Americans impose sanctions on the Chinese tech sector. Malfunctions Amazon are suggestive of US personnel and education policy. AT&T sells online advertising platform to Microsoft.
Disclaimer: when we talk about, that something has grown, we mean a comparison with the same quarter a year earlier. Since all issuers are from the USA, then all results in dollars. When creating the material, sources were used, inaccessible to users from the Russian Federation. We hope, Do you know, what to do.
"Apologize, apologize now!»: America versus Chinese high-tech companies
The story of the ban on the export of high technologies from the United States to "authoritarian" countries has taken a new turn. Biden administration blacklists a number of major Chinese tech companies:
- the world's largest drone manufacturer DJI;
- face recognition software makers Megvii and CloudWalk Technology;
- computer manufacturer Dawning Information Industry - the company once made the world's second most powerful supercomputer;
- Cyber Security Solution Provider Xiamen Meiya Pico;
- software developer based on artificial intelligence YITU Technology;
- cloud business Leon Technology;
- NetPosa Technologies, providing monitoring services in the cloud.
Now American companies are prohibited from selling goods to these enterprises without special permission., and American investors are prohibited from investing in them. And why such punishments? For Xinjiang.
All these companies, according to the Americans, to some extent related to the, which the PRC installed in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with widespread surveillance and tight control of the local population.
Of these companies, none of them are listed on the American stock exchange, but some of them are traded on Chinese exchanges, and American investment funds could well invest in them.
This is the first time, when technology companies entered the American blacklist en masse. This is a serious signal to investors, that China's attempts to develop its own high-tech sector will be blocked.
Listed Companies, frankly,, not that they are directly involved in the oppression of the Uighurs taking place in Xinjiang. У Dawning, for example, have a business in Xinjiang, and Xiamen Meiya Pico works with Chinese security forces. According to this logic, every second Chinese company can find a "Xinjiang trace" and punish it for it..
US accusations against these companies look far-fetched. Probably, the main goal of the United States here is not to find the guilty: Disney didn't do anything for that, what did they take off movie in Xinjiang and also thanked the regional administration in the credits. Probably, this is an opportunity to get to the bottom of Chinese enterprises, working in the high value added sector, and not those involved in the sewing of sneakers.
As a result, investing in Chinese tech companies looks increasingly risky.: Not today, so tomorrow any of them may be delisted from the American stock exchange or just large Western investment funds will start ignoring these shares.
However, you can also make money from it. From the point of view of Americans, there are also “good” countries in Asia, that is, not having with Washington, unlike China, insoluble contradictions. First of all, this is India., Japan and South Korea.
High-tech issuers from these countries: Tata Motors, Sony, LG Display and other interesting companies may well become beneficiaries of the "emigration" of money from Western investors from China, which is becoming more and more toxic for investors.
Thus, the United States achieved several strategic goals at once.: will deprive Chinese competitors of the money flow and at the same time create false confidence in Chinese companies, that political change in their country will pump their stock: "Well you look, how the stock market grows in india, and all because, what is democracy there!»
However, there are risks here too, even if you don't invest in companies outside the US at all. US companies could still get caught in the crossfire in Xinjiang debate. For example, Intel recently sent messages to its partners asking them to avoid using goods or labor, associated with Xinjiang. This caused great outrage among the Chinese public., and Intel had to apologize.
Now the question arises: will ESG investors make the company apologize?, That, probably, will demand from Intel to show their position more actively in the future, which could have a negative impact on sales.
The cloud fell: what the failure of the Amazon Web Service tells us
Amazon cloud service (Amazon Web Service, AWS) out of order this week: problems started in 04:35 am EST, most of them decided to 06:51 - although in general the failures continued until noon.
unknown, exactly how many users were affected by the outage of AWS, but we know for sure about the problems with the Coinbase crypto exchange and the Slack business communication platform. Here to talk about, how should all this remind us of the critical importance of cloud infrastructure, - and so it is. But instead of obvious things, I would like to point out one important point.
AWS has broken for the third time in the last three weeks. So there is no reason to believe, that such incidents will not occur in the future with unenviable regularity. What to do with it, absolutely incomprehensible, since the damage from such breakdowns will also grow along with an increase in their duration and frequency. But one can only guess about the causes of breakdowns. I think, that the problem is a drop in the level of knowledge and experience among Amazon employees - and it will get even worse further.
