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How North Korea’s hacker army stole $3 billion in crypto, funding nuclear program: Regime has trained cybercriminals to impersonate tech workers or employers, amid other schemes. WSJ
+ North Korea’s digital thieves began hitting their first big crypto attacks around 2018. Since then, North Korea’s missile launch attempts and successes have mushroomed, with more than 42 successes observed in 2022, according to data tracked by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
+ Roughly 50 percent of North Korea’s foreign currency funding for purchasing foreign components for its ballistic missile program is now supplied by the regime’s cyber operations.
+ US officials say North Korea has built what is essentially a shadow workforce of thousands of IT workers operating out of countries around the world, including Russia and China, who make money—sometimes more than $300,000 a year—doing mundane technology work. But this workforce is often linked up with the regime’s cybercrime operations, investigators say.
+ They have pretended to be Canadian IT workers, government officials and freelance Japanese blockchain developers. They will conduct video interviews to get a job, or, as with the Sky Mavis example, masquerade as potential employers.
+ To get hired by crypto companies, they will hire Western “front people”—essentially actors who sit through job interviews to obscure the fact that North Koreans are the ones actually being hired. Once hired, they will sometimes make small changes to products that allow them to be hacked, former victims and investigators say.
+ “It seems like a modern-day pirate state,” said Nick Carlsen, a former FBI analyst who works for the blockchain tracing firm TRM Labs. “They’re just out there raiding.”
Today: Asia New Vision Forum by China's Caixin media in Singapore
Tuesday: Palestinian president visits China. President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine kicks off his four-day visit to China on an invitation by his counterpart President Xi Jinping, who has offered to help facilitate Israel-Palestinian peace talks.
Musk and Dimon are not alone in sticking with China, despite tensions: Investors grappling with political risks around US-China ties. David Lynch
+ Top American companies are struggling to devise new strategies for the Chinese market, as government policies in both Washington and Beijing push the two nations apart and economic growth in China slows from its customary torrid pace.
+ The latest boardroom action came this week, when Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley firm that was among the early investors in TikTok parent ByteDance, said it would split its China and US operations into separate companies.
+ Some on Capitol Hill want to accelerate the commercial divorce.
+ “Business leaders, if they think they can continue business as usual, are ignoring political reality on the Hill, but also they’re ignoring the geopolitical reality that their business will stop when [Chinese President] Xi Jinping decides it's going to stop … I just don't know how anyone thinks that business as usual is sustainable.” -- Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on China
+ Canada’s Caisse de dépôt et placement du Quebec, one of the country’s largest pension funds, stopped making private investments in China and closed its Shanghai office. Public employee retirement plans in Florida and Texas last year reduced or eliminated their Chinese holdings.
+ “Most of the large western funds believe China is now ‘uninvestable’ due both to geopolitical risks and economic growth,” said Andrew Collier, an economist with GlobalSource Partners in Hong Kong.
Cuba is hosting a Chinese spy station, White House says: Officials said the facility is one of the dozens that Beijing has established, or sought to establish, as it seeks to expand its intelligence activities worldwide. Ellen Nakashima
Washington is suffering from policy capture, not groupthink, on China: Misdiagnosing the contemporary China debate as groupthink rather than policy capture matters because it leads to inappropriate solutions. David McCourt
+ Many fear that competition has too easily slipped into confrontation, and that a return toward a managed form of great power competition would be wise. The administration should listen to other voices pushed aside, since these voices present different understandings of America’s interests, which remain firmly against conflict.
How to read Xi Jinping: Is China really preparing for war? John Culver, John Pomfret + Matt Pottinger
Bloomberg: Esoteric fines pile up as China’s provinces hunt for revenue
+ Shanghai eatery’s $702 fine over cucumber dish provoked ire
+ Levies come as local governments lack the income to pay bills
Thursday: China will announce key economic data for May that includes industrial production, housing sales, and retails.
More special relationships: Facing threats from two sides, Biden goes global: A peek at the president’s diary shows burgeoning alliances with Poland, India, and Australia amid pressures from Russia and Beijing. The Times
+ In Washington, you often can learn a lot simply by studying the president’s schedule. And right now, a look at President Biden’s recent activities says much about a changed world order that is taking shape in subtle but important ways.
