A U.S. ban of Chinese-owned TikTok, the country’s most popular social media for young people, seems increasingly inevitable a day after the grilling of its CEO by Washington lawmakers from across the political divide. 

But the Biden administration will have to move carefully in denying 150 million Americans their favorite platform over its links to China, especially after a previous effort by then-President Donald Trump was struck down by a U.S. court. 

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew endured a barrage of questions by U.S. lawmakers who made clear their belief that the app best known for sharing jokes and dance routines was a threat to U.S. national security as well as being a danger to mental health. 

In a tweet, TikTok executive Vanessa Pappas deplored a hearing “rooted in xenophobia.”   

With both Republicans and Democrats against him at Congress, Chew must now confront a White House ultimatum that TikTok either sever ties with ByteDance, its China-based owners, or be banned in America. 

Bipartisan legislation

A ban will depend on passage of legislation called the RESTRICT ACT, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate this month that gives the U.S. Commerce Department powers to ban foreign technology that threatens national security. 

When asked about Chew’s tumultuous hearing, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre repeated the White House’s support of the legislation, which is one of several proposals by Congress to ban or squeeze TikTok. 

The sell-or-be-banned order tears up 2.5 years of negotiations between the White House and TikTok to find a way for the company to keep running under its current ownership while satisfying national security concerns. 

Those talks resulted in a proposal by TikTok called Project Texas in which the personal data of U.S. users stays in the United States and would be inaccessible to Chinese law or oversight. 

But the White House turned sour on the idea after officials from the FBI and the Justice Department said that the vulnerabilities to China would remain. 

“It’s hard for TikTok to prove a negative. ‘No, we’re not turning over any data to the Chinese government.’ Look at how skeptical our European partners are about U.S. companies where we have a strong legal system,” said Michael Daniel, executive director of the Cyber Threat Alliance, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to cybersecurity. 

Presently, the White House’s preferred solution is that TikTok sever ties with ByteDance either through a sale or a spinoff. 

“My understanding is that what has been … insisted on is the divestment of TikTok by the parent company,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday.

Impossible to achieve? 

But that option is riddled with difficulties, with many experts saying that TikTok cannot function without ByteDance, which develops the app’s industry-leading technology. 

“ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok and the golden jewel algorithm at the center of this security debate is a hot-button issue that will not necessarily be solved just by a spinoff or sale of the assets,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. 

Proving the point, China has ruled out giving the go-ahead for a TikTok sale, citing its own laws to protect sensitive technology from foreign buyers. 

That leaves a ban of TikTok that would undeniably benefit domestic rivals Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. 

One unknown is whether a death sentence for TikTok will cost Washington politically among voters. 

Through a ban, “a democracy will be taking steps that impede the ability of young Americans to express themselves and earn a livelihood,” said Sarah Kreps, professor of government at Cornell University. 

Does the lawmakers’ grilling of the TikTok CEO minimize the danger of political blowback? 

“I want to say this to all the teenagers … who think we’re just old and out of touch,” said Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican. “You may not care that your data is being accessed now, but there will be one day when you do care about it.”
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Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok, pushed back Thursday against calls from US lawmakers to ban the social media app, contending that the company is not connected to the Chinese Communist Party. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more
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A 3D-printed rocket goes up before crashing right back down. Plus, a new spacesuit designed with women in mind, and mysterious objects streak the California-night sky. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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The CEO of TikTok made a rare public appearance Thursday before a U.S. Congressional committee, where he faced a grilling on data security and user safety while he makes his own case for why the hugely popular video-sharing app shouldn’t be banned.

Shou Zi Chew’s testimony comes at a crucial time for the company, which has acquired 150 million American users but is under increasing pressure from U.S. officials. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have been swept up in a wider geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington over trade and technology.

In her opening statement, Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, assailed the social platform’s trustworthiness because of its close ties to Beijing.

“Mr. Chew, you are here because the American people need the truth about the threat TikTok poses to our national and personal security,” McMorris Rodgers said. “TikTok has repeatedly chosen a path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation.”

Chew, a 40-year-old Singapore native, will tell the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce that TikTok prioritizes the safety of its young users and deny allegations that the app is a national security risk, according to his prepared remarks released ahead of the hearing.

“There are many misconceptions about our company and I’m very proud to come here and represent them and all our users in this country,” Chew told reporters before entering the hearing.

On Wednesday, the company sent dozens of popular TikTokers to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers to preserve the platform. It has also been putting up ads all over Washington that tout promises of securing users data and privacy and creating a safe platform for its young users.

TikTok has been dogged by claims that its Chinese ownership means user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government or that it could be used to promote narratives favorable to the country’s Communist leaders.

“We understand the popularity of Tiktok, we get that,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “But the President’s job is to make sure again that the Americans, national security is protected as well.”

For its part, TikTok has been trying to distance itself from its Chinese origins, saying that 60% percent of its parent company ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group. ByteDance was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs in Beijing in 2012.

“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said.

A U.S. ban on an app would be unprecedented and it’s unclear how the government would go about enforcing it.

Experts says officials could try to force Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, preventing new users from downloading it as well as preventing existing users from updating it, ultimately rendering it useless.

The U.S. could also block access to TikTok’s infrastructure and data, seize its domain names or force internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon to filter TikTok data traffic, said Ahmed Ghappour, a criminal law and computer security expert who teachers at Boston University School of Law.

But a tech savvy user could still get around restrictions by using a virtual private network to make it appear the user is in another country where it’s not blocked, he said.

To avoid a ban, TikTok has been trying to sell officials on a $1.5 billion plan called Project Texas, which routes all U.S. user data to domestic servers owned and maintained by software giant Oracle. Under the project, access to U.S. data is managed by U.S. employees through a separate entity called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which employs 1,500 people, is run independently of ByteDance and would be monitored by outside observers.