Slow, but fundamental changes in the American education system predispose to even more massive collapses in the technological sphere in the future. Harvard University recently announced, that for the next four years will not require applicants to submit the results of the standardized exams SAT and ACT upon admission. This is not the first American university, taking this step: previously done by the University of Chicago and universities, included in the system of the University of California. Total number of American schools, not requiring testing for these exams, almost doubled during the pandemic: with 45 to 80%.
Difficulties in conducting exams during a pandemic is just one of the reasons for not testing., the main reason is completely different. These tests have long been criticized by left-liberal progressives for, that they de facto discriminate against poor African American and Hispanic students.
These categories of the population cannot afford good tutors to prepare for such difficult exams., and therefore whites and Asians sell them best. And this leads to, that there are not enough African Americans and Hispanics in good universities and, Consequently, they occupy low-skilled and low-paid jobs in the future.
These conversations are being conducted with an eye on the technological sector with its huge salaries and basic sciences in principle., where there are a lot of whites and Asians - and the rest of the population is represented, frankly,, very modest. Here, By the way, characteristic selection of articles from the prestigious New York Times paid publication:
- "Why Do Tech Degrees Not Lead to More Blacks and Hispanics in the Tech Sector";
- "What does it mean for a black mathematician to be 'one of a kind'";
- “Face recognition technology works well, unless you're a white guy";
- "The issue of race in the tech sector goes beyond dry numbers".
I think, that these trends in the American educational system and in public discourse will not help alleviate the staffing shortage of American technology companies - and, probably, lead to a worsening of existing technical problems.
Regardless of that, what circumstances lead to a shortage of minority technical workers, the abolition of a strict educational qualification in this industry will inevitably lead to a drop in quality. We saw something similar in the case of Boeing., where project managers neglected old technical standards when hiring specialists and a large-scale "airplane fall" began.
Without standardized testing in universities, unqualified graduates will fill the ranks of employees of the same Amazon in the future, because in the exact sciences standardization of educational criteria is not a luxury, but the need. And such are the failures, как у Amazon, in the future five or more years will become permanent.
Probably, the more frequent breakdowns of recent times are caused precisely by the growth of the share of people among Amazon employees, unable to master the program of the classical Russian gymnasium of the pre-revolutionary era. The company has just stepped up pressure to increase diversity among its employees amid criticism, that she had previously made insufficient efforts in this direction. A logical question arises: how new workers are, hired for belonging to a group, will correspond to the required technical level? Probably, will not.
In this context, it is difficult to find the beneficiaries of future troubles: everyone will suffer - from banks and exchanges to streaming services and even industrial enterprises, — since cloud computing is now required by everyone. But you can, at least, hope for an increase in demand for educational platform services.
Your ad could be here: AT&T sells ad platform to Microsoft
Telecom giant AT&T (NYSE: T) sells to IT giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xandr online advertising platform.
The deal cannot be called particularly profitable: Xandr's selling price was $ 1 billion, which is not enough. AT&T bought Xandr in 2018 for 1.6 billion. At the same time, Xandr was not to say that a valuable asset: for annual revenues in the range of 300-380 million, the division gave 50-90 million losses.
For AT&The infamous sale of Xandr is just part of her overall strategy: previously she got rid of the movie- and TimeWarner media assets, to focus on investments in the core telecom business. One could say, that AT management&T clearly represents, what is he doing, - but I do not think so.
The company spent a lot of money and time on TimeWarner and actively sued antitrust regulators, who blocked the deal. In the end, everything ended for her and the shareholders with nothing.: the company failed to grow even the “Netflix killer”, not to mention a full-fledged competitor to Disney +. At the time of the TimeWarner spin-off news, its HBO Max streaming service had 44 million subscribers, up from Disney+'s 103 million..
Because at Microsoft, seem to be, know, what they do. Advertising revenue now gives Microsoft 5% proceeds: This is an ad on the Bing search engine., on LinkedIn and on the Xbox gaming platform. So that, may be, Xandr in the hands of Microsoft will be a useful tool and will please shareholders of the company.
Maybe, something worthwhile will come out for AT shareholders&T: the more it will focus on growing its telecom business, the more likely, that it will be able to successfully compete with Verizon.
