Weekly Roundup
Ignoring TikTok and the ex-administration's EO flurry, but reimagining cyber property
The Biden administration has been on overdrive this past week, issuing Executive Order after Executive Order. Many seemed to be really good policies, like incentivizing homegrown AI talent or opening federal lands to data centers. But they are an outgoing administration for a reason, and we will have a whole new set of EOs in the coming hours outlining the country’s new tech agenda for the next few years.
TikTok briefly
There will be a longer post coming about the Supreme Court’s opinion on the TikTok ban because 1) there is a lot more to say about the longer impact of what just happened, and 2) the dust is far from settled. In brief:
TikTok stopped working in the US as a national ban took effect — but the shutdown may not last.
The app seemed confident that the blackout is temporary, telling users to “stay tuned.” Donald Trump said in a social media post that he will issue an executive order to delay the ban Monday after his inauguration — which TikTok’s CEO is attending.
It will be interesting to see what Trump’s Executive Order says. The TikTok ban is a law passed by Congress, signed by the President, and upheld Unanimously by the Supreme Court. An Executive Order can’t just delete existing laws, so we will see if the incoming administration’s lawyers have interesting workarounds or if they will just ignore the law.
Security
Frenemies?
Despite sanctions and rhetoric, the U.S. and the PRC have been frequent research collaborators in AI research. This collaboration is speculated to drop off, and a more antagonistic approach to AI talent will take root in both countries’ foreign policy.
War on the Rocks published a lengthy piece last week titled “The Battle for Brilliant Minds: From the Nuclear Age to AI.” The author begins with a series of historical stories—one where the U.S. controversially exfiltrated hundreds of Nazi scientists at the end of WWII and another where, just a couple of years ago, Israel assassinated an Iranian scientist—setting the stage for the direction, and importance, of securing scientific talent, and preventing it from going to our adversaries.
The article is long but worth the read because it shows how the U.S. and China (and other parts of the world) compete for scientific talent. In the upcoming weeks, debates on restricting VC funds, immigration visas, and domestic subsidies for homegrown talent will take center stage. The U.S., with its high quality of living, massive amounts of capital available for personal enrichment, and free society, should be an easy sell for scientists and engineers living in totalitarian countries–if the U.S. is willing to engage in some realpolitik to get them over here permanently.
Frontelligence reports that sanctions have been effective in reducing tantalum, a crucial rare earth mineral:
Russia relies on tantalum to produce tantalum powder, an essential component for capacitors used in electronics, particularly in control, navigation, and signal processing systems.
And
Property
Who owns your social media feed? 10/10 people will probably say, “Social media companies, of course!” The question isn’t and shouldn’t be so cut and dry.
Think of a homeowner. A person who owns a home may own the structure and the plot of land it sits on, or just one. They may rent—which still affords them some property rights in the rental property. The city where they live may have rights to a piece of the homeowner’s land. The homeowner may be responsible for land the city owns, such as clearing snow or leaves from the sidewalk.
Bluesky provides an interesting continuation of this analogy:
Just like email, Bluesky sits on top of an open protocol, in this case known as the AT Protocol. In practice, that means that anyone can build on it. Just as you wouldn’t need anyone’s permission to start a newsletter company built on email, people are starting to share remixed versions of their social media feeds, built on Bluesky.
And importantly, if you decide that you don’t agree with Bluesky’s design and moderation decisions, you can build something else on the same infrastructure and use that instead. This is fundamentally different from the dominant, centralized social media that has prevailed until now.
Or, in other words, if you don’t like your neighborhood but really like your house, you can sell it and build a new house in a different subdivision that is more to your liking. The Bluesky model seems to be the small, grassroots, community-oriented internet for which we have all been yearning for.
Yet Bluesky is not turning a profit.
The author of the linked article wrote that piece to launch a non-profit to preserve this protocol, lest Bluesky be tempted to make itself profitable. While admirable, this is not sustainable nor replicable across the internet. One alternative solution may be to Change cyber property laws to reflect traditional property rights.
The internet’s law is far less established than IRL property, but there is no reason that, as the law solidifies and society decides what it values in cyberspace, internet property rights should be absolute in tech companies’ ownership. Rights to repair, modify, and government easements can all be incorporated into cyberspace through various legal doctrines.
In other property news
Do you really own a piece of equipment you bought? FTC Sues John Deere Over Its Repair Monopoly
Does a company have exclusive rights over its proprietary algorithm? Brussels orders X to hand over documents on its algorithm.
Who owns frozen embryos? Do the embryos have rights? Inside the strange limbo facing millions of IVF embryos
Litigation roundup
AI is writing increasingly complex laws, which will probably require AI to read and navigate. AI is not the cause but an enabling factor for existing incentives to write complex laws, such as entrenched lobbyist groups, resource-constrained legislatures, divided governments, and the popularity of omnibus bills.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week on Texas’ porn ID laws. A ruling won’t be as fast as the TikTok ruling, but it may have far-reaching implications. A history of the lawsuit can be found here.
“The State of Texas sued Allstate on Monday, accusing the insurer of illegally tracking drivers by way of their phones through a subsidiary called Arity that claimed to have the “world’s largest driving behavior database.”
“[The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)] is likely to see its authority tested in the coming years as it asserts its jurisdiction over more types of transactions, pursues more aggressive actions on transaction parties, and imposes significant penalties publicly naming offending parties—actions that shift the calculus on when and how to challenge CFIUS in court.”
In other news
“Fertility apps” are unregulated, use poor data analysis, and can lead to life-altering mistakes for young women.
President Trump launched a “memecoin” last week, now valued at around $45 billion. This administration will likely be very, very friendly to the crypto world. It has already surrounded itself with many crypto true believers, and President Trump may create a “strategic crypto reserve” upon taking office. The Wired published a great interactive map of the new administration’s crypto connections.