As of October, all new U.S. user data was being stored inside the country. The company started deleting all historic U.S. user data from non-Oracle servers this month, in a process expected to be completed later this year, Chew said.

Generally, researchers have said TikTok behaves like other social media companies when it comes to data collection. In an analysis released in 2021, the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab found TikTok and Facebook collect similar amounts of user data, including device identifiers that can be used to track a user and other information that can piece together a user’s behavior, all valuable information for advertisers.

To block such tracking, Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and more than half of U.S. states have banned the use of the app from official devices.

But wiping away all the data tracking associated with the platform might prove to be difficult. In a report released this month, the Cybersecurity company Feroot said so-called tracking pixels from ByteDance, which collect user information, were found on 30 U.S state websites, including some where the app has been banned for official use.

Other countries including Denmark, Canada, and New Zealand, along with the European Union, have already banned TikTok from devices issued to government employees, citing cybersecurity concerns.

David Kennedy, a former government intelligence officer who runs the cybersecurity company TrustedSec, agrees with restricting TikTok access on government-issued phones because they might contain sensitive military information or other confidential material. A nationwide ban, however, might be too extreme, he said. He also wondered where it might lead.

“We have Tesla in China, we have Microsoft in China, we have Apple in China. Are they going to start banning us now?” Kennedy said. “It could escalate very quickly.”
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The decision to launch a series of cyberattacks that crippled Albanian government websites and temporarily shut down government services may be backfiring on the alleged perpetrator.

Albania blamed the attacks in July and September of last year on Iran, claiming the evidence pointing to Tehran was “irrefutable,” and ordered all Iranian officials out of the country.

Now, a U.S. cyber team sent to Albania to help the country recover and “hunt” for more dangers says the efforts have turned up “new data and information about the tools, techniques, and procedures of malicious cyber actors, attempting to disrupt government networks and systems.”

“The hunt forward operation resulted in incredibly valuable insights for both our allied partner and U.S. cyber defenses,” the Cyber National Mission Force’s Major Katrina Cheesman told VOA, adding information was shared not only with the Albanian government but also some private companies with critical roles in the digital infrastructure of both countries.

Officials declined to share additional details, citing operational security, other than to say the networks they examined were of “significance” to Washington.

“These hunts bring us closer to adversary activity to better understand and then defend ourselves,” the commander of U.S. Cyber National Mission Force, Major General William Hartman, said in a statement Thursday, following a visit to Albania.

“When we are invited to hunt on a partner nation’s networks, we are able to find an adversary’s insidious activity,” Hartman said. “We can then impose costs on our adversaries by exposing their tools, tactics and procedures, and improve the cybersecurity posture of our partners and allies.”

Iran has consistently denied responsibility for the cyberattacks against Albania, calling the allegation “baseless.”

Albania’s claims were backed by the United States, which described the Iranian actions in cyberspace as “counter to international norms.”

This past September, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, and the FBI attributed the initial cyberattacks against Albania to Iranian state cyber actors calling themselves “HomeLand Justice.”

The joint advisory warned the group first gained access to Albania’s in May 2021 and maintained access to the Albanian networks for more than a year, stealing information, before launching the initial cyberattack in July 2022.

CISA and the FBI also concluded that Iran likely launched the second cyberattack in September 2022, using similar types of malware, in retaliation for Albania’s decision to attribute the first round of attacks to Tehran.

U.S. officials confirmed they had sent a team of experts to Albania shortly after the attacks, but information released Thursday sheds more light on the scope of the operation.

According to the U.S. officials, the so-called “hunt forward” team was deployed to Albania last September and worked alongside Albanian officials before returning home in late December.

Prior to the mission in Albania, other U.S. “hunt forward” teams had been deployed 43 times to 21 countries, including to Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Montenegro and Croatia.

 

Albanian officials have indicated they hope to continue working with U.S. cyber teams to further strengthen Albania’s cyber defenses.

“The cooperation with U.S. Cyber Command was very effective,” said Mirlinda Karcanaj, the general director of Albania’s National Agency for Information Society, in a statement released by the U.S. 

“We hope that this cooperation will continue,” she added.
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TikTok went on a counteroffensive Tuesday amid increasing Western pressure over cybersecurity and misinformation concerns, rolling out updated rules and standards for content as its CEO warned against a possible U.S. ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. 

CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to appear Thursday before U.S. congressional lawmakers, who will grill him about the company’s privacy and data-security practices and relationship with the Chinese government. 

Chew said in a TikTok video that the hearing “comes at a pivotal moment” for the company, after lawmakers introduced measures that would expand the Biden administration’s authority to enact a U.S. ban on the app, which the CEO said more than 150 million Americans use. 

“Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok. Now, this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you,” said Chew, who was dressed casually in jeans and a blue hoodie, with the dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington in the background. 

“I’ll be testifying before Congress this week to share all that we’re doing to protect Americans using the app,” he said. 

The TikTok app has come under fire in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, where a growing number of governments have banned TikTok from devices used for official business over worries it poses risks to cybersecurity and data privacy or could be used to push pro-Beijing narratives and misinformation. 

So far, there is no evidence to suggest this has happened or that TikTok has turned over user data to the Chinese government, as some of its critics have argued it would do. 

Norway and the Netherlands on Tuesday warned that apps like TikTok should not be installed on phones issued to government employees, both citing security or intelligence agencies. 

There’s a “high risk” if TikTok or Telegram are installed on devices that have access to “internal digital infrastructure or services,” Norway’s Justice Ministry said without providing further details. 

TikTok also rolled out updated rules and standards for content and users in a reorganized set of community guidelines that include eight principles to guide content moderation decisions. 

“These principles are based on our commitment to uphold human rights and aligned with international legal frameworks,” said Julie de Bailliencourt, TikTok’s global head of product policy. 

