fortune--2020-12-17--Joe Biden underestimated China’s ability to innovate before. He shouldn’t repeat that mistake

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Few American political leaders have dismissed China’s capacity for technological innovation as publicly and as emphatically as President-elect Joe Biden.
In a 2014 speech to the graduating class of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, then-vice-president Biden famously scoffed at the prospect of China graduating “six to eight times as many” scientists and engineers as the U.S. At the end of the day it didn’t matter, he asserted, because China’s authoritarian political system stymied the development of breakthrough products.
“I challenge you,” Biden dared cadets, to “name me one innovative project, one innovative change, one innovative product that has come out of China.”
Challenge accepted. Here are three, plucked just from headlines this month:
Early Thursday morning Beijing time, a capsule from China’s unmanned Chang’e-5 spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and landed in Inner Mongolia bearing 2 kilograms of moon rocks that are expected to make a major contribution to scientific understanding of lunar geography. Chang’e-5’s four-week voyage establishes China as only the third nation to bring pieces of the moon back to Earth, and the only country to put robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon this century.
In a report published Dec. 3 in Science magazine, a team of Chinese researchers at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei claimed to have built a quantum computer that is able to perform certain computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most advanced supercomputers.
On Dec. 8, the United Arab Emirates said a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical group Sinopharm had proven 86% effective in treating the virus in phase 3 trials, potentially clearing the way for distribution of Chinese vaccines throughout the developing world.
Yes, one can conjure caveats for all these achievements: China’s lunar expedition succeeded in boldly going where American Neil Armstrong already went back in 1969. The Chinese quantum supercomputer was built to perform a single, specific task and cannot be programmed to do anything else. And despite the apparent success of Sinopharm’s UAE trial, none of China’s vaccine candidates have published any late-stage information about clinical trials.
I’ve argued often in this space that in many crucial sectors, most notably the manufacture of high-speed semiconductors, China lags far behind the U.S., and other trade partners such as South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan—and that no amount of government subsidy will be enough to close the gap. China’s push to become self-sufficient in semiconductors suffered a further setback Wednesday as its biggest chipmaker, Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, struggled to explain the apparent resignation of its co-CEO Liang Mong-son. Media reports of Liang’s departure sent the company’s stock price tumbling nearly 10% Wednesday on exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
And yes, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent clampdown on private companies, especially tech giants like Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, will likely slow the pace of future Chinese innovation.
Still, the big picture is clear: Over the past two decades, China has emerged as a technology superpower, and a formidable one at that. (The Financial Times‘ Tom Mitchell made a similar argument last week.) In many technologies, such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce, digital payments and the rollout of high-speed telecommunications networks, China is poised to lead—or already leads—the world. As president, Biden must recognize that his former disdain for China’s inability to innovate is badly out-of-date.
Eastworld will take a break for the next two weeks and return again in the New Year.
Clay Chandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com
This edition of Eastworld was curated and produced by Naomi Xu Elegant and Grady McGregor. Reach Naomi at naomi.elegant@fortune.com and Grady at grady.mcgregor@fortune.com.
Eastworld news
Alibaba's cloud
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's cloud computing service offered its clients facial recognition software that can detect Uighur and other ethnic minority people's faces. It's not clear whether Alibaba customers used the software, or how they would use it; the company removed references to the ethnicity-detecting software on its website after a New York Times inquiry this week. Uighur people in China's western Xinjiang province are an ongoing target of Chinese government surveillance and alleged human rights abuses. The revelation raises questions of whether Alibaba will become a target of sanctions or other action by the U.S. government, which has scrutinized Chinese tech firms over U.S. national security concerns and has penalized Chinese officials over their alleged involvement in government suppression of Uighur people in Xinjiang. New York Times
A tightening belt
When Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative in 2017, he called the $1 trillion plan "a project of the century." Three years later, the BRI—an ambitious program to finance and construct infrastructure in developing countries—risks becoming China's first overseas debt crisis. China was reportedly in talks with at least 12 countries over debt renegotiations this year. Beijing's shift to focus on domestic investments over outbound ones is reflected in the overseas lending figures of two Chinese banks, the China Development Bank and the Import-Export Bank of China. Between 2008 and 2019, the two banks lent nearly as much to overseas borrowers as the World Bank did in the same period; the Chinese banks' overseas lending levels plummeted in 2019 to $4 billion, compared to $75 billion at their peak in 2016. Financial Times
Australian barley
Australia is taking its trade dispute with China to the World Trade Organization, escalating the year-long spat between the two nations. Canberra filed a formal request to the WTO on Wednesday to appeal the 80% tariff on Australian barley that China imposed in May. China is Australia's biggest trading partner, but relations between Beijing and Canberra soured this year, with the nations clashing over human rights, the origins of the coronavirus, and claims of Chinese political interference in Australia. China has also slapped tariffs and restrictions on Australian beef, wine, and coal. The Australian
North Korea, Hezbollah, and Hong Kong
Wan Chai, a neighborhood in Hong Kong, is likely home to the world’s highest concentration of U.S.-sanctioned companies, according to a new CNN investigation. Hong Kong has long touted its low taxes and relatively open business environment as a reason why it's become a global financial hub. But Hong Kong’s relative lack of financial regulations also makes it an attractive location for shadier businesses—including Hezbollah financiers, an arm of a powerful Southeast Asia militia, and a company with a North Korean bank account—to set up shell companies as a means of evading U.S. government sanctions. CNN
Pandemic nationalism
For many Chinese nationalists, the pandemic has proved that China's governing system is superior to that of the U.S.'s. Such a viewpoint is increasingly on display in new art exhibits in Beijing, in the more combative behavior of Chinese diplomats, and in online commentary that compares the current state of the U.S. to the fall of the British empire. Some voices in China, however, are wary that China's new hubris may underestimate the U.S.'s strength and work to entrench anti-China attitudes abroad. New York Times
Coronavirus by country
India
In March, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, tens of millions of migrant workers found themselves stranded without jobs or food, in cities far away from their hometowns. India's government organized 4,621 special trains to take over 6 million people home, but the emergency transport became a vector for COVID-19. India currently has the second-highest number of recorded COVID-19 cases in the world, and the emergency trains played a big role in accelerating the spread of the virus. Most people weren't tested before boarding the trains, and passengers rode for days in cramped compartments before alighting in rural areas that had no recorded COVID-19 cases until the workers started returning. New York Times
Markets and movers
Luckin Coffee — Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee will pay a $180 million penalty to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims that it committed sales fraud. Nasdaq delisted Luckin from its exchange in July after an internal Luckin investigation revealed that some employees had fabricated sales figures. Wall Street Journal
Grab and Gojek — Southeast Asia's two most valuable ride-share startups haven't confirmed reports that they are considering a merger, but drivers in Indonesia want a say in the potential deal. A union representing over 100,000 Grab and Gojek drivers threatened nationwide protests if they aren't brought to the table for the merger talks. The drivers fear they could lose their jobs if the merger happens without their input. Channel News Asia
Baidu — Chinese search engine giant Baidu is reportedly looking into producing its own electric vehicles. Baidu currently makes autonomous driving software for car companies, but the new venture would involve the tech firm launching a majority-owned venture with carmakers or contract manufacturing electric vehicles, a growing auto market segment in China. Reuters
Alibaba and Tencent — Chinese regulators on Monday fined three companies—e-commerce giant Alibaba, the online bookstore China Literature, and the logistics company Shenzhen Hive Box—under an anti-monopoly law. The regulator, China's State Administration of Market Regulation, said it's also probing a merger between two Tencent-backed game live-streaming firms over anti-trust claims. Reuters
SMIC — Shares in China's biggest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, fell on Wednesday after the firm's co-CEO resigned without warning. The executive, Liang Mong Song, quit after the firm appointed a new board member without consulting him, according to a resignation letter that circulated on local media. Bloomberg
Fosun — Chinese pharma firm Fosun Pharmaceutical will buy at least 100 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Germany's BioNTech SE and U.S. pharma giant Pfizer if the vaccine gets regulatory approval in China. Reuters
Final figure
7%
China's industrial output rose 7% year-on-year in November, continuing the sector's hot streak and the country's broad economic rebound from a COVID-induced slowdown. The growth exceeded economists' predictions as overseas demand for pandemic-related goods like personal protective equipment, laptops, and other work-from-home electronics surged. China's fixed-asset investment also rose in November, and the urban jobless rate dropped. China is expected to be the only major economy to register an expansion in gross domestic product for 2020.
Wall Street Journal


