fortune--2020-09-04--Europe’s privacy regulators form task force to tackle complaints about Google and Facebook code

Europe’s privacy regulators have formed a special task force to handle a flood of complaints filed last month about European companies’ use of Google and Facebook’s analytics and log-in services on their web pages.
The complaints were filed by NOYB, the data-protection advocacy organization founded by Max Schrems, a young Austrian lawyer whose crusade to protect his Facebook data has reshaped the transatlantic legal landscape.
The complaints followed a bombshell July ruling from the EU’s highest court (in a case launched by Schrems) that demolished the Privacy Shield agreement for the transfer of personal data from the EU to the U.S.—a simple and inexpensive legal tool used by thousands of companies to allow American companies to process Europeans’ personal data.
The ruling, issued by the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg, also called into question the viability in the U.S. context of a more onerous tool used for the same thing: standard contractual clauses (SCCs), based on a European Commission template, that companies can include in their user agreements as a legal basis for personal-data transfers.
SCCs can be used to legalize transfers of personal data from the EU to any country, but the court’s ruling meant privacy regulators could still ban those transfers if the destination country does not provide suitable protection for the data.
Companies such as Google and Facebook rely on SCCs when transferring personal data from the EU to the U.S. But the core problem afflicting Privacy Shield—the fact that U.S. law gives its intelligence services leeway to spy on the communications of foreigners—also comes into play with standard contractual clauses. Google or Facebook may promise in their user agreements that they will protect the personal data of European users, but that won’t stop the likes of the National Security Agency (NSA) from scooping up Big Tech’s EU-derived data if they want to.
Schrems was the litigant who prompted that July ruling, and his organization was quick to pounce after it came through.
In mid-August, NOYB (“None Of Your Business”) flooded the EU’s national data protection authorities with identical complaints about 101 companies across 30 EU and European Economic Area countries, ranging from food-delivery services (Takeaway.com) and accommodation platforms (Airbnb’s European operation) to banks (Danske Bank) and media outlets (Le Huffington Post).
Appropriately, given the tally, the move was announced in a blog post illustrated with dalmatians.
“We have done a quick search on major websites in each EU member state for code from Facebook and Google,” Schrems explained in the August post. “These code snippets forward data on each visitor to Google or Facebook. Both companies admit that they transfer data of Europeans to the U.S. for processing, where these companies are under a legal obligation to make such data available to U.S. agencies like the NSA. Neither Google Analytics nor Facebook Connect are essential to run these web pages and are services that could have been replaced or at least deactivated by now.”
On Friday, the European Data Protection Board—a body that includes all the EU’s national data protection authorities—announced the creation of a special task force to handle NOYB’s 101 complaints. A separate task force will come up with advice for data “controllers” (European companies handling personal data) and “processors” (the services those companies use to process that data) in the wake of the so-called Schrems II ruling.
Google and Facebook had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing.
“No quick fix”
“The EDPB is well aware that the Schrems II ruling gives controllers an important responsibility,” said Andrea Jelinek, the board’s chair, in a statement. She warned that there was no “one-size-fits-all, quick fix solution” to the legal problems raised by the ruling, and said “each organization will need to evaluate its own data processing operations and transfers and take appropriate measures.”
Her wording echoed that of the EU’s justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, who on Thursday told members of the European Parliament that “there will be no quick fix” in the search for a replacement for Privacy Shield, the easier-to-use legal mechanism for transatlantic data transfers that was demolished in July’s ruling.
Privacy Shield was itself the replacement for a similar U.S.-EU deal called Safe Harbor, which was scrapped in 2015, again by the Court of Justice of the EU—and again because of Schrems’s data-protection crusade.
The European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce say they’re working on a third iteration, but by this point most observers agree that no such agreement will be legally viable in the EU unless the U.S. reforms its own data-protection and intelligence laws.
“What we need are sustainable solutions that deliver legal certainty, in full compliance with the judgment of the court,” Reynders said. “That is also the message that I have clearly passed to my U.S. counterparts.”
Reynders highlighted various obstacles to a sustainable solution, including the unreformed terms of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) Section 702, and the looming U.S. election.
He also said the Commission wanted to “modernize” standard contractual clauses and would come up with a proposal later this year. “It’s very important to say that it’s not just possible to use SCCs without any changes,” he said.


fortune--2020-09-04--Why we don’t need to break up Google

Why we don’t need to break up Google

Trump and Biden ’ s election odds are virtually even for the first time in 3 months

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
A century ago, the economy was being stifled by dominant companies in energy, transportation, and finance.
A half century ago, the problems were in the sectors of telecommunications, computers, film, and, eventually, software.
Today, as you’ve probably read a few times, our concerns are with e-commerce, smartphones and mobile apps, plus digital advertising.
Reading the tea leaves in Washington, it seems digital advertising will be first on the docket, with the Justice Department keen to file an antitrust case against Google.
The law on antitrust has evolved further and further away from strong enforcement over the decades, and Google may well avoid a break up or other serious sanctions. Regardless, the history of these kind of cases offers a hopeful track record that points to how merely the pursuit of anticompetitive business practices helps restore competition.
After all, the government dropped its case against IBM in the 1980s completely. But Big Blue was sufficiently chastised and fearful of further cases that it decided to license operating system software for its then-new personal computer on a non-exclusive basis. That opened the door for massive change and innovation.
Likewise, the beneficiary of IBM’s opening, Microsoft, won an appeal overturning an order to break up the company, but still backed down enough to allow the open Internet to flourish and new players to emerge, like Google.
Google’s antitrust case may be, if anything, even more complicated than those older battles. The troubling issue is Google’s huge share of all online ad revenue, starving all kinds of other publishers and site owners and crushing the news business. Coincidentally, it’s the same reason all of those “Peak Google” predictions back in 2014 and 2015 turned out to be so wrong—and explains why AT&T is looking to sell Xandr, as Adam discussed yesterday.
The key to it all: Google’s dominance of the infrastructure of the digital ad business, built through acquisitions like DoubleClick, AdMob, and Invite Media.
Google is the largest broker of ad sales on all other sites, serving most buyers and most sellers. As critic and researcher Dina Srinivasan explains in a draft of her upcoming law journal article, behind the scenes, Google sets the terms of bidding for ad spots, awards winning bids, sets prices, takes an unknown cut, excludes some bidders, and generally runs the show from end to end with very little oversight. It’s as if the New York Stock Exchange also controlled the brokerage industry and was itself the largest investor in stocks. The conflicts of interest we forbid in financial markets are rife in the advertising market, Srinivasan argues.
Whether lawmakers and regulators seek to break up Google and undo some of those acquisitions, adopt restrictions to prohibit the conflicts of interest, or go some other route, history’s lessons are pretty clear. The end result will be a renewed opportunity for innovation and the rise of new giants that will need scrutiny, say, in another 50 years.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
Person, woman, man, camera, stock market crash. Did somebody mention the New York Stock Exchange? Maybe you should avert your eyes, because stocks, and particularly tech stocks, got killed on Thursday–and not really for any discernible reason. Apple was down 8%, losing $180 billion in market value, the biggest single-day loss ever. Don't worry too much. Tim Cook's enterprise is still worth almost $2.1 trillion. Other big losers included Zoom down 10%; Tesla, Nvidia, and AMD each down 9%; and Microsoft and Square down 6%. Ahead of Friday's open, futures markets are signaling that the sell-off may continue today.
Oh sinner man where you going to run to. I hope you liked today's Google essay, because I also could have written a whole piece on Apple's new human rights policy. The iPhone maker has gotten plenty of criticism for bending to the demands of repressive governments and faced a shareholder proposal forcing it to do better. Instead, the company adopted a policy that tries to have it both ways: "Where national law and international human rights standards differ, we follow the higher standard. Where they are in conflict, we respect national law while seeking to respect the principles of internationally recognized human rights."
Spicy antitrust roll. Speaking of Apple, Japan is the latest country worried about the company's mobile app store dominance. Japan's antitrust authorities say they are looking into complaints from game publishers and others about Apple's behavior. Apple also said on Thursday it is delaying a privacy protection feature in its upcoming iOS 14 that could hurt advertisers while enhancing the power of Google and Facebook. Huh, is anyone worried about that? And finally on this overly Apple news morning, an appeals court in California says Apple, after all, may have to pay its store employees overtime while they wait in line to be searched at the end of their of shifts.
Three web monte. After Adam or I get to that Apple essay, Facebook will be up next. What in the world is going on over in Zuck World? Turns out that the social network did not take down event planning pages for the vigilante group Kenosha Guard, even though it said it did.
What if he wasn't crazy, what if he was right. Good news, at least, arriving from the heavens. SpaceX says its satellite Internet service, Starlink, is already reaching download speeds over 100 megabits per second with minimal latency. That could be good enough to make the service competitive with ground-based Internet service providers. SpaceX hasn't said how much Starlink will cost or precisely when it will open for business, hinting only that it will focus initially on parts of North America later this year.
Read through. Chinese consumer tech maker TCL says it has a breakthrough in display technology that combines elements of e-ink and high-resolution video screens. Dubbed NXTPAPER, the invention should be coming to tablets and TV sets “in the near future.” That sounds RLYGREAT.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Why can't tech secure online voting? Ars Technica reporter Timothy B. Lee reviews some of the issues that have bedeviled online voting platforms and explains why it's such a tough challenge.
A conventional voting system with paper ballots is remarkably good on this score. Ordinary voters have an intuitive understanding of the security properties of paper ballots and ballot boxes. Voters can see their ballots go into the ballot box. Anyone can observe an election and verify that nobody is opening the ballot box and tampering with its contents. Recounts can be monitored by representatives of rival candidates to make sure no funny business occurs.
Verifying the security of an online voting system is vastly more difficult. Partly that's because the system has many more moving parts. Voatz's system makes use of smartphones and mobile operating systems, servers and server software, cellular towers, encryption algorithms, a blockchain, and so forth. Most voters have only a vague idea of how some of these technologies work. Most citizens are not remotely qualified to judge whether that system is secure or not.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
One IT Guy’s Spreadsheet-Fueled Race to Restore Voting Rights (Wired)
This fall, thousands will show up to vote only to find out they’ve been purged. Lots of activists—and one Ohio man with lots of cats—are on a quest to fix that.
Patti Smith Isn’t Worried About New York City’s Future (WSJ Magazine)
“I don’t know what will happen to our city. I don’t know what will happen anywhere. I’ll always love New York City.”
Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic (Vanity Fair)
The acclaimed novelist lost her beloved husband—the father of her children—as COVID-19 swept across the country. She writes through their story, and her grief.
We Quit Our Jobs to Build a Cabin—Everything Went Wrong (Outside)
And it was awesome.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Book recommendations from Fortune’s 40 under 40 in tech By Rachel King
Match’s CEO explains how dating has changed during the COVID pandemic By Danielle Abril
Why American Express is trying technology that makes deepfake videos look real By Jonathan Vanian
T-Mobile expands promise to connect students for free amid COVID-19 By Aaron Pressman
A SPAC courts Airbnb By Lucinda Shen
Cloud gaming gets a lift from COVID-19 and 5G. Here’s how much By Jonathan Vanian
Mulan’s Disney+ release is reigniting a boycott movement By Naomi Xu Elegant
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
If you are among the millions of sports fans happy that professional basketball is back, I hope you didn't miss last night's game between the Celtics and Raptors that went down to the very end. As my colleague Michal Lev-Ram put it on Twitter, "I have newfound respect for .5 seconds." Here's the video clip. There will be plenty more NBA action over this long weekend, if that's your thing. See you back here on Tuesday.