+ Much has been written about how Russia and China are reorienting their foreign policies from the traditional East-West axis to a new North-South one. Now it’s becoming clear that there is a flip side to this trend: America’s view of important friendships is also evolving.
+ India is more problematic, because it can’t quite bring itself to join the American condemnation of Russia for its Ukraine misadventure. That’s at least in part a consequence of its ongoing dependence on Russian defence supplies; Moscow provides about 60 percent of India’s military equipment.
+ But its wariness of China, with which it has tangled militarily over disputed border regions, makes India at least a potential partner of the US, so Washington is working hard to create an actual friendship.
+ “India is an independent country that has a long history of autonomy and we have to respect that,” says James Steinberg, a former senior foreign policy official who is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
This weekend: Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will visit Indonesia on June 17-23 as state guests.
Emmanuel Macron backs NATO membership ‘path’ for Ukraine: President of France shifts position on Kyiv’s aspirations to join the military alliance. FT
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo: ‘A city’s creativity doesn’t depend on cars. That’s the 20th century’: Accused of desecrating the French capital, the politician wants more bikes, green spaces, and social housing. FT
+ The mayor of Paris is leading one of the most ambitious efforts worldwide to wean people off cars.
+ She has embraced the concept of the “15-minute city”, redesigning transport, housing, jobs and public space so residents can live without long, polluting commutes.
+ Paris is the second most congested city in Europe after London, according to analytics company Inrix. But many boulevards now have a steady trickle of cyclists.
+ Parisians who used to enjoy driving across the city are outraged. They accuse Hidalgo of making the capital less easy and less pleasant to live in.
+ Some on social media use the hashtag #SaccageParis — “Ransacked Paris” — to label photos of botched tree-planting and cycle lanes, as well as what they see as increased litter on the streets.
+ Paris’s population fell by about 75,000 people between 2014 and 2020.
+ The exodus, which is likely to have increased during the pandemic, does not seem the sign of a flourishing city.
+ She attributes the falling population to property prices and divorce rates.
+ “In Paris . . . one in two couples divorce.” She urges people to think not just of the city of Paris of 2mn people that she runs, but also of “Grand Paris”, the wider area of 7mn that is due to be connected by a (behind schedule) metro project.
+ She criticises the rental platform Airbnb, “which has made us lose a lot of housing”. Will she go ahead with a promised referendum on Airbnb? “For now, no — because also the Olympics are coming.” But its presence in Paris is “still not” a settled matter.
+ Hidalgo’s changes have provoked enough controversy that even allies question if she can win re-election for a third term in 2026.
+ She says she hasn’t decided whether to run.
+ By 2026, for all her ambition, Paris will almost certainly not have caught up with Amsterdam’s cycle lanes, or Vienna’s public housing, or experienced Barcelona’s post-Olympic bounce. Whether it ever becomes a 15-minute city probably depends as much on the next mayor as on her.
Reuters: Boris Johnson's shock exit reverberates through British ruling party
Johnson’s angry exit from parliament poses fresh dilemmas for Sunak: The former PM’s resignation and those of two acolytes trigger three by-elections and keeps the drama going. FT
+ Rishi Sunak had hoped to move beyond the psychodrama of the Boris Johnson premiership and put the brakes on the political roller-coaster of the past few years. It was wishful thinking.
+ Pat McFadden, a Labour frontbencher, said that three by-elections would prove there were no “no go areas” for his party: “We are going to fight all of them to win,” he said.
BBC: Nicola Sturgeon arrested in SNP finances inquiry
The Times: ‘Distressed’ Sturgeon questioned for 7 hours
Will Argentina ditch the peso for the dollar? The front-runner in the presidential race says he would make the greenback the official currency and “blow up” the central bank. Bloomberg
Barr on Trump: “If even half of it is true, he is toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning.” -- Former Attorney General Bill Barr, on Fox News, on Donald Trump being indicted.
This county backed every president for two decades. What about 2024? WP
+ Door County, Wisconsin, is one of nine counties nationwide that have backed the presidential winner in every election since 2000.
+ In 2020, Biden beat Trump in Door County by 292 votes. Four years earlier, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by 558 votes, and four years before that, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 1,229 votes.