fortune--2020-12-17--A country with one of the strictest COVID lockdowns is seeing a V-shaped recovery

New Zealand’s economy bounced back strongly from recession in the third quarter, achieving a so-called V-shaped recovery as massive fiscal and monetary stimulus fueled consumer spending.
Gross domestic product surged 14% from the second quarter, when it contracted a revised 11%, Statistics New Zealand said Thursday in Wellington. Economists forecast a 12.9% gain. From a year earlier, the economy grew 0.4%, confounding the consensus forecast for a 1.8% decline.
New Zealanders have gone on a spending spree since the nation eliminated community transmission of COVID-19 in May and then successfully contained sporadic outbreaks. However, the border remains closed to foreigners, crippling the tourism industry, and many businesses have put investment and hiring plans on hold, which is projected to push the jobless rate higher in 2021.
The V-shaped economic rebound is “vindication of the COVID-19 ‘elimination’ strategy New Zealand has pursued, as it has underpinned a strong economic recovery from what has been an unprecedented shock,” said Paul Bloxham, chief Australia and New Zealand economist at HSBC in Sydney. Still, “closed international borders to people movement are weighing on tourism and other services exports, and are set to continue to do so for some time.”
The New Zealand dollar rose after the GDP report and bought 71.29 U.S. cents at 3:52 p.m. in Wellington. The currency has gained 5.5% the past three months, and was appreciating ahead of the release after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced plans to offer Covid-19 vaccines to the entire population in the second half of 2021.
The economy’s quick rebound to pre-COVID levels was a rare feat, said Stephen Toplis, head of research at Bank of New Zealand in Wellington.
“We can only identify three other countries that have achieved the ‘full recovery’: Taiwan, China and Ireland,” he said. “New Zealand is definitely in a very small minority.”
The government’s determination to eliminate the virus saw it impose one of the strictest lockdowns in the world but allowed a quicker resumption of economic activity once it was stamped out. New Zealand has recorded 1,744 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and just 25 deaths.
A fresh community outbreak in mid-August required a second, six-week lockdown in largest city Auckland, but the country has fared better than many of its peers. U.K. GDP fell 9.6% in the third quarter from a year earlier, while Australia’s fell 3.8%.
The government pledged NZ$62 billion ($44 billion) of fiscal support to help revive domestic demand and protect jobs, while the central bank has slashed interest rates and embarked on quantitative easing and term lending programs to further drive down borrowing costs.
That’s put a rocket under the housing market, with prices soaring to fresh records.
Still, the Reserve Bank and some economists have cautioned the economy may contract in the fourth quarter and even face a double-dip recession early next year, citing slower global growth and the possibility that the border will remain closed to most visitors until at least the second half of 2021.
Other Details
The third-quarter expansion was driven by construction and services industries — in particular retailing, accommodation and restaurants, the statistics agency said.