She said TikTok strives to be fair, protect human dignity and balance freedom of expression with preventing harm. 

The guidelines, which take effect on April 21, were repackaged from TikTok’s existing rules with extra details and explanations. 

Among the more significant changes are additional details about its restrictions on deepfakes, also known as synthetic media, created by artificial intelligence technology. TikTok more clearly spells out its policy, saying all deepfakes or manipulated content that show realistic scenes must be labeled to indicate they’re fake or altered in some way. 

TikTok had previously banned deepfakes that mislead viewers about real-world events and cause harm. Its updated guidelines say deepfakes of private figures and young people are also not allowed. 

Deepfakes of public figures are OK in certain contexts, such as for artistic or educational content, but not for political or commercial endorsements. 
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Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff Monday. 

The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the tech giant said it would lay off in January. The company’s workforce doubled during the pandemic, however, during a hiring surge across almost the entire tech sector. 

Tech companies have announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year. 

In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas. 

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them, so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said. 

The job cuts announced Monday will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. Twitch, the gaming platform Amazon owns, will also see some layoffs as well as Amazon’s PXT organizations, which handle human resources and other functions. 

Prior layoffs had also hit PXT, the company’s stores division, which encompasses its e-commerce business as well as the company’s brick-and-mortar stores such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and other departments such as the one that runs the virtual assistant Alexa. 

Earlier this month, the company said it would pause construction on its headquarters building in northern Virginia, though the first phase of that project will open this June with 8,000 employees. 

Like other tech companies, including Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, Amazon ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet the demand from homebound Americans that were increasingly making purchases online. 

Amazon’s workforce, in warehouses and offices, doubled to more than 1.6 million people in about two years. But demand slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased. The company began pausing or canceling its warehouse expansion plans last year. 

Amid growing anxiety over the potential for a recession, Amazon in the past few months shut down a subsidiary that’s been selling fabrics for nearly 30 years and shuttered its hybrid virtual, in-home care service Amazon Care among other cost-cutting moves. 

Jassy said Monday given the uncertain economy and the “uncertainty that exists in the near future,” the company has chosen to be more streamlined. 

He said the teams that will be impacted by the latest round of layoffs are not done making final decisions on which roles will be eliminated. The company plans to finalize those decisions by mid- to late April and notify those who will be laid off. 
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Brazilian federal agents aboard three helicopters descended on an illegal mining site on Tuesday in the Amazon rainforest. They were met with gunfire, and the shooters escaped, leaving behind an increasingly familiar find for authorities: Starlink internet units.

Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has almost 4,000 low-orbit satellites across the skies, connecting people in remote corners of the Amazon and providing a crucial advantage to Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. The lightweight, high-speed internet system has also proved a new and valuable tool for Brazil’s illegal miners, with reliable service for coordinating logistics, receiving advance warning of law enforcement raids and making payments without flying back to the city.

Agents from the Brazilian environment agency’s special inspection group and the federal highway police rapid response group on Tuesday found one Starlink terminal up and running next to a pit, an officer who participated in the raid told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns for his personal safety.

They also seized mercury, gold and ammunition, and destroyed fuel and other equipment used by miners in an area known as Ouro Mil, controlled by Brazil´s most feared criminal organization, known as the First Command of the Capital, according to federal investigations.

Since taking office this year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to crack down on environmental violations, particularly illegal mining in Yanomami land, Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory. In recent years, an estimated 20,000 prospectors contaminated vital waterways with mercury used to separate gold. They have disrupted traditional Indigenous life, brought disease and caused widespread famine.

The environment agency, known as Ibama, has seized seven Starlink terminals in Yanomami land over the past five weeks, the agency’s press office said.

Illegal miners have long used satellite internet to communicate and coordinate, but until now that entailed sending a technician, usually by plane, to install a heavy, fixed antenna that cannot be carried off when mining sites move or are raided. And the connection was slow and unstable, especially on rainy days.

Starlink – which first became available in Brazil last year and has spread rapidly – solved those problems. Installation is do-it-yourself, the equipment works even on the move, speed is as fast as in Brazil´s large cities and it works during storms.

Starlink has long viewed the Amazon as an opportunity. That was underscored by Musk’s visit to Brazil last May, when he met with then-President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Super excited to be in Brazil for launch of Starlink for 19,000 unconnected schools in rural areas & environmental monitoring of Amazon,” Musk tweeted at the time.

That project with the government hasn’t advanced, however. SpaceX and the communications ministry haven’t signed any contract, and only three terminals were installed in Amazon schools for a 12-month trial period, the ministry’s press office said in an emailed response to questions.

Nevertheless, Starlink has taken off in the region and begun ushering in change.

In Atalaia do Norte, on the western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon near the borders with Peru and Colombia, Rubeney de Castro Alves installed Starlink at his hotel in December. Now, he can make bank transfers and conduct video calls. He even started bingeing Netflix.

“There are so many new things to watch that I’m not even sleeping,” Alves said, chuckling.

His son once flew all the way to Manaus, the state capital 1,140 kilometers (708 miles) away, just to negotiate with a group of tourists via conference call. Today, internet at his 11-room hotel in Atalaia do Norte is more reliable than in Manaus, and he bought a second terminal for his tour boat to enable communications on its 10-day voyages, Alves said.

With high demand for internet, dozens of the riverside town’s 21,000 residents flock to Alves’ hotel each day. Its balcony is a meeting point for teenagers who spend hours playing online games on their phones.

“It made a revolution in our city,” Alves said.

A world away, in Ukraine, Starlink has yielded advantages on the battlefield in its war with Russia.

Ukraine has received some 24,000 Starlink terminals that allow continued internet in the most vulnerable regions of the southeast even amid ongoing Russian shelling. In large Ukrainian cities, authorities have set up “points of resilience” that offer free internet along with hot beverages.

