DRONES

Washington Clips DJI’s Wings

On Friday, the U.S. added 60 Chinese companies and universities to the Commerce Department’s Entity List. Huawei and SMIC, China’s biggest chipmaker, have received this designation, which restricts access to “U.S.-origin technology” and exports.

High up on the list

Above all the others, one new Entity List addition caught our eye: DJI. As you may recall, the Chinese company is the top global vendor of consumer and commercial drones. 

• In the U.S., for example, DJI captures ~77% of consumer drone sales. 

In a filing, Commerce writes that DJI “enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance.” DJI provided drones to the Chinese government to monitor detention camps in Xinjiang province, Bloomberg Businessweek revealed in March.  

DJI was already persona non grata in Washington. The security community has said its drones could be a conduit for espionage. Late last year, the Justice Department banned the purchase of foreign-made drones using agency grants and the Interior Department grounded its fleet of drones made in China or containing Chinese-made parts. 

This could shake up the drone world 

Operative word there is “could.” The fallout depends on U.S. enforcement, which is uncertain—especially with a new presidential administration incoming. For its part, DJI has already said American consumers can continue using and buying its drones. 

But...Removing U.S. hardware from DJI’s supply chain could send it into a tailspin. Nikkei’s recent teardown of the Mavic Air 2 revealed the popular model has many parts made by U.S. companies. “In the absence of alternatives, DJI may have a hard time sourcing key components if it is subjected to new U.S. trade restrictions.,” Nikkei wrote. 

In August, the Pentagon gave its blessing to five drone companies to sell preapproved drones to U.S. federal agencies. They’re much smaller players than DJI, but it may be worth reviewing the list and checking back in a couple years. 

PUBLIC HEALTH

A Dose Call

In Contagion, the vaccine rollout is determined via birthday lottery. In our (slightly) less dystopian reality, it's determined by algorithm. 

How it works 

A secretive-but-familiar name is helping lead the vaccine distribution charge: Palantir. The data-mining firm teamed up with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on “Tiberius,” a software platform primed for use by states, territories, and federal agencies. 

Tiberius can help make quick decisions on where to send the vaccine—and how much may be needed—in any jurisdiction. And that’s where potential problems can come in. 

Behind the curtain: Tiberius relies on population data from the U.S. Census Bureau and The CIA World Factbook. But the U.S. Census regularly undercounts certain groups—for instance, Black men aged 30 to 49, reports VentureBeat. And the Covid-19 death rate for Black Americans is more than twice that of white Americans.  

Zoom out: This isn't the only issue that will arise from AI's use in determining vaccine distribution. Some states have developed in-house distribution algorithms, which have their own issues with transparency. 

And some organizations are already under fire for concrete issues—e.g., Stanford’s rule-based (not machine learning-based) algorithm, which reportedly prioritized physicians working remotely over patient-facing medical residents. 

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AI

Safety First

To try and keep their logos from appearing next to unsavory internet things, 85% of advertisers use “brand safety” tech. It leverages tools like natural language processing to analyze the content of web pages. Pages deemed unsafe can be blocked from serving ads.

The problem? 

Advertisers commonly use these tools to parse context at an article level, rather than at the publisher level. Experts say that practice isn’t backed up by evidence, and it can produce funky classifications. Some new findings, c/o Adalytics research and Branded:

• An Oracle tool marked more articles on WSJ, Wired, and The Economist as unsafe than it did on disinformation-friendly outlet OANN. 
• Coverage of the pandemic, civil unrest, and politics were disproportionately flagged as unsafe.
• The study found no evidence that the tools can screen for disinformation. 

And a separate 2019 study concluded that news publishers lost $3.2 billion due to overzealous brand safety tech. Stories about rugby and Avengers: Endgame had been demonetized for using words like “attack,” for instance. 

Bottom line: By marking "hard news" topics as unsafe while failing to detect disinformation, brand safety algorithms can create worrying incentives for news publishers.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: EVs could reach price parity with gas-powered vehicles in three to four years, per BloombergNEF’s 2020 Battery Price Survey.

Quote: “What I take issue with is our leaders—people of means— abandoning our community when it needs us most. Reaping the benefits of Silicon Valley’s talent, tech incubators, mentors, professional network, and culture until they no longer need it.”—Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, in a Twitter thread about members of the tech community fleeing the Bay Area. 

Read: Check out the 2021 Speculative Travel Calendar from the Future Today Institute. The group imagines what travel to various tech-infused global destinations might look like. 

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Customs and Border Protection has requested an expansion of facial recognition at all air- and land ports.  
• Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine has been authorized for emergency use. 
• Tesla’s Full Self-Driving subscription is due to arrive in early 2021. 
• U.S. Space Force members will now be called “Guardians.” 
• At least 24 organizations—including Cisco, Intel, Nvidia, Deloitte, and VMWare—downloaded corrupted SolarWinds code, according to a WSJ analysis. 

THREE THINGS WE'RE WATCHING

Monday: You can’t write a newsletter about emerging tech without being a bit of a space nerd, so here’s what we’re literally watching. Tonight, for the first time in nearly 800 years, Jupiter and Saturn will converge in a spot that’s visible to skywatchers. The vibrant point of light—colloquially being called the “Christmas Star”—should be visible just after sunset. 

Wednesday: The Brew officially begins its holiday break. We’ll still have a few issues for you between now and the New Year, but we’ll be busy sleeping in and watching holiday drone light shows. Regular programming resumes Jan. 6. 

Friday: We’ll be checking in with Santa to see what gadgets topped his list this year. 

FROM THE ARXIVES

One more housekeeping note: We’re shuffling up these parts of the newsletter. In “From the Arxives,” we’ll tell you about the latest emerging tech research that caught our eye.

Bad actors can coax large AI language models into spitting out personally identifiable, private information. The new study comes from a dream team of researchers: Google, Apple, Stanford University, OpenAI, Berkeley, and Northeastern.

Github user ggerganov created Keytap2, an acoustic keyboard eavesdropping program. The algorithm listens to clacks on a keyboard and tries to predict what exactly someone was typing. 

Finally, Intel’s Mobileye is developing a camera-only autonomous vehicle platform. How does the system hold on the Autobahn? Watch Mobileye take an AV for a one-hour test drive in Munich. 

ICYMI

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

• Fallout from a “grave” cyberattack on the U.S. continues 
• OpenAI turns five: a Q&A with cofounder Greg Brockman
• New announcements from the FTC and European Commission