fortune--2020-12-18--Skillz shares soar 29% in trading debut as investors bet on mobile e-sports

Sen. David Perdue ’ s suspicious stock success shows why members of Congress shouldn ’ t be allowed to trade @ @

Skillz shares jumped in its trading debut as investors embraced a business billing itself as the first publicly traded mobile esports company.
The stock climbed 29% to $22.73 on Thursday following a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that allowed it to go public.
Skillz lets 2.7 million players a month compete with others on their mobile phones for points or prizes in games such as Solitaire Cube and Blackout Bingo. The mobile tournaments provider runs about 1,700 tournaments a second, Chief Executive Officer Andrew Paradise said in an interview.
“If you think about Skillz, we are the only meaningful endeavor in mobile esports in the world,” he said. “If you are looking for exposure in mobile esports, Skillz is really the best investment that you can find.”
Skillz effectively lets small-to-midsize game developers make money without having to sell to a bigger company, or resorting to ads, which many users find annoying. Consumers pay tournament fees, of which Skillz takes a 14% cut.
With Skillz public, “the developers don’t have to worry about our financial viability, they can just look it up,” Paradise said. Skillz also makes money off of brand-sponsored advertising.
A merger with the blank-check company Flying Eagle Acquisition Corp. allowed Skillz to go public — a path that’s become increasingly popular for companies looking to avoid the hassles of an initial public offering. Investors included Wellington Management, Fidelity Management & Research, Franklin Templeton and Neuberger Berman.
Through nine months of the year, Skillz’s revenue grew 91% to $162.4 million. But the company isn’t yet profitable: It lost $78.5 million, compared with a net loss of $14.9 million in the first nine months of 2019. Skillz has $250 million in cash and no debt.
The San Francisco-based company’s user base has more than tripled in the last two years, and it’s planning to use its cash for international expansion, targeting markets such as India, Paradise said.
Paradise previously founded and sold startup AisleBuyer, letting consumers check out in stores via their mobile phones, to Intuit Inc. in 2012.


fortune--2020-12-17--Poshmark, newly profitable, files for IPO

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Poshmark, an online marketplace for secondhand clothing, on Thursday filed for an initial public offering with U.S. regulators, hoping to ride a surge of interest in IPOs now that the company has become profitable.
Founded in 2011, Poshmark reported that revenue in the first nine months of 2020 rose 28% to $192.8 million. But perhaps more crucially, as it looks to entice investors to buy its stock, the company earned $8 million in profit after a sizable loss in the same period last year.
Earlier this fall, Poshmark rival ThredUp confidentially filed for an IPO. The RealReal, a competitor focused solely on the luxury market, went public in mid-2019, though its shares are below its IPO price, and the company is currently unprofitable.
All three are leaders in the so-called re-commerce market, which has soared as younger shoppers develop a taste for vintage and secondhand items amid a backlash against the wastefulness of the apparel sector and the need to save money in a tough economy.
A study earlier this year, conducted by independent research firm GlobalData and commissioned by ThredUp, found that the U.S. resale market would hit $36 billion by 2024, compared with $7 billion last year. The idea has caught on to such a degree that some well-established companies, including Levi Strauss, are jumping in with their own resale programs.
Poshmark recently launched features to bolster spending by its customers and increase how frequently they shop. Those include its Just Picked feature, which uses artificial intelligence to scan listings (there were 201 million items listed as of the end of its last quarter) and personalize suggestions to customers on what they should buy. Also new is Dropping Soon, which allows sellers to market their listings ahead of when they’ll be on sale in order to build buzz.
Poshmark had 31.7 million active users as of September, primarily young shoppers who are millennials or members of Gen Z.
“Three key trends are driving the future of retail: the shift to online, the shift to social, and the shift to secondhand. Many of these trends are led by younger generations who continue to grow their spending power as they age,” Poshmark said in its IPO filing.
It plans to list shares on Nasdaq under the ticker POSH.
The U.S. stock market has seen a record number of IPO filings this year, with investors looking to take advantage of a soaring stock market to cash in on their investments. New stocks that have soared recently include those of DoorDash and Airbnb. But not all IPOs see a so-called first-day pop. The distinction for worst first-day performance goes to Wish, an online marketplace, whose shares plummeted 16% on their first day of trading this week.


fortune--2020-12-17--Citron calls this the ‘most ridiculous’ IPO of 2020

“In a year of many interesting IPOs from disruptive data platform Snowflake to leading big data software player Palantir to mobile game engine Unity, there is one IPO that stands out from the rest…” Citron Research wrote in a report Thursday.
DoorDash.
The food delivery company’s stock closed Thursday at $154—down 2.4% on the day—following its debut last week. As Danielle Abril wrote in Fortune: “DoorDash is now valued at around $50 billion. That’s more than big established companies like General Mills, Kraft Heinz, and Ford. Still, DoorDash must prove that its growth during the pandemic was no fluke. Other than a profitable blip in one recent quarter, it has hemorrhaged money for years, losing $204 million in 2018, $667 million in 2019, and, in the first nine months of this year, $149 million.”
The Citron report, from the research arm of the well-known “activist” short-seller, predicts that “this stock should trade to $40 quickly as insiders eagerly await to dump their shares.” They give four reasons:
It’s commoditized: There is “zero differentiation” between Uber Eats, Postmates, Caviar, Grubhub, DASH, or any local provider, Citron’s analysts write.
It’s competitive: “Even worse, this business model has no brand loyalty as the consumer just picks who will deliver their food for the cheapest price.”
It’s expensive: “With DASH direct competitors Postmates, Grubhub, and Uber all trading in a tight valuation range of 3x to 6x sales, DASH is by far the most expensive food delivery company in the world trading at 19x sales.”
Its growth has peaked: “These same people that were betting on DASH blindly should have read the company’s S-1, which clearly states that growth has PEAKED: ‘The circumstances that have accelerated the increase in Total Orders stemming from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may not continue in the future, and we expect the growth rate in Total Orders to decline in future periods,” they write.
To be sure, Citron Research discloses that Citron Capital may hold a position (long or short) in any security discussed. As activist short-sellers, the fund has a history of taking aim at high-flying companies with sharply critical reports, and profiting as the stock sinks.
But as my colleague Bernhard Warner wrote in Fortune recently, activist shorts have recently gained wider repute on the strength of a number of prescient calls. One recent example? As Warner writes, “On Sept. 10, Hindenburg Research published a 67-page report on Nikola—a huge dump of damning allegations…The opening page set the tone: It included 24 bullet points that poured cold water on the company’s claims that it was developing proprietary battery technology, and that it had cracked the code on cheap hydrogen fuel production.” The report helped expose Nikola to closer scrutiny from other investors, and its share price has tumbled more than 60% since then.
As for what’s in store for DoorDash? Citron’s report simply concludes: “See you at $40.”


