ByteDance

Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China's ByteDance
by Matthew Brennan
Published 9 Oct 2020

For an extensive list of ByteDance’s product suite refer to the back of this book. Key People at ByteDance Higher Management (mid-2020) ByteDance Company Structure (Overview) There are three core functional departments at ByteDance: user growth, technology, and commercialization, focused on user acquisition, product development, and monetization respectively. ByteDance Technical Systems (Overview) ByteDance Technology System Infrastructure ByteDance Number of Global Employees (estimated, pre-India ban) Sources: company financial reports, SinaTech, Reuters, 36Kr, TMT post, Huxiuwang ByteDance Corporate Legal Structure Investment rounds Chinese Cities Mentioned in This Book ByteDance Head Office Locations, North West Beijing Preface T he original Chinese v ersion of TikTok, called Douyin, was the kind of app that you’d hear of once and then forget about.

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Editor, Rita Liao Cover design, Agnese Lena Illustrations, Valentina Segovia Interior design, Hammad Khalid ISBN: 9798694483292 First paperback edition: October 2020 Attention Factory The Story of TikTok & China’s ByteDance Matthew Brennan Contents Resources Preface Disclaimer Acknowledgments THE BACK END Prologue Gaming the Gatekeepers Yiming ByteDance The Early Years Recommendation, From YouTube to TikTok In China, the News Reads You THE FRONT END From Paris to Shanghai - Musical.ly Awesome.me Going Global with TikTok CRINGE!!! Epilogue People ByteDance Apps Works Cited About the Author Resources ByteDance’s Key Mobile Applications Greyed out icons indicate the app has recently shut down. For an extensive list of ByteDance’s product suite refer to the back of this book.

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It was the key to understanding the success of the app and its parent company, ByteDance. ByteDance had been the earliest Chinese internet company to go “all in” on the then-nascent technology and commit to the daunting task of building a recommendation engine, challenging the status quo of human curation. This early bet paid off in spades. The foundations of TikTok’s success were laid many years before the app itself was built, and it was no coincidence that ByteDance was the company to make it. Above: ByteDance’s three growth phrases, news aggregation from 2012 to 2016, short video from 2016 to 2018, and international from 2018 onwards Today ByteDance is a sprawling corporate leviathan.

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global
by Rebecca Fannin
Published 2 Sep 2019

Nasty Mobile Streaming Fight In China, Tencent and ByteDance are duking it out for the market lead. The conflicts started in 2017 when Tencent invested $350 million at a valuation of $3 billion in ByteDance lead rival, Chinese video streamer Kuaishou, started by CEO and former Google and Baidu programmer Su Hua.15 The next year, ByteDance and Tencent founders got into a spat on WeChat Moments news stream. Zhang accused Tencent of plagiarism after the titan revived and released a video clip feature and news reading function. Unfair competition and defamation claims shot back and forth between the two. In early 2019, ByteDance moved into Tencent turf by debuting video messaging app Duoshan, which lets users share videos that disappear within 72 hours.

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After ByteDance folded the four-year-old Musical.ly into TikTok and rebranded it to a single application under the TikTok name, the app immediately gained some 30 million new users within three months. ByteDance also got inroads into Hollywood with Musical.ly and its deals with Viacom and NBCUniversal for short-form video shows. ByteDance founder Zhang emphasized that this deal makes a lot of sense because it integrates Musical.ly’s global reach with the massive user base of ByteDance in China and key Asian markets, and it creates a global digital media platform for content creators and brands both inside and out of China. Fishing for more, the aggressive ByteDance also has been busy buying into innovators and making deals from a Los Angeles–based office that is on the lookout for more.

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Fishing for more, the aggressive ByteDance also has been busy buying into innovators and making deals from a Los Angeles–based office that is on the lookout for more. There were 62 job openings at ByteDance in early 2019, ranging from business, strategy, and communications to engineering and product development. Over the past few years, ByteDance has snapped up Los Angeles–based Flipagram, a video and photo creation app set to music clips, and has invested $50 million in Live.me, a livestreaming app that is majority owned by Chinese mobile app developer Cheetah Mobile. Additionally, ByteDance acquired News Republic, a global mobile news aggregation service based in France, from Cheetah Mobile for $86.6 million. ByteDance even tried to buy a major stake in US social news aggregator Reddit from Si Newhouse’s Advance Publications but lost that deal to Tencent, which swept in with a $300 million co-investment in early 2019.

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology
by Anu Bradford
Published 25 Sep 2023

These laws are supplemented with continuing government direction and active monitoring. In a 2021 interview given under the pseudonym “Li An,” an employee at ByteDance—the creator of TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin—shed light on how ByteDance’s censorship machine works and how connected it is to the CAC.126 Li An, who helped develop content moderation tools for the company, recounted how the CAC would issue recurrent directives—at times over a hundred a day—to ByteDance’s Content Quality Center, which then ensured that these instructions were followed. The biggest fear for ByteDance was that it fails to delete politically sensitive content that triggers government scrutiny, which can be a “life-and-death matter” for the company without strong government relationships.127 Troubled by the role she was playing in the Chinese censorship machine, Li An described her role in erasing the nation’s “collective memories” of historical events, removing unwanted conversations, and amplifying narratives that the Chinese government approves.

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Jan. 8, 2011), art. 20, http://www.cac.gov.cn/2000-09/30/c_126193701.htm (China), translated in PKULaw, CLI.2.174868(EN). 122.See id. arts. 15, 16. 123.See Wangluo Xinxi Neirong Shengtai Zhili Guiding (网络信息内容生态治理规定) [Provisions on Ecological Governance of Network Information Content] (promulgated by Cyberspace Admin. of China, Dec. 15, 2019, effective Mar. 1, 2020), arts. 5–7, 10–11, http://www.cac.gov.cn/2019-12/20/c_1578375159509309.htm (China), translated in PKULaw, CLI.4.338029(EN). 124.Guanyu Yinfa “Wangluo Yinshiping Xinxi Fuwu Guanli Guiding” de Tongzhi (关于印发《网络音视频信息服务管理规定》的通知) [Notice of Issuing the Provisions on the Administration of Cyber Audio and Video Information Services] (promulgated by Cyberspace Admin. of China, Ministry of Culture and Tourism & Nat’l Radio and Television Admin., Nov. 18, 2019, effective Jan. 1, 2020), arts. 4, http://www.cac.gov.cn/2019-11/29/c_1576561820967678.htm (China), translated in PKULaw, CLI.4.337537(EN). 125.Id. arts. 9, 12. 126.Shen Lu, I Helped Build ByteDance’s Vast Censorship Machine, protocol (Feb. 18, 2021), https://www.protocol.com/china/i-built-bytedance-censorship-machine. 127.Id. 128.See Segal, supra note 59. 129.ByteDance’s Toutiao Ordered by China to Halt New Registrations Since Sept—Sources, Reuters (July 16, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedances-toutiao-ordered-by-china-halt-new-registrations-since-sept-sources-2021-07-16/; Nicole Jao, China Is Serious About Cleaning Up Jinri Toutiao and Kuaishou This Time, technode (Apr. 4, 2018), https://technode.com/2018/04/04/china-is-serious-about-cleaning-up-jinri-toutiao-and-kuaishou-this-time/. 130.Raymond Zhong, It Built an Empire of GIFs, Buzzy News and Jokes.

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, Renmin Wang (人民网) [People.cn] (Sep. 3, 2021), http://www.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0903/c32306-32216236.html (China). 198.Alibaba Group, A Letter to Our Customers and to the Community, alizila (Apr. 10, 2021), https://www.alizila.com/a-letter-to-our-customers-and-to-the-community/. 199.Gonggao (公告) [Statement], Weixin: Meituan (微信：美团) [WeChat: Meituan] (Oct. 8, 2021), https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/530n5oAZb1aaCTaiOTCEHw (China). 200.Laura He, Pinduoduo’s Founder Leaves as His Chinese E-Commerce Giant Grows Bigger Than Ever, CNN (Mar. 18, 2021), https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/18/tech/pinduoduo-colin-huang-intl-hnk/index.html; Laura He, The Young CEO Who Helped Make TikTok a Global Hit Is Latest Chinese Tech Entrepreneur to Quit, CNN (May 20, 2021), https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/20/tech/zhang-bytedance-ceo-resignation-intl-hnk/index.html. 201.Zhong, supra note 166. 202.Xie Yu, Founder of China’s Meituan Donates $2.3 Billion Stake, Wall St. J. (June 4, 2021), https://www.wsj.com/articles/founder-of-chinas-meituan-donates-2-3-billion-stake-11622804438. 203.Yingzhi Yang & Bhargav Acharya, ByteDance Founder Zhang Yiming Steps Down as Chairman—Source, Reuters (Nov. 3, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/bytedance-founder-zhang-step-down-chairman-bloomberg-news-2021-11-03/; Zhong, supra note 166. 204.Yue Wang, Tencent Warns of More Regulations, Pledges Additional $7.7 Billion for Social Philanthropy Projects, Forbes (Aug. 19, 2021), https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2021/08/19/tencent-warns-of-more-regulations-pledges-additional-77-billion-for-social-philanthropy-projects/?

Four Battlegrounds
by Paul Scharre
Published 18 Jan 2023

Horowitz et al., Artificial Intelligence and International Security (Center for a New American Security, July 10, 2018), https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/artificial-intelligence-and-international-security. 5More than fifty countries: Daniel Zhang et al., The AI Index 2021 Annual Report (Stanford, CA: AI Index Steering Committee, March 2021), 153–164, https://aiindex.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021-AI-Index-Report_Master.pdf. 5500 Chinese military scientists: Alex Joske, Picking Flowers, Making Honey: The Chinese Military’s Collaboration with Foreign Universities (Australian Strategic Policy Institute, October 2018), 8–9, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/picking-flowers-making-honey. 5most highly valued AI start-ups: “The 10 Biggest Artificial Intelligence Startups in The World,” Nanalyze.com, June 6, 2018, https://www.nanalyze.com/2018/06/10-biggest-artificial-intelligence-startups; “World Top 30 Best-Funded AI Startups 2020,” Disfold, July 9, 2021, https://disfold.com/top-ai-startups/; “The 25 Most-Funded AI (Artificial Intelligence) Startups,” GrowthList, February 24, 2022, https://growthlist.co/ai-funded-startups/. 5SenseTime: Scott Murdoch and Kane Wu, “SenseTime Shares Jump as Much as 23% on Debut after $740 mln Hong Kong IPO,” Reuters, December 30, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/technology/sensetime-shares-open-up-16-hong-kong-debut-2021-12-30/. 5ByteDance: Emma Lee, “ByteDance Becomes World’s Largest Unicorn with $353 Billion Valuation: Hurun Report,” technode, December 20, 2021, https://technode.com/2021/12/20/bytedance-becomes-worlds-largest-unicorn-with-353-billion-valuation-hurun-report/; Roger Chen and Rui Ma, “How ByteDance Became the World’s Most Valuable Startup,” February 24, 2022, https://hbr.org/2022/02/how-bytedance-became-the-worlds-most-valuable-startup. 5SenseTime and Megvii: “Top 19 Facial Recognition Startups,” AI Startups (website), updated September 13, 2021, https://www.ai-startups.org/top/facial_recognition/. 6more than half of the world’s surveillance cameras: Liza Lin and Newley Purnell, “A World with a Billion Cameras Watching You Is Just Around the Corner,” Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-billion-surveillance-cameras-forecast-to-be-watching-within-two-years-11575565402?

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Any Chinese company is ultimately subject to the Chinese Community Party’s direction, through both legal and extralegal means. If the CCP demands that they hand over data or censor content, ByteDance, like any other Chinese company, must comply. ByteDance can contest U.S. government demands in an independent judiciary in the United States—as well as in the court of public opinion—but they have no such recourse in China. In 2018, after pressure from government regulators, Zhang Yiming, then-CEO of ByteDance, issued a public apology letter in which he affirmed his fealty to Xi Jinping thought and stated that “technology must be led by the socialist core value system.”

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Tencent, “Tencent Announces 2020 Third Quarter Results,” news release, Hong Kong, November 12, 2020, https://static.www.tencent.com/uploads/2020/11/12/4c2090d5f6f00fd90ddc9bbd9a1415d1.pdf. 1462.3 million active users in the United States: Jeanne Whalen, “Chinese Censorship Invades the U.S. via WeChat,” Washington Post, January 7, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/07/wechat-censorship-china-us-ban/. 146TikTok: Yingzhi Yang, “Tik Tok Hits 500 Million Global Monthly Active Users as China Social Media Video Craze Continues,” South China Morning Post, July 17, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2155580/tik-tok-hits-500-million-global-monthly-active-users-china-social-media-video; Sarah Perez, “TikTok Surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat & YouTube in Downloads Last Month,” TechCrunch, November 2, 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/02/tiktok-surpassed-facebook-instagram-snapchat-youtube-in-downloads-last-month/. 146India, the United States, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, and Europe: Debra Aho Williamson, “TikTok Users Around the World 2020,” eMarketer, December 14, 2020, https://www.emarketer.com/content/tiktok-users-around-world-2020. 146nearly 700 million users globally: Alex Sherman, “TikTok Reveals Detailed User Numbers for the First Time,” CNBC, August 24, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/24/tiktok-reveals-us-global-user-growth-numbers-for-first-time.html. 147Douyin: Yingzhi Yang and Brenda Goh, “ByteDance’s Chinese Version of TikTok Hits 600 Million Daily Users,” Reuters, September 15, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bytedance/bytedances-chinese-version-of-tiktok-hits-600-million-daily-users-idUSKBN2660P4. 147national security risks of a Chinese-owned social media app: Tom Cotton, Senator for Arkansas, “Cotton, Schumer Request Assessment of National Security Risks Posed by China-Owned Video-Sharing Platform, TikTok, a Potential Counterintelligence Threat with Over 110 Million Downloads in U.S., Alone,” news release, October 24, 2019, https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-schumer-request-assessment-of-national-security-risks-posed-by-china-owned-video-sharing-platform-tiktok-a-potential-counterintelligence-threat-with-over-110-million-downloads-in-us-alone. 147India banned TikTok: “Government Bans 59 Mobile Apps Which Are Prejudicial to Sovereignty and Integrity of India, Defence of India, Security of State and Public Order,” Ministry of Electronics & IT, Government of India, June 29, 2020, https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power
by Jacob Helberg
Published 11 Oct 2021

One security researcher found that TikTok transmits an “abnormal” volume of information to its servers, as much as half a megabyte—or 125 pages of typed data—in less than 10 seconds.96 Researchers have also discovered that TikTok was accessing the contents of smartphone clipboards—where users might paste sensitive information like passwords—every few seconds, which one Israeli researcher calls “very concerning and very rare.”97 These revelations come in spite of a number of technical steps the app’s developers appear to have taken to make it difficult for researchers to determine what information it’s vacuuming up.98 In June 2021, a group of former TikTok employees reportedly said “the boundaries between TikTok and ByteDance were so blurry as to be almost nonexistent.”99 Alarmingly, one employee claimed that ByteDance employees “are able to access U.S. user data.”100 On top of the data TikTok collects is what it does—or doesn’t—display. TikTok professes to be uncomfortable with political content, which has led the app allegedly to censor or flag clips featuring everything from Make America Great Again hats to #BlackLivesMatter content.101 TikTok has reportedly removed videos of Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,102 and content critical of the government’s treatment of Uyghurs.103 One young woman cleverly circumvented censors with a series of viral “makeup tutorials,” in which she begins by offering tips to getting long eyelashes before pivoting to educate viewers about the plight of the Uyghurs.104 Conversely, the app seemingly privileges pro-China content, which has even led teens in America to attempt to boost their profiles by posting tongue-in-cheek videos praising President Xi.