fortune--2020-09-04--Majority of tech employees and potential founders say big tech needs more regulation

Even tech employees want greater regulation over companies in the field.
Some 81% of tech employees and university students say they believe big technology firms need more regulation, according to a study conducted by Index Ventures and Qualtrics between May and June. The study polled some 1,275 people, a third of whom were students, another third were employees at tech companies with under 1,500 in headcount, while the other third came from large tech companies with over 5,000 employees.
The results come as big tech has come under increasingly scrutiny for their ubiquity and how they wield their influence. Social media platform Facebook took heavy heat for its role in allowing the spread of misinformation during the 2016 presidential elections. Lawmakers and tech gurus have also chimed in with varying levels of severity: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) has advocated vociferously for the break up of big tech companies, while Microsoft co-founder has opined that Big Tech companies require greater regulation.
The use of private information was the top concern among survey respondents by a slim margin: 30% said it was their main worry, while 26% cited the security of the data. Another 26% called for greater oversight into content moderation.
Within Silicon Valley itself, unease over how big tech may quash smaller tech businesses has also grown. Startups have voiced concerns taking funding from the likes of Amazon or Facebook, for fear of their product being copied by a far more cash-rich company. Epic Games’ lawsuit accusing Apple’s app store of monopolistic practices earlier this year meanwhile only highlighted the rising dissatisfaction among app developers with the platform and its fees.
The dominance of the giants in the space, the Facebooks, Amazons, and Alphabets, have also pushed founders and investors to avoid playing in the same space for fear of going head-to-head with the tech giants. In 2019, funding to enterprise technology companies, firms that focus on software and services for businesses, reaped in more funding than consumer-focused businesses for the first time in at least five years.
“There’s been a shift definitively toward enterprise and business-to-business companies and away from consumer,” says Mike Volpi, a partner at Index Ventures. “The reason is that there is a prevailing sentiment that there isn’t enough space for a competitor to come in because there’s too much strength in the incumbents—whether it is Amazon or Google—to go after that [space].”
Index created the survey after the coronavirus hit stateside, fueling worries that a protracted economic downturn could push potential founders in universities and technology companies to find more financially stable jobs rather than making a leap into startups. Simultaneously, there was a sense that the big tech companies—the Facebooks, Amazons, and Alphabets, would continue to only get larger.
While the results of the survey haven’t exactly shifted Volpi’s thesis on investing in consumer-based startups, it does show that sentiment is shifting in favor of greater regulation. And depending on what form the regulation takes, it could leave more breathing room for newer startups to shoot up.
“I have no doubt that consumer investing will come back,” Volpi says. “The question is when.”
Already some startups are riding building on the turf of the tech giants: A former Google executive founded a search engine that doesn’t profit off of user data dubbed Neeva. Clubhouse meanwhile is leading the charge in a wave of social media companies betting on interest in so-called spontaneous chat rooms.
A.I.
Index Ventures conducted the study as a way to understand where potential founders and talents may seeking to build out new companies. The venture capital community after all is still a story of many dollars chasing few startups. A.I. and machine learning led the list, with 34% of respondents saying they believed it would be the most impactful technology in the next 10 years, followed by green technology (26%).
While the clean tech movement struggled following the 2008 Financial Crisis, the sector has grown more mature since, says Volpi, with electric carmakers such as Tesla now well-established, and creating an ecosystem for other startups to build out supply chain software or charging stations.


fortune--2020-09-04--Women are making more big political donations in 2020 than ever before. Here’s why

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women’s rights activists claim a victory in Afghanistan, Brazilian soccer makes progress on equal pay, and it’s a ‘year of the woman’ in more ways than one. Have a relaxing weekend; we’ll see you Tuesday as we observe Labor Day in the U.S.
– 43%. As 2020 shapes up to be another ‘year of the woman’ in terms of candidates, it’s also turning into a ‘year of the woman’ when it comes to political donors.
Women make up 43% of donors who have made ‘large-dollar’ contributions, or those over $200, this cycle. That’s up from 38% in 2018 and 37% in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 1990s, the share never passed 28%.
This time around, donations from women have totaled roughly $1.5 billion, versus men’s $2.3 billion. Women donors overwhelmingly support Democrats, with donations to Democratic candidates nearly double those to Republican hopefuls.
As NPR reports, frustration with Trump’s 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton motivated some female donors to get involved in 2018. This cycle, the coronavirus is considered a big driver, since the burden of dealing with the pandemic’s societal upheaval has fallen disproportionately on women.
Another factor? The record number of Democratic women who ran for president.
According to longtime Democratic fundraiser Sally Susman, “a very compelling and charismatic female candidate” can encourage women donors to expand their own political clout.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Goooooal! The U.S. Women's National Team is still fighting for equal pay—even as other countries make progress on the issue. In a move forward for pay parity in global athletics, the Brazilian Football Federation announced that it has started to compensate male and female soccer players at the same rate, for both daily pay and prize money. CNN
- Written into history. Afghan citizens' national identification cards have long included the name of the card holder's father; now they will also note the name of the citizen's mother. The step, announced by the government this week, has long been an aim of women's rights activists. New York Times
- Break point. Kim Clijsters ended up choosing a strange year to embark on a tennis comeback following two retirements from the sport. The athlete lost her first-round match at the U.S. Open on Tuesday. "I was excited to play more tournaments, have the family travel with me," she says of her third act. "But that obviously didn’t happen." New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Opendoor board member Carrie Wheeler is now the real estate company's CFO; she plans to step down from her board seat. Diane Gherson, IBM's SVP for HR, has retired; she will be succeeded as SVP of HR and chief human resources officer by VP, HR in cloud and cognitive software Nickle LaMoreaux. iRobot hired former Arnold Worldwide CEO Kiran Smith as CMO. Joanne Harrell, Microsoft senior director of U.S. citizenship and market development, joins the board of nonprofit Equal Opportunity Schools.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Best actors. The Berlin Film Festival this year will give out only a "best actor" award, doing away with gendered "actor" and "actress" categories. Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton both spoke up in support of the decision. "I've always referred to myself as an actor," Blanchett says. CNN
- Letter-writing campaign. In an op-ed for Fortune, Haley Clark, director of anti-trafficking at World Hope International and chair of the Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking, writes about why she joined fellow Christian leaders in signing a letter urging Ivanka Trump to protect human trafficking survivors. The group is appealing to the first daughter to get the White House to enforce the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Fortune
- Fonda tries Ivanka. Someone else who lobbied Ivanka Trump recently? Jane Fonda. The actor/activist says she called "Jared, or whatever his name is," to talk about an idea she had for four women to appeal to President Trump on his climate policies; Jared Kushner told her that "Ivanka is the environmentalist in the family." "She called me and I told her my idea," Fonda says of Ivanka, "and she laughed and I never heard from her again." New York Times
ON MY RADAR
Long live style: A state of redress Refinery29
Was Nancy Pelosi's hair salon visit really a political 'set-up?' The Cut
Gabrielle Union is the voice we all need right now Women's Health
What if men thought about their sperm like women think about their eggs? Elle
PARTING WORDS
"That is like undergoing chemotherapy for a headache."
-Stacey Abrams on enacting new rules to prevent voter fraud


fortune--2020-09-04--Everything we know—and don’t know—about human-to-animal COVID transmission