fortune--2020-12-17--U.S. nuclear weapons agency hacked by suspected Russians

The U.S. nuclear weapons agency and at least three states were hacked as part of a suspected Russian cyber-attack that struck several federal government agencies.
The Energy Department and its National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains America’s nuclear stockpile, were targeted as part of a larger attack by suspected Russian hackers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The hack affected unclassified systems, the person added. The hack of the nuclear agency was first reported by Politico.
In addition, two people familiar with the ongoing investigation said three states were breached in the attack, though they wouldn’t identify the states. A third person familiar with the probe confirmed that states were hacked but didn’t provide a number.
In an advisory Thursday that signaled the widening alarm over the the breach, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the hackers posed a “grave risk” to federal, state and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure and the private sector. The agency said the attackers demonstrated “sophistication and complex tradecraft.”
While President Donald Trump has yet to publicly address the hack, President-elect Joe Biden issued a statement Thursday on “what appears to be a massive cybersecurity breach affecting potentially thousands of victims, including U.S. companies and federal government entities.”
Biden statement
“I want to be clear: My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government — and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,” Biden said, pledging to impose “substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks.”
Russia has denied any involvement in the hack.
Although many details are still unclear, the hackers are believed to have gained access to networks by installing malicious code in a widely used software program from SolarWinds, whose customers include government agencies and Fortune 500 companies, according to the company and cybersecurity experts. The departments of Homeland Security, Treasury, Commerce and State were breached, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“This is a patient, well-resourced, and focused adversary that has sustained long duration activity on victim networks,” CISA said in its bulletin.


fortune--2020-12-17--How a molecule gets to the masses

How a molecule gets to the masses

Good afternoon, readers.
Have you heard the good news about COVID vaccines?
That’s right. In the span of mere days between the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) emergency authorization of Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus shot last Friday to the initial rollout of said vaccine earlier this week, some Americans are beginning to get their first COVID vaccine doses. In a separate vote on Thursday, FDA advisers also voted to recommend Moderna’s vaccine, clearing the way for emergency authorization as early as Friday.
The priority, of course, is for the health care workers on the front lines and the most vulnerable Americans, such as long-term care facility and nursing home residents. But the real marvel to me is the very process of how a vaccine travels from the minds of scientists to the arms of the populace.
It’s worth taking time to marvel at exactly how fast this process has gone—and the myriad challenges which remain.
When companies develop a drug or a vaccine, what they’re really looking to do is suss out a pathogen or biological target’s weak spots. That can take place via, say, throwing a random assortment of molecules and disease-fighters at a specific target in the body. And it’s a process which can often be informed by decoding a biological foe’s genetic code to maximize your chances of a successful biopharmaceutical.
That’s how the R&D part of the COVID vaccine effort went down. Now, it’s all up to a motley crew of players to plan out how to actually get these things to people like doctors and nurses in the safest way possible. And that includes prioritizing exactly who, within a hospital, should be prioritized for getting the first doses.
Dr. Melanie Swift of the famed Mayo Clinic health system is helping lead such efforts on the ground for her own hospital system. It’s an approach that requires keeping tabs on just how close contact nurses, physicians, and their support staff (like those who may have to clean up an ICU) have with COVID patients and their corresponding risk.
“We’ve provided a grid of different tasks and places where our people might work” in order to prioritize how the vaccine doses are doled out, she tells Fortune. “So the COVID-specific unit, for example, emergency departments, a COVID outpatient vaccine infusion center, etc” would be among the first to get vaccine doses once they reach Mayo’s various affiliate hospitals.
“There’s about 10 or 11 of these different risks and settings for our various employees. And it goes all the way down to outpatient clinics, non-direct patient contact staff, and teleworkers. So we’ve got this grid. We actually sent these lists out to the appropriate level supervisor,” says Swift. Those supervisors then check off columns for those they oversee to help Swift and her team determine this vaccine resource allocation.
For more on that conversation, and chats with informatics experts faced with this logistics challenge, head on over here.
We’ll be offline next Thursday (and the Thursday after that) due to the upcoming holidays. Read on for the day’s news, and we’ll see you again in the New Year on January 7. And as a personal request to readers: Let me know what mattered to you most in the health care world this year. And no, it doesn’t have to be related to COVID.
Happy holidays to all.
Sy Mukherjee
sy.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Behind ZocDoc's personalized COVID vaccine platform. I spoke with ZocDoc CEO Oliver Kharraz about the company's new efforts to serve as an information hub about the local availability of COVID vaccines. There's a twist to what ZocDoc is doing: The service is free, and you don't have to be a member. It pools in state and local health data in order to provide personalized advice on what steps someone may be able to take in order to get vaccinated. “We understand ourselves really as sort of a marketplace, where consumers can find what’s available to them,” Kharraz says. “And we are, in some ways, a neutral entity. So in that respect there’s a broad spectrum of services Zocdoc users can benefit from. We don’t have a horse in this race. We can just try and put forward what you think is objectively the best information for patients and give them the ability to act on this.”(Fortune)
FDA approves pioneering implant for repairing torn ACLs. The FDA has approved the first-ever implant to help repair torn ACLs, among the most common and debilitating injuries faced by athletes. The BEAR implant from Miach Orthopaedics essentially allows ACL injury patients to avoid expensive and intrusive reconstructive surgery by slowly releasing a flow of collagen back into the injured area, facilitating growth and healing. And it supports the theory that future of medicine is all about being as non-invasive as possible. Just look at the roster of robotic surgeons out there these days. (FierceBiotech)
INDICATIONS
It's Moderna's turn at the FDA. Just a week after an committee of expert advisers recommended Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID vaccine for emergency authorization (advice which the FDA heeded just a day later), the same committee decided to endorse giving Moderna's own mRNA-based COVID vaccine the same treatment, setting up a speedy emergency authorization. While Moderna's vaccine uses similar technology to Pfizer's, it has different storage requirements, including a less extreme cooling threshold, which could significantly expand the pool of vaccine doses which are out there.
THE BIG PICTURE
The scale of the pandemic just keeps surging. I'm tired of using the phrase "grim milestone" at this point, but unfortunately we just seem to keep reaching grim milestones. Early Thursday morning, we found out that more than 3,600 Americans had died of COVID in a single day. In addition, there are more than 113,000 active COVID-related hospitalizations, per data from Johns Hopkins. Of course, this is why the vaccine campaign is so critical as we head into what could be a very dark winter when everyone may not have the option to keep gatherings outdoors or socially distant. Vigilance and collective responsibility remains as important as ever. (NPR)
REQUIRED READING
Get ready to return to a very different office, by S. Mitra Kalita
During COVID, immigrants are getting the job done, by Fortune Editors
CEOs found their voice in a year of upheaval, by Verne Kopytoff


