Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. As usual, each edition has a few brief stories and finishes with a mix of interesting links, hot takes, and good reads.

Enjoy

Tech

For those who don’t know, Huawei is a Chinese telecommunications company. They are one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, and specifically, one of the leading providers of 5G mobile technology. This 5G technology should make them absolutely dominant, but accusations of Chinese state espionage in the West has steadily dogged them throughout the years.

And it appears to be pretty clear that Huawei is a piece of Chinese spyware. The evidence against them makes even TikTok look clean:

• 25,000 Huawei employees have Chinese intelligence backgrounds.

• They are basically government-owned and are so important in China that blocking Huawei is an act of aggression.

• They assisted in the surveillance and mass detention of Uyghurs and tested a facial-recognition AI that could spy on people better for the Chinese government.

• And they assisted in building Chinese spy sites on Cuba.

Naturally, Huawei claims innocence on these charges. But the West is increasingly taking action against the 5G provider:

• The US led the charge with the “Clean Network Initiative”, which was a public rebuke and de facto ban of Huawei.

• Like always, Europe was a little behind the curve here, but now they too are increasingly considering banning Huawei, while also thinking of ways guard technology from China in general.

Bigger picture, it feels like the US and China are on a crash course for a technology trade war. They are probably already in one right now. Biden attacks Chinese semiconductors. China bans Micron chips. The US is considering a ban on investing in Chinese tech. Apple is moving its supply chain away from China. Microsoft is taking its top Chinese AI experts out of China. TikTok and Huawei are under constant scrutiny. Sequoia sawed off its Chinese branch.

It’s the cold war all over again.

Politics

I’ve previously written about the EU’s distaste for encryption, but France takes it to another level. Not only are they arresting people for using encryption services like Signal and WhatsApp, but they are claiming that the very use of these services implies terroristic activities. In other words, in France, if you want some privacy, you are seen as a terrorist.

That’s the slippiest of slippery slopes. In one fell swoop, France has made everything from private messages to VPNs basically illegal. It’s a cypherpunk’s worst nightmare.

What is so interesting and scary is that this isn’t a story from China, Russia, or North Korea. This is France. A Western “free” country. If it could happen there, why couldn’t it happen anywhere?

The answer is it could, and it probably will. The only thing preventing a dystopian 1984 surveillance state in the West are cultural norms. But this is eroding. Governments are now starting to equate privacy with danger. The citizenry is now doing the same if they care about surveillance at all, as most of them are numbed from the constant Big Tech spying.

Politics flows downstream from culture. That’s all politics is: cultural norms codified. If the culture becomes “only criminals care about privacy”, then it’s only a matter of time until privacy is outlawed. Couple those politics with the overwhelming power of the modern state to surveil, and you now have 1984.

This is what annoys me so much about people in the West who say that cryptocurrencies have no use case. They argue that because we have money and an economy that works, we don’t need crypto. But they miss the point that just because you don’t need something right this instance doesn’t miss you’ll never need it in the future. It is very possible to envision a world where crypto is the only money free from government surveillance and intrusion in existence. And even if you don’t agree, you can just not use crypto and go on with your life exactly as it was before. It makes no sense why non-government agents would go out of their way to criticize and work against it.

But, as usual, people won’t appreciate something until it’s gone.

Culture

I watched the newest season of Black Mirror this week, just like every other tech nerd. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed. The first two episodes were just ok-good, the third episode was ok, and the last two episodes sucked.

However, the second episode did get me thinking about something that I’ve wondered about before. For those who haven’t seen it, the second episode has to do with an old crime in a sleepy Scottish town that is turned into a documentary. In the process of making this documentary, basically everything that could go wrong for the main character goes wrong. The result is he has a very successful documentary, but every other aspect of his life freaking sucks.

Obviously, it’s a commentary on true crime.

I got my start in true crime from an ex-girlfriend who was absolutely obsessed with it. I didn’t understand why. Who wants to watch or listen to the details of a murder? Turns out, a lot of people do:

• 34% of podcast listeners regularly listen to true crime podcasts.

• 24% of the top podcasts are about true crime, the most common topic among top podcasts.

• There are more popular true crime documentaries than I can count.

Is this a good thing for individual people and society at large? I’m not really sure. Like most things, it’s a complex question.

On the one hand, there’s no evidence that true crime romanticizes crime to the point that people want to become criminals. People have been consuming true crime forever now. OJ’s case was true crime. So was Bonnie and Clyde. Even with all this violent content, not to mention video games, crime has been down-only for decades now.

On the other hand, there is evidence that true crime is negative for mental health. Makes sense, because most people who watch true crime are women, who also happen to be the demographic most afraid of getting minked in a dark alley. Consuming hours of true crime isn’t going to ease these fears. I see this in my own life. I know tons of girls (and guys) who won’t sleep without their doors and windows locked. Even though we live in a wealthy neighborhood.

On the other other hand, there is something supremely fucked up about making money off people who were murdered. This is what Black Mirror points out. You have to be a special type of sick to see a grisly murder and think to yourself “this could be a great documentary”. Of course, this is what the families of victims have been saying for years.

So yeah, it’s just entertainment, people can make whatever they want, and it doesn’t hurt viewers beyond making them think twice about walking in the dark. But, how would you feel if you had to re-live a loved one’s murder over and over?

I wouldn’t feel too good.

Extras

• 3D-printed guns are quite scary.

• DeSantis promises to purge the FBI on day one of his Presidency. He’s right about this one.

• The Grammy’s are banning AI. As they should.

• If you take one of those DNA heritage tests, then you might as well kiss your genetic privacy bye-bye.

• Most Americans, even young Americans, want to go back to a world without the internet. Can you blame them?

• Google search sucks and there is room for disruption here.

• GPT-4 generated pitch decks are 3x more likely to secure funding than human ones. Does this mean GPT-4 is that good at creating pitch decks, or that most humans suck at it?

• Every Texas school will now have armed security. Make fun of the optics all you want, but this is one surefire way to keep kids safe.

• AI is now making medical decisions.

• The Biden administration is working to get internet to rural areas. Good job Presidente.

• The Taliban has to get off WhatsApp.

• Vertical farms aren’t doing too hot.

• YouTube hates privacy.

• So does your car. Especially when ICE and LexisNexis is around.

• China and Cuba are building a new military base.

• Canada is getting smart about immigration. Thankfully, it looks like the US might finally be getting smart as well. The more people you can recruit, the better.

• Police robots are here.

• Everyone talks about the bee population decline, which is important, but the birds are in trouble too, which means we too are in trouble.

• Get your kids off social media.

• The GOP is in a war against researchers who study disinformation. Such a waste of their time and energy.

• AI is going to take your job.

• The DOJ now has a nation-state cybercrime unit. AKA, a unit to persecute Russian, Chinese, and North Korean hackers.

• 13-year old students’ math and reading scores continue to decline. It’s time to admit that keeping kids locked up in a room for 8 hours per day is probably not the best way for them to learn.

• You should never have any loyalty toward your boss. They don’t give a shit about you.

• Even the people paid to train AI are outsourcing their work to AI.

• Zoey 102 is an incredibly stupid idea and is just another example of how we really are stuck in one big culture loop due to the influence of 1) algorithms and 2) money.

• I don’t think Elon and Zuck will actually end up fighting, but if they do, Zuck is going to wipe the floor with him.

Until next time, ✌️

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