We think we know about the initial transmission of the coronavirus; it occurred at a live animal market in Wuhan, China, most likely from a bat to a person. In the time since, our attention has been understandably focused on the global human toll of this brutal disease, which already has reached a total of more than 25 million cases.
But how likely is it that, in addition to continually infecting each other, our human viral spread is also putting the animal world at risk? The answers to that question are emerging, and they carry implications both for endangered species and our own household pets.
Animals and humans have a long, common history when it comes to viruses. “Every year, tens of thousands of Americans get sick from diseases spread between animals and people,” said Casey Barton Behravesh, U.S. public health service director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in a statement posted to the organization’s website last year. The CDC says roughly 60% of human infectious diseases are zoonotic, meaning they’re transmitted by animals to people (or vice versa). Think of rabies, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, and MERS, among others.
But what about COVID-19? The short answer is that, although the numbers remain very low, human-to-animal transmission of the novel coronavirus has occurred. Depending upon what scale that ultimately achieves, it’s something worth watching closely.
We have very little prevalence data on animals. In a published preprint from Wuhan, researchers found that of more than 100 domestic and stray cats they tested, approximately 15% were positive for the coronavirus, but only rare cases of COVID-19 have been reported in domesticated cats, dogs, and other species in the U.S. The American Veterinary Medical Association website says that there’s little to no evidence that domestic animals are easily infected with the virus, and the Agriculture Department database reports that fewer than 40 animals so far have been confirmed COVID-positive by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories. (Barton Behravesh told me via email that infected animals “might or might not have any symptoms…and for this reason we don’t know for sure how many animals are infected in the U.S.”)
Two dogs in Hong Kong were among the first known cases to appear in canines. The first known human-to-cat transmission, meanwhile, occurred in Belgium in late March, where a sick owner’s cat developed typical coronavirus-like symptoms including diarrhea, vomiting, and breathing difficulties. The cat made a full recovery nine days later. In fact, Barton Behravesh told me, most of the animals diagnosed with COVID experienced only “mild illness and fully recovered.”
Since these initial cases, very rare reports of domesticated dogs and cats testing positive for coronavirus have appeared, and they appear to stem primarily from either symptomatic or asymptomatic pet owners transmitting the infection to their beloved felines and canines. Thankfully, there is little evidence of the reverse. The risk that petting or hugging your furry domestic companion might transmit the virus from the pet back to you, Barton Behravesh said, is considered low.
Big cats can get the coronavirus, too. As was widely publicized in April, New York’s Bronx Zoo found that five tigers and three African lions developed mild respiratory symptoms—and all tested positive for the virus, though each recovered without incident. Transmission was felt to have occurred from an asymptomatic but positive zookeeper “who was actively shedding virus,” according to the Agriculture Department. Barton Behravesh confirmed to me that no further outbreaks of the coronavirus at zoos in the U.S have been reported, though a single puma in South Africa was infected by its caretaker.
We’ve seen COVID-19 outbreaks in other animals, including on mink farms in Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the U.S., where it’s believed that ill farm workers were responsible for the outbreaks. And while animal-to-human transmission is felt to be insignificant at this time, cases in the Netherlands hypothesize possible spread from minks to humans.
Certainly, we’re learning as we go. For example, research reported in Science magazine found that in the laboratory, the virus either did not replicate or did not spread easily in dogs, pigs, chickens, or ducks. Cats, meanwhile, appeared able to pass along the coronavirus much easier to one another than were dogs. And there’s an unpublished modeling study that shows apes and African and Asian monkeys are likely to be “highly susceptible” to COVID-19. (It is important to remember that experimental and modeling studies do not necessarily reflect how infection will occur under natural conditions. Animals may not be as easily infected in the real world—perhaps that’s part of the reason the numbers are so low.)
Still, history suggests we need to have our guard up, as the spread of viruses to other species previously has had devastating effects on animal and fish populations. Though once hotly debated, the evidence shows that during the Ebola outbreak of 2002–03, more than 5,000 gorillas died of the virus. In 2015, an outbreak of parvovirus was thought to be responsible for a gastrointestinal wasting illness that affected hundreds of millions of starfish off America’s West Coast, many of which succumbed. Given that the coronavirus is a novel virus, we need to ensure that our at-risk wild animal and sea life populations do not experience massive die-offs or suffer extinctions because we failed to act to protect them.
What’s our concern globally right now? Above all else, it may well be untreated human waste. At Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, scientist Graham Dellaire and his cohorts predicted in an unpublished preprint study that at least 15 species of marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, seals, otters, and sea lions, are susceptible—or potentially more susceptible than humans—to coronavirus infection. This is based on their analysis of ACE2 receptors, the key protein for virus entry. (The American Veterinary Medical Association notes that other processes are necessary for a virus to replicate and spread, so it is difficult to make definitive statements regarding the ability of the virus to transmit.) Some of these species are endangered, and their infection would likely occur either through direct contact with humans at zoos or aquariums or via untreated wastewater that is contaminated with the coronavirus from human sewage.
Several countries, including Italy, Australia and Spain, have detected the coronavirus in untreated wastewater, and scientists have shown that previous coronaviruses remained infectious in the contaminated water for days to weeks. The question, of course, is whether virus present in the water will lead to actual infections in sea life. Dellaire told me that while no marine mammals have been found yet infected with SARS-CoV-2, “…beluga whales and dolphins have been found to be infected by related gammacoronaviruses.” That includes four dolphins in San Diego Bay who were symptomatic with a gastrointestinal illness this past July.
The potential consequences are grave. Coronavirus infections were linked to a beluga whale that experienced lung disease and terminal liver failure, and Pacific harbor seals that died from pneumonia in 2000. Said Dellaire, “We do not know how bad the disease could be in these mammals. It could be a sniffle or multi-organ damage, just like COVID-19 in humans.” It also could be nothing, if transmission is negligible.
To help mitigate the impact and prevent coronavirus transmission, Dellaire and his colleagues believe proper treatment of wastewater and raw sewage is essential. They even discuss what right now may sound inconceivable: a potential vaccination program for endangered mammal populations in which the goal is to achieve herd immunity, or perhaps pod immunity. In fact, vaccines have already been used successfully in gray seals for contraceptive purposes, so we know the technology is there.
If you get COVID, know that your furry friends and oceangoing pals may be susceptible, though we have seen only rare spread so far. While many studies are underway, the CDC recommends that pet owners infected with the coronavirus maintain hygiene precautions and restrain from having direct contact with their animals. If possible, another member of the family should care for the pets until the individual is no longer infectious. Like so much else in the age of COVID, snuggle time will have to wait.
But let’s help save the Shamus of the world, too. Let’s limit visitor contact with at-risk mammals at marine parks and aquariums to reduce viral exposure. Let’s work also with policymakers, cities, and underdeveloped countries with poor sanitation to better monitor live virus in our waters and treat wastewater appropriately. Dellaire recommends at least secondary treatment of wastewater or—even better—UV or ozone treatment, which he says destroys up to 99% of pathogens.
The technology is ready. A drone already exists, for example, that can collect mucus from a whale and feasibly detect viruses like the coronavirus. We have the resources. We need to investigate further how much transmission is occurring under natural conditions, conduct more surveillance and studies, and then determine how we might best prevent our now-human pandemic from becoming a problem for the animal kingdom as well.
Carolyn Barber has been an emergency department physician for 25 years. She is cofounder of the homeless work program Wheels of Change and author of a new book, Runaway Medicine: What You Don’t Know May Kill You.


fortune--2020-09-04--Unemployment rate falls to 8.4%—with over 10 million jobs added since April’s jobless peak

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The unemployment rate dropped from 10.2% in July to 8.4% in August—marking four consecutive months of a declining jobless rate after peaking at an 80-year high of 14.7% in April.
That 8.4% jobless rate beat the estimate of 9.8% by Goldman Sachs.
Since April, the U.S. economy has added 10.7 million jobs, including 1.4 million jobs added in August.
While the economy continues to rebound, the rate of that recovery is slowing. In June the U.S. added 4.8 million jobs, followed by 1.8 million in July.
Much of the hiring during the summer has been driven by states reopening businesses, like dental offices and clothing stores. But with the pandemic still raging across the country, many businesses that attract large crowds—such as bars and sporting venues—remain closed, which is holding back the recovery.
And there are more headwinds looming. Those include layoffs from local and state governments, which are facing huge budget shortfalls. New York City has plans to lay off 22,000 city workers.
And unemployed Americans, who lost their $600 enhanced unemployment benefits in July, could see their $300 enhanced unemployment benefits phase out as early as this week if not replaced by Congress. That cut could drag down consumer spending—which accounts for two-thirds of the economy and is already slowing.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report also finds the total number of unemployed Americans stood at 13.6 million in August, much improved from the 23.1 million unemployed in April. But that still amounts to mass joblessness when compared to the 5.8 million Americans who were out of work in February.
And even as economic data improves, most Americans don’t feel optimistic. Only 27% of U.S. adults say the economy as improving, while 57% say the economy is still getting worse. That’s the finding from a Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll of 2,478 U.S. adults on Aug. 17 and 18.


fortune--2020-09-04--Trump wants a COVID-19 vaccine by Election Day. But will one be ready?