fortune--2020-12-17--In tackling the country’s biggest problems, Biden and Harris need to prioritize gender and racial eq

In tackling the country’s biggest problems, Biden and Harris need to prioritize gender and racial equity

During the Democratic presidential primaries, both President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris committed to what is called gender mainstreaming of policy issues. In other words, each promised to apply the gender lens when making major policy decisions: How would Policy X impact the 51% of our population that is female; and how would that differ from its impact on the other 49% that is male?
In his Agenda for Women, Biden also committed to creating a White House Council on Gender Equality. This council, to be chaired by a senior member of the Executive Office of the President, will do something that many economists (including myself) have been urging the government to do for decades: evaluate policies through an intersectional gender lens.
The intersectional gender lens takes the idea of gender mainstreaming a step further by factoring in not only gender, but also race and ethnicity in policy evaluation. This more nuanced view of how policies impact the population leads to more efficient, more effective allocation of resources.
And this approach will be key to achieving the new administration’s goals when it comes to tackling what Biden and Harris recently announced as their top four priorities: COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity, and climate change.
COVID-19
Putting an intersectional gender lens on COVID-19 response efforts would not only lead to more efficient resource allocation, it would also help reverse deepening economic inequity.
As it stands, none of the over $2 trillion in economic stimulus deployed by the U.S. government to combat COVID-19 so far has been allocated with this lens in mind. Instead of creating a targeted response plan that took into account the unique experiences of each gender and race/ethnicity, government resources were distributed broadly. Policymakers have seemed ignorant of the extent to which the pandemic hindered women and people of color to a greater degree on multiple levels.
To give one example of what COVID-19 response efforts look like through the intersectional gender lens, consider that women hold over 75% of healthcare jobs, according to the Census Bureau. They also dominate caregiving roles within the industry. They make up 89% of registered nurses, 88% of nurse practitioners, and 87% of healthcare support workers. Among those 87% of support workers (which include home health aides and nursing assistants), a remarkable 23% are Black women.
Despite their work on the front lines, women healthcare workers in the U.S. are paid less than men. In 2018, a female healthcare support worker brought home $0.83 for every $1 her male counterparts brought home. Over a lifetime, that adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost economic opportunity, mobility, and security. Decades of pay inequity, such as that experienced by our front-line heroes, created cracks in the country’s economic foundation. And when the crisis hit, the foundation collapsed. But the COVID response so far hasn’t taken these disparate impacts into account.
To rebuild the foundation of our economy post-crisis, we need a recovery plan that accounts for the systemic cracks (including pay inequity and many others) that COVID-19 has so swiftly brought to the surface.
Economic recovery
If women in the U.S. were compensated for the “second shift” of unpaid labor, including childcare and housework, they would earn an additional $40,000 each year, on average. But as we know, women are not compensated for their unpaid work, and our economic recovery is in jeopardy because of it. With women continuing to burn both ends of the stick faster than before, it’s time we thoughtfully reconsider the long-term impact of relegating them to be the country’s social safety net.
We are already witnessing women fall out of the workforce at a rapid clip. Our economy has been set back three years in terms of the number of women participating in the labor force, and 32 years in terms of the rate of women participating in the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. And while white women have recovered 61% of the jobs they lost during the pandemic, the Washington Post reported that Black women have recovered only 34% of their jobs.
Since achieving equity in the labor force is key to reviving the middle class, boosting consumer spending, expanding the economy by $789 billion, and ultimately unlocking the $2 trillion economic opportunity of intersectional gender equity, it’s paramount to create a recovery plan with the needs of our most vulnerable (i.e., women and people of color) at the core. This is the only way we can truly build back better.
To accomplish such a task, we need a more complete view of our economy than what we have historically been given. What does the economy look like for a Black breadwinner mom? What does the economy look like for a same-sex couple? What does the economy look like for a stay-at-home dad whose spouse was denied a promotion because of pregnancy bias?
Without a nuanced, intersectional understanding of our economy, recovery efforts will continuously fall short and lead to deeper economic inequity. It’s time we start horizontally integrating gender, race, and ethnicity into all phases of the policy lifecycle. From ideation to creation to evaluation, intersectional gender data is key to unlocking insights that will sharpen our recovery efforts.
Racial equity
President-elect Biden recognizes the importance of building an economy that welcomes all Americans as full participants. To build the type of economy, where, as Biden has put it, “every American enjoys a fair return for their work, and an equal chance to get ahead,” our elected officials need a mechanism to embed myriad lived experiences into the policy-making process.