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In August 2020, President Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—which allows the president to regulate international commerce in the event of an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States”—to block any transactions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance (or with WeChat).114 In response, TikTok promptly sued the Trump administration.115 TikTok’s CEO stepped down after just four months on the job. “The Clock Is Ticking on TikTok,” delighted headline writers proclaimed.116 The following month, President Trump announced that he had approved a deal allowing Oracle and Walmart to acquire ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok. Questions remained, however, over the fluid and confusing terms of the deal.117 “This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation,” a draft Walmart press release stated.

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referringSource=articleShare. 2 Emma Graham-Harrison, “China’s Communist party ran campaign to discredit BBC, thinktank finds,” The Guardian, March 4, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/chinas-communist-party-ran-campaign-to-discredit-bbc-thinktank-finds. 3 Ibid. 4 Shen Lu, “I helped build ByteDance’s censorship machine,” Protocol, February 18, 2021, https://www.protocol.com/china/i-built-bytedance-censorship-machine?utm_campaign=post-teaser&utm_content=8gi0rq1u. 5 Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back (New York: Penguin Random House, 2018), 4 6 Amy Thomson and Stephanie Bodoni, “Google CEO Thinks AI Will Be More Profound Change Than Fire,” Bloomberg Quint, January 22, 2020, https://www.bloombergquint.com/davos-world-economic-forum-2020/google-ceo-thinks-ai-is-more-profound-than-fire. 7 Hal Brands, “China’s Foreign Policy Weapons: Technology, Coercion, Corruption,” Bloomberg, January 24, 2021, bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-25/china-s-geopolitical-weapons-technology-coercion-corruption. 8 Rob Wile, “A Venture Capital Firm Just Named an Algorithm to Its Board of Directors—Here’s What It Actually Does,” Business Insider, May 13, 2014, https://www.businessinsider.com/vital-named-to-board-2014-5. 9 Lee, AI Superpowers, e-book, 36. 10 Pedro Domingos, The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 10. 11 Lee, AI Superpowers, e-book, 8. 12 “Once again, a neural net tries to name cats,” AI Weirdness, https://aiweirdness.com/post/185339301987/once-again-a-neural-net-tries-to-name-cats. 13 Miles Brundage, The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation, Arxiv, February 2010, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07228.pdf. 14 “Vision: Transform the DoD Through Artificial Intelligence,” U.S.

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley
by Atsuo Inoue
Published 18 Nov 2021

In 2018, Son introduced Claure to a 35-year-old Chinese entrepreneur by the name of Zhang Yiming, the CEO of ByteDance, although Claure could not really grasp what Son meant when he described Zhang as the head of a ‘new media company’. ByteDance operated TikTok, a service where hundreds of thousands of people could record and upload video content, with the algorithm showing users those it thinks they would like to see. Users would spend all day watching videos, and the products featured in the adverts between videos were selling quite well. Son told Claure that TikTok was the future of media and e-commerce, to which his counterpart chuckled, ‘Masa, you are always dreaming.’ ‘Bytedance and TikTok, in my opinion, will be one of the world’s most valuable companies’ Marcelo recalls.

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Marcelo Claure believes investing in these types of platforms has been a good decision. ‘I think it is very unfortunate that the geopolitical wars between the China and the US can somehow potentially damage an incredible company like ByteDance. But, there will always be a solution because the technology, the company and the connectivity with people is so powerful that these are just obstacles that get in the middle. I have no doubt that ByteDance will be an incredibly powerful company, because it has the ability to deliver the news and the content that you want. ‘Compare this model to the New York Times website where everyone is reading the same type of news – there is an absence of personalisation.

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WeWork 2.0 refers to the phase where the brand becomes a business solutions provider, offering marketing, accounting and insurance services to companies, providing users with an environment where all they have to do is focus on their core business. WeWork continues to evolve, with 70 per cent of the world’s largest companies – such as ByteDance, Google, Facebook and Goldman Sachs – having accessed its services. In any sector or business, being at the right place at the right time – random acts of fate, essentially – plays an important role in success and with the Covid-19 pandemic and social-distancing requirements companies have been forced into a rethink of population density within the workplace, with some concluding agreements with WeWork to accommodate their employees.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
by Matthew Ball
Published 18 Jul 2022

In early August, South Korean gaming giant Krafton, maker of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (also known as PUBG) completed its IPO, the second largest in the country’s history. Krafton’s investment bankers made sure to tell would-be investors that the company would also be a global leader in the Metaverse. In the ensuing months, Chinese internet giants Alibaba and ByteDance, the parent company of the global social network TikTok, both began to register various Metaverse trademarks and acquire various VR and 3D-related start-ups. Krafton, meanwhile, committed publicly to launching a “PUBG Metaverse.” The Metaverse captured more than the imagination of techno-capitalists and sci-fi fans.

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In August 2021, Match Group, the owner of dating sites such as Tinder, Hinge, and OKCupid, said that its services would soon receive “augmented features, self-expression tools, conversational AI and a number of what we would consider metaverse elements, which have the element to transform the online meeting and getting-to-know-each-other process.” No further details were provided, though presumably its Metaverse initiatives will involve virtual goods, currencies, avatars, and environments that facilitate romance. After Chinese megacorporations Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance began positioning themselves as leaders in the vaguely defined but seemingly imminent Metaverse, their domestic competitors stumbled as they sought to explain how they, too, would become pioneers in this multi-trillion-dollar future. For instance, the head of investor relations at NetEase, another Chinese gaming giant, said on the company’s Q3 2021 earnings call that “The metaverse is indeed the new buzzword everywhere today.

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“Layer 2,” 211–12, 230 in the Metaverse, 231–35 non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 216–22 obstacles to, 230–31 as “permissionless,” 209–12, 214, 218, 222, 288 public vs. private, 211n as self-sustaining, 209–10 sidechains, 212, 230 “smart contracts,” 226–30, 300 Solana blockchain, 211, 230 sustainability in, 222–23 as “trustless,” 209–12, 214, 218, 222, 227, 231, 288 as a virtual vending machine, 225–27 see also cryptocurrency; non-fungible tokens (NFTs) Bloomberg, xii, xiii, 227 Blue Origin, 4 Bluetooth, 143, 161–62, 189, 196 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), 53, 86 Bored Apes Yacht Club, 218, 265 BP, 166 Bradbury, Ray, 5 brain-to-computer interfaces (BCIs), xi, 154–55, 204–5 Branson, Richard, xi broadband operators, 15–6, 38, 49, 271 Broadcom, 212, 243 Bumble, 215 Bush, Vannevar, ix–xi, 4, 7, 305 Buterin, Vitalik, 210, 228 ByteDance, xiii, 19. See also TikTok Call of Duty, 29–30 Call of Duty Mobile, 32, 190, 201, 303 Call of Duty Warzone, 32, 91, 146–47, 179 Candy Crush, 82, 116, 263 Capcom’s Street Fighter, 139 Carmack, John, 21, 57, 94, 239 Carnegie Institution of Washington, ix casual gaming, 80, 255 CCP Games, 45–46, 55–56, 90 central processing units (CPUs), 36–37, 89, 98–101, 105 in consoles, 174 required by the Metaverse, 174, 223 in smartphones, 131, 148–49, 159, 243, 245 Chaturbate, 261 China, xiii–xiv gaming in, xiii–xiv, 115 megacorporations of, xii–xiii, 19–20 Minecraft tribute during COVID-19, 10 regionalization of the internet, 62, 302–4 satellite capabilities of, 156n Tencent WeChat’s payment rails, 205–6 see also Alibaba; Tencent; TikTok China Mobile, 212 CHIPS (Clearing House Interbank Payment System), 168–70 Citigroup, 166 “CityDAO,” 228 Civilization V, 181 Cline, Ernest, 21, 144 cloud game streaming, 77–78, 82, 98–99, 112, 195–96, 197, 198–99, 203, 204, 281n, 300.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
by Kai-Fu Lee
Published 14 Sep 2018

Revealingly, it was Robert Mercer, founder of Cambridge Analytica, who reportedly coined the famous phrase, “There’s no data like more data.” ALGORITHMS AND EDITORS First-wave AI has given birth to entirely new, AI-driven internet companies. China’s leader in this category is Jinri Toutiao (meaning “today’s headlines”; English name: “ByteDance”). Founded in 2012, Toutiao is sometimes called “the BuzzFeed of China” because both sites serve as hubs for timely viral stories. But virality is where the similarities stop. BuzzFeed is built on a staff of young editors with a knack for cooking up original content. Toutiao’s “editors” are algorithms.

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See superintelligence Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 88–89 Austria, 159 automation in factories and farms, 20, 165–66, 167–68 Fink’s letter and, 215, 216 intelligent vs. physical, 166, 167 jobs at risk of displacement by, 157–60, 162, 164, 165–67, 204 autonomous AI, 105–6, 128–36 Avenue of the Entrepreneurs (Chuangye Dajie), 53, 54, 61–62, 64, 68 B Baidu AI City and, 134 Chinese startups and, 58 as dominant AI player, 83, 91, 93 Google compared to, 37, 38, 109 Microsoft Research Asia and, 89 Ng, Andrew, and, 44 self-driving cars and, 131, 135 success of, 40, 66 Bain and Company, 164–65 banking industry, 110, 113, 116 BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), 58 battery approach, 95 beetle-like robots, 129–30 Beijing, China, 2–4, 28, 29, 51–52, 77–78, 99, 144–45 Bengio, Yoshua, 86 Bezos, Jeff, 33 Bhutan, 229 bicycle sharing, 77–78, 79 Bitmain, 97 blue-collar workers, 128–29, 165–66, 167, 168 Bostrom, Nick, 141, 142, 143 Brazil, 137, 138 Brin, Sergei, 33 Brooks, Rodney, 143 Brynjolfsson, Eric, 148–49, 150, 151 Buddhism, 187–90 business AI, 105–6, 110–17, 136 BuzzFeed, 40, 108, 109 ByteDance. See Toutiao (news platform) C Cambricon Technologies, 97 Cambridge Analytica, 107–8, 125 Canada AI superpowers and, 169 birth of AI and, 11, 13–14 business AI and, 111 new world order and, 20 volunteerism in, 229 cancer AI and diagnosis of, 167 Lee’s diagnosis with, 176–77, 181–83, 225 lymphoma, 176, 183, 190–92, 194 Care.com, 213 Careem, 137 care work and social investment stipend, 221, 222 Chan, Connie, 70 chess, 4–5 China AI, perspective on, and jobs, 202–3 AI deployment by, 18–19, 82–84, 132–33, 154–55 AI fever in, x, 1–6 conformity and deference to authority, cultural propensity for, 66 copycat era in.

The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors
by Spencer Jakab
Published 1 Feb 2022

Video and images rather than boring old text seem to be the preferred medium: the largest source by far was YouTube, owned by Google, with 41 percent having consulted it. TikTok and Instagram were in second and third place, with 24 percent and 21 percent having consulted those sources, respectively. Then came Facebook groups and Twitter, with Reddit bringing up the rear at 13 percent.[13] TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, is popular with the younger side of the young cohort and had amassed nearly 7.5 billion views of videos with hashtags such as #FinTok and #investing by July 2021.[14] Influencers on the platform can make serious money no matter how good or bad their advice as long as they get views and followers.

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Ackman, William, 56, 116–17, 253 addictive behavior, 31 see also gambling Ailes, Roger, 156 All of Us Financial, 209 Alphacution Research Conservatory, 202 Alphaville, 78 Amazon, 26, 52, 89, 98, 133, 160 AMC, 39, 93, 125, 127, 132, 169, 188, 220–21, 224–26 Americans for Tax Fairness, 72 Andreessen, Marc, 24, 161 Animal House, xv Apes Together Strong, 142, 230 Apple, 25, 46, 52, 98, 133, 178 apps, 26 see also smartphone trading apps arbitrage, 84 Aron, Adam, 225 Attack of the Clones, xiv, 262 Attal, Alan, 114 Atwater, Peter, 59, 101, 123, 214 Axonic Capital, 103 B baby boomers, 71 Bale, Christian, 88 Bank of America, 56, 59 Barber, Brad, 235, 238, 243 Barnes & Noble, 26 Barron’s, 128, 254 Barstool Sports, 57 Bartiromo, Cole, 163 baseball playoffs, 19 BB Liquidating Inc., 133 bear markets, 52, 59, 69, 70, 72, 255 Bear Traps Report, The, 99 Bed Bath & Beyond, 115, 133, 188 behavioral economics, 51, 62, 255 Belfort, Jordan, 118, 148, 217 Benchmark Company, 128 Berkshire Hathaway, 240, 259 Bernanke, Ben, 10 Bessembinder, Hendrik, 243 Best Buy, 130 Betterment, 27, 54, 183, 193, 242, 257, 258, 261 Bezos, Jeff, 89, 160 Bhagavad Gita, 83 Bhatt, Baiju, 23–25, 49, 90, 219 Biden, Joe, 192 big banks, 202, 219–20 Big Money Thinks Small (Tillinghast), 222 Big Short, The (Lewis), 16, 88 Billions, 218 Black, Fischer, 101, 102, 108 BlackBerry, 93, 115, 133, 169, 178, 188, 224 black swan events, 5 blank check firms (SPACs; special purpose acquisition companies), 64–65, 155, 158, 164, 178, 194, 246, 247 Blankfein, Lloyd, 9 Block, Carson, 158 Blockbuster Video, x–xi, 15, 93, 133, 178 Blodget, Henry, 90, 156 Bloomberg, 126, 181 Bloomberg Intelligence, 159 Bloomberg News, 208 Bogle, John, 4, 37, 254 Bolton, Michael, 196, 207 bonds, 58 bots, 163–66, 229–30 Box, 26 Broderick, John, 223 Bronte Capital, 181 Buckingham Strategic Wealth, 62 Buffet, Warren, x, 52–53, 57, 88, 96, 174–75, 183, 236, 240–41, 245, 259 bull markets, 27, 28, 41, 52, 59, 62, 156, 159, 175, 179, 183, 185, 217, 234, 252, 256 Burry, Michael, 16–17, 52, 88–89, 91, 93, 153, 185, 222 Business Insider, 220 ByteDance, 162 C call options, 15–16, 43–44, 68, 99–101, 104–8, 138, 147, 169–70, 216, 227–28 covered calls, 102 Robinhood and, 97–98 Tesla, 103 Carlson, Tucker, 189 Cashin, Art, 240 Casten, Sean, 5, 6 Cato Institute, 14 CBS News, 165 Cecchini, Peter, 103, 228 Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, 14 Center for Responsive Politics, 239 Change.org, 120 Chanos, Jim, 77, 84–86, 105, 119, 125, 148, 186, 236 Charles Schwab, 24, 25, 33–35, 49, 50, 59, 66, 70, 139, 200, 202, 234, 236, 245, 257, 259 Charlotte Hornets, 8, 111, 246 Chartered Financial Analyst designation, 18 Chen, Steve, 162 Chewy, 89, 114, 128 Chu, Sandra, 37, 165, 166 Chukumba, Anthony, 128, 147 Churchill Capital IV, 164 Ciara, 64 Cihlar, Rachael, 142–43 Citadel, 8–11, 33, 35, 49, 55, 104, 106–8, 140–41, 146, 178, 189, 198, 202, 206–8, 218, 231 Citron Research, 118, 120, 121, 123, 124 clearinghouses, 187, 203–5 Clubhouse (app), 60, 161–62 Clubhouse Media Group, 60, 161–62 CNBC, 98, 111, 117, 119, 128, 152, 156, 157, 170, 180, 191–92, 240 CNN, 104 Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 160 Code, The (O’Mara), 38 Cohen, Abby Joseph, 254 Cohen, Ryan, 89–90, 154, 221, 222 GameStop and, 90–95, 112–14, 128, 130, 133, 148, 154, 223–24 Cohen, Steven A., 7–9, 110, 146, 161, 197, 218 Cohen, Ted, 89 Colbert, Stephen, 197 college endowments, 77, 245 Comeau, F.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab
Published 7 Jan 2021

