Friday, January 31, 2025

"US Probing If DeepSeek Got Nvidia Chips From Firms in Singapore"

From Bloomberg, January 30:

  • Nvidia says it ‘insists’ that customers comply with laws
  • Singapore accounts for about 20% of Nvidia’s revenue

US officials are probing whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek bought advanced Nvidia Corp. semiconductors through third parties in Singapore, circumventing US restrictions on sales of chips used for artificial intelligence tasks, people familiar with the matter said.

DeepSeek recently released a chatbot, called R1, that in some respects performs as well as comparable tools from the US, suggesting that China is further ahead in the AI race than previously believed. Some prominent engineers have marveled at R1’s capabilities, and DeepSeek has touted the tool’s low cost and efficiency, prompting rivals to speculate whether it was built on the back of Western technology. 

Officials in the White House and Federal Bureau of Investigation are also trying to determine whether DeepSeek used intermediaries in the Southeast Asian nation to purchase Nvidia chips that the US has banned from sale to China, said the people, who requested anonymity to relay private conversations.

DeepSeek didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. An Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement that “we insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly.” The company issued a statement on DeepSeek earlier this week that indicated it believes the Chinese company didn’t violate US restrictions.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment, while a representative for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Singapore embassy in Washington couldn’t be reached outside of office hours.

Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, suggested on Wednesday that DeepSeek evaded US export controls. 

“Nvidia’s chips, which they bought tons of, and they found their ways around it, drive their DeepSeek model,” Lutnick, who would enforce semiconductor trade restrictions as the Commerce head, told senators in his confirmation hearing Wednesday. “It’s got to end. If they are going to compete with us, let them compete, but stop using our tools to compete with us. So I’m going to be very strong on that.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Now Singapore is known as a pretty tech-savvy place but 20% of Nvidia's revenue flowing through the entrepôt seems like quite a bit.

"The Failed Strategy of Artificial Intelligence Doomers"

From Palladium Magazine, January 31:

In recent decades, a growing coalition has emerged to oppose the development of artificial intelligence technology, for fear that the imminent development of smarter-than-human machines could doom humanity to extinction. The now-influential form of these ideas began as debates among academics and internet denizens, which eventually took form—especially within the Rationalist and Effective Altruist movements—and grew in intellectual influence over time, along the way collecting legible endorsements from authoritative scientists like Stephen Hawking and Geoffrey Hinton.

Ironically, by spreading the belief that superintelligent AI is achievable and supremely powerful, these “AI Doomers,” as they came to be called, inspired the creation of OpenAI and other leading artificial intelligence labs whose technology they argue will destroy us all. Despite this, they have continued nearly the same advocacy strategy, and are now in the process of persuading Western governments that superintelligent AI is achievable and supremely powerful. To this end, they have created organized and well-funded movements to lobby for regulation, and their members are staffing key positions in the U.S. and British governments.

Their basic argument is that more intelligent beings can outcompete less intelligent beings, just as humans outcompeted mastodons or saber-toothed tigers or neanderthals. Computers are already ahead of humans in some narrow areas, and we are on track to create a superintelligent artificial general intelligence (AGI) which can think as broadly and creatively in any domain as the smartest humans. “Artificial general intelligence” is not a technical term, and is used differently by different groups to mean everything from “an effectively omniscient computer which can act independently, invent unthinkably powerful new technologies, and outwit the combined brainpower of humanity” to “software which can substitute for most white-collar workers” to “chatbots which usually don’t hallucinate.” 

AI Doomers are concerned with the former scenario, where computer systems outreason, outcompete, and doom humanity to extinction. The AI Doomers are only one of several factions that oppose AI and seek to cripple it via weaponized regulation. There are also factions concerned about “misinformation” and “algorithmic bias,” which in practice means they think chatbots must be censored to prevent them from saying anything politically inconvenient. Hollywood unions oppose generative AI for the same reason that the longshoremen’s union opposes automating American ports and insists on requiring as much inefficient human labor as possible. Many moralists seek to limit “AI slop” for the same reasons that moralists opposed previous new media like video games, television, comic books, and novels—and I can at least empathize with this last group’s motives, as I wasted much of my teenage years reading indistinguishable novels in exactly the way that 19th century moralists warned against. In any case, the AI Doomers vary in their attitudes towards these factions. Some AI Doomers denounce them as Luddites, some favor alliances of convenience, and many stand in between.

Most members of the “AI Doomer” coalition initially called themselves by the name of “AI safety” advocates. However, this name was soon co-opted by these other factions with concerns smaller than human extinction. The AI Doomer coalition has far more intellectual authority than AI’s other opponents, with the most sophisticated arguments and endorsements from socially-recognized scientific and intellectual elites, so these other coalitions continually try to appropriate and wield the intellectual authority gathered by the AI Doomer coalition. Rather than risk being misunderstood, or fighting a public battle over the name, the AI Doomer coalition abandoned the name “AI safety” and rebranded itself to “AI alignment.” Once again, this name was co-opted by outsiders and abandoned by its original membership. Eliezer Yudkowsky coined the term “AI Notkilleveryoneism” in an attempt to establish a name that could not be co-opted, but unsurprisingly it failed to catch on among those it was intended to describe.

Today, the coalition’s members do not agree on any name for themselves. “AI Doomers,” the only widely understood name for them, was coined by their rhetorical opponents and is considered somewhat offensive by many of those it refers to, although some have adopted it themselves for lack of a better alternative. While I regret being rude, this essay will refer to them as “AI Doomers” in the absence of any other clear, short name.

Whatever name they go by, the AI Doomers believe the day computers take over is not far off, perhaps as soon as three to five years from now, and probably not longer than a few decades. When it happens, the superintelligence will achieve whatever goals have been programmed into it. If those goals are aligned exactly to human values, then it can build a flourishing world beyond our most optimistic hopes. But such goal alignment does not happen by default, and will be extremely difficult to achieve, if its creators even bother to try. If the computer’s goals are unaligned, as is far more likely, then it will eliminate humanity in the course of remaking the world as its programming demands. This is a rough sketch, and the argument is described more fully in works like Eliezer Yudkowsky’s essays and Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence....

....MUCH MORE

"AI Comes to the Apple Orchard—From Pollinating to Picking"

From the Wall Street Journal, January 29:

Researchers are developing robots that promise to automate a process that has always relied on human workers—and bees

Apple orchards are largely untouched by automation. But that could be changing.

Recent breakthroughs in robotics and artificial intelligence could enable robots to do much of the work that orchards require, potentially transforming how apples get to a fruit bowl near you.

A number of universities and startups are developing specialized robots for each stage of apple production, from pollinating the trees to fertilizing them, pruning them and harvesting the fruit.

The push for automation comes as orchards face rising labor costs, and as they’re evolving in a way that would mesh well with robot apple pickers. Modern growing techniques train trees into narrow, rectangular shapes of limited height—rather than the natural big, bushy shape with a rounded canopy—making it easier to reach the fruit.

Here’s how robots are potentially revolutionizing the orchard, step by step.