As outlined in their top four priorities plan, the Biden-Harris administration aims to achieve racial equity via thirteen smaller goals. Let’s take a look at just one goal, “boosting retirement security and financial wealth for Black, Brown, and Native Families,” through the intersectional gender lens.
First, we need to understand why boosting retirement and financial wealth matters. Black, Brown, and Native families face pay gaps that dampen wealth creation, economic security, and overall wellbeing. Latina Equal Pay Day, for instance, took place on October 29 this year—which is symbolic of the extra ten months Latina women had to work to catch up to the earnings of non-Hispanic white men from 2019. With the average Latina woman experiencing a lifetime wage gap of $1.1 million (as compared to non-Hispanic white men), it’s no wonder the poverty rate of Latina-headed households is nearly four times the aggregate U.S. poverty rate (39% vs. 10.5%).
So how might we begin to use this information to shape more targeted, efficient, and equitable policy solutions to boost retirement security and financial wealth for Black, Brown, and Native families? Perhaps we should pass legislation to ensure pay equity. Maybe we need to forgive student loan debt because it disproportionately takes money out of women’s wallets before they even have an opportunity to start building wealth. (Yes, there’s such a thing as a student loan debt gender gap.)
Climate change
As Vice President-elect Harris has said, “It’s a woman’s issue to care about climate change.” Women are 51% of the U.S. population, and they—together with their lived experiences, unique perspectives, and specific talents—need to be integrated into climate solutions.
When it comes to disaster management, I wonder what the recovery of Hurricane Katrina would have looked like had the intersectional gender lens been applied to recovery efforts. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 83% of single mothers could not return to their homes two years post-hurricane. What resources would we have distributed to meet the needs of those women if we’d been thinking in terms of equity? What pathways for reemployment would we have created for the women who lost two-thirds of all the jobs eliminated as a result of Katrina?
And when it comes to disaster mitigation, it’s time we give women a seat at the table. Not only is this the right thing to do, it’s also the smart thing to do. Female policymakers are more likely to sign international treaties on climate resolutions than male policymakers according to a study published by the European Journal of Political Economy.
Climate change—like COVID-19, like our economic recovery, like racial justice, like intersectional gender equity—impacts all of us. We cannot keep these issues siloed any longer. Through the diligent application of gender mainstreaming, as executed by the head of the White House Council on Gender Equality, we can truly build back better.
Katica Roy is a gender economist and the CEO and founder of Pipeline, a SaaS company that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and drive economic gains through gender equity.


fortune--2020-12-17--Stimulus update: Congress is nearing a deal that includes $600 checks

Republican and Democratic leaders are hashing out the final details of another massive economic aid package. And it looks like the final deal should include another stimulus checks for most Americans.
Unlike the CARES Act, which sent out $1,200 checks to most Americans, this go around stimulus checks are expected to be $600 per taxpayer, the Washington Post reports. The package is also expected to send $600 per dependent, including adult dependents. If that passes, it would mean a married couple with two dependents could expect a check up to $2,400.
Drew Hammill, the spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted last night that the Speaker, Leader Schumer, and Secretary Mnuchin spoke at 10:30 p.m. as “part of a series of phone conversations to complete the COVID relief negotiations,” and that they would continue discussions Thursday morning. CNN reported that “On a conference call with Senate Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats are pushing to get the deal done immediately. ‘Chuck was very adamant about shooting for tomorrow at midnight,’ said Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat.”
If checks are indeed included the package, eligibility would be the same as the CARES Act, the Washington Post reports. That means these stimulus checks would decrease for adjusted gross income above $75,000 per individual or $150,000 per qualified couple. And the checks would phase out for individuals earning above $99,000, head of household filers with one child above $146,500, and joint filers with no children at $198,000.
Talks kicked into high-gear this week after Republicans backed off of their request for COVID-19 lawsuit immunity for businesses being included in this bill, and Democrats sidelined their demand for state and local government funding. The bill is expected to be in the ballpark of $900 billion. A final agreement rest of the on the two sides working through details for items like pandemic unemployment benefits and mortgage/rent moratoriums.
If the last go-around is any indication, the first of the checks would start to be deposited within two weeks of the legislation passing. After the passage of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act on March 27, Americans started to receive their stimulus checks as early as the week of April 13.
The long waits for stimulus checks shouldn’t happen this time. Back in the spring, millions of Americans, including those on Social Security, saw their checks delayed until they provided additional information. Since this payment would be based on the same tax year, it’s unlikely more information will need to be verified—at least among those who received their first round of payments.


fortune--2020-12-17--GitHub CEO: We’re nuking all tracking ‘cookies’ and you should too

