Trying to put our finger on digital sovereignty 👉
#00
🇺🇸⚡️🇨🇳 Greed, grudge, grief, graft, and guilt are the new 5G
The US made it clear that they wouldn’t be on cloud nine were their allies to use Chinese servers and infrastructure for their telecommunications. The US government has called Chinese companies such as Huawei“an arm of the PRC surveillance state” and warned against relying on Alibaba, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom, and Tencent.
On August 5, 2020, Secretary Pompeo announced the expansion of the Clean Network program. It aims to strip away Chinese phone makers’ ability to pre-install and download US apps. It also aims at removing “untrusted applications” from mobile app stores.
While it could deal a blow to Chinese companies’ sales overseas, it might well blowback. Banning apps such as WeChat from mobile stores could have real consequences for Apple in China - where it makes 17% of its revenue.
🇪🇺 Free Europe?
While the US is hard at work trying (and sometimes failing) to convince its allies not to partner with Chinese companies and especially Huawei over 5G, some European countries are considering their options while increasingly concerned about their digital sovereignty.
In Germany, Element - an open-source Slack rival with end-to-end encryption allowing users to retain control of their secure communication infrastructure - won a massive deal with the German education system.
It echoes a move by the city of Munich to shift back to Linux over proprietary software concerns.
🤓 No sh*t Sherlock
5G: Short for “fifth generation of cellular technology”. It’s “more than 600 times faster than the typical 4G speeds on today’s mobile phones” and it should be used to power the new IoT (Internet of Things) wave that fell short a couple of years ago by helping connect “cars, environmental sensors, thermostats, and other gadgets ”. Read more here.
Digital sovereignty - or cyber sovereignty if you’re an 80s kid: For states, it means “control over their data, over their capacity for innovation, and over their ability to shape and enforce legislation in the digital environment” as the European Parliament put it.
📢 The rest is familiar noise
You’ve already heard about it, but just in case:
Veep… Kamala Harris is officially Joe Biden’s running mate. TL;DR: Progressives and moderates believe that this is history as she is the first Black woman and the first woman of Indian ancestry on a major-party presidential ticket. Meanwhile conservatives would like to remind us that they weren’t pals before, some push the idea that she is no moderate, while others believe that she advocates “illiberal policies”.
Put a ring on it? Microsoft is pursuing discussions regarding the “purchase of the TikTok service in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and would result in Microsoft owning and operating TikTok in these markets.” The hard deadline: “no later than September 15, 2020”.
