23 state governors and 187 utility companies and data center developers have signed President Donald Trump’s “ratepayer protection pledge,” which is Washington’s way of trying to control spiraling electricity costs driven by the massive power demand of AI data centers. According to The Associated Press, some of the signers include utility companies NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Southern Co., and Pacific Gas & Electric, and data center developers Equinix, Digital Realty, and Prologis.

Trump first revealed this promise in late February during the State of the Union address and then hosted some of the biggest AI hyperscalers — including Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI — in the White House a week later to force them to spend on their own power requirements. This was supposed to help bring electricity costs down, with Energy Secretary Christ Wright saying back in March that it “will deliver more affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the American people.” The president repeated this promise during the event, saying, “Electricity bills for American families will actually come down. They’re going to have a lot of electricity left over, and they’ll put that into the grid.”

Unfortunately, the March promise had little to no effect on electricity rates across the country at the moment. Despite the White House’s promises that the pledge would lower utility bills, PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power grid operator, slapped Maryland with a $2-billion bill for upgrading its grid to accommodate out-of-state AI data centers. Monitoring Analytics, an independent watchdog monitoring PJM Interconnection, also said that the 75.5% increase in power costs in the U.S.’s largest power region has been directly caused by data centers.

It’s unclear if these cost increases are the long-term effects of the AI build out even before the White House pledge, but it seems the administration is doubling down on it by asking states, utility companies, and data center developers to commit to it, too. Trump has been pushing for the acceleration of the adoption of AI tools and the infrastructure needed to support them, believing that it needs to win in the “AI race” to maintain its global supremacy, especially as China is neck-and-neck with the U.S. when it comes to the technology.

However, the American public is pushing back against these developments, especially as issues impacting electricity costs, water quality, noise pollution, and more that were caused by data centers are widely reported. It has gotten to the point that several jurisdictions have applied temporary bans on data center developments, including Seattle (which plays host to Amazon and Microsoft) and the state of New York. These developments threaten to derail the current administration’s AI policy, which has ordered grid operators to expedite AI data center applications.

The ratepayer protection pledge will supposedly allow the U.S. to have its data centers without punishing the common American with excessive electricity cost increases, but its critics say that it’s just a promise and cannot be legally enforced. The Associated Press says that California is trying to pass legislation that will codify these promises into law.

Oregon is the only state at the moment to have passed a law that forces developments that use more than 20 megawatts of power to pay their fair share. The POWER Act, which was passed in April 2025 — almost a full year before Trump announced the ratepayer protection pledge — forces the power bills of large electricity consumers to “reflect the true costs of their electric service.” Because of this, Portland General Electric (PGE), the state’s largest power supplier, has increased the data center power bills by 30% while also cutting residential costs by 1.3%.

It’s unclear if any of the states that have signed the pledge have similar legislation underway, or what steps the data center developers will take to follow through on their promises. Still, the U.S. president is adamant that states should support data center development within their borders. “You have to convince your community. You can’t fight it. You have to go with it,” Trump said. “If you don’t take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves.”

More than 70% of Americans now oppose data centers, which has resulted in bipartisan moves to block these projects. This pushback isn’t limited to just a few people or towns, either. In fact, a coordinated protest was organized just this weekend, happening in 142 different venues across 42 states, and is the first one to happen simultaneously across the U.S. Forbes reports that this makes community consent scarcer than the chips and other equipment and resources needed to build and run these sites. As Reuters notes, the organisers behind the protests have branded the "unaccountable" data center buildout as an "unacceptable infringement on our liberty."

Data centers have faced shortages of various kinds in the past few years — it began with GPU supply, then evolved into a memory chip bottleneck. Alongside that, there’s also the limited supply of electricity from the grid, as well as the related power infrastructure. But the one thing that many data center developers did not count on was the lack of public support.

This resistance isn’t limited to the streets, as bipartisan political moves have resulted in everything from delays in various projects to statewide bans. More than 69 jurisdictions have already imposed data center bans, with Seattle (home to the headquarters of AI tech giants Microsoft and Amazon) and the state of New York passing one-year moratoriums. Because of this, more than $130 billion worth of data centers have already been delayed in just the first quarter of 2026.

Developers have employed various techniques to get around these bans and opposition. This includes picking sites in rural areas with fewer people (thus less resistance), bringing their own electricity, or claiming that their data centers use less water than lawn care and gardening. But despite all their promises of jobs, investment, and tax revenue, the American public has grown wary of suffering from the consequences of having a data center as a neighbor. This is especially true after reports of increased utility rates, water quality issues, noise pollution problems, and more have widely circulated around the country.

Because of this, any data center project must take the community into account. It can no longer just rely on a friendly town council for approval, especially as the voting public has proven that they are willing to take steps to oust officials that they feel do not represent them. While many know that the U.S. needs data centers to compete in the AI race, they don’t want this to happen at the expense of their quality of life. And while investors can just keep on pouring money into purchasing chips and upgrading infrastructure, they cannot just buy off the community — instead, they need a solid plan that stands up to scrutiny and opposition and accounts for the months or even years it will take for permits to go through and get approved.

Intel just announced another round of layoffs more than a year after CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned of “tough decisions” required to get the company back on track. This decision has resulted in the reduction of its headcount by more than 35,000 since 2024, when ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger revealed that its data center and foundry divisions have lost $1.6 billion. The latest announcement came months after the last job cuts and is still happening despite the company posting a strong first quarter this year. According to Oregon Live, its share price has more than tripled from a low of $23 per share to more than $96 today, with the data center group reporting sales of $5.1 billion for the first quarter. However, this good performance seems not to have affected the firm’s plan to streamline its operations.

“As part of our broader strategy to become a more focused and efficient company, (the data center group) is aligning its organization to ensure it has the right roles and skills in place to position the business for long-term success,” Intel told the publication in a statement. It also added, “We are committed to treating all impacted employees with respect and providing resources to support them through this transition.” Unfortunately, the company did not say how many positions will be cut and when it is happening — it only assured that the reduction-in-force won’t affect its business commitments and plans to launch new products.

While the AI infrastructure build-out was initially powered by GPUs and memory chips, advancements in agentic AI have greatly increased the demand for CPUs, putting Intel in a good position with its Xeon chips. Aside from that, the company is reporting customer interest, possibly including Apple, for its 18A and 14A nodes. It’s also planning to launch an AI GPU in the latter half of 2026 that will compete against Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5000 GPU.

This is a slow reversal of its misfortunes in the first half of the decade, but it seems that it’s not happening fast enough for its data center group employees who will be affected by the job cuts. It’s quite surprising that Intel plans to gut its Data Center group, which is one of its strongest performers and is in a good position to take advantage of the ongoing AI data center boom. But despite the high demand for AI data centers, it seems that the company still needs to cut its personnel count to streamline its operation.

The head of the SK Group, which owns SK hynix, said in a press briefing that memory semiconductor prices are “abnormally high,” and that the industry must take steps to increase supply and help lower prices. The Chosun Daily writes that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won delivered this statement during a press briefing at an industry forum, where he also noted that the group is looking at building a memory chip plant in the U.S. to increase production.

“Memory prices are currently at an abnormally high level. While AI companies can absorb increased costs through investments, PC and smartphone manufacturers have no choice but to pass rising semiconductor costs onto product prices,” Chey told the media. “Since most customers for these products are individuals, there are limits to how much prices can be raised. To prevent 'chipflation'—where rising chip prices drive up finished product costs—supply must be expanded.”