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Last month the team at GitHub, the software code-sharing website, showed its chief executive, Nat Friedman, some new design plans.
The group was tasked with refurbishing the site’s so-called cookie banners. They’re those annoying digital pop-ups that ask visitors to accept the use of “cookies,” a pervasive tracking technology that hitches a ride on Internet browsers to track people’s web-surfing activity.
The designers offered mock-ups. They simplified the disclosures’ ponderous legalese. They made the boxes tinier. They updated the colors to more pleasing hues. All the effort was aimed at making the banners less irritating.
Friedman commended the team’s work, but his verdict was no less harsh for it. “It may be the world’s best cookie banner,” Friedman adjudged. “But it still sucks. Nobody wants to see it.”
“Let’s just get rid of it all together,” Friedman said.
So the team went a different route. GitHub, a business Microsoft acquired for $7.5 billion two years ago, has spent the past few weeks excising all nonessential web trackers and cookies on its site—save for a few that are critical to its operation. A “session” cookie authenticates a logged-in user, for example, and others detect visitors’ time zones and language preferences.
Now that GitHub no longer has any outside trackers or cookies on its site, it doesn’t need to generate a nuisance pop-up the instant someone visits the web page. No outside services can scrutinize what people are up to on GitHub, and that ever-present consent form, ubiquitous around the web, is gone.
The action is a small victory in a bigger war. As the ad-selling duopoly of Google and Facebook comes under fire by antitrust regulators, the biggest tech players are drawing battle lines around companies’ use of people’s data. Apple and Facebook are openly feuding over the future of online profiling and behavior tracking. GitHub’s stance can be viewed as a division of yet another tech giant, Microsoft—another subsidiary of which, LinkedIn, is at least partly an ad-based social network—staking out a position against surveillance.
Cookie monsters
Cookies can be sorted into a few categories depending on their purpose, but the majority help boost targeted ads, a boon to the businesses like Google and Facebook.
Other types of cookies have different functions, though many of them, too, help serve ads. Some cookies allow certain pieces of content to inhabit a site, such as embedded YouTube videos, Twitter sharing buttons, Facebook log-in forms. Others provide analytics, allowing website operators to scrutinize how people are using their websites.
Since GitHub doesn’t rely on ads to make money—it sells premium products on top of its free developer tools—eradicating cookies was a lighter lift than other websites may find. The job mostly involved scrapping that last category of analytics trackers.
Friedman believes the tradeoff was worth the effort. “We lost some visibility [into how people are using GitHub]. But I think it’s questionable whether that matters,” he said. “I don’t think you need an all-seeing eye to build a good website.”
A screenshot of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser when visiting GitHub.com, where trackers and cookies are no longer present.
Cookie banners proliferated in the wake of the European Union’s adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, a piece of legislation intended to improve privacy and data transparency on the web. Midas Nouwens, an assistant professor who studies data privacy protection law at Aarhus University in Denmark, said GitHub’s move was a “welcome consequence” of the new rules.
“Companies should consider whether harvesting that kind of data is really worth it if it means they have to implement user-hostile consent interfaces,” Nouwens said.
“It’s like having a lawyer tap you on the shoulder every time you visit a new website,” Friedman said. “This is like, you’re gonna go play miniature golf, and you have to sign like a 25-page liability waiver to play.
“I just think that’s kind of slightly corrosive to your soul, as a human being,” Friedman added.
Do Not Track redux
John Bergmayer, legal director at Public Knowledge Project, a nonprofit Internet advocacy group, called GitHub’s move “admirable.” He added: “The incentives all point toward people collecting more and more data, even if it’s not that useful, because if it’s basically free to collect and there’s no penalties for collecting it or for misusing it.”
Marshall Erwin, chief security officer at Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, also praised GitHub’s action. “There are legitimate use cases for third-party cookies, but the technology and the way that it’s used across the web is pretty pernicious, and it has created an unhealthy web,” he said. “For a large important platform like GitHub to take those steps, I think that is significant.”
An earlier attempt at making the web more private, the “do not track” movement, relied on voluntary participation. When few websites agreed to observe people’s anti-tracking preferences, the initiative fizzled out.
Recently, web browser makers, like Mozilla, became more aggressive, updating their software to block third-party cookies and trackers by default. The nonprofit Tor browser and Apple’s Safari browser have adopted similar policies.
Google’s Chrome browser, widely perceived as dragging its feet on the issue, is aiming for a phaseout by 2022.
Go on and git
While privacy advocates praise GitHub for taking action on the issue, it’s relatively easy for the company to do so. GitHub doesn’t rely on ads to keep the lights on. And the site’s engineers have the coding chops to develop in-house tools to replace the analytics features it lost.
But the move is noteworthy, nonetheless. GitHub represents one of the first websites in a coming wave of cookie phaseouts. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Vox, and other publications are seeking to do the same. (Fortune’s website, on the other hand, uses trackers for the time being.)
“I think more websites should just do it,” Friedman told Fortune. “You don’t need all these cookie banners, you don’t need to use all these cookies, you don’t need to send all your users’ data to third parties. Just focus on building a good product. That’s what people want.”


fortune--2020-12-17--Americans are more worried than ever about coronavirus—but are doing less to combat it

