GEOPOLITICS

Diplomacy in the Age of Super-Apps

Tensions between China and India have escalated since a border skirmish between troops turned deadly two weeks ago. India is administering retaliation digitally. 

On Monday, New Delhi announced an official ban of 59 popular Chinese apps for violating 1) the country’s sovereignty and national security, and 2) users’ privacy. TikTok, WeChat, and Weibo are on the list. 

From apps to bilateral trade

You can ban an app (or 59) swiftly, assuming American app stores and Indian internet service providers comply. But rejigging complex physical supply chains—another part of China-India trade tensions—takes more time: 

• New Delhi has told state-owned telecoms to avoid sourcing 4G and 5G networking equipment from Chinese vendors, per Nikkei. 
• Maharashtra, a western Indian state, recently paused a deal with Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, which has spent nearly $500 million to retrofit a former GM auto plant in the region.
• Indian customs officials have also held up U.S. tech products slated for export from China, Reuters reported last week. 

What does the crackdown mean for the tech world?

It depends on the country. When India banned TikTok for nearly two weeks in 2019, ByteDance execs said the ban cost them $500,000 a day, per Reuters. 

Chinese tech companies are losing a key market: The 59 banned apps have accrued 4.9 billion downloads from Apple and Google’s Indian app stores since January 2014, with 750 million total installs so far this year, per Sensor Tower estimates shared with me. TikTok has 611 million Indian downloads, 30% of its global total. 

For Indian developers, this could be a time to build. Plus, anti-China sentiment is rising on Indian social media, so users could embrace domestic apps. 

But make no mistake, U.S. Big Tech is another beneficiary of the ban. Facebook has more than 350 million Indian users, making the country its largest market by size. And with their large mobile markets in India, Google and Apple also have beachheads in the country. 

Bottom line: Prophecies of a splinternet (a system of nationally controlled internets) don’t seem so farfetched.

M&A

Google Heads North, Likes What it Sees

Google has acquired North, the nine-year-old Canadian smartglass maker confirmed yesterday. 

In total, North had raised nearly $200 million from investors. But as longtime readers know, hardware is hard, and as Google knows, making AR glasses a thing is even harder. North discontinued production of Focals 1.0 in December and laid off part of its staff in February, The Verge reported. And the company said it’s nixing development of Focals 2.0, the next-gen AR eyewear it was working on.

What’s Google’s plan?

While the company does sell Google Glass to enterprise customers, I wouldn’t expect a consumer reboot soon. Google says it plans to pair North’s technology with its vision of ambient computing, technology that works in the background. 

Bottom line: Google has ARCore, its AR software development kit, and AR integrations in search (Lens) and navigation (Maps). Whether the company pushes into AR hardware is TBD, but we do know its buddies Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are all trying...

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AV

A Social Network for Autobots

This morning, trucking unicorn TuSimple announced it’s forming an autonomous freight network (AFN) with UPS, Penske, U.S. Xpress, and McLane Company. 

The network has four parts: robotrucks, digitally pre-mapped routes, “strategically placed” terminals, and a proprietary monitoring/command hub. The AFN will roll out in three phases: 

1. Southwest (2020-2021): Routes between Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. TuSimple also aims to remove the safety driver from the truck cab in this window. 
2. Coast to coast (2020-2023): In Phase 2, TuSimple will expand service from L.A. to Jacksonville, connecting the U.S. coasts. 
3. Nationwide (2023-2024): AFN will expand to cover the contiguous U.S. 

Bottom line: TuSimple is building an ecosystem for its trucks, but scaling the AFN won’t come cheap. On Friday, TechCrunch reported TuSimple is looking to raise $250 million. The company declined to comment. 

But I was able to chat with TuSimple President Cheng Lu about force majeure, fully driverless operations, what happens if a robotruck gets pulled over, the “Texas Triangle,” and more. .

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Microsoft estimates that the global workforce will add 149 million new tech-oriented jobs by 2025. Yesterday, the company launched a new reskilling initiative. I’ll have more on Friday.

Quote: "The world is your gameboard.”—Catan: World Explorers, Niantic’s next multiplayer AR game, is launching soon. 

Read: A Redditor reverse-engineered TikTok and distilled what data the app is logging. Tl;dr = it’s a significant amount of data. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Uber has made an offer to buy Postmates for $2.6 billion, the NYT reports.
• Amazon is pitching military customers and private space outfits to sign up for AWS, the WSJ reports. AWS is getting its own Space Force. 
• Facebook says it’s changing its News Feed algorithm to promote original reporting, Axios reports.
• Lululemon is buying connected fitness startup Mirror for $500 million. It’s a timely exit for the consumer hardware startup.

TRIVIA

July 4 is almost here. Today’s trivia is about the tech in fireworks, a staple of Independence Day. I promise most questions have a tech angle. 

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TECH THINGAMABOBS

For a throwback: The New Yorker writes about the Sony Walkman, “the gadget that taught the world to socially distance.”

For community: Chat app Discord has raised $100 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Do you use the app? If the Brew made a Discord chat room, would you be interested in joining? Reply and let me know.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Big Tech calls a robotaxi
• Facial recognition’s fiascoes
• WWDC20 recap & Apple event trivia