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There’s no clear news on the presidential race this morning, unfortunately, but there are plenty of items on the to-do list of the next president regarding tech.
- The most obvious challenge: the dominance of the largest companies and the piecemeal efforts to rein them in. The new lawsuit against Google’s search business aside, there’s been precious little action to address other areas of concern, ranging from Apple’s app store policies to Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers to Facebook’s manipulation of advertising. The House’s 449-page report on Big Tech and antitrust offered more than a dozen suggestions for action, including passing laws banning discrimination on tech platforms, limiting certain business combinations, and requiring interoperability across social networks. What’s needed is a healthy debate over the proposals.
- China poses several challenges that need to be addressed, from both a national security and an economic perspective. The old free-market approach of allowing Chinese companies into U.S. tech spaces has not been reciprocated. And hackers working with the Chinese government have been stealing trade secrets and targeting pro-democracy movements for years. But the Trump administration’s disorganized reaction has been stymied in court. Many lawmakers are eager to act, but the continually amended responsibilities of the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) have not helped much. A president could do worse than appoint a blue-ribbon panel to straighten out this mess.
- The pandemic has laid bare the state of America’s broadband infrastructure—and that state is not good for millions of people. One million kids live in “Internet deserts” where connectivity is unreliable, overpriced, or simply unavailable. Don’t forget the girls at the Taco Bell for Wi-Fi! And Land O’ Lakes CEO Beth Ford, speaking last week at Fortune’s Global Forum, called for $100 billion in government effort to close the broadband gap.
- Unlike other countries, the U.S. has not made many of the most appropriate airwave bands available for 5G use and service so far is spotty or slow. 5G wireless promises to ignite a wave of innovation by exponentially increasing the speed of wireless and the number of devices connected. So-called midband spectrum has the capacity to support high speeds and the range needed for comprehensive coverage. An FCC auction of the C-Band next month will help but carriers still need a lot more airwaves more quickly.
- Despite what any politician says, many 20th-century jobs are going away. Employment in coal mining has dropped 50% since 2012, while jobs in telecommunications, textiles, and other industries are forecast to shrink by 20% to 70%. At the Global Forum, Adecco Group CEO Alain Dehaze called on companies to emphasize reskilling workers whose jobs have become redundant. As the White House Council of Economic Advisers reported in 2018, many reskilling programs are already helping, but many gaps remain.
Those are just a few items that need to become higher priorities. Now back to counting the ballots.
Aaron Pressman
NEWSWORTHY
Misclassification reclassification. California voters appear to have sided with Uber and Lyft and approved Proposition 22 to allow the companies to continue to classify their workers as independent contractors. State legislators had moved to classify the workers as employees. But so-called gig workers will get a minimum hourly wage, new health benefits if they log a minimum of 15 hours a week, and medical and disability coverage for injuries suffered on the job. Uber's stock was up 12%, while Lyft jumped 16% in pre-market trading. Massachusetts voters approved an extension of the state's "right to repair" law to cover a vehicle's wireless telemetry data.
Nothing but the truth. Social networks were busy on Election Day trying to stop the spread of misleading information. Twitter added a warning label to a Trump tweet about stolen elections, while Facebook added a label disputing Trump's claim of having already won. The FBI is probing the source of millions of suspect robocalls that went out on Tuesday falsely telling voters that the election had been postponed.
The shine beneath thy starry eyes. Early reports are flowing in from beta testers of Elon Musk's Starlink service. Customers who pay $500 for equipment and $100 a month for service are seeing Internet download speeds of 120 megabits per second from the satellite-based service.
Plague detector. A neural network developed at MIT known as ResNet50 has been trained for a new and timely task. Researchers say the program correctly identified 97% of people infected with COVID-19 just by analyzing their coughing sounds. The main goal is to identify infected people who are not showing symptoms yet so that they can be tested, research scientist Brian Subirana says.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund made some large bets that didn't work out so well, like, say, WeWork. Now it's investing with a revised strategy of focusing on smaller and less developed companies. Wataru Suzuki and Christopher Grimes take a deep dive into the new approach for Nikkei.
The quiet shift in strategy, which brings the Vision Fund's approach closer to that of a traditional venture capital investor, may ease concerns over big, bold bets going sour, a factor that has left a major gap between SoftBank's market capitalization and the sum of its investments.
Bigger returns, in percentage terms, could also help SoftBank to attract co-investors, who have so far not committed to Vision Fund 2. The sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia were big backers of the first fund.
At the same time, it highlights the smaller role the Vision Fund is playing within SoftBank, which has recently begun investing in large, publicly listed tech companies via a separate subsidiary.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The dollar, Bitcoin soar as the markets contend with a dreaded, contested election By Bernhard Warner
14 Twitter and Instagram accounts you should follow for election news By Jeff John Roberts
November is historically the best month for investors in an election year. Will 2020 be different? By Anne Sraders
The world’s largest surveillance system is growing—and so is the backlash By Grady McGregor
6 new books to read in November By Rachel King
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BEFORE YOU GO
A great and fully diverting trend going around on Twitter: Show off four books that had the biggest impact on you as a kid. I first noticed a post by Microsoft's senior cloud advocate (and former tech journalist) Christina Warren, who picked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Ramona Quimby, and Bridge to Terabithia. Excellent choices! From Christina's tweet, you can read even more. I posted my own selections, but I'm sad I didn't have a cover of the brilliant Encyclopedia Brown handy.