The benefits of connectivity were immediately apparent to bad actors in the Amazon, Hugo Loss, operations coordinator for Brazil´s environment agency, told the AP in a phone interview.

“This technology is extremely fast and really improves the ability to manage an illegal mine,” Loss said. “You can manage hundreds of mining sites without ever setting foot in one.”

Another official with the environment agency told AP it is just beginning to expel miners from the Yanomami territory and the spread of Starlink has complicated that mission. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about personal safety.

An unauthorized reseller of Starlink in Boa Vista, the gateway for travel into Yanomami territory, has been marketing the units in a WhatsApp group for illegal miners and promising same-day delivery. Her price for a terminal is $1,600— six times what Alves pays for service at his little hotel in Atalaia do Norte. Others are selling the Starlink terminals on Facebook groups for illegal miners, like one called “Fanatics for Prospecting.”

As lawbreakers have gained access to superior internet service, authorities have started using Starlink themselves. Federal agents installed a terminal at a new checkpoint on the Uraricoera River – an important corridor for miners entering Yanomami territory. The official who informed the AP about the Tuesday raid used Starlink to send photos and even heavy video files of their operation.

Brazil’s environment agency told the AP via email that it, along with other federal bodies, is studying how to block Starlink’s signal in illegal mining areas, calling it crucial to stopping the activity.

The AP emailed James Gleeson, SpaceX’s Communications Director, questions about Starlink’s presence in Brazil and its use by illegal miners in remote areas, but received no response.
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U.S. former officials and experts are urging greater efforts to thwart Chinese espionage, which many believe has enabled Beijing to develop a range of advanced weaponry on the back of stolen American technology.

James Anderson, a former acting undersecretary of defense for policy, said China stole U.S. military technology for developing its J-20 fighter jet and has benefited immensely.

“They have profited greatly from their thievery over the years,” he said. “They’ve put it to good use, and they’ve come up with an advanced fifth-generation fighter,” noting that it’s “hard to say, short of actual combat,” how the J-20 matches up against the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter.

Matthew Brazil is a researcher and writer with Jamestown Foundation who served in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he both promoted and controlled U.S. high-technology exports to China. He said the FBI doesn’t have enough people to keep track of China’s activities in the U.S.

Brazil told VOA Mandarin, “Chinese communist espionage is not like an army of cockroaches crawling up our arms with daggers between their teeth. It’s spying. We can handle it with a better counterespionage system that includes both the government and the private sector working more closely together.”

He noted the FBI lacks “enough agents trained in Chinese language, culture and area studies. Congress should step in here and fund this sort of program to train people.”

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner last month urged the Biden administration to expand the use of existing tools and authorities at the Treasury and Commerce departments to prevent China’s military-industrial complex and entities from benefiting from U.S. technology, talent and investments.

As of March 14, Warner’s office told VOA Mandarin, “We have not yet received a response and are following up with the relevant departments.”

VOA Mandarin emailed the Chinese Embassy in Washington asking for a comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Anderson, who made his remarks to Fox News Digital last week, was sworn in on June 8, 2020, and resigned in November 2020.

US tech in Chinese weapons

China claims to have independently developed its fifth-generation stealth fighter J-20, which entered service in 2017. John Chipman, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said on February 15 at an IISS event that China’s J-20A production is expected to surpass that of the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jet by the end of 2023.

China’s sixth-generation fighter jets, hypersonic weapons and missiles, and even the spy balloons that crossed the continental United States last month all appear to incorporate elements of American technology, according to DefenseOne, a Washington news site devoted to military issues.

U.S. defense officials say China has the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal.

Terry Thompson, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and war planner at the Pentagon who blogs, told VOA Mandarin that China lacks a solid technological foundation and has a long history of stealing technology.

He said, “If you look back at the epic progression of Chinese aircraft, they say they’ve produced an aircraft that looks like and flies like the F-16 and like the F-15 and the F-18. I mean, they look just like our aircraft. They’re not building something new that comes from their own base of technology. They don’t have a base of technology.”

Thompson said China targets engine and power system technology, but also “the aerodynamics. They didn’t have the capability to coat airplanes with stealth material. They stole that from us.

“But now China is making its way right up to the table that the rest of the free world is playing on, because they are just stealing their pathway to that table.”

Old-style spies and cyberattacks

Anderson told Fox News Digital that China’s intelligence practices include the old-fashioned — spies and bribes to buy American contractors, university professors and government officials — and high-tech cyberactivity to steal key information on military weapons.

“In effect, we end up subsidizing a portion of their research and development budget because they are successfully stealing some of our secrets,” Anderson said.

Kris Osborn, president and editor-in-chief of the U.S. Military Modernization Center, said in an article published last month that China has hired at least 162 Chinese scientists who had worked at the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory on deep-penetrating warheads, new hardened heat-resistant nanocomposite materials, vertical-takeoff-and-landing drones and a new generation of submarine “quiet” technologies.

“However, to put things simply and clearly, many of the U.S.-driven technological advances in these critical areas appear to have been stolen by Chinese spies,” Osborn wrote.

A report published in April 2022 by BluePath Labs, a consulting firm commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said, “Despite a wide body of research on China’s scientific progress, the laboratory system remains a less understood component. … This opacity not only leads to gaps in our knowledge of Chinese defense research, but in many cases has allowed these labs to fly under the radar, leading to cases of close interaction, and even cooperation between Chinese defense labs and U.S. and allied academic institutions.”

In 2023, China’s military expenditure will expand significantly, by 7.2% to $224.8 billion, according to the official budget discussed in an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

When meeting with a delegation of the People’s Liberation Army and the Armed Police Force on March 8, China’s President Xi Jinping said China should accelerate the promotion of high-level technological self-reliance.

Emily de La Bruyere, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA Mandarin that China wants semiconductor technology for military functions, development of algorithms and valuable data.