Aside from expanding supply and easing memory prices for consumer products, extremely high memory prices brought about by limited supply could negatively impact the big three companies. That’s because the high margins could lead to the entry of new players or give smaller manufacturers the opportunity to grow their presence and challenge the established firms. We’re already seeing this, as some Chinese brands have ditched them for domestically produced CXMT and YMTC chips. While this could be driven by Beijing, even major multinational brands like Corsair and Lenovo have started sourcing from these companies just to get chips. Even Apple is asking permission from Washington to buy memory chips from CXMT. Aside from that, he also cited Elon Musk’s interest in building his own fab as a potential threat to existing memory semiconductor companies.

This isn’t a problem at the moment as there is more than enough demand to go around for incumbent memory and storage chip manufacturers and new entrants. In fact, memory companies can use this as a defense against price-fixing lawsuits, with the massive AI demand and the higher margins it offers standing as a plausible reason why memory chip companies focused on HBM production and reduced DRAM output. But before the AI boom, the memory industry was actually suffering from one of the worst memory downturns to hit the industry for over a decade. So, if and when the memory shortage is over and the memory industry resumes its boom-and-bust cycle, more manufacturers jockeying to find customers in a tight market would make it that much harder for these companies to survive and thrive.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the government is working to establish the “Australian Standards for A.I.,” which would stand as a national framework that AI companies must follow if they want to operate in the country. As backlash against the negative effects of data centers is making it harder for AI hyperscalers to build and expand infrastructure in the U.S. and Europe, the New York Times reports that many of these firms are now eyeing the Land Down Under for its vast lands and abundant renewable energy sources. But even before they start setting up shop in the country, Canberra wants to get ahead and ensure that these developments do not cause any problems for the general public.

“Every country on earth is grappling with these challenges right now. Australia will be the first country in the world to bring these issues into a single, national framework,” the prime minister said in his speech. One part of this policy will enforce a “legal obligation” for data centers to produce the same amount of power that they consume, ensuring that their presence does not put an unnecessary burden on the power grid that would result in increased utility prices for the average citizen. It also wants to ensure that these projects be as water efficient as possible, especially given that Australia is the driest populated continent on Earth, according to the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Center (IGRAC).

Aside from concern for data centers’ use of natural resources, the Australian government also wants to ensure that the intellectual property rights of its people are protected. Albanese said that Australian creators, including writers, musicians, artists, and news reporters, should “retain control of the price and value of their work” when used for AI training. “Anything less is theft. No country has got this right yet,” says the prime minister.

While some business industry groups expressed their support for the government’s goal, they were also a bit cautious, saying that overregulation could mean that Australia will miss out on the opportunities the AI data centers will bring for the company. University of New South Wales in Sydney professor Toby Walsh, who specializes in Artificial Intelligence, also told The Times that the PM is on the right track, as it addresses the concerns that most Australians have regarding AI and the infrastructure behind it. However, these are just planned policies, and the regulation behind them must still be worked out. “The devil will be in the details exactly what they do,” says Prof. Walsh.

Google is reportedly preparing to take a more proactive role in defending itself—and potentially other American organizations, U.S. infrastructure, etc.—from hackers.

CyberScoop reported that Google Threat Intelligence Group vice president Sandra Joyce recently revealed that the company is planning to form a "disruption unit" in the coming months. “What we’re doing in the Google Threat Intelligence Group is intelligence-led proactive identification of opportunities where we can actually take down some type of campaign or operation,” Joyce said. "We have to get from a reactive position to a proactive one … if we’re going to make a difference right now.”

Joyce's revelation arrived at an event hosted by the Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law, which published a report titled "To Hack Back, or Not Hack Back? That is the Question … or is it?" in May. Unfortunately the report doesn't offer many answers of its own—it merely asks if the U.S. government should allow the private sector to engage in offensive cyber operations, if non-cyber retaliation would better deter the country's adversaries, and if the focus should instead be on improving cyber defenses.

It's clear in what direction the U.S. government is leaning: the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" passed in July earmarked $1 billion for offensive cyber operations even as the Trump administration enacted policies that undermined defensive efforts overseen by the likes of the U.S. Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency. That wouldn't necessarily allow companies like Google to contribute to offensive cyber operations, but it does show that such activity is a priority for this administration, at least.

The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" was followed by the Aug. 15 proposal of the "Scam Farms Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025," which, if passed, would "authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal with respect to acts of aggression against the United States a member of a criminal enterprise or any conspirator associated with an enterprise involved in cybercrimes." (The full text of the bill is available on the official Congress.gov website.)

Modern technology is no stranger to nautical metaphors — illegally procuring digital media is broadly known as "piracy," after all, and we still refer to products as being "flagship." But the Scam Farms Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act would rely on a practice that is quite literally from the "Age of Sail," as Wikipedia puts it, in an effort to discourage international cybercriminals from targeting American organizations. The only thing missing is a provision allowing the use of muskets and cutlasses.

That doesn't necessarily mean that being more proactive in cyber defense (whether or not that includes participation from the private sector) would be ill-advised. The current approach clearly isn't working; cybercriminals regularly target U.S. organizations with ransomware, steal their intellectual property, and in some cases siphon off money used to fund weapons programs. Other nations, meanwhile, frequently target various aspects of America's critical infrastructure.

It seems the U.S. government is ready to change its approach to deterring those attacks, and now it's clear that companies like Google are prepared to support that shift, too. Good idea? Bad idea? We'll see. But either way this is a massive change from the status quo, and if I were the one behind the hopefully metaphorical Guy Fawkes mask, I wouldn't be keen to find out what it looks like when the U.S. government and the companies it's been telling not to "hack back" finally decide to let loose.

New reports from the White House indicate that the Trump administration, specifically Howard Lutnick's Department of Commerce, has seemingly inexplicable designs to start putting statistics "on the blockchain." As to what data exactly might find its way to the blockchain, or what purpose that might serve, Lutnick failed to elaborate.

Gizmodo reports that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told President Trump on Aug. 26 that his department "is going to start issuing its statistics on the blockchain because you are the crypto president, and we are going to put out GDP on the blockchain so people can use the blockchain for data distribution."

Lutnick added, "and then we’re going to make that available to the entire government so all of you can do it ... we’re just ironing out all the details so we can do it.”

You'd be forgiven for not remembering what the blockchain is. It was the hype train of choice before being briefly supplanted by the metaverse, and now it's barely managed to hitch its caboose to AI. For everyone else, just say it with me: The blockchain is an immutable, distributed ledger used to keep an ostensibly tamper-proof log of... stuff.

The most famous example of the blockchain in action is cryptocurrency, which is supposed to keep its users honest in the absence of a central regulator. Companies have been looking to find ways to apply the blockchain to non-cryptocurrency projects—and raising large amounts of money in the process—for the better part of a decade.

There has been some progress over the years. Kraken said in January that "blockchain adoption is accelerating across major sectors like finance, healthcare, and supply chain management." So-called Web3 proponents have also made blockchain adoption (among other things) a core part of what they view as the next generation of the internet.

Yet it's still unclear how blockchain-based solutions are superior to their predecessors. Even if the ultimate goal for most of these projects is to avoid centralized authority, the Department of Commerce is by definition a central authority, so that wouldn't apply here. Lutnick didn't offer any details; he merely drew the line between crypto and the blockchain.

Ransomware gangs might have to scratch a few targets off their lists. The UK High Office and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) announced proposals to ban ransom payments in an effort to "crack down on cyber criminals and safeguard the public."

According to the announcement, the proposals would prohibit "public sector bodies and operators of critical national infrastructure, including the [National Health Service], local councils and schools," from making ransomware-related payments. They would also require other businesses planning to pay a ransom to notify the UK government so it can "provide those businesses with advice and support" before the payment is made. (Including a heads-up if such a payment would violate sanctions on Russia.)

The proposals wouldn't require companies to inform the UK government of a ransomware attack if they didn't plan to pay the ransom. But the announcement indicated that a mandatory reporting policy is in the works, too, in a bid to "equip law enforcement with essential intelligence to hunt down perpetrators and disrupt their activities" and "better protect British organisations and industry." That should make it more difficult to deploy ransomware in the UK without risking law enforcement's ire.