Pollinating
Researchers have developed robotic pollinators to help where there are no local bees to do the job. Orchards where bees are lacking currently pay to have them brought in from elsewhere.

The robots use cameras to identify apple blossoms. When they spot a target, a mechanical arm moves in close and releases a precise burst of pollen through a nozzle. Early results are promising. In tests conducted by researchers at Washington State University, 84% of targeted flowers were pollinated.

Researchers envision using these systems to strategically pollinate flowers in the most accessible locations on trees at the optimal time. This could help improve robotic harvesting by ensuring fruit grows where machines can best reach it.  

Pollinating only certain flowers this way would also limit the number of apples a tree produces, resulting in better-quality fruit. Orchard workers currently achieve this by thinning a tree’s fruit manually....

....MUCH MORE 

Perhaps, somehow, by the Grace of God, avoiding the horribly divisive issue already threatening the blueberry business:

CNN guest says women won’t have berries for smoothies if illegal immigrants are deported

And who will pick our cotton if Lincoln is successful?

‘Ticking time bomb’: how the fall of Syria’s prison camps could unleash 1000s of terrorists on the world

Then the people who backed the new boss, al-Julani, should do something about it.

From The Telegraph, January 30:

Observers are warning that detention camps housing followers of the notorious Isis caliphate are close to collapse 

In a desolate expanse of north-east Syria, where there is little more than dirt and dust, the sprawling Al-Hol camp rises from the desert.

Hot and dry in summer, with relentless winds whipping up sandstorms, and exposed to biting cold in winter, the high-security facility is hemmed in by metal fencing and patrolled by Western-allied Kurdish-led troops.

Behind the barbed wire, under the eyes of surveillance cameras and watchtowers, is the largest single remnant of the bloody caliphate once ruled by Isis. The camp is home to thousands of women and children, the relatives of the terror group’s legions of male fighters, the majority of whom are held at an unknown number of prison facilities spread across the region.

Among those facing indefinite detention in Al-Hol, the smaller Al-Roj camp farther north, and the secretive jails are a number of terror suspects linked to Britain – including Shamima Begum and “Jihadi Jack” Letts – who travelled to Syria and Iraq to join Isis between 2012 and 2019. Some 20 British women, 40 children and 10 men are believed to be held in facilities across the region in total.

The fate of the prisoners has been the subject of years of concern and debate following the fall of Isis’s caliphate six years ago. To this day, foreign governments and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue to wrestle with the complexity of finding a long-term solution to the security problems they pose.

Those worries have now taken on a heightened sense of urgency as Syria enters a new phase of uncertainty following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. On Wednesday, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s de-facto leader and the head of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group, abolished the country’s 2012 constitution and declared himself president for a “transitional period” following a meeting of armed factions in Damascus.

The announcement came after officials and analysts warned earlier this week that the Isis terrorists held in north-eastern Syria could escape from camps and prisons as a result of Donald Trump’s cuts to foreign aid.

US funding to the SDF was halted for several days, reportedly leading to local guards not turning up to work. An intervention by the US state department on Monday reinstated funding for two weeks, but it remains unclear what will happen after the stopgap measure expires.

“This is the biggest population of incarcerated terrorists, anywhere in the world, ever – within an active war zone in which Isis remains determined to launch mass breakout attacks,” Charles Lister, the director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism programme at the Middle East Institute, said on Monday. “The threat… cannot be understated.”

Guards have warned that attempted prison breaks could be imminent.

Khaled Ibrahim, an official in north-eastern Syria’s de facto autonomous region, describes the facilities across the region as “ticking time bombs”.

“Detainees consider themselves part of Isis’s retaliatory legacy,” he says, adding they have been laying in wait for an opportunity to strike back.

Those held in the overcrowded camps, where rows of weather-beaten tents stretch off into the distance, surrounded by overflowing sewage, are near-constantly exposed to extremist ideologies. There are few rehabilitation programmes in place. Al-Hol itself has previously been described as a “mini caliphate”, populated by some 40,000 women and children brainwashed by years of Isis indoctrination. Security control is limited to the facility’s perimeter, with no clear authority or effective monitoring within the camp itself....

....MUCH MORE
 
Or let the ISIS goons explain their actions to the Kurdish and Yazidi women. From a March 2019 post:

Female Yazidi worshippers gather to remember the thousands of women and girls seized as sex slaves, tortured and murdered by ISIS fanatics
I had intended to post this on International Women's Day but was counseled to hold off.
We have a special admiration for the Yazidi women and their Kurdish sisters and do think they should be celebrated....
****
....Previously on the Yazidi and Kurdish women:
Feb. 2016
Hundreds of Former Sex Slaves Take Up Arms To Do What Obama, Cameron Won't: Kill ISIS Pigs
Nov. 2016
The Battle to Retake Raqqa Syria From ISIS Is Being Led By A Kurdish Woman: Jihadis, Erdoğan Not Pleased
This woman is leading efforts to send ISIS to hell, but Turkey has other plans
 This woman is leading efforts to send ISIS to hell, but Turkey has other plans
 Killer of ISIS swine 

https://web.archive.org/web/20201231133327im_/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6aZDqCXMAEfUZM.jpg 
Commander of Bethnahrin Women Protection Units: 
"We & YPJ will take revenge for all the women who have been enslaved by IS" 
(ANHA)
https://web.archive.org/web/20201208174144/https://twitter.com/dersi4m/status/839526688954466304 

"Collapse of the Solar Stocks"

We have had nothing to do with these names for the last fifteen years or so.

It is hard enough to identify the class-of-the-field, in the case of the solars: FSLR, and wend our way through the vagaries of that one issue than to track the dreck (or eventual dreck).

From Wolf Street, January 23:

This is about stock market craziness, not about solar power.

This is about stock prices that get inflated beyond recognition on nothing but wild mania, and when the mania subsides, the stocks collapse and are inducted into our pantheon of Imploded Stocks. And we’re going to look at eight of these imploded solar stocks.

This is not about solar power. Rooftop and utility-scale solar installations are now a fairly large business. Utility-scale batteries have become a profitable way of arbitraging the highly volatile electricity spot prices that can spike during high-demand hours and plunge during low-demand hours, and in this arbitrage, batteries work well with big solar installations, buying electricity when the price is low, and selling when it’s high. And they work well with small-scale solar too. Some of the eight companies here are involved with both solar power and energy storage.

There are up-front costs with solar power, as there are with every power plant. But with solar, the “fuel” is free for the life of the installation, and the math has been getting better as the price of photovoltaic panels has come down over the years. In 2023, the share of electricity generated by small-scale and utility-scale solar installations rose to 5.6% of the total electricity generated in the US.

The eight companies here are sort of pure-plays in the solar-power field. Big utilities are all over solar power, as are big equipment providers, and of course, Tesla. But these eight companies here are specialized players, many of them with over 1,000 employees at the peak, and with hundreds of millions to several billion in annual revenues.

