course, are going to have value in those spaces,” London-based Boson Protocol co-founder Justin Banon said. “All of these things of social signaling in the real world are just, in fact, perhaps more important in the digital world.” It’s only natural that fashion would pave the way for the less digitally savvy consumers, who may shy away from Bitcoin and balk at multimilliondollar sales of NFTs that have captured the attention of artists and collectors alike. “Fashion brands have to go where other people are not going. The whole point of a fashion brand is to stand out,” Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, said. For Gucci, the biggest return on investment from the Roblox tie-up “is to become part of that generation’s world,” Adamson said. “No one shares ordinary,” Adamson said. “‘My avatar is wearing a Gucci belt’ is a little different” and perhaps even catchier for a certain audience than spotting a real Gucci bag on the street. Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri said that more than generating revenue, the Roblox collaboration was a way to tap fresh creative veins and stay apace of an evolving world where fashion, music, films and technology increasingly mashup.

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“Who knows what the industry will look like in 10 years? We want to start before everyone else to get up to speed,” Bizzarri said at the physical Gucci Garden opening in Florence. “Certainly, they are not operations that bring a lot of business now, but they could be a source of business tomorrow.” Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele described the metaverse as new “territory” to explore. “Fashion has become more than a boutique along the street in a capital. I think we are in a phase when maybe the world wants to go beyond the industrialized revolution and doesn’t know how to do it,” Michele said. “Especially now, in this phase of the pandemic, it is a big chance to accelerate changes.”

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ENERGY CHIEF CITES RISK OF CYBERATTACKS CRIPPLING POWER GRID

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called for more public-private cooperation on cyber defenses and said U.S. adversaries already are capable of using cyber intrusions to shut down the U.S. power grid. “I think that there are very malign actors who are trying,” she said. She added: “Even as we speak, there are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally.” Granholm noted, without mentioning the company by name, that Colonial Pipeline Co. was hit in May with a crippling cyberattack by a ransomware group. Colonial temporarily shut down its gasoline distribution networks in the South before paying $4.4 million to the hackers. She urged energy companies to resist paying ransom. 145

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US INTEL REPORT ON UFOS: NO EVIDENCE OF ALIENS, BUT...

Whatever or whoever they are, they’re still out there. U.S. intelligence is after them, but its upcoming report won’t deliver any full or final truth about UFOs. The tantalizing prospect of top government intel finally weighing in — after decades of conspiracy theories, TV shows, movies and winking jokes by presidents — will instead yield a more mundane reality that’s not likely to change many minds on any side of the issue. Investigators have found no evidence the sightings are linked to aliens — but can’t deny a link either. Two officials briefed on the report due to Congress later this month say the U.S. government cannot give a definitive explanation of aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots. 135

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The answer is that there are numerous technological, legal and diplomatic hurdles to going after ransomware gangs. Until recently, it just hasn’t been a high priority for the U.S. government. That has changed as the problem has grown well beyond an economic nuisance. President Joe Biden intends to confront Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, about Moscow’s harboring of ransomware criminals when the two men meet in Europe later this month. The Biden administration has also promised to boost defenses against attacks, improve efforts to prosecute those responsible and build diplomatic alliances to pressure countries that harbor ransomware gangs. Calls are growing for the administration to direct U.S. intelligence agencies and the military to attack ransomware gangs’ technical infrastructure used for hacking, posting sensitive victim data on the dark web and storing digital currency payouts. Fighting ransomware requires the nonlethal equivalent of the “global war on terrorism” launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, said John Riggi, a former FBI agent and senior adviser for cybersecurity and risk for the America Hospital Association. Its members have been hard hit by ransomware gangs during the coronavirus pandemic. “It should include a combination of diplomatic, financial, law enforcement, intelligence operations, of course, and military operations,” Riggi said. A public-private task force including Microsoft and Amazon made similar suggestions in an 81page report that called for intelligence agencies 150

