Always Be Communicating.
Happy Thursday.
Here’s today’s ITK Daily.
To be ITK, know this:
Why the UN still matters: Great-power competition makes it more relevant—not less Kal Raustiala + Viva Iemanjá Jerónimo
+ Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Cold War did not render the United Nations impotent.
The struggle to control AI: At a summit in Sweden, the EU and US plan a joint code of conduct for AI firms. If only they agreed on what it should say. Politico
AFP: Sunak announces first AI summit, pitching UK role from US
AP: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
New US spy satellites to track Chinese, Russian threats in orbit: Bloomberg reports the US Space Force is set to launch a constellation of satellites this summer to track Chinese or Russian space vehicles that can potentially disable or damage orbiting objects, the latest step in the burgeoning extra-terrestrial contest between superpowers.
+ Dubbed “Silent Barker,” the network would be the first of its kind to complement ground-based sensors and low-earth orbit satellites, according to the Space Force and analysts.
+ The satellites will be placed about 22,000 miles (35,400 kilometers) above the Earth and at the same speed it rotates, known as geosynchronous orbit.
China’s trade slowdown points to global woes: Exports and imports both fell in May, the latest sign that China’s post-Covid recovery is losing steam. Stella Yifan Xie
+ The weak figures underline the extent to which the global goods trade has softened this year, as central banks in the U.S. and other Western countries raised interest rates to tame inflation and more consumers switched to services spending after years of pandemic-induced restrictions.
+ The lackluster figures point to a shrinking role for trade in driving China’s economic growth when compared with the “zero-Covid” era, when roaring Western demand for electronics, furniture and other physical goods flooded Chinese factories with orders. Chinese officials made great efforts to ensure that factories remained open, even as they kept many residents confined to their homes.
+ The State Council, China’s cabinet, has pledged to support the economy and to help manufacturers and exporters secure overseas orders, though economists are skeptical about the effectiveness of such measures.
Macron’s new headache: A successful Giorgia Meloni: Paris’ concerns center on the risks of normalizing Italy’s far-right leader, ahead of the European election. Politico
+ The prospect of the far-right Italian prime minister becoming the respectable face of the right in Europe presents a serious problem for Macron’s party ahead of the European election in 2024.
+ Macron and his allies “fear that the success of Giorgia Meloni could be contagious and further weaken the French government,” said Nicola Procaccini, an MEP with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. The French government “is terrified by the idea that the center-right in France could unite and realize in France what happened in Italy,” he said.
+ At the root of the friction, including on migration, is both internal politics and the upcoming European Parliament election.
Rishi Sunak is making all the wrong friends: International elites may love the UK prime minister, but even he must know that all politics, when it comes down to it, is local. Martin Ivens
+ Rishi Sunak is winning lots of friends in all the wrong places. The international elite may have embraced the UK’s prime minister as one of their own but voters’ don't share their enthusiasm. His Conservative party is polling at 25%, just as it was in early January.
+ Millennials make up 26% of the electorate and represent the largest demographic cohort in more than 50% of British parliamentary constituencies. Yet, unfortunately for Sunak, who wasn’t even born when Thatcher entered Downing Street in 1979, he is not getting their vote.
+ A survey of 8,000 millennial voters aged 25-40, conducted by Onward, the center-right think tank, describes them as “shy capitalists.”
+ Millennials are socially liberal, support spending on public services, especially the National Health Service, but resent paying record levels of taxation and high marginal rates.
+ The line from the chief Tory strategist Isaac Levido is that the party walks a “narrow path to victory.”
+ As a Thatcherite, he will know that the Iron Lady would never have got her feet in the door of No. 10 if it had been a personal popularity contest. Still, she too became popular on the international circuit out of office.
Quebec is the latest victim of the extraordinary fires ravaging Canada: Le Monde reports according to the federal government, 2,214 fires have consumed some 3.3 million hectares in recent weeks. A total of 120,000 people have already been forced to leave their homes, and a further 26,200 are being evacuated.