Globally, about 85% of the photovoltaic panels are manufactured in China, which is also its own biggest customer. Vietnam is #2 with a share of a little over 3%. There are some efforts underway to boost manufacturing of photovoltaic panels in the US, to not be so totally dependent on China. But that will take a while to pan out.

This is about stock market craziness, not about solar power.

SunPower has been around for a long time. It went public in 2005 as a spin-off from Cypress Semiconductor. It was one of the big boys at the time.

Its stock experienced two huge bubbles. The first in 2006-2007 when it went from $20 a share to $100. The second started in May 2020, when free money turned brains to mush, and the stock multiplied by 12, from $4 a share to $54 a share in about 18 months to peak in January 2021. Then it collapsed.

There was a mix of operational issues, years of substantial losses, accounting issues, missed filing deadlines, defaults, etc., etc. When it could no longer raise new cash to burn, after it had already burned everything it had, it was over.

In August 2024, SunPower filed for bankruptcy. Most of its assets were acquired by solar SPAC Complete Solaria for $45 million (more in a moment), and SunPower’s shares and investors got wiped out.

This stuff happens. What was crazy were the two spikes in share prices on nothing but mass-mania, and after it subsided, the stock collapsed to zero (data via YCharts).

Complete Solaria [CSLR], the residential solar systems provider that acquired SunPower’s assets for $45 million, had gone public via merger with a SPAC in July 2023, an amazing feat, given that the ignominious SPAC bubble had already collapsed. From the merger-share price of $10 a share, the stock has plunged by 81% to about $1.90 currently, including a slick rug-pull right after the SPAC merger was completed (data via YCharts).

SolarEdge Technologies [SEDG] makes inverters, batteries, power optimizers, and other equipment for solar systems. Back in 2015, when it went public via IPO, SolarEdge made a deal with Tesla Energy to provide inverters for Tesla’s Powerwall. But eventually, Tesla produced its own inverter.

The company, which is headquartered in Israel and is largely active in Europe, made several acquisitions: In 2018, it acquired a major stake in South Korean maker of battery cells and batteries, Kokam. In 2019, it acquired a majority stake in Italian EV powertrain manufacturer SMRE, and it acquired UPS maker Gamatronic. In 2023, it acquired UK-based software-as-a-service provider Hark Systems.

In prior years, the company booked some net income, but over the past five quarters, it booked massive losses, totaling $1.72 billion, including $1.2 billion in Q3. And sales collapsed in 2024, including by 65% in Q3 2024.

The stock price had multiplied by 10 between early 2019 ($36 a share) and January 2021 ($360 a share), then plunged and spiked a few more times within the same range, before the big kathoomph in the second half of 2023. The stock has now plunged by 96% from the triple peaks in 2021 and 2022:

Sunrun [RUN] makes and installs residential solar systems that it sells as a subscription or financed purchase. The company, which is based in San Francisco, went public via IPO in 2015. There had been some profitable years, but over the past five quarters, it lost $1.45 billion.

The stock had multiplied by 11 between April 2020 ($8.36) and January 2021 ($96.50), but then collapsed and today, closing at $9.23, is down by 91% from that peak....

....MUCH MORE 

Even with First Solar it is not easy:

...On October 30 we posted "First Solar Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (FSLR)" with the intro line "It sounds like dead money for at least a quarter." Straight analysis in ten words informed by a lifetime at the market.

So far so good.

On November 2 the Des Moines Register published "Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day. Here's how" about which the BBC gushed:

A new poll of voters in Iowa suggests that Kamala Harris is leading with 47% over Donald Trump's 44%.
The survey was released by the highly regarded pollster Ann Selzer, who regularly carries out surveys for the Des Moines Register newspaper....
MarketWatch did not refer to the "highly regarded pollster", instead going with "Trump election odds tumble on betting markets after Iowa poll shows Harris lead".

The stock which had traded as low as $183.68 on October 30 (closing at $197.50), hit $221.20 on November 4.
 
This morning's MarketWatch story is headlined "Renewable-energy stocks tank after Trump wins White House"
The stock is trading at $183.20 down $32.69 (-15.14%).

....MUCH MORE

Here's six months of price action via TradingView:

Chart Image

That is indeed what the old-times used to call "dead money." Good fun though in early November. You can see when the political pollster Ann Selzer claimed Vice-President Harris was ahead by three percentage points.

Guided by the first inductee into the Climateer Hall of Fame we have attempted to avoid the traps and pitfalls the equity market is littered with:

Finally for investors in rent-seeking organizations there is the real risk that the politicians will change the rules. Heed the words of Sen. Simon Cameron (R&D!-Pa.):
Our Hero
Simon Cameron

"The honest politician is one who when 
he is bought, will stay bought."

That's an April 2009 iteration of the boilerplate in "RENEWED ENERGY: Solar Seeks Special Place in Climate Bill (Rentseeking to the Fifth)".

Why Did New York Magazine Cut Out The Black People?

The cover of the magazine:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GiVxQ66XQAAxqzI?format=jpg&name=large

The uncropped version:

Image 

The story at the Hollywood Reporter.

The politicized press is beyond loathsome. They are like something you try to scrape off your shoe before entering a building.

Batteries: Sweden's Northvolt Scrambles To Avoid Liquidation

The company is already in reorganization.

From Reuters, January 31

Exclusive: Scania tries to breathe life into troubled EV battery maker Northvolt 

  • Scania is supporting Northvolt's operations in Sweden
  • Scania staff heavily involved in day-to-day running of Northvolt Ett plant, documents
  • Northvolt faces financial struggles, needs $1.29 bln to overhaul, sources
  • Northvolt filed for Chapter 11 after financing talks collapsed
STOCKHOLM, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Truckmaker Scania has stepped in to help Northvolt with the day-to-day running of its flagship plant in northern Sweden, a last-ditch effort to boost quality and output at the struggling electric vehicle battery maker as it scrambles to secure funds.
Since November, Scania has sent members of staff to Northvolt's Ett plant in Skelleftea, 200 kilometres below the Arctic Circle, according to internal Northvolt documents reviewed by Reuters that outline Scania's support strategy for the green tech player. The plant employs some 2,500 people.

Four Northvolt workers told Reuters they had seen Scania employees, identifiable by an orange visitor armband, inside the factory in recent months, with one saying this was happening as late as this week.
 
Scania acknowledged to Reuters that it was assisting with the production ramp-up and that it had sent staff to the Northvolt Ett plant for a period, but declined to provide further comment.
 
Under the support plan, which has not been reported, each Scania staff member is to be paired with a Northvolt shift manager or team leader to "coach" teams while "simultaneously helping to drive improvements and implement standards", an internal presentation dated early November read....

....MUCH MORE

And from Reuters via MSN, January 29:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Volvo Cars has signed an agreement to buy struggling Swedish battery maker Northvolt's stake in their joint battery venture NOVO Energy, the Sweden-based automaker said on Wednesday, without disclosing the price.

Volvo Cars and Northvolt, which is under bankruptcy protection, formed the joint venture in 2021 to build a battery factory in Gothenburg on Sweden's west coast. The carmaker said in October it would need a new partner to keep plans for the factory on track....