"The new package of measures will lead the way in tackling ransomware and are designed to strike against cyber criminals’ business model, bolstering our national security and protecting key services and businesses from disruption - delivering on our Plan for Change," the Home Office and NCSC said in the announcement. "They follow an extensive consultation with stakeholders across the UK, which showed strong public backing for tougher action to tackle ransomware and protect vital services."

The UK and Singapore previously said in January 2024 that they "strongly discourage anyone from paying a ransomware demand" because doing so:

• Does not guarantee the end of an incident, or the removal of malicious software from your systems
• Provides incentives for criminals to continue and expand their activities
• Provides funds that criminal actors can use for illicit activity
• Does not guarantee you will get your data back

Now the UK is looking to outright ban those payments rather than merely "strongly discouraging" them. The news follows reports earlier this week that a 158-year-old UK company was forced to shut down following a ransomware attack, at the cost of 700 jobs.

"Cyber criminals have not only cost the nation billions of pounds but in some cases have brought essential services to a standstill," the Home Office and NCSC said. "The devastating consequences are not just financial but can put lives in danger, with an NHS organisation recently identifying a ransomware attack as one of the factors that contributed to a patient’s death. These attacks have brutally exposed the alarming vulnerability at the core of our public and private institutions, from flagship British retailers and essential supermarkets including the Co-op to NHS hospitals."

US Vice President JD Vance took to the podium as he gave a keynote on the final day of the Paris AI Action Summit, where he gave several key insights on the Trump administration’s strategy on the technology. During his speech, Vance focused on the opportunities that AI brings, and that the White House will continue supporting the technology through its policies.

“The United States of America is the leader in AI and our administration plans to keep it that way. The US possesses all components across the full AI stack, including advanced semiconductor design, frontier algorithms, and, of course, transformational applications,” said the Vice President. “Now the computing power this stack requires is integral to advancing AI technology, and to safeguard America’s advantage, the Trump administration will ensure the most powerful AI systems are built in the US with American-designed and manufactured chips.”

This announcement is good news for the semiconductor industry, especially as Trump has previously voiced opposition to the CHIPS and Science Act during his campaign. This is in addition to the act currently making its way through the U.S. Congress that would give tax credits to chip designers and manufacturers, helping boost semiconductor innovation within the country. He added that Washington is already working on an AI strategy that will remove overly precautionary regulations while remaining beneficial to the American public.

Vance invited other countries to partner with the U.S. and also welcomed them to replicate this policy. But he also criticized the European Union’s regulations—specifically, the Digital Services Act and GDPR — which he called “onerous international rules.” The VP said these impose excessive legal costs on smaller firms and are stifling free speech by preventing an adult from “accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation.” He also emphasized AI’s need for electricity, saying that it needs high-quality semiconductors and reliable power sources, but that many countries are choosing to de-industrialize while removing stable power sources from their grids.

Lastly, he also warned against partnering with hostile authoritarian regimes, saying that even though they deliver cheap technologies right now, long-term partnerships with them will not pay off. While he didn’t directly mention China (whose representative was seated close by), Vance called out cheap 5G and CCTV equipment, Chinese exports that are widely used in the U.S. and its allies until they were banned and removed starting in 2019.

“Some of us in this room have learned from experience, partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in, and seize your information infrastructure,” VP JD Vance said. “Should a deal seem too good to be true, just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley, ‘If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.’”

The price of Bitcoin rose 5% overnight after El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that the country will start to accept the cryptocurrency as legal tender on September 7 and that its citizens will be eligible to receive $30 in Bitcoin at that time.

That announcement helped stem the bleeding for Bitcoin, the price of which fell more than 10% earlier this week after several provinces in China started to shut down cryptocurrency mining operations to enforce new government restrictions.

Those shutdowns contributed to Bitcoin’s continued decline in value. The cryptocurrency was worth more than $64,000 per coin in April, but even after the rally that followed Bukele’s announcement, it’s currently trading at just $32,939.

Where the Chinese government has become increasingly restrictive towards Bitcoin, the El Salvadorian government embraced it, with its Congress voting in favor of Bukele’s proposal to accept the cryptocurrency as legal tender earlier this month.

Bukele doesn’t plan to stop there. He also said that he’s asked the state-owned LaGeo electric company to build a volcano-powered Bitcoin mining operation in an effort to offer a sustainable, emissions-free way to mine the cryptocurrency.

The plan to distribute $30 in Bitcoin might prove more controversial than El Salvador’s other crypto-related efforts, however, because it requires people to sign up for a new wallet called Chivo that relies on facial recognition software.

It also isn’t clear how El Salvador’s transition to Bitcoin is expected to work. Technically if it’s legal tender businesses will have to accept it, but according to a regional report, Bukele has said there will be exceptions to that rule.

But it seems like Bukele—and therefore El Salvador—will continue to operate in favor of Bitcoin even as other countries look to restrict it. That might not be enough to make up for losing China, but hey, at least volcanoes are involved.

China is single-handedly undermining the crypto market as it forced widespread closures of mining operations across the country, leading to a decline in the network hashrate for both Bitcoin and Ethereum. In fact, according to China's Global Times, one province has had 90% of its Bitcoin mining capacity shut down. Coindesk also reported that The People's Bank of China (PBOC) had issued new restrictions preventing banks from offering any services that facilitate transactions involving cryptocurrencies. So naturally, the value of both Bitcoin and Ethereum tumbled in trading today.

A translated version of the PBOC statement claimed that "virtual currency trading speculation activities disrupt the normal economic and financial order, breed the risk of illegal and criminal activities such as illegal cross-border asset transfer and money laundering, and seriously infringe on the property safety of the people."

The value of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other coins promptly fell after the announcement. Bitcoin's price has fallen by roughly 4% at the time of writing, according to the Coindesk price index, and the price of Ethereum is down more than 6%.

Both cryptocurrencies were already suffering from Chinese regulations. Reuters said authorities in Sichuan told miners on June 18 to shut down by June 20; Bloomberg reported that day that Bitcoin and Ethereum prices fell a respective 5.5% and 5.9%.

Sichuan's crackdown followed Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Yunnan in banning crypto mining. Those are the most productive mining provinces in the most productive ming country globally; no wonder the market is spooked.

Cryptocurrency mining operations might be able to relocate to avoid China's regulations—El Salvador is particularly keen to embrace Bitcoin—but for now, they appear to be shut down entirely. It'll probably take some time to recover from that.

The declining value of leading cryptocurrencies might be good news for hardware enthusiasts, however, with ASRock saying last week that waning demand from mining operations could lead to lower prices for supply-constrained graphics cards.

Bitcoin miners should probably start thinking about leaving China sooner than later. Reuters said Friday that two provinces, Qinghai and Xinjiang, banned cryptocurrency mining this week due to the country's broader crackdown on the practice.

Reuters said that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology office in Qinghai "ordered a ban on new cryptomining projects in the province, and told existing ones to shut down" on Wednesday. A similar order was reportedly issued by the Development & Reform Commission of Xinjiang's Changji Hui Prefecture.

Neither announcement was a surprise. The Financial Stability and Development Committee of China's State Council announced on May 21 that it would "crack down on bitcoin mining and trading behavior and resolutely prevent the transfer of individual risks to the society." These provinces are merely enforcing that decision.

That official crackdown followed other efforts to impede cryptocurrency mining in China, too, including the Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission's establishment of a hotline province residents could use to report suspected miners. It's not like the Chinese government has played coy about its opinion on the matter.

Yet each successive move to suppress Bitcoin mining in China has had a noticeable impact on the cryptocurrency's value because, according to Reuters, the country is responsible for mining roughly half of the world's bitcoin. It makes sense for stricter regulations on that supply to negatively affect the world's leading crypto coin.

