INCOMPAS, the internet and competitive networks association, is hosting the INCOMPAS Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, with the objective of connecting technology business executives with legislative leadership. Speakers at the event will include Commissioners Brendan Carr (R), Nathan Simington (R) and Geoffrey Starks (D) of the Federal Communications Commission; Evan Feinman, director of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program; Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.); and Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio).

The Internet Education Foundation will host its State of the Net event in Washington, D.C., on Monday, with the aim of exploring emerging trends in internet policy. Speakers include Kemba Walden, acting national cyber director at the White House; Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s antitrust division; Will Farrell, interim security officer at TikTok U.S Data Security; and FCC Commissioner Simington.

SXSW 2023 kicks off in Austin, Texas, on Friday and runs through March 19, with this year’s tech track of the conference focused on artificial intelligence, security, privacy and social media platforms. Speakers include Ian Beacraft, chief executive and chief futurist at Signal and Cipher; Greg Brockman, co-founder and president of OpenAI; Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly; and former executive chair of Reddit Alexis Ohanian.

The House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation will hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Advances in AI: Are We Ready For a Tech Revolution?” Witnesses at the hearing will include Aleksander Mądry, director of MIT’s Center for Deployable Machine Learning; Scott Crowder, vice president of IBM Corp.’s IBM Quantum; and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and current chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust And Consumer Rights will hold a hearing Tuesday titled “Reining in Dominant Digital Platforms: Restoring Competition to Our Digital Markets.”

U.S.-China relations

• The Biden administration is considering revoking licenses that allow U.S. suppliers to sell to Chinese telecom company Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., according to people familiar with the matter, as part of an ongoing effort to re-evaluate technology trade policy over national security concerns. The potential decision to revoke existing licenses follows previously considered policies that would see the administration stop issuing new export licenses, and the new policy would extend beyond 5G technology to older 4G products. 
• In order to receive money from the $39 billion federal fund established by the CHIPS and Science Act to boost the American semiconductor industry, participating chipmakers must agree not to expand their capacity in “foreign countries of concern” including China for 10 years, according to new Commerce Department rules. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also noted companies that receive funding must not “knowingly engage in any joint research or technology licensing effort with a foreign entity of concern that involves sensitive technologies or products.”
• Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said his panel plans to examine how American-founded companies operate within China, including looking at how private equity and venture capital firms have invested money in Chinese technology companies that may have ties with the Chinese military.

AI

• Apple Inc. reportedly delayed the approval of an update to email app BlueMail over concerns that a recently introduced feature that uses ChatGPT to automate text in emails might produce inappropriate content for younger users. Apple suggested that BlueMail either change its age restriction to 17 and older or include content filters to address the issue, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal, but the app’s developer has complained the requests are unfair.
• Meta is creating a new product team led by Ahmad Al-Dahle, vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning, that will focus on rapidly integrating generative AI technologies into the company’s platforms and services. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook that the company would focus on “building creative and expressive tools” in the short term and “developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways” in the long term, with plans to introduce generative AI features around text in WhatsApp and Messenger and image filters on Instagram.

Microsoft Corp.-Activision Blizzard Inc. 

• The European Commission is expected to approve Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard without any demands for Microsoft to sell assets to address antitrust concerns, according to three people familiar with the matter. Microsoft, which has already agreed to offer licensing deals to rivals, may still be subject to other behavioral remedies to address concerns from competitors, one of the people said. 
• Microsoft and Activision Blizzard met with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority to discuss proposed remedies that would allow Microsoft to move forward with its proposed acquisition, according to people familiar with the discussions. The antitrust watchdog previously said Microsoft’s purchase of the gaming giant could lead to higher prices and fewer choices for U.K. gamers. 

Antitrust

• The Federal Trade Commission is expected to challenge financial services company Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s proposed $13 billion purchase of mortgage data company Black Knight Inc., according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawsuit, expected to be filed some time in March and follows an investigation that opened nearly one year ago, will allege the acquisition will give Intercontinental Exchange too much control over the American mortgage market, the people said.
• Chipmaker Broadcom Inc. is expected to receive an antitrust warning from the European Commission in the coming weeks about the potential anti-competitive effects of its proposed $61 billion acquisition of cloud computing company VMware Inc., people familiar with the matter said. The anticipated warning follows an investigation into the deal opened in December by the competition enforcer, which has a deadline for approving or rejecting Broadcom’s purchase by June 7.

TikTok

• The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to advance the DATA Act, which would give President Joe Biden the authority to effectively ban foreign-owned applications including TikTok. The bill passed by a vote of 24-16, with all Democrats on the committee voting no over concerns that fast-tracking the bill would supersede the ongoing security review of TikTok being carried out by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
• In a letter sent to Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the American Civil Liberties Union urged Congress not to move forward with proposed legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States, despite ongoing national security concerns stemming from the platform’s Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. The ACLU argued that the legislation would “limit Americans’ political discussion, artistic expression, free exchange of ideas — and even prevent people from posting cute animal videos and memes.” 