As if the skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases across the U.S. wasn’t proof enough, a new study from consumer data science firm Dunnhumby seems to signal that many Americans have given up when it comes to the virus.
The survey found that U.S. consumers are more worried than ever about the pandemic but are doing less to combat the virus.
“Worry is back with a vengeance,” said Grant Steadman, president of North America for Dunnhumby, in a press release.
Dunnhumby’s “Worry Index” shows that Americans are at their highest level of anxiety about the virus since the pandemic started, with 32% of respondents saying they are “extremely worried about it.”
And yet the results also showed that fewer people in the U.S. are taking action to combat it. Social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing are all down since March, according to the survey. Only 40% of respondents support restaurant and bar closings, versus 69% in March.
U.S. consumers are outliers when it comes to their increased concern. The report, which surveyed more than 42,000 respondents in 21 countries, showed that most nations’ worry levels are below those seen at the beginning of the pandemic.
Consumers in the U.S. are also losing confidence in institutions, the study found. Faith in the U.S. government’s ability to handle COVID-19 is at all-time low at 18%, down 19 points from the start of the pandemic. Only respondents in Japan and Spain offered lower assessments of their governments’ response.
Americans also have a grim outlook on their economic situation, with more more than half reporting that their finances are in poor shape and 70% saying the country’s economy is weak.
That will translate into lower holiday spending, Dunnhumby says: U.S. consumers plan on spending 25% less on holiday food and 36% less on gifts in 2020 compared with last year. In fact, 10% said they would not be buying any gifts at all.


fortune--2020-12-17--Innovation just isn’t happening over Zoom

Not long ago, we thought that interacting with coworkers over the Internet would accelerate our ability to develop new methods, ideas, and perspectives. Working remotely was supposed to make us more engaged and productive, liberating our creativity from the confines of the office. I have learned during the pandemic the hard way that this belief was wrong.
For the last four semesters, I’ve co-taught a class at Carnegie Mellon University’s Silicon Valley campus called Exponential Innovation with my father, Vivek Wadhwa. We teach students about advancing technologies, how these trends are overturning industries, and how they can become entrepreneurs to tackle the grand challenges of humanity. Each class has been a great success in terms of the impact it had on students, with as many as one-third saying it changed their goals in life and many more telling us how their mind has been opened to all sorts of new possibilities. It’s been amazing to see the innovative startup ideas the students have come up with by interacting with each other.
Last year, one of our students, Mark Langer, developed an idea to build electric, autonomous drones for cargo transport, which he developed into a startup called Amelia Aero. When I asked Langer what about the class worked for him, he told me, “Without the forum of minds in that class, the company would not have developed into what it is today.” In previous classes, students have developed robots for inventory management and machine learning applications to reduce health care costs, among other things.
This spring we took our in-person class fully remote. This time, however, the groundbreaking ideas just didn’t materialize.
The students were just as brilliant as they always are. They all made a great effort to stay engaged, and they gave us high marks for instruction. Many told us they found the class valuable. But the sparks didn’t fly as they usually do. This time, there were no new ventures launched, no amazing insights discovered, and no long emails about career paths changed and outlooks expanded.
I’ve come to believe that meaningful collaboration is far more about the free-flowing, back-and-forth exchange of ideas, the informal discussions, and the unplanned gatherings than being able to speak to each other online.
Every year, we would make it a point to make sure that students worked in diverse groups of five. We insisted on students with different backgrounds coming together to brainstorm. They would debate, discuss, and challenge each other. Oftentimes, one group would overhear another, and the conversation would spill over into a new subject. Students would approach each other after a session to offer casual recommendations for material they might be interested in, or YouTube videos they needed to watch.
This year we used the same working-group strategy. But that magic just didn’t translate to a breakout room on videoconference. When we did these exercises in person, our room would be full of energy and excitement, but when I’d drop into online conversations, they were typically more dull and distracted.
Innovation requires a human touch—there’s something special that happens when people are able to physically work together. They can look each other in the eyes, read body language, and see and hear the person with full clarity. One of the most powerful tools in business is a marker and a whiteboard. Online collaboration tools are full of friction and just don’t capture the exchange of ideas in a similar, seamless way.
As Alan Murray reported recently in Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter, Google is planning to give its employee’s a three-day “flexible workweek” when they return to the office in September. Murray points out that Google has a lot of issues to work through—among them, it needs to decide which three days employees work and how employees now living in different geographies will factor into this. It’s a worthy effort, but Google will run into the same challenges as everyone else: Remote collaboration works well for certain tasks and approaches, but innovation is not one of them.
For older workers with established networks, or teams with years of experience working together, there may be an exception. But the vast majority of employees are going to realize that bouncing ideas off peers and superiors is key to any efforts to innovate. In a remote environment, it’s harder to show their managers what they are capable of. They lose the benefits of spontaneity in the workplace. They can interact with the company’s culture only in a minimal way, and that will lead to increasing concerns about stagnating or being left behind.
If Google and other companies looking to integrate remote and distributed teams into their innovation efforts, they need to find a way to upgrade the human element of collaboration—today’s tools and technologies just aren’t going to work.
Tarun Wadhwa is an entrepreneur, strategist, lecturer, and writer who is working at the intersection of technology, innovation, global growth, security, and public policy. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at Emory University Department of Political Science.


fortune--2020-12-17--Google is hit with another antitrust lawsuit, adding to its legal woes

A bipartisan coalition of states sued Alphabet’s Google Thursday alleging broad antitrust violations in the online search market, marking the third U.S. case against the search giant in two months.
The lawsuit, led by Colorado, Iowa and other states, marks the latest escalation of the antitrust battle against Google. It comes a day after 10 Republican state attorneys general led by Texas sued the company for anticompetitive practices, and follows an October complaint by the Justice Department.
“Combined with the other recent lawsuits filed against Google, never before have so many states and the federal government come together to challenge a company with such power,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said a statement. “Google has more data on consumers, and more variety of information, than perhaps any entity in history.”
The lawsuit, filed by 38 attorneys general, accuses Google of illegally monopolizing internet search and search advertising through a series of anticompetitive contracts and conduct, hurting consumers and advertisers in the process.
The Justice Department and 11 Republican state attorneys general sued Google on Oct. 20 in the most significant monopolization case in more than two decades. That case focuses on Google’s agreements with Apple Inc. and