ITK Daily | March 8

Happy Wednesday.

Here’s today’s ITK Daily.

To be ITK, know this:?

Germany closes ranks to stop the end of the car: Politico reports the government in Berlin objects to the EU’s zero-emissions legislation in order to protect its carmaking industry.

Putin’s Russia summons Stalin from the grave as a wartime ally: Seventy years after his death, the dictator still inspires those who want to stifle dissent.?Politico

Intelligence suggests pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged pipelines, US officials say: NYT reports new intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.

French strikes escalate against pension overhaul: WSJ reports workers across the country walked off the job and took to the streets, kicking off what unions are touting as an open-ended standoff over the government's plans to raise the retirement.

Le Monde: Sixth day of protests draws record number of demonstrators across France

Macron’s France is a tinderbox?John Keiger

+ Quite exceptionally all French trades unions are united in the struggle. Strikes in the energy sector began last weekend, with rail, ports, air traffic controllers, lorry drivers, schools, and refuse collectors taking up the cudgel.

+ Historically, French insurrections and revolutions tend to be initiated by le peuple or students.

+ As the great political thinker and historian of revolution in France and the United States Alexis de Tocqueville warned: ‘History is a gallery of pictures where there are few originals and many copies.’

British tech minister: TikTok should be ‘personal choice’ for UK officials: Politico reports a TikTok ban would require a ‘significant’ evidence, Michelle Donelan said.

An aversion to risk is holding Britain back: In contrast to the US, a hive of investment, we are fast becoming unable to fund our future. A change of mindset is crucial.?William Hague

+ I have just spent a week in the United States, which was a sharp reminder that the most powerful nation on earth is actually getting stronger.

+ Americans may be shockingly polarised with chronic social and cultural divisions, but they are not in decline.?

+ On Ukraine, or at the G7, America calls the shots.

+ China is now a serious rival but the allies of the US are more dependent than ever on its natural resources, its military might and its dominant tech companies.

+ Over the past few decades, we British have, slowly, unintentionally but unmistakably, become too risk-averse to own and fund our own future.

AP: Biden to host April state visit for South Korean leader Yoon

The daring ruse that exposed China’s campaign to steal American secrets: How the downfall of one intelligence agent revealed the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage.?NYT

China’s leader, with rare bluntness, blames US containment for troubles: Xi Jinping criticized what he called a US-led campaign of “encirclement and suppression.” His new foreign minister said it was impossible for China not to fight back.?NYT

China’s foreign minister says ties with US risk going off the rails: Qin Gang warns Washington against indulging in what he calls new McCarthyism.?WSJ

'Xi Jinping's guy': Longtime acolyte Li set to be China's next premier: Reuters reports four years before Li Qiang gained notoriety as the force behind the two-month COVID lockdown of Shanghai, the man set to become China's next premier worked quietly behind the scenes to drive a bold revamp of the megacity's sclerotic stock market.

Caixin: China to reorganize Science and Tech Ministry, set up National Data Bureau

China to move finance and tech under direct party oversight: Nikkei reports the overhaul designed to make the country more resilient to Western sanctions.

What more can Xi Jinping do for China Inc.??Beijing wants more high-end manufacturing, but it’s on Chinese companies to make the next big leap.?Anjani Trivedi

+ Governments globally play a big role in R&D spending and encouraging high-tech innovation. However, it is often left to companies to decide where and how to put their money to work, as is the case in the US and Japan.?

+ At this stage, Beijing can’t direct corporates to be more innovative when it comes to the nitty-gritty of industrial hardware — there’s only so much it can do.?

+ Nor can the state allocate their capital expenditure at a granular level. The word “innovation” appeared 38 times in the government work report delivered by outgoing premier Li Keqiang.?

+ It also noted that “enterprises should be the principal actors” in this arena.

+ Ultimately, though, companies will have to figure out where to invest and how to put their capital to work effectively — without Beijing’s breadcrumbs — to make the next big technological leap.

The real lesson Xi can take from Silicon Valley: Chip pioneers found the right markets 70 years ago, and China needs to do the same today.?Tim Culpan

+ Today’s China, however, doesn’t need a better search engine or more mobile games. It needs semiconductor technology that’s completely independent of foreign companies, artificial intelligence algorithms and computing power that is entirely indigenous, and electric vehicles that will allow the nation to move away from crude oil.?

