March 29, 2024

House Republicans Urged to Investigate China’s IP Theft, Big Tech Ties

“There’s sort of no simply neutral way to work with China in any way.”

“Apple computer has this strange dependency on  Chinese labor to build the iPhones”

Republicans Urged to Investigate China’s IP Theft, Big Tech Ties

Policy experts and tech leaders including conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel are urging the incoming GOP House to investigate China’s exploitation of the U.S. intellectual property system, as well as ties between Big Tech companies and the communist country.

Policy experts and tech leaders including conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel are urging the incoming GOP House to investigate China’s exploitation of the U.S. intellectual property system, as well as ties between Big Tech companies and the communist country.

In a recent speech at the Reagan Library, Thiel called on the incoming GOP House Majority to get tougher on China, stating “There’s sort of no simply neutral way to work with China in any way.”

In particular, he called out the role of Big Tech in China:

“with . . . some of the Dynamics in the tech industry where you have . . . Apple computer has this strange dependency on  Chinese labor to build the iPhones . . .would violate every labor law standard in the U.S and so the biggest company in the US that makes up something like six and a half seven percent of the S&P 500 is somehow incredibly deeply entangled on an economic level with China.”

Thiel also noted that our “data gets shared in all sorts of different ways” with China, citing concerns about TikTok’s ties to the CCP. Thiel famously called Google’s relationship with China “seemingly treasonous” at the 2019 National Conservatism Conference

While Thiel has largely been an anti-establishment, the bulk of the majority of the GOP Leadership shares this view rhetorically. Prior to the election McCarthy’s blueprint called to “End Dependence on China” and “Confront Big Tech.”  Candeub was encouraged with McCarthy’s claim that “China is the No. 1 country when it comes to intellectual property theft.” Indeed, China has exploited the U.S.’s IP system, stealing an estimated $600 billion in intellectual property each year.

Many leading conservative anti-Big Tech scholars have argued that cracking down on Big Tech and China requires a tough approach on intellectual property.

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Mike Pompeo demands US BANS Chinese travelers after Beijing eased travel restrictions – and claims Xi Jinping is trying to infect the world with another variant of COVID

Mike Pompeo demands world shut down Chinese travel due to COVID

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists the world should shut down travel from China right after Xi announced an easing travel restrictions in the New Year because it’s a plot to spread COVID.

  • Mike Pompeo warned China is trying to spread a new variant of COVID-19 
  • Comes after President Xi Jinping decided to reopen travel out of China
  • Several countries have already imposed pre-departure testing requirements 
  • ‘Xi got away with this once,’ Pomepoe said. ‘I regret he wasn’t held accountable’

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists the U.S. – and the world – should shut down accepting travel from China right after the Communist country announced it would be easing travel restrictions in the New Year.

He warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping has a plot to infect the world and spread a new COVID-19 variant after ‘the whole world has been through hell.’

China, which has the most stringent COVID-19 restrictions still in place, announced last month that it would start allowing travel out of and into the country following three years of ‘zero COVID’ policies.

Several countries, including the U.S., immediately said Chinese travelers would be required to test negative for coronavirus before boarding flights.

‘It sounds like we might have as many as 1 million Chinese people infected. Fifty percent of their population traveling,’ Pompeo told Cats Roundtable host John Catsimatidis in a Sunday interview.

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California is Now a ‘Sanctuary State’ For Transgender Children

California is Now a ‘Sanctuary State’ For Transgender Children | The Gateway Pundit | by Cassandra MacDonald | 70

California is now a “sanctuary state” for children seeking transgender procedures and medications.

California is now a “sanctuary state” for children seeking transgender procedures and medications.

The bill was passed in September but went into effect on January 1.

California will now “offer refuge” to minors and their families “if they’re being criminalized in their home states” over transgender treatments.

Many of these treatments irreversibly sterilize and/or disfigure the patient.

