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Enlarge / The Chinese automaker BYD has every other electric vehicle maker worried. (credit: John Keeble/Getty Images)
The United States has won an important battle in its war to keep low-cost Chinese electric vehicles from American car buyers. Today, Reuters reports that the Mexican federal government has responded to pressure from the US and will not offer incentives to Chinese automakers, like BYD, that are looking to establish North American manufacturing operations.
BYD last met with Mexican officials in January, according to Reuters, where it learned that Chinese automakers would not be offered tax breaks or cheap land to build factories.
Until now, Mexico has offered foreign automakers generous subsidies that have made the country a cheap place to build cars. Added to that, the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement also makes Mexico desirable for ease of access to the US market, and Chinese automotive part suppliers have flocked to the country in recent years.
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A federal Cyber Safety Review Board has issued its report on what led to last summer's capture of hundreds of thousands of emails by Chinese hackers from cloud customers, including federal agencies. It cites "a cascade of security failures at Microsoft" and finds that "Microsoft's security culture was inadequate" and needs to adjust to a "new normal" of cloud provider targeting.
The report, mandated by President Biden in the wake of the far-reaching intrusion, details the steps that Microsoft took before, during, and after the breach and in each case finds critical failure. The breach was "preventable," even though it cites Microsoft as not knowing precisely how Storm-0558, a "hacking group assessed to be affiliated with the People's Republic of China," got in.
"Throughout this review, the board identified a series of Microsoft operational and strategic decisions that collectively points to a corporate culture that deprioritized both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management," the report reads.
Enlarge / A billboard from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is seen on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on May 29, 2018, warning of a drug-resistant gonorrhea. (credit: Getty | )
Health officials have long warned that gonorrhea is becoming more and more resistant to all the antibiotic drugs we have to fight it. Last year, the US reached a grim landmark: For the first time, two unrelated people in Massachusetts were found to have gonorrhea infections with complete or reduced susceptibility to every drug in our arsenal, including the frontline drug ceftriaxone. Luckily, they were still able to be cured with high-dose injections of ceftriaxone. But, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bluntly notes: "Little now stands between us and untreatable gonorrhea."
If public health alarm bells could somehow hit a higher pitch, a study published Thursday from researchers in China would certainly accomplish it. The study surveyed gonorrhea bacterial isolates—Neisseria gonorrhoeae—from around the country and found that the prevalence of ceftriaxone-resistant isolates nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021. Ceftriaxone-resistant strains made up roughly 8 percent of the nearly 3,000 bacterial isolates collected from gonorrhea infections in 2022. That's up from just under 3 percent in 2017. The study appears in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
While those single-digit percentages may seem low, compared to other countries they're extremely high. In the US, for instance, the prevalence of ceftriaxone-resistant strains never went above 0.2 percent between 2017 and 2021, according to the CDC. In Canada, ceftriaxone-resistance was stable at 0.6 percent between 2017 and 2021. The United Kingdom had a prevalence of 0.21 percent in 2022.
Enlarge (credit: peterschreiber.media | Getty Images)
The US Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment charging seven men with hacking or attempting to hack dozens of US companies in a 14-year campaign furthering an economic espionage and foreign intelligence gathering by the Chinese government.
All seven defendants, federal prosecutors alleged, were associated with Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science & Technology Co., Ltd. a front company created by the Hubei State Security Department, an outpost of the Ministry of State Security located in Wuhan province. The MSS, in turn, has funded an advanced persistent threat group tracked under names including APT31, Zirconium Violet Typhoon, Judgment Panda, and Altaire.
“Since at least 2010, the defendants … engaged in computer network intrusion activity on behalf of the HSSD targeting numerous US government officials, various US economic and defense industries and a variety of private industry officials, foreign democracy activists, academics and parliamentarians in response to geopolitical events affecting the PRC,” federal prosecutors alleged. “These computer network intrusion activities resulted in the confirmed and potential compromise of work and personal email accounts, cloud storage accounts and telephone call records belonging to millions of Americans, including at least some information that could be released in support of malign influence targeting democratic processes and institutions, and economic plans, intellectual property, and trade secrets belonging to American businesses, and contributed to the estimated billions of dollars lost every year as a result of the PRC’s state-sponsored apparatus to transfer US technology to the PRC.”