But they are increasingly eclipsed by new types of pilot zones: those of science parks, start-up incubators, and innovation hubs. There, tech start-ups and innovators are incubating products for China's increasingly tech-savvy and wealthy consumers and businesses. Shenzhen again is a leader in this field, but other locations, including Beijing's Zhongguancun neighborhood in the Haidian district (where ByteDance, the creator of TikTok, was launched), Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, and others are also contenders. The Price of Progress If you cross the Sham Chen River today, you enter a concrete jungle, the sprawling metropolis that is Shenzhen. But on a hot day in summer, you will hardly see more people in the street than you might have in the sleepy fishing village that preceded it.

…

See AT&T Belt and Road Initiative (China), 100 Benioff, Marc, 164, 201, 207, 207–208, 210, 211, 212–213 Berkshire Hathaway Energy (US), 218 Berlin Wall (1961–1989), 75–77, 88, 89 Berlusconi, Silvio, 83 Better Life Index (OECD), 190 Bezos, Jeff, 132 Bhutto, Bhenazir, 245 Bhutto, Bilawal, 245 Big Four (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC), 215, 250 Big Tech Benioff's call for European regulators to break up, 211 lacking core values of the past, 208 monopolies of, 127–129, 140–142, 145, 211 shift toward stakeholder model approach by, 201–202 tech unicorns of ASEAN nations, 66, 67fig widening inequalities, 210 See also Silicon Valley; US economy The Billionaire Raj (Crabtree), 40 Biodiversity Amazon Rainforest, 107 Anthropocene label on human responsibility for, 161 fossil fuels accelerating loss of, 49 Global Risks Report (2020) on losses in, 52 looking for solutions to stop loss of, 165 Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) report [2019], 51 Bismarck, Otto von, 133 Bivens, Josh, 122 Black Lives Matter, 186, 243, 246, 250 BlackRock (US), 164, 215, 216 Bloomberg, 163, 177 BMW (German manufacturer), 9 BNY–Mellon, 132 Bolivia, 225 Bolsonaro, Jair, 84, 85 Bombardier (Canada), 142 Booking (US), 97 Boston Consulting Group, 167 BP Statistical Review of World Energy (2019), 49 BP Statistical Review of World Energy (2020), 63 Brandenburg Gate (East Berlin), 76–77, 79, 89–90 Brazil dropping voter turnout for elections in, 188 erosion of political center in, 84, 85 income inequality in, 40 mining exports to China, 64 “21st century socialism” of, 225 Brexit vote (2016), 80 Brookings Institution, 70 Brooks, Robin, 27 Bruegel Institute, 36, 37, 112 Bryan, William Jennings, 133 Brynjolfsson, Eric, 143 B Team Responsible Tax Principles, 205 Buffet, Warren, 218 Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD). See West Germany BYD (“Build Your Dreams”), 60 ByteDance, 61 C Caballero, Sandra, 163–164 California efforts to reduce emissions in, 167 Gig Workers Rising in, 241 Proposition C proposing tax to help the homeless, 212–213 rejected Proposition (2020) designating gig workers as employees, 187–188 Rideshare Drivers United advocacy group, 187 See also United States Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 38 Capitalism the golden age (1945–early 1970s) of, 8 history of medieval, 131 ideological battle between communism and, 7 Marc Benioff's speech (2020) on, 164, 211 productivity growth during golden age of, 33–34 shareholder, 171–172, 173 state, 171, 172–173, 193 See also Stakeholder capitalism Capitalism, Alone (Milanovic), 173 Carbon footprints finding hope for lowering, 159 no magic formula for lowering, 157 Paris Agreement aim to lower, 150, 165, 182, 183, 189, 198 urbanization and increased, 159–160 Carnegie, Andrew, 132 Carnegie Hall, 132 Carney, Mark, 162 Carroll, Aaron E., 231 Case, Anne, 42 Castro, Fidel, 76 Central European University, 113 Central European Warsaw Pact, 77 CEO Climate Leaders, 167 Checks and balances, 185, 193–198 Chevron, 134 Chiang Kai-shek, 56 Chicago School, 14, 136, 140 Chile copper exports, 64 China (People's Republic) age/gender representation political issues in, 188 becoming an upper-middle-income country, 36 Chinese Dream in, 184 city of Shenzhen of, 55, 57–61 continued trust in public institutions in, 196 demographic changes in, 161 one-child policy of, 161 People's Republic established by CPC, 56–57 Sham Chun River in, 55, 61 World Inequality Lab (WIL) on rising inequality in, 72–73fig World Trade Organization membership of, 18 WTO membership of, 18, 59, 64 ZF Drivetech Co.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham
Published 27 Jan 2021

But they are increasingly eclipsed by new types of pilot zones: those of science parks, start-up incubators, and innovation hubs. There, tech start-ups and innovators are incubating products for China's increasingly tech-savvy and wealthy consumers and businesses. Shenzhen again is a leader in this field, but other locations, including Beijing's Zhongguancun neighborhood in the Haidian district (where ByteDance, the creator of TikTok, was launched), Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, and others are also contenders. The Price of Progress If you cross the Sham Chen River today, you enter a concrete jungle, the sprawling metropolis that is Shenzhen. But on a hot day in summer, you will hardly see more people in the street than you might have in the sleepy fishing village that preceded it.

…

See AT&T Belt and Road Initiative (China), 100 Benioff, Marc, 164, 201, 207, 207–208, 210, 211, 212–213 Berkshire Hathaway Energy (US), 218 Berlin Wall (1961–1989), 75–77, 88, 89 Berlusconi, Silvio, 83 Better Life Index (OECD), 190 Bezos, Jeff, 132 Bhutto, Bhenazir, 245 Bhutto, Bilawal, 245 Big Four (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC), 215, 250 Big Tech Benioff's call for European regulators to break up, 211 lacking core values of the past, 208 monopolies of, 127–129, 140–142, 145, 211 shift toward stakeholder model approach by, 201–202 tech unicorns of ASEAN nations, 66, 67fig widening inequalities, 210 See also Silicon Valley; US economy The Billionaire Raj (Crabtree), 40 Biodiversity Amazon Rainforest, 107 Anthropocene label on human responsibility for, 161 fossil fuels accelerating loss of, 49 Global Risks Report (2020) on losses in, 52 looking for solutions to stop loss of, 165 Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) report [2019], 51 Bismarck, Otto von, 133 Bivens, Josh, 122 Black Lives Matter, 186, 243, 246, 250 BlackRock (US), 164, 215, 216 Bloomberg, 163, 177 BMW (German manufacturer), 9 BNY–Mellon, 132 Bolivia, 225 Bolsonaro, Jair, 84, 85 Bombardier (Canada), 142 Booking (US), 97 Boston Consulting Group, 167 BP Statistical Review of World Energy (2019), 49 BP Statistical Review of World Energy (2020), 63 Brandenburg Gate (East Berlin), 76–77, 79, 89–90 Brazil dropping voter turnout for elections in, 188 erosion of political center in, 84, 85 income inequality in, 40 mining exports to China, 64 “21st century socialism” of, 225 Brexit vote (2016), 80 Brookings Institution, 70 Brooks, Robin, 27 Bruegel Institute, 36, 37, 112 Bryan, William Jennings, 133 Brynjolfsson, Eric, 143 B Team Responsible Tax Principles, 205 Buffet, Warren, 218 Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD). See West Germany BYD (“Build Your Dreams”), 60 ByteDance, 61 C Caballero, Sandra, 163–164 California efforts to reduce emissions in, 167 Gig Workers Rising in, 241 Proposition C proposing tax to help the homeless, 212–213 rejected Proposition (2020) designating gig workers as employees, 187–188 Rideshare Drivers United advocacy group, 187 See also United States Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 38 Capitalism the golden age (1945–early 1970s) of, 8 history of medieval, 131 ideological battle between communism and, 7 Marc Benioff's speech (2020) on, 164, 211 productivity growth during golden age of, 33–34 shareholder, 171–172, 173 state, 171, 172–173, 193 See also Stakeholder capitalism Capitalism, Alone (Milanovic), 173 Carbon footprints finding hope for lowering, 159 no magic formula for lowering, 157 Paris Agreement aim to lower, 150, 165, 182, 183, 189, 198 urbanization and increased, 159–160 Carnegie, Andrew, 132 Carnegie Hall, 132 Carney, Mark, 162 Carroll, Aaron E., 231 Case, Anne, 42 Castro, Fidel, 76 Central European University, 113 Central European Warsaw Pact, 77 CEO Climate Leaders, 167 Checks and balances, 185, 193–198 Chevron, 134 Chiang Kai-shek, 56 Chicago School, 14, 136, 140 Chile copper exports, 64 China (People's Republic) age/gender representation political issues in, 188 becoming an upper-middle-income country, 36 Chinese Dream in, 184 city of Shenzhen of, 55, 57–61 continued trust in public institutions in, 196 demographic changes in, 161 one-child policy of, 161 People's Republic established by CPC, 56–57 Sham Chun River in, 55, 61 World Inequality Lab (WIL) on rising inequality in, 72–73fig World Trade Organization membership of, 18 WTO membership of, 18, 59, 64 ZF Drivetech Co.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka
Published 15 Jan 2024

This was the algorithmic feed at work, sorting my preferences into categories of taste and then serving up those subjects, over and over. It was the most personalized and accurate feed I had ever used; as such, it felt both pleasurable and horrifying. TikTok is run by a Chinese company called ByteDance and has a Chinese equivalent, Douyin, but it didn’t launch in the United States until 2018. That’s when ByteDance acquired another Chinese social network called Musically, which had launched in 2014 and was best known for teenagers posting lip-synching music videos, with a pre-established strong user base in the United States. Musically merged into TikTok, which became popular for its quick video clips of music or dance, a holdover from its predecessor.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It
by Azeem Azhar
Published 6 Sep 2021

By the summer of 2019, more than 20 per cent of Koreans had done so.14 And as soon as we get to grips with one fast-moving exponential age product, another shows up. Take TikTok, a social network for funny videos. It went from an unheard-of service to the most downloaded app in the world in a matter of months. And with that growth came an unparalleled flow of sales. ByteDance, Tiktok’s parent company, reported sales of $7 billion in 2018; two years later its revenues had more than quintupled. For comparison, just five years earlier, Facebook had exceeded the same milestone of $7 billion in revenue; in its next two years, its revenues had only tripled.15 This increasing speed is the legacy of Moore’s Law.