“Stealing technology has been an escalating priority. And I also say that just general aggressiveness of China when it comes to the development of these capabilities, but also its use of international presence in order to coerce – all of those are increasing,” she said. “Not only are they working to catch up, but also if they’re stealing technology from the international system for their military modernization, they’re then able to modernize more cheaply than anybody else.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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New Zealand said on Friday it would ban TikTok on devices with access to the country’s parliamentary network due to cybersecurity concerns, becoming the latest nation to limit the use of the video-sharing app on government-related devices.

Concerns have mounted globally about the potential for the Chinese government to access users’ location and contact data through ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company.

The depth of those concerns was underscored this week when the Biden administration demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes or the app could face a U.S. ban.

In New Zealand, TikTok will be banned on all devices with access to parliament’s network by the end of March.

Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said in an email to Reuters that the decision was taken after advice from cybersecurity experts and discussions within government and with other countries.

“Based on this information, the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment,” he said.

Special arrangements can be made for those who require the app to do their jobs, he added.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Speaking at a media briefing, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said New Zealand operated differently from other nations.

“Departments and agencies follow the advice of the (Government Communications Security Bureau) in terms of IT and cybersecurity policies … we don’t have a blanket across the public sector approach,” Hipkins said.

Both New Zealand’s defense force and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Friday they had already implemented bans on TikTok on work devices.

A spokesperson for the New Zealand Defense Force said in an email to Reuters the move was a “precautionary approach to protect the safety and security” of personnel.

On Thursday, Britain banned the app on government phones with immediate effect. Government agencies in the U.S. have until the end of March to delete the app from official devices.

TikTok has said it believes the recent bans are based on “fundamental misconceptions” and driven by wider geopolitics, adding that it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.
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The Biden administration has demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a possible U.S. ban, the company told Reuters this week.

The move follows the introduction of a new U.S. legislation that would allow the White House to ban TikTok or other foreign-based technologies if they pose a national security risk.

Other countries and entities have also elected to ban the app.

TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance, the world’s most valuable start-up. Numerous countries have raised concerns over its proximity to the Chinese government and hold over user data across the world.

Here is a list of countries and entities that have implemented a partial or complete ban on TikTok:

New Zealand

Became the latest country to target TikTok, imposing a ban on the use of the app on devices with access to the parliamentary network amid cybersecurity concerns.

United Kingdom

Would ban TikTok on government phones with immediate effect, and asked the National Cyber Security Centre to look at the potential vulnerability of government data from social media apps and risks around how sensitive information could be accessed and used.

India

Banned TikTok and dozens of other apps by Chinese developers on all devices in June 2020, claiming that they were potentially harmful to the country’s security and integrity.

Afghanistan

Is in talks to ban TikTok and video game PUBG, with the Taliban claiming those were leading Afghan youths “astray.”

Pakistan

Banned TikTok at least four times, with the latest ban ending in November, over what the government said was immoral and indecent content on the app.

Belgium

Belgian federal government employees will no longer be allowed to use TikTok on their work phones, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on March 10.

Canada

The nation has banned TikTok on government-issued devices due to security risks.

Taiwan

Banned TikTok and some other Chinese apps on state-owned devices and in December 2022 launched a probe into the social media app over suspected illegal operations on the island.

United States

The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 unanimously recommended ByteDance divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government.

In early March, legislators from both major U.S. parties introduced a bill to ban the popular app in the United States.

Congress previously passed a bill in December 2022 to ban TikTok on federal devices.

US educational institutions

Boise State University, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas-Austin, and West Texas A&M University are some of the schools to ban TikTok on university devices and Wi-Fi networks.

US states

Texas, Maryland, Alabama and Utah are among the more than 25 states that have issued orders to staff against using TikTok on government devices.

European Commission and European Parliament

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, has issued an order to ban the use of popular Chinese app TikTok on its staff’s phones due to cybersecurity concerns. Separately, the European Parliament also banned the app from staff phones.
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Time may be running out in the U.S. for Chinese-owned entertainment platform TikTok, with the White House on Thursday supporting proposed legislation that would effectively ban the app over concerns about the safety of the data of the 100 million Americans who use the trendy video platform.

“The bottom line is that when it comes to potential threats to our national security, when it comes to the safety of Americans, when it comes to privacy, we’re going to speak out, and we’re going to be very clear about that, and the president has been over the last two years,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“And so we’re asking Congress to act, we’re asking Congress to move forward with this bipartisan legislation, the RESTRICT Act … and we’re going to continue to do so,” Jean-Pierre said.

When asked if the administration had any concrete evidence that the platform has used data maliciously, she pointed to an ongoing study by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and said the White House was “not going to get ahead of their process.”

The CFIUS is an inter-agency panel that reviews certain transactions involving foreign investment and national security concerns.

Also Thursday, the U.K. prohibited the use of the app on government-issued devices – a move already imposed by the U.S., the European Union, Canada and India. And in the U.S., other entities, such as universities, have banned use of the app on their networks.

Earlier this week, TikTok leadership told U.S. media that the Biden administration has demanded that the platform’s Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a ban, issuing a statement that said “a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access.”

In recent weeks, the company has been promoting its $1.5 billion plan, called “Project Texas,” for the Texas software company it has partnered with to construct a firewall between U.S. users and ownership in Beijing.

“The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing,” the statement read.

A Trojan giraffe or just a chocolate one?

TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, is best known for its bite-sized dance videos and unconventional recipes — one video providing a tutorial for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos macaroni and cheese provoked more than 24,000 reactions, including one commenter who described the recipe as “worse than first-degree murder.” It also has offered some truly revelatory feats of food engineering, like the French pastry chef who made an impressively realistic 8-foot-tall giraffe out of chocolate.

But critics of the platform say its close ties to the Chinese government make it a Trojan horse: Once the compelling app gains entry to users’ devices, it then has access to their data and information.