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and the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command to work with other agencies to “prioritize ransomware disruption operations.” “Take their infrastructure away, go after their wallets, their ability to cash out,” said Philip Reiner, a lead author of the report. He worked at the National Security Council during the Obama presidency and is now CEO at The Institute for Security and Technology. But the difficulties of taking down ransomware gangs and other cybercriminals have long been clear. The FBI’s list of most-wanted cyber fugitives has grown at a rapid clip and now has more than 100 entries, many of whom are not exactly hiding. Evgeniy Bogachev, indicted nearly a decade ago for what prosecutors say was a wave of cyber bank thefts, lives in a Russian resort town and “is known to enjoy boating” on the Black Sea, according to the FBI’s wanted listing. Ransomware gangs can move around, do not need much infrastructure to operate and can shield their identities. They also operate in a decentralized network. For instance, DarkSide, the group responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack that led to fuel shortages in the South, rents out its ransomware software to partners to carry out attacks. Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Red Canary, said identifying and disrupting ransomware criminals takes time and serious effort. “A lot of people misunderstand that the government can’t just willy-nilly go out and press a button and say, well, nuke that computer,” she said. “Trying to attribute to a 153

person in cyberspace is not an easy task, even for intelligence communities.” Reiner said those limits do not mean the United States cannot still make progress against defeating ransomware, comparing it with America’s ability to degrade the terrorist group al-Qaida while not capturing its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over after U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden. “We can fairly easily make the argument that alQaida no longer poses a threat to the homeland,” Reiner said. “So short of getting al-Zawahiri, you destroy his ability to actually operate. That’s what you can do to these (ransomware) guys.” The White House has been vague about whether it plans to use offensive cyber measures against ransomware gangs. Press secretary Jen Psaki said that “we’re not going to take options off the table,” but she did not elaborate. Her comments followed a ransomware attack by a Russian gang that caused outages at Brazil’s JBS SA, the second-largest producer of beef, pork and chicken in the United States. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, said at a recent symposium that he believes the U.S. will be “bringing the weight of our nation,” including the Defense Department, “to take down this (ransomware) infrastructure outside the United States.” Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who is a legislative leader on cybersecurity issues, said the debate in Congress over how aggressive the U.S. needs to be against ransomware gangs, as well as state adversaries, will be “front and center of the next month or two.” 154

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“The bottom line is, people, whether you’re private sector, public sector, whatever, you shouldn’t be paying ransomware attacks, because it only encourages the bad guys,” she said. Granholm even spoke in favor of having a law that would ban paying such ransom, though she said, “I don’t know whether Congress or the president is at that point.” Asked whether American adversaries have the capability now of shutting down the U.S. power grid, she said: “Yes, they do.” Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States and other countries should talk to countries such as Russia, which is believed to be the origin on some ransomware attacks, about law enforcement and intelligence cooperation “to shut it down.” Rice said this would “test the reality of how much the Russian government is or is not involved” in these attacks. Granholm was on CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and Rice appeared on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

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GLOBAL WAR ON RANSOMWARE? HURDLES HINDER THE US RESPONSE

Foreign keyboard criminals with scant fear of repercussions have paralyzed U.S. schools and hospitals, leaked highly sensitive police files, triggered fuel shortages and, most recently, threatened global food supply chains. The escalating havoc caused by ransomware gangs raises an obvious question: Why has the United States, believed to have the world’s greatest cyber capabilities, looked so powerless to protect its citizens from these kind of criminals operating with near impunity out of Russia and allied countries? 148

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in several countries, said Dutch National Police Chief Constable Jannine van den Berg. Australian Federal Police Commander Jennifer Hearst called it “a watershed moment in global law enforcement history.” The ANOM app became popular in criminal circles as users told one another it was a safe platform. All the time, police were looking over their shoulders as they discussed hits, drug shipments and other crimes. Since October 2019, the FBI cataloged more than 20 million messages from a total of 11,800 devices — with about 9,000 currently active, according to documents, which cited Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and Serbia as the most active countries. They say the number of active ANOM users was only 3,000 until Sky, one of the platforms previously used by criminal gangs, was dismantled in March. While primarily focused on drug trafficking and money-laundering, the investigation also resulted in “high-level public corruption cases,” an FBI agent quoted in the documents said. A goal of Trojan Shield was to “shake the confidence in this entire industry because the FBI is willing and able to enter this space and monitor messages,” the agent said. Swedish police prevented a dozen planned killings and believe that they arrested several “leading actors in criminal networks,” according to a statement from Linda Staaf, the head of Sweden’s national criminal intelligence unit. Finnish police said that nearly 100 people have been detained and more than 500 kilograms Image: Denis Poroy