Enlarge / Nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines power Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle off the pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, early Thursday. (credit: Brady Kenniston/Rocket Lab)
Welcome to Edition 6.36 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX wants to launch the next Starship test flight as soon as early May, the company's president and chief operating officer said this week. The third Starship test flight last week went well enough that the Federal Aviation Administration—yes, the FAA, the target of many SpaceX fans' frustrations—anticipates a simpler investigation and launch licensing process than SpaceX went through before its previous Starship flights. However, it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for Starship to start launching real satellites.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Starship could threaten small launch providers. Officials from several companies operating or developing small satellite launch vehicles are worried that SpaceX's giant Starship rocket could have a big impact on their marketability, Space News reports. Starship's ability to haul more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit will be attractive not just for customers with heavy satellites but also for those with smaller spacecraft. Aggregating numerous smallsats on Starship will mean lower prices than dedicated small satellite launch companies can offer and could encourage customers to build larger satellites with cheaper parts, further eroding business opportunities for small launch providers.
Enlarge / A Long March 8 rocket, standing 165 feet (50 meters) tall, rolled out of its assembly building to its launch pad Sunday at the Wenchang Space Launch Site. (credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
The next phase of China's Moon program began with the launch of a new data relay satellite Monday to link lunar landers and rovers on the far side of the Moon with ground controllers back on Earth.
This launch sent China's Queqiao-2 relay spacecraft toward the Moon, where it will enter an elliptical orbit and position itself for the arrival of China's next robotic lunar lander, Chang'e 6, later this year.
A medium-lift Long March 8 rocket carried the Queqiao-2 spacecraft aloft from the Wenchang launch base, located on Hainan Island in southern China. This was the third flight of the kerosene-fueled Long March 8, one of a new generation of Chinese rockets designed to replace older Long March launcher designs burning toxic propellant.
Enlarge / A stand of TikTok (Douyin) at The First International Artificial Products Expo Hangzhou on October 18, 2019, in Hangzhou, China. (credit: Long Wei | VCG | Getty Images)
Does the Chinese government have officials inside TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, pulling the strings? And does the storing of data from the popular social media app outside of China protect Americans?
These questions appear to dominate the current thinking in the US over whether to ban TikTok if its owner, Chinese technology giant ByteDance, refuses to sell the platform.
But in my opinion—forged through 40 years as a scholar of China, its political economy, and business—both questions obscure a more interesting point. What’s more, they suggest a crucial misunderstanding of the relationship between state and private enterprise in China.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Pool)
Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is reportedly assembling an investor group to buy TikTok as the US comes closer to enacting legislation forcing the company to either divest from Chinese ownership or face a nationwide ban.
"I think the legislation should pass, and I think it should be sold," Mnuchin told CNBC Thursday. "It’s a great business, and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok."
Mnuchin currently leads Liberty Strategic Capital, which describes itself as "a Washington DC-based private equity firm focused on investing in dynamic global technology companies."
Enlarge (credit: Anadolu / Contributor | Anadolu)
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill with a vote of 352–65 that could block TikTok in the US. Fifteen Republicans and 50 Democrats voted in opposition, and one Democrat voted present, CNN reported.
TikTok is not happy. A spokesperson told Ars, "This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it's a ban. We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service."
Lawmakers insist that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act is not a ban. Instead, they claim the law gives TikTok a choice: either divest from ByteDance's China-based owners or face the consequences of TikTok being cut off in the US.
Enlarge / Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing (credit: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)
Apple and Tesla cracked China, but now the two largest US consumer companies in the country are experiencing cracks in their own strategies as domestic rivals gain ground and patriotic buying often trumps their allure.
Falling market share and sales figures reported this month indicate the two groups face rising competition and the whiplash of US-China geopolitical tensions. Both have turned to discounting to try to maintain their appeal.
A shift away from Apple, in particular, has been sharp, spurred on by a top-down campaign to reduce iPhone usage among state employees and the triumphant return of Chinese national champion Huawei, which last year overcame US sanctions to roll out a homegrown smartphone capable of near 5G speeds.