Where wildfire smoke is hitting the US the hardest — and when it will end: WP reports the smoke, emanating from Canada, is causing gray skies and poor air quality
WSJ: Wildfire smoke blankets sky across Northeast US
WP: Eastern US air quality reaches harmful levels as Canadian wildfires rage
Trump’s lawyers told he is target in Mar-a-Lago documents investigation: Guardian reports the move dramatically raises stakes for the former president as the investigation appears to near its conclusion.
Independent: Prosecutors ready to ask for Trump indictment on obstruction and Espionage Act charges
If Trump documents probe leads to charges, bulk of indictment would be in S. Florida: WP reports people familiar with the matter said special counsel Jack Smith wants to base the case where most of the possible misconduct happened.
Politico: Chris Christie crashed and burned last time. He thinks 2024 will be different.
AP: Christie goes after Trump in presidential campaign launch, calling him a ‘self-serving mirror hog’
The GOP has drifted, but Mike Pence is as conservative as ever: NYT reports the polls say the former vice president, who announced his 2024 candidacy in a video on Wednesday, has little chance. But he is driven by his faith.
Pence seeks to go where no Vice President has gone before: In running for the Republican nomination against Donald J. Trump, Mike Pence will be the first vice president to directly challenge the president who originally put him on the ticket. NYT
+ Never before has a No. 2 mounted a direct challenge to a onetime running mate in the way that Mr. Pence is taking on former President Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination next year.
+ Vice presidents, after all, typically owe their national stature to the presidents who chose them, and even if they are not especially grateful, they rarely find it politically feasible to compete with their patrons.
+ “Having a former vice president contest the president he served for their party’s nomination in contested primaries is like a 234-year flood,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a specialist on the vice presidency at the St. Louis University School of Law. “It doesn’t happen.”
Doug Burgum: Why I’m running for President in 2024: America needs new leadership to unleash our people’s potential. Doug Burgum - WSJ OpEd
+ We need to embrace innovation over regulation to solve the challenges of the 21st century. We need to return power to the states. Together, we can ensure unlimited opportunity for everyone willing to reach for it.
+ The economy must be our top priority. We need to get inflation under control, cut taxes, lower gas prices and reduce the cost of living.
+ We need to stop buying energy from our enemies and start selling it to our friends and allies. America produces the cleanest and safest energy in the world. Anyone who cares about the environment should want all energy produced here.
+ The world is changing. We face both unprecedented threats and tremendous opportunities over the next decade. How we respond will define our future as a country. Working together, we’ll achieve the best for America.
GOP candidates’ $1 t-shirt tactic: Clever fundraising ploy or desperate debate-stage bid? Candidates will be required to have at least 40,000 donors to face off in August. Politico
+ GOP presidential candidates will be required to have at least 40,000 donors to face off in August, including at least 200 from 20 distinct states.
+ WinRed, the primary GOP fundraising platform, saw more than 2.5 million individual donors to federal campaigns and committees during the 2022 cycle.
+ When Democrats put forward a donor threshold for their 2020 primary candidates, the rush for online donations caused roughly half the field to spend more than they raised early in the cycle.
Biden and Trump could both lose in 2024: Early polls have often proved wrong, and both front-runners have big weaknesses. Karl Rove
+ It will be essential for Team Biden to irradiate his GOP opponent to eke out a victory. As Mr. Biden often quotes his father, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”
+ Biden could still win re-election, especially if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee. But he’s probably the only serious Democrat who could lose to Mr. Trump; too many voters see Mr. Biden as too old and too weak. Democrats ignore that real possibility at their peril.
Whitmer ramps up national outreach: MI Governor Gretchen Whitmer forms ‘Fight Like Hell PAC’ to back federal candidates
Biden’s crypto cop taunts Republicans: Politico reports the SEC announced major lawsuits against the world’s largest digital currency exchange, Binance, and the largest US-based exchange, Coinbase
+ “We don’t need more digital currency. We already have digital currency. It’s called the US dollar.” -- SEC Chair Gary Gensler
Crypto firms start looking abroad as US cracks down: NYT reports as the country becomes one of the world’s strictest crypto regulators, companies are exploring plans to expand internationally and possibly leave entirely.
Fortune: CNN CEO Chris Licht steps down
CNN CEO Chris Licht ousted after tumultuous year: THR reports the cable news chief's departure came after a series of negative headlines atop the cable news channel.
