Interconnected

What is Exceptional about "American Exceptionalism"

Every year leading up to July 4th, the American Independence Day, I get pensive and meditative. As a naturalized American citizen, who has sworn the oath to protect the US constitution three times so far -- once during my naturalization ceremony, once to work

Topics: ByteDance• Oracle• Data Regulation•

Solutions to TikTok's American Credibility Problem

Last week, I wrote a detailed post breaking down TikTok’s immense credibility challenges in America, as revealed by Buzzfeed’s reporting based on more than 80 leaked internal meeting recordings. In today’s post, I propose some viable solutions – some technical, some organizational

Topics: ByteDance• Oracle• Data Regulation•

TikTok's American Credibility Problem

What happens when audio recordings of 80 internal meetings of a company are leaked to the media? A serious credibility problem. That’s what happened to TikTok last week when the audio of, indeed, more than 80 internal meetings were leaked to Buzzfeed, which

Topics: China• Alibaba• Jack Ma•

Ant IPO and China's "Startup Debt" Problem

Last week, Chinese tech stocks went through a mini rollercoaster. The Wall Street Journal first reported that regulators were close to completing their cybersecurity investigations of Didi, Full Trust Alliance, and Kanzhun, sending stock prices up. Then Bloomberg reported that the China Securities Regulatory

Topics: Apple• Tesla• China•

American Tech Leaves China, But What Will Stay?

A series of recent headlines has confirmed a looming trend – American tech businesses are giving up China for good. LinkedIn, Yahoo, Airbnb, and most recently, Amazon’s Kindle, have all officially announced their departure. To me, this trend feels irreversible and not a temporary

Topics: Southeast Asia• Cloud Industry• Geopolitics•

US and Southeast Asia: A Dysfunctional Romance

Last week, Southeast Asia scored a long overdue diplomatic victory. The US-ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Nations) Summit was finally held in Washington, DC and hosted by the White House – the first time in ASEAN’s 55-year history. Symbolic victory aside, what the Southeast

Topics: Morris Chang• TSMC• Semiconductor•

When Morris Chang Speaks, America Should Listen

Last month, Morris Chang, the founder and two-time CEO of TSMC (now retired and in his 90s), gave a rare interview, hosted by the Brookings Institution and CSIS, two of the most prestigious DC think tanks. During this interview, in no uncertain terms, Morris

Topics: ByteDance• Facebook•

How Does TikTok Do Global Expansion

Like it or not, TikTok is now a global phenomenon, not just in terms of cultural relevance, but also as a real business success. (As we all have seen with Twitter, you can be very culturally relevant and still struggle as a business.) Based

Topics: Web3• Open Source•

Polygon: Web3's MongoDB and More

I first heard of Polygon in mid-2021. Friends of mine who were web3 entrepreneurs and NFT artists mentioned it as a promising project, providing a solid scaling solution for Ethereum. After some initial research, I learned that the founding team members were mostly from

Topics: Twitter• Open Source• Elon Musk•

Why Open Sourcing Twitter is Good for Humanity and Business

By now, the entire world knows that Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. During his first interview after making his intention known, Elon made it clear that he wants to open source Twitter’s algorithm. This announcement was met with long, thunderous applause. There’

Topics: Facebook• ByteDance•

Facebook vs TikTok: Will Every Tech Company Become a Political Campaign?

Long before tech, I cut my teeth working on political campaigns fresh out of college. I was a field staffer on Obama’s first presidential campaign, during a time when smartphones were novel, Twitter didn’t exist, Facebook grew mostly just on college campuses,

Topics: Didi• IPO•

Take Didi Private

If Disney builds a new rollercoaster using Didi’s stock chart from the last four weeks, it will surely be one of its most head-spinning, vomit-inducing rides yet. With so much volatility around all Chinese stocks, but Didi’s in particular, it is impossible

Topics: China• Stock Market• Charlie Munger•

Dissecting the "Great Delisting"

Last December, I wrote a rather provocative post called “Let the ‘Great Delisting’ Begin”. That was when the SEC released its final specifications to implement the accounting compliance requirements outlined in the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA). Back then, and right on cue,

Topics: e-CNY• Central Bank Digital Currency• Web3•

Central Bank Digital Currency: Should You Want It Too?

Over the last five months, we have researched and written about e-CNY (China’s Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC), from its core technology and product experience, to the key institutional players involved and its long-term strategic implications. During this process, I found myself

Topics: Russia• Ukraine• Semiconductor•

Fog of War

The analogies of “war” are used often to describe and analyze non-war situations – businesses, sports, electoral politics. We now have a real war between Russia and Ukraine, and the “fog of war” between clarity and confusion is as thick as ever. Because there is

Topics: RISC-V• Intel• Arm•

[Premium] Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Semiconductor Edition

Topics: e-CNY• Winter Olympics• Blockchain•

e-CNY: The Product

Topics: e-CNY• Winter Olympics•

Beijing Winter Olympics: What Am I Watching?

Today’s post will be shorter than our usual weekly offering. This is partially due to the amount of cooking I signed myself up to do for the Lunar New Year. (It’s the Year of the Tiger. I’m a Tiger. It’s

Topics: Low Code No Code• Developer• VC•

Low Code No Code, Part III: Hands-on Experience with Notion, Retool, Bubble, Yida

This post is a guest contribution from Shawn Xu (no relations). Shawn is a software engineer at TikTok, got his Masters in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, and writes an informative WeChat public account on SaaS called 硅谷成长攻略. In Part I and Part

Topics: WeWork• Remote Work• IPO•

A WeWork Future: Perpetual Hybrid Work

I published my very first post on Interconnected in late February 2020. Back then, the coronavirus in China was in full swing, but the rest of the world has yet to grasp the gravity of this pandemic. In that post, I talked about a

Topics: Alibaba• Charlie Munger• Open Source•

[Premium] Charlie Munger’s New Favorite: Alibaba

Topics: Open Source• Web3• Rest of World•

2022 Outlook: Rise of the "Rest"

As we enter 2022, one new, big theme we will be more focused on is what I call: Rise of the “Rest”. The “Rest” here refers to any country or market that is not the US or China. Admittedly, “Rest” is not the most

Topics: Meta•

2021 Interconnected Wrap-Up: Readership Stats and Breakdown

As we near the end of 2021, it’s time for a wrap-up post on Interconnected. We wrote a similar post last year in “Open Source, Open Stats, Open Development”, where we provided a rough breakdown of our audience. We also shared details and

Topics: Open Source• China• Alibaba•

Open Source in China: Next Four Years

Last May, I wrote a three-part series that surveyed the entire open source landscape in China: Part I: the PlayersPart II: the GamePart III: the TrendsSince then, the landscape has changed significantly as “open source” continues to receive top-down attention from the central government.

Topics: IPO• China• Regulation•

Let the “Great Delisting” Begin

Last week, the SEC dropped the final “regulatory shoe” by specifying the rules and procedures that will implement the accounting compliance requirements outlined in the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA) on foreign companies listed on US stock exchanges. Right on cue, every Chinese