July 26, 2020: Mars, Ant Group, New York Times, COVID-19, Open Source, ARM

This issue covers the period between July 20 - 26, 2020 with six news stories – three from English language sources, three from Chinese language sources – hand-picked by your humble author to further our exploration of the interconnections between technology, business, investment, and geopolitics. All translated article titles are done by me, not official translations from the media outlets.

Before we start: Last week, I recorded a wide-ranging discussion on the podcast, China Talk, with its host Jordan Schneider. We dived into many of the topics I recently wrote about: Tesla, ByteDance, Open Source in China, and Kanye West’s run for POTUS. If you have time, given it a listen! // 上周，我录了一集播客和 China Talk的主持人 Jordan Schneider深入探讨了许多最近写过的话题：特斯拉、字节跳动、中国的开源世界，以及Kanye West竞选美国总统。如果大家有空的话，听听吧！

“China’s first Mars mission launches” (English Source: SupChina)

My Thoughts: In about seven months, we will know if China’s probe has landed successfully on Mars, which would make it the third country to accomplish this feat after the U.S. and Russia. The so-called “space race” is often colored by the lens of big nation geopolitics and zero-sum competitiveness, and this launch out of China will no doubt trigger that emotion or thinking in many people. But space exploration is fundamentally a humanity-scale effort that requires sharing, collaboration, and positive-sum thinking, by the brightest minds from all corners of the world, regardless of their nationalities. In a rare moment of solidarity and positivity, on Twitter no less, the NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine, welcomed Tianwen to the “community of international scientific explorers at Mars”.

“How to use ETFs to play Ant Group’s historic Shanghai-Hong Kong dual listing” (English Source: CNBC)

My Thoughts: Back on earth, technology and money continue to move and shake things. The much-anticipated IPO of Ant Group (formerly Ant Financials, an independent but closely linked financial technology company to Alibaba), may be the largest public offering history. (For background: size here is defined in terms of how much money is raised in the IPO.) The size of this IPO is significant because it will happen in a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong simultaneously, away from the U.S. capital market -- meaning there’s plenty of money outside of America to buy a piece of one of the largest tech companies in the world. Meanwhile, American investors are scrambling to find ways to get in on the action, via ETFs and other vehicles.

“Meredith Levien Wants the NYT to be a World Class Tech Company” (English Source: The Information)

My Thoughts: This interview with Meredith Levin, the New York Times’s new CEO, validates both a trend and a predicament: every media company needs to become a tech company to survive. This trend is also interconnected with another trend that’s less discussed: every tech company is also becoming a media company. From blogging and whitepapers, to producing conferences, podcasts, and webinars, tech companies big and small are effectively their own “publishers” trying to find and engage with their own audiences. There’s a lot these two worlds can learn from each other. Most tech companies are not good at telling a story about their product and weaving together a compelling narrative. And most news and media organizations are terrible at implementing technological know-how to boost their own business longevity. I’m giving the New York Times the benefit of the doubt and look forward to seeing how it will evolve into a real tech company. But if Levien’s answer in this interview is any indication, the company has a long way to go beyond just “we have to get software”.

“Use the power of open source to fight against COVID-19! Tencent joins the Linux Foundation Public Health Initiative as a Founding Member” (Chinese Source: Tencent Open Source)

My thoughts: I have long believed that open source technology is the single most powerful thread that’s holding the world together and continuing to push our collective advancement forward. (That’s why I write so much about open source on Interconnected.) The Linux Foundation’s new initiative to combat COVID-19, the Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) initiative, is a recent and powerful example. The founding members of this initiative are: Cisco, doc.ai, Geometer, IBM, NearForm, Tencent, and VMware, while the two open source apps being hosted are COVID Shield (first created by engineers at Shopify) and COVID Green (developed by the Irish tech company, NearForm). I’m highlighting this post from Tencent, not just because Tencent stands out as the lone Chinese tech company in the founding members list, but also that its representation is well-deserved. Four months ago, Tencent already open sourced some COVID-19 related technologies -- a global case tracking software with an AI-based digital health portal to help people figure out if they have COVID-related symptoms or not. Just like space exploration, fighting a global pandemic will also need a humanity-scale effort that requires sharing, collaboration, and positive-sum thinking.

“Straight from Apache: China's open source projects have gone global” (Chinese Source: Open Source Community)

My thoughts: Last week was the 15th “Open Source China, Open Source World” Summit. During this conference, Shane Curcuru, vice-chair of the Apache Software Foundation, which hosts many of the most commonly-used open source technologies, delivered a presentation. In his presentation, Curcuru highlighted the 10 “Top Level” (aka most mature) Apache projects and nine “Incubating” (aka maturing quickly) projects that were originally created in China. Because open source is borderless and not (yet?) subjected to any sanctions, these technologies continue to thrive with contributions coming from many developers outside of China. Keep these projects in mind, as we continue our exploration of the interconnections between technology, business, investment, and geopolitics.

“It’s the era of ARM sweeping across the world. At what stage is China's own semiconductor IP development?” (Chinese Source: Tencent Technology News)

My thoughts:This article does a good job of breaking down ARM’s dominance as the leading global licensor of semiconductor IP. It also rightfully mentioned the Wassenaar Agreement, an international organization I explored in depth in “Chips, Geopolitics, Elections”, as a key force that will likely eliminate any Chinese company from being able to buy a portion of ARM, as Softbank looks to offload some of that holding. Even though I think Alibaba would make a reasonable suitor, the forces of Wassenaar are likely too much to overcome. Another element worth watching is a few domestic players in China who are generating their own IP, notably Cambricon (just IPO’ed on Shanghai’s STAR market) and Empyrean (an EDA equipment maker critical to chip manufacturing at scale). However, by and large, the state of these Chinese companies still lag far behind ARM and other established companies in this space.

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