Lesson here...
Don't let Tim Alberta write a 10,000-word magnum opus about how you conduct your business.
Can anyone save cable news now? Ben Smith
BBC: Telegraph Media Group set to be put up for sale
Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers to be put up for sale: Guardian reports the Barclay family have lost control of crown jewel media assets in a bitter row with the newspaper group’s lender.
Amazon plans ad tier for Prime Video streaming service: WSJ reports Amazon is planning to launch an advertising-supported tier of its Prime Video streaming service as it looks to generate more revenue from entertainment.
GPT AI has arrived in the doctor's office: Bloomberg reports a new tool from Carbon Health aims to reduce a doctor’s workload by generating records and billing codes.
Bloomberg: Microsoft is bringing OpenAI’s GPT-4 AI model to US government agencies
How Sam Altman stormed Washington to set the AI agenda: The chief executive of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, has met with at least 100 US lawmakers in recent months. He has also taken his show abroad. NYT
Beaming solar energy from space gets a step closer: Scientists are testing how satellites could collect power from the sun and send clean electricity to Earth—and getting encouraging results. WSJ
+ In this age of wireless everything, engineers are trying to perform the ultimate act of cord-cutting: generating abundant solar electricity in space and beaming it to the ground, no power cables required.
+ One of the central challenges for all of these projects is finding a safe, efficient and reliable way to transmit gigawatts of power to the ground and then convert it into electricity that people can use.
+ Microwave beams are the favored technique, in large part because they can travel freely through the air regardless of weather.
+ While similar to those used in microwave ovens, these beams would be nowhere near as concentrated. A recent study by the European Commission found that the incoming microwave beams would be too feeble and diffuse to harm human health. Some involved in these projects say further thorough research will be needed for public acceptance, though
+ “It’s basically the same technology as wireless charging for your cellphone,” says Chris Rodenbeck, head of the Advanced Projects Group at the US Naval Research Laboratory.
China’s EV juggernaut is a warning for the West: It wasn’t just a big hand from the state—competitive pressure and creativity have made Chinese-designed and -built electric cars formidable competitors. WSJ
+ When Western auto executives flew in for April’s Shanghai auto show, “they saw a sea of green plates, a sea of Chinese brands,” said Le, referring to the green license plates assigned to clean-energy vehicles in China. “They hear the sounds of the door closing, sit inside and look at the quality of the materials, the fabric or the plastic on the console, that’s the other holy s— moment—they’ve caught up to us.”
+ Chinese dominance of EVs isn’t preordained. The low barriers to entry exploited by Chinese brands also open the door to future non-Chinese competitors. Nor does China’s success in EVs necessarily translate to other sectors where industrial policy matters less and creativity, privacy and deeply woven technological capability—such as software, cloud computing and semiconductors—matter more.
+ Western companies themselves are likely to respond by deepening their presence in China—not to sell cars, but for proximity to the most sophisticated customers and suppliers.
+ Jörg Wuttke, the past president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, calls China a “fitness center.” Even as conditions there become steadily more difficult, Western multinationals “have to be there. It keeps you fit.”
How US-China tensions shattered Sequoia’s venture capital empire: Silicon Valley VC group’s lucrative foray into rival nation ends as geopolitical tensions flare up. FT
+ “Sequoia is successful in both geographies independently,” said one executive at a Silicon Valley fund. “But you can’t be wining and dining the US president and have investments which could be controlled by the CCP. The geopolitics made it impossible to have that exposure so in the end they cut it off. India, I think, is collateral damage.”
+ When Sequoia China raised $9bn last year, about half of that came from US investors such as MassPRIM, University of Texas Investment Management Company and the University of Washington endowment, according to PitchBook.
+ Sequoia’s move has led other US VCs to consider their own exposure to China. “Is this a harbinger of things to come?” asked a partner at a rival venture group. “Funds which had global ambitions, do they change their strategy?”
Musk and Dimon missed an opportunity in China: Corporate titans watch their words too carefully when meeting top Chinese leaders. They need to deliver a much louder message. Minxin Pei
+ Geopolitical tensions are shifting the balance of power in favor of Western businesses. Due to its struggling economy, dependence on Western technology, and fears of full-fledged economic decoupling, China needs Western investments and markets much more than before.