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(half a ton) of drugs confiscated, along with dozens of guns and cash worth hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars). In Germany, the general prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt said that more than 70 people were arrested Monday and drugs, cash and weapons were also seized. In Australia, authorities said they arrested 224 people and seized more than four tons of drugs and $35 million. New Zealand police said they had arrested 35 people and seized drugs and assets worth millions of dollars. As part of a global operation, the Australian government “struck a heavy blow against organized crime,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters. “Not just in this country, but one that will echo around organized crime around the world.” European police last year delivered a major blow to organized crime after cracking an encrypted communications network known as EncroChat, which was used by criminal gangs across the continent. In March, Belgian police arrested dozens of people after cracking another encrypted chat system and seizing more than 17 tons of cocaine. The latest effort went even further before authorities decided to take down the service. The operation will likely lead criminals to wonder whether services they use are run by a government, Turner said, and it has shown that authorities have the technical knowledge and international cooperation to make it work. Asked if its success can be replicated, she said, “Who knows, right?”

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“To be honest, it’s complicated because you’re talking about using government agencies, government capabilities to go after private citizens in another country,” he said. The U.S. is widely believed to have the best offensive cyber capabilities in the world, though details about such highly classified activities are scant. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the U.S. conducted 231 offensive cyber operations in 2011. More than a decade ago a virus called Stuxnet attacked control units for centrifuges in an underground site in Iran, causing the sensitive devices to spin out of control and destroy themselves. The cyberattack was attributed to America and Israel. U.S. policy called “persistent engagement” already authorizes cyberwarriors to engage hostile hackers in cyberspace and disrupt their operations with code. U.S. Cyber Command has launched offensive operations related to election security, including against Russian misinformation officials during U.S. midterm elections in 2018. After the Colonial Pipeline attack, Biden promised that his administration was committed to bringing foreign cybercriminals to justice. Yet even as he was speaking from the White House, a different Russian-linked ransomware gang was leaking thousands of highly sensitive internal files — including deeply personal background checks — belonging to the police department in the nation’s capital. Experts believe it’s the worst ransomware attack against a U.S.-based law enforcement agency. “We are not afraid of anyone,” the hackers wrote in a follow-up post. 157

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When the FBI dismantled an encrypted messaging service based in Canada in 2018, agents noticed users moving to other networks. Instead of following their tracks to rivals, investigators decided on a new tactic: creating their own service. ANOM, a secure-messaging service built by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, launched in October 2019 and solidified its following after authorities took down another rival. Popularity spread by word of mouth. When ANOM was taken down, authorities had collected more than 27 million messages from about 12,000 devices in 45 languages — a vast body of evidence that fueled a global sting operation. Authorities revealed the operation known as Trojan Shield and announced that it had dealt an “unprecedented blow” to organized crime around the world. “Each and every device in this case was used to further criminal activity,” said Suzanne Turner, the agent in charge of the FBI in San Diego, where the investigation began in 2016. Users were “upper-echelon, command-and-control” figures in more than 300 criminal organizations. Unbeknown to criminals, authorities were copied on every message sent on the FBI devices, much like blind recipients of an email. “The very devices that criminals use to hide their crimes were actually a beacon for law enforcement,” Randy Grossman, the acting U.S. attorney in San Diego, said at a news conference. More than 800 suspects were arrested and more than 32 tons of drugs seized, including cocaine, cannabis, amphetamines and methamphetamines. Police also seized 250 Image: Denis Poroy

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The universe of “The Conjuring” proves it may be reaching its spooky limits when a demon pops up in the latest film from, of all things, a waterbed. That such a well-worn punchline of ’80s suburban life could be home to Satan’s spawn might be played for camp in any other movie, but not here. This gentle franchise is all about timeless scary stuff — swing sets that mysteriously

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One of the bill’s provisions would create a new directorate focused on artificial intelligence and quantum science with the National Science Foundation. The bill would authorize up to $29 billion over five years for the new branch within the foundation with an additional $52 billion for its programs. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Congress should be cutting the foundation’s budget, not increasing it. He called the agency “the king of wasteful spending.” The agency finances about a quarter of all federally supported research conducted by America’s colleges and universities.

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David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick’s screenplay — he also co-wrote “The Conjuring 2” — uses that real history and then opens it up to a wider mystery, which may include a missing teenager in another state. The Warrens must find out who is behind it and stop them. “A master Satanist is not an adversary taken lightly,” they are warned. Director Michael Chaves has real skill with eeriness but we can also see the patterns: Quiet scenes start ordinarily until an odd occurrence happens — say, a cereal box shakes — then the music gets ominous and the camera gets shaky before the split-second shocking addition of a disturbing figure. Fans of the franchise get some nice call-backs to Elvis and the demonic doll Anabel, while newcomers and veterans alike may never be able to listen to Blondie’s “Call Me” the same way again.

THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT Final Trailer

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In the jargon of the internet, Casey Hamilton is chaotic good. He is the human embodiment of “dance like no one’s watching,” with a disarming wholesomeness bred in his native Plant City. The 25-year-old dresses like a flamboyant 9-year-old with a credit card and no parental supervision, and makes it look good, right down to his trademark pink Crocs festooned with Jibbitz, the little cartoon character189

The “Conjuring” universe, kicked off by creator James Wan, now includes three “Conjuring” films and such movies as “Annabelle” and “Annabelle: Creation,” “The Nun” and “Annabelle Comes Home.” The latest film perhaps belongs in the Warrens’ basement trophy room with all the others, sealed off from the present day like a dusty museum of artifacts. It’s a place to retreat to when you’re looking for what can only be described as comfort terror — lots of flashlights, rats and bones cracking. But look carefully during the end credits and you’ll see an uncomfortable reminder of our present-day fears: There were three COVID-19 compliance officers on the set. That reminds us of something scary enough to wet the bed for real. “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated R for “terror, violence and some disturbing images.” Running time: 120 minutes. Two stars out of four.

https://www.theconjuringmovie.com/

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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It was shortly before the start of the pandemic that he created the TikTok account. In early videos he gets extremely excited about watching Guy Fieri on TV and says “It’s spring break, baby” over and over and with increasing fervor until the words devolve into a sound like a boiling bullfrog. He went viral the first time by combining Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage lyrics with Patrick the starfish from SpongeBob SquarePants. In April 2020, he issued a challenge to Grammywinning singer Lizzo to sing what he sang, and then scatted for 20 seconds in an over-the-top way. Soon he hit 300,000 followers. Then he got Lizzo to laugh at that video and repost it, which bumped him to 400,000 in a day. Last June, his students dropped off a “one Hamillion” cake at his apartment to congratulate him on a million followers. Hamilton felt hopeful. He dropped weight. He found a therapist. In one of his most-watched videos, he chokes up while explaining he is wearing a size large shirt for the first time in years, down from an XXXXL. His followers sent money, and expensive supplies for the high school. Hamilton used the money to fund a $5,000 film scholarship for a former student. Then, fans funded a road trip, #HamTrip2020. Hamilton had rarely left Florida, but spent weeks traveling the country, meeting up with other TikTokers and fans. With the money people sent, he tipped hundreds of dollars to servers at cheap restaurants and documented it on the app. 196

SENATE PASSES BILL TO BOOST US TECH INDUSTRY, COUNTER RIVALS

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill that aims to boost U.S. semiconductor production and the development of artificial intelligence and other technology in the face of growing international competition, most notably from China. The 68-32 vote for the bill demonstrates how confronting China economically is an issue that unites both parties in Congress. That’s a rarity in an era of division as pressure grows on Democrats to change Senate rules to push past Republican opposition and gridlock. The centerpiece of the bill is a $50 billion emergency allotment to the Commerce Department to stand up semiconductor development and manufacturing through research and incentive programs previously authorized by Congress. The bill’s overall cost would increase spending by about $250 billion with most of the spending occurring in the first five years. 177

Supporters described it as the biggest investment in scientific research that the country has seen in decades. It comes as the nation’s share of semiconductor manufacturing globally has steadily eroded from 37% in 1990 to about 12% now, and as a chip shortage has exposed vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain. “The premise is simple, if we want American workers and American companies to keep leading the world, the federal government must invest in science, basic research and innovation, just as we did decades after the Second World War,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “Whoever wins the race to the technologies of the future is going to be the global economic leader with profound consequences for foreign policy and national security as well.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the bill was incomplete because it did not incorporate more Republican-sponsored amendments. He nonetheless supported it. “Needless to say, final passage of this legislation cannot be the Senate’s final word on our competition with China,” he said. “It certainly won’t be mine.” Senators slogged through days of debates and amendments leading up to Tuesday’s final vote. Schumer’s office said 18 Republican amendments will have received votes as part of passage of the bill. It also said the Senate this year has already held as many roll call votes on amendments than it did in the last Congress, when the Senate was under Republican control. While the bill enjoys bipartisan support, a core group of GOP senators has reservations about its costs. 178