....MUCH MORE  

If interested see also:

So far it's compartmentalized but the parent company is also facing financing and sales problems, more after the jump....
***
...There was a reason we titled September 5's post "Portents" - "Portents: Sweden's Northvolt may postpone $5bn Quebec battery plant by up to 18 months". It was a sign of things to come, including September 25's Batteries: "Sweden’s Northvolt to Cut 20% of Staff Amid Liquidity Crunch"

Batteries: Sweden's Northvolt Has Hired A Restructuring Expert 

"Battery unicorn Northvolt files for bankruptcy, upending Europe’s industrial plan"

The electric vehicle business is not an easy one.

PCE Inflation For December 2024: Headline Up 0.3%; Core Up 0.2%

From the Bureau of Economic Analysis, January 31:

.... From the preceding month, the PCE price index for December increased 0.3 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.2 percent.

From the same month one year ago, the PCE price index for December increased 2.6 percent.

Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 2.8 percentfrom one year ago...

....MUCH MORE (9 page PDF)

Earlier: "WSJ's Fed Whisperer: Core PCE Inflation Forecast 0.18% For December"

WSJ's Fed Whisperer: Core PCE Inflation Forecast 0.18% For December

From the Journal's Nick Timeraos, January:

The next three CPI releases will get very interesting should the disinflationary trend bleed over to that index but not incentivize the Fed to cut rates. In that event pencil rising real rates into your forecasts.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

"The Coming Age Of The Internet Of Agents"

From The Next Platform, January 28:

Almost a year ago, executives, researchers, and developers within the Outshift group of Cisco Systems – an incubation unit focused on such advanced technologies as AI and quantum computing – began batting about the idea of a network infrastructure connecting vast numbers of AI agents from multiple vendors or organizations, allowing those AI agents to automatically communicate, work together, and solve complex problems for enterprises.

The idea is that, as the nature of AI agents evolves and their use grows, there needs to be an open environment in which they can find each other and work together, regardless of what vendors built them. If an organization has a drug discovery project or sales forecasting problem that needs to be addressed, the AI agents they assign to it should be able to pull in other agents from other companies to solve it.

That’s not happening. Not yet, anyway. But it’s coming, according to Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president of the Outshift incubator, and it’s going to arrive in the form of the Internet of Agents.

“Largely, computing has been deterministic in nature for all these decades with probabilistic (stochastic) computing being relegated to special use cases (ML models) or quantum computing use cases,” Pandey wrote this month in a white paper on the subject. “Generalized probabilistic computing only took shape after the democratization of language foundation models such as ChatGPT in November 2022.”

The rise of foundation model-based AI-native applications, particularly in the form of AI agents, is happening quickly and will change how AI is used by enterprises and how work and business is done. Pandey pointed to the Internet and the Internet for clouds as examples of infrastructure adapting to rapid changes in business and IT environments. A similar shift is needed for AI agents.

“We stand at yet another inflection point – the move to distributed agentic computing,” he wrote. “One that will drive a platform paradigm shift larger than all other platforms in the past. This distributed agentic computation platform needs a new secure connectivity layer that sits above the current cloud native connectivity layer.”

The Internet of Agents will need to be fast, safe, and open, he wrote. It will involve “push-button hardware-software stacks” that include GPU and CPU virtualization, sophisticated pipelines for transmitting data, and tightly coupled compute clusters that provide high memory bandwidth and very low latency connections.

“This infrastructure must process agent collaboration at machine speed, potentially thousands of times faster than current,” Pandey wrote, adding that it also must be protected from upcoming quantum computing, which threatens encryption and other security methods. “This isn’t just about protecting data in transit – it’s about securing the entire chain of agent interactions across organizational boundaries.”

It’s also going to take industry-wide cooperation for such tasks as creating open standards for communication between agents, including defining how agents identify themselves, create trust, and securely share information. In additions, all companies should be able to implement the open protocols....

....MUCH MORE 

Recently from The Next Platform (January 27):

How Did DeepSeek Train Its AI Model On A Lot Less – And Crippled – Hardware?
(third of three links on that page)

Attention Bored Boffins* And Geeky Gageteers: "Spy bosses looking for James Bond-style Q"

Keeping in mind that the James Bond's Q works for MI6, not 5, and that the real life Q is a woman, I assume of the XX rather than the XY variety as the former are so much more numerous (also historically resonant for those who remember the 20 Committee—"XX" Double-Cross Committee")

From the always calm and reserved Daily Star, January 24:

Spy bosses looking for James Bond-style Q to make gadgets for its spooks
MI5 is searching for a real-life Q to conjure up gadgets for spooks and thwart terror attacks, and the successful candidate can expect a starting salary of £71,053

Spy bosses are hiring a real-life Q to develop gadgets for spooks and thwart terror attacks. The security service is advertising for a new Product Manager – like James Bond’s gizmo wizard sidekick.

The successful candidate can expect a starting salary of £71,053 and the job ad states: “MI5 keeps the country safe from serious threats like terrorism and attempts by states to harm the UK, its people and way of life. We carry out investigations by obtaining, analysing and assessing intelligence, and then work with a range of partners, including MI6 and GCHQ to disrupt these threats....

....MUCH MORE 
*A nod to the geeks at The Register who almost single-handedly are keeping the word "boffins" in current use. Yesterday: "Tiny Linux kernel tweak could cut datacenter power use by 30%, boffins say" and thousands of times over the years.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

"Tesla (TSLA) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript" (Mr. Musk Seems Exuberant)

After trading down $8.99 (-2.26%) to $389.10 during Wednesday's regular session, the stock reversed after-hours, up $16.12 (+4.14%), settling at $405.23.

From Motley Fool Transcribing:

Q4 2024 Earnings Call
Jan 29, 2025, 5:30 p.m. ET

 Contents:

  • Prepared Remarks
  • Questions and Answers
  • Call Participants

*****

....Elon Reeve Musk -- Chief Executive Officer and Product Architect

Thank you. So, in summary, in Q4, we set record and delivered vehicles at an annualized rate of nearly 2 million a year. So, congratulations to the Tesla team on excellent work, achieving record production and deliveries. Model Y was the best-selling vehicle of any kind for 2024.

That's worth noting. Not just the best electric vehicle, the best vehicle of any kind on Earth, No. 1 was Model Y. We are staying focused on maximizing volumes and obviously doubling down -- I don't know what -- really, I was going to say doubling down in autonomy, but really, it's like autonomy is like 10x-ing frankly.

Doubling is not even enough. We made many critical investments in 2024 in manufacturing, AI and robotics that will bear immense fruit in the future, immense. Like it's, in fact, to such a scale that it is difficult to comprehend. And I've said this before and I'll stand by it.

I see a path. I'm not saying it's an easy path but I see a path of Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far. Not even close, like maybe several times more than -- I mean, there is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined. There's a path to that.