There are growing signs that the Trump administration is preparing to license a COVID-19 vaccine before the November presidential election, alarming scientists who warn that rushing a vaccine into use before large-scale clinical trials have concluded could be dangerous and might dent the public confidence needed for a successful inoculation program.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told state health officials to be prepared to begin distributing a coronavirus vaccine to health care workers and other high-priority groups by Nov. 1, days before Americans head to the polls.
Over the past several days, two top U.S. health officials—Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration—have also told news organizations that a vaccine might be made available to some high-priority groups, like health care workers, even before clinical trials are concluded, if the preliminary data from those trials is overwhelmingly positive.
It is thought that President Donald Trump and his advisers are eager to have a vaccine approved in order to blunt criticism of the administration’s COVID-19 response and boost Trump’s chances of reelection.
Vaccine A and Vaccine B
The CDC said it was planning to distribute one or two vaccines but did not identify them, calling them only Vaccine A and Vaccine B in the planning documents sent to state health agencies, according to the New York Times, which obtained copies of the documents. The paper said that descriptions in the documents seemed to match a vaccine candidate being tested by biotechnology company Moderna and another being developed by Pfizer in conjunction with German biotech firm BioNTech.
The Financial Times reported last month that members of the Trump administration had discussed granting emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine being developed by a team from the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, in England, and manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. In a statement, the company said it has not held any such discussions and that it would be “premature to speculate on that possibility.”
Pfizer has said previously that its vaccine—which is currently undergoing late-stage clinical trials in the U.S., Germany, Argentina, and Brazil—was “on track” for regulatory approval “as early as October.” Moderna’s vaccine is also undergoing late-stage human testing in the U.S.
But what will we know from these clinical trials by November? The answer is far from clear. And there’s a good case to be made that not enough evidence will have been gathered to be certain that a vaccine works and is safe.
Airfinity, a London-based science information and analytics firm, forecasts that the AstraZeneca and Oxford team will be the first to report preliminary data from a Phase III trial, probably around Sept. 19. It estimates that Pfizer will have preliminary data around Oct. 8, and Moderna around Oct. 23. Preliminary results for a fourth vaccine candidate, produced by Chinese firm Sinovac, may also be ready around that date.
The company bases these predictions on when the clinical trials begin, the rate at which they report enrolling volunteers, and the infection rates in the areas where the testing is being conducted. But these are just preliminary readouts; AstraZeneca’s vaccine is the only candidate that Airfinity predicts will have final results ready before Election Day.
Preliminary readouts
Rasmus Bech Hansen, Airfinity’s chief executive officer, says that preliminary readouts from clinical trials are sometimes sufficient to give a clear indication that a drug will be effective, allowing pharmaceutical firms to apply for immediate regulatory approval without having to complete expensive further clinical testing. Conversely, sometimes the early results show that a medicine will clearly fail. But most often, he says, the preliminary readouts simply provide enough positive indications to know that it is worth completing the full clinical trial.
To receive a U.S. license, the FDA has said, a vaccine must provide 50% more protection than a placebo. To determine that, the companies conducting the trials give the vaccine to one group of volunteers and a placebo to a control group and then see who actually gets COVID-19 over the subsequent weeks and months.
But if there aren’t enough infections in the control group, proving that the vaccine works is difficult. In both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s clinical trials, which involved 30,000 people, about 50 infections will need to be reported between both the control group and the inoculated group in order to get an early readout of the results, Hansen says. The trials are not expected to produce final results, however, until three times that number of infections have been recorded among the participants.
That is why it has been essential to conduct trials in places where infection rates remain high. Even in a place like Florida, with about 115 new cases per 100,000 people at the moment, one would only expect about 35 total cases in a cohort of 30,000 trial volunteers—which is why it can take a long time to get enough infections among the trial participants to draw conclusions about whether the vaccine works.
It is possible for the preliminary readouts to produce results that appear promising but aren’t statistically significant. This is why scientists say they would be particularly wary of any move to grant emergency use authorization to a vaccine on the basis of the initial efficacy results from earlier stage human testing, as opposed to the larger Phase III trials.
These early tests often involve 1,000 or fewer people and are mostly designed to provide an indication that a vaccine is safe, not whether it is effective. Nonetheless, these early studies do provide clues to how effective a vaccine might be. One is by studying what is called the “immunogenicity” of the vaccine: What kind of immune response does it seem to produce. This is most often gauged by looking for antibodies to the virus in blood samples taken from the inoculated volunteers. Those results have already been reported for all three leading vaccines, but the lack of standardized antibody tests makes interpreting the results difficult.
‘Vaccine efficacy measure’
Unusually for a Phase I trial, a few of the COVID-19 early human trials—most notably the Oxford Jenner Institute’s study—had an explicit goal of providing an “vaccine efficacy measure.” This is done the same way as in the larger, later-stage clinical trials: Just wait and see how many people in the inoculated group contract COVID-19 compared with the control group. The AstraZeneca-Oxford team is expected to report these figures for its Phase I trial sometime in the next few weeks.
But Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute in Gainesville who has also written a book on vaccine trial design, told the trade publication Pharmaceutical Technology that the Phase I trials of the Oxford vaccine, with 1,000 volunteers and an “efficacy measure” end point at 30 total COVID-19 infections among this study participants, is too small to produce “clinical significance” and should not be used to authorize a vaccine. In fact, other researchers told the publication that depending on how those 30 infections break down between the control group and the inoculated volunteers, the results might not have any statistical significance.
Steve Pritchard, a spokesman for Oxford University, told Fortune that the idea of using the Phase I trial to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Jenner Institute’s vaccine was based on the idea that there would still have been enough COVID-19 transmissions in the U.K., where the trial took place, to get a good indication of the vaccine’s effectiveness. But this “has changed since the protocol’s inception. We are in Phase III clinical trials currently with higher expected transmission in the U.K. and other populations in the months ahead.”
Safety concerns are another reason why many researchers would prefer that full Phase III trial results are known before any vaccine receives authorization. Some rare adverse reactions to the inoculations may only show up once the vaccines have been studied in a large, diverse population. Others may not even show up until months or years after a person has been vaccinated. Hansen says that vaccines have “an unfortunate history of not being safe,” but that the need for long-term safety studies needed to be balanced against the risks of the pandemic.
But many researchers worry that the Trump administration’s rush to approve a vaccine before the election may backfire—undermining public confidence in the vaccine and maybe any future ones too. “Any negative publicity at all about vaccine efficacy or safety would muddy the waters and undermine confidence in one of the most significant missions humankind has ever faced,” Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College’s Hammersmith Hospital in London, wrote in an opinion piece for U.K. medical journal The BMJ.


fortune--2020-09-05--There’s more than one way to ditch white (wine) after Labor Day

Podcast recommendations for a better life and career from Fortune ’ s 40 under 40

Labor Day, on the first Monday in September, traditionally marks the end of summer for Americans and brings with it the fashion convention of no longer wearing white.
As the temperature starts to go down, there is a similar convention with wine. Consumers start moving away from white wines and begin gravitating toward the reds to complement the cooler temperatures and seasonal foods.
But that isn’t the only way to move away from white wine. Rosé and sparkling wines, in particular, have become generally accepted as year-round libations rather than just summertime, holiday, or celebratory beverages.
“Rosé is definitely enjoyable for more than just the summer months,” says Nicole McAllister, sommelier at the double Michelin-starred restaurant Jean-Georges in New York City. “In the fall, I’d opt for something with a little bit more body, like a Tavel [a dark pink-hued rosé]. Still thirst quenching and delicious, but more robust.”
For those looking for some more traditional fall-friendly wines, Sarah Plath, former assistant wine director for The NoMad Bar and Restaurant in New York, suggests cooler vintages can bring out a mix of spiced and savory flavors in red Burgundy after five or more years of age. “Cooler vintages can really surprise you as an underdog,” she says. “That tiny amount of bitterness present in fuller-bodied rosés pairs really well with fall herbs like rosemary and sage.”
Here are some suggested bottles to consider popping open this fall, many of which pair nicely with your cooler weather comfort foods.
Santi Ventale: The Santi winery is situated in near Lake Garda, one of the most respected winemaking regions in Italy. The winery meticulously sources its wood for aging, in which the Ventale is aged for 18 months in 70% oak, 20% chestnut, and 10% cherrywood barrels. The result is a deep red wine with notes of dark fruit and velvety tannins mimicking berry jams spread on a slice of toasted bread. SRP: $16.
Hecht & Bannier: A boutique winery in France’s epicenter for rosé production, Hecht & Bannier’s bottle exemplifies rosé from Provence with a refreshing and floral wine. H&B Provence is a great rosé for the fall, when you haven’t turned back to heavy, muscular reds yet, says the winery’s owner, Gregory Hecht: “I always see it as a great pick for Thanksgiving. Its fruit character and vivid expression pair great with turkey. Rosé is the best of both worlds, and it is a perfect alternative for the traditional combo of turkey and Pinot Noir.” SRP: $18.
El Esteco: Bodega El Esteco is located in Argentina’s Calchaquí Valley, known as the world’s highest growing region for wine. The Cabernet Sauvignon is harvested from an elevation over 6,000 feet. High sun exposure, low humidity, and broad thermal amplitude make the Calchaquí Valley an exceptional wine region. Garnet red in color with an elegant, spicy nose, this wine is ripe and round in the mouth with black fruit, chocolate notes, and balanced oak. SRP: $25.
Château Fuissé: This estate dates back to 1604 and has been in the Vincent family for five generations. This bottle of red is a clean, dark, and ruby hue, with fresh fruit on the nose and characteristic flower aromas of ripe red fruits (wild strawberries, red current, and raspberries). Expect lots of finesse and soft fruits in the mouth, while crisp with good intensity and length. Excellent aging potential up to seven to 10 years. SRP: $29.
WillaKenzie Estate: A classic expression of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, this particular savory blend boasts rustic tannins and a palate with notes of red and black fruit. This Pinot Noir pairs well with salmon, roasted poultry, and pork loin. SRP: $30
Vivanterre: Fashion team Rosie and Max Assoulin recently launched a wine named Vivanterre (which translates from French to English as “Living Earth”). Produced in the Auvergne region of France, the brand is debuting with two wines to start: the Gamay MVB (made with Gamay grapes sourced from Moulin au Vent in Beaujolais) and the Orange Contact SGU (a special blend of Sylvaner, Gewürztraminer, and Ugni Blanc grapes). Orange wines haven’t quite become the new rosé yet, but they are certainly popular with somms and wine nerds. This natural wine is a good bottle to start for anyone new to the style. The Orange Contact SGU offers flavors of white peach, lychee, and tropical fruits with notes of white flowers, black tea, and ginger. SRP: $32.
Olivier Leflaive: The Leflaive family has had roots in Burgundy since 1717 and produces one of the finest examples of Puligny Montrachet. This bottle presents an incredible value within its category and is sourced from a variety of terroir within the Côte de Beaune with a large percentage sourced within the village of Pommard. A flattering nose with aromas of small red berries (especially strawberry and raspberry). A fresh and elegant palate with crunchy fruits and fine tannins. SRP: $37.
La Crema: The 2017 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir is full with aromas of black plum, raspberry, and forest floor, complemented by flavors of bing cherry and sassafras and hints of baking spice. This 100% Pinot Noir bottle pairs with a full table spread, from grilled and roasted meats as well as pasta Bolognese to prosciutto, mushrooms, and cured black olives. SRP: $40.
Justin: Produced on the California Central Coast, the 2017 Isosceles is made with the same care as the highest quality, traditional Bordeaux red wines. Also the flagship wine for the Paso Robles winery, the 2017 vintage is a blend of 83% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Cabernet Franc, and 8% Merlot grapes. Expect a full-bodied wine with a palate full of ripe black fruit and barrel spices, and it’s ready to drink right out of the gate or after a few years in the cellar. SRP: $76.