Enlarge / A Google sign stands in front of the building on the sidelines of the opening of the new Google Cloud data center in Hesse, Hanau, opened in October 2023. (credit: Getty Images)
On Wednesday, authorities arrested former Google software engineer Linwei Ding in Newark, California, on charges of stealing AI trade secrets from the company. The US Department of Justice alleges that Ding, a Chinese national, committed the theft while secretly working with two China-based companies.
According to the indictment, Ding, who was hired by Google in 2019 and had access to confidential information about the company's data centers, began uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago.
The trade secrets Ding allegedly copied contained "detailed information about the architecture and functionality of GPU and TPU chips and systems, the software that allows the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology," according to the indictment.
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More than 1,000 Ubiquiti routers in homes and small businesses were infected with malware used by Russian-backed agents to coordinate them into a botnet for crime and spy operations, according to the Justice Department.
That malware, which worked as a botnet for the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, was removed in January 2024 under a secret court order as part of "Operation Dying Ember," according to the FBI's director. It affected routers running Ubiquiti's EdgeOS, but only those that had not changed their default administrative password. Access to the routers allowed the hacking group to "conceal and otherwise enable a variety of crimes," the DOJ claims, including spearphishing and credential harvesting in the US and abroad.
Unlike previous attacks by Fancy Bear—that the DOJ ties to GRU Military Unit 26165, which is also known as APT 28, Sofacy Group, and Sednit, among other monikers—the Ubiquiti intrusion relied on a known malware, Moobot. Once infected by "Non-GRU cybercriminals," GRU agents installed "bespoke scripts and files" to connect and repurpose the devices, according to the DOJ.
Enlarge / The latest Huawei-designed Kirin processor was a 7-nanometer chip made for it by SMIC that appeared in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone in August. (credit: James Park/Bloomberg)
China’s national chip champions expect to make next-generation smartphone processors as early as this year, despite US efforts to restrict their development of advanced technologies.
The country’s biggest chipmaker, SMIC, has put together new semiconductor production lines in Shanghai, according to two people familiar with the move, to mass-produce the chips designed by technology giant Huawei.
That plan supports Beijing’s goals of chip self-sufficiency, with President Joe Biden’s administration tightening export restrictions for advanced chipmaking equipment in October, citing national security concerns. The US has also been working with the Netherlands and Japan to block China’s access to the latest chip tools, such as machines from the Dutch maker ASML.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Benj Edwards)
On Sunday, a report from the South China Morning Post revealed a significant financial loss suffered by a multinational company's Hong Kong office, amounting to HK$200 million (US$25.6 million), due to a sophisticated scam involving deepfake technology. The scam featured a digitally recreated version of the company's chief financial officer, along with other employees, who appeared in a video conference call instructing an employee to transfer funds.
Due to an ongoing investigation, Hong Kong police did not release details of which company was scammed.
Deepfakes utilize AI tools to create highly convincing fake videos or audio recordings, posing significant challenges for individuals and organizations to discern real from fabricated content.
Enlarge / Firefly Aerospace's fourth Alpha rocket lifted off December 22 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. (credit: Firefly Aerospace/Trevor Mahlmann)
Welcome to Edition 6.25 of the Rocket Report! We hope all our readers had a peaceful holiday break. While many of us were enjoying time off work, launch companies like SpaceX kept up the pace until the final days of 2023. Last year saw a record level of global launch activity, with 223 orbital launch attempts and 212 rockets successfully reaching orbit. Nearly half of these missions were by SpaceX.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Firefly's fourth launch puts payload in wrong orbit. The fourth flight of Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket on December 22 placed a small Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite into a lower-than-planned orbit after lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. US military tracking data indicated the Alpha rocket released its payload into an elliptical orbit ranging between 215 and 523 kilometers in altitude, not the mission's intended circular target orbit. Firefly later confirmed the Alpha rocket's second stage, which was supposed to reignite about 50 minutes after liftoff, did not deliver Lockheed Martin's satellite into the proper orbit. This satellite, nicknamed Tantrum, was designed to test Lockheed Martin's new wideband Electronically Steerable Antenna technology to demonstrate faster on-orbit sensor calibration to deliver rapid capabilities to US military forces.