Image: Kevin Lamarque

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think tank. “It’s not there yet, but it’s one of those things that moves the needle more toward a competitive vehicle for a lot of people, this ability to fast charge.” The latest generation of EVs, many with ranges around 300 miles (480 kilometers) per charge, can accept electricity at a much faster rate than previous models could. So fast, in fact, that most charging stations cannot yet accommodate the vehicles’ advanced technology. It can now require hours to fully charge an electric vehicle because most stations operate on a home-like alternating current. Direct-current fastcharging stations, by contrast, are hours faster. But they can cost tens of thousands of dollars more. The high cost is something the Biden administration will have to consider as it develops incentives to encourage companies and governments to build 500,000 charging stations nationwide by 2030. Among the possibilities being discussed are grants, with $15 billion in spending over five years to build the network, including fast chargers along highways and in communities. Details are being worked out as the administration negotiates its infrastructure plan with key members of Congress. Of the roughly 42,000 public charging stations in the United States, only about 5,000 are considered direct-current fast chargers, according to the Department of Energy. The rest are like home chargers; they require roughly eight hours to fully charge longer-range batteries, longer than anyone wants to wait to charge a vehicle on a road trip. And most fast chargers can pump out only about 50 kilowatts per hour — requiring roughly 204

Image: John Raoux

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a court to postpone a legal dispute as the government began a broader review of the national security threats posed by Chinese technology companies. A court filing said the Commerce Department was reviewing whether Trump’s claims about TikTok’s threat to national security justified the attempts to ban it from smartphone app stores and deny it vital technical services. An update to the review was due in a court case later this week. Also in limbo has been a proposed U.S. takeover of TikTok. Last year, the Trump administration brokered a deal that would have had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in the Chinese-owned app on national security grounds. Oracle did not return a request for comment. The unusual arrangement stemmed from a Trump executive order that aimed to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless it accepted a greater degree of American control. Trump targeted TikTok over the summer of 2020 with a series of orders that cited concerns over the U.S. data that TikTok collects from its users. Courts temporarily blocked the White House’s attempted ban, and the presidential election soon overshadowed the TikTok fight. TikTok has been looking to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review Trump’s divestment order and the government’s national security review by an interagency group called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. That process remains ongoing.

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Leasing a car now provides a number of advantages over a traditional financed purchase. To start with, you don’t have to put as much money down. Additionally, the monthly payments are lower compared to those you’d have to make for the same vehicle but with a loan. “Since leases are usually a much shorter time commitment than buying, this allows you to test the waters on a new brand or vehicle type you hadn’t previously considered,” said Drury. “By the time you come back to the market, the inventory situation will be in a much better place.” With this in mind, our analysts have combed through transaction data and found these vehicles that provide significant savings when leased rather than financed. The vehicles are listed in order of highest net savings from leasing.

2021 TOYOTA PRIUS PRIME The Prius Prime has a bigger battery than standard Prius and can be charged at home. It can go about 25 miles using all-electric power. For many people, that’s more than enough for around-town driving. Once the battery is depleted, the Prius’ hybrid powertrain takes over and delivers excellent fuel efficiency. Buying notes: The Prius Prime is a great way to reduce fuel costs, and the average lease offers an impressive 50% savings off the monthly payment if you were to finance. Average finance monthly payment: $613 Average lease monthly payment: $306 Savings: $307 per month

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2021 RAM 1500 The Ram 1500 offers uncommonly smooth driving manners because of its distinct rear suspension design. You also get an upscale interior highlighted by the optional 12-inch infotainment display. The V6 and V8 engines are both solid choices, but the diesel-powered V6 is also worth considering for its higher fuel efficiency and stout towing capability. Buying notes: Truck buyers tend to be pretty brand loyal, but if you were considering a full-size pickup, the Ram is worth trying out not only for the savings but also because it’s one of top-rated models. Average finance monthly payment: $779 Average lease monthly payment: $534 Savings: $245 per month