I mean, I think it's like and incredibly it's like a difficult path but it is an achievable path. And that is overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots. So, our focus is actually building toward that. And then that's where we're laying the ground.

We laid the groundwork for that in 2024. We'll continue to lay the groundwork for that in 2025. In fact, more than laying the groundwork, actually started building the structure. We're building the manufacturing lines.

And I'd like -- setting up for what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculous '27 and '28, ridiculously good. That is my prediction. As you very few people understand the value of self-driving and our ability to monetize the fleet. Some of these things I've said for quite a long time, and I know people have said, "Well, Elon, the boy who cried like a wolf like several times." But I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time and you can drive it.

In fact, it could drive you. It's a self-driving wolf. For a lot of people, like their experience of Tesla Autonomy is like if it's even a year old, if it's even two years old, it's like meeting someone when they're like a toddler and thinking that they're going to be a toddler forever. But obviously not going to be a toddler forever.

They grow up. But if their last experience was like, "Oh, FSD was a toddler." It's like, well, it's grown up now. Have you seen it? It's like walks and talks. And that's really what we've got.

And it's difficult for people to understand this because human intuition is linear as opposed to what we're seeing is exponential progress. So, that's why my No. 1 recommendation for anyone who doubts is simply try it. Have you tried it? When's the last time you tried it? And the only people who are skeptical, the only people who are skeptical are those who have not tried it.

So, a car goes -- a passenger car typically has only about 10 hours of utility per week out of 168, a very small percentage. Once that car is autonomous, my rough estimate is that it is in use for at least a third of the hours per week, so call it, 50, maybe 55 hours of the week. And it can be used for both cargo delivery and people delivery. So, even, let's say, people are askeep but you can deliver packages in the middle of the night or resupply restaurants or whatever the case may be, whatever people need at all hours of the day or night.

That same asset, the thing that -- these things that already exist with no incremental cost change, just a software update, now have five times or more the utility than they currently have. I think this will be the largest asset value increase in human history. Maybe there's something bigger but I just don't know what it is. And so, people who would look in the rearview mirror are looking for past precedent, except I don't think there is one.

So, look, the reality of autonomy is upon us. And I repeat my advice, try driving the car or let it drive you. So, now it works very well in the U.S., but of course, it will, over time, work just as well everywhere else. Yes, so we're working hard to grow our annual volumes.

Our current constraint is battery packs this year but we're working on addressing that constraint. And I think we will make progress in addressing that constraint. And then things are really going to go ballistic next year and really ballistic in '27 and '28. So, yes, so a bit more on full-self-driving.

Our Q4 vehicle safety report shows continued year-over-year improvement in safety for vehicles. So, the safety numbers, if somebody has supervised full self- driving turn on or not, the safety differences are gigantic. And people have seen the immense improvement with Version 13, and with incremental versions in Version 13 and 14 is going to be yet another step beyond that, that is very significant. We launched the Cortex training cluster at Gigafactory Austin, which was a significant contributor to FSD advancement.

And we continue to invest in training infrastructure out of Texas headquarters. So, the training needs for Optimus humanoid robot, are probably at least ultimately 10x of what is needed for the car, at least to get to the full range of useful role. You can say like how many different roles are there for a humanoid robot versus a car? A humanoid robot has probably 1,000 times more uses and more complex things than in a car. That doesn't mean the training scales by 1,000 but it's probably at 10x.

Now you can do this progressively, so it doesn't mean like Tesla's going to spend like $500 billion in training computer because we will obviously train Optimus to do enough tasks to match the output of robots. And obviously, the cost of training is dropping dramatically with time. But it's one of those things where I think long-term, Optimus has the potential to be north of $10 trillion in revenue, like it's really bananas. So, that you can obviously afford a lot of training compute in that situation.

In fact, even $500 billion training compute in that situation will be quite a good deal. Yes, the future is going to be incredibly different from the past, that's for sure. We live at this unbelievable inflection point in human history. So, yes, so the proof is in the pudding.

So, we're going to be launching unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June. So, I talked to the team. We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June. We already have Teslas operating autonomously unsupervised full self-driving at our factory in Fremont, and we'll soon be doing that at our factory in Texas.

So, thousands of cars every day are driving with no one in them at our Fremont factory in California, that we'll soon be doing that in Austin and then elsewhere in the world, the rest of our factories, which is pretty cool. And the cars aren't just driving to exactly the same spot because, obviously, they want to collide at the same spot. The cars are actually programmed with where -- with what lane they need to park into to be picked up for delivery. So, the drive from the factory end of line to their destination parking spot and to be picked up for delivery to customers and then doing this reliably every day, thousands of times a day.

It's pretty cool. Like I said, these Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin. So, what I'm saying is this is not some far-off mythical situation. It's literally five, six months away, five months away kind of thing.

And while we're stepping -- putting our toe in the water gently at first just to make sure everything is cool, our solution, our sort of solution is a generalized AI solution. It does not require high precision maps of locality. So, we just want to be cautious. It's not that it doesn't work beyond Austin.

In fact, it does. We just want to put our toe in the water, make sure everything is OK, then put a few more toes in the water, then put a foot in the water with safety of the general public as and those in the car as our top priority. With regard to Optimus, obviously, I'm making these revenue predictions that sound absolutely insane, I realize that. But they are -- I think they will prove to be accurate.

Now with Optimus, there's a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing because it's not like a train arriving at the station for Optimus. We are designing the train at the station and in real time while also building the tracks. And so, they'll be like, why didn't the train arrive exactly at 12:05? And like we're designing the train and the tracks in the station in real-time while like how can we predict this thing with absolute precision? It's impossible. The normal internal plan calls for roughly 10,000 Optimus robots to be built this year.

Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will. Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of the year? Yes, I'm confident they will do useful things. Those Optimus in use at the Tesla factories for production design 1 will inform how will we change for production design 2, which we expect to launch next year. And our goal is to ramp up Optimus production faster than maybe anything has ever been ramped, meaning like aspirationally in order of magnitude, ramp per year.

Now if we aspire to an order of magnitude ramp per year, perhaps, we only end up with a half order of magnitude per year. But that's the kind of growth that we're talking about. It doesn't take very many years before we're making 100 million of these things a year if you go up by let's say, a factor by 5x per year.

Travis Axelrod -- Head of Investor Relations

That's insane.

Elon Reeve Musk -- Chief Executive Officer and Product Architect

Insane. Not 50%, 500%. Yeah, big growth numbers. Yes.....

....MUCH MORE

The comments on energy storage are especially interesting.  

CLSA Feng Shui Index: Happy Year Of The Wood Snake

From CLSA:

Scales of success

This year, there are 13 lunar months, something that happens every few years to bring the lunar calendar back into line with the solar observations. Custom has it that it is not a winter month that is repeated, and this year it will be the sixth month. It’s not unlike a ‘Groundhog Month’ when the repeated month takes place. It is not exactly the same of course, the qi of the universe and seasons keeps moving along, and this year the added month has only 29 days, which don’t map exactly onto the 30 of the primary, or first, sixth month. Also, for those who keep an eye on a Chinese-style almanac or lunar calendar: not only do the guiding 10 heavenly stems and 12 earthly branches change through the days; the nine flying stars, the 28 constellations or lunar mansions, and the 12 day officers or day indications all keep to their own systems. The latter, for example, repeating one of the 12 day officers or indications depending on the occurrence of every second solar term. Happily or unhappily for us, the sixth month this year is a snake relaxed, basking on a rock in the sun, and the index may not budge.