Enlarge / A Long March 5 rocket, the largest launcher in China's inventory, deployed a classified Chinese military satellite into orbit Friday. (credit: CASC)
China's largest rocket apparently wasn't big enough to launch the country's newest spy satellite, so engineers gave the rocket an upgrade.
The Long March 5 launcher flew with a payload fairing some 20 feet (6.2 meters) taller than its usual nose cone when it took off on Friday with a Chinese military spy satellite. This made the Long March 5, with a height of some 200 feet, the tallest rocket China has ever flown.
Adding to the intrigue, the Chinese government claimed the spacecraft aboard the Long March 5 rocket, named Yaogan-41, is a high-altitude optical remote-sensing satellite. These types of surveillance satellites usually fly much closer to Earth to obtain the sharpest images possible of an adversary's military forces and strategically important sites.
Enlarge / The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzen is made to be pointed at, rapidly, in a crowded environment. (credit: Machinery Enchantress / Crowd Supply)
"Hong Kong has better food, Shanghai has better nightlife. But when it comes to making things—no one can beat Shenzen."
Many things about the Hua Qiang market in Shenzhen, China, are different than they were in 2016, when Andrew "bunnie" Huang's Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen was first published. But the importance of the world's premiere electronics market, and the need for help navigating it, are a constant. That's why the book is getting an authorized, crowdfunded revision, the New Essential Guide, written by noted maker and Shenzhen native Naomi Wu and due to ship in April 2024.
Naomi Wu's narrated introduction to the New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen.
Huang notes on the crowdfunding page that Wu's "strengths round out my weaknesses." Wu speaks Mandarin, lives in Shenzhen, and is more familiar with Shenzhen, and China, as it is today. Shenzhen has grown by more than 2 million people, the central Huaqiangbei Road has been replaced by a car-free boulevard, and the city's metro system has more than 100 new kilometers with dozens of new stations. As happens anywhere, market vendors have also changed locations, payment and communications systems have modernized, and customs have shifted.
Enlarge / The iPhone 15 is manufactured both in China and India. (credit: Apple)
Apple wants batteries for its latest generation of iPhones to be made in India, as part of the US tech giant’s efforts to diversify its global supply chain and move manufacturing out of China.
The world’s most valuable company has informed component suppliers of its preference to source batteries for the forthcoming iPhone 16 from Indian factories, according to two people close to Apple.
Battery manufacturers, such as Desay of China, have been encouraged to establish new factories in India, while Simplo Technology, a Taiwanese battery supplier for Apple, has been asked to scale up production in India for future orders, said three people familiar with the situation.
Enlarge / Imagery from Europe's Sentinel-2 satellite shows the aftermath of an explosion on a test stand at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. (credit: Sentinel Hub EO Browser/CC BY 4.0)
Welcome to Edition 6.21 of the Rocket Report!
Someone is always watching, and it's more difficult than ever to hide bad news. This is one of my mantras as a reporter who will always come down on the side of transparency. We've seen space companies and government agencies in the United States try to downplay setbacks, which, let's face it, are inevitable in the space business. In China, it looks like a recent test-firing of a rocket motor didn't go well. Unsurprisingly, Chinese officials haven't said a thing.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Enlarge (credit: FT)
In late 2020, Huawei was fighting for its survival as a mobile phone maker.
A few months earlier, the Trump administration had hit the Chinese company with crippling sanctions, cutting it off from global semiconductor supply chains.
The sanctions prevented anyone without a permit from making the chips Huawei designed, and the company was struggling to procure new chips to launch more advanced handsets.
Enlarge / A solid-fueled Ceres 1 rocket, developed by the Chinese company Galactic Energy, fires away from an ocean-going launch platform in the Yellow Sea on September 5. (credit: Chen Xiao/VCG via Getty Images)
Led by SpaceX and China, the world's launch providers have put more rockets and payloads into orbit so far in 2023 than in any prior year, continuing an upward trend in launch activity over the last five years.
On Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration reported that it screened more than 2.9 million airline passengers making their way through US airports after Thanksgiving. It was the busiest day in history for US airports.
