Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Yield signs. TSMC’s Arizona fab is churning out chips at higher rates than the company’s facility in Taiwan, with a production yield four percentage points higher in the US, a good sign for domestic chip manufacturing.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Hazard lights. Chinese President Xi Jinping asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to press Musk on avoiding Starlink activation over Taiwan, The Wall Street Journal reported.

On Musk, NASA chief Bill Nelson said the SpaceX founder’s alleged conversations with Putin “should be investigated.” Nelson, speaking with Semafor’s Congressional Bureau Chief Burgess Everett, said he didn’t know whether the discussions between the two men were true, but it would be “concerning” for a number of agencies if The Wall Street Journal article detailing nearly two years of “secret conversations” was accurate.

“If the story is true, that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies,” Nelson said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Friday. He said more information should come to light in the “coming days.”

Former European Parliament member and tech critic talks AI, politics of big tech

THE SCENE

Marietje Schaake, author of the new book The Tech Coup, is a former Dutch member of the European Parliament, where she focused on tech policy. She is now a fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She spoke to Semafor about the book and how she sees the tech debate from both sides of the Atlantic.

Q&A

Reed Albergotti: We’re talking on Zoom from halfway across the world, which to me is still kind of mind-boggling. How do you square all of the benefits of technology with the downsides? Do you worry about coming off as “anti-technology?”

Marietje Schaake: As I write in the book, this is not a book against technology. It’s a book for democracy. I mean, who could be against technology? It’s brought so many amazing things and it still holds so much promise. But what I am against, and what I think is the core message of the book is this unchecked corporate power that dominates the whole technology ecosystem.

You’ve spent time in the US, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Can you compare that culture to the European viewpoint?

One of my key insights of having spent time in Silicon Valley is how much of it is about money, rather than actual innovation.

When I look at the “values” lens, I think many in the United States believe that Europeans are adopting these laws because they want to go after American companies.

More often, the deep anchoring in needing to protect people from abuse of power by both companies and governments is much more historically informed. Data protection rules were really put in place because of the Second World War, when information about people, Jews, was weaponized against them. When I served in the European Parliament, there were lots of people who grew up in the Soviet Union, who had, as activists, dissidents, journalists, been profiled by the Stasi.

What we’re unfortunately seeing unfolding is that again in the United States some of these cautionary tales which are not difficult to find, have to hit home before people take them seriously.

The number of people who had records stolen in the United HealthCare hack, the latest high-profile hacking case unearthed as US businesses struggle to keep up with security threats.

AI disinformation and deepfakes are a “global issue that transcends language and culture,” Kevin Guo, the CEO and co-founder of Hive, told Semafor in an interview Thursday.

Speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit, Guo stressed that “this is a serious concern” for every intelligence agency and government.“You need to be able to trust the authenticity and diversity of the data you’re looking at,” Guo, whose company makes software to detect and label AI-generated content, said.

A single piece of AI-generated content can cause market crashes or other harmful consequences, Guo added, referring to an AI-made image falsely showing an explosion at the Pentagon posted in 2023 that caused a stock market blip.

“I think this is one of the cases where more regulation is certainly needed and helpful,” he said, pointing to Singapore, which recently passed a bill banning all political deepfakes. Guo praised legislation in the UK and Europe aimed at limiting AI content, something the US has lagged on by comparison. Nonetheless, the legislation so far is not “hard coded” for how pervasive fake AI content will become, he said.

One of the world’s biggest renewables investors wants to expand an already huge deal to build clean power for Big Tech, a top executive told Semafor. Brookfield Asset Management and Microsoft, which in May unveiled a 10.5-gigawatt green-power supply agreement potentially worth $15 billion, want to grow the deal, the Canada-based fund’s chief investment officer for renewables told Semafor in an interview. “They would be keen to expand it further, as would we,” Jeh Vevaina said. “And, it’s possible we do.” He added: “There’s a lot of interest out there. The market for these kinds of contracts, these kinds of partnerships… is very large.”

Vevaina’s remarks point to rapidly growing demand from Big Tech companies for electricity to power their data centers. They also reflect long-running trends in the energy transition. For one, whereas publicly owned fossil fuel companies dominated the energy system of the 20th century, privately held financial firms are playing bigger roles in that of the 21st and are strategically embracing a new identity as clean energy “supermajors.” And companies are scaling up to deliver globe-spanning green deals.

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