fortune--2020-09-05--This elite college is building a COVID ‘bubble’—where students are tested 3 times per week, and can’

This elite college is building a COVID ‘bubble’—where students are tested 3 times per week, and can’t leave campus

There ’ s more than one way to ditch white ( wine ) after Labor Day

One is a multi-billion dollar colossus with worldwide broadcasts. The other is a small New England college known for its bucolic campus and demanding coursework. On the face of it, the NBA and Amherst College have little in common. Except this: Both organizations have resumed in-person activities amidst COVID by forming a so-called “bubble.”
For the NBA, this has meant isolating players, support staff and broadcasters in a series of luxury hotels in Orlando. The plan has widely been viewed as a success—well into the playoffs no cases have been reported.
For Amherst, the experiment is far newer but the early results are promising. “Things are going well. About two weeks into the semester, only three members of our community have tested positive; that’s out of more than 11,000 tests that have been administered as of yesterday,” according to a college spokesperson. She adds that “a robust testing program, limited residential capacity, smaller classroom occupancies, hybrid learning and remote work, and intensive cleaning regimes” are all being employed to limit the spread of the virus.
If a student decides to return—they also had the option to study remotely this year—there’s a fairly strict regime. An initial test (typically via an at-home mail-in kit) is followed by a quarantine period of 3-5 days, after which they are tested again. The college’s website says that “online programming will be designed to keep students engaged throughout this period, and meals will be delivered to students.” Following that initial period, students will be tested three times per week, says the Amherst spokesperson.
Obviously Amherst’s relatively small size works in its favor when it comes to the bubble approach, notes Mehdi Maghsoodnia, CEO of 1Health.io, which works with a network of partners to distribute COVID saliva tests to organizations such as corporations and universities. “That’s a very effective strategy, but it only works in very small, remote campuses,” he says.
Meanwhile much larger schools, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have rolled out similarly ambitious testing regimes, including mandatory regular saliva testing and contact tracing for its much larger campus two hours south of Chicago.
Amherst’s COVID dashboard tracks testing in real time, and shows that as of Friday, 11,337 tests had been performed, with three positive results (two students and one staff member). A note to the community regarding the second student read in part, “the student is isolating and is currently asymptomatic and feeling well. In keeping with our contact tracing protocol, we identified two students who were in close contact with the student, and they are now in quarantine. They are all being well cared for. Our cleaning and disinfecting protocol is focused on the places on campus where the student indicated they had been, and those places are being aggressively cleaned and disinfected.”
Maghsoodnia notes that having separate buildings, tents or dorms to quarantine sick students is a big challenge for universities. In a web address to the community, Northwestern University’s President personally took responsibility for not factoring in how many extra empty rooms the school would need to set aside in order to quarantine sick students. He said that was a big reason Northwestern decided this week to move to all-virtual classes for 1st and 2nd year students.
At Amherst, life does look a little different on campus. Dining service is grab-and-go only, most clubs are meeting virtually, and sports competitions are suspended (though some teams are allowed to practice). Furthermore students can only access their own dorms—no visitors allowed. As for socializing? “A number of College offices have increased on-campus activities to take place in a number of rented tents (some outfitted with lights) this fall for classes and outdoor gathering,” the spokesperson said.
A map on the school’s website shows the campus “border” outlined in red, which calls to mind movies such Will Smith’s “I Am Legend,” in which the lead character survives in a post-apocalyptic New York before escaping to find a picturesque survivor colony in rural Vermont. Though it’s not clear exactly how the border is enforced, a spokesperson notes that since school started, “There have been the inevitable instances of people on campus violating some of the rules related to our protective measures, but they are being attended to swiftly.” The school’s guidelines state that “depending on the severity or frequency of the infractions…consequences could ultimately include dismissal from campus housing, although they would be allowed to continue their studies remotely.”
And while things are going fairly well so far, the college is preparing for any number of twists and turns as the semester goes on. “Amherst has plans in place to switch to all remote learning and, in an extreme emergency, evacuate quickly, for example,” said the spokesperson. “We are preparing for as many scenarios as possible, no matter how unlikely they may seem.”
As for students, one big source of student worry seemed to be access to a range of snacks and supplies customarily procured in town. According to Amherst’s website, “The campus store at Schwemmns will carry the common office supplies that students would typically get at Hastings. Students will be able to ask the cashier if an item is not carried and we will make our best efforts to source it.”


fortune--2020-09-05--TikTok: Everything to know about tech’s biggest soap opera

TikTok has less than two weeks before it must sell or shutter its U.S. operations—at least according to the Trump administration, citing national security concerns.
The social media app, which gained an initial following with teens sharing dance videos before becoming an international sensation, will be required to shut down in the U.S. if it doesn’t sell by Sept. 15.
What happens next is unclear. But what is clear is that the site’s future has become one of the tech industry biggest dramas in years.
It involves Trump battling with China’s government over foreign trade. It also involves some of the biggest U.S. companies—Oracle[/hotlink], Microsoft, and Walmart—lining up as suitors in an effort to gain an edge over their rivals.
For its part, ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, is caught in the middle.
“It’s between a rock and hard place, frankly,” Mark Shmulik, an analyst at investment bank AB Bernstein. “It’s a very unenviable place to be.”
In an effort to escape its predicament, TikTok has sued the Trump administration, which it says has deprived it of due process. Meanwhile, China’s government has entered the fight by enacting a new law that would require any sale of TikTok to first be approved by Beijing.
Here’s everything you need to know about TikTok and moment of reckoning.
Why would big companies want a dance-video app?
The big companies bidding on TikTok would benefit from the app’s young user base, ad capabilities, and e-commerce potential. Of the app’s 100 million monthly U.S. users, most are teens, a demographic many brands want to reach.
Meanwhile, social commerce, the emerging business of selling products through social media, is a growth opportunity. ByteDance already has its eyes on that business and is pushing TikTok and Douyin, its sister site in China, to add more e-commerce.
“This is the future,” Shmulik said about social commerce. “Legacy companies want to participate in the future. And If you can’t build, it buy it.”
Why did Walmart and Microsoft team up for a bid?
In recent years, Walmart has been beefing up its e-commerce arm and reach new customers. Meanwhile, Microsoft already has a social media business—LinkedIn—and has the technical chops to build a social commerce operation.
“So if [social commerce] is the future of e-shopping, what more perfect combination is there than a retailer like Walmart and Microsoft?” Shmulik said.
Michael Lasser, an analyst at investment bank UBS, said the joint Walmart-Microsoft bid may ultimately lead to Walmart accomplishing one of its key goals. “Capturing more hearts and minds of the younger generation is a really an important part of Walmart’s outlook,” Lasser said.
But there also could something else at play: Walmart is increasingly challenging Amazon‘s dominance in online retailing by growing its own online business during the pandemic and rolling out a subscription service called Walmart+ that mimics Amazon’s popular Prime. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also butting heads with Amazon over cloud computing, the gigantic business that involves supplying data center computing power to corporate customers.
The combination of Walmart and Microsoft would represent two companies going up against a common enemy, said Tom Keiser, CEO of Hootsuite, a tool that helps people manage their social media. And this wouldn’t be the first time the two have teamed up. Walmart chose Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider in 2018.
“Retailers have always had a deep mistrust for Amazon,” Keiser said. “That has spilled into AWS.”
Why does Trump care about TikTok?
Trump has long complained about China’s trade practices, which he says have unfairly benefitted China. His concerns: U.S. companies have limited access to operate in China, while Chinese companies operate freely in the U.S. He’s also worried about the theft of intellectual property from U.S. companies and the access the Chinese government may have to data collected from the U.S.
“When U.S. operations aren’t allowed to operate [the same way] in China, but the reverse is true, it’s a very real argument we probably should be having anyway,” Shmulik said.
But young TikTokers may have put Trump’s sights on TikTok by allegedly sabotaging his campaign rally in Tulsa in June. TikTok teens along with Korean pop fans claim to have registered for hundreds of thousands of tickets so that the arena’s seats would remain empty. As a result, only about 6,000 people attended the event, and Trump ended up canceling a second rally in Tulsa that was scheduled for the following night. Trump now may be seeking payback.
Meanwhile, Trump has expressed concern over what the Chinese government may do with data TikTok collects from U.S. users and the threat that could pose for national security. In June, India, citing similar concerns, banned TikTok and other apps owned by Chinese companies.
Why does Beijing care about TikTok?
Similar to Trump, China likely sees TikTok as an important piece in its game of chess with the U.S. over trade. Following Trump’s order that TikTok sell or shutter, the Chinese government crafted a response that complicates matters: Any deal involving ByteDance would have to cleared by Beijing.
The new law is meant to protect what China’s government considers to be sensitive technologies, including artificial intelligence. Without its artificial intelligence and other “sensitive” technologies, TikTok is nothing more than a name. “You’d effectively be buying a shell,” Shmulik said.
How may this chess game end?
Experts say the situation could play out three different ways: ByteDance could sell TikTok and leave the two governments to argue over the deal’s specifics. Or ByteDance could sign a deal with a U.S. buyer before the deadline to hold off the U.S. government, but then find a way to delay the process in hopes that a new administration with different policies is elected in November.
One final possibility is that ByteDance closes its U.S. operations, to avoid it—and China—from acquiescing to the Trump administration.
“I think its 80% chance a deal doesn’t go through,” Shmulik said. “I think they’re hoping for an eleventh-hour save.”
Keiser said he expects any resolution to be delayed far beyond the Sept. 15 deadline. “I would guess … this drags into next year,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a quick and easy wrap up to this.”