A few days earlier, the world's spaceports set a new record with the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites from Florida. This launch on November 22 was the 180th launch of 2023 to put its payload into orbit, eclipsing the mark of 179 successful orbital launches from last year.
Enlarge / Founder and CEO of NVIDIA Jensen Huang speaks during the New York Times annual DealBook summit on November 29, 2023, in New York City. (credit: Michael M. Santiago / Staff | Getty Images North America)
The US could be up to two decades away from maintaining its own domestic chips supply chain, Nvidia Corp.'s CEO, Jensen Huang, told an audience gathered in New York for the New York Times’s DealBook conference.
Nvidia is a giant in the semiconductor industry, and Huang said his company's success depends on "myriad components that come from different parts of the world," Bloomberg reported. "Not just Taiwan," Huang said, where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing company makes the world's most advanced semiconductor technology.
“We are somewhere between a decade and two decades away from supply chain independence,” Huang said. “It’s not a really practical thing for a decade or two.”
Enlarge / Parents with children who are suffering from respiratory diseases are lining up at a children's hospital in Chongqing, China, on November 23, 2023. (credit: Getty | Costfoto/NurPhoto)
Last week, news stories and a posting on an infectious disease surveillance system raised fears that another novel respiratory pathogen with pandemic potential was mushrooming in northern areas of China—namely Beijing and Liaoning province. The reports referenced "undiagnosed pneumonia" in "clusters" of children, hospitals that were "overwhelmed," and parents who were questioning whether "authorities were covering up the epidemic."
But, rather than a sequel to the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation appears to be merely a side effect of it. According to independent experts and the World Health Organization, it's most likely that China is now experiencing a roaring comeback of a mix of common respiratory infections that were muted during the global health crisis. Many other countries experienced the same surges in the past year or two, including the US. As with the other countries, the wave of infection in China is mostly affecting children, who were less exposed to all sorts of pathogens amid the health restrictions, leaving them more vulnerable to infections now.
The global explosion of COVID-19 transmission and subsequent pandemic health measures severely disrupted common cycles of many infectious diseases worldwide, knocking seasonal respiratory infections like adenoviruses and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) off their annual cycles. In the US, the 2020-2021 flu season was virtually nonexistent, for instance. But, as the novel coronavirus abated and restrictions lifted, those pathogens vigorously returned. (The US also experienced early and intense peaks of RSV and flu last year.)
Enlarge / A nurse is on night shift at the emergency clinic of the International Peace Maternity & Child Health Hospital of China welfare institute in Shanghai, April 1, 2022. (credit: Getty | Yuan Quan)
Doctors in China are reporting a startling and unexplained spike in fetuses with situs inversus, a rare congenital condition in which the organs in the chest and abdomen are arranged in a mirror image of their normal positions.
In the first seven months of 2023, the rate of fetuses identified with the condition quadrupled compared with historic rates, according to a brief report appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine Thursday.
For the report, doctors from two big obstetric centers in the cities of Shanghai and Changsha combined their centers' clinical records from January 2014 through July 2023. The doctors found that from 2014 to 2022, the yearly total of situs inversus cases was typically about five to six per 10,000 pregnant people undergoing ultrasounds. But, in 2023, the rate jumped to nearly 24 cases per 10,000 ultrasound screenings.
Enlarge / A Long March 2F rocket climbed into space Thursday with a three-man crew heading for China's Tiangong space station. (credit: Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images)
Welcome to Edition 6.17 of the Rocket Report! Two Asian powers notched achievements in their human spaceflight programs this week. In China, three astronauts launched to begin a six-month expedition on the Tiangong space station. With this mission, China is settling into a routine of operations on the Tiangong complex. Elsewhere in Asia, India took strides toward launching its own astronauts with a successful test of a launch abort system for the country's Gaganyaan spacecraft, which could fly people into low-Earth orbit in 2025. This is welcome news for US officials because India could help offer a counterweight to China's dominance (among Asian countries) in spaceflight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
India tests escape system for human-rated crew capsule. India aced the first in-flight test of the crew escape system for the country's Gaganyaan spacecraft Saturday, Ars reports. With this flight, India tested the set of rocket motors and parachutes that would propel the spacecraft away from a failing launch vehicle, a dramatic maneuver that would save the lives of everyone on board. An unpressurized version of the Gaganyaan capsule launched, without anyone aboard, on top of a single-stage liquid-fueled rocket. About a minute later, soon after the rocket surpassed the speed of sound, the vehicle triggered the abort maneuver, and the capsule separated from the booster to parachute into the sea. By all accounts, Indian officials were thrilled with the outcome of the test flight.