…

Abu Dhabi, UAE, 250 Acemoglu, Daron, 139 Acorn Computers, 16, 21 Ada Lovelace Institute, 8 additive manufacturing, 43–4, 46, 48, 88, 166, 169, 175–9 Adidas, 176 advertising, 94, 112–13, 116, 117, 227–8 AdWords, 227 aeroponics, 171 Afghanistan, 38, 205 Africa, 177–8, 182–3 Aftenposten, 216 Age of Spiritual Machines, The (Kurzweil), 77 agglomeration, 181 Air Jordan sneakers, 102 Airbnb, 102, 188 aircraft, 49–50 Alexandria, Egypt, 180 AlexNet, 33 Algeciras, HMM 61 Alibaba, 48, 102, 108, 111, 122 Alipay, 111 Allen, Robert, 80 Alphabet, 65, 113–14, 131, 163 aluminium, 170 Amazon, 65, 67–8, 94, 104, 108, 112, 122, 135–6 Alexa, 25, 117 automation, 135–6, 137, 139, 154 collective bargaining and, 163 Covid-19 pandemic (2020–21), 135–6 drone sales, 206 Ecobee and, 117 Go stores, 136 Kiva Systems acquisition (2012), 136 management, 154 Mechanical Turk, 142–3, 144, 145 monopoly, 115, 117, 122 Prime, 136, 154 R&D, 67–8, 113 Ami Pro, 99 Amiga, 16 Anarkali, Lahore, 102 anchoring bias, 74 Android, 85, 94, 117, 120 Angola, 186 Ant Brain, 111 Ant Financial, 111–12 antitrust laws, 114, 119–20 Apache HTTP Server, 242 Appelbaum, Binyamin, 63 Apple, 47, 62, 65, 85, 94, 104, 108, 112, 122 App Store, 105, 112, 115 chip production, 113 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 222–3 data collection, 228 iOS, 85 iPhone, 47, 62, 85, 94, 105 media subscription, 112 watches, 112 APT33 hacker group, 198 Aral, Sinan, 238 Aramco, 108, 198 Armenia, 206–7 Arthur, William Brian, 110, 123 artificial intelligence, 4, 8, 31–4, 54, 88, 113, 249 academic brain drain, 118 automation, 125–42 data and, 31–2, 142 data network effect, 106–7 drone technology and, 208, 214 education and, 88 employment and, 126–7 healthcare and, 88, 103 job interviews and, 153 regulation of, 187, 188 arXiv, 59 Asana, 151 Asian Development Bank, 193 Aslam, Yaseen, 148 Assembly Bill 5 (California, 2019), 148 asymmetric conflict, 206 AT&T, 76, 100 Atari, 16 attack surfaces, 192–3, 196, 209, 210 Aurora, 141 Australia, 102, 197 automation, 125–42 autonomous weapons, 208, 214 Azerbaijan, 173, 206–7 Ballmer, Steve, 85 Bangladesh, 175 banking, 122, 237 Barcelona, Catalonia, 188 Barlow, John Perry, 184 Barrons, Richard, 195, 211 Bartlett, Albert, 73 batteries, 40, 51, 53–4, 250, 251 Battle of the Overpass (1937), 162 Bayraktar TB2 drone, 206 Bee Gees, 72 Bekar, Clifford, 45 Bell Labs, 18 Bell Telephone Company, 100 Benioff, Marc, 108–9 Bentham, Jeremy, 152 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 4 Bermuda, 119 Berners-Lee, Timothy, 55, 100, 160, 239 Bessen, James, 46 Bezos, Jeffrey, 135–6 BGI, 41 Biden, Joseph, 225 Bing, 107 biological weapons, 207, 213 biology, 10, 39, 40–42, 44, 46 genome sequencing, 40–41, 90, 229, 234, 245–7, 250, 252 synthetic biology, 42, 46, 69, 174, 245, 250 biopolymers, 42 bits, 18 Black Death (1346–53), 12 BlackBerry, 120 Blair, Tony, 81 Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, 22 blitzscaling, 110 Blockbuster, 138 BMW, 177 Boeing, 51, 236 Bol.com, 103 Bollywood, 181 Boole, George, 18 Bork, Robert, 114–15, 117, 119 Bosworth, Andrew, 233 Boyer, Pascal, 75 Boyle, James, 234 BP, 92, 158 brain, 77 Braudel, Fernand, 75 Brave, 242 Brazil, 202 Bremmer, Ian, 187 Bretton Woods Conference (1944), 87 Brexit (2016–20), 6, 168 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 87, 129, 191 Brookings Institution, 130 BT, 123 Bulgaria, 145 Bundy, Willard Legrand, 149 Busan, South Korea, 56 business, 82, 92–124 diminishing returns to scale, 93, 108 economic dynamism and, 117 economies of scale, 50, 92 growth, 110–13 increasing returns to scale, 108–10 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156, 175, 180 linear value chains, 101 market share, 93–6, 111 monopolies, 10, 71, 94, 95, 114–24 network effect, 96–101 platform model, 101–3, 219 re-localisation, 11, 166–79, 187, 252, 255 state-sized companies, 11, 67 superstar companies, 10, 94–6 supply chains, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175, 187, 252, 255 taxation of, 96, 118–19 Butler, Nick, 179 ByteDance, 28 C40 initiative, 189 Cambridge University, 127, 188 cancer, 57–8, 127 Capitol building storming (2021), 225 car industry, 93 carbon emissions, 35, 90, 251 Carlaw, Kenneth, 45 Carnegie, Andrew, 112 Carnegie Mellon University, 131 Catholic Church, 83, 88 censorship, 216–17, 224–6, 236 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 194 Cerebras, 34 cervical smears, 57–8 chemical weapons, 207, 213 Chen, Brian, 228 chewing gum, 78 Chicago Pile-1 reactor, 64 Chile, 170 China automation in, 127, 137 brainwave reading in, 152 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 245 drone technology in, 207 Great Firewall, 186, 201 Greater Bay Area, 182 horizontal expansion in, 111–12 manufacturing in, 176 misinformation campaigns, 203 raw materials, demand for, 178 Singles’ Day, 48 social credit systems, 230 superstar companies in, 95 US, relations with, 166 chips, 19–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 Christchurch massacre (2019), 236 Christensen, Clayton, 24 CIPD, 153 cities, 11, 75, 169, 179–84, 188, 255 Clegg, Nick, 225–6, 235 climate change, 90, 169, 187, 189, 251, 252 cloud computing, 85, 112 Cloudflare, 200 cluster bombs, 213 CNN, 185, 190 coal, 40, 65, 172 Coase, Ronald, 92 Coca-Cola, 93 code is law, 220–22, 235 cold fusion, 113–14 Cold War (1947–91), 194, 212, 213 collective bargaining, 147, 149, 154, 156, 162–5 Colombia, 145 colonialism, 167 Columbus, Christopher, 4 combination, 53–7 Comical Ali, 201 commons, 234–5, 241–3, 256 companies, see business comparative advantage, 170 complex systems, 2 compounding, 22–3, 28 CompuServe, 100 computing, 4, 10, 15–36, 44, 46, 249 artificial intelligence, 4, 8, 31–4, 54, 88 cloud computing, 85, 112 internet, 47–8, 55, 65, 84 Law of Accelerating Returns, 30–31, 33, 35 machining, 43 Moore’s Law, see Moore’s Law quantum computing, 35 transistors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52 conflict, 87, 189, 190–215 attack surfaces, 192–3, 196, 209, 210 cyberattacks, 11, 114, 140, 181, 187, 190–200, 209–14, 256 de-escalation, 212–13 drone technology, 11, 192, 204–9, 214, 256 institutional change and, 87 misinformation, 11, 191, 192, 200–204, 209, 212, 217, 225 new wars, 194 non-proliferation, 213–14 re-localisation and, 189, 193, 194, 209 consent of the networked, 223 Costco, 67 Coursera, 58 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 12–13, 59, 78–9, 131, 245–9 automation and, 127, 135, 136 cities and, 183 contact-tracing apps, 222–3 gig economy and, 146 lockdowns, 12, 152, 176, 183, 246 manufacturing and, 176 misinformation and, 202–4, 247–8 preprint servers and, 60 recession (2020–21), 178 remote working and, 146, 151, 153 supply chains and, 169, 246 vaccines, 12, 202, 211, 245–7 workplace cultures and, 151, 152 cranks, 54 credit ratings, 162, 229 critical thinking skills, 212 Croatia, 145 Crocker, David, 55 crowdsourcing, 143–4 Cuba, 203 Cuban missile crisis (1962), 99, 212 cultural lag, 85 cyberattacks, 11, 114, 140, 181, 187, 190–200, 209–14, 256 CyberPeace Institute, 214 Daniel, Simon, 173–4 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 183 Darktrace, 197 data, 8, 11, 71, 217–19, 226–31, 235, 237–42, 256 AI and, 8, 32, 33, 58, 106 compensation for, 239 commons, 242 cyberattacks and, 196 doppelgängers, 219, 226, 228, 239 interoperability and, 237–9 network effects, 106–7, 111 protection laws, 186, 226 rights, 240 Daugherty, Paul, 141 DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroe thane), 253 death benefits, 151 Dediu, Horace, 24, 30 deep learning, 32–4, 54, 58, 127 deforestation, 251 dehumanisation, 71, 154, 158 deindustrialisation, 168 Deliveroo, 154, 163 Delphi, 100 dematerialised techniques, 166, 175 Denmark, 58, 160, 199–200, 257 Deutsche Bank, 130 Diamandis, Peter, 5 Dickens, Charles, 80 digital cameras, 83–4 Digital Geneva Convention, 211 Digital Markets Act (EU, 2020), 122 digital minilateralism, 188 Digital Nations group, 188 Digital Services Act (EU, 2020), 123 diminishing returns, 93, 108 disinformation, see misinformation DoorDash, 147, 148, 248 dot-com bubble (1995–2000), 8, 108, 150 Double Irish tax loophole, 119 DoubleClick, 117 drone technology, 11, 192, 204–9, 214, 256 Dubai, UAE, 43 Duke University, 234 dystopia, 208, 230, 253 Eagan, Nicole, 197 eBay, 98, 121 Ecobee, 120 economies of scale, 50, 92 Economist, The, 8, 65, 119, 183, 239 economists, 63 Edelman, 3 education artificial intelligence and, 88 media literacy, 211–12 Egypt, 145, 186 Elance, 144 electric cars, 51, 69, 75, 173–4, 177, 250 electricity, 26, 45, 46, 54, 157, 249–50 see also energy Electronic Frontier Foundation, 184 email, 6, 55 embodied institutions, 82 employment, 10, 71, 125–65 automation, 125–42 collective bargaining, 147, 149, 154, 156, 162–5 dehumanisation and, 71, 154, 158 flexicurity, 160–61, 257 gig economy, 10, 71, 142–9, 153, 162, 164, 239, 252, 255 income inequality, 155–8, 161, 168 lump of labour fallacy, 139 management, 149–54, 158–9 protections, 85–6, 147–9 reskilling, 159–60 universal basic income (UBI), 160, 189 Enclosure, 234–5, 241 energy, 11, 37–8, 39–40, 44, 46, 172–4, 250 cold fusion, 113–14 fossil fuels, 40, 159, 172, 250 gravitational potential, 53 solar power, 37–8, 53, 65, 77, 82, 90, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250, 251 storage, 40, 53, 114, 173–4, 250, 251 wind power, 39–40, 52 Energy Vault, 53–4, 173 Engels, Friedrich, 81 Engels’ pause, 80, 81 environmental movement, 73 Epic Games, 116 estate agents, 100 Estonia, 188, 190–91, 200, 211 Etzion Airbase, Sinai Peninsula, 195 European Commission, 116, 122, 123 European Space Agency, 56 European Union, 6, 82, 147, 186, 226 Excel, 99 exogeny, 2 exponential gap, 9, 10, 67–91, 70, 89, 253 cyber security and, 193 institutions and, 9, 10, 79–88, 90 mathematical understanding and, 71–5 predictions and, 75–9 price declines and, 68–9 superstar companies and, 10, 94–124 exponential growth bias, 73 Exponential View, 8–9 externalities, 97 extremism, 232–4 ExxonMobil, 65, 92 Facebook, 27, 28, 65, 94, 104, 108, 122, 216–17, 218, 219, 221–2, 223 advertising business, 94, 228 censorship on, 216–17, 224–6, 236 collective bargaining and, 164 data collection on, 228, 239–40 extremism and, 233–4 Instagram acquisition (2012), 117, 120 integrity teams, 234 interoperability, 237–8 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 misinformation on, 201, 225 network effect and, 98, 223 Oculus acquisition (2014), 117 pay at, 156–7 Phan photo controversy (2016), 216–17, 224, 225 platform model, 101 polarisation and, 233 relationship status on, 221–2 Rohingya ethnic cleansing (2018), 224, 225 US presidential election (2016), 217 WhatsApp acquisition (2014), 117 facial recognition, 152, 208 Factory Act (UK, 1833), 81 Fairchild Semiconductor, 19, 21 fake news, 201–4 family dinners, 86 farming, 170–72, 251 Farrar, James, 148 fax machines, 97 Federal Aviation Administration (US), 236 feedback loops, 3, 13 fertilizers, 35, 90 5G, 203 Financial Conduct Authority, 122 Financial Times, 183 Finland, 160, 211–12 Fitbit, 158 Fiverr, 144 flashing of headlights, 83 flexicurity, 160, 257 flints, 42 flywheels, 54 Ford, 54, 92, 162 Ford, Gerald, 114 Ford, Henry, 54, 162 Ford, Martin, 125 Fortnite, 116 fossil fuels, 40, 159, 172 France, 100, 138, 139, 147, 163 free-market economics, 63–4 freelance work, 10, 71, 142–9 Frey, Carl, 129, 134, 141 Friedman, Milton, 63–4, 241 Friedman, Thomas, 167 FriendFeed, 238 Friendster, 26 Fudan University, 245 fund management, 132 Galilei, Galileo, 83 gaming, 86 Gates, Bill, 17, 25, 84 gender, 6 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 87 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 226 General Electric, 52 General Motors, 92, 125, 130 general purpose technologies, 10, 45–8 generative adversarial networks (GANs), 58 Geneva Conventions, 193, 199, 209 Genghis Khan, 44 GEnie, 100 genome sequencing, 40–41, 90, 229, 234, 245–7, 250, 252 Germany, 75, 134, 147 Giddens, Anthony, 82 gig economy, 10, 71, 142–9, 153, 162, 164, 239, 252, 255 Gilbreth, Lillian, 150 Ginsparg, Paul, 59 GitHub, 58, 60 GlaxoSmithKline, 229–30 global financial crisis (2007–9), 168 Global Hawk drones, 206 global positioning systems (GPS), 197 globalisation, 11, 62, 64, 156, 166, 167–71, 177, 179, 187, 193 internet and, 185 conflict and, 189, 193, 194 Glocer, Thomas, 56 Go (game), 132 GOAT, 102 Gojek, 103 Golden Triangle, 170 Goldman Sachs, 151 Goodfellow, Ian, 58 Google, 5, 35, 36, 94, 98, 104, 108, 115, 122 advertising business, 94, 112–13, 116, 117, 227 Android, 85, 94, 117, 120 chip production, 113 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 222–3 data network effect, 106–7 death benefits, 151 Double Irish tax loophole, 119 Maps, 113 quantum computing, 35 R&D, 114, 118 vertical integration, 112–13, 116 X, 114 YouTube acquisition (2006), 112, 117 Gopher, 59, 100 GPT-3, 33 Graeber, David, 133–4 Grand Bazaar, Istanbul, 102 Graphcore, 34, 35 graphics chips, 34 Grateful Dead, The, 184 gravitational potential energy, 53 gravity bombs, 195 Greater Bay Area, China, 182 Greenberg, Andy, 199 Gross, Bill, 53 Grove, Andrew, 17 GRU (Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije), 199 Guangzhou, Guangdong, 182 Guardian, 8, 125, 154, 226, 227 Guiyang, Guizhou, 166 H1N1 virus, 75 Habermas, Jürgen, 218 Hard Times (Dickens), 80 Hardin, Garrett, 241 Harop drones, 207–8 Harpy drones, 207–8 Harvard University, 150, 218, 220, 221, 253 healthcare artificial intelligence and, 57–8, 88, 103 data and, 230, 239, 250–51 wearable devices and, 158, 251 Helsinki, Finland, 160 Herlev Hospital, Denmark, 58 Hinton, Geoffrey, 32, 126–7 HIPA Act (US, 1996), 230 Hitachi, 152 Hobbes, Thomas, 210 Hoffman, Josh, 174 Hoffman, Reid, 110, 111 Holmes, Edward, 245 homophily, 231–4 Hong Kong, 182 horizontal expansion, 111–12, 218 Houston Islam protests (2016), 203 Houthis, 206 Howe, Jeff, 143 Hsinchu, Taiwan, 181 Hughes, Chris, 217 Hull, Charles, 43 Human + Machine (Daugherty), 141 human brain, 77 human genome, 40–41, 90, 229, 234, 250 human resources, 150 Hussein, Saddam, 195 Hyaline, 174 hydroponics, 171 hyperinflation, 75 IBM, 17, 21, 47, 98 IDC, 219 Ideal-X, 61 Ikea, 144 Illumina, 41 Ilves, Toomas Hendrik, 190 ImageNet, 32 immigration, 139, 168, 183–4 Impossible Foods, 69 Improv, 99 income inequality, 155–8, 161, 168 India, 103, 145, 181, 186, 224, 253, 254 Indonesia, 103 Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), 79–81, 157, 235 informational networks, 59–60 ING, 178 innovation, 14, 117 Innovator’s Dilemma, The (Christensen), 24 Instagram, 84, 117, 120, 121, 237 institutions, 9, 10, 79–88, 90–91 path dependence, 86–7 punctuated equilibrium, 87–8 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156, 175, 180 integrated circuits, 19 Intel, 16–17, 19, 163 intellectual property law, 82 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), 237 International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers, 164 International Court of Justice, 224 International Criminal Court, 208 International Energy Agency, 77, 82 International Labour Organization, 131 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 87, 167, 