Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events (2 September)

Here is today’s Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events

Coming Events

• The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission will hold a hearing on 9 September on “U.S.-China Relations in 2020: Enduring Problems and Emerging Challenges” to “evaluate key developments in China’s economy, military capabilities, and foreign relations, during 2020.”
• On 10 September, the General Services Administration (GSA) will have a webinar to discuss implementation of Section 889 of the “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2019” (P.L. 115-232) that bars the federal government and its contractors from buying the equipment and services from Huawei, ZTE, and other companies from the People’s Republic of China.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold a forum on 5G Open Radio Access Networks on 14 September. The FCC asserted
  • Chairman [Ajit] Pai will host experts at the forefront of the development and deployment of open, interoperable, standards-based, virtualized radio access networks to discuss this innovative new approach to 5G network architecture. Open Radio Access Networks offer an alternative to traditional cellular network architecture and could enable a diversity in suppliers, better network security, and lower costs.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights Subcommittee will hold a hearing on 15 September titled “Stacking the Tech: Has Google Harmed Competition in Online Advertising?.” In their press release, Chair Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asserted:
  • Google is the dominant player in online advertising, a business that accounts for around 85% of its revenues and which allows it to monetize the data it collects through the products it offers for free. Recent consumer complaints and investigations by law enforcement have raised questions about whether Google has acquired or maintained its market power in online advertising in violation of the antitrust laws. News reports indicate this may also be the centerpiece of a forthcoming antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice. This hearing will examine these allegations and provide a forum to assess the most important antitrust investigation of the 21st century.
• The United States’ Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that its third annual National Cybersecurity Summit “will be held virtually as a series of webinars every Wednesday for four weeks beginning September 16 and ending October 7:”
  • September 16: Key Cyber Insights
  • September 23: Leading the Digital Transformation
  • September 30: Diversity in Cybersecurity
  • October 7: Defending our Democracy
  • One can register for the event here.
• On 22 September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold a public workshop “to examine the potential benefits and challenges to consumers and competition raised by data portability.”
• The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights Subcommittee will hold a hearing on 30 September titled ““Oversight of the Enforcement of the Antitrust Laws” with Federal Trade Commission Chair Joseph Simons and United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Makan Delhrahim.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold an open meeting on 30 September, but an agenda is not available at this time.