+ These three developments — more money for defense, direct investment into chipmakers and adding semiconductor representatives to the list of government advisors — are all related. They also mimic history.

+ Beijing’s pivot toward so-called hard tech makes sense given the global environment it’s now in. But that doesn’t mean completely discarding the lessons it has learnt over the past two decades, and the people who helped build China into the global economic powerhouse it is today.

AP: US sees China propaganda efforts becoming more like Russia’s

+ A record-low 15% of Americans view China favorably, marking a five-percentage-point, one-year decline in this rating, which Gallup has measured since 1979.

Canada roiled by leaked intelligence reports of Chinese election ‘meddling’: Trudeau resists calls for public inquiry as leaks spark fierce debate and threaten to dent country’s reputation with allies.?Guardian

BBC: Canada's Trudeau launches China election meddling probes

CBC: Trudeau announces multiple investigations into foreign election interference

Did China mess with Canada? Trudeau says he has a plan to find out.?Critics say the prime minister has been slow to respond to spy agency leaks that allege Beijing meddled in federal elections.?Politico

+ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has buckled to political pressures and is calling an investigation into allegations that Beijing interfered with Canadian elections.

+ Trudeau stopped short of the public inquiry that opposition parties have demanded. Instead, he pitched a convoluted plan led by an “eminent, unimpeachable expert,” minus any deadlines.

+ China’s embassy in Canada has called the claims “pure slander and total nonsense” and accused media of spreading “all kinds of disinformation” without offering evidence why the stories are wrong.

AP: Biden will buck tradition and unveil budget in Pennsylvania

Smart.

A good example of high-low communications from Team Biden.

Biden scraps reliance on market for faith in broader government role: The administration is pushing businesses to change with a carrot — and a stick.?WP

+ Industrial policy — the use of government power to promote specific industries — has a long history in the United States. The 19th-century transcontinental railroad; the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear weapons that ended World War II; and the 1960s Apollo space program are examples.

+ But after free-spending by the public sector in the 1960s helped usher in the inflation of the 1970s, the strategy fell out of favor. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” President Ronald Reagan said in his 1981 inaugural address.

+ The Biden administration’s embrace of industrial policy reflects its view of the lessons of the pandemic, the urgency of the climate challenge and the imperatives of strategic competition with China.

Biden’s big bet on big government: Top aides like John Podesta are racing the clock to transform America’s economy.?Economist

Biden to embark on West Coast fundraising swing before expected election launch: Politico reports the president will go to California next week. Another sign that he has an eye on 2024.

Never Trumpers rally in DC, trying to find hope and a plan amid despair: A two-day conference in the nation’s capital was a counter-programing, of sorts, to the MAGA confab happening just down the river.?Politico

+?Panels for the event included “Looking to 2024: Hope and Despair — but Mostly Despair” and “Can the GOP survive?”

DeSantis vs. Trump pits accomplishments against narrative: In a potential 2024 election match-up, the ex-president portrays himself as the people’s hero, but the governor has a stronger record.?Gerard Baker

Paul Ryan says even MAGA diehards believe Trump can’t win in 2024?NYT

AP: DeSantis to argue US should be like Fla. ahead of 2024 bid

Wild.

Scouting report: Who will win the GOP 2024 nomination??Hugh Hewitt

+ Trump divides the GOP primary electorate into four categories: “Never Trumpers,” “Sometime Trumpers,” “Always Trumpers” and “Only Trumpers.”

+ My veteran Republican strategist tells me the “Only” and the “Never” groups are of roughly the same size — between 25 and 30 percent of the party — meaning the race may be decided in between those extremes, with a possible fissure in the party as a looming risk.

+ As Richard M. Nixon said long ago about right-wing supporters of Sen. Barry M. Goldwater: You can’t win with just them but you can’t win without them.

Amazon's HQ2 fiasco has politicians canceling their Prime accounts: The company's pause in construction of its second headquarters in Northern Virginia could herald the end of era in regional development.?Jessica Karl

A 120-year-old company is leaving Tesla in the dust?Ezra Dyer

+ "If you want to work for a flexible, modern company, you don’t apply to Tesla. You apply to 120-year-old Ford."