2021 CHEVROLET BOLT EV The Chevrolet Bolt is a solid electric vehicle, especially with its 259 miles of range on a full battery charge. It’s an enjoyable EV to drive. The upright hatchback styling doesn’t stand out in a crowd, but the Bolt delivers solid green street cred and low-cost long-range performance. Buying notes: Chevy had planned a major update of the Bolt this year but was delayed by the pandemic. You’ll see more substantial changes for the 2022 model year. The delay is partly why the deals are so good on the 2021, but just know that you won’t have the latest body style for long. Average finance monthly payment: $440 Average lease monthly payment: $216 Savings: $224 per month 219

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2021 CHEVROLET TAHOE People expect comfort, capability and convenience with a large SUV, and the Chevrolet Tahoe delivers. Redesigned for 2021, the Tahoe offers better interior space, increased cargo volume and a smoother ride over a wide variety of surfaces than the previous model. In short, it does a better job at being the family workhorse. Buying notes: The average monthly payment is pretty high on these large SUVs, but for those who need to seat seven, tow or carry more cargo, opting for a lease in this case can save you 18% on average per month. Average finance monthly payment: $1,066 Average lease monthly payment: $856 Savings: $210 per month

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2021 KIA FORTE The Forte is a grown-up small sedan that’s a fantastic value considering its many features and long warranty. Other highlights include a comfortable, quiet interior and easy-to-use technology features. However, it lags behind top competitors in driving dynamics, ride quality and rear legroom. Buying notes: The Forte’s savings might not seem dramatic, but in this price range, every dollar can make a difference. Average finance monthly payment: $410 Average lease monthly payment: $268 Savings: $142 per month We don’t typically recommend leasing as a long-term solution for saving money because ultimately it’s more expensive since you never own the vehicle. But the reality is buying a car in today’s unusual climate is a more expensive proposition than it was a few years ago.

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EUROPEAN REGULATORS LAUNCH FRESH PROBES OF FACEBOOK, GOOGLE

European Union and British regulators opened dual antitrust investigations into whether Facebook distorts competition in the classified advertising market by using data to compete unfairly against rival services. German officials, meanwhile, launched a fresh investigation of Google using stepped up powers to scrutinize digital giants. The multiple probes represent the latest escalation by European regulators in their battle to rein in the dominance of big American tech companies. The focus of the EU and 225

AUTOMAKERS FACE A THREAT TO EV SALES: SLOW CHARGING TIMES

If the auto industry is to succeed in its bet that electric vehicles will soon dominate the roads, it will need to overcome a big reason why many people are still avoiding them: fear of running out of juice between Point A and Point B. Automakers have sought to quell those concerns by developing EVs that go farther per charge and fill up faster. Problem is, most public charging stations now fill cars much too slowly, requiring hours — not minutes — to provide enough electricity for an extended trip. Concerned that such prolonged waits could turn away potential EV buyers and keep them stuck on gas-burning vehicles, automakers are trying to cut charging times to something close to the five or 10 minutes of a conventional gasoline fill-up. “It’s absolutely the target to get faster and faster,” said Brett Smith, technology director at the Center for Automotive Research, an industry Image: Susan Walsh

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an hour to charge an average EV to 80% — even though newer EVs are capable of being charged must faster than that. “It’s one of the big barriers for someone who is not living with a battery-electric vehicle yet,” said Alex Tripi, who head’s Volvo’s electric vehicle marketing. “It will continue to be for a while.” Limited by technology, early electric vehicles charged at ridiculously low speeds when compared with recent models. When Nissan’s Leaf first went on sale more than a decade ago, for example, it could take in only 50 kilowatts per hour from a fast charger. That meant it took a half hour to charge it to 80% of its small battery, with a range of just 58 miles (93 kilometers) . A new long-range version released in 2019 nearly tripled the range per charge. Because it can take 100 kilowatts at a fast charger, it can get to 80% — 181 miles (291 kilometers) — in 45 minutes. Newer EVs can be charged even faster. But they far exceed the capacity of most fast chargers. Ford’s Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning can take in 150 kilowatts per hour. Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and Porsche’s Taycan are over 200 kilowatts. The Hyundai, with 300 miles (480 kilometers) of range, can go from a 10% charge to 80% in just 18 minutes, much closer to gasoline fill-up times. (Automakers tend to quote charging times to 80% of battery capacity because it takes much longer to go from 80% to 100%; the final 20% is often slowed down to prolong battery life.) Hyundai knows there aren’t many chargers now that can fill the Ioniq that fast. But it says it’s ready for a future when more quick chargers are more widely available.