187 international organisations, 82 International Organization for Standardization, 55, 61 International Rescue Committee, 184 International Telecommunication Union, 55 internet, 7, 47–8, 55, 65, 72, 75, 84–5, 88, 115, 184–6 code is law, 220–22, 235 data and, 11, 32, 71 informational networks, 59–60 localisation, 185–6 lockdowns and, 12 network effect, 100–101 online shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 platform model and, 102 public sphere and, 223 standardisation, 55 Wi-Fi, 151 interoperability, 55, 120–22, 237–9, 241, 243, 256–7 iPhone, 47, 62, 85, 94, 115, 175 Iran, 186, 196, 198, 203, 206 Iraq, 195–6, 201, 209 Ireland, 57–8, 119 Islamic State, 194, 233 Israel, 37, 188, 195–6, 198, 206, 207–8 Istanbul, Turkey, 102 Jacobs, Jane, 182 Japan, 37, 152, 171, 174 Jasanoff, Sheila, 253 JD.com, 137 Jena, Rajesh, 127 Jio, 103 job interviews, 153, 156 John Paul II, Pope, 83 Johnson, Boris, 79 Jumia, 103 just in time supply chains, 61–2 Kahneman, Daniel, 74 KakaoTalk, 27 Kaldor, Mary, 194 Kapor, Mitchell, 99 Karunaratne, Sid, 140–41, 151 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 Keynes, John Maynard, 126, 158 Khan, Lina, 119 Khartoum, Sudan, 183 Kim Jong-un, 198 King’s College London, 179 Kiva Systems, 136 Kobo360, 145 Kodak, 83–4, 88 Kranzberg, Melvin, 254 Krizhevsky, Alex, 32–3, 34 Kubursi, Atif, 178 Kurdistan Workers’ Party, 206 Kurzweil, Ray, 29–31, 33, 35, 77 Lagos, Nigeria, 182 Lahore, Pakistan, 102 landmines, 213 Law of Accelerating Returns, 30–31, 33, 35 Laws of Motion, 20 learning by doing, 48, 53 Leggatt, George, 148 Lemonade, 56 Lessig, Larry, 220–21 Leviathan (Hobbes), 210 Li Fei-Fei, 32 life expectancy, 25, 26 light bulbs, 44, 157 Lime, 27 Limits to Growth, The (Meadows et al.), 73 linear value chains, 101 LinkedIn, 26, 110, 121, 237, 238 Linkos Group, 197 Linux OS, 242 Lipsey, Richard, 45 lithium-ion batteries, 40, 51 lithium, 170 localism, 11, 166–90, 252, 255 log files, 227 logarithmic scales, 20 logic gates, 18 logistic curve, 25, 30, 51, 52, 69–70 London, England, 180, 181, 183 London Underground, 133–4 looms, 157 Lordstown Strike (1972), 125 Lotus Development Corporation, 99 Luddites, 125, 253 Lufa Farms, 171–2 Luminate, 240 lump of labour fallacy, 139 Lusaka, Zambia, 15 Lyft, 146, 148 machine learning, 31–4, 54, 58, 88, 127, 129, 143 MacKinnon, Rebecca, 223 Maersk, 197, 199, 211 malaria, 253 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown (2014), 199 Malta, 114 Malthus, Thomas, 72–3 malware, 197 Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974 film), 37 manufacturing, 10, 39, 42–4, 46, 166–7, 175–9 additive, 43–4, 46, 48, 88, 166, 169, 175–9 automation and, 130 re-localisation, 175–9 subtractive, 42–3 market saturation, 25–8, 51, 52 market share, 93–6, 111 Marshall, Alfred, 97 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 18, 147, 202, 238 Mastercard, 98 May, Theresa, 183 Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, 189 McCarthy, John, 31 McKinsey, 76, 94 McMaster University, 178 measles, 246 Mechanical Turk, 142–3, 144, 145 media literacy, 211–12 meningitis, 246 Mexico, 202 microorganisms, 42, 46, 69 Microsoft, 16–17, 65, 84–5, 88, 98–9, 100, 105, 108, 122, 221 Bing, 107 cloud computing, 85 data collection, 228 Excel, 99 internet and, 84–5, 100 network effect and, 99 Office software, 98–9, 110, 152 Windows, 85, 98–9 Workplace Productivity scores, 152 Mill, John Stuart, 193 miniaturisation, 34–5 minimum wage, 147, 161 misinformation, 11, 191, 192, 200–204, 209, 212, 217, 225, 247–8 mobile phones, 76, 121 see also smartphones; telecom companies Moderna, 245, 247 Moixa, 174 Mondelez, 197, 211 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 44 monopolies, 10, 71, 94, 95, 114–24, 218, 255 Monopoly (board game), 82 Montreal, Quebec, 171 mood detection systems, 152 Moore, Gordon, 19, 48 Moore’s Law, 19–22, 26, 28–9, 31, 34, 63, 64, 74 artificial intelligence and, 32, 33–4 Kodak and, 83 price and, 41–2, 51, 68–9 as social fact, 29, 49 superstar companies and, 95 time, relationship with, 48–9 Moravec, Hans, 131 Moravec’s paradox, 131–2 Motorola, 76 Mount Mercy College, Cork, 57 Mozilla Firefox, 242 Mumbai, India, 181 mumps, 246 muskets, 54–5 MySpace, 26–7 Nadella, Satya, 85 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020), 206–7 napalm, 216 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), 56 Natanz nuclear site, Iran, 196 National Health Service (NHS), 87 nationalism, 168, 186 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 191, 213 Netflix, 104, 107, 109, 136, 137, 138, 139, 151, 248 Netherlands, 103 Netscape Communicator, 6 networks, 58–62 network effects, 96–101, 106, 110, 121, 223 neural networks, 32–4 neutral, technology as, 5, 220–21, 254 new wars, 194 New York City, New York, 180, 183 New York Times, 3, 125, 190, 228 New Zealand, 188, 236 Newton, Isaac, 20 Nigeria, 103, 145, 182, 254 Niinistö, Sauli, 212 Nike, 102 nitrogen fertilizers, 35 Nixon, Richard, 25, 114 Nobel Prize, 64, 74, 241 Nokia, 120 non-state actors, 194, 213 North Korea, 198 North Macedonia, 200–201 Norway, 173, 216 NotPetya malware, 197, 199–200, 211, 213 Novell, 98 Noyce, Robert, 19 NSO Group, 214 nuclear weapons, 193, 195–6, 212, 237 Nuremberg Trials (1945–6), 208 O’Reilly, Tim, 107 O’Sullivan, Laura, 57–8, 60 Obama, Barack, 205, 214, 225 Ocado, 137 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 239 Oculus, 117 oDesk, 144 Ofcom, 8 Ofoto, 84 Ogburn, William, 85 oil industry, 172, 250 Houthi drone attacks (2019), 206 OAPEC crisis (1973–4), 37, 258 Shamoon attack (2012), 198 Standard Oil breakup (1911), 93–4 Olduvai, Tanzania, 42 online shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 open-source software, 242 Openreach, 123 Operation Opera (1981), 195–6, 209 opium, 38 Orange, 121 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 119, 167 Osborne Computer Corporation, 16 Osborne, Michael, 129 Osirak nuclear reactor, Iraq, 195–6, 209 Ostrom, Elinor, 241 Oxford University, 129, 134, 203, 226 pace of change, 3 pagers, 87 Pakistan, 145, 205 palladium, 170 PalmPilot, 173 panopticon, 152 Paris, France, 181, 183 path dependence, 86 PayPal, 98, 110 PC clones, 17 PeerIndex, 8, 201, 237 Pegasus, 214 PeoplePerHour, 144 PepsiCo, 93 Perez, Carlota, 46–7 pernicious polarization, 232 perpetual motion, 95, 106, 107, 182 Petersen, Michael Bang, 75 Phan Thi Kim Phuc, 216–17, 224, 225 pharmaceutical industry, 6, 93, 250 phase transitions, 4 Philippines, 186, 203 Phillips Exeter Academy, 150 phishing scams, 211 Phoenix, Arizona, 134 photolithography, 19 Pigou, Arthur Cecil, 97 Piketty, Thomas, 160 Ping An Good Doctor, 103, 250 Pix Moving, 166, 169, 175 PKK (Partîya Karkerên Kurdistanê), 206 Planet Labs, 69 platforms, 101–3, 219 PlayStation, 86 plough, 157 Polanyi, Michael, 133 polarisation, 231–4 polio, 246 population, 72–3 Portify, 162 Postel, Jon, 55 Postings, Robert, 233 Predator drones, 205, 206 preprints, 59–60 price gouging, 93 price of technology, 22, 68–9 computing, 68–9, 191, 249 cyber-weapons, 191–2 drones, 192 genome sequencing, 41–2, 252 renewable energy, 39–40, 250 printing press, 45 public sphere, 218, 221, 223 Pulitzer Prize, 216 punctuated equilibrium, 87–8 al-Qaeda, 205, 210–11 Qatar, 198 quantum computing, 35 quantum physics, 29 quarantines, 12, 152, 176, 183, 246 R&D (research and development), 67–8, 113, 118 racial bias, 231 racism, 225, 231, 234 radicalisation pathways, 233 radiologists, 126 Raford, Noah, 43 Raz, Ze’ev, 195, 209 RB, 197 re-localisation, 11, 166–90, 253, 255 conflict and, 189, 193, 194, 209 Reagan, Ronald, 64, 163 religion, 6, 82, 83 resilience, 257 reskilling, 159–60 responsibility gap, 209 Restrepo, Pascual, 139 Reuters, 8, 56, 132 revolutions, 87 Ricardo, David, 169–70, 177 rights, 240–41 Rise of the Robots, The (Ford), 125 Rittenhouse, Kyle, 224 Roche, 67 Rockefeller, John, 93 Rohingyas, 224 Rome, ancient, 180 Rose, Carol, 243 Rotterdam, Netherlands, 56 Rule of Law, 82 running shoes, 102, 175–6 Russell, Stuart, 31, 118 Russian Federation, 122 disinformation campaigns, 203 Estonia cyberattacks (2007), 190–91, 200 Finland, relations with, 212 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020), 206 nuclear weapons, 237 Ukraine cyberattacks (2017), 197, 199–200 US election interference (2016), 217 Yandex, 122 S-curve, 25, 30, 51, 52, 69–70 al-Sahhaf, Muhammad Saeed, 201 Salesforce, 108–9 Saliba, Samer, 184 salt, 114 Samsung, 93, 228 San Francisco, California, 181 Sandel, Michael, 218 Sanders, Bernard, 163 Sandworm, 197, 199–200, 211 Santander, 95 Sasson, Steve, 83 satellites, 56–7, 69 Saturday Night Fever (1977 soundtrack), 72 Saudi Arabia, 108, 178, 198, 203, 206 Schmidt, Eric, 5 Schwarz Gruppe, 67 Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson and McAfee), 129 self-driving vehicles, 78, 134–5, 141 semiconductors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 September 11 attacks (2001), 205, 210–11 Shamoon virus, 198 Shanghai, China, 56 Shannon, Claude, 18 Sharp, 16 Shenzhen, Guangdong, 182 shipping containers, 61–2, 63 shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 Siemens, 196 silicon chips, see chips Silicon Valley, 5, 7, 15, 24, 65, 110, 129, 223 Sinai Peninsula, 195 Sinclair ZX81, 15, 17, 21, 36 Singapore, 56 Singles’ Day, 48 Singularity University, 5 SixDegrees, 26 Skydio R1 drone, 208 smartphones, 22, 26, 46, 47–8, 65, 86, 88, 105, 111, 222 Smith, Adam, 169–70 sneakers, 102, 175–6 Snow, Charles Percy, 7 social credit systems, 230 social media, 26–8 censorship on, 216–17, 224–6, 236 collective bargaining and, 164 data collection on, 228 interoperability, 121, 237–8 market saturation, 25–8 misinformation on, 192, 201–4, 217, 247–8 network effect, 98, 223 polarisation and, 231–4 software as a service, 109 solar power, 37–8, 53, 65, 77, 82, 90, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250, 251 SolarWinds, 200 Solberg, Erna, 216 South Africa, 170 South Korea, 188, 198, 202 Southey, Robert, 80 sovereignty, 185, 199, 214 Soviet Union (1922–91), 185, 190, 194, 212 Spain, 170, 188 Spanish flu pandemic (1918–20), 75 Speedfactory, Ansbach, 176 Spire, 69 Spotify, 69 Sputnik 1 orbit (1957), 64, 83 stagflation, 63 Standard and Poor, 104 Standard Oil, 93–4 standardisation, 54–7, 61, 62 Stanford University, 32, 58 Star Wars franchise, 99 state-sized companies, 11, 67 see also superstar companies states, 82 stirrups, 44 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 208 Stockton, California, 160 strategic snowflakes, 211 stress tests, 237 Stuxnet, 196, 214 Sudan, 183 superstar companies, 10, 11, 67, 94–124, 218–26, 252, 255 blitzscaling, 110 collective bargaining and, 163 horizontal expansion, 111–12, 218 increasing returns to scale, 108–10 innovation and, 117–18 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156 interoperability and, 120–22, 237–9 monopolies, 114–24, 218 network effect, 96–101, 121 platform model, 101–3, 219 taxation of, 118–19 vertical expansion, 112–13 workplace cultures, 151 supply chains, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175, 187, 252 surveillance, 152–3, 158 Surviving AI (Chace), 129 Sutskever, Ilya, 32 synthetic biology, 42, 46, 69, 174, 245, 250 Syria, 186 Taiwan, 181, 212 Talkspace, 144 Tallinn, Estonia, 190 Tang, Audrey, 212 Tanzania, 42, 183 TaskRabbit, 144 Tasmania, Australia, 197 taxation, 10, 63, 96, 118–19 gig economy and, 146 superstar companies and, 118–19 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 150, 152, 153, 154 Tel Aviv, Israel, 181 telecom companies, 122–3 Tencent, 65, 104, 108, 122 territorial sovereignty, 185, 199, 214 Tesco, 67, 93 Tesla, 69, 78, 113 Thailand, 176, 203 Thatcher, Margaret, 64, 163 Thelen, Kathleen, 87 Thiel, Peter, 110–11 3D printing, see additive manufacturing TikTok, 28, 69, 159–60, 219 Tisné, Martin, 240 Tomahawk missiles, 207 Toyota, 95 trade networks, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175 trade unions, see collective bargaining Trading Places (1983 film), 132 Tragedy of the Commons, The (Hardin), 241 transistors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 transparency, 236 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 199 TRS-80, 16 Trump, Donald, 79, 119, 166, 201, 225, 237 Tufekci, Zeynep, 233 Turing, Alan, 18, 22 Turkey, 102, 176, 186, 198, 202, 206, 231 Tversky, Amos, 74 23andMe, 229–30 Twilio, 151 Twitch, 225 Twitter, 65, 201, 202, 219, 223, 225, 237 two cultures, 7, 8 Uber, 69, 94, 102, 103, 106, 142, 144, 145 Assembly Bill 5 (California, 2019), 148 engineering jobs, 156 London ban (2019), 183, 188 London protest (2016), 153 pay at, 147, 156 satisfaction levels at, 146 Uber BV v Aslam (2021), 148 UiPath, 130 Ukraine, 197, 199 Unilever, 153 Union of Concerned Scientists, 56 unions, see collective bargaining United Arab Emirates, 43, 198, 250 United Autoworkers Union, 162 United Kingdom BBC, 87 Biobank, 242 Brexit (2016–20), 6, 168 collective bargaining in, 163 Covid-19 epidemic (2020–21), 79, 203 DDT in, 253 digital minilateralism, 188 drone technology in, 207 flashing of headlights in, 83 Golden Triangle, 170 Google and, 116 Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), 79–81 Luddite rebellion (1811–16), 125, 253 misinformation in, 203, 204 National Cyber Force, 200 NHS, 87 self-employment in, 148 telecom companies in, 123 Thatcher government (1979–90), 64, 163 United Nations, 87, 88, 188 United States antitrust law in, 114 automation in, 127 Battle of the Overpass (1937), 162 Capitol building storming (2021), 225 China, relations with, 166 Cold War (1947–91), 194, 212, 213 collective bargaining in, 163 Covid-19 epidemic (2020–21), 79, 202–4 Cyber Command, 200, 210 DDT in, 253 drone technology in, 205, 214 economists in, 63 HIPA Act (1996), 230 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 Lordstown Strike (1972), 125 manufacturing in, 130 misinformation in, 202–4 mobile phones in, 76 nuclear weapons, 237 Obama administration (2009–17), 205, 214 polarisation in, 232 presidential election (2016), 199, 201, 217 presidential election (2020), 202–3 Reagan administration (1981–9), 64, 163 self-employment in, 148 September 11 attacks (2001), 205, 210–11 shipping containers in, 61 shopping in, 48 solar energy research, 37 Standard Oil breakup (1911), 93–4 taxation in, 63, 119 Trump administration (2017–21), 79, 119, 166, 168, 201, 225, 237 Vietnam War (1955–75), 216 War on Terror (2001–), 205 universal basic income (UBI), 160, 189 universal service obligation, 122 University of Cambridge, 127, 188 University of Chicago, 63 University of Colorado, 73 University of Delaware, 55 University of Oxford, 129, 134, 203, 226 University of Southern California, 55 unwritten rules, 82 Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 194 UpWork, 145–6 USB (Universal Serial Bus), 51 Ut, Nick, 216 utility providers, 122–3 vaccines, 12, 202, 211, 245–7 Vail, Theodore, 100 value-free, technology as, 5, 220–21, 254 Veles, North Macedonia, 200–201 Véliz, Carissa, 226 Venezuela, 75 venture capitalists, 117 vertical expansion, 112–13, 116 vertical farms, 171–2, 251 video games, 86 Vietnam, 61, 175, 216 Virological, 245 Visa, 98 VisiCalc, 99 Vodafone, 121 Vogels, Werner, 68 Wag!

