POLICY

From Steel to Smart Stuff

Beijing's top brass convened Monday to finalize China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP), spanning 2021–2025. While FYPs used to primarily focus on steel production or market reforms, robotic factories and autonomous vehicles (AVs) are front and center now. 

The fine print

Well, actually, we won’t know that until March. But it’s safe to say that semiconductors, 5G, cloud computing, and AI will be priorities. Since decarbonization will also figure prominently into the 14th plan, you can also expect EVs, other new energy vehicles, and smart grids.

But don’t take it from us. Innovation will “drive China’s manufacturing industry and push it up the global value chain while strategically ensuring domestic supply,” a state-run newspaper wrote. 

Predictions

We’ll outsource them to Macro Polo, which published a China 2025 forecast yesterday. The Chicago-based think tank expects “a China that will be near-majority middle class for the first time, with increasing technological parity with Silicon Valley.”

Industry 4.0: Macro Polo thinks China will focus on accelerating the industrial internet. There’s less room for growth on the consumer internet side, which has produced successful global exports like short-form video (TikTok) and social e-commerce (buy through TikTok). 

• Industrial internet tech, in case you’re wondering, includes cloud computing, 5G networks, and smart city/surveillance projects. 

China’s tech titans will lead its industrial internet pivot, but that’s not winner-take-all. Macro Polo says a new crop of startups could build smart agriculture systems, drone delivery networks, and software to manage these not-yet-mainstream technologies. 

A different plan

Chinese officials have largely stopped discussing “Made in China 2025,” a 2015 plan that called for a domestic high-tech revolution, because it irked Washington and international corporations. 

But tech geopolitics will still play a part of the 14th FYP. The U.S. has limited the flow of semiconductors and chip-making equipment to China, which will delay the country’s deployment of FYP-critical tech infrastructure. 

Where both countries agree: New technologies—the ones you see frequently in this newsletter—are key for economic growth and global competitiveness. 

CYBERSECURITY

Ballot Blocks

When it comes to election hacking in 2020, it turns out there were still some “firsts” left—namely, the first reported ransomware attack on an election-related system. 

Georgia’s Hall County experienced the Oct. 7 attack, which was first reported by The Gainesville Times. Here’s what got hit: 

• A database used to verify voter signatures on absentee ballots 
• The county’s online voter precinct map 
• County government phone and email services 

Ransomware attacks are generally financially, not politically, motivated. The ransoms are costly—around $400,000 for local governments, on average—and since experts advise against paying up, systems can be sidelined for a while. 

Near future: "At least 18 county or municipal bodies have been impacted by ransomware since the beginning of September—about three per week—so it's very likely that other bodies will be hit in the run-up to the election,” Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the security firm Emsisoft, told CNN. 

Down the road: Some cybersecurity experts are optimistic about AI’s potential to fight ransomware and other cyberattacks on local governments. Unsupervised ML trained by large-scale data sets can learn to detect malicious files and flag anomalies. But the tech hasn’t been widely adopted for this election cycle. 

SPONSORED BY DOCUSIGN

Is Selling Digitally Going Smoothly?

Here at the Brew, our sales team has moved from in-person meet-and-greets to 50 Zoom calls a day. And it isn’t always easy to build a relationship without personal interaction (or a free lunch).

So we put together an article with the digital masterminds at DocuSign to discuss how our team uses DocuSign’s tech to sell efficiently when things continue to change every. single. day.

Featuring our very own Brand Partner (and fun fact: DJ), Jenna Castaldo, we’re getting the low-down on how she creates meaningful relationships that drive revenue. 

So if our brave new digital world has made you yearn for the sales calls of old, take a read of our article with DocuSign. It’ll teach you the ways of automated contracts, eSignatures, and countersigns with incredible speed. 

Check out our article with DocuSign right here.

EVS

It’s Electric

What does the future hold? More things to charge, including our cars.

Kia detailed a $25 billion-initiative last month: Plan S (which stands for “Shift”) marks the automaker’s aggressive pivot to electric vehicles. 

That tracks with recent industry trends: 

• Last week, we wrote about GM’s $2.2 billion investment, Hummer EV, and third dedicated EV production facility—all part of CEO Mary Barra’s plan to roll out 20 new EV models by 2023. 
• This month, Volkswagen ordered 800 robots from industrial supplier ABB. They’ll be put to work manufacturing a new generation of EVs at a VW plant in Germany. 
• Tesla, which some admirers brand as the “iPhone of EVs,” is shipping out its first-ever vehicles made in China as we speak: 7,000 Model 3 cars that are headed for Europe. 

Big picture: On Tuesday, Kia president Ho-sung Song told Automotive News that by 2025, total ownership costs for internal combustion cars and EVs should reach price parity. Thank maintenance and fuel costs. 

SPONSORED BY RINGCENTRAL

Connecting women leaders for a great cause. The inaugural episode of RingCentral Connect Online on Transcending Barriers and Creating Breakthroughs is November 10th at 1pm est. Featuring speakers like Best Selling Author and Entrepreneur Judi Holler, Consultant/CEO and former NBA exec Pam El, SF 49ers coach Katie Sowers, and more, this discussion on women making a difference in IT is not to be missed. Plus, for every registration received, RingCentral will donate $25 (up to $10,000) to Women In Technology. Sign up here.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: SpaceX is pricing the “Better Than Nothing Beta” Starlink internet service at $99/month. There’s also a $499 upfront fee to install the Starlink Kit.  

Quote: “Moving forward, teams and team members will have flexibility to explore where they work: in the office, remotely, or a combination of the two.”—Reddit’s blog

Read: Fortune profiles Paradigm, a crypto-focused VC firm. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• AMD agreed to acquire Xilinx for $35 billion, which could help expand its datacenter business. Also, AMD reported $2.8 billion in Q3 revenue, a 56% annual jump. 
• Microsoft reported $37.2 billion in Q1 revenue, up 12% YoY. Azure revenue was up 48%, Xbox up 30%. 
• Apple paid ~$50 million to acquire computer vision startup Vilynx earlier this year, Bloomberg reports. 
• Samsung Display received a U.S. license to supply parts to Huawei, Nikkei reports. 
• JP Morgan Chase changed course on Bitcoin. Analysts predicted its value could double or triple—and even challenge gold.
• Zoom launched end-to-end encryption for free meetings. 

TRIVIA

We recently informed you that PayPal was exchanging haterade for bitcoin. Truth is, the payments company has been doing “fintech” since before it was a term. Today’s trivia tests your knowledge of all things PayPal. 

Take the quiz here.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For socially distanced sweets: Hershey built a robotic “Halloween door” to disperse Reese’s to trick-or-treaters. It releases the king-sized goods upon hearing the magic words: “Trick or treat.” Here it is in action. 

For space cams: A new machine learning algo from NASA researchers helped discover a group of craters on Mars, created by a meteor crash 8-10 years ago. It’s the first time AI has been used for this purpose, made possible with training data from more than 112,000 Mars images. 

ICYMI

ICYMI

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

• How Google Assistant learns slang 
• Automation and the future of work
• Qualcomm and Intel’s big moves