Earlier in March, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the RESTRICT Act, which stands for “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology.”

“Over the past several years, foreign adversaries of the United States have encroached on American markets through technology products that steal sensitive location and identifying information of U.S. citizens, including social media platforms like TikTok,” said Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat. “This dangerous new internet infrastructure poses serious risks to our nation’s economic and national security.”

Senator Mark Warner, also a Democrat, one of the bill’s main sponsors, is calling for “a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren’t playing Whac-A-Mole [dealing with a recurring problem with no solution] and scrambling to catch up once they’re already ubiquitous.”

This is not the first time the White House has gone after the popular video service — the Trump administration also pushed the platform to divest. In 2020, CFIUS unanimously recommended that ByteDance divest the platform. The company tried to make a deal with Walmart, the largest U.S. retailer, and Austin, Texas-based Oracle Corp. to shift its assets into a new entity.

But analysts are divided on the next move.

“A forced sale is the right move,” said Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow for emerging technologies at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“The app gives a name and a face to the export of China’s surveillance state around the world. But now there’s bipartisan consensus that TikTok poses a national security threat to the United States’ democracy. The China tech threat — today exemplified by TikTok — may be the only thing Congress agrees on,” Gorman said.

Caitlin Chin, a fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said stopping TikTok won’t solve the larger issue over apps using data maliciously.

“The strongest approach would be for Congress to establish comprehensive rules across the entire data ecosystem that would limit how all companies — including TikTok — use personal information in ways that could amplify the spread of harmful content,” she said.

“Policymakers should take popular interest in TikTok as an opportunity to implement industrywide protections that could benefit all of society, rather than just a messaging tool primarily geared toward the Chinese Communist Party,” Chin said.

Some information in this article came from Reuters.
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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 23. Lawmakers have questions about the app’s connections to China. For VOA, Deana Mitchell reports.
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Microsoft on Thursday trumpeted its latest plans to put artificial intelligence into the hands of more users, answering a spate of unveilings this week by its rival Google with upgrades to its own widely used office software.

The company previewed a new AI “copilot” for Microsoft 365, its product suite that includes Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and Outlook emails.  

Going forward, AI can offer a first draft in Microsoft’s applications, speeding up content creation and freeing up workers’ time, the company said.

“We believe this next generation of AI will unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said in a livestreamed presentation.

This week’s drumbeat of news including new funding for AI startup Adept reflects how companies large and small are locked in a fierce competition to deploy software that could reshape how people work. At the center are Microsoft and Google-owner Alphabet Inc, which on Tuesday touted AI features for Gmail and a “magic wand” to draft prose in its own word processor.

The frenzy to invest in and build new products began with the launch last year of ChatGPT, from the Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI. Chatbot showed the potential of so-called large language models, technology that learns from past data how to create content anew. It is rapidly evolving. Just this week, OpenAI began the release of a more powerful version known as GPT-4.
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TikTok confirmed Wednesday that U.S. officials have recommended the popular video-sharing app part ways with its Chinese parent ByteDance to avoid a national ban.

Western powers, including the European Union and the United States, have been taking an increasingly tough approach to the app, citing fears that user data could be used or abused by Chinese officials.

“If protecting national security is the objective, calls for a ban or divestment are unnecessary, as neither option solves the broader industry issues of data access and transfer,” a TikTok spokesperson told AFP.

“We remain confident that the best path forward to addressing concerns about national security is transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification.”

The Wall Street Journal and other U.S. news outlets on Wednesday reported that the White House set an ultimatum: if TikTok remains a part of ByteDance, it will be banned in the United States.

“This is all a game of high stakes poker,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

Washington is “clearly… putting more pressure on ByteDance to strategically sell this key asset in a major move that could have significant ripple impacts,” he continued.

The White House last week welcomed a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate that would allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok.

The bipartisan bill “would empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services… in a way that poses risks to Americans’ sensitive data and our national security,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement.

The bill’s introduction and its quick White House backing accelerated the political momentum against TikTok, which is also the target of a separate piece of legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Appearing tough on China is one of the rare issues with potential for bipartisan support in both the Republican-run House and the Senate, where Biden’s Democratic Party holds the majority.

Concern ramped up among American officials earlier this year after a Chinese balloon, which Washington alleged was on a spy mission, flew over U.S. airspace.

TikTok use rocketing

TikTok claims it has more than a billion users worldwide including over 100 million in the United States, where it has become a cultural force, especially among young people.

Activists argue a ban would be an attack on free speech and stifle the export of American culture and values to TikTok users around the world.

U.S. government workers in January were banned from installing TikTok on their government-issued devices.

Civil servants in the European Union and Canada are also barred from downloading the app on their work devices.

According to the Journal report, the ultimatum to TikTok came from the U.S. interagency board charged with assessing risks foreign investments represent to national security.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the report.

TikTok has consistently denied sharing data with Chinese officials and says it has been working with the U.S. authorities for more than two years to address national security concerns.

Time spent by users on TikTok has surpassed that spent on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and is closing in on streaming television titan Netflix, according to market tracker Insider Intelligence.
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From 5G infrastructure to mobile phones and more, Chinese technologies are used in many parts of the world. It’s part of China’s Digital Silk Road initiative, which is getting mixed reviews: welcomed by some countries, while others are assessing the potential risks of Chinese technology. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains. Camera: Henry Ridgwell, Adam Greenbaum
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Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it would cut 10,000 jobs, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees, the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs. 

“We expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to staff.  

The layoffs are part of a wider restructuring at Meta that will see the company flatten its organizational structure, cancel lower priority projects and reduce its hiring rates as part of the move. The news sent Meta’s shares up 2% in premarket trading. 