Enlarge / A press photo of the Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU. (credit: Nvidia)
On Tuesday, chip designer Nvidia announced in an SEC filing that new US export restrictions on its high-end AI GPU chips to China are now in effect sooner than expected, according to a report from Reuters. The curbs were initially scheduled to take effect 30 days after their announcement on October 17 and are designed to prevent China, Iran, and Russia from acquiring advanced AI chips.
The banned chips are advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) that are commonly used for training and running deep learning AI applications similar to ChatGPT and AI image generators, among other uses. GPUs are well-suited for neural networks because their massively parallel architecture performs the necessary matrix multiplications involved in running neural networks faster than conventional processors.
The Biden administration initially announced an advanced AI chip export ban in September 2022, and in reaction, Nvidia designed and released new chips, the A800 and H800, to comply with those export rules for the Chinese market. In November 2022, Nvidia told The Verge that the A800 "meets the US Government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it." However, the new curbs enacted Monday specifically halt the exports of these modified Nvidia AI chips. The Nvidia A100, H100, and L40S chips are also included in the export restrictions.
Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images via Getty)
China has launched an investigation into Apple iPhone-maker Foxconn over tax and land use, Chinese state media reported on Sunday.
The Global Times, citing anonymous sources, said tax authorities inspected Foxconn’s sites in the provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu, and natural resources officials had inspected sites in Henan and Hubei.
Foxconn said it would cooperate with the investigation. “Complying with laws and regulations is a basic principle for the group worldwide,” said Foxconn in a statement. “We will actively cooperate with the relevant authorities’ operations.”
Enlarge / Aerial photo taken at night shows the TSMC plant area in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
The US Commerce Department announced today that key foreign chipmakers can continue receiving critical US chipmaking tools at China-based plants, Reuters reported.
This decision extends special authorizations that were granted to foreign chipmakers—including South Korea's SK Hynix and Samsung, as well as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC)—after the Biden administration curbed shipments of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China last October.
Those export controls were intended to slow down China's rapid advancement of AI and military technologies, but the new rules also negatively impacted US chip production. To overcome those inadvertent impacts on US chip supplies, the Biden administration granted limited special authorizations to allow some chipmakers to continue shipping equipment into China. Now, those chipmakers will be able to continue operating Chinese plants "without the headache of applying for US licenses," Reuters reported.
On the occasion of Black History Month UK, we speak to Lynda Chinaka, Senior Lecturer in Computing in Education at the University of Roehampton, about her experiences in computing education, her thoughts about underrepresentation of Black students in the subject, and her ideas about what needs to be done to engage more Black students.
Black history is a really important topic, obviously, and I think that, when Black History Month was first introduced, it was very powerful — and it continues to be in certain places. But I think that, for where we are as a society, it’s time to move past talking about Black history for only one month of the year, albeit an important, focused celebration. And certainly that would include integrating Black history and Black figures across subjects in school. That would be a very useful way to celebrate the contributions that Black people have made, and continue to make, to society. Children need to be taught a history in which they are included and valued. Good history is always a matter of different perspectives. Too often in schools, children experience a single perspective.
In terms of my journey, I’ve always been passionate about Computing — formerly ICT. I’ve been a Computing subject lead in schools, moving on into senior management. Beyond my career in schools, I have worked as an ICT consultant and as a Teacher Leader for a London authority. During that time, my interest in Computing/ICT led me to undertake an MA in Computing in Education at King’s College London. This led me to become a teacher trainer in my current role. In some sense, I’m carrying on the work I did with the local authorities, but in a university setting. At the University of Roehampton, I teach computing to BA Primary Education and PGCE students. Training teachers is something that I’m very much interested in. It’s about engaging student teachers, supporting them in developing their understanding of Computing in the primary phases. Students learn about the principles of computing, related learning theories, and how children think and learn. Perhaps more importantly, I am keen to instil a love of the subject and broaden their notions about computing.