These latest changes were no different. Coindesk's price index shows that Bitcoin's value plummeted late Tuesday and early Wednesday as news broke about these new bans in Qinghai and Xinjiang. It has since recovered, but the price per coin has still fallen by roughly $18,000 month-over-month and is near a three-month low.

Bitcoin miners affected by these restrictions might want to consider a move to El Salvador. The country has embraced the cryptocurrency by accepting it as legal tender, considering a move to extend citizenship to anyone who owns three bitcoin, and, of course, planning to establish volcano-powered mining operations.

Volcanoes are great for inspiring science fair projects, instilling dread in people who live next to them, and incinerating unlucky participants in ancient rituals. We might be able to add another item to that list soon because El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said yesterday that he’s planning to use volcanic energy to mine Bitcoin. This latest effort builds on the country's fascination with Bitcoin: Earlier this week, El Salvador became the first country in the world to consider the cryptocurrency legal tender.

Bukele said in a follow-up tweet that LaGeo’s engineers dug a new well on Wednesday capable of providing “approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy” from El Salvador’s volcanoes. He also re-affirmed that the plan was for LaGeo to design a full Bitcoin mining hub around this new well.

The announcement follows increasing concerns about the global impact of Bitcoin mining operations. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with mining cryptocurrency from an environmental perspective, but it is an energy-intensive process, and that can be a problem if the energy is derived from non-sustainable sources.

If the energy derived from this volcanic well truly is emissions-free, the planned Bitcoin mining operation could avoid some of those criticisms. Even if it’s not, well, it’s still hard to deny that using a volcano to mine cryptocurrency makes recent efforts to set up Bitcoin mining rigs in abandoned power plants seem quaint.

Bukele appears to be going all-in on Bitcoin. Earlier this week, El Salvador became the first country in the world to consider the cryptocurrency legal tender because his proposal was approved by 62 of the country’s 84 members of Congress. He also said El Salvador would offer citizenship to anyone who owns more than 3 bitcoin.

Those changes won’t be without controversy. Bukele is supposed to meet with the International Monetary Fund today, for example, to address concerns about how the adoption of Bitcoin as an official currency will affect El Salvador’s relationship with the financial institution. Businesses will also have to figure out how to process transactions involving the cryptocurrency; refusing to accept it would be illegal.

Bukele also hasn’t provided specific information about when the Bitcoin mining operation will be more than just a proposal in a tweet or how the coins generated by the operation would be managed. It’s entirely possible the plan will be scrapped in favor of using the volcanic energy provided by the well more traditionally. But at least for now, crypto enthusiasts can revel in the idea of lava-powered mining.

China might be the last country to weigh in on Nvidia’s proposed acquisition of Arm. The Financial Times today reported that Nvidia “submitted an application to Chinese competition regulators” to review the proposal ”in recent weeks” even though the $40 billion acquisition was officially revealed to the public in September 2020.

It’s not clear why Nvidia started the approval process in China almost nine months after it announced its plan to acquire Arm from SoftBank—especially since Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at GTC 2021 in April that he expected the deal to close in 18 months. The Financial Times said it could take that long to receive China’s approval.

Assuming “in recent weeks” means some time after GTC 2021, the purportedly late submission to Chinese regulators could delay the acquisition’s closing to 2023, assuming the deal is approved. That‘s later than Huang predicted just a few months ago, and the controversial nature of the deal could stretch the regulatory approval process. Huang has remarked that he expects the merger to close within the expected timeframe. 

Not that China is the acquisition’s only obstacle. The UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport asked the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the deal in April, and companies like Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Google have reportedly complained about the acquisition to US regulators as well.

In this, it seems Chinese tech companies are aligned with their Western counterparts. The Financial Times said that Huawei’s chip company, HiSilicon, as well as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, have opposed the deal. (Probably at least partly because of US government restrictions on their businesses.)

It’s entirely possible that regulators around the world are going to approve the Nvidia-Arm acquisition faster than most people expect. Nvidia has repeatedly said that it would continue to remain neutral when it comes to licensing Arm technologies to its competitors; maybe that will be enough for the deal to pass.

But it seems unlikely. Arm pioneer Hermann Hauser has already said that technologies like NVLink used in the upcoming Grace CPU show that Nvidia won’t compete fairly with Arm licensees, and Citigroup analysts said in April that they’re giving the acquisition a 10% chance of being approved because of those concerns.

The White House announced Thursday that U.S. President Joe Biden has extended restrictions imposed by the Trump administration that prevent U.S. firms from doing business with 59 tech companies associated with the Chinese military-industrial complex.

This order serves the same primary function as Executive Order 13959, which was issued by President Donald Trump in November 2020 but uses different language. It also revokes Executive Order 13974—which Trump issued in January to extend the the reach of his previous order—and rescinds associated “orders or prohibitions.”

Biden said that “additional steps are necessary to address the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13959 … including the threat posed by the military-industrial complex of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its involvement in military, intelligence, and security research and development programs, and weapons and related equipment production under the PRC’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy."

Biden also said in the order that “the use of Chinese surveillance technology outside the PRC and the development or use of Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuse constitute unusual and extraordinary threats” to the “national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.”

A list of the companies affected by these restrictions are found in the order. The list appears to be slightly different from the one included with Executive Order 13959 but is largely the same, and its most well-known member continues to be Huawei, (which has been a focal point for the U.S.-China trade war since 2019).

It was previously unclear if Biden would continue to restrict trade with Chinese tech companies or if relations with China would improve after Trump left office. This order provides some clarity. It also complicates things for U.S. businesses that might have expected to be able to return to the status quo following Biden’s election.

The restrictions imposed by these orders—as well as additional tariffs on goods imported from China—led some companies to at least consider moving their production facilities to other countries starting in 2019. But those efforts slowed as Biden took office and COVID-19 halted plans to build factories outside China.

Additional information about this new executive order is available in a fact sheet on the White House website. The restrictions imposed by the order are set to go into effect on August 2 for companies that were listed on the initial order and will apply to any companies that have been added to the order 60 days after their addition.

Nvidia’s bid to buy Arm might have just become even more contentious. Today the Register reported that Arm, until the Nvidia deal is finalized, has instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual “wellbeing” allowance it paid to employees.

The hiring freeze appears to be limited to the IP Products Group responsible for designing Arm chips, with other departments still being allowed to bring on new employees, but even hiring for those roles is said to have “slowed to a trickle.”

The Register said the hiring freeze also prevents the IP Products Group from replacing employees who leave the company, which seems more likely in light of Arm canceling the yearly allowance known as FlexPot introduced in 2016.

FlexPot reportedly offered varying amounts based on location, with U.S. employees getting as much as $8,500 for "activities that support you and your family’s health or financial wellbeing" and "any activities that allow you to learn something new."

That’s a significant amount of money Arm employees can no longer count on, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if many sought new employment as a result. The Register said employees did receive a bonus last quarter, however, which could engender loyalty.

A memo about the hiring freeze reportedly said: 

“The primary reason for this is that due to the accelerated hiring in the past six months, we are well ahead of our planned headcount. The market response has been fantastic, the selection process rigorous, and we have hired some exceptional people into Arm from across the globe. […] We are pleased to welcome these new hires from early careers through to experienced business leaders. However, we now need to take this action to ensure we are within the cost targets for the business.“

Companies often enact cost-saving measures when they’re on the verge of being acquired. Usually, it’s supposed to make sure the deal remains attractive to the buyer; however, it’s hard to believe Nvidia would back out of the Arm takeover.

Why? Partly because Nvidia just announced its first Arm-based CPU, and even though it could technically move forward with that, even if the acquisition never goes through, it would be strange to cancel the deal as that product is coming to market.