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“Hopefully the infrastructure will improve across the U.S. for this to be a whole lot more viable,” said John Shon, senior group manager of product planning. Tesla, which has its own private charging network of 25,000 plugs worldwide, leads just about every automaker. Its newer chargers can crank out up to 250 kilowatts and 175 miles (282 kilometers) of range in about 15 minutes. Electrify America, a charging network funded with money paid by Volkswagen as punishment for its emissions cheating scandal, says it’s ready for the newer EVs. Having installed fast chargers since 2018, it runs more than 600 stations with 2,600 plugs nationwide. All can pump out 150 kilowatts. That means they can charge a typical EV with 300 miles (480 kilometers) of range to 80 percent of battery capacity (240 miles (386 kilometers) ) in roughly 45 minutes. Over half of Electrify America’s stations can pump out 350 kilowatts, which charge twice as fast. A fast-charge fill-up to 80% of battery capacity varies by state but typically costs around $16. Even Tesla owners, who can access the nation’s biggest fast-charging charging network, risk running out of juice on road trips, especially in rural areas. This week, one such driver, Dan Nelson, said he had to stop at a Tesla station near Ann Arbor, Michigan, for more than 20 minutes to make sure his Model 3 had enough charge to reach his rural home 25 miles (40 kilometers) away. “There’s definitely improvements that can be made,” said Nelson, who charges at home most of the time.

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Bruce Westlake, president of the East Michigan Electric Auto Association, suggested that such anxiety tends to ease as people gain more experience with EVs. He said he is now comfortable running his two Teslas as low as 5% of battery capacity to go farther between charges on trips. Research by J.D. Power shows that most people think charging stations are needed at locations where gas stations are now. But in fact, according to the Energy Department, most EV owners charge at home more than 80% of the time. That means super-fast chargers, which can cost close to $100,000, should be built mainly along highways where people are traveling long distances and need to charge quickly, experts say. They also may be needed in urban areas where people live in apartments with no access to a home charger. It’s far from clear that the automakers can depend on a proliferation of fast chargers across the country to build customer confidence and propel EV sales in the years ahead. The high cost and heavy load on utility grids likely will limit the number of fast chargers to areas where they’re needed for quick fill-ups, said Jessika Trancik, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies EV charging. “As we’re approaching this transition,” she said, “it’s important to be more strategic than just putting them everywhere.” Charging companies have time to figure out where to build fast chargers, because it would take more than 17 years to convert the entire U.S. fleet of 279 million passenger vehicles from petroleum to electricity — even if every motorist were willing to make the switch, said Pasquale 210

NBC also announced earlier this year that it would air live coverage of the opening ceremony at 6:55 a.m. EDT on July 23. Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone, meaning many of the marquee events will take place during prime time in the U.S. USA Network, CNBC, NBCSN, Olympic Channel and Golf Channel will combine for over 1,300 hours, while Telemundo Deportes and Universo have at least 309 hours for Spanish-language viewers. Coverage of the Games begins July 20 at 8 p.m. ET on NBCSN with live softball and 4 a.m. ET on July 21 on USA Network when the United States faces Sweden in women’s soccer. NBCSN (440 hours) and USA Network (388.5 hours) will present round-the-clock coverage beginning July 24. NBCSN’s coverage will focus on soccer, softball, beach volleyball, table tennis, handball, badminton, fencing and equestrian. USA Network will feature basketball, soccer and water polo as well as swimming, track & field, diving, beach volleyball, volleyball, cycling and triathlon. CNBC (124.5 hours) will concentrate on diving, beach volleyball, skateboarding, rowing, canoeing, archery, water polo and rugby. Olympic Channel (242 hours) will focus on tennis and wrestling while Golf Channel (111 hours) has coverage of the men’s and women’s tournaments. NBC Sports Digital will stream more than 5,500 hours of coverage on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service will include studio programming and other coverage that has yet to be finalized. 234

Romano, CEO of ChargePoint, a charging station company. But the chargers can’t come fast

connect metro areas, and that the United States should get there in about two years. As more EVs

enough for automakers, who want more people to buy their EVs to spread development costs

are sold, he said, more stations will be built.

over more vehicles.

“You don’t want to put all the infrastructure

Romano says fast chargers will be needed about

in for 20 years starting with vehicle zero,” Romano said. “This is about the natural

every 75 miles (120 kilometers) on roads that

organic growth.”