Cybersecurity

• The White House announced its National Cyber Strategy, which will seek to establish a plan for how the Biden administration will handle online threats to national security. The strategy includes shifting the burden of cybersecurity from individuals, small businesses and local governments onto software developers and other institutions that better understand cyber risk, and also calls for legislation to establish liability for failures by software developers to reasonably secure products and services.
• The U.S. Marshals Service suffered a security breach that compromised a system containing sensitive information including “personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees,” though a senior law enforcement official familiar with the incident said it did not affect the witness protection program. An investigation into the breach, which was discovered Feb. 17 when the Marshals Service found ransomware on one of its systems, is still ongoing.

Other news

• Amazon.com Inc. halted construction on its planned second headquarters in Arlington, Va., where the company has pledged to spend $2.5 billion and hire 25,000 workers by 2030, as it reassesses its needs for office space after significant job cuts and the rise of remote work. The first phase of Amazon’s HQ2 location is near completion, but the second phase — three 22-story office towers and a corporate conference center — is currently paused and does not have a specified start date.
• Google has hired Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP to carry out a civil rights review of how its diversity and inclusion policies and approach to content moderation may affect marginalized communities, according to two people familiar with the matter. The alleged review comes nearly two years after Democratic lawmakers and civil rights leaders called upon the company to perform a civil rights audit.
• Neuralink Corp., the medical device company started by Elon Musk that has been working on developing brain implant technology that its founder claims will help to treat conditions from paralysis to blindness, did not seek permission for human trials from the Food and Drug Administration until early 2022 and had its application rejected, according to seven current and former employees. The rejection cited issues with the company’s use of lithium batteries, concerns that the implant’s wires could migrate to other parts of the brain, and fears of damaging brain tissue when removing the device, according to the sources — and three staffers remain skeptical the problems will be resolved in time to meet Musk’s prediction of approval by this spring. 
• BetterHelp, the online therapy service offered by Teladoc Health Inc., will be banned from sharing health information with Meta and other social media companies for advertising purposes, per a proposed settlement with the FTC. The company is accused of sharing sensitive data for advertising purposes in violation of its privacy pledges and will pay $7.8 million to resolve the matter.
• Speaking at Mobile World Congress, the European Union’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, defended the European Commission’s proposal that would see major tech companies like Alphabet Inc., Amazon and Microsoft help foot the bill for improving Europe’s telecommunications infrastructure. Breton said the challenge is to provide “fast, reliable and data-intense Gigabit connectivity” across Europe by 2030, and called out U.S.-based tech companies that operate their own closed ecosystem networks in the region. 
• The GSMA, an industry group that represents the world’s largest mobile operators, announced a united interface called Open Gateway that will give developers universal access to the networks operated by 21 companies including AT&T Inc., China Mobile Ltd., Deutsche Telekom AG and Vodafone Group PLC. The interface, which is backed by Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, will allow companies to build services that can be used across multiple networks simultaneously. 

$23 billion

The value of licenses approved for U.S. companies by the Biden administration to ship goods and technology to blacklisted Chinese companies during the first quarter of 2022, according to Rep. McCaul.

1) Congress to examine operations of US companies in China

Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times

2) Huawei Export Licenses Could Be Revoked by U.S.

Ian Talley and Asa Fitch, The Wall Street Journal

3) Chipmakers receiving US federal funds barred from expanding in China for 10 years

Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times

4) White House aims to shift cybersecurity burden from individuals and small businesses to tech providers

Lauren Feiner, CNBC

5) GOP rams through TikTok ban bill over Dem objections

Brendan Bordelon, Politico

6) TikTok Ban Debated by House Lawmakers

John D. McKinnon, The Wall Street Journal

7) Biden finds breaking up Big Tech is hard to do

Will Oremus et al., The Washington Post

8) Despite Crackdowns by Big Tech, QAnon Conspiracy Continues to Live on Alt-Tech Platforms

AJ Dellinger, Morning Consult

9) Biden admin grilled over $23 bln in licenses for blacklisted Chinese firms

Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper, Reuters

10) China leads US in global competition for key emerging technology, study says

Kirsty Needham, Reuters

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• The Internet’s Richest Fitness Resource Is a Site from 1999 (The New Yorker)
• You Are Not a Parrot (New York Magazine)
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• 6 Stand-ups Analyze ChatGPT’s Attempts to Steal Their Jobs (Vulture)
• What Students Are Saying About the C.D.C. Report on Teen Sadness (The New York Times)
• Walking Back Remote Work Won’t Woo Wall Street (The Information)
• Can TikTok convince the world it is not a tool for China? (Financial Times)
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