But it’s mostly because Nvidia’s already made a $2 billion commitment to the Arm acquisition—a $1.25 billion breakup clause—that makes it harder to justify backing out of the deal because of Arm’s hiring policies.

That $2 billion pales in comparison to the $40 billion Nvidia will pay SoftBank if the deal is approved, of course, and it’s possible that Arm‘s goal is to avoid giving new employees whiplash if the pink slips start to fly when the acquisition is closed.

Yet these new policies simply invite more criticism of the acquisition. Before, the complaints were mostly ideological—how could Nvidia maintain Arm’s neutral licensing approach when it’s designing its own chips with proprietary technology?

Now the deal has resulted in a hiring freeze in Arm’s core teams and what amounts to a substantial pay cut for many of its employees, and there’s no word on what happens if regulators block the acquisition. Will the freeze be lifted? Will the FlexPot system be reenacted? And how many employees will stick around to find out?

It’s about to get even harder to mine cryptocurrency in China. The Financial Times reports that the Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission (IMDRC) plans to set up a hotline for reporting suspected mining operations.

The report arrived shortly after Reuters reported that China banned financial institutions from offering “clients any service involving cryptocurrency, such as registration, trading, clearing and settlement,” ostensibly to curb speculative trading.

But this isn’t the first time China has cracked down on the crypto market. Regulators attempted to assert more control over the market by banning initial coin offerings in 2017, for example, and in 2019 it considered a ban on the industry as a whole. 

Inner Mongolia also said in February that it was banning cryptocurrency mining in a bid to reduce its power consumption. That would actually be a win for the environment; a study published by Nature in April said that Bitcoin mining in China alone would exceed Venezuela's carbon emissions by 2024.

Still, it wasn’t clear before how it planned to suss out mining operations that defied the ban. Now it seems we have our answer: The Financial Times said the IMDRC wants the hotline to help it “comprehensively clean up and shut down” any mining operations that have remained within the province despite the ban.

These efforts seem like the cryptocurrency mining equivalent to McCarthyism: Inner Mongolia has effectively made it so anyone can accuse someone else of mining crypto. Depending on how severely mining will be punished, it’s not hard to imagine the resulting investigation being a terrifying experience for the accused.

China’s latest crackdown on cryptocurrencies has reduced prices for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other popular coins. While that might dissuade mining in the country for a while, it’s still a highly lucrative endeavor. It won’t be surprising if mining operations continue despite the risk of being snitched on by their neighbors.

Iran announced this week that its new supercomputer, Simorgh, has debuted with a peak performance of 0.56 petaflops and plans to reach 1 petaflop in two months. 

Al Jazeera reported that Simorgh was "said to be wholly designed and built by a team of Iranian engineers, who developed the country’s first supercomputer a decade ago, but some of its hardware has been imported." (The original source is the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, but we can't find the report on its English website.)

It's not clear from where the Amirkabir University of Technology, which developed Simorgh, would have been able to import the parts required to build the system. The U.S. government has imposed harsh restrictions on the sale of American tech—or products created using those technologies, like the processors and GPUs most commonly used in supercomputers—to companies operating in Iran.

Remember that part of the U.S. government's complaints regarding Huawei were that the company allegedly skirted American sanctions to sell equipment to Iran. That wasn't the sole motivation behind Huawei's blacklisting, of course, but it served as a useful reminder that the U.S. has strict policies regarding exports to Iran. It also serves as an example of how countries such as Iran can get around US sanctions. 

Al Jazeera reported that Simorgh "is said to comprise 42 racks in an area of approximately 250sq meters (2,690 sq feet) based on the TIA-942 standard and is projected to be upgraded to 84 racks laid out in an area of 400sq meters (4,305 square feet)." Iran's government provided half its $4.5 million development budget.

Simorgh will purportedly be "used in analysing artificial intelligence, crunching traffic and weather data, and image processing." It's also set to be followed by another supercomputer, Maryam, expected to "have 100 times the capacity of Simorgh." Work on Maryam has already started, but it doesn't have a firm deployment date.

It's worth putting that 100x better performance in perspective. Right now the most powerful supercomputer in the world is an Arm-based system in Japan called Fugaku. It's said to offer performance up to 415.5 petaflops. The next-highest, IBM Summit, offers 148.6 petaflops. Maryam's 100 petaflops target pales in comparison.

That figure is also based on many assumptions: that Simorgh's performance will reach 1 petaflops; that AUT can offer a 100x performance increase in a second-gen supercomputer; and that all of the parts on which Maryam will rely can be imported without running afoul of U.S. restrictions on American-developed technologies.

The last one might be the hardest to believe given U.S.-Iran relations. The U.S. also made it clear it takes the development of supercomputers in countries with which it has some tension (to put it mildly) seriously by blacklisting seven Chinese companies for helping build supercomputers for the Chinese People Liberation Army.

Apple, Microsoft, and many other big tech companies today announced the formation of the Semiconductors in America Coalition (SIAC) lobbying group, whose first order of business was lending its support to the CHIPS for America Act.

The companies said in a press release that SIAC’s “mission is to advance federal policies that promote semiconductor manufacturing and research in the U.S. to strengthen America’s economy, national security, and critical infrastructure.”

Supporting the CHIPS for America Act is a logical first step. SIAC explained in its press release that the act, which was introduced in June 2020, would “appropriate $50 billion for domestic chip manufacturing incentives and research initiatives.”

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and President Joe Biden have both lent their support to the act, which was approved by the House and the Senate as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 but has not yet been funded.

SIAC wants to secure that funding. It said in a letter to Congressional leadership:

“The current shortage of semiconductors is impacting a broad range of industries throughout the economy. To address this problem in the short term, government should refrain from intervening as industry works to correct the current supply-demand imbalance causing the shortage. But for the longer term, robust funding of the CHIPS Act would help America build the additional capacity necessary to have more resilient supply chains to ensure critical technologies will be there when we need them. Manufacturing incentives funded by Congress should focus on filling key gaps in our domestic semiconductor ecosystem and cover the full range of semiconductor technologies and process nodes – from legacy to leading-edge – relied on by industry, the military, and critical infrastructure.”

SIAC counts seemingly every company that designs, manufactures, or uses semiconductors among its members. The full list—which includes 64 members split into four groups—can be found on the group’s website. Here are a few standouts:

• TSMC
• Intel
• AMD
• Nvidia
• Arm
• Samsung
• Qualcomm
• Broadcom
• Google
• AWS

And many others besides. It turns out nothing brings companies together quite like the prospect of receiving—or helping their suppliers receive—$50 billion to help address the chip shortage that’s affecting practically every aspect of the industry.

China might have recently lost access to another vital aspect of its efforts to build out its semiconductor industry: skilled workers. Nikkei Asia Review today reported that Taiwan, has told recruitment firms to remove listings for jobs based in China.

According to the report, Taiwan's Labor Ministry recently sent a notice to those firms saying that they "may no longer post openings for jobs located in China, especially those involving critical industries, such as integrated circuits and semiconductors."

Firms that violate those rules will be fined, with jobs related to the chip industry carrying larger fines, Nikkei Asia Review said. The new rule will also force multinational companies to re-post jobs in China under their Chinese subsidiaries.

Taiwan, home to the likes of TSMC and Foxconn, is a massive player in the chip industry—a recent study claimed the country is responsible for 92% of the global manufacturing capacity for sub-10nm chips. Losing experienced workers to China might threaten its dominance over the market.

The restrictions could also help strengthen relations between the U.S. and Taiwan. The U.S. has obstructed China's efforts to develop its semiconductor industry for years by making it increasingly difficult for Chinese companies to use U.S. tech.

