At a glance.
- Europe arranges investment in European cybersecurity firms.
- TikTok looks for a reprieve.
- Anti-trust actions in China.
- Comment on the EU's anti-trust case against Amazon.
Europe to jumpstart its domestic cyber sector.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the European Cybersecurity Organization along with eight venture-capital firms are developing a €1 billion reserve to spend on domestic cybersecurity firms over the next few years. The project’s broader aim is decreased reliance on imported tech and comes with a new “Made in Europe” label. The EU is also investing €10 billion in cloud computing to enable independence from US solutions like Microsoft and Amazon. Financial experts say domestic alternatives must achieve parity in cost and functionality for them to succeed. The road may be a long one, as Europe’s industry is separated by a several billion dollar chasm from Washington and Beijing.
TikTok requests reprieve from sell-by-12-November order.
ByteDance was directed to move its US chattels by today, but is seeking a thirty-day rain check since its suggested fix of partnering with Walmart and Oracles is still up in the air, according to the Washington Post. If a resolution isn’t reached today, the US could sue for a sale—but University of Texas law school dean Robert Chesney said it won’t be easy to “unscramble the egg.” The Justice Department appears to be standing its ground, stating yesterday, “we have been clear with ByteDance regarding the steps necessary.”
Beijing does antitrust, too.
The South China Morning Post says Beijing has published preliminary antitrust rules directed at digital tech giants, plunging their stocks $102 billion. In the country’s first crack at specifying monopolistic cyber behavior, the regulation could outlaw practices like requiring the use of a single platform, driving competition out of business with markdowns, swapping customer information, and varying costs based on users’ habits. Meal delivery, ridesharing, and online shopping companies—used by 855 million nationally—will likely be hardest hit. The maneuver is being compared to current US lawsuits against Google, which are being compared to the Microsoft suit of the 1990’s and the AT&T suit of the 1970’s.
The EU on Amazon as an anti-trust target.
It's been widely reported, by the New York Times and others, that European Union regulators have alleged that Amazon committed various anti-trust violations, mostly having to do with its alleged use of data to "box out" competitors.
We heard from The @ Company on the implications of the action. Colin Constable, CTO of data privacy and new internet protocol, commented, "Amazon works as a flywheel, getting more and more powerful by offering independents access to its enormous network. An unfortunate outcome of this and other companies like them that enable access to their network of services is that they start tracking these businesses. The implication is that while initially, these services enable small businesses, these companies pay a data tax for being too successful. It's a data fiefdom of sorts. We applaud the European Union for taking a first step toward breaking the flywheel and freeing small businesses from this damaging long-term outcome."
Kevin Nickels, CPO, wrote that, "We expect these large platforms to continue to be under pressure on a number of fronts as a result of the negative aspects of their business models and data practices. This is healthy and a good thing and a number of responses will emerge. The @ Company is meanwhile busy trying to provide fundamental technology solutions that will be instrumental to address this in addition to regulatory actions."