The move underscores Zuckerberg’s push to turn 2023 into the “Year of Efficiency” with promised cost cuts of $5 billion in expenses to between $89 billion and $95 billion. 

A deteriorating economy has brought about a series of mass job cuts across corporate America: from Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to Big Tech firms including Amazon.com  and Microsoft.  

The tech industry has laid off more than 280,000 workers since the start of 2022, with about 40% of them coming this year, according to layoffs tracking site layoffs.fyi.  

Meta, which is pouring billions of dollars to build the futuristic metaverse, has struggled with a post-pandemic slump in advertising spending from companies facing high inflation and rising interest rates.  

Meta’s move in November to slash headcount by 13% marked the first mass layoffs in its 18-year history. Its headcount stood at 86,482 at 2022-end, up 20% from a year ago. 
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Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse rattled the technology industry that had been the bank’s backbone, leaving shell-shocked entrepreneurs thankful for the government reprieve that saved their money while they mourned the loss of a place that served as a chummy club of innovation.

“They were the gold standard, it almost seemed weird if you were in tech and didn’t have a Silicon Valley Bank account,” Stefan Kalb, CEO of Seattle startup Shelf Engine, said during a Monday interview as he started the process of transferring millions of dollars to other banks.

The Biden administration’s move guaranteeing all Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits above the insured limit of $250,000 per account resulted in a “palpable sigh of relief” in Israel, where its booming tech sector is “connected with an umbilical cord to Silicon Valley,” said Jon Medved, founder of the Israeli venture capital crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.

But the gratitude for the deposit guarantees that will allow thousands of tech startups to continue to pay their workers and other bills was mixed with moments of reflection among entrepreneurs and venture capital partners rattled by Silicon Valley Bank’s downfall.

The crisis “has forced every company to reassess their banking arrangements and the companies that they work with,” said Rajeeb Dey, CEO of London-based startup Learnerbly, a platform for workplace learning.

Entrepreneurs who had deposited all their startups’ money in Silicon Valley Bank are now realizing it makes more sense to spread their funds across several institutions, with the biggest banks considered safer harbors.

Kalb started off Monday by opening an account at the largest in the U.S., JP Morgan Chase, which has about $2.4 trillion in deposits. That’s 13 times more than the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S.

Bank of America is getting some of the money that Electric Era had deposited at Silicon Valley Bank, and the Seattle startup’s CEO, Quincy Lee, expects having no difficulty finding other candidates to keep the rest of his company’s money as part of its diversification plan.

“Any bank is happy to take a startup’s money,” Lee said.

Even so, there are fears it will be more difficult to finance the inherently risky ideas underlying tech startups that became a specialty of Silicon Valley Bank since its founding over a poker game in 1983, just as the advent of the personal computer and faster microprocessors unleashed more innovation.

Silicon Valley quickly established itself as the “go-to” spot for venture capitalists looking for financial partners more open to unconventional business proposals than its bigger, more established peers who still didn’t have a good grasp of technology.

“They understood startups, they understood venture capital,” said Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, commercializing a process to make low-carbon cement. “They were woven into the fabric of the startup community that I’m part of, so banking with SVB was a no brainer.”

Venture capitalists set up their accounts at Silicon Valley Bank just as the tech industry started its boom and then advised the entrepreneurs that they funded to do the same.

That cozy relationship came to an end when the bank disclosed a $1.8 billion loss on low-yielding bonds that were purchased before interest rates began to spike last year, raising alarms among its financially savvy customer base who used the fruits of technology to spread warnings that turned into a calamitous run on deposits.

Bob Ackerman, founder and managing director of venture funder AllegisCyber Capital, likened last week’s flood of withdrawal demands from Silicon Valley Bank to a self-inflicted wound by “a circular firing squad” intent on “shooting your best friend.”

Many of Silicon Valley Bank’s roughly 8,500 employees now find themselves hanging in limbo, too, even though government regulators now overseeing the operations have told them they will be offered jobs at 1.5 times their salaries for 45 days, said Rob McMillan, who had worked there for 32 years.

“We don’t know who’s going to pay us when,” McMillan said. “I think we all missed a paycheck. We don’t know if we have benefits.”

Even though all of Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors are being made whole, its demise is expected to leave a void in the technology sector that may be difficult to fill. In an essay that he posted on his LinkedIn page, prominent venture capitalist Michael Moritz compared Silicon Valley Bank to a “cherished local market where people behind the counters know the names of their customers, have a ready smile but still charge the going price when they sell a cut of meat.”

Silicon Valley Bank is fading away at a time when startups were already having a tougher go at raising money, with a downturn in technology stock values and a steady ride in interest rates caused venture capitalists to retrench. The bank often helped fill the financial gaps with one of its specialties — loans known as “venture debt” because it was woven into the funding provided by its venture capitalist customers.

“There’s going to be a lot of great ideas, a lot of great teams that don’t get funding because the barriers to entry are too high or because there are not enough people who are willing to invest,” said William Lin, co-founder of cybersecurity startup Symmetry Systems and a partner at the venture capital firm ForgePoint.

With Silicon Valley Bank gone and venture capitalists pulling in their reins, Lin expects there will be fewer startups getting money to pursue ideas in the same fields of technology. If that happens, he foresees a winnowing of competition that will eventually make the biggest tech companies even stronger than they already are.

“There’s a real day of reckoning coming in the startup world,” predicted Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable.

That may be true, but entrepreneurs like Lee and Kalb already feel like they had been through an emotional wringer after spending the weekend worrying that all their hard work would go down a drain if they couldn’t get their money out of Silicon Valley Bank.

“It was like being stuck inside a doomsday loop,” Lee said.

Even as he focuses on growing Shelf Engine’s business of helping grocers managing their food orders, he vowed not to forget “a very hard lesson.”