fortune--2020-09-05--Spit vs. Swab? Scientists say new studies support use of ‘saliva tests’ for COVID

A second lockdown proposed by Trump would get more support from Americans than one proposed by Biden

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Two new studies made the case recently for an alternative to the invasive Covid-19 tests that require collecting a sample from deep in the nose. Saliva samples, both studies found, were nearly as reliable and far less of a hassle.
Anne Wyllie, a researcher at the Yale School of Public Health who was the lead author of one of the studies, said she hopes the work helps quell some of saliva’s detractors.
“There’s been a lot of debate about saliva versus swab,” she said. “I think some of it is not entirely justified.”
The U.S. is more than six months into a global pandemic made worse by delayed and disorganized testing efforts and there’s still no clear consensus on who to screen, when to do it, or even what the best way to do so is. These studies suggest saliva could present a compelling alternative to other tests — one that does not necessarily require trained personnel to collect a sample and therefore use up valuable personal protective gear or put staff at risk. Even if the tests are marginally less accurate, the trade-off may be worth it.
A range of new testing options have been flooding the market since an initial shortage of the first provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency authorizations for more than 150 diagnostic Covid-19 tests, including those that rely on saliva and others that require a swab of deep in the nasal cavity, the front of the nose or the throat.
“The U.S. has undertaken this very differently from most other countries,” said Alan Wells, medical director of UPMC Clinical Laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh. “We’ve gone andproliferated dozens of different assays, which in this case is basically more confusing than helpful.”
What would be helpful, said Wells, is more guidance on when to use which test.
“There should be a cheat sheet out there for what test to use when,” Wells said.
In Yale’s new saliva study, published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Wyllie’s team identified 70 hospital patients whose infections had already been confirmed with the more traditional nasal swabs. Studies have suggested that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, first binds to cells in the body’s nasal cavity and then begins replicating, spreading through the body’s respiratory tract. There’s little doubt that in this process, the virus also spreads to the body’s oral cavity. The question is whether there is enough virus to be spotted easily with a saliva test.
In the Yale study, the saliva tests actually detected the virus more frequently — 81% of the tests came back positive in the first five days of infections, compared to 71% of nasopharyngeal tests. The saliva test also detected more copies of the virus’s genetic material.
In a second study from Canada in Annals of Internal Medicine, that was also out last week, researchers tested nearly 2,000 people with either mild symptoms of the virus or no symptoms but at a high risk of infection. Participants collected their own saliva and also took the traditional swab test: 34 came back positive in both tests. In 14 cases, virus was detected in the saliva sample, but not the nasal sample. In 22, the opposite was true.
Though the nasal sample had a slight edge in detecting infections, the University of Ottawa researchers said the study made a case for saliva samples.
“Saliva testing presents potential advantages,” the researchers wrote. “Collection does not require trained staff or personal protective equipment, can be done outside testing centers, and may be better tolerated in challenging or pediatric populations.”
On top of debates over which way to test is best, there’s been added confusion over who should be tested, particularly as schools and colleges reopen, since the CDC issued guidance suggesting that those without symptoms “do not necessarily need a test.”
Wyllie said many saliva-test detractors may simply be uncomfortable working with it.
“What we desperately need right now is just more testing,” she said. “And maybe just having those different options available means that we can get more testing out there.”
Wells said though that there are still significant questions about whether saliva tests are as good.
In approving Yale’s SalivaDirect test, which was developed based on Wyllie’s study, the FDA noted potential upsides as well as differences among the saliva tests it vetted.
But different tests might be better in different scenarios, depending on whether a test aims to screen individuals, diagnose the virus, or conduct surveillance, according to Davey Smith, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego.
“There is lots of misunderstanding about when to use what test,” he said.
Some tests may be very sensitive but less specific — in other words, good at picking up the presence of virus when it is there but less good at saying when the virus is not there. Such tests might be useful, say, to screen school children or cruise ship passengers. Tests that are highly specific, on the other hand, are useful in places like nursing homes and emergency rooms.
Speed and lower costs come with trade-offs, too, said Andrew Brooks, a professor at Rutgers University and chief executive of Infinity BiologiX, a company spun off last month from the school where it developed the first saliva test to receive emergency use authorization from the FDA.
“People want a test to be cheap, fast and the most sensitive and specific,” he said. “But you can’t have all three of those things with the technology we have today.”
Antigen tests, for example, he said, may present more accuracy issues but they’re also far faster and so better in situations where speed is important. An antigen is a viral protein, or a piece of one, that indicates the pathogen’s presence.
“What is the absolute right test? It depends on the situation,” Brooks said.


fortune--2020-09-05--Latinas vote at lower rates than other women. America Ferrera and Eva Longoria have a plan to close

Latinas vote at lower rates than other women. America Ferrera and Eva Longoria have a plan to close the turnout gap

In the 2018 midterm elections, Latinas turned out to the polls at rates between 10 and 15 points behind white and Black women. As the 2020 general election draws nearer, a group of powerful Latinas is taking a new approach to ensure their community makes their voices heard in November.
Actors America Ferrera and Eva Longoria Bastón, alongside activists Carmen Perez, Mónica Ramírez, and others, founded She Se Puede, a new lifestyle site meant to, in part, motivate its readers to vote. Rather than launch a strictly get-out-the-vote initiative, the founders hope to engage Latinas across areas of interest well beyond this election.
So how do recipes and remote-learning tips, as the site intends to publish, help get women to the polls? Data from Equis Research, a firm run by She Se Puede cofounder Stephanie Valencia, has found that Latinas are less confident about voting than their peers. “They don’t think their vote will count, or they don’t feel prepared and don’t want to mess up,” Valencia says. “How do we create a culture of confidence and empowerment to encourage women that their vote counts, that you don’t need a Ph.D. in political science to vote?”
Valencia hopes that building a more “holistic relationship” through lifestyle content will bring in women who may, because of those feelings, tune out overtly political messaging. Many of those Latinas are not registered to vote, and don’t receive traditional election turnout efforts like campaign texts and calls, she says.
Says Ferrera: “There’s a confidence crisis among Latinas. They don’t feel like they know enough to change their own lives, to change the country, when the truth is, they hold the power to be the difference. It’s about telling the story that Latinas matter, that their lives count.”
Earlier this year, Equis Research found that Latinas showed lower rates of motivation around the political process, and excitement—or being ready to take action—than they had in prior years. Those numbers have now started to rise as the general election gets closer, Valencia says, but are still crucial to closing the turnout gap this fall.
“You can’t just show up with a catchy slogan and a famous actor two months before an election,” says Ferrera, “and expect that’s all Latinos need.”


fortune--2020-09-05--Why meat could be top of mind for voters in the upcoming election

The Trump campaign has yet to figure out the best line of attack on Sen. Kamala Harris: Is she a left-wing extremist or a snub to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party?
In throwing the kitchen sink at the California senator, Vice President Mike Pence recently tried out some red meat on a crowd of ranchers, warning them that Harris wants to take their meat away. “We’re not going to let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America’s meat!” Pence declared to the ranchers’ adoration.
Pence was referring to then-Presidential candidate Harris’s assertion that we should consider the environmental effects of our food choices. But in a time when we’ve experienced an actual pandemic-induced meat shortage along with an executive order aimed at keeping slaughtering plants open, the idea of meat availability playing a role in the election isn’t so farfetched.
In fact, it’s happened before.
During World War II, Americans became accustomed to meat rationing as part of the effort to support the troops abroad. When the war ended, the country was obviously flying high after its victory over Germany and Japan, but the problem of meat availability remained.
Wartime government-induced price ceilings on meat meant that many farmers simply chose not to produce for fear of losing money, but Americans were willing to endure the less-meat diet out of a shared desire to defeat the Axis enemies.
When the war ended, however, those ceilings were lifted, and unsurprisingly the price of meat skyrocketed. In the midst of the 1946 midterm elections, President Harry Truman, trying to save the Democratic Party, moved to enforce price ceilings again, but this time without the ability to rely on patriotism to encourage farmers to produce meat for untenably low prices.
Enraged, the meat lobby retaliated by having producers again cease sending animals to slaughter.
As Time’s Emelyn Rude wrote in 2016 of the postwar incident, “Miners declared they could not work without more meat and began striking in Washington. Hospitals stirred scandal by claiming they could only find horsemeat to serve their sick patients. The lines outside the butcher shops still in operation stretched for blocks and provoked shoving and scratching amongst the patrons.”
The country was on edge. Time itself even editorialized on the topic, blaming what it called the “widespread meat famine” directly on Truman. Congressional Democrats begged the President to do something about the meat crisis, declaring it the single biggest issue of concern to their constituents. The Republicans, just like Pence today, campaigned on a pro-meat message.
“Got enough meat?” asked Rep. John Vorys, a Republican from Ohio, in a campaign speech, a slogan which quickly came to be an election rallying cry. Rep. Sam Rayburn even dubbed the midterm election of 1946 the “beefsteak election,” and in substantial part owing to the perception of a meat shortage, Democrats lost control of both chambers of Congress.
Today, another meat shortage has coincided with an important election. But unlike in 1946, our nation in 2020 is better prepared to withstand a scarcity of animal protein. Today, our response to the temporary closing of slaughter plants can be a permanent opening of our dietary habits to actual plants.
Already, fast food chains are offering plant-based burgers that routinely wow the most inveterate carnivores, including newspaper food writers. Meat giants themselves are now the purveyors of plant-based meat, with companies like Cargill selling their plant-based chicken even in China. Others like Perdue Farms are offering blended products that are hybrids of both animal and plant proteins, lowering the ecological footprint of the food while helping meat go much further. (My startup, The Better Meat Co., enables meat companies to hybridize their animal meats with plant protein ingredients, and we provide plant-based ingredients to Perdue.)
Such a world—where we can essentially have our meat and eat it too—would have been a dream come true for President Truman and congressional Democrats in the mid-1940s. Today, Joe Biden and Democrats can rest assured that thanks to advances in food technology enabling us to produce meaty foods with less reliance on animals, Americans will be able to satiate our meat tooth all we want. And in addition to helping during the pandemic, plant-based meats also have the advantage of being better for the planet and animals, and having zero cholesterol, too.
Our nation has faced meat shortages in the past. While it may be laughable to think that Kamala Harris wants such an outcome again, we should just be glad that unlike in Truman’s day, we now have far more options, and diversifying our protein sources is good for us anyway.
Paul Shapiro is the author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World and the CEO of The Better Meat Co.