Secret hissings point towards good rises in the market through the spring and winter, a long period of summerish lassitude, and small falls throughout the year. For ophiophiles and lovers of other slithery critters, we’ve pegged each month to a different species of snake and see them sloughing off their skins to reveal, like Russian dolls, the true inner snake of the Hang Seng Index.....

....MUCH MORE, so much more 

Previous snake years

https://www.clsa.com/special/FSI/2025/?section=sectors

https://www.clsa.com/special/FSI/2025/?section=property

Launched in 1992 as a Chinese New Year card, the CLSA Feng Shui Index is a light-hearted outlook for the Hong Kong market and a well-loved firm tradition. Please note that this guide is not a research report.

Hong Kong's Security Law And Financial Analyst Self-Censorship

Following on January 28's "DeepSeek and Chinese Security Laws: There Are No Secrets".

A quick note up front. Much of what the Chinese authorities do as a result of the 2014 - 2020 security laws the Americans also did under the Biden administration and perhaps earlier.

The difference in the two approaches is that the Chinese could act with impunity due to the laws whereas the American government/security organs had to have the assistance of the various companies and platforms as the censoring/manipulating was done in a surreptitious wink-and-a-nod manner. 

Of the two, the Chinese methods at least have the grace of being more upfront and forthright: "We are censorious authoritarians and that's the way it is. Live with it."

From the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business' ProMarket, January 27, 2025:

How Political Speech Restrictions Spill Over Into Financial Analysis 

A new study by Utpal Bhattacharya, Tse-Chun Lin, and Janghoon Shon finds that Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law led local financial analysts to self-censor their reports, particularly when covering poorly performing state-owned enterprises.


Following the introduction of Hong Kong’s National Security Law (NSL) in June 2020, local financial analysts began self-censoring their reports, particularly when covering poorly performing state-owned enterprises, according to new research by Utpal Bhattacharya, Tse-Chun Lin, and Janghoon Shon. The findings suggest that constraints on political speech can have far-reaching effects on financial discourse and market efficiency.

The new study examines how the NSL’s enactment influenced the behavior of equity analysts covering major companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Their analysis reveals that local analysts began providing more optimistic forecasts, using vaguer language, and taking longer to issue reports about underperforming firms after the law took effect—patterns that were especially pronounced when covering Chinese central state-owned enterprises (SOEs). SOE’s are legal entities that undertake commercial activities on behalf of the Chinese central government (as opposed to provincial or city governments).

The Law’s impact on financial speech

The NSL, which came into effect on June 30, 2020, prohibits acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces. While the law’s primary focus is political speech, the researchers find evidence that its effects spilled over into financial analysis, likely due to uncertainty about how broadly the law might be interpreted.

Using data from 2018 to 2022, the study examines over 6,000 analyst reports covering 38 major companies consistently listed in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index. The researchers compared the behavior of local analysts (identified by Chinese family names) with foreign analysts before and after the NSL’s implementation, focusing particularly on how they covered firms during periods of poor performance.

To identify potential self-censorship, the authors examined three key metrics: forecast errors in earnings predictions, the use of weak modal words in reports (such as “could,” “might,” and “perhaps”), and the time lag between earnings announcements and analyst reports. They also analyzed market reactions to analyst recommendations to assess whether investors adjusted their behavior in response to potential self-censorship.

The study controlled for various factors that could influence results, including changes in the teams of analysts that issued the reports, drastic changes to firm stock prices, and seasonal variation in firm performance.

Three key changes in analyst behavior

The study documents changes in analyst behavior across three dimensions:

First, local analysts’ earnings forecasts showed an upward bias after the NSL when covering underperforming firms. Compared to foreign analysts, local analysts’ forecast errors were 0.47 to 0.63 standard deviations higher for poorly performing companies after the law’s enactment. This effect was even stronger for central SOEs, where the difference in forecast errors between local and foreign analysts was 1.39 standard deviations, compared to just 0.26 standard deviations for non-SOEs.

Second, when writing about central SOEs with poor performance, local analysts doubled their use of weak modal words compared to foreign analysts after the NSL. This increase in ambiguous language suggests analysts may have been attempting to hedge their statements when discussing negative developments....

....MUCH MORE

Fed Day, Dead Day: Analysts React

The major indices are down between .09% and .50%, about where they were before the announcement.

From/via ZeroHedge, January 29:

Coming into today's FOMC meeting, consensus was that the Fed would unveil a dovish pause, instead what the Fed revealed was much more hawkish than many expected.

Below is a snapshot of some of the initial kneejerk reactions by Wall Street strategists and analysts.

Lindsay Rosner, Goldman Sachs Asset Management:

This is a new phase of the Fed’s easing cycle, given the strong growth and resilient labor market data providing scope for a more patient approach amid elevated data and policy uncertainty. The Fed’s easing cycle has not yet run its course, but the FOMC will want to see further progress in the inflation data to deliver the next rate cut highlighted by the fact they removed the reference on inflation making progress.

David Russell, Head of Market Strategy at TradeStation

The statement was a little hawkish, but policymakers are on hold with a long break until the March meeting. Data between now and then will set the tone for that next big decision. Today’s meeting is a non-event for Fed watchers. The central bank wants to be less of a factor over the next month as Trump takes the spotlight.

Ira Jersey, Bloomberg Intelligence US interest rate strategist

The Fed’s statement was somewhat hawkish relative to last month, so it isn’t surprising that the knee-jerk reaction was for some modest bear flattening (something we noted might occur in our preview)

Neil Dutta, Renaissance Macro

This press statement makes clear that the dominating risk is a passive tightening of monetary policy. The Fed is remarkably complacent. I don’t agree with their economic outlook. Housing is a mess and wage growth is slowing. Core inflation is likely to ease in the months ahead as rental disinflation comes more into focus....

....MUCH MORE

McDonald's Announces AI Model That ‘Outperforms ChatGPT & DeepSeek’

Sorry, it's Alibaba. I was looking at a story on value meals while typing.

It does seem that a lot of companies are announcing their models though.

From Tech.com January 29:

The AI race gets frantic as Alibaba throws down a challenge at DeepSeek just days after ByteDance launches its own AI model.

Just as US AI innovators scramble hastily to counter the impact of Chinese AI wunderkind, DeepSeek, another Chinese company has issued a challenge.

Tech giant Alibaba has launched a new version of its Qwen2.5 AI LLM and is making the claim that it is faster and more efficient than DeepSeek-V3.

The Chinese company though also took aim at OpenAI and Meta in a move that will rile President Trump, stating that its new launch also “outperforms … almost across the board GPT-4o… and Llama-3.1-405B.”
 
