FTI Consulting News Bytes – 30th September 2022

This week’s news

Starlink for Iran

Elon Musk’s Starlink announced this week that it would be activating its satellite broadband service in Iran. The news followed the US decision to allow private companies to offer full, uncensored internet access to the country amid violence protests resulting in a number of fatalities. Under the new guidelines, tech companies can provide some platforms and services within Iran without falling foul of the usual restrictions on dealings with the country. On the Starlink launch, Musk commented in the FT: “Obviously, the Iranian government is not going to approve it… It would require somebody actually buying a [Starlink] terminal and smuggling it into Iran.” Earlier this year, Starlink’s service was also activated in Ukraine following the Russian invasion disrupting the country’s communication networks. Starlink is the first in a new generation of satellite networks operating in low-Earth orbit that are designed to provide high-bandwidth internet connections from space directly to individual users, according to the FT.

The encryption debate

Elsewhere, the debate surrounding the UK’s online safety bill has rumbled on this week with WhatsApp warning any moves to undermine encryption would embolden bad actors and weaken cybersecurity on major platforms. In an interview with the FT, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said there were alternative techniques to protect children on WhatsApp without having to reduce its underlying safeguarding technology. Cathcart continued that: “If the UK decides that it is okay for a government to get rid of encryption, there are governments around the world that will do exactly the same”, potentially impacting human rights in areas where liberal democracy is not as strong. The comments come after UK PM, Liz Truss, said earlier this month that she would be pushing ahead with the legislation with some tweaks to increase the bill’s focus on child safety. Tech companies had largely opposed the bill’s previous proposals that apps and digital services should cut out ‘legal but harmful’ content on their platforms.

Netflix doubles down on gaming

Earlier this week, Netflix announced that it will be opening an internal game studio in Finland. This move is the first of its kind for the company having entered the mobile gaming market in November 2021. The streaming giant bought Next Games for $72m alongside three external gaming studios over the past 12 months. Netflix currently offers 31 mobile games available for download with the company targeting 50 titles by the end of the year, reported by CNBC. Fewer than 1% of the company’s 220 million subscribers are engaging in the mobile games according to data from Apptopia in August. Netflix has recently lost overall subscribers in recent quarters and may be looking to diversify into a more multi-media platform offering for consumers. Amir Rahimi, VP of game studios at Netflix, commented that “It’s still early days, and we have much more work to do to deliver a great games experience on Netflix.” The company said that its games will have no ads or in-app purchases.

Women in STEM

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook this week spoke exclusively to the BBC where he outlined that without a more diverse workforce, technology “will not achieve nearly what it could achieve.” More pointedly, Cook said He said there were “no good excuses” for the lack of women in the Technology sector. Apple itself does not escape criticism; Cook says his own company is not doing enough. Perhaps to help rectify this, Apple has just launched its founders’ development programme for female founders and app creators in the UK. Cook also noted a more fundamental challenge; a lack of girls choosing to pursue science, tech, engineering and maths subjects at school. “Businesses can’t cop out and say ‘there’s not enough women taking computer science – therefore I can’t hire enough’,” says Mr Cook. “We have to fundamentally change the number of people that are taking computer science and programming.”

Space Raiders

This week the world watched on in awe – and slight trepidation – as NASA purposefully collided a 570kg spacecraft into a 160-metre-diameter asteroid, Dimorphos, at 14,000mph. The collision was designed to nudge the asteroid off its current trajectory into a slightly tighter orbit to understand whether similar deflection techniques might one day be used to divert an asteroid heading for planet Earth, as Sky News reported. In 2024, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a follow-on mission, Hera, that will assess the aftermath of the collision. TEKEVER, a Lisbon-based company that specialises in unmanned aerial technology systems, will provide inter-satellite link technology for Hera, enabling the satellites involved in the mission to communicate with each other and take precise measurements of the mass, structure and position of the asteroid. The data collected will enable NASA and the ESA to develop asteroid deflection so it can become a repeatable, well-understood planetary defence technique.

Top Tweets of the Week

• Akash Pasricha, a reporter at the Information tweets on tech valuations since 2019 highlighting that 2019 tech IPO’s are UP 38%, however, tech valuations since the start of 2020 are DOWN 39%.
• Live from BloombergTech, Ecosia’s Sophie Dembinski and Watershed’s Ellen Moeller speaking on Climate responsibility ask How Green is Tech’s Future, honestly?
• 5-minute macro riffs on the Bond market via James Bond, asking “have any Gilt strategists done ‘Bond: No time to LDI’ yet?”

Number of the Week

€200bn – The size of Germany’s energy aid package to help businesses and consumers struggling with soaring energy costs.

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