technology
For years Silicon Valley dismissed Chinese tech firms--first as an irrelevance, then as industrial spies and copycats. Most recently China has been seen as a tech Galapagos, where unique species thrive than would never spread abroad. But as our Schumpeter column explains this week, China’s technology industry has been catching up far faster than expected.
Technology is trending on all fronts in 2018. The leap to artificial intelligence is making headlines, big data is getting bigger, and wearables are moving to new industries at a feverish pace -- these are only a few of the technology trends that you need to remain aware of during the next few years.
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 with a payload that could be significant in the long term. The primary mission was to put Paz, a satellite operated by Hisdesat and intended for Earth observations, in orbit. The other two satellites are the first broadband satellites SpaceX has developed for Project Starlink.
A technology revolution is now sweeping the world, and the countries that most effectively seize the opportunities it creates will dominate the 21st century. Nowhere is the revolution more transformative for lives, livelihoods, security and prosperity than in the field of artificial intelligence. AI will shift the balance of power in both the global economy and international relations, because the countries that master AI first will have a crucial strategic advantage in writing the rules for the next global order.
China is a rising power in artificial intelligence. This white paper, a collaboration between Eurasia Group and Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a leading AI researcher and founder of Sinovation Ventures, provides an in-depth view of China's AI sector, detailing where it lags and where it is leap-frogging ahead of the United States in the most important technology race of the 21st century.
Human rights activists say they fear the authorities could use that power to track down dissidents, citing cases from more than a decade ago in which Yahoo Inc handed over user data that led to arrests and prison sentences for two democracy advocates. Jing Zhao, a human rights activist and Apple shareholder, said he could envisage worse human rights issues arising from Apple handing over iCloud data than occurred in the Yahoo case.
In 2015 women were found to make up only 4% of the developer population in the UK, and account for just 16% of the IT sector. Yet women make wide use of tech products and half of gamers are female. While the figures might suggest that women have little to do with IT innovation, the reality is that women have been involved in the IT industry since the dawn of technology.
At the first National Space Council meeting in October, Pence emphasized that the U.S. will "win the 21st century in space," laying out a plan to focus on human spaceflight and get astronauts back to the moon. At today's meeting, hosted at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, he talked about the path toward that goal and brought in several panelists who supported loosening regulations to allow for more innovation from private spaceflight companies.
...the U.S. semiconductor industry has developed an 8-point policy plan for 2018 (outlined below) to promote U.S. economic growth and innovation, while helping to ensure American businesses can compete on a level playing field with our competitors abroad.
According to the FCC, if the proposal is approved, it would be the first time an American company has been given permission to use low-Earth orbit satellites for providing broadband. Other companies like OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat are also pursuing similar projects, which have been approved by the FCC.