Detroit highway to become boulevard to address wrongs to Black communities Reuters
Gridlock: How a lack of power lines will delay the age of renewables: A backlog of wind and solar projects is waiting to connect to infrastructure built for another era, threatening net zero plans. FT
+ To keep the 1.5C target alive, the renewable power generated must more than triple from 3,000GW today to more than 10,000GW in 2030, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, or Irena.
+ The green transition will require an overhaul of the current set-up. Several wind and solar farms are often needed to replace a large power plant, partly due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy; the wind doesn’t always blow. These farms all need grid connections, yet typically they are in remote areas or off coasts, where grids are patchier.
+ “The grid is in the wrong place to deliver the power from [renewable energy] to economic centres,” says Peter Crossley, a professor of power systems at Exeter university.
+ In the UK, Spain and Italy more than 150GW of wind and solar projects are stuck in grid connection queues in each country, according to figures from BloombergNEF.
A mineral used in EVs can lead to neurological harm. Industry hasn’t addressed the threat to mineworkers. South Africa is the world’s largest producer of manganese, but the EV industry has done little to protect miners from the neurological hazards of the mineral. WP
+ As demand for electric vehicles has soared in recent years, automakers have rapidly turned to manganese, a common and relatively inexpensive mineral that is already used in about half of rechargeable batteries and is seen as key to making supply chains more reliable and cars more affordable.
+ The industry’s demand for manganese has quintupled over the past five years, and analysts predict it could increase a further ninefold by 2030.
+ For years, however, manganese has taken a toll on the health of those who mine and process it, according to scientific research that shows that high-level exposure can be toxic, causing a spectrum of neurological harm.
+ In South Africa, home to the world’s biggest manganese reserves, interviews with dozens of current and former employees in mines and smelters, as well as with doctors and researchers, underscore the peril.
+ To run, EVs typically require six times the mineral input of conventional vehicles, as measured by weight, excluding steel and aluminum. But there remains little recognition of the harm that the extraction and processing of such minerals could have on workers and surrounding communities.
Toyota study shows electric vehicles unnecessary to lower CO2 emissions Thomas Lifson
+ Virtually alone among major auto manufacturers, Toyota has been a skeptic about the conversion of vehicle fleets to battery-powered electric vehicles.
+ Toyota released a study demonstrating that the use of the “eco mode” on some of its gasoline-powered vehicles saves CO2 emissions and gasoline consumption far more than people realize and may rival any potential savings from conversion to EVs.
+ Toyota Motor Corp.’s leader criticized what he described as excessive hype over electric vehicles, saying advocates failed to consider the carbon emitted by generating electricity and the costs of an EV transition.
+ Toyota President Akio Toyoda said Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all cars were running on electric power. The infrastructure needed to support a fleet consisting entirely of EVs would cost Japan between ¥14 trillion and ¥37 trillion, the equivalent of $135 billion to $358 billion, he said.
+ In a country such as Japan that gets most of its electricity from burning coal and natural gas, EVs don’t help the environment, Mr. Toyoda said. “The more EVs we build, the worse carbon dioxide gets,” he said.
Wednesday: Toyota Motor holds its annual general shareholders' meeting at its headquarters in Aichi Prefecture.
17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot: Tesla’s driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, has been involved in far more crashes than previously reported. WP
Why AI will save the world Marc Andreessen
+ AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.
+ A short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it.
+ AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output.
+ AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts. It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.
+ A shorter description of what AI isn’t: Killer software and robots that will spring to life and decide to murder the human race or otherwise ruin everything, like you see in the movies.
+ An even shorter description of what AI could be: A way to make everything we care about better.
+ Human intelligence is the lever that we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today: science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, medicine, energy, construction, transportation, communication, art, music, culture, philosophy, ethics, morality.
+ Without the application of intelligence on all these domains, we would all still be living in mud huts, scratching out a meager existence of subsistence farming. Instead we have used our intelligence to raise our standard of living on the order of 10,000X over the last 4,000 years.
+ What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence to make all of these outcomes of intelligence – and many others, from the creation of new medicines to ways to solve climate change to technologies to reach the stars – much, much better from here.