“I obviously now know banks aren’t as safe as I used to think they were,” he said.
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Boeing structural analysis engineer George Ndayizeye, who grew up in Burundi, has won a 2023 Black Engineer of the Year Legacy Award. He spoke with VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya outside Seattle.
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A global shortage of semiconductor chips in the automotive industry starting in 2020 has motivated many countries to increase their domestic manufacturing. The United States has allocated more than $50 billion to promote semiconductor production and research stateside as the global need for the chips is expected to double over the next decade. Keith Kocinski has more from New York.
Camera: Keith Kocinski and Rendy Wicaksana
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China’s government on Thursday criticized the Netherlands for joining Washington in blocking Chinese access to technology to manufacture advanced processor chips on security and human rights grounds.

A Dutch minister told lawmakers Wednesday that exports of equipment that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits on chips would be restricted on security grounds. ASML of the Netherlands is the only global supplier. Industry experts say a lack of access to ASML’s most advanced technology is a serious handicap for China’s efforts to develop its own chip industry.

Washington in October blocked Chinese access to U.S. tools to make advanced chips that it said might be used in weapons or in equipment for the ruling Communist Party’s surveillance apparatus. The Biden administration is lobbying European and Asian allies to tighten their own controls.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman complained that “an individual country,” a reference to the United States, was trying to “safeguard its own hegemony” by abusing national security as an excuse to “deprive China of its right to development.”

“We firmly oppose the Netherlands’s interference and restriction with administrative means of normal economic and trade exchanges between Chinese and Dutch enterprises,” said the spokeswoman, Mao Ning. “We have made complaints to the Dutch side.”

Mao appealed to the Netherlands to “safeguard the stability of the international industrial and supply chain.”

ASML’s extreme-ultraviolet, or EUV, equipment uses light to etch microscopically precise circuits into silicon, allowing them to be packed more closely together. That increases their speed and reduces power demand.

The Dutch government has prohibited ASML from exporting its most advanced machines to China since 2019, but the company is allowed to supply lower-quality systems.

Chinese manufacturers can produce low-end chips used in autos and most consumer electronics but not those used in smartphones, servers and other high-end products.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and U.S. President Joe Biden held talks in January on ASML’s chip machines.
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Mexico is undergoing a fevered competition among states to win a potential Tesla facility in jostling reminiscent of what happens among U.S. cities and states vying to win investments from tech companies.

Mexican governors have gone to extremes, like putting up billboards, creating special car lanes or creating mock-ups of Tesla ads for their states.

And there’s no guarantee Tesla will build a full-fledged factory. Nothing is announced, and the frenzy is based mainly on Mexican officials saying Tesla boss Elon Musk will have a phone call with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The northern industrial state of Nuevo Leon seemed to have an early edge in the race.

It painted the Tesla logo on a lane at the Laredo-Colombia border crossing into Texas last summer and is erecting billboards in December in the state capital, Monterrey, that read “Welcome Tesla.”

The state governor’s influencer wife, Mariana Rodriguez, was even shown in leaked photos at a get-together with Musk.

However, López Obrador appeared to exclude the semi-desert state from consideration Monday, arguing he wouldn’t allow the typically high water use of factories to risk prompting shortages there.

That set off a competitive scramble among other Mexican states. The governors’ offers ranged from crafty proposals to near-comic ones.

“Veracruz is the only state with an excess of gas,” quipped Gov. Cuitláhuac García of the Gulf Coast state, before quickly adding “gas … for industrial use, for industrial use!”

A latecomer to the race, García had to try harder: He noted Veracruz was home to Mexico’s only nuclear power plant. And he claimed Veracruz had 30% of Mexico’s water, though the National Water Commission puts the state’s share at around 11%.

The governor of the western state of Michoacan wasn’t going to be left out. Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla quickly posted a mocked-up ad for a Tesla car standing next to a huge, car-sized avocado — Michoacan’s most recognizable product — with the slogan “Michoacan — The Best Choice for Tesla.”

“We have enough water,” Ramírez Bedolla said in a television interview he did between a round of meetings with auto industry figures and international business representatives.

Michoacan also has an intractable problem of drug cartel violence. But similar violence in neighboring Guanajuato state hasn’t stopped seven major international automakers from setting up plants there.

Nuevo Leon Gov. Samuel García had to think fast to avoid being shut out entirely.

García reached out to the western state of Jalisco, whose governor, Enrique Alfaro, belongs to the same small Citizen’s Movement party. Together, the two came up with an alliance Thursday that would allow trucks from Jalisco preferential use of Nuevo Leon’s border crossing, the same one where a “Tesla” lane appeared last year.

Jalisco has a healthy foreign tech sector, but most importantly, it has more water than Nuevo Leon.

López Obrador’s focus on water might be more about politics than about droughts, said Gabriela Siller, chief economist at Nuevo Leon-based Banco Base. She said the president appeared to be trying to steer Tesla investment to a state governed by his own Morena party, like Michoacan or Veracruz.

That could be a dangerous game, Siller said.

“Tesla could say it’s not somebody’s toy to be moved around anywhere, and it could decide not to come to Mexico,” she said.

There are doubts that whatever Musk eventually does announce will be an auto assembly plant. Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said his understanding is that it won’t be a plant, but rather an ecosystem of suppliers.

Musk at times has floated the idea of building a $25,000 electric vehicle that would cost about $20,000 less than the current Model 3, now Tesla’s least-expensive car. Many automakers build lower-cost models in Mexico to save on labor costs and protect profit margins.

A Tesla investment could be part of “near shoring” by U.S. companies that once manufactured in China but now are leery of logistical and political problems there. That those companies will now turn to Mexico represents the Latin American country’s biggest foreign investment hope.

“The fight among states to attract investments from this nearshoring phenomenon is going to be tough, complicated,” Michoacan’s Ramírez Bedolla said.

As Ramírez Bedolla put it, “wherever Tesla sets up, it is going to be big news in Mexico.”
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