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 1 Feb 2022

Neil Shen was entering the period when he would be crowned the number one venture capitalist in the world, not just once, but for three years consecutively. Wang Xing, for his part, progressed from billionaire to deca-billionaire, and his company became Sequoia Capital’s most lucrative investment ever, surpassing even Google.[77] By 2019, admittedly, Meituan-Dianping had been eclipsed. But Sequoia’s new gold medalist was another Chinese venture, ByteDance, operator of a wildly popular short-form video app named TikTok. In the summer of 2016, Gary Rieschel packed his suitcases in Shanghai. He had known when to arrive, and now he knew when it was time to leave. An American outsider could no longer add much to China’s venture industry. Chapter Eleven Accel, Facebook, and the Decline of Kleiner Perkins In the early years of the twenty-first century, in the shadow of the tech bust, an entrepreneur named Kevin Efrusy joined Accel.

…

In 2021, when Kleiner partners had all but disappeared from the Forbes Midas list, Sequoia occupied the number one and number two slots, and three of the top ten, making it by far and away the top firm in the industry. It dominated the business in both the United States and China. It backed unicorns from Airbnb and WhatsApp to ByteDance and Meituan. It seemed to succeed at everything it touched, from venture investing to growth funds and even to an experimental hedge fund. Up and down the Valley, rivals swapped theories about what made Sequoia win. No other team had sustained performance at this level. Sequoia’s secret sauce began with the union between Moritz and Leone, the most successful buddy act in the history of venture capital.

…

See also Google broadcast storm, 110–11 Brown, Patrick, 1–6, 11, 12, 431n Buffett, Warren, 24, 31, 50, 259, 364 Burns, Terri, 385 Bush, Vannevar, 18 Bushnell, Nolan, 59, 62–63, 64–66, 82–83, 96 Business Week, 71 Byers, Brook, 70 BYJU, 324 ByteDance, 248, 304 C Café Algiers, 216–17 Calacanis, Jason, 305 California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 75 California Public Utilities Commission, 357 California State University, Chico, 109–10 Camp, Garrett, 351, 458n Canova, Frank, 20 capital gains tax, 81, 91–92, 129, 395, 430n Capital Group, 289, 425n, 426n Capital Management Fund, 425n Capital Research and Management, 60–61, 64, 66, 425n Capital Today, 235–37 carbon regulations, 262, 381 Carlyle Group, 240 Carnegie Mellon University, 5, 416n carry trades, 415n Carter, Gene, 91 Carter, Scott, 456n Casado, Martin, 293–95 Caufield, Frank, 264 Cayman Islands, 231–33, 243 CBS, 12 Center for Seismic Studies, 132–33 Cerent, 9, 10 Cervélo, 319 Chandler, Bill, 329–30 Charles River Ventures, 98, 210 Charney, Howard, 102–3 Cheriton, David, 176, 431n, 442n Chicago Bulls, 349 Chien, Chi-Hua, 253 China, 16, 222–48.

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
by Tony Fadell
Published 2 May 2022

And the good times won’t last forever. Upswings will inevitably turn into downswings. And you want to leave when things are going well, when you can hand the company over proudly to the next CEO, not throw it to them in a panic as you get cut loose by the board. As we’re writing this, Zhang Yiming, the founder and CEO of ByteDance, the creators of TikTok, announced that he’s resigning. TikTok has never been more popular. Zhang is experiencing a high that few CEOs ever reach. But he can see a change coming. And in this case, it’s internal. He just doesn’t want the job. It doesn’t suit him. “The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager,” he said.

…

See startups business-to-business (B2B) companies, 201–3, 205, 285 business-to-business (B2B) products, 111, 147, 150, 202 business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) companies, 201, 204–5 business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, 201, 202–3, 204, 285, 290 business-to-consumer (B2C) products, 147, 150, 202 ByteDance, 369 Calico, 314 Campbell, Bill, 185–86, 317–19, 334, 340, 351–53 Capital G, 314 career growth assholes and, 65–68 decisions and, 57–58 management and, 43–44 quitting and, 41, 76–78 strategies of, 35–41 team leadership and, 37–40 cell phones, adoption of, 122 CEOs acquisitions and mergers, 345–55 babysitter CEOs, 321, 330, 364, 367 benefits and, 356, 357, 361 board of directors and, xi, 107, 185, 192, 320, 321, 326, 332, 333–44, 364, 365, 367 breakpoints and, 259–60 brown-bag lunches with the CEO, 237 commonalities of successful leaders, 326–27 communication and, 320 criteria for stepping down, 364–71 culture and, 324 decisions of, 330–31 egoism in, 327, 366 expectations of, 322–25, 328–29 founder as, 183, 284, 322, 336, 366, 367, 369–71 incompetent CEOs, 322 isolation of, 330–31 life after stepping down, 372 marketing and, 277 parent CEOs, 321–22, 329, 367 perks and, 356–63 recognizing great ideas, 327–28, 331–32 removal of, 336, 365 responsibility of, 332 role of, 321, 322, 326, 367, 370 succession plan for, 364, 368–69 types of, 321–22 vision of, 334, 339 Colgate-Palmolive, 282 communication CEO and, 320 in crisis, 218–19 inter-team communication, 247 in management, 53 reevaluation of, 254, 258 team size and, 244, 246, 247–49 companies.

Open: The Story of Human Progress
by Johan Norberg
Published 14 Sep 2020

In one of them, a businessman investing in both China and the US praised China’s government for being ‘much more open to innovators experimenting’, while American innovators must slow down and negotiate with local officials to be able to operate.54 Sounds like paradise for an entrepreneur – until you read the other article, about how Chinese authorities suddenly shut down the flagship app of the tech company ByteDance because it was seen as vulgar. The founder was even forced to apologize publicly. He was ‘filled with guilt and remorse’ for not understanding that ‘technology must be led by socialist core values’.55 This is the China paradox: authorities are open to everything they like, but closed to everything they find worthless, impossible or stupid – and when they’ve exhausted innovations to imitate, that is the only place to find new ones.