Here's a section of the notice obtained by Nikkei Asia Review related to that subject:

"Due to geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China, China's semiconductor development has suffered some setbacks, and as a result China has become more aggressive in poaching and targeting top Taiwanese chip talent to help build a self-sufficient supply chain."

So these new restrictions could allow Taiwanese companies to focus on dealing with record droughts, an ongoing chip shortage and increasing demand for their wares instead of the fear their skilled employees will be poached by Chinese companies, while also making it clear to the U.S. that Taiwan doesn't support China's efforts.

Apple today announced that it's upping its commitment to investing in the U.S. from $350 billion, the figure it set in 2018, to $430 billion over the next five years. The company said those investments are expected to create 20,000 new jobs as a way of "supporting American innovation and driving economic benefits in every state."

A few states, in particular, will benefit from Apple's increased spending. The company said that it plans to spend $1 billion on a new campus in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. For example, it has already started work on another $1 billion campus in Texas. It's also started the design process for a new data center in Iowa.

But the company doesn't just plan to build new campuses and data centers. Apple said that it plans to expand its teams in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts in the next five years. A new office space in Washington also opened up to 1,000 of the company's Seattle employees; that workforce is expected to at least double.

The goal for each investment varies by state. Apple's hoping the campus in the Research Triangle will "create at least 3,000 new jobs in machine learning, artificial intelligence, software engineering, and other cutting-edge fields" as well as "generate over $1.5 billion in economic benefits annually for North Carolina."

Other investments are expected to go to "more than 9,000 suppliers and companies large and small in all 50 states," Apple said, "supporting American job creation across dozens of sectors, including silicon engineering, 5G, and manufacturing." It's also devoting more attention—and money—to developing new clean energy technology.

Let's be clear: Apple doesn't just plan to write $430 billion worth of cheques over the next five years. Its figures include its own hiring efforts, economic impact estimates that could prove inaccurate, and "developer jobs in the thriving iOS app economy" enabled by its platform but not directly supported by the company itself.

Apple's bragging about being "the largest taxpayer in the US" and paying "almost $45 billion in domestic corporate income taxes over the past five years alone" is often seen as a way of deflecting criticism related to its accounting practices too. However, that criticism can be levied against many other companies as well.

Apple also announced the increased commitment as it faces complaints regarding the App Store, policies accusing it of favoring the company's own AirTag device tracker over similar products, and other issues. The higher investment might not be at all related, but it could definitely help distract from those complaints.

Does that mean a $430 billion investment over five years should be overlooked? No. That's a lot of money, and even if it doesn't actually create 20,000 jobs, it will still lead to a lot more gainfully employed people. But it's worth remembering Apple isn't doing this because of corporate altruism; it's doing it because it's good business.

Bitcoin is falling back to earth. This morning, the cryptocurrency's price was nearly 25% lower than the all-time high set a few weeks ago, and reports that U.S. President Joe Biden plans to nearly double the capital gains tax might be partly responsible.

The cryptocurrency's value peaked at nearly $65,000 per coin on April 13 as the Coinbase trading platform prepared to go public. Its per-coin price fell as low as $47,467 this morning, according to Coindesk, before starting to rebound.

It's possible that Bitcoin's value would have fallen even without the Bloomberg report Thursday afternoon on President Biden's planned increase to the capital gains tax. The crypto market is fickle, and not even Bitcoin's price can be expected to rise forever.

Other cryptocurrencies have also declined in value today. Coindesk's data puts Ethereum's price down 10.5% in the last 24 hours, and it's fared better than other coins, some of which have seen their prices fall by as much as 24% at time of writing.

Even the beloved Dogecoin, returns for which rose 6,000% year-over-year just last week, has seen its per-coin price fall by roughly 20%. But at least Dogecoin is a meme rather than the cornerstone of an entire industry.

Does this mean the crypto boom is over? Probably not. The market isn't known for its stability, and efforts to capitalize on it will continue, despite these falling prices. And, of course, we doubt it'll be easier to find the best graphics cards today than it was yesterday.

But at least enthusiasts who missed out on the Bitcoin craze will be able to watch the cryptocurrency's price fall for a while instead of climbing up, up, up like it was before. 

Bitcoin mining is an incredibly resource-intensive process. So what better place to do it than an abandoned power plant? Well, as New York Focus reported this week, Finger Lakes environmentalists think the answer is “pretty much anywhere else.”

The conflict revolves around a power plant on New York's Seneca Lake called Greenidge. The company’s website says the plant was opened in 1937, shuttered in 2009, and purchased by new owners in 2014. Those owners started mining Bitcoin in  the facility in 2019.

New York Focus reported that Greenidge plans “to quadruple the power used to process Bitcoin transactions by late next year” as the cryptocurrency’s value soars. Environmentalists fear those plans would lead to dangerously high CO2 emissions.

This isn’t a new concern. Researchers have warned about the environmental implications of cryptocurrency mining for years, claimed that Bitcoin uses more electricity than all of Argentina each year and said the increasing popularity of Bitcoin mining could prevent countries like China from meeting their climate goals.

Yet, those warnings have often been ignored as Bitcoin’s value has risen. That’s unlikely to stop now that the cryptocurrency has a $1 trillion market cap and recently saw its price rise to an all-time high as the Coinbase trading platform went public.

Bitcoin’s defenders often claim that it’s hard to measure the cryptocurrency’s effect on global warming because every mining operation is different. Some could use the cleanest energy sources available; others might be as pollutant as they get.

This is where local conflicts like this come in. New York Focus pointed to the same numbers environmental advocates are using to argue against the company’s plans for expansion.

”Last year, Greenidge’s GHG emissions were far below the plant’s annual allowance of 641,000 tons of CO2-equivalent gasses,“ the report said. “But as Greenidge ramped up Bitcoin transaction processing throughout 2020, its rolling 12-month GHG emissions average soared nearly tenfold, from 28,000 tons in January to 243,000 tons in December.”

Now imagine how things could worsen if Greenidge quadruples power usage as planned. There wouldn’t necessarily be a one-to-one increase, of course, but it’s not hard to figure out why local residents might oppose Greenidge’s expansion plans.

The other fear is that more power plants — which, by their very nature, have access to the massive amounts of electricity required to mine Bitcoin—might follow Greenidge in expanding into the cryptocurrency market.

It’s worth reading the full New York Focus report on Greenidge’s situation, especially if you live in upstate New York, but this should serve as a welcome reminder that Bitcoin’s rise has far greater implications beyond making crypto enthusiasts rich.

A new irrigation policy that favors Taiwan's chipmakers over its rice farmers has led to increased tension between the two, The New York Times reported Thursday, as the country attempts to respond to a water shortage caused by an ongoing drought.

Liberty Times Net reported that Taiwan's Water Resources Agency shut off irrigation to more than 183,000 acres of farmland to conserve water. Yet companies in the Hsinchu Science Park—most notably TSMC—still receive the precious liquid.

It might seem odd to prioritize chip production over farming, but Water Resources Agency deputy director Wang Yi-Feng told the NYT that the inverse would be a "lose-lose" because the farmers would suffer from low yields even with irrigated water.

Yet a recent study co-authored by the Semiconductor Industry Alliance estimated that 92% of the world's sub-10nm chip production happens in Taiwan. That means problems in the country "may cause severe interruptions in the supply of chips."

The "may" was unnecessary. The world's already waiting on Taiwan for chips used in CPUs, GPUs, automobiles, and other devices. The supply of other components, such as display panels, has also been threatened by the country's ongoing drought.

Companies like TSMC have responded to the water shortage with everything from improved recycling processes to trucking in water from elsewhere. These efforts won't completely solve the problem, however, at least in the short term.

Taiwan's Water Resources Agency is essentially in a no-win situation. If it favors rice farmers it runs the risk of further limiting chip production during a global shortage, and there's no guarantee that the farms would receive enough water anyway.

