FTI Consulting News Bytes – 13 September 2024

FTI Consulting News Bytes

In this week’s edition, we report that datacenters, in the UK, have been designated as critical national infrastructure. Over in India, Prime Minster Modi trumpeted his nation’s semiconductor ambitions. Elsewhere, Google is under investigation from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission and Nvidia is expected to face questioning from the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. We end with news that billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis became the first non-professional astronauts to walk in space.

This week’s news

Additional protection for datacenters 

Datacenters, the Financial Times writes, will be designated as critical national infrastructure (CNI). It means they will be provided with additional government support when dealing with and recovering from emergencies. A dedicated CNI infrastructure team will monitor potential threats and co-ordinate priority access to government security agencies. The hope, the Financial Times adds, is that the additional layer of protection could act as a deterrent to those targeting datacenters in the UK. 

In India the chips are never down

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi trumpeted India’s potential in technology, saying the country aims to increase its electronics sector to $500 billion by the end of the decade. He brought to the fore the country’s progress in semiconductors. Bloomberg explains it comes as India is trying to “woo” more chipmakers into the country. “This is the right time to be in India,” Modi said. “In the India of the 21st century the chips are never down.” Modi’s administration has so far approved more than $15 billion worth of semiconductor investments. These include a proposal by conglomerate Tata Group to build the country’s first major chip plant and US memory maker Micron Technology Inc.’s envisioned $2.75 billion assembly facility in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. 

Google under investigation by Europe’s privacy watchdogs

As regulators ramp up their scrutiny of big tech’s AI ambitions, firms are starting to feel the heat, with Google being the first to fall victim to an investigation from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), the Financial Times reports.  The DPC, who is responsible for enforcing the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, announced that it has launched an investigation into the tech company’s AI data compliance and its use of the personal data of users in the EU. The DPC said in a statement that the inquiry focuses on whether Google complied with obligations under GDPR to conduct a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before processing personal data of EU or EEA individuals in developing its AI model, Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2).

Trust Issues

U.S. antitrust enforcers are intervening early to examine whether a handful of big tech companies such as Nvidia are using their leverage to establish dominance over the artificial intelligence market. Nvidia, whose AI chip market share is estimated at over 80% is likely to face questions about the terms of its contracts and partnerships from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, the Wall Street Journal reports. The investigation is still at an early phase, and government attorneys have not yet issued a subpoena to Nvidia for internal documents.

First non-professional astronauts walk in space

“From here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” were the words spoken by billionaire Jared Isaacman as he stepped out of the Resilience spacecraft to start his spacewalk, the BBC reports. It marks a historic moment for private space travel, as Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis became the first non-professional astronauts to walk in space. SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission was the first non-government funded spacewalk to ever take place – with the whole event livestreamed to the world. The successful completion of this mission is also a major leap forward for Elon Musk’s SpaceX ambitions in commercial space flight. 

Top Tweets of the Week

• Michael Pettis, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment tweets: “China’s private sector is suffering. Among other things,” “China used to be the best VC destination in the world after the US,” says one Beijing-based executive, but “the industry has just died before our eyes. The entrepreneurial spirit is dead.”
• Adam Tooze, Professor at Columbia University tweets: “German auto industry R&D dominates EU innovation trends and yet it is China, despite low labour costs, that has surged robotization.”
• The Economist tweets: “Europe’s economic decline is becoming more painful. In 1995 European productivity was 95% of America’s; today it is less than 80%, which is a big enough gap for holidaymakers to notice. The continent’s failure to exploit its scale is a problem.”

Number of the week

£1trn– The amount in investment needed according to London business executives in the next decade for the UK to boost growth. (Bloomberg.)