What Is Qwen 2.5-Max?
This is the latest model to join the Qwen 2.5 family, which are built using both proprietary and open-source technology, in contrast to rivals who have opted for one or the other option. OpenAI and Baidu – another Chinese AI contender – have both largely used closed source approaches while DeepSeek’s agile and relatively small team uses an open source approach....
 
BYD and CATL probably have something coming next week.

Barron's Says Some Nice Things About GE Vernova (GEV)

And they use the paradox in the original sense, energy. Back in the day Jevons was talking about coal.

From Barron's, January 29:

3 Stocks That Will Win From the ‘Jevons Paradox’
Falling costs of artificial intelligence computing will yield some winners, just as the emergence of AI itself has. 

*****

.....Obin points out that while hyperscalers account for about 25% of total data-center capacity, so-called colocators make up about 50%. Those are companies whose computers are at server farms run by third parties. That business segment isn’t growing like the hyperscalers, but if AI gets cheaper, it could.

That is the basis of Marc Andreessen’s “Sputnik moment” tweet from Sunday. The Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957, marking the start of a space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The U.S. federal space budget went from about $500 million a year to $10.5 billion in 1958, Obin points out.

Obin isn’t changing his assumption for 2.8% annual growth in U.S. electricity demand from 2023 to 2030. That growth underpins demand assumptions for a host of companies that make electrical components, cooling technology, and grid equipment.

Growth of 2.8% might not sound like a lot, but it is way faster than in recent history. U.S. electricity demand growth grew less than 1% annually between 2013 and 2023.

What about the stocks? Obin has Buy ratings on shares of the data-center infrastructure provider Vertiv , the electrical equipment maker Eaton , and GE Vernova ,

a provider of power-generation technology.

Vertiv stock dropped almost 30% Monday, closing at $102.60. GE Vernova stock fell more than 20% to $330. And Eaton shares slid about 16%, ending the day at $311.55.

Obin’s price target for Vertiv stock is $165. His targets for Vernova and Eaton are $485 and $410, respectively. Those prices imply an average gain of about 45% from Monday’s closing levels....

....MUCH MORE

GEV is up $3.61 to $358.73, and of possibly greater interest—if it's possible to get more interesting than natural gas-fired turbines—line-slinger Quanta Services is up $5.90 (+2.01%) at $299.89.

Recently on GE Vernova- "Chevron Partners With GE Vernova and Investment Firm Engine No 1 To Power Data Centers (CVX; GEV)"

Jevons made a couple of appearances in this morning's "ASML CEO Says DeepSeek’s Emergence Is ‘Good News’ for AI".

"ASML CEO Says DeepSeek’s Emergence Is ‘Good News’ for AI"

Echoing Nvidia's line. 

And leading to more references to Jevons' Paradox over the last 72 hours than in the preceding five years. 

From Bloomberg, January 29:

ASML Holding NV’s leader brushed off concerns about the artificial intelligence-driven demand for its chipmaking machines after Chinese startup DeepSeek’s low-cost chatbot roiled markets earlier in the week.

“Anyone that lowers cost is good news for ASML,” Chief Executive Officer Christophe Fouquet said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Lower cost means AI can be used in more applications, more applications mean more chips.”

The comments came as the Dutch lithography machine maker announced strong fourth-quarter results fueled by the artificial intelligence boom. It booked more than twice as many orders as analysts expected in the period. 

As AI becomes more commonplace, AI chips will be used everywhere, according to Fouquet. “We are still very bullish,” he said. “This is such an opportunity that we can expect more and more players.”....

...MUCH MORE 

Time was when even mentioning Jevons was anachronistic/borderline fuddy-duddy, e.g.

And he's brought his paradox.

Chips: "ASML reports boost in full-year sales as it shares outlook for 2025" Stock Jumps

The stock was up as much as 11% 12% in Amsterdam, 696.50 euros +49.90 (+7.72%) last I saw.

From EuroNews, January 29:

ASML's robust results come at a time when the semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) market is reeling under the shock of new entrant DeepSeek, a new arrival from China.

Dutch semiconductor giant ASML has reported its fourth quarter results, along with full year earnings for 2024.  

The company's total net sales came up to €28.3 billion for the full year 2024, a rise from 2023's €27.6bn. This was mainly driven by the rapid and recent advancements in AI, which in turn has led to an increase in semiconductor demand. 

Net income for 2024 was €7.6bn, which was down from 2023's €7.8bn. 

ASML's share price soared 10.45% on Wednesday morning....

....MUCH MORE

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

DeepSeek and Chinese Security Laws: There Are No Secrets

And that includes your email and quite a few other apps and programs.

Some years ago China implemented a series of laws that require Chinese companies to work with the state security organs and not just in China but around the world - universal jurisdiction.

Some of our posts from that time:

July 2019
"How the state runs business in China"
.... The author rather blithely skips over the National Security Law.
Here via China Law Translate:

There is not a lot of wiggle room in Article 7

Article 7: All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.
The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.
All means all, including foreign companies operating in China.
Ditto articles 14:
Article 14: National intelligence work institutions lawfully carrying out intelligence efforts may request that relevant organs, organizations, and citizens provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation.
And 16:
Article 16: When national intelligence work institutions staff lawfully perform their tasks in accordance with relevant national provisions, with approvals and upon the presentation of relevant identification, they may enter relevant restricted areas and venues; may learn from and question relevant institutions, organizations, and individuals; and may read or collect relevant files, materials or items.
And then there's The Cybersecurity Law and the Foreign NGO Law (2016) and the Counter-espionage Law (2014) and all worded vaguely enough that the laws can mean whatever the Party and the authorities want them to mean.

Making a bit of a straw man argumentum ad absurdum, the top Canadian spinmeister for one of the companies subject to the National Security Law said:

‘At Huawei, we’re not attaching laser beams to the heads of sharks’
—Alykhan Velshi, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Huawei Technologies Canada, Markham, Ont.
Letter to the Editor, Maclean's Magazine, published July 23, 2019

Personally I think laser-enhanced sharks would be kind of cool, it's the required handing over of data should the Chinese government request it that gives one pause.

The quibble on the importance of the National Security Law aside, my Mandarin speaking friends say the Guardian article is a fair representation of Xi and how he is shaping China.

October 2019
So You Want To Do Business In China Do You? "China’s New Cybersecurity Program: NO Place to Hide"
We mentioned the National Security Law (and the cybersecurity law and the NGO law) back in July, anyone doing business in China WILL comply, here's a deeper dive.
From China Law Blog:
The Chinese government has been working for several years on a comprehensive Internet security/surveillance program.  This program is based on the Cybersecurity Law adopted on 2016. The plan is vast and includes a number of subsidiary laws and regulations. On December 1, 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced it will finally roll-out the full plan.