The law says that any potential out-of-state arrest warrant for violating laws related to transgender treatments on children and teens will be given “the lowest law enforcement priority.”

“We are going to provide them with refuge and we’re not going to send them back and we’re not going to honor subpoenas,” said Senator Scott Wiener, who authored the bill. “And our law enforcement is not going to enforce the laws of Texas and Alabama criminalizing these families.”


How simple, cheap quadcopters are revolutionizing the art of war

Thread by @sambendett on Thread Reader App

@sambendett: 1/ A THREAD: As 2022 draws to a close, a few words about how technology helped shape and influence the war in Ukraine – specifically, the impact of commercial quadcopters. 2/ Ukraine led this charge……

 1/As 2022 draws to a close, a few words about how technology helped shape and influence the war in Ukraine – specifically, the impact of commercial quadcopters.

2/ Ukraine led this charge as Russia invaded in February 2022, scoring some major successes in key battles against Russian forces, with quadcopters providing crucial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to long-range artillery and MLRS systems. 

3/ This capacity enabled Ukraine to better organize and position its forces to meet the invading Russian military.

4/ The pinnacle of this tactic is a Chinese-made DJI Mavic quadcopter – easy to procure, easy to fly/ navigate, it became absolutely indispensable for ISR, target spotting, artillery correction and combat missions like “kamikaze attacks”, dropping small bombs and grenades.

5/ Ukrainian military forces have greater flexibility and independence in making decision based on the data from these quadcopters, a key capability that enabled them to faster react to Russian movements, maneuvers and force-positioning. This is still the case now. 

6/ But the Russian military and its allies likewise incorporated the DJI and other quadcopters like Autel into their tactics and force structure. DNR militia expanded its drone training center in 2022 to teach drone operators that fly Mavics and other models.

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Brother and sister had to stop 6 times in 1 day to charge their rented Tesla in cold weather because the battery drained so quickly

A brother and sister say they had to stop 6 times in one day to charge their rented Tesla in cold weather after the battery drained quickly

Xaviar and Alice Steavenson said they paid up to $30 each time they needed to recharge their car on their road trip from Orlando to Wichita.

  • A brother and sister rented a Tesla and found they had to stop six times in one day to charge it.
  • Xaviar Steavenson and his sister Alice drove from Orlando, Florida to Wichita, Kansas.
  • They said other customers with rented Teslas had called Hertz with similar charging problems.

Xaviar and Alice Steavenson wanted to find out what it’s like to drive a Tesla, so they rented one from Hertz for a road trip from Orlando, Florida to Wichita, Kansas.

They knew that the electric car would need charging en route, but what the siblings did not expect was just how often they’d need to plug it in.

They realized it would take longer to charge the car after the weather turned so cold in late December.

However, it got to the point that the “battery would drain faster than it would charge,” Xaviar told Insider.

When they set off they could drive for at least two and a half hours before needing to charge the Tesla. “We ended up having to stop every one to one and a half hours to charge for an hour, then an hour and a half, then two hours,” he said.

So beyond the lost time, it also got to the point it was between $25 and $30 to recharge. Just in one day, we stopped six times to charge at that cost,” Xaviar said.

Hertz said on its website that renting a Tesla was “always cheaper than gas,” according to Xaviar, but he said that claim was far from the truth.

The first time the siblings called Hertz, Xaviar said the agent told him he’d had “had nothing but Tesla calls today – I have no idea why they’re having issues.”

A spokesperson for Hertz told Insider: “We have not experienced a significant increase in communication from customers about the battery of their EV rentals. However, battery range varies by vehicle manufacturer and can be influenced by multiple factors including weather and driving conditions.”

The Steavensons were not alone in experiencing Tesla charging problem in very cold weather. A 44-year-old radio presenter, from Lynchburg in eastern Virginia, told Insider it was 19 degrees (minus 7 C) when he was left stranded just before Christmas because his Model S wouldn’t charge.

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