+ Ezra Dyer is a columnist for Car and Driver magazine.

Boom.

EV startups brace for another tough year as cash dwindles: WSJ reports after worrying about producing enough autos, young electric-vehicle makers are now concerned about selling them.

The giant arcs that may dwarf everything in the cosmos: The discovery of giant superclusters of galaxies are challenging our very understanding of the Universe.?BBC

+ Known as the Giant Arc, the structure throws into question some of the basic assumptions about the Universe.

+ According to the standard model of cosmology – the theory on which our understanding of the Universe is based – matter should be more-or-less evenly distributed across space.?

+ When scientists view the Universe on very large scales there should be no noticeable irregularities; everything should look the same in every direction.

+ Yet the Giant Arc isn't the only example of its kind. These gargantuan structures are now forcing scientists to reassess their theory of how the Universe evolved.

+ Over billions of years, the pull of gravity eventually led these clumps to form stars and galaxies. However, there is a size limit to this process. Anything larger than about 1.2 billion light-years across simply wouldn't have had sufficient time to form.

Japan forced to destroy flagship H3 rocket in failed launch: BBC reports Japan was forced to blow up its new rocket during a failed launch on Tuesday, setting back efforts to crack a market led by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Its space agency had to send a self-destruct command to the H3 rocket when its second-stage engine failed minutes after lift-off.

Politico: Biden administration moves to block JetBlue’s $3.8B Spirit takeover

Reuters: White House backs Senate bill to boost US ability to ban TikTok

How China Inc is tackling the TikTok problem: A CEO’s guide to doing business amid anti-Chinese sentiment.?Economist

LinkedIn should position itself as the next Twitter, says this early tech evangelist: Guy Kawasaki thinks LinkedIn is blowing it.?FC

CNBC: Google CEO defends desk-sharing policy, says some offices are like a ‘ghost town’

Give the drummer some: As AI drum machines embrace humanizing imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music??Jack Stilgoe

+ Good drumming is about more than staying in time. Musicians often talk about a good drummer’s ‘feel’. A drummer’s expertise may be impossible to describe.?

+ Like riding a bicycle, the relevant knowledge is tacit, held in the body as much as the brain.

+ All innovation in art has generated new answers to the question of what counts as art.

+ We have seen with the development of the drum machine that there is an opportunity to use AI to release a new wave of musical innovation. The risk is that the technology will concentrate power in ways that devalue and homogenize music.

TBWA’s Backslash reveals 39 cultural shifts shaping our world?Peach

+ This year’s 39 Edges span categories and countries, offering a comprehensive forecast of what’s to come. Six new Edges have been identified for 2023, including:

- Creativity is undergoing an AI revolution

- The future is being grown in a lab

- A renewed emphasis on collectivism is redistributing power at scale

UK architect David Chipperfield wins 2023 Pritzker Prize: DW reports prize organizers said the architect sustained "connections between tradition and innovation." Chipperfield is known for the reconstruciton of old buildings while honoring their history and preserving the environment.

"My generation has always been about the product, but I believe more than anything now we need to focus on the process." -- David Chipperfield - Pritzker Architecture Prize 2023 Laureate

The timeless innovations of De La Soul, now (finally) available for the streaming generation?LAT

In the history of hip-hop fashion, there’s no ignoring Lil’ Kim: She paved the way for female rappers to front fashion campaigns, be a designer’s muse or star in major ad campaigns.?Andscape

David Attenborough’s Wild Isles hits close to home: New BBC documentary series focuses on the wonders of Britain and Ireland but also highlights environmental decay.?FT

… It’s the Oscars that got small: On the eve of Hollywood’s big, if diminished, night, two deeply researched books dig into the scandal-soaked history of the Academy Awards.?NYT

MLS commissioner Don Garber discusses expansion, Apple TV deal and more in exclusive interview?The Athletic

WP: The LIV effect: Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm welcome changes to PGA Tour schedule

The Times: McIlroy: LIV rivalry has dragged PGA Tour into 21st century

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc?

Marc A. Ross | Founder + Chief Communications Strategist @ Caracal

Caracal produces ITK Daily.

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