fortune--2020-09-05--Luxury hotels are wooing guests with exclusive wines and spirits

Ed. note: This story was reported, written, and edited prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Luxury hotels know that proprietary touches establish an elevated experience for guests. From signature robes to custom-scented bath products, these exclusive amenities make a guest feel pampered. Now, some accommodations are taking this approach to the hotel bar.
Unlike a house wine, which is often an existing cuvée purchased in large quantities, or a winery’s creation that gets a special label designed for the client, these hotels have worked side-by-side with winemakers and distillers to produce a signature beverage to their exact specifications.
Chef German Ghelfi wanted wines that would not only complement the food but pay homage to Chilean culture. Courtesy of Mandarin Oriental
German Ghelfi, the executive chef at the new Mandarin Oriental in Santiago first fell in love with Chilean wine while living in Panama. When he took his new post at the Mandarin Oriental, Ghelfi saw an opportunity to make something unique from the wines that caught his attention. “We thought it was the perfect occasion to show the local culture through an exclusive Chilean wine,” he says.
Lapostolle—a Chilean winery founded in 1994 by Alexandra Marnier-Lapostolle, of the family that created Grand Marnier—was his first choice for a winery partner. “I loved the philosophy and the work done there, both in the harvesting of the grapes and the complete winemaking process,” he explains. Ghelfi approached the winery with the proposal, and a partnership was formed.
As the first—and only—Mandarin Oriental hotel with its own proprietary still wine (although the Milan location has a sparkling wine as well as a craft beer), Ghelfi took a hands-on approach to the wine’s creation. “The process lasted from six to seven months until the final concept was created,” he says. “Then, we went to the vineyard to begin the proper creation of our wine. Together with the Lapostolle enologist, we made different [blends], including more than 14 varieties of wines from different years and strains, in order to arrive at the final product that was our wine.”
The small inaugural release in December 2019—which coincided with the hotel’s opening—is comprised of 8,000 bottles of Carménère red wine and 2,000 bottles of a white blend. “Given that it’s our first wine, we also wanted to see how it would do in terms of sales, so we have a better idea how to scale for future productions,” says Ghelfi.
Mandarin Oriental, Santiago’s proprietary wines include a Carménère and a white blend. Courtesy of Mandarin Oriental
The historic five-star Britannia Hotel in Trondheim, Norway uses an exclusive Champagne to tie the hotel’s history with its current iteration. While undergoing renovations over the last few years, the Britannia team took the time to go through archives and find elements to bring to the modern guest experience. “We found a menu from 1898 where Champagne from Maison Ayala was served as an aperitif,” explains Peter André Gjerde, director of marketing and communications for the hotel. “A small family-owned heritage Champagne house opened in 1860, Maison Ayala was one of most popular Champagnes in the United Kingdom around the time the Britannia Hotel opened.” As many of the hotel’s first guest were British lords, Ayala retained a place on the menu.
However, over time, Ayala lost its footing and production dramatically dropped in the 1990s. Big investments into the house by new owners the Bollinger family of Bollinger Champagne starting in the mid-2000s soon turned the flailing estate around. Today, Caroline Latrive—one of only three female cellar masters in Champagne—oversees all the winemaking.
The concept for a proprietary Champagne was partially fueled by a historic menu that listed Ayala as an aperitif wine. Couresty of Britannia Hotel, Trondheim
“In every grand five-star hotel you want to serve a preferred house Champagne,” explains Gjedre. As the hotel, which closed in 2016 for renovations, sourced partners for other bespoke items, such as toiletries, the concept of a house Champagne took hold. Ayala’s revival dovetailed with the hotel’s transformation and given the Champagne’s presence in the hotel’s early years, the sparkling winemaker seemed a likely partner for the project.
The Champagne collaboration began in 2017, nearly two years before the hotel reopened. Gjerde, along with two other members of Britannia went to Champagne to work on blends. Seeking something that was “fresh yet delicate,” according to Gjerde, they landed on a cuvée comprised of 48% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir, and 12% Pinot Meunier. Approximately 5,000 bottles of the inaugural Champagne were produced. Gjerde says the project has been such a success that they are currently working on a Britannia rosé Champagne together.
While a specialty cocktail is far from novel—virtually every occasion, from corporate holiday parties to weddings, has its own boozy namesake creation—a bespoke liquor is more unusual. In 2015, the Capella Singapore resort introduced its own rum.
Capella Singapore was built in the 1880s to accommodate the British officers of the Royal Artillery Coastal Defense Command based on the island. Courtesy of Capella Singapore
Like Britannia’s Champagne, history played a large part in the creation. “Capella Singapore was built in the 1880s to accommodate the British officers of the Royal Artillery Coastal Defense Command based on the island,” explains Jesiah Fernando Selvarajan, supervisor and bartender at Bob’s Bar in the hotel. “Rum was served daily to the sailors as a long-standing tradition of the Navy.”
The hotel enlisted the expertise of master distiller Richard Seale of the Foursquare distillery in Barbados to aid with the creation, dubbed Navegante (Spanish for navigator).
Capella’s Navigante rum is used in various signature cocktails at the hotel’s Bob’s Bar. Courtesy of Capella Singapore
“The drink itself is categorized as a single-blended rum, where the traditional pot still distillation method is combined with the modern-day coffey still system to produce a single distillate rum,” says Selvarajan. It’s then aged for three years in bourbon oak casks followed by five in cognac French oaks, which Selvarajan says, “creates a textured and rich flavors with fruity notes from the blending of caramel, vanilla, and peach.”
Inspired by the hotel’s history with the spirit, rum was a natural fit for the bar as well as the tropical climate.
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fortune--2020-09-05--Pre-pandemic, Kuala Lumpur’s hospitality scene was heating up with new design-forward boutique hotel

Pre-pandemic, Kuala Lumpur’s hospitality scene was heating up with new design-forward boutique hotels