In terms of the support I’ve received, I’ve worked in certain schools where Computing was really valued by the Headteacher, which enabled me to promote my vision for the subject. Supportive colleagues made a difference in their willingness take on new initiatives that I presented. I have been fortunate to work in local authorities that have been forward-thinking; one school became a test bed for Computing. So in that sense, schools have supported me. But as a Black person, a Black woman in particular, I would say that I faced barriers throughout my career. And those barriers have been there since childhood. In the Black community, people experience all sorts of things, and prejudice and barriers have been at play in my career.
Prejudice sometimes is very overt. An example I think I can share because it prevented me from getting a job: I went for an interview in a school. It was a very good interview, the Headteacher told me, “It was fantastic, you’re amazing, you’re excellent,” the problem was that there weren’t “enough Black pupils”, so she “didn’t see the need…”. And this is a discussion that was shared with me. Now in 2021 a Headteacher wouldn’t say that, but let’s just wind the clock back 15 years. These are the kinds of experiences that you go through as a Black teacher.
So what happens is, you tend to build up a certain resilience. People’s perceptions and low expectations of me have been a hindrance. This can be debilitating. You get tired of having to go through the same thing, of having to overcome negativity. Yes, I would say this has limited my progress. Obviously, I am speaking about my particular experiences as a Black woman, but I would say that these experiences are shared by many people like me.
But it’s my determination and the investment I’ve made that has resulted in me staying in the field. And a source of support for me is always Black colleagues, they understand the issues that are inherent within the profession.
There need to be more Black teachers, because children need to see themselves represented in schools. As a Black teacher, I know that I have made a difference to Black children in my class who had a Black role model in front of them. When we talk about the poor performance of Black pupils, we need to be careful not to blame them for the failures of the education system. Policy makers, Headteachers, teachers, and practitioners need to be a lot more self-aware and examine the impact of racism in education. People need to examine their own policies and practice, especially people in positions of power.
A lot of collective work needs to be done.
Lynda Chinaka
Some local authorities do better than others, and some Headteachers I’ve worked with have been keen to build a diverse staff team. Black people are not well-represented at all in education. Headteachers need to be more proactive about their staff teams and recruitment. And they need to encourage Black teachers to go for jobs in senior management.
In all settings I taught in, no matter how many students of colour there were, these students would experience something in my classroom that their white counterparts had experienced all their lives: they would leave their home and come to school and be taught by someone who looks like them and perhaps speaks the same language as them. It’s enormously affirming for children to have that experience. And it’s important for all children actually, white children as well. Seeing a Black person teaching in the classroom, in a position of power or influence — it changes their mindset, and that ultimately changes perspectives.
So in terms of that route into Computing, Black students need to see themselves represented.
It’s absolutely vital to teach children about Computing. As adults, they are going to participate in a future that we know very little about, so I think it’s important that they’re taught computer science approaches, problem solving and computational thinking. So children need to be taught to be creators and not simply passive users of technology.
One of the things some of my university students say is, “Oh my goodness, I can’t teach Computing, all the children know much more than me.”, but actually, that’s a little bit of a myth, I think. Children are better at using technologies than solving computing problems. They need to learn a range of computational approaches for solving problems. Computing is a life skill; it is the future. We saw during the pandemic the effects of digital inequity on pupils.
In education, we need to look at the curriculum and how to decolonise it to really engage young people. This also includes looking out for bias and prejudice in the things that are taught. Even when you’re thinking about specific computer science topics. So for example, the traditional example for algorithm design is making a cup of tea. But tea is a universal drink, it originates in China, and as a result of colonialism made its way to India and Kenya. So we drink tea universally, but the method (algorithm) for making tea doesn’t necessarily always include a china tea pot or a tea bag. There are lots of ways to introduce it, thinking about how it’s prepared in different cultures, say Kenya or the Punjab, and using that as a basis for developing children’s algorithmic thinking. This is culturally relevant. It’s about bringing the interests and experiences children have into the classroom.