+ Whether they fully realize it yet or not, Chinese leaders cannot dismiss the opinions of Western CEOs as easily as they might have in the past.
Lionel Messi makes a deal with Inter Miami of MLS—and Apple and Adidas: WSJ reports Inter Miami mobilized MLS’s biggest sponsors, Apple and Adidas, to bring Lionel Messi to the US.
Lionel Messi, soccer’s biggest star, plans to sign with MLS club Inter Miami: WP reports barring contract complications, Messi could formally join Miami as early as July 5, when the MLS transfer window opens, and debut three days later against DC United in Washington.
Why Lionel Messi chose Miami over Riyadh: The soccer great’s move to the US makes a lot of sense professionally, personally, and maybe even financially. JP Spinetto
The PGA never had any principles to begin with Will Leitch
+ With the merger, the Saudis get their most high-profile entry into the world of sports — the biggest success story of a project they’ve been working on for years. And the PGA Tour gets access to all of the money it wants.
PGA Golf-LIV deal: Trump loves it, Democrats hate it and regulators may have questions Reuters
+ The DOJ is already conducting an antitrust probe into professional golf, which included PGA's fight with LIV. It declined comment on Tuesday.
+ A national security attorney Reuters spoke to said the deal could be subject to a review by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the US, or CFIUS, a Treasury-led committee that reviews foreign investments for national security concerns, if, for instance, PIF can exercise "control" over PGA, a US entity, through the transaction.
Through ties to Saudis, golf deal promises benefits to Trump: The new alliance between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf is the latest example of how the former president’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has yielded gains, and criticism, for both. NYT
+ In an interview last year at Trump National Doral, when the LIV tournament was taking place there, Mr. Trump added that he was confident the Saudis were going to win the dispute.
+ “You’re not going to beat these people,” Mr. Trump said in October. “These people have great spirit, they’re phenomenal people and they have unlimited money — unlimited.”
The PGA and LIV Golf merger is the revenge of the Saudi ‘pariah’: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wins again. WSJ-Editorial
+ Biden’s antitrust cops could try to block the golf tour merger, but it’s hard to see who will be harmed by it. The President would be wiser to follow the PGA’s lead and patch things up with the Saudis.
Golf’s antitrust problem just got bigger Peter Coy
+ Sports leagues love competition, except against one another. The leagues make more money when they don’t have to compete for talent and audience.
+ “The PGA-LIV merger is another in a long line of successful efforts by entrenched monopoly organizers of sporting competitions to maintain their dominance through predatory behavior directed toward rivals, followed by swallowing them up,” Stephen Ross, a sports law expert at Penn State Law, said in an emailed statement.
+ “From the branding point of view the PGA Tour was a monopoly and it will still be the dominant organizer with its new huge partner.”
+ The PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, didn’t do himself any favors with antitrust authorities when he said the quiet part out loud Tuesday, telling reporters that one advantage of the deal is “ultimately to take the competitor off of the board.”
+ “What you’ve created now is a bigger, badder, more powerful monopoly,” Jodi Balsam, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, told me. “That’s what LIV was complaining about all along.”
PR Week: LIV Golf tees up pressing FARA questions for agencies
I chatted with Ewan Larkin and PR Week on how comms pros must define their agreements with foreign-owned clients as geopolitics and sports increasingly intertwine.
+ Vendors must recognize geopolitics' increasing place in sports and devote resources to monitoring relevant factors, says Marc Ross, chief communications strategist at geopolitical business comms firm Caracal.
+ “Sports is now becoming another battlefield for geopolitics, communications, and human rights. It’s no longer just about putting the ball in the back of the net, there are new stakeholders involved,” he adds.
+ “Does any sports team or league that has foreign investors need to register?” Ross asks, referencing teams with foreign ownership such as the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets or English soccer team Manchester City. “As a communicator or a big PR firm, do I take these clients? There’s no guidance. It’s kind of the Wild West.”
You can read the full article here.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
Marc A. Ross | Chief Communications Strategist @ Caracal
Caracal produces ITK Daily.
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