…

INDEX Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), 6, 136–7, 138, 169, 353 abortion, 113 absolutist monarchies, 154, 155, 170, 182, 185 Academy Awards, 82 Accenture, 375 accountants, 41 Acemoglu, Daron, 185, 187, 200 Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), 86–7, 88, 249 Acton, Lord, see Dalberg-Acton, John Adams, Douglas, 295 Adobe, 310 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 306 Aeschylus, 132 affirmative action, 244 Afghanistan, 70, 345 Age of Discovery, 177 agriculture, 39–40, 42, 74, 171, 263 Akbar I, Mughal Emperor, 98 Akkadian Empire (c. 2334–2154 BC), 42 Alaska, 76 Albania, 54 Albertus Magnus, Saint, 145 d’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond, 154 Alexander III ‘the Great’, Basileus of Macedon, 87–9 Alexandria, Egypt, 134 algae, 332 algebra, 137 Alibaba, 311 Allport, Gordon, 244–5 Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269), 137–8 alpha males, 227–8, 229 Alphaville, 245 altruism, 216 Amalric, Arnaud, 94 Amazon, 275, 311 America First, 19, 272 American Civil War (1861–5), 109 American Declaration of Independence (1776), 103, 201, 202 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 102–3, 200–201 American Society of Human Genetics, 76–7 Americanization, 19 Amherst, William, 1st Earl Amherst, 176–7 amphorae, 48 Amsterdam, Holland, 150, 152, 153 An Lushan Rebellion (755–63), 352 anaesthesia, 279, 296 anagrams, 83 Anatolia, 42, 74 Anaximander, 127 Anaximenes, 127 al-Andalus (711–1492), 97, 137–9, 140 Andromeda, 88 Anglo–French Treaty (1860), 53–4 Anhui, China, 315 anti-Semitism, 11, 94–7, 109, 220, 233, 251, 254, 255 anti-Semitism, 254–5, 356 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 Antoninus Pius, Roman Emperor, 91 Apama, 88 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 5 Apple, 82, 195, 304, 311, 319 Apuleius, 89 Arab Spring (2011), 10, 342 Arabic numerals, 70, 137, 156 Arabic, 136, 137, 140 archaeology, 21–2, 31, 32, 38, 43, 50, 51 Archer Daniels Midland, 329 Aristides, Aelius, 48 Aristophanes, 129, 131, 132 Aristotle, 130–31, 132, 137, 141–6, 161 Armenians, 136, 220 ARPAnet, 306 Art Nouveau, 198 art, 198 Artaxerxes III, Persian Emperor, 87 Ashkenazi Jews, 99 Ashoka, Mauryan Emperor, 53 Assyria (2500–609 BC), 248–9 Assyrian Empire (2500–609 BC), 41, 43, 86 astronomy, 80, 145–6, 150 Atari, 304 Athens, 47, 53, 89, 90, 131, 134 Atlas Copco, 65 Augustine of Hippo, 133, 139 Australia, 50–53, 76, 262 Australopithecus afarensis, 24–5 Austria, 1, 150, 151, 190 Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), 179, 254 Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Habsburg monarchy (1282–1918), 151, 179, 190, 237 migration crisis (2015–), 342 Mongol invasion (1241), 95 Nazi period (1938–45), 105 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 150 Authoritarian Dynamic, The (Stenner), 343 authoritarianism, 4, 14, 220, 343–61, 363, 379 democracy and, 357 economics and, 346–51 exposure to difference and, 242 innovation and, 318 insecurity and, 338, 342, 378 media and, 346–9 nostalgia and 351–4 predisposition, 220, 343–6 populism and, 325, 350–51 scapegoats and, 355–6 science and, 161–3 automatic looms, 179 automation, 63, 312–13 Averroes, 137–8, 143, 144, 145 Aztec Empire (1428–1521), 55 Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, 75 baby-boom generation (1946–64), 294, 340 Babylon, 39, 86–7 Babylonia (1895–539 BC), 39, 42, 43, 86–7, 128, 131, 249, 267 Bacon, Francis, 147, 156, 165–6, 201 bad news, 322 Baghdad, 70, 136, 353 Bahrain, 42 Bailey, Ron, 11 Bailyn, Bernard, 201 balance of trade, 59–60 Banda Islands, 100 Bangladesh, 270 Bannon, Steve, 14, 108 Barcelona, Catalonia, 320 Basel, Switzerland, 152 Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Bayezid II, Ottoman Sultan, 98 Bayle, Pierre, 158 Beginning of Infinity, The (Deutsch), 332 Behavioural Immune System, 222 Beirut, Lebanon, 236 benefit–cost ratio, 60, 61, 62 Berges, Aida, 80 Bering land bridge, 76 Berkeley, see University of California, Berkeley Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 10, 340, 341, 363, 364 Berners-Lee, Timothy, 307–8 Bernstein, William, 42 Berossus, 267 Better Angels of Our Nature, The (Pinker), 243 Beveridge, William, 59 Béziers, France, 94 Bezos, Jeffrey, 274, 275–6, 277 Bi Sheng, 171 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50, 296 bicycles, 297 de Biencourt, Charles, 189 Big Five personality traits, 7 Black Death (1346–53), 77, 139, 208, 356, 352, 356 Blade Runner, 334 Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, 124–6 Blue Ghosts, 236 Bohr, Niels, 105 Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), 307 bonobos, 226–7 Book of Jonah, 248–50 Borjas, George, 116 Boston, Massachusetts, 122, 223 Boudreaux, Donald, 62, 270 Boulton, Matthew, 194 Bowles, Samuel, 216 Boym, Svetlana, 288 Brandt, Willy, 364 Brewer, Marilynn, 247 Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 Brezhnev, Leonid, 315 Britain, 169, 181–99 Acts of Union (1707), 101, 194 Afghanistan War (2001–14), 345 Amherst Mission (1816), 176–7 anti-Semitism in, 254 arts, 198 Bletchley Park, 124–6 Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 Cheddar Man, 74 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (1860), 53–4 coffee houses, 166 colonies, 84, 191, 194, 200 Corn Laws repeal (1846), 53, 191 creative destruction in, 179 crime in, 119, 120 Dutch War (1672–4), 101 English Civil War (1642–1651), 148, 183, 184, 201 Glorious Revolution (1688), 101, 185–8, 190, 193 hair powder tax (1795), 72 immigration in, 113, 115, 118, 119, 120, 193–4 Industrial Revolution, 188–99, 202 innovation in, 53, 189–90 Internet, development of, 307–8 Iraq War (2003–11), 345 Levellers, 183–4, 186 literacy in, 188, 198 literature, 188–9 London Bridge stabbings (2019), 120 London 7/7 bombings (2005), 341 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Magna Carta (1215), 5 monopolies, 182 MPs’ expenses scandal (2009), 345 Muslim community, 113 Navigation Acts, 192 nostalgia in, 294 open society, 169, 181–2, 195–9 patent system, 189–90, 203, 314 Peasants’ Revolt (1381), 208 political tribalism in, 238, 240–41 poverty in, 256 railways in, 297 Royal Society, 156, 157, 158, 196, 296 ruin follies, 286–7 slavery, abolition of (1807), 182, 205 smuggling in, 192 Statute of Labourers (1351), 208 United States, migration to, 104 West Africa Squadron, 205 Whig Party, 185, 201 World War II (1939–45), 124–6 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 135 Bronze Age (c. 3300–600 BC) Late Bronze-Age Collapse (1200–1150 BC), 44, 49, 54 migration to Europe, 74–5 Phoenician civilization, 43–6, 49, 70 Sumerian civilization, 42–3 Brotherton, Rob, 322 Brown, Donald, 219, 283 Bruges, Flanders, 208 Bruno, Giordano, 150 Bryn Mawr College, 201 Buddhism, 96, 149, 352 Bulgaria, 73, 342 Bureau of Labor Statistics, US, 65 Burke, Edmund, 152, 292 Bush, George Walker, 328 ByteDance, 318 Byzantine Empire (395–1453), 94, 134, 135, 155, 224 California Gold Rush (1848–1855), 104 Calvin, John, 149 Calvinism, 6, 99, 153, 356 Canada, 235, 258 Caplan, Bryan, 258 Caracalla, Roman Emperor, 91 Carbon Engineering, 332 Cardwell, Donald, 10 Cardwell’s Law, 10 Carlson, Tucker, 82, 302 Carlyle, Thomas, 206 Carthage (814–146 BC), 45 Caspian Sea, 75 Cathars, 94, 142 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 154 Catholicism, 208 in Britain, 101, 185–6, 191 Crusades, 94, 138 in Dutch Republic, 99 exiles and, 153 in France, 154 Jews, persecution of, 97–8, 100, 106, 140, 233 Inquisition, 94, 97, 98, 100, 143, 150 in Italy, 6, 169 Muslims, persecution of, 97, 106, 233 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178, 237 in Rwanda, 230–31 in United States, 102, 104, 108, 254 values and, 114 Cato’s Letters (Trenchard and Gordon), 201 Celts, 89, 289 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 313 Ceres, 89 Cerf, Vinton, 307 CERN (Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire), 306, 307 chariot racing, 224 Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 148, 179, 183 Chávez, Hugo, 354 Chechen War, Second (1999–2009), 354 Cheddar Man, 74 cheongsam dresses, 73 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 286, 300 Chicago principles, 164–5 Chicago, Illinois, 202 child mortality, 168–9 Child, Josiah, 184 children, 26 chimpanzees, 24, 25, 32, 36, 226–7, 228 China, 4, 5, 6, 13, 84, 270, 314–18 Amherst Mission (1816), 176–7 An Lushan Rebellion (755–63), 352 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 authoritarianism, 4, 162–3, 175, 318, 325, 343 budget deficits, 60 cheongsam dresses, 73 Confucianism, 129, 149, 169, 176 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 4, 11–12, 162–3 Cultural Revolution (1966–76), 355 dictatorships, support for, 367 dynamism in, 315–18 ethnic groups in, 84 Great Wall, 178 industrialization 169, 172–3, 207 intellectual property in, 58 kimonos, 73 literacy in, 148 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Ming dynasty (1368–1644), 54, 148, 175, 177–8, 179, 215 national stereotypes, 235, 236 overcapacity in, 317 paper, invention of, 136 private farming initiative (1978), 315–16 productivity in, 317 poverty in, 273, 316 Qing dynasty (1644–1912), 148, 149, 151, 153, 175–7, 179, 353 Reform and Opening-up (1979–), 4, 53, 56, 315–16 SARS outbreak (2002), 162 science in, 4, 13, 70, 153, 156, 162–3, 169–73, 269 Silk Road, 171, 174, 352 Song dynasty (960–1279), 53, 169–75 state capitalism in, 316–17 Tang dynasty (618–907), 84, 170, 177, 352 Taoism, 129, 149 trade barriers, 59 United States, migration to, 104, 109, 254 United States, trade with, 19, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 64 WTO accession (2001), 63 Yuan Empire (1271–1368), 174–5 Zheng He’s voyages (1405–33), 177–8 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 254 Christensen, Clayton, 305 Christianity, 46, 70, 96, 129 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50, 296 in Britain, 101 Calvinism, 6, 99, 149, 153, 356 Cathars, 94, 142 clash of civilizations narrative, 237 Crusades, 94, 138 Catholicism, see Catholicism Dominican order, 356 in Dutch Republic, 99 economic hardship and, 359 fundamentalism, 133–5, 149 Great Awakening (1730–55), 102 Great Vanishing, 134–5 Inquisition, 97, 98, 100 Jews, persecution of, 95, 96, 97 Lutheranism, 99, 356 in Mongol Empire, 96 Old Testament, 46, 72 orthodox backlash, 149–50 Orthodox Church, 155 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178, 233 Protestantism, 99, 104, 148, 149, 153, 169, 178 Puritanism, 99, 102 Rastafari and, 72 Reformation, 148, 155 in Roman Empire, 90, 93–4 science and, 133–5, 141–6, 149–50 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 97 tribalism and, 230–31, 246 zero-sum relationships and, 248–50 Chua, Amy, 84 Cicero, 141 Cilician, Gates, 42 cities, 40, 79, 140 division of labour in, 40 immigration and, 114, 250 innovation and, 40, 53, 79, 140, 145, 172, 287 liberalism and, 339 Mesopotamia, 37–43 open-mindedness and, 35 productivity and, 40, 98 tradition and, 287, 291 turtle theory and, 121–2 civic nationalism, 377–8 civil society, 6, 199, 253, 358, 363 clash of civilizations narrative, 237, 362–3, 365–6 ‘Clash of Civilizations?’

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization
by Harold James
Published 15 Jan 2023

China’s private tech “BAT” firms—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—received about 67 percent of digital ad revenues in 2018, up from 61 percent in 2015, and accounted for about half of venture-capital investment in China.77 By the time of the pandemic, it was widely assumed that the power of the tech titans was on the retreat, broken by a trade war between China and the United States that threatened the central connection of ideas from California to Hangzhou and Shanghai. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, who had developed TikTok, explained that he was retreating in 2021: “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to better drive real long-term breakthroughs, which cannot simply rely on steady, but incremental, progress.”78 The pandemic allowed a full-scale war of the state against the entrepreneur.

…

Keith Zhai, Lingling Wei, and Jing Yang, “Jack Ma’s Costliest Business Lesson: China Has Only One Leader,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2021. 76. Ryan McMorrow and Sun Yu, “The Vanishing Billionaire,” Financial Times, April 15, 2021. 77. Nathaniel Taplin and Jacky Wong, “Profits and Politics in China’s Tech Crackdown,” Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2021. 78. Ryan McMorrow and Yuan Yang, “Zhang Yiming to Step Down as ByteDance Chief,” Financial Times, May 20, 2021. 79. Alex Hamilton, “Wirecard Signs Payments Processing Partnership with Visa,” Fintech Futures, April 21, 2020, https://www.fintechfutures.com/2020/04/wirecard-signs-payments-processing-partnership-with-visa/. 80. Dan McCrum, “Wirecard’s Suspect Accounting Practices Revealed,” Financial Times, October 15, 2019. 81.

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
by Clive Thompson
Published 26 Mar 2019

Facebook engineers had long been using many different styles of machine learning to help recognize faces in photos, filter stories in the News Feed, and predict whether users would click on an ad; it set up an experimental AI research lab, and soon Facebook was producing a deep-learning model that could recognize faces with 97.35 percent accuracy, 27 percent better than the state of the art (“closely approaching human-level performance,” as they noted.) Self-driving car programs around the world seized on deep learning to help teach cars to navigate roads. Uber uses it to predict where new rides will emerge. The National Cancer Institute is working on using it to detect cancer in CT scans. It’s even seeping into the world of culture: ByteDance, one of China’s hugest firms, uses neural nets to help curate news stories in its Toutiao news app, so successfully that users spend more than 74 minutes a day using it. A few years ago, Kai-Fu Lee, who invented the first “plain-talk speech recognition” and went on to be a veteran of Apple, Microsoft, and Google put all his new financial investment decisions in the hands of AI.

…

See minority coders Black Girls Code, ref1 #blacklivesmatter, ref1 Black Mirror (TV show), ref1 Blaze, Matt, ref1, ref2 “Bless” function, ref1 blockchain technology, ref1 Block Together app, ref1 blogging, ref1 Bloomberg, Michael, ref1 blue-collar coding, ref1 aptitude testing and, ref1 boot camps, ref1, ref2 children, computer programming education for, ref1 coal miners in KY learn coding at Bit Source, ref1 computer science degree programs, ref1 demand for coders, explosion in, ref1 job training, ref1, ref2 mainstreaming of coding, ref1 nontraditional fields, benefits of hiring workers from, ref1 self-taught coders, ref1, ref2 women and minorities and, ref1 Blue Gene, ref1 Blum, Lenore, ref1 Bogachev, Evgeniy Mikhailovich, ref1 Bogost, Ian, ref1, ref2 Booch, Grady, ref1 Boole, George, ref1 Boos, Hans-Christian, ref1 boot camps, ref1, ref2 Flatiron School, ref1, ref2, ref3 Geekskool, ref1 hiring rates for graduates of, ref1 types of coding graduates are prepared to do, ref1 vocational training nature of, ref1 Boston Globe, ref1 Bostrom, Nick, ref1, ref2 Bosworth, Andrew, ref1 botnets, ref1 boyd, danah, ref1, ref2, ref3 Braithwaite, Gwen, ref1 Brandeau, Greg, ref1 Brandon, Richard, ref1 break points, ref1 Breisacher, Tyler, ref1, ref2, ref3 Brewer, Johanna, ref1 Brin, Sergey, ref1 brogrammers, ref1, ref2 Broken Age (game), ref1 Brooks, Fred, ref1, ref2 Brotherhood, Oliver, ref1 Brotopia (Chang), ref1 Brown, Barrett, ref1, ref2 bug bounties, ref1 bugs, ref1 defined, ref1 examples of, ref1 fixing (See debugging) GetCalFresh app and, ref1 Netscape design and attitude regarding, ref1 origins of term, ref1 penetration testers and, ref1 self-esteem of coders and, ref1 triumph and elation in solving, ref1 unpredictability and abruptness of programming “wins,” ref1 user behavior and, ref1 Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes), ref1 Bunner, Andrew, ref1, ref2 Buolamwini, Joy, ref1 Burbn, ref1 Burke, Tarana, ref1 Burkhart, Annalise, ref1 Businessweek, ref1 Buyukkokten, Orkut, ref1 BuzzFeed, ref1, ref2 ByteDance, ref1 Cahill, Matt, ref1 Caldbeck, Justin, ref1 Callahan, Ezra, ref1 Cambridge Analytica scandal, ref1 Campbell, Donald, ref1 Campbell’s Law, ref1 Cannon, William, ref1 Cantrill, Bryan, ref1 capacity crisis, ref1 capitalism, and coding, ref1 CAPTCHA tests, ref1 Carmack, John, ref1 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) computer science program, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Carr, Nicholas, ref1 Catalyte, ref1 Cegłowski, Maciej, ref1 Chang, Emily, ref1, ref2, ref3 Chaos Monkeys (Martínez), ref1 Charlebois, Andrew, ref1 chatbots, ref1 Chawla, Rameet, ref1 children, computer programming education for, ref1 Choe, David, ref1 Chou, Tracy, ref1, ref2 Churchill, Elizabeth, ref1 Citizen Lab, ref1 Citron, Danielle, ref1 city planners, ref1 civic impacts of big tech, ref1, ref2 bias in algorithmic ranking systems and, ref1 coding employees power to pressure for change, ref1 engineers’/designers’ failure to see negative ways sites would be used, reasons for, ref1 free-to-use model, effects of, ref1 measures to combat harassment at big social networks, ref1 microtargeting and, ref1 presidential campaign of 2016, ref1, ref2 reforming big tech, ref1 Twitter and, ref1 civil engineers, ref1 civil liberties, hacking to protect.