For children to be engaged in Computing, there needs to be a payoff for them. For example, I’ve seen young people developing their own African emojis. They need to see a point to it! They don’t necessarily have to become computer scientists or software engineers, but Computing should be an avenue that opens for them because they can see it as something to further their own aims, their own causes. Young people are very socially and politically aware. For example, Black communities are very aware of the way that climate change affects the Global South and could use data science to highlight this. Many will have extended family living in these regions that are affected now.
So you don’t compromise on the quality of your teaching, and it require teachers to be more reflective. There is no quick fix. For example, you can’t just insert African masks into a lesson without exploring their meaning in real depth within the culture they originate from.
So in your Computing or Computer Science lessons, you need to include topics young people are interested in: climate change, discrimination, algorithms and algorithmic bias in software, surveillance and facial recognition. Social justice topics are close to their hearts. You can get them interested in AI and data science by talking about the off-the-shelf datasets that Big Tech uses, and about what impact these have in terms of surveillance and on minority communities specifically.
‘Culturally relevant’ is easier to sit with. ‘Decolonising the curriculum’ provokes a reaction, but it’s really about teaching children about histories and perspectives on curricula that affect us all. We need to move towards a curriculum that is fit for purpose where children are taught different perspectives and truth that they recognise. Even if you’re in a school without any Black children at all, the curriculum still needs to be decolonised so that children can actually understand and benefit from the many ways that topics, events, subjects may be taught.
When we think about learning in terms of being culturally relevant and responsive, this is about harnessing children’s heritage, experiences, and viewpoints to engage learners such that the curriculum is meaningful and includes them. The goal here is to promote long-term and consistent engagement with Computing.
Diversity initiatives are a good step, but we need to give it time.
The selection process for subjects at GCSE can sometimes affect the uptake of computing. Then there are individual attitudes and experiences of pupils. It has been documented that Black and Asian students have often been in the minority and experience marginalisation, particularly noted in the case of female students in GCSE Computer Science.
ITE (Initial Teacher Education) providers need to consider their partnerships with schools and support schools to be more inclusive. We need more Black teachers, as I said. We also need to democratise pathways for young people getting into computing and STEM careers. Applying to university is one way — there should be others.
Schools could also develop partnerships with organisations that have their roots in the Black community. Research has also highlighted discriminatory practices in careers advice, and in the application and interview processes of Russell Group universities. These need to be addressed.
There are too few Black academics at universities. This can have an impact on student choice and decisions about whether to attend an institution or not. Institutions may seem unwelcoming or unsympathetic. Higher education institutions need to eliminate bias through feedback and measuring course take-up.
Outside the field of education, tech companies could offer summer schemes, short programmes to stimulate interest amongst young Black people. Really, the people in leadership positions, all the people with the power, need to be proactive.
A lot of collective work needs to be done. It’s a whole pipeline, and everybody needs to play a part.
You can present children with Black pioneers in computing and tech. They can show Black children how to achieve their goals in life through computing. For example, create podcasts or make lists with various organisations that use data science to further specific causes.
It’s not a one-off, one teacher thing, it’s a project for the whole school.
Lynda Chinaka
Also, it’s not a one-off, one teacher thing, it’s project for the whole school. You need to build it into a whole curriculum map, do all the things you do to build a new curriculum map: get every teacher to contribute, so they take it on, own it, research it, make those links to the national curriculum so it’s relevant. Looking at it in isolation it’s a problem, but it’s a whole school approach that starts as a working group. And it’s senior management that sets the tone, and they really need to be proactive, but you can start by starting a working group. It won’t be implemented overnight. A bit like introducing a school uniform. Do it slowly, have a pilot year group. Get parents in, have a coffee evening, get school governors on board. It’s a whole staff team effort.
People need to recognise the size of the problem and not be discouraged by the fact that things haven’t happened overnight. But people who are in a position of influence need to start by having those conversations, because that’s the only way that change can happen, quite frankly.
Lynda, thank you for sharing your insights with us!
Lynda was one of the advisors in the group we worked with to create our recently published, practical guide on culturally relevant teaching. You can download it as a free PDF now. We hope it will help you kickstart conversations in your setting.
The post Engaging Black students in computing at UK schools — interview with Lynda Chinaka appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
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