Kevin Xu - Interconnected (Page 5)

So Which Algorithms Do the Chinese Regulators Have?

Back in January, [http://www.cac.gov.cn/2022-01/04/c_1642894606364259.htm] the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), in coordination with several other regulatory bodies, enshrined a new policy to regulate how algorithms are used in Chinese Internet companies. Seven months later, the

Topics: Masa Son• Softbank• Alibaba•

Understanding Masa Son’s Rationality

During Christmas last year, I read one of the few biographies available on Masayoshi Son, titled “Aiming High [https://www.amazon.com/Aiming-High-Masayoshi-SoftBank-Disrupting/dp/1529338581/ref=asc_df_1529338581/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=564725475526&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=

Topics: XPeng• Tesla• Alibaba•

Why China’s Road to Self-Driving Goes Through Inner Mongolia

AliCloud and XPeng announced a partnership to build a dedicated cloud computing center to train XPeng electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities last week. The news of this alliance was not terribly surprising. After all, Alibaba was an early investor in XPeng, still one of its

Topics: Intel• Semiconductor• South Korea•

Not Intel, but South Korea, is where CHIPS Money Should Go

The comically embarrassing timing between the final passage of the CHIPS and Science Act and Intel’s disastrous quarterly earnings, both occurring on the same day last week, elucidated one hard truth: Congress may be barking up the wrong tree. Many have assumed that

Topics: Didi• Antitrust• Data Regulation•

Didi's $1.2 Billion Penalty and the Global 5% Upper Bound

Last week, the embattled Didi stock had arguably its best week ever since its IPO last July, notching a 20% weekly gain. Why? Because it was fined $1.2 billion by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) for its egregiously poor data privacy and

Topics: Cloud Industry• Google Cloud Platform• Data Regulation•

Where Data Centers and Abortion Rights Intersect

On the surface, cloud data center locations and women’s right to abortion in America are two topics that could not be further apart. Yet, they have become intimately intertwined when Proov [https://proovtest.com/], a healthcare tech company focused on fertility, decided to

Topics: Geopolitics•

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 [https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm] three times

Topics: ByteDance• Oracle• Data Regulation•

Solutions to TikTok's American Credibility Problem

Last week, I wrote a detailed post [https://interconnected.blog/tiktoks-american-credibility-problem/] breaking down TikTok’s immense credibility challenges in America, as revealed by Buzzfeed’s reporting [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access] based on more than 80 leaked internal meeting recordings. In today’

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 [https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-to-conclude-didi-cybersecurity-probe-lift-ban-on-new-users-11654501320?mod=hp_lead_pos6] of Didi, Full Trust Alliance, and Kanzhun, sending stock

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 [https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedin-social-network-is-leaving-china-but-microsoft-remains-11634321277] , Yahoo [https://www.reuters.com/technology/yahoo-leaves-china-good-cites-challenging-environment-2021-11-02/] , Airbnb [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/airbnb-is-closing-its-domestic-business-in-china-sources-say.html] , and

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 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwCWYcag5RE] , hosted by the Brookings Institution and CSIS, two of the most prestigious DC think tanks. During

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 [https://youtu.be/cdZZpaB2kDM?t=781] after making his intention known, Elon made it clear that he wants to open source Twitter’s algorithm. This announcement was

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 [https://interconnected.blog/let-the-great-delisting-begin/]”. That was when the SEC released its final specifications [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-250] to implement the accounting compliance requirements outlined in the Holding

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 [https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-technology-dcep-e-rmb/] and product experience [https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-the-product/], to the key institutional players [https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/

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•

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Semiconductor Edition

Three months after Softbank announced its acquisition of Arm in 2016, Masa Son (founder and CEO of Softbank) invited Jensen Huang (founder and CEO of Nvidia) for dinner at his California mansion. Just the two of them. Among the many things they talked about

Topics: e-CNY• Winter Olympics• Blockchain•

e-CNY: The Product

The Olympics have always been an opportunity for the host countries to showcase their athletic, economic, political, and, increasingly, technological power. The Beijing Winter Olympics is perhaps the best example of this tech-dominated narrative yet. So far, the robot baristas, bartenders, and cleaners, as

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 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/shengyangxu/] (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