+ Economists have observed a longstanding pattern in reform movements of this kind. The actors within movements like these fall into two categories – “Baptists” and “Bootleggers” – drawing on the historical example of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920’s.
+ A cynic would suggest that some of the apparent Baptists are also Bootleggers – specifically the ones paid to attack AI by their universities, think tanks, activist groups, and media outlets. If you are paid a salary or receive grants to foster AI panic…you are probably a Bootlegger.
+ The problem with the Bootleggers is that they win.
+ The Baptists are naive ideologues, the Bootleggers are cynical operators, and so the result of reform movements like these is often that the Bootleggers get what they want – regulatory capture, insulation from competition, the formation of a cartel – and the Baptists are left wondering where their drive for social improvement went so wrong.
+ AI doesn’t want, it doesn’t have goals, it doesn’t want to kill you, because it’s not alive. And AI is a machine – is not going to come alive any more than your toaster will.
+ It turns out that this type of cult isn’t new – there is a longstanding Western tradition of millenarianism, which generates apocalypse cults. The AI risk cult has all the hallmarks of a millenarian apocalypse cult.
+ AI isn’t just being developed in the relatively free societies of the West, it is also being developed by the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.
+ The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.
+ The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.
+ We should seek to win the race to global AI technological superiority and ensure that China does not.
Artificial intelligence: Global powers embark upon regulation race: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants his country, which is at the forefront of AI research, to take the lead in regulating the sector. But the European Union is way ahead, while the United States and China are also actively working on the issue. Le Monde
+ On Thursday, June 8, during his first visit to the White House since becoming prime minister, Britain's Rishi Sunak relied on his ambitions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) to show that the UK can still have a global influence after Brexit. The young leader, who has cultivated an image as a tech enthusiast, has understood how the regulation of these technologies has suddenly become a major issue.
+ Nothing specific was announced about London's plans to host a global AI regulator or a global cooperative research program, along the lines of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
Reddit’s head of global foresight says ‘trends have lost all meaning’: Brands’ fascination with social-media fads has devalued the rigorous practice of trend forecasting, says Matt Klein, and should remember some simple laws of physics to get back on track. FC
+ Trends once meant meaningful social change: an emerging and defining collective thought, behavior, value, or attitude. A shift in society. But today, “mermaidcore” is being named a top trend for this summer.
+ Trends lost their meaning.
+ Most of the signals considered “trends” today are really nothing more than frivolous entertainment.
+ In short, we’ve come to confuse what is “trending” with what is a trend.
+ Trends are trending. And the trending is seen as trends. It’s a mess. For this reason, we need to break up with trends as we currently know them.
+ Here are three reasons why:
- First, they are exhausting. About 64% of people feel the pace of culture accelerating.
- Second, they are futile. Around 66% of people believe brands try too hard today.
- And third, these trends are empty—devoid of meaning.
+ 70% of people would rather brands “serve their needs by understanding what they care about” versus 30% of people who’d rather brands “appear relevant by leaning into the latest trends.”
The Netflix effect chills foreign content creators: Producers and governments grapple with the mixed blessings of the world’s leading provider of premium streaming video. Bloomberg
+ Many TV producers and regulators have long worried that US-based companies such as Netflix and Amazon.com Inc. would decimate local-TV networks, dominating every major market and smothering homegrown players before they can develop, as has happened in social media
+ Netflix now accounts for 33% of streaming video subscribers in South Korea and for 42% of premium-video viewership in Southeast Asia, according to Media Partners.
+ It also accounts for 30% or more of customers in the UK, France and Sweden, according to Midia Research.
+ No nation has been more of a protectionist than France, which has mandated that the services invest at least 20% of their revenue from within the country into local programming.
+ France has also stipulated that three years must pass before theatrical releases can appear on a streaming service, though last year it reduced that window to 15 months.
+ This year, Canada passed a law that will require streaming services to support local content; the rule has yet to go into effect.
+ Australia is contemplating a similar measure.
+ Netflix declined to comment for this article, but the company has said it doesn’t oppose laws requiring minimum investments in local content, so long as they’re not overly restrictive about the form that investment takes.
+ For decades, South Korea has had rules in place intended to protect the local film industry from foreign competition, and the distribution of US content in the country has at times led to tension in trade negotiations and local protests in theaters showing US films.