Ed. note: This story was reported, written, and edited prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A city of nearly two million inhabitants, Kuala Lumpur is an oft-visited Southeast Asian capital largely for its thriving business scene, the architectural splendor of the Petronas Twin Towers, and the exciting street food experience. But it’s never really been a hotspot for headline snatching hotels until recently when big-name brands like Four Seasons have settled down with luxury satellites within city limits. And even newer still is the introduction of design-heavy properties luring jetsetting aesthetes to one of the city’s under-the-radar hipster districts.
Locally born-and-bred hospitality firm Ormond Group just opened two such hotels in Chow Kit. Located about a mile west of the twin towers, Chow Kit was historically a red light district, but it’s now undergoing a dramatic transformation that has endeared it to cool-hunting modern-day Malaysians. And the unveiling of these hotels—both brought to life by sought-after international design agencies—effectively puts the neighborhood on the radars of similarly minded global nomads.
“I think there is a case to be made that the Kuala Lumpur people know has lost its sense of place; it is super structures and malls,” says Ormond Group CEO Gareth Lim. “How is it different from any Asian metropolis? In Chow Kit, you get to see a side that is uniquely Kuala Lumpur.” Whether it’s the winding, clandestine alleyways that leads to who-knows-what or the buzzing market (the largest wet market in town), this pocket of KL is layered with intrigue, and these new projects are meant to add contemporary flourish to what’s already there.
Inside one of the guest bedrooms at The Chow Kit. Courtesy of The Ormond Group
The first of the two to open is aptly called The Chow Kit, home to 113 rooms and suites (from $80 a night) plus an all-day restaurant—all of which were designed by Brooklyn’s renowned Studio Tack. According to Lim, this property delivers simplified luxury. For instance, the guest rooms, which aren’t massive, were stitched together to efficiently provide guests with the essentials like a custom blond-wood console that is at once a desk, a wardrobe, and a mini bar. But visually, there’s excess. The lacquered headboard, the mix-and-match light fixtures, the green ceiling, and the tapestry-inspired upholstery on the couch give guests so much to look at.
It’s the same in public areas, too. Like most cool-kid hotels out there, The Chow Kit has been realized to hopefully become a hangout for locals and travelers alike. The main floor is split up between the lobby, the restaurant, and there’s even an intimate little nook for whatever the mood calls for. The dining menu was purposefully crafted to not compete with street food vendors. Tandoori-marinated fish and chips, avocado fried rice, and cocktails spiked with ingredients like cardamom bitters and lemongrass liqueurs keep things familiar but still adventurous.
Roti Jala at The Chow Kit. Courtesy of The Ormond Group
“We hope that The Chow Kit sparks a curiosity,” says Leigh Salem, partner at Studio Tack. “That guests will ask questions about the origins of items, artwork or design decisions.”
Research into the project included studying historical books that reveal a bit of what the neighborhood was like decades ago as well as deep diving into what the atmosphere and culture there is like today. To wit: The easygoing vibe of the restaurant with its vintage chairs and lantern-like pendant chandeliers is a soft nod to kopitiams, coffee houses of the region, where the Tack team would start their mornings during visits to Kuala Lumpur.
Newly opened MoMo’s and The Chow Kit are attracting cool-hunting travelers to Kuala Lumpur. Courtesy of The Ormond Group
Just around the corner is the more pocket-friendly 99-room MoMo’s, a more whimsical hotel concept that called on the talents behind Sydney’s Akin Atelier for its interior decor. There is a much more minimalist approach to design here, especially in the cozy guest rooms (starting at $40 per night), where there really isn’t much space to do anything besides sleep and get ready for the day.
Still, Akin has done an exceptional job of making sense of the spatial limitations. Think: frameless beds stacked atop a raised platform to allow for storage underneath. Some rooms are even outfitted with bunk beds. There’s also a brightening palette of light timber and white walls hand-treated with cloud-like texture to inspire restfulness. The Mexican-inspired eatery MoMosita is a more colorful antidote with its pastel tiles, street-art mural, and potted cacti. At both hotels, almost every piece of furniture or art was created by a local.
Inside one of the guest bedrooms at MoMo’s. Courtesy of The Ormond Group
But at MoMo’s—like many hotels that favor limited guest room acreage—the magic happens outside those four walls. “MoMo’s is social and flirty,” Lim explains. “It’s a revolving door of regular events, from karaoke and DJ nights to pop-up dinners. These were curated for the traveler who isn’t here for rest and respite but is instead looking to meet like-minded people.”
Over at The Chow Kit, which Lim calls reflective and retrospective, there is a rooftop space where regularly scheduled yoga or meditation is hosted. Similarly, both properties offer walking tours of their surrounding areas, and soon, they will be led by at-risk local youth through a partnership with Yayasan Chow Kit, a foundation that specifically works with providing opportunities to young people.
“KL didn’t have a great selection of design hotels and so we’ve never been really able to attract the design seekers,” Lim adds. “By prioritizing good design, we’re able to attract the design and culture traveler seeking new adventures in a familiar city.”
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fortune--2020-09-05--A second lockdown proposed by Trump would get more support from Americans than one proposed by Biden

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari advocates for a six-week shutdown stricter than state orders back in March. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, argues for the same thing. They think this timeline can help control the spread of the coronavirus and bolster long-term economic prospects.
The short-term consequences would be massive: Just look at March and April, when the jobless rate soared from 4.4% to 14.7%.
Is that something the public can stomach again? To find out, Fortune and SurveyMonkey teamed up to poll 2,725 U.S. adults between August 31 and September 1.
Among U.S. adults, 65% support a national “stay at home” order, in which everyone in the U.S. is required to remain in their home except for essential services. That support is striking considering the economic damage caused by state-issued shutdowns in the spring. It also speaks to how concerned Americans remain about the pandemic.
That support wanes among high-income Americans. Among individuals earning under $50,000, 79% support a national “stay at home.” Meanwhile, that figure is 55% among individuals earning more than $100,000.
The S&P 500 has rebounded to above 3,400 points after bottoming out at 2,237 points on March 23 amid states going into lockdown. However, we’d likely see stocks plunge again if states went back into lockdown. The fear of another stock plunge, and the impact on business, could be why high-income Americans are the least supportive of another lockdown.
Given the political divide in America, we tested two versions (an A/B test) of the poll question: Some poll takers were asked if they’d support another lockdown if proposed by President Donald Trump, and others were asked if they’d support it if proposed by Joe Biden. The latter has expressed openness to such a policy if supported by public health officials.
Among Republicans, 54% would support a national “stay at home” order if proposed by Trump. Only 23% of them would support it if proposed by Biden. Meanwhile, Democrats would be supportive of a “stay at home” order by both Biden (93%) and Trump (85%).


fortune--2020-09-05--Podcast recommendations for a better life and career from Fortune’s 40 under 40

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They say listening to podcasts makes you smarter, and if the accomplishments of Fortune’s 40 under 40 are anything to go by, that certainly appears to be true. Across a spectrum of professions from finance to entertainment, some of the brightest young minds use podcasts to stay sharp and informed.
Here are some of the top choices for podcasts from this year’s 40 under 40.
Charlotte Clymer, writer, LGBTQ advocate, and consultant
I love Radiolab from WNYC Studios. The way they take a subject and look at it from numerous angles, uncovering meaning in every facet, is so inspiring and motivating. Anytime I feel the need for a little push that’s authentic and earnest, I’ll listen to an episode or two to be reminded of what brilliant and thoughtful folks are doing in the world.
Mona Chalabi, data editor for Guardian U.S.
I loved, loved, loved The Ballad of Billy Balls by iO Tillett Wright. In the podcast, I think iO walks a delicate line between journalism and inserting himself into the story, and he does it incredibly well! I think that’s always a difficult balance for any journalist, and iO showed me the value to listeners of occasionally letting yourself into the story.
Adelina Grozdanova, cofounder and head of investor group at Upgrade
A few years ago I came across a podcast by John Allison that he did after he had retired as CEO of BB&T Bank. He discusses the values and philosophy that guided his career.
Two parts resonated with me the most. First, his emphasis on being a lifelong learner, always trying to read and learn more from one’s experiences—especially the failures. One key point he makes is to “evade less and focus more.” He gives an example that some of the best leaders fail when they evade and don’t analyze information because they won’t like the answer. Be equally comfortable with success and failure and never stop learning from either one.
The second one is about the importance of self-esteem to one’s happiness. Unlike a lot of things in life, self-esteem can’t be given, it has to be earned. For most of us the fundamental driver of self-esteem happens to be work because of the long hours and energy that we commit to work. My favorite quote from the podcast is the following: “Something I said to the employees of BB&T many times: It matters a lot to BB&T whether you do your job well, but it matters a lot more to you. You might fool me about how well you do your job, you might fool your boss about how well you do your job, but you will never fool you. If you don’t do your work the best you can possibly do it, given your level of skill, given your level of knowledge…you’ll lower your self-esteem. Good news is, the flip side is also true. Do your work the best you can possibly do it and you’ll raise your self-esteem, which is more important than whether you get a promotion or more money because it’s fundamentally about your character.”
Ron Steslow, cofounder and adviser for The Lincoln Project
Making Sense with Sam Harris. Sam’s wide-ranging and fearless conversations often help me draw connections between things I’m thinking about or working on. I also listen to the Slate Political Gabfest with John Dickerson, Emily Bazelon, and David Plotz, with religious consistency—love that trio.
Kristin Smith, executive director for Blockchain Association
Crypto is super complicated. There’s a lot of jargon. There are a lot of factions within the industry. I didn’t start getting into it until 2017, so I had a lot of catching up to do. The biggest help in getting up to speed was Laura Shin’s Unchained podcast. She talks to everyone in the field and has a sort of methodical way of explaining the issues that I found really helpful. Over time, by listening to her, I was able to learn the crypto basics. It gave me the knowledge and confidence to make the change to specialize in this industry.
Jason Kander, president of national expansion for Veterans Community Project
Marc Maron’s WTF podcast is a go-to for me. Though I’m not a comedian or an actor or a musician, I gain a lot of wisdom from the conversations he has with entertainers and am able to relate it to the performative aspects of my work.
Racquel Bracken, partner at Venrock
Anything on How I Built This with Guy Raz. The stories from entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses and the never-ending tales of heartache, perseverance, and resilience. I am a resilience junkie—I think it’s the most important quality in great humans, and I love getting to celebrate stories of coming back from being down but not out!
Taylor Lorenz, technology reporter at the New York Times
Yeah, But Still is an excellent Internet-culture podcast that is constantly keeping me informed about new and weird things happening on the Internet. I love it, and the topics they discuss always inspire me.
Prem Tumkosit, managing director at Merck Global Health Innovation Fund
Ultimately, a lot of what I do as an investor is use analysis to tell the story of ideas, companies, and people. So I find that the most helpful podcasts are the ones where you can see how the author or storyteller can help you structure a strong narrative. The podcasts that I go to are things like This American Life, Radiolab, and the Risk podcast—shows that explain complicated or uncomfortable topics in a way that people can understand or relate to.
Lindsey Finch, global privacy and data protection officer at Salesforce
Kara Swisher’s podcasts—currently Pivot and previously Recode Decode. She helps me stay on top of what is happening with the tech industry with a healthy side of policy.
Last, but not least: A bonus audiobook from…
Steve Martocci, cofounder and CEO at Splice
Recently I listened to The Outsiders audiobook, which my board member Adam D’Augelli recommended. It’s full of stories of nontraditional CEOs and how they evolved and thrived as capital allocators. The transition from founder to CEO isn’t easy and continually changes as you scale. The stories in the book are helping to guide me into the next phase of my journey.