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
by Ed Conway
Published 15 Jun 2023

That generation of Chinese students came home and, rather than establishing a hardware industry, they used what they had learned in the US to set up internet services firms. Rather than building the new titans of the Material World, this generation of Chinese entrepreneurs built retail giant Alibaba, TenCent (which owns WeChat) and ByteDance (which owns TikTok). In steel production, cement, manufacturing, distribution and even social media, China has managed to catch up and even overtake the rest. But not, crucially, in semiconductors, for while it has begun to dominate in less complex, lower value silicon chip manufacture, Chinese fabs still trail those leading-edge designs, however much money and effort they expend.

…

Abbe, Ernest 48 , 56 adhesives 345 agricultural machinery 201–2 , 441 aircraft landing gear 225 , 229 Akhmetov, Rinat 209 Albemarle (company) 375 alchemy 33 Alexander II, Tsar 206 Alexander the Great 136 , 144 Algeria: salt 133 Alibaba (company) 115 alkali 154 Allende, Salvador 175 , 392 Almeria, Spain: greenhouses 350 alum/alum mines 125 , 220 aluminium 9 , 21 , 117 , 152 , 198 , 228 , 248 , 278 , 279–80 adding to steel 227 in batteries 408 and electricity 257–8 and electrolysis 263n recycling 420 Amazon (company) 115 America see United States of America ammonia 10 , 173 , 188 , 275 , 342 , 432 , 433 , 438 Anaconda Copper (company) 281 Anderson, Philip 40 Anglo-American (company) 187 , 188 , 189 Anglo-Saxon graveyard, Street House 126 ‘Angstrom era’ 91 anhydrite 177 anodes see under batteries anthracite 219 , 334 Anthropocene, the 67 , 359 , 384 antibiotics 152 anti-depressants 152 Antofagasta, Chile 163 , 169 , 170 , 285 , 392 railway 163–4 , 168–9 Apple (company) 92 , 119 , 400 , 403 , 405 Applied Materials (company) 116 , 119 Arabian Gulf 315 , 316 Aramco (company) 321 , 358 , 361 Argentina 384 , 396 Aristotle 275 ARM (company) 120 arsenic 272 , 273 , 351 Ashton’s Flash, Cheshire 157 ASM Pacific (company) 119 ASML (company) 13 , 93 , 112–14 , 119 Aspdin, Joseph 75 , 80 , 85 asphalt 8 , 71 , 331 aspirin 334 Atacama Desert 163 , 167 , 169 , 171 , 174–5 , 270 , 271 , 371 , 375 , 385 , 387 , 393 AT&T (company) 60 Atlantic Ocean 17 , 135 , 178 , 262 , 353 see also Mid-Atlantic Ridge Auschwitz concentration camp 337 Australia 396 Aboriginal people 235 , 237–43 The Dreaming 237–9 iron ore 233–5 , 236–7 , 238 , 239–40 , 243–4 spodumene (lithium aluminium silicate) mines 385 , 412 , 421 , 423 Sydney Harbour Bridge 125 Sydney Opera House 80 see also Pilbara, the Austria 119 , see also Hallein salt mine Azovstal Iron and Steel Works see Mariupol Babbage, Charles 90 Bagnold, Ralph 29 , 30 Bahrain: oil 313 Baker, Laura 228 Baku, Azerbaijan: oilfields 312 , 335 , 337 Balearic Islands 159 Ballard, Bob 291 , 301 ballpoint pens 229–30 Bardeen, John 89 , 100 Barnett Shale, Texas 322 Barrick Gold Corporation 1 , 2–5 Barron, Gerard 299–301 , 304 BASF (company) 334 , 335 , 348 , 438 batteries 13 , 17 , 21 , 34 , 244 , 253 , 287 , 293 , 353 , 377–80 , 397–8 , 407 , 429 anodes 267n , 327 , 332 , 380–81 and n , 382 , 401 , 402 , 403 , 407 , 409 , 416 cathodes 380–81 and n , 382 , 401 , 402 , 407 , 416 , 423 ‘Coke can’ 405 and n ‘jelly rolls’ 402 , 408 , 409 , 427 lead-acid 378 , 379 , 381 lithium-ion 332 , 373 , 375 , 377 , 379 , 380–81 , 382–4 , 395–6 , 398 , 402–5 , 408–9 , 416 , 427 , 433 rechargeable 293 , 379 , 381 , 382 , 402 recycling 419 , 420–23 sodium-ion 409 Bayer (company) 334 beaches, tourist 68 Bedouins 75 , 309 , 310 beer brewing 218 , 219 , 220 Belarus: potash 180 Bell, Alexander Graham 59–60 Bell Labs 60 , 89 , 100 , 102n , 356 Benchmark Mineral Intelligence 406 benzaldehyde 351 benzene 342 , 433 Berg, Ernie 309–10 , 313–14 , 315 , 321 , 323 Bergius, Friedrich 334–5 , 337 , 351 beryllium 52 Bessemer, Sir Henry 200 , 248 Bessemer converter 207 , 209 , 223 BHP Billiton (company) 237 Biden, President Joe 17 , 119 , 320 , 321 , 325 , 330 , 411 Bihar, India 70 Billingham, County Durham: ICI plant 188 , 432 Bingham Canyon copper mine, Utah 268 , 281 binoculars 46 , 47 , 48 , 49–51 , 52 bipolar disorder 376 bischofite 178–9 bitumen 312 ‘black smokers’ see hydrothermal vents block mining 283 , 305 BMW (company) 407 Bolivia/Bolivians 169 , 170 , 265 , 392 see also Salar de Uyuni borates 20 , 21 Borlaug, Norman 275 boron 8 , 20–21 , 372 , 376 Bosch, Carl 173 , 335 see also Haber-Bosch process bottles, plastic 354 , 355 , 360 Boulby, North Yorkshire 177 , 189 saltmaking 125–7 , 128–9 , 131 , 134 , 144 , 155 , 177 , 190 see also Cleveland Potash Boyle, Robert 37 Bragg reflectors 113 Brattain, Walter 89 , 100 Brazil 42 , 51n , 187 , 222 deforestation 247 iron mining 235 , 246–7 , 261 , 268 niobium 225 breweries 218 , 219 , 220 brickmakers 219 bridges 80 , 81 , 114 , 125 , 149 , 198 , 200–1 , 203 , 210 , 225 , 229 suspension cables 225 brine and cheese making 132 , 190 and chloralkali process 151–2 , 190 , 395 and lithium 372 , 375–6 , 394–5 , 421 , 423 and salt making 130 , 131 , 144–6 and soda ash 190 , 351 springs 132 146–7 British Salt (company) 145–6 , 150 , 155 , 158 , 395 British Science Guild 48–9 Bronze Age 258–9 Brunner Mond (company) 335 Brussels Royal Palace 413 statue of Leopold II 413 , 414 , 416 , 417 bubble wrap 354 Builth, Heather 240 bulletproof vests 351 , 355 Burghausen, Germany 98 Burj Khalifa, Dubai 64 BYD (company) 401 ByteDance (company) 115 cadmium 52 Calama, Chile 270 , 272 , 273 calcium 73 , 181 calcium carbonate 82 calcium oxide 82 calcium silicate hydrate 73 caliche 168 , 169 , 171 , 175 California Arabian Standard Oil Company 309 Camborne School of Mines, Cornwall 437 Canada 42 , 95 , 147 , 180 , 330 , 421 Canary Islands 68 , 179 capitalism 128 , 129 , 441 car industry/cars 9 , 90 , 246 , 311 , 398–9 , 406 aluminium 248 electric 13 , 15 , 35 , 58 , 85 , 269 , 273 , 287 , 319 , 332 , 342 , 375 , 380 , 381n , 383 , 385–6 , 400 , 403 , 404–5 , 406 , 408 , 409 , 419 , 421 , 423 and steel 226–8 see also Ford, Henry Carajás iron mine, Brazil 246–7 carbon capture and storage (CCS) 82 , 161 , 188 carbon dioxide 9–10 , 11 , see carbon capture ; carbon emissions carbon emissions from cement production 81 , 82–5 elimination of/net zero 269 , 318 , 367 , 373 , 430 , 436–7 , 442 and fossil fuels 287 , 324 , 373 , 398–9 , 429–30 , 434–5 from greenhouses/glasshouses 349–50 and iron and steel production 197 , 217 and manufacture of paper bags and straws 359–60 and silicon chips 97 see also greenhouse gases carbon fibre 247–8 Caribbean sand 32 carnallite 178 Carnegie, Andrew 207 , 237 , 281 cassette-tapes 401 Cassiodorus 133 cathode active materials 398 , 407 , 408 , 411 , 412 , 419 cathodes copper 267 and n , 284 , 285 , 392 see also under batteries CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth
by Guillaume Pitron
Published 14 Jun 2023

Frankfurt, the Danish peninsula of Jutland, London, Paris, and Dublin all face the same problems,’ admits Dutch lobbyist Stijn Grove.35 The industry is, in fact, experiencing what is called the ‘Amsterdam effect’, and other municipalities may make similar decisions to avoid overload.36 Could Dublin, where data centres, enticed by an attractive tax regime, thrive, be the next city to overheat? In 2020, the Chinese company ByteDance — the parent company of TikTok — announced its intention to build a data centre in the Irish capital to store its videos of teenagers prancing around to music.37 Only, the announcement came after internet giants Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook set up operations in Dublin, with the result that ‘data centres now consume more energy than the city’s population!’

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
by Ali Tamaseb
Published 14 Sep 2021

It’s possible that Steinert didn’t need a co-founder because he already knew how to grow the business, based on his years developing TripAdvisor. The success of TripAdvisor also made it easier for CarGurus to attract talent and funding, which may have helped Steinert succeed as a solo founder. CarGurus had an IPO in 2017 that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Similar patterns are also found outside the United States. ByteDance, one of the highest-valued privately-owned startups in the world at the time of writing this book and the famous Chinese company behind the video-sharing app TikTok and the content-aggregation platform Toutiao, was started by a solo founder, Zhang Yiming. Ric Fulop didn’t have a single co-founder when he started Desktop Metal—he had six of them.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking
by Michael Bhaskar
Published 2 Nov 2021

But since then, the latter has grown twice as fast.10 Asia took the lion's share of global growth over the last forty years. By 2012 China was the world's largest manufacturer. In the twenty-five years after 1990, the dollar value of its exports grew forty-fold and it continues to rise steeply.11 Its high-tech businesses, like Tencent, Bytedance, Alibaba, Didi and DJI, eclipse all but a few rivals in market cap, R&D spend, user numbers and the deployment of groundbreaking tech. From the 2010s on, no one could claim new technologies were the privileged domain of the West. Chinese research is well-resourced and increasingly worldleading, not least in building the new toolkit.

The Great Firewall of China
by James Griffiths;
Published 15 Jan 2018

Link, ‘The anaconda in the chandelier’, New York Review of Books, 11 April 2002, http://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-anaconda-chandelier 10King, Pan and Roberts, ‘How censorship in China allows government criticism’, p. 5. 11R. Zhong, P. Mozur and I. Zhao, ‘Horns honk, and censors in China get a headache’, The New York Times, 12 April 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/business/china-bytedance-duanzi-censor.html 12She was ridiculing ongoing anti-Japanese protests over a territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo, in which young protesters had targeted Japanese businesses and smashed Japanese products. Cheng retweeted a mocking suggestion that they instead target a government-run pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, adding the three words that landed her with a charge of “disrupting public order”.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman
Published 4 Sep 2023

Xi Jinping has explicitly called for a “robot revolution”: China installs as many robots as the rest of the world combined. It built hypersonic missiles thought years away by the United States, is a world leader in fields from 6G communications to photovoltaics, and is home to major tech companies like Tencent, Alibaba, DJI, Huawei, and ByteDance. Quantum computing is an area of notable Chinese expertise. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information from U.S. intelligence programs, China became particularly paranoid and keen to build a secure communications platform. Another Sputnik moment. In 2014, China filed the same number of quantum technology patents as the United States; by 2018 it had filed twice as many.

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination
by Mark Bergen
Published 5 Sep 2022

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT admitted about TikTok: hankschannel, “YouTube, Pandemics, Creators, and Power: An Interview with Susan Wojcicki and Hank Green,” YouTube video, May 6, 2020, 54:38, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPXht-gyj4. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT would become TikTok: ByteDance, a tech firm based in Beijing, acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and later refashioned that company’s app as TikTok. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on its talks with Musical.ly. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Americans watched more TikTok: The study covered only Android phones.

It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO
by Felix Gillette and John Koblin
Published 1 Nov 2022

Not long after joining the company, Kilar popped up on an internal companywide video call wearing a purple wig and a pair of giant orange novelty sunglasses. A stuffed white owl sat on his shoulder. He looked like a rich guy visiting Burning Man for the first time. Then there was his preoccupation with TikTok. The short-form video-sharing site, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was exploding in popularity, particularly with young people. There were viral dancing videos. Acting lessons. Fashion tutorials. Recipes. Pranks. Above all else, Kilar wanted HBO Max to have an impressive presence on TikTok. He convened one meeting after the next to discuss the topic. His idea was to hire a group of young interns to make their own videos inspired by HBO and Warner Bros. programming.

Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections
by Mollie Hemingway
Published 11 Oct 2021

In the run-up to his appointment as Fulton County election administrator, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution speculated that “Barron’s run-in with Republicans may boost his chances with a panel where Democrats have a 5–2 majority.”26 Apparently, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners considered the fact Barron had run afoul of Republicans a credential rather than a liability. Barron was not the only one who asserted that the video of Fulton County poll workers did not merit serious consideration. Another group purporting to debunk the video was an outfit called Lead Stories, which relies on funding from Silicon Valley tech giants Google and Facebook, in addition to ByteDance, a Chinese-operated company headquartered in Beijing that operates the social media platform TikTok.27 Lead Stories relied on the same line as the Washington Post, saying, “There was never an announcement made to the media and other observers about the counting being over for the night and them needing to leave, according to [Frances Watson, chief investigator for the Georgia secretary of state], who was provided information by the media liaison, who was present.”

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order
by Colin Kahl and Thomas Wright
Published 23 Aug 2021

They soon began replicating this agenda elsewhere, including in Europe, where they found a receptive audience among national security professionals increasingly alienated by Beijing’s wolf warrior approach. China had overplayed its hand. Domestically, the administration also went into overdrive on China. It closed the Chinese consulate in Houston against the advice of the U.S. ambassador to China, imposed restrictions on Chinese technology companies such as ByteDance, sent health and human services secretary Azar to Taiwan, agreed to a new Taiwan arms sale, and imposed new sanctions on China over its violation of the “one country, two systems” model in Hong Kong and mass human rights abuses in Xinjiang. As the official told us: “I don’t think those things necessarily would have happened without COVID.