But, as The New York Times report showed, prioritizing the semiconductor industry is already rubbing some residents the wrong way. It's also a temporary solution that appears to be intended to bide time until the drought finally comes to an end.

In the meantime, TSMC can announce plans to spend $100 billion in three years to improve chip supply and continue developing new technologies, but it can't actually make it rain.

Stop us if you've heard this before: John McAfee has been accused of a crime. This time it's because he allegedly pocketed $13 million from people who, prompted by McAfee's tweets, wanted to profit from the cryptocurrency boom of 2017 and 2018.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a press release on Friday that McAfee and the executive adviser of his cryptocurrency team, Jimmy Watson, "exploited a widely used social media platform and enthusiasm among investors in the emerging cryptocurrency market to make millions through lies and deception."

Which is the legalese way of saying McAfee and Watson were accused of lying on Twitter, convincing people they should invest in the booming cryptocurrency market, and then pocketing nearly $2 million between the two of them. FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. described it as "an age-old pump-and-dump scheme."

McAfee and Watson were also accused of using Twitter to promote Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) without disclosing the compensation they received for doing so. The press release claimed, "the ICO Issuers were paying the McAfee Team a substantial portion of the funds raised from ICO investors for their touting efforts."

The two were charged with "conspiracy to commit commodities and securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities and touting fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and substantive wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy offenses." Watson was arrested in Texas on Thursday and was expected to be presented to a judge Friday.

As for McAfee, well, he was already being detained in Spain because the U.S. Department of Justice's Tax Division has accused him of tax evasion. Which is probably as good a time as any to run down a condensed list of the other times McAfee has run into trouble with the law, to put it mildly, over the last few years.

McAfee was previously accused of manufacturing methamphetamine (in 2009) and ordering a hit against a neighbor (in 2012) in Belize, then of illegally entering Guatemala to evade those charges, and he ended up faking a heart attack to stop the Guatemalan authorities' efforts to deport him to Belize.

And so McAfee returned to the U.S. He wanted to run for president in 2016, but lost the Libertarian Party to Gary Johnson. He became the Chief Cybersecurity Visionary of MGT Capital Investment in August 2017, but the company broke things off in January 2018. Then, of course, he tried to run for president again in 2020.

Now he's been charged in Manhattan's federal court for these cryptocurrency schemes. Oh, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have filed civil suits against him and his team, too.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have proved lucrative for some Japanese companies. Nikkei Asia today reported that prices for used chip-making equipment, which aren’t subject to U.S. restrictions imposed in 2020, have risen 20% on average as a result of increased demand from Chinese semiconductor manufacturers.

The U.S. imposed new sanctions on SMIC, the largest semiconductor manufacturer in China, in September 2020 to prevent it from purchasing new chip-making equipment. It also added the company to the Entity List in December 2020 to make it even harder for other businesses to supply it with American-developed technology.

Used chip-making equipment sellers in Japan aren’t subject to those same restrictions. Nikkei Asia said those sellers have struggled to keep their products in stock, which has led to significant price increases over the last year. The value of critical equipment such as lithography systems reportedly tripled in that timeframe.

Nikkei Asia said that “nearly 90% of used machines appear to be headed to China,” per a source at Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance, and that another anonymous source at an unidentified used equipment dealer claimed, “machines that were basically worthless several years ago are now selling for 100 million yen [$940,000].”

Some of that equipment is being used on production lines, but Nikkei Asia said that some of it‘s merely being hoarded just in case it could prove useful in the future. It doesn’t make a difference to the companies selling that equipment; they’re making significant profits and selling through stock they otherwise would’ve sat on.

That isn’t just true of Japanese companies. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that “Chinese businesses bought almost $32 billion of equipment used to produce computer chips from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere” in 2020. That was “a 20% jump from 2019,” according to the report, and that growth could continue.

The end goal for China is self-sufficiency. Companies in the country have made progress on their own chip-making equipment so they won’t have to rely on American technologies, for example, and SMIC has sought other ways to reduce the U.S. blacklisting’s effect on its ability to advance the Chinese semiconductor industry.

China’s also worked to develop its own CPUs, GPUs, memory, and other components so it won’t have to rely on Western products. But until it can replace American chip-making equipment entirely, assuming the U.S. won’t budge on its restrictions, the country’s going to have to continue to stockpile these once-outdated machines.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday that required an extensive review of critical American supply chains, with a special focus on semiconductors, to “ensure our economic prosperity and national security.”

The executive order requires the Secretary of Commerce to ”submit a report identifying risks in the semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging supply chains and policy recommendations to address these risks” by June 4.

The White House explained the order’s focus on semiconductors in a fact sheet:

“The United States is the birthplace of this technology, and has always been a leader in semiconductor development. However, over the years we have underinvested in production—hurting our innovative edge—while other countries have learned from our example and increased their investments in the industry.“

Relying on chips produced elsewhere also threatens various aspects of the U.S. economy and national security. The semiconductor shortage has slowed the production of automobiles, for example, which is vital to American manufacturing.

This isn’t a strictly American problem—TSMC’s decision to devote some of its production to automobile chips reportedly arrived due to pressure from Germany—but addressing it would quickly mitigate the chip shortage’s effect on U.S. workers.

The executive order also requires agencies to make recommendations regarding the resiliency of U.S. supply chains, reforms needed to improve analyses of those supply chains, and other factors “as soon as practicable” after the June 4 reports are filed.

All of these recommendations are supposed to help “revitalize and rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity, maintain America’s competitive edge in research and development, and create well-paying jobs” as well as “support small businesses, promote prosperity, advance the fight against climate change, and encourage economic growth in communities of color and economically distressed areas.”  

Update, 2/17/2021 11:15am PT: Intel responded to our request for comment; we've included it below.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found that Intel discriminated against older workers, The Oregonian reported today, in 2015. Yet the commission has reportedly decided not to formally sue Intel over the issue.

The Oregonian reported that accusations of age discrimination were lobbied against Intel following layoffs in 2015 that affected more than 1,100 of its employees. The EEOC reportedly found evidence of such discrimination against eight workers.

According to the EEOC website, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act “forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older,” and states can extend further age-related protections to younger people if they choose to do so.

Intel appears to have violated the ADEA during the 2015 layoffs. The EEOC hasn’t sued the company, however, and The Oregonian reported that the commission is instead “working with Intel to resolve the issues on behalf of the laid-off workers.”

Intel responded to our request for comment with the following statement:

"Personnel decisions in our 2015 and 2016 actions were based solely upon business needs.  Factors such as age, race, national origin, gender, immigration status, or other personal demographics were not part of the process when we made these decisions.  The EEOC has concluded its investigation into our 2015 action and offered to work with Intel to address its concerns."

It’s not clear how exactly the EEOC is working with Intel, why it decided not to sue the company, or why it took more than five years to find evidence of age discrimination. How much longer would it take to investigate other, larger mass layoffs?

That isn’t an idle question. Intel laid off 11,000 workers in 2016, and even though layoffs have slowed in the years since, they’re still a regular occurrence. Hundreds of people at the company were given pink slips throughout 2019 and 2020.

Former EEOC commissioner Victoria Lipnic said in 2018 that “older workers who lose a job have much more difficulty finding a new job than younger workers” and that their “new job may not have been on a par with the one [they] had before.”

Huawei's efforts to develop its own chips have borne fruit. According to a Bloomberg report Monday, Huawei said it shipped 50,000 next-generation wireless base stations that don't rely on U.S. processors in the fourth quarter of 2019.

The company has to rely on its own chips as the result of the U.S. Department of Commerce putting it on the the Entity List in 2019. Being on that list prevents U.S. companies from easily supplying Huawei with the chips it's relied on for years.

