This is your regular dive into the intersections that matter in 4:42 minutes.
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Tech x Society - Battle for the homefront
Google is investing $450m in home alarm system ADT as the battle for the home wages on. You know ADT. You’ve seen their helpful blue signs on lawns across the country. Beyond smart speakers, Google and Amazon have been fighting for the American home. In 2014, Google acquired Nest, known for smart theromstats, alarm systems, and cameras. Amazon responded with its acquisition of Ring in 2018 (side note: the internet is afire about this acquisition because Bezos told the House Antitrust Committee he bought it for market position, which is a very common reason for any M&A transaction). Now Google is thirsty for more. On first glance, this seems to, at best, compete with Nest. However, Nest users are not ADT users (duh). Google has already made its way into the abodes of tech savvy homeowners. The ADT deal will help it penetrate the “layman’s” market.
And to do this, Google doesn’t even need to acquire a company. In fact, they’re getting less than 7% of the company for their investment. Per ADT’s 2019 annual report, this investment gives Google an inroad to 6.5m households and retail businesses. Google and ADT have also committed to releasing a joint product in 2021.
The market response? 📈 ADT’s stock shot up 57% when the news broke. Investors in ADT stock on trading platform Robinhood, which is now basically the Twitter of stock trading, surged 8x from 5,000 invetors to over 40,000. Do we want to give Google more data? We don’t know, but we always do.
Also: The secret rules of the internet. Parents shouldn’t spy on their kids.
Government x Tech - Tick tock TikTok ⏰
Are we buying it or not? President Trump’s war on Chinese technology continues with the most explosive social media company on the planet - TikTok (what is it? Not our favorite Ke$ha song). TikTok, subsidiary of Chinese company ByteDance, has drawn the eye of sino-skeptics. But why are we concerned about a consumer app?
TikTok collects data on who users are, where they are, what they’re doing, and their preferences. This doesn’t make it any different from an Instagram. What does make it different is that if the US Federal Government asks for unanonymized user data, Instagram can (and hopefully will) say no. But TikTok (ByteDance) must comply to identical demands from CCP. Who cares? Uighurs do. They’re the group who claims to have inhabited the Xinjiang province before the initial Chinese Dynasties. Xinjiang is a politically sensitive area surrounded by eight countries and home to a major part of the original Silk Road. Uighur inhabitants are now being systematically arrested and forced into camps. CCP has allegedly used Douyin (ByteDance’s TikTok-equivalent app for China) to locate Uighar women of child bearing age in order to arrest and sterilize them. Sobering.
Microsoft is in talks to acquire the company and won’t pay a cent over $30bn. In relation to the Antitrust hearings, a Microsoft acquisition of TikTok will deal a massive blow to the House Antitrust Committee’s case against Facebook (but why buy it when you’re already copying it?). Microsoft has until September 15 to make a decision (assuming CCP allows the sale, which is not a given) and its stock performance indicates investors haven’t made up their minds on this quite yet. China has not been silent here. CCP has fired warnings that the US will soon swallow its own “bitter fruit,” but it’s unclear how China can retaliate given the technical superiority (for now) in the US and the fact that China has already banned all US tech companies.
Even if/when a buyer is secured, a secondary question to be answered is President Trumps requirement that a “significant portion” of the sale goes to the US Treasury. It’s unclear what form this unprecedented request would take. Does the Treasury take a cut from the money that would go to ByteDance or does Microsoft have to pay more on top of the agreed upon price to go to the Treasury? This sets a potentially dangerous precedent for future deals that may be held up by the US Government. If a deal cannot go through without the government “allowing it” and thus demanding a cut, this power could spiral out of control to a point in which all deals cannot go through without the requisit government sign off and “significant portion” going to our government gatekeeper. Let’s not do that.
Also: The invention of the police. How the ADA has changed the lives of the deaf.
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Business x Society - #SaveThePiggies
A damning report on industrial meat farming was just released on Medium. It starts with a covert operation to a meat farm in remote Poland, travels to the Italian countryside, and covers antibiotic resistant bacteria, global pollution, live animals living in confined spaces among their dead, and human exploitation. It sounds like a spy novel because that’s the type of work required to understand an industry dominated by massive private companies (we were tempted to call them “corporations” to make them sound more Bond villain-esque).
Many people believe that, in the future, our treatment of animals today will be viewed similarly to the treatment of Africans in the slave trade. We know pigs exhibit complex emotions like suffering and grieving, octopi are inquisitive and creative, nine species pass the mirror test, showing that they’re self-aware. We damn the Chinese practice of eating dogs but then grill baby cows that have been chained inside a box for their whole 30-day lives.
Is this getting too dark? Here’s the silver lining: consumers have a viable alternative now. Sales of clean meat have been exploding during lockdown. Not “clean” as in organic or free range. “Clean” as in not requiring the use of animals. Start-ups like Memphis Meats, Beyond, and Impossible Foods use plant-derived proteins or lab grown meat to create the same end-product without the requisite land, chemicals, or animals. These brands don’t want to be seen as “meat alternatives” and be shelved with the brick-hard bean patties. They’re meat. They want to be shelved in the meat aisle. To the meat industry’s dismay, that’s a good strategy. When they’re with meat, clean meat flies off the shelf.
If all else fails, try a watermelon burger. Just #SaveThePiggies
Also: Amazon wants to give everybody high speed internet. The car industry invented jaywalking. Microsoft reviews the results of remote work.
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What else we’re reading
We’re not all doom and gloom this week. Apparently aging is optional!
Read about Deep Ellum, Texas - proving ground for generations of musicians.
The Whiskey Guide. We drink it, we might as well learn about it.
We leave you with this: Hazy DC from @esc_leo