The core of the plan is for China’s Ministry of Security to fully access the massive amounts of raw data transmitted across Chinese networks and housed on servers in China. Since raw data has little value, the key to the Ministry’s success will be in processing that data. Seeing that this is the key issue, the Ministry has appointed Wang Yingwei to be its new head of the Cybersecurity Bureau. Wang is a noted “big data” expert and he will be tasked with making sense of the raw data that will be gathered under the new system.

The plan for the new system is ambitious and comprehensive. As explained by Guo Qiquan, the chief cheerleader for the plan, the main goal of the new system is to provide “full coverage”.  As explained by Guo, “It will cover every district, every ministry, every business and other institution, basically covering the whole society. It will also cover all targets that need [cybersecurity] protection, including all networks, information systems, cloud platforms, the internet of things, control systems, big data and mobile internet.”

This system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from this full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. No VPNs. No private or encrypted messages. No anonymous online accounts. No trade secrets. No confidential data. Any and all data will be available and open to the Chinese government. Since the Chinese government is the shareholder in all SOEs and is now exercising de facto control over China’s major private companies as well, all of this information will then be available to those SOEs and Chinese companies. See e.g. China to place government officials inside 100 private companies, including Alibaba. All this information will be available to the Chinese military and military research institutes. The Chinese are being very clear that this is their plan....
....MUCH MORE
HT: The Register 

And July 2020 claiming universal jurisdiction for an ostensibly Hong Kong focused law:
 
"Hong Kong’s National Security Law: a first look"
....The law also applies to everyone everywhere in the world. This means if one were to be seen by Beijing as breaking this new legislation in another country and then enter Hong Kong, or transit through it, or even fly in a vehicle registered in Hong Kong, then one would be at risk. Possibly this could even apply to residing in a country with an extradition treaty with Hong Kong (or one day China?). In short, it is a very large, sharp Sword of Damocles....

From The China Collection, June 30:

It’s not the substantive crimes and their definitions that count; it’s the institutions that will investigate, prosecute, and judge them that count. Language matters only if there are institutions that will make it matter. This whole law is about avoiding the involvement of such institutions.

Everyone is doing their hot take on the new Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (the “Nat Sec Law” or the “Law”) [Chinese | English], just revealed to the public and made effective today (consultation? schmonsultation!), so why not me?
Two things first:
  1. As these are just quick notes, I’m going to comment on the various parts of the law pretty much in the order they appear instead of in a more organized way.
  2. An important point: I’m not going to talk much about the substantive offenses and their definitions. There’s a reason for that. If mainland practice to date is any guide—and it is—then the definitions don’t matter that much. Anything can be stretched as necessary to cover something done by the person being targeted. As the old cliché goes, 欲加之罪何患无辞 (roughly, “if you are determined to convict, you needn’t worry about the lack of grounds”). The key is in the institutions and procedures the law establishes and empowers. Who has power to do what? What are the procedures under which they operate? Who appoints and pays for them? To whom are they responsible? Etc.
All right, let’s begin.
Article 2 begins with a weird provision stating that nobody may violate the rules of Article 1 and Article 12 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. But Article 1 and Article 12 of the Basic Law aren’t rules about anything. Article 1 states a proposition, not a rule: “The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China.” How could one “violate” that statement? Article 12 is grammatically the same: ” The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be a local administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, which shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy and come directly under the Central People’s Government.” Again, how does one “violate” a proposition?

Article 4 says that Hong Kong should protect rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Given the rest of the law, whether this will happen seems unlikely.

Article 5 states that all persons shall be considered innocent until declared guilty by a judicial organ. As we shall see, this is contradicted by the bail provisions in Article 42.

Article 6 says that protecting the country’s sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity is the common duty of all the people (renmin 人民) of China. This seems an odd formulation to me. Why not say all the citizens (gongmin 公民) of China? “People” in PRC officialese has a special meaning: it is a subset of the citizenry, and consists of those who are allies of the Communist Party at any given moment. It would be odd to say that reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries, who are not part of the people, get a pass on this duty.

Article 12 calls for the establishment of a Committee for Safeguarding National Security (the “National Security Committee” or the “Committee”), said to be under the supervision of and accountable to the Central People’s Government (the “CPG”), i.e., the State Council and the Premier.

It’s not quite clear how this accountability is to work in practice, since the membership is prescribed by law: the Chief Secretary for Administration, the Financial Secretary, the Secretary for Justice, the Secretary for Security, the Commissioner of Police, the head of the department for safeguarding national security of the Hong Kong Police Force established under Article 16 of this Law (the “Nat Sec Head”), the Director of Immigration, the Commissioner of Customs and Excise, and the Director of the Chief Executive’s Office. (To understand where all these fit within Hong Kong’s administrative structure, check out this handy chart. I’ll just note here that they are not all of equal rank. The Nat Sec Head, for example, is under the Commissioner of Police, who is under the Secretary for Security, who is under the Chief Secretary for Administration.) The Committee is to be chaired by the Chief Executive.....MUCH MORE

 Finally, more on that universal jurisdiction (tweet disappeared but she was right):

THREAD

Here's Bethany:

Head of China investigations @aspi_cts. Was @axios @foreignpolicy @yale
@HopkinsNanjing. Author BEIJING RULES, FT Best Books 2023. bethanyallen AT aspi org au
https://x.com/BethanyAllenEbr/

"Helion raises $425M to help build a fusion reactor for Microsoft"

From TechCrunch, January 28:

Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion. The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI, and has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028 — years earlier than its competitors. 

The company’s unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it plenty of fans — and critics. But don’t count its investors among the naysayers. 

Helion announced Tuesday a $425 million Series F raise that pushed its valuation $5.245 billion. The startup also flipped the switch last month on its latest prototype, Polaris, which it anticipates will be the first fusion reactor to generate electricity. 

Polaris, Helion’s seventh prototype, sits inside a 27,000 square-foot building in Everett, Washington. It took more than three years to build, which is quick by fusion industry standards. But to hit its ambitious 2028 deadline for Microsoft, the startup will have to move even faster on its commercial-scale power plant.

The difficulties Helion faces are in many ways similar to those in other leading-edge industries.

“In AI, what’s the big challenge? Getting the chips. In fusion, what’s the big challenge? Getting the chips,” CEO David Kirtley told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “Polaris is 50,000 of these large-scale, pulse-power semiconductors, and getting those set the timeline.” 

The solutions it’s seeking are similar, too. The new investment will go toward bringing a significant amount of specialized manufacturing in-house. For example, the company had to order a type of short-term energy storage device known as capacitors three years in advance.

“Our goal is to go from waiting three years for a supplier to give us capacitors to us making our own capacitors but faster, so now we can make them in a year or less,” he said....

....MUCH MORE

Meanwhile, further west (Reuters via Asia Financial, Jan. 28)

China Building Huge Laser Fusion Research Facility, Analysts Say
Satellite photos show China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research centre in a southwestern city

China looks to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research centre in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two US analytical organisations say.

They said the development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation.

Satellite photos – such as the one below – show four outlying “arms” that will house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that will hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers will fuse together, producing energy, Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organisation CNA Corp, said....

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Recently (Jan. 23) on China's efforts:

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