Other Developments

• The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) released for comment an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to implement a provision from a 2018 rewrite of the United States (U.S.) export control of certain technology, namely “foundational technology” in this case. The Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) (P.L. 115-232) required the Department of Commerce to establish “a regular, ongoing interagency process to identify emerging and foundational technologies,” and Commerce began the process with an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to identify only emerging technologies in November 2018. Yet the agency has not followed up with draft regulations on managing the export control process for emerging technologies. BIS explained
  • Pursuant to the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, BIS and its interagency partners are engaged in a process to identify emerging and foundational technologies that are essential to the national security of the United States. Foundational technologies essential to the national security are those that may warrant stricter controls if a present or potential application or capability of that technology poses a national security threat to the United States. In order to determine if technologies are foundational, BIS will evaluate specific items, including items currently subject only to anti-terrorism (AT) controls on the CCL or those designated as EAR99.
  • Under ECRA, emerging and foundational technologies are those technologies that are essential to the national security of the United States and are not critical technologies described in Section 721(a)(6)(A)(i)-(v) of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (DPA).
  • Section 1758 of ECRA requires that foundational technologies be identified, and that BIS establish appropriate controls for that technology under the EAR. At a minimum, such controls would apply to countries subject to an embargo, including an arms embargo, imposed by the United States.
  • ECRA also requires that the interagency process is to take into account:
    • The development of foundational technologies in foreign countries;
    • The effect export controls may have on the development of such technologies in the United States; and
    • The effectiveness of export controls imposed pursuant to ECRA on limiting the proliferation of foundational technologies to foreign countries.
• The Privacy Commissioner of Canada Daniel Therrien responded to an inquiry from Members of Parliament “about the privacy implications of the federal government’s COVID-19 exposure notification application (COVID Alert) and the ArriveCAN application.” The OPC explained
  • Our review of the COVID Alert application highlighted serious weaknesses with our current federal privacy legislation. In this case, the government took the position that its privacy laws do not apply in light of its assertion that personal information is not collected by the application. Further, while the design of the application is good, and that the government has agreed to be subject to an independent review, the government was not bound to make these commitments. The government chose to respect the principles put forth in our guidance documents because public trust is vital to the application’s success. However, without robust laws, other programs and applications could be introduced in the future that are not so privacy-sensitive.
• The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) “added 24 Chinese companies to the Entity List for their role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarize the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea,” including a number of technology companies. BIS explained:
  • The Entity List is a tool utilized by BIS to restrict the export, re-export, and transfer (in-country) of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to persons (individuals, organizations, companies) reasonably believed to be involved, or to pose a significant risk of becoming involved, in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.
  • Additionally, in a related action, “the Department of State will begin imposing visa restrictions on People’s Republic of China (PRC) individuals responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarization of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, or the PRC’s use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources.” The Department of State stated that “[t]hese individuals will now be inadmissible into the United States, and their immediate family members may be subject to these visa restrictions as well.”
• The Trump Administration announced “more than $1 billion in awards for the establishment of 12 new AI and QIS research and development (R&D) institutes nationwide,” a substantial portion of which Congress would need to appropriate in future years. The White House claimed the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) quantum information science (QIS) Research Centers “will serve as national R&D hubs for these critical industries of the future, spurring innovation, supporting regional economic growth, and training our next generation workforce.”
• The Trump Administration explained:
  • The National Science Foundation and additional Federal partners are awarding $140 million over five years to a total of seven NSF-led AI Research Institutes. These collaborative research and education institutes will focus on a range of AI R&D areas, such as machine-learning, synthetic manufacturing, precision agriculture, and forecasting prediction. Research will take place at universities around the country, including the University of Oklahoma at Norman, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at Davis, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • NSF anticipates making additional AI Research Institute awards in the coming years, with more than $300 million in total awards, including contributions from partner agencies, expected by next summer. Overall, NSF invests more than $500 million in artificial intelligence activities annually and is the largest Federal driver of nondefense AI R&D.
  • To establish the QIS Research Centers, DOE is announcing up to $625 million over five years to five centers that will be led by DOE National Laboratory teams at Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermi, Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Each QIS Center will incorporate a collaborative research team spanning multiple institutions as well as scientific and engineering disciplines. The private sector and academia will be providing another $300 million in contributions for the centers.

Further Reading

• “Facebook takes down Russian operation that recruited U.S. journalists, amid rising concerns about election misinformation” By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg – The Washington Post; “Russians Again Targeting Americans With Disinformation, Facebook and Twitter Say” By Sheera Frenkel and Julian E. Barnes; “Russian internet trolls hired U.S. journalists to push their news website, Facebook says” By Kevin Collier and Ken Dilanian – NBC News. In what is more evidence that the Russian Federation’s tactics have changed even though its goals have not, Facebook and Twitter announced the takedown of content written by Americans for a fake new source created and run by the Internet Research Agency. The purported online publications, Peace Data, has posted a number of articles aimed at turning far left voters off to the Biden-Harris campaign. In a sign of evolution, however, they hired freelance American journalists to write content that was then amplified elsewhere on the internet. A very curious aspect of this incident is why the FBI merely tipped off Facebook and Twitter instead of a more vigorous approach to addressing efforts to again create distrust and chaos in a U.S. election. One of the articles claims the FBI does not respond to state-sponsored influence operations as they may not be against U.S. law.
• “Big Tech Embraces New Cold War Nationalism” By JS Tan – Foreign Policy. This piece argues that Silicon Valley’s worldview and strategies have changed now in large part because of the rise of companies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) like Huawei, TikTok, Tencent, and Alibaba. Now companies like Facebook and Google are discarding their internationalist, neoliberal approach and have aligned themselves with the United States (U.S.) government for a variety of reasons, including an inability to compete fairly inside the PRC. However, Silicon Valley and Washington’s interests on the PRC may be aligned, but in a number of other, very significant ways, especially with the current government, there are considerable differences.
• “Amazon Is Spying on Its Workers in Closed Facebook Groups, Internal Reports Show” By Lauren Kaori Gurley and Joseph Cox – Vice. Another article about the online giant’s distaste for unions and labor organizing activity. In this piece, we learn that Amazon is monitoring public posts by Amazon Flex drivers and possibly even penetrating closed or private groups on platforms like Facebook and hen reportedly extensively inside the company on The other day, Vice broke a story about Amazon posting two positions for intelligence analysts to help the company track labor organizing. The company took down the positions after the story was posted.

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