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CONSIDER LEASING WHEN NEW CAR PRICES SOAR

New and used car prices remain high as a global semiconductor chip shortage, combined with increased consumer demand, has caused a shortage of vehicles on dealer lots. The situation is expected to last many months, making it hard on people who are in need of a car today. “If you can’t find the truck or SUV of your dreams out there but still need to jump into a new vehicle, leasing is a great solution,” said Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ senior manager of insights. 215

Image: Evgenia Novozhenina

from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year. “Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than preindustrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research. “If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.” Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what’s considered dangerous levels. The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily cool, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Ralph Keeling. Keeling’s father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve. Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9. Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other activity by about 7%, earlier studies show. But that was 239

too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.

the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.” By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that

The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.

same amount.

“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For

exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost

example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system,

inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.

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“The world is approaching the point where

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EUROPEAN REGULATORS LAUNCH FRESH PROBES OF FACEBOOK, GOOGLE

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U.K. investigations highlights a longstanding concern that the data the companies collect from people or businesses with their platforms is used to get an advantage over competitors, which could include those same businesses. “Facebook collects vast troves of data on the activities of users of its social network and beyond, enabling it to target specific customer groups,” said Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president in charge of competition policy. “We will look in detail at whether this data gives Facebook an undue competitive advantage, in particular on the online classified ads sector, where people buy and sell goods every day, and where Facebook also competes with companies from which it collects data.” The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said in a simultaneous announcement that it launched its own probe to examine whether Facebook’s collection and use of data gave it an unfair advantage over competitors providing classified data and online dating services. Facebook said it “will continue to cooperate fully with the investigations to demonstrate that they are without merit.” Marketplace, Facebook’s classified ad service, and Facebook Dating “offer people more choices and both products operate in a highly competitive environment with many large incumbents,” the company said in a statement. The EU’s executive commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, is looking at the possibility that Facebook collects data on what users are interested in based on how rival classified ad sites are advertising their services to Facebook 227

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users. The commission is worried Facebook then uses that data to tailor Marketplace to outcompete the rival sites. It’s also looking at whether the way Marketplace is embedded into the social network gives Facebook an advantage in reaching customers and shutting out competing sites, in violation of EU competition rules. The U.K.‘s competition watchdog is pursuing its own investigation, which includes examining whether data from Facebook Login was unfairly used. The feature lets users sign into other websites, apps and services with their Facebook credentials, making it a potentially big source of information on users’ interests. “We intend to thoroughly investigate Facebook’s use of data to assess whether its business practices are giving it an unfair advantage in the online dating and classified ad sectors,” Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, said in a press statement. The EU and U.K. investigations could result in formal charges, but it’s not a given. Regulators have the power to impose penalties worth up to 10% of a company’s annual revenue, which in Facebook’s case would amount to billions of dollars. Also, Germany’s competition watchdog, which has gained new powers to use on digital companies, opened its latest investigation of Google. The Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, said it is examining whether Google’s News Showcase, a licensing platform for publishers launched last fall, includes “unreasonable conditions” in contracts for news publishers. 229

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The federal office is also looking at whether search results give preference to publishers using the platform at the expense of others that haven’t been signed up. Google denied giving preference to news partners and said it is cooperating with the German watchdog agency. U.S. tech giants already faced intensifying scrutiny in Europe over their business practices. Officials in Brussels have charged Apple with stifling competition in music streaming, accused Amazon of using data from independent merchants to unfairly compete against them with its own products, and are informally investigating Google’s data practices for advertising purposes.

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NBCUNIVERSAL WILL HAVE 7,000 HOURS OF TOKYO GAMES COVERAGE

NBCUniversal will present 7,000 hours of coverage of the upcoming Tokyo Olympics across eight networks and multiple digital platforms from July 20 to Aug. 8. The Tokyo Games will be NBCUniversal’s 11th consecutive Olympics production and ninth consecutive Summer Games — beginning with the 1988 Seoul Games. NBC’s first Olympics were in Tokyo in 1964. NBC is scheduled to air 250 hours across 17 days, headlined by its prime-time coverage. 233

Image: Eugene Hoshiko

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Image: Susan Cobb

CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS HIT 50% HIGHER THAN PREINDUSTRIAL TIME

The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began. And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported this week. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans. Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide 237

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Image: Evgenia Novozhenina

too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.

the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.” By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that

The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.

same amount.

“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For

exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost

example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system,

inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.

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“The world is approaching the point where

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