+ For producers in places like South Korea, the impact of this largesse is complicated. Earlier this year, Netflix said it would spend $2.5 billion in the country over the next few years. Shares in South Korean companies gained on the news, only to slump in the following weeks.
How Man City copied ‘the Disney model’ to build their global kingdom INews
+ “I’d never heard anybody talk like that before,” Professor Simon Chadwick recalls. Soriano spoke about the notion of franchising, of Disney parks in Tokyo, Florida and Paris, of Disney stores in Manchester and New York. And in a speech laden with strategic concepts and thinking he explored the convergence of sport, entertainment, music and fashion.
+ “The DNA of what we now see at Manchester City and the City Football Group can be traced back to Soriano’s vision for football,” Chadwick says.
+ It’s unclear whether Soriano pitched his idea to them or they sought him out, although Chadwick, an expert in sport and geopolitical economy, says: “I don’t think Abu Dhabi went out and found him. I’ve always had this sense that Soriano pitched up to the owners and said make me chief executive and this is what I’ll do for you.
+ The City Football Group, the company set up to form Manchester City’s network of clubs, opened for business in 2013 and has since acquired – either entirely or stakes in – 11 other clubs in 11 countries.
+ “Some people refer to it as soft power or sportswashing, I prefer to label it as image and reputation management,” Chadwick says. “The City Football Group network has been used for political and diplomatic purposes around the world. Manchester City is not a football club, it’s a policy instrument. It is deployed as a policy instrument by the Abu Dhabi government to help the country achieve whatever ends it’s seeking to achieve.
European football has become a status competition between Gulf monarchies: Middle Eastern money will keep shaping the game after Manchester City’s Champions League win. FT
+ In fact, if you want a winning team, you have to buy it, with salaries and usually with transfer fees, too. The ugly truth of football economics is that the only way for Cinderella to become a princess is to be bought by a prince.
+ English football could have taken a different route, rejecting Gulf money. It could have followed Germany, with its “50 + 1 rule”, which states that club members must hold a majority of voting rights.
+ In fact, there is a simpler explanation for why these people went into football: it’s fun. It makes their friends and neighbours jealous.
+ It’s an affordable hobby for billionaires.
The PGA Tour is calling this a victory, but something doesn’t smell right Sally Jenkins
+ Somehow, Monahan and Edward Herlihy, the chair of the PGA Tour policy board, wound up hand in hand with his excellency Yasir Al-Rumayyan as the leaders of this new for-profit global golf organization funded by a fresh infusion of Saudi “capital.”
+ Somewhere along this very muddy line, the PGA Tour found itself advised by the New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Which is interesting, because who is a partner and co-chair of that firm? Herlihy. And what sort of work does the firm mainly do? Multibillion-dollar mergers and acquisitions. It’s also known for its uniquely profitable billing system: It doesn’t hit clients with just billable hours but also large flat fees and sometimes percentages of deals.
+ And what did Herlihy’s firm evidently advise the PGA Tour to do? Merge.
+ Herlihy was “key to the development and implementation of this agreement,” according to a PGA Tour spokesperson.
+ How on earth are self-respecting PGA Tour golfers supposed to choke down this corporate sellout gluttony and pretend that any of it was really for them?
Saudi Arabia’s golf deal puts Biden and PGA in same awkward position Bloomberg
+ The PGA Tour and President Joe Biden have learned the same hard lesson in recent months: Saudi Arabia is too rich and consequential to shun.
+ Asked to discuss the deal, the White House declined to comment on a private merger, though it’s one that will have to undergo antitrust scrutiny.
+ It demonstrated again how foreign powers — think China, with its TikTok video-sharing app — are exerting soft power on the US, rather than the reverse.
+ And it seemed to put to rest the question of whether the US can pursue a human-rights-first policy with the rest of the world if the companies on the front lines of that US soft-power influence — its sports leagues and entertainment industry — don’t have any interest in playing along.
+ The timing of the announcement was also hard to ignore: It came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Saudi Arabia for a meeting of countries that are part of a coalition fighting Islamic State terrorists. A crucial subtext of that visit was the concern about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
AFP: 'Fantastic' Ferrari triumph at Le Mans on return after 50 years
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
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