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Huawei said last year that it would ramp up its own chip development in response to the U.S. ban. Now, we have an idea of just how well its chip-making division, HiSilicon, can meet its needs as telecoms around the world build their 5G wireless networks.

The answer is 'not very.' Bloomberg reported that Huawei sold 50,000 base stations equipped with its own chips in the last quarter. That's not a lot considering it shipped  600,000 base stations total, making that 50,000 a mere 8% of output. 

Huawei VP of Risk Management & Partner Relations Tim Danks told Bloomberg that "it's still our intention to return to using U.S. technology," despite Huawei's investment in its own chip development. But the exec also warned that it will be hard to make that switch if the ban lasts too long.

It may soon become difficult forHuawei to continue making its own chips too, however. The U.S. has reportedly considered restrictions on the use of U.S.-made chip-making equipment abroad specifically because it wants to disrupt Huawei. 

The U.S. has also pressured other Huawei suppliers, including TSMC, to stop working with the company.  

The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 on Thursday. The bill, which now heads to Donald Trump for approval, would establish a $1 billion fund to help rural telecommunications networks remove and replace Huawei and ZTE equipment.

U.S. federal agencies have been banned from purchasing Huawei and ZTE equipment through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019. The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act would prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from supporting the purchase of that equipment by service providers.

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The bill's passage comes shortly after the FCC adopted a rule preventing telecoms from using the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes the expansion of broadband availability throughout the country, to purchase equipment from "companies posing a national security threat" (read: Huawei and ZTE and other Chinese companies).

Yesterday, the FCC announced that it "began collecting information from telecommunications carriers on the use of Huawei and ZTE equipment and services in their networks." Universal Service Fund recipients have until April 22 to share this information with the FCC via a dedicated web portal.

The FCC said it wants to know "whether carriers own or are using equipment or services from Huawei or ZTE; the type of such equipment or services; the costs associated with purchasing and/or installing such equipment and services; and the costs associated with removing and replacing such equipment and services."

Huawei gave The Hill the following statement in response to the bill's passage:

"Unfortunately, the legislation that was just passed is considerably underfunded, would take longer than anticipated and could put at risk some of our customers, who serve the most underserved areas. This legislation will simply reduce the ability of broadband providers to provide the most secure network equipment and in turn hurt local consumers and businesses."

We wouldn't be surprised if Huawei contests this decision--it's sued the U.S. government multiple times over the last few years. A District Court judge recently said the company couldn't sue over the federal government's equipment ban, however, because the rule merely affects how the government spends its money.

This bill--as well as the FCC's rule--are similar in concept. U.S. telecoms providers are technically allowed to use Huawei and ZTE equipment; they simply can't use funds from the Universal Service Fund to do so. We'll see how the companies respond if or when President Trump signs the bill into law.

Huawei might have some new friends. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that The Pentagon and the U.S. Department of the Treasury objected to the U.S. Department of Commerce's proposed restrictions on American exports to Huawei.

We aren't going to recap the entire back-and-forth between the U.S. government and Huawei. Suffice it to say that Huawei and its American suppliers have been caught in a regulatory limbo since May 2019. The Commerce Department wanted to make things a bit clearer by imposing new restrictions on sales to Huawei.

The Commerce Department reportedly withdrew those new regulations after The Pentagon and the Treasury Department objected. Per The Wall Street Journal:

"The Pentagon is concerned that if U.S. firms can’t continue to ship to Huawei, they will lose a key source of revenue—depriving them of money for research and development needed to maintain a technological edge, the people said. The chip industry has pressed that argument in talks with government officials."

We already knew American companies fear losing Huawei's business; they pressed U.S. regulators on the issue throughout 2019. The Pentagon's support could help lend some credence to those complaints, though, even if it makes it seem like selling to Huawei and not selling to Huawei both threaten national security. (Allegedly.)

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's objection didn't have the same motivation as The Pentagon's, according to The Wall Street Journal, which said that "The Treasury Department wanted to make sure that Secretary Steven Mnuchin had a chance to weigh in" on the proposed restrictions. It's not clear where he lands on them.

How long will The Pentagon side with Huawei? And will the Treasury Department withdraw its objection to the Commerce Department's proposed restrictions after Mnuchin's able to express his opinion? We expect the answer to both questions, as with everything involving the U.S. and Huawei, will flip-flop in the coming weeks.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai joined the growing list of tech executives calling for regulators around the world to put sensible limits on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in an opinion article The Financial Times published on Sunday.

Pichai trumpeted Google's efforts to use AI to help doctors spot breast cancer, assist meteorologists with their forecasts and bolster Lufthansa Group's efforts to keep flights running on time. The company's also used AI to improve its product offerings.

But that doesn't mean regulators should let companies do whatever they want to with AI, he explained.

"The EU and the U.S. are already starting to develop regulatory proposals. International alignment will be critical to making global standards work," Pichai said. 

"To get there, we need agreement on core values. Companies such as ours cannot just build promising new technology and let market forces decide how it will be used. It is equally incumbent on us to make sure that technology is harnessed for good and available to everyone.

"Now there is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. It is too important not to. The only question is how to approach it."

Pichai argued that regulators around the world should develop consistent guidelines that protect their citizens without unnecessarily restricting the tech industry's ability to innovate. He also advocated for nuanced rules that adapted to various situations.

This entreaty follows similar messaging from other companies. Microsoft called for stricter rules affecting facial recognition in 2018, for example, lest we find ourselves living in dystopian societies like the ones found in George Orwell's 1984 by 2024.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also said throughout 2019 that regulators needed to increase their oversight of the tech industry. He mostly focused on privacy, but it seemed like Cook expected governments around the world to be more wary of tech, period.

These statements make it clear that Google, Microsoft and Apple expect their offerings--many of which have become increasingly reliant on and informed by AI--to attract more scrutiny in the future. It's better to play along than to resist those efforts.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is reportedly considering an expansion to the De Minimis Rule, which allows the U.S. to restrict the export of a product if at least 25% of its components were made in America, that would specifically target Huawei. While that wouldn't be the best outcome for Huawei, it could actually benefit AMD. 

Reuters said on January 14 that the expanded rule would allow regulators to restrict the export of goods to Huawei if at least 10% of the product was made in the U.S. Exports to other companies would remain at the 25% threshold, the report said.

The U.S. has specifically targeted Huawei before. It barred the company's equipment from federal networks in 2018, for example, and in 2019 it added Huawei to the Entity List to disrupt the company's access to American-supplied technologies.

There are other examples--such as the Federal Communications Commission prohibiting network providers from using federal funds to buy Huawei equipment--as well. Suffice it to say that it's clear the U.S. wants to disrupt Huawei's business.

Huawei has challenged these moves by the U.S. multiple times over the last few years. It also managed to bring in record-breaking revenues in 2019 despite contending with the U.S. government's actions. Yet the U.S. hasn't backed down.

There could be an unexpected consequence of the proposed change to the De Minimis Rule: it could limit Huawei's access to chips made using the 7nm process; that could in turn force the company to adopt the 5nm process sooner than later.

Huawei wouldn't be the only company to adopt 5nm chips in the near future--Apple's said to be using the process for its A14 processor--but it would be the largest. DigiTimes reported in October 2019 that Huawei's chipmaking subsidiary, HiSense, became the largest customer of TSMC's advanced process node.

That means the largest customer of TSMC's 7nm chips could be forced to switch or transition to 5nm chips real soon. While that might not be the best news for Huawei, it could be good news for AMD, which has used the 7nm chips to better compete with Intel, but struggled with shortages. With less competition for 7nm nodes, it's conceivable that these developments could benefit AMD. 

Reuters said the Department of Commerce's proposal was sent to the Office of Business and Management last week. If other agencies approve it, the rule could go into effect "in a matter of weeks," without even waiting for public comment.