In Washington, D.C., so the saying goes, one should never let a serious crisis go to waste. After covering stories from D.C. for many decades, I can translate: Politicians and lobbyists always try to bend the reaction to any crisis towards whatever is at the top of their agenda at the moment.
For a while now, the semiconductor industry has been flogging the idea that they need more subsidies from the U.S. government, perhaps through tax cuts or maybe even direct investment. Even though there are already many chip manufacturing factories in the United States, there could always be more and they do provide high-paying jobs. There’s also the security angle. Key chip factories owned by Taiwan Semiconductor are close to China. And so on and so forth.
So with a massive shortfall of chips right now, a shortfall that has stalled car production worldwide and led to delays in all kinds of gadget orders, there’s obviously a crisis. And the new administration is on the case. President Biden is meeting today with lawmakers led by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York who are pushing legislation to subsidize chip manufacturing along with a few other cutting-edge technologies like 5G, A.I., and quantum computing. Biden is said to be considering an executive order directing a rapid review of the supply chain of the semiconductor industry and a few others.
There’s only one slight problem. None of this has anything to do with the current chip shortage. As Data Sheet’s favorite chip analyst and spider wrangler extraordinaire, Stacy Rasgon at Bernstein Research, noted last night, the auto industry largely brought this problem upon itself by relying on a just-in-time supply strategy, overestimating how much production would be cut due to COVID-19, and collectively being such a small buyer in the global chip market.
“Frankly, it’s likely the current shortage situation, especially in automotive, would be here whether the U.S. had let its semi manufacturing footprint slip or not given it is much more a function of the supply chain whipsaw, both domestic and abroad, amid COVID,” he writes. But he’s also a supporter of more government backing for chips. “If worries over the current shortages serve to jump-start the discussion that’s probably a good thing.”
Hey, we wouldn’t want to let a good crisis go to waste, now would we?
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
Maxed out credit cards.On Wall Street, Square disappointed while Snap impressed. Square said its fourth quarter revenue more than doubled to $3.2 billion, a little less than analysts expected, and gave a tepid forecast for the next quarter. The Jack Dorsey-led company also said it bought $170 million more of bitcoin. Square's stock, which has more than tripled over the past year, lost 2% in premarket trading on Wednesday. At Snap, the company held its first investor day and predicted multiple years of sales growing at 50% or more. Its shares, which have more than quadrupled in the past year, gained 11% on Tuesday and rose another 3% in premarket trading this morning. Gaming platform Roblox is almost ready to join the party. Its direct listing to go public is now scheduled for March 10. Also in gaming, HP is acquiring Kingston Technology's peripheral unit, HyperX, for $425 million.
Running low on power. Not all is good in tech investor land, however. The wheels are coming off the EV train this week it seems. The U.S. Postal Service did not name Workhorse Group as its partner for an upcoming electric mail delivery van. Workhorse shares plunged 47% on Tuesday (though they're still up 350% over the past year). Other EV stocks also took a hit, with Lordstown Motors falling 13%, Fisker off 10%, and battery specialist Quantumscape down 14%. Tesla was down just 2% but 12% over the past week. But do not fret. Better news arrived on Wednesday morning, as Fisker announced a car partnership with Foxconn. And Cathie Wood, head of hot stock snatching money management firm Ark Investment, says she's buying on the dip. "We think it’s very healthy, a very healthy shakeout,” Wood says. “All I know is we are keeping our eyes on the prize and the prize just got a little bit more interesting.”
So you wanna play with magic. In new product land, Google is adding some features to Android phones, including a password monitoring service, dark mode for Google Maps, and an improved version of screen reader TalkBack. And LG says it's going to license to other manufacturers its damn fine WebOS software that runs apps like YouTube and Hulu directly on TV sets. Not all new products work out as expected. Some people with laptops running Apple's new M1 processor are worried about excessive wear on their SSDs.
Nice little app you got here, be a shame if something happened to it. Speaking of Apple, the company's "Sign in with Apple" program is under scrutiny by antitrust regulators after some developers complained, The Information reports. Apple did not comment on the probe but said the service is intended to give customers better privacy protection than competing options. In other regulatory developments, a federal judge allowed California's 2018 net neutrality law to take effect finally. Internet service providers have been on pretty good behavior since the FCC repealed the national net neutrality rules in 2017, so we'll have to wait and see if there's any impact from the state's legislation.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
We're not done explaining just why and how TikTok has become so successful. Longtime tech exec and brilliant blogger Eugene Wei has some thoughts, a lot of thoughts actually. The whole long essay is worth a read but here's just a little pearl:
Though I have said that TikTok isn't a social network—I don't know most people on the app, I don't have to follow anyone to have a good experience—the algorithm does create, through its efficient sorting, a sense of traveling through subcultural neighborhoods as you scroll down one TikTok at a time.
Users have adopted spatial or geographic language to describe this sense of shared viewing spaces. Various subcultures are described by appending -tok or TikTok behind a descriptor. Someone commenting on a particularly high-quality video might say "I've finally gotten Premium TikTok." People share weird niches they're on by saying things like "I'm deep into carpet cleaning tok" or "I don't know how but I've found music theory tok." Sometimes it's just one word, like "Sportstok or Liberaltok." Tok has almost come to be a suffix meaning "neighborhood" or "community," almost like Disney uses -land to describe themed areas in its parks like Frontierland or Tomorrowland.
I’ve tended to think of social networks as being built by people assembling a graph of people bottoms up, but perhaps I’ve been too narrow-minded. TikTok might not qualify by that definition, but it feels social.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
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How Macy’s plans to hit its $10 billion e-commerce goal By Phil Wahba
Tax tips every Robinhood trader should read By Chris Taylor
Illinois legislator wants to ban Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games in hopes of reducing crime By Chris Morris
Gig economy: Europe tells companies to negotiate with workers or face new laws By David Meyer
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BEFORE YOU GO
Today's essay was almost about the burgeoning crypto art scene but more research is needed for that. After Nyan Cat, next check out some of the crazy digital work of Mike Winkelmann, a South Carolina teacher and dad who goes by "Beeple" online. An auction of his art in December brought in more than $3 million. And you can't hang any of it on your wall. It's hump day. Stay strong.
