House Democrats criticized the Commerce Department for creating a National Institute of Standards and Technology senior position without notice to congressional committees. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appointed Jason Richwine deputy undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology. Richwine published “blog posts for a prominent white supremacist website,” wrote House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson, Texas, and Research and Technology Subcommittee Chair Haley Stevens, Michigan. “That Dr. Richwine holds these beliefs and has deliberately built a public profile around them is abhorrent; that he has apparently been rewarded for them by the Trump Administration is a scandal.” Commerce didn’t comment.
President-elect Joe Biden cited universal broadband access during a Monday speech as one of his priorities for reviving the U.S. economy. The issue came up in a meeting he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had with business and labor leaders, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Biden said. Broadband is “more important than ever for remote learning,” telework and telemedicine amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the politician said: The U.S. needs to build its “digital infrastructure to help businesses, healthcare workers, first responders and students.” Biden previously cited the issue when he accepted the Democratic Party nomination in August (see 2008210001).
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has “deep regret” about the Trump administration imposing national security export restrictions on China’s largest chipmaker (see 2009080057), said SMIC Chairman Zhou Zixue on a Q3 investor call Wednesday. Though the restrictions “will have an impact on SMIC in the near term, we believe it’s manageable,” he said. “The company will maintain close cooperation with suppliers and customers and continue to maintain active communication with the relevant department of the United States government working to resolve possible differences.” SMIC supplies products and services only for “civilian end users,” said co-CEO Zhao Haijun. “SMIC strictly complies with the laws and regulations of all jurisdictions where we conduct business. Over the years, we have established good cooperative relations with well-known customers and semiconductor equipment suppliers in the United States and internationally.” The company is working with U.S. suppliers to apply for export licenses, he said: It risks longer delivery lead times for equipment and raw materials due to the restrictions.
Rolling back a “substantial number” of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods likely will be a “first order of business” for the Biden administration’s trade policy, said the Information Technology Industry Council Tuesday. The duties have “proven to be punishing to American consumers and businesses,” it said. The new administration will need to negotiate with the Chinese “to potentially achieve or strengthen commitments on trade issues and to ensure a stepped tariffs removal process on both sides,” it said. “This can serve as a relatively easy trust building exercise and ‘low-hanging’ fruit as the administration seeks to reestablish more routine government-to-government discussions.” It can also provide “an early window” into which issues the new administration will “prioritize in trade discussions with China,” it said. Neither the Biden team nor the Chinese Embassy in Washington responded to questions.
Twitter should suspend President Donald Trump’s account for “repeated violations” of company policy by spreading election disinformation, Common Cause and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law wrote CEO Jack Dorsey Thursday. The platform labeled as potentially misleading several tweets by the president about the election. Trump made unsubstantiated claims of victory in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina and about ballot processing violations, the groups wrote. Twitter and the White House didn’t comment.
The Republican National Committee Friday touted President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign pledge to establish a “National High-Speed Wireless Internet Network” as among “his priorities for a 2nd term.” The Trump campaign proposed a national network ahead of the August Republican National Convention, prompting questions about whether it was a callback to past 5G nationalization proposals (see 2008270051). DOD in September issued a request for information on dynamic spectrum sharing of the 3.5 GHz band (see 2009210056), which critics call an avenue for nationalization. Trump also wants to build the “World’s Greatest Infrastructure System” during a second term, the RNC tweeted. The committee didn’t comment on whether it views the Trump campaign’s proposal as a form of nationalization.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is “very hopeful and very optimistic that we’re making progress” in talks on a compromise COVID-19 aid bill despite the Senate failing to invoke cloture on Republicans’ Delivering Immediate Relief to America’s Families, Schools and Small Businesses Act. It has Department of Education funding partly for remote learning (see 2009080076). Senators voted 51-44 on moving forward with debate on the measure, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered as a substitute amendment to S-178, the designated shell bill for the next COVID-19 measure. That fell short of the 60-vote threshold to invoke cloture on legislation. Democrats are pushing for passage of the revised version of the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (Heroes) Act (HR-8406), which includes more than $15 billion in broadband funding (see 2009290044). Meadows told reporters he remains hopeful a deal can happen, but Senate Republicans “are starting to get to a point where they believe that” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “is not negotiating in a fair and equitable manner.” Pelosi noted on SiriusXM she wants “a deal” before the Nov. 3 election, and it’s “going to be up to whether” President Donald Trump “can convince [McConnell] to do so.” House Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., urged Democrats to “put partisan politics aside.”
The NAACP, National Hispanic Media Coalition, American Civil Liberties Union and more than 20 other civil rights groups urged any winners of the 2020 election to enact “proper safeguards” to ensure surveillance programs don’t engage in “high-tech profiling.” That's among other tech polices “to ensure that technology is designed and used in ways that respect civil rights, preserve privacy, ensure transparency and hold both nation-states and companies accountable for harm.” In “some cases, surveillance technologies should simply never be deployed,” the groups said Wednesday. “In other cases, clear limitations and robust auditing mechanisms are needed to ensure that these tools are used in a responsible and equitable way.” They want to prevent automated technologies from replicating and amplifying “patterns of discrimination in society. These tools must be judged ... by their impacts -- especially on communities that have been historically marginalized.” They want “constitutional principles such as equal protection and due process” to “keep pace with government use of technology,” including ensuring that governments don’t “compel companies to build technologies that undermine basic rights, including freedom of expression, privacy and freedom of association.” Deploy technologies “in close consultation with the most affected communities, especially those who have historically suffered the harms of discrimination,” the groups said. They want “clear baseline protections for data collection.”
The Trump administration emphasized a “market-based approach” to ensure U.S. dominance in developing emerging technologies, in a national strategy released Thursday. The National Security Council identified 20 critical technologies, including telecom, semiconductors, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The market-based approach is preferable to “state-directed models” that “produce waste and disincentivize innovation,” the strategy said. It helps “protect ourselves from unfair competition,” including from China and Russia. Those countries and other “strategic competitors … have adopted deliberate whole-of-government” critical and emerging tech “efforts and are making large and strategic investments to take the lead,” the strategy said. “America’s lead in certain C&ET sectors is declining. The [U.S.] will take meaningful action to reverse this trend.” The strategy includes a focus on improving the U.S. workforce for some emerging tech and increasing the pool of investors to ensure improved R&D. It calls for preventing foreign adversaries like China from unfairly benefiting from U.S. innovation, including by beefing up international intellectual property theft norms and expanding restrictions on exports of some tech to those countries.
New legislation and bigger fines were mentioned in a presidential memorandum Tuesday aimed at stopping imports of counterfeit goods through e-commerce platforms. Customs and Border Protection should seize counterfeit goods imported into the U.S. and impose the “maximum fines and civil penalties permitted by law on any e-commerce platform that directs, assists with, or is in any way concerned in the importation into the United States of counterfeit goods,” wrote President Donald Trump. He sought “legislation that would clarify and strengthen the executive branch’s authority and increase its resources to deter and address counterfeit trafficking on e-commerce platforms.” The Department of Homeland Security and attorney general are directed to “develop a legislative proposal to promote the policy objectives” within 120 days. EBay didn't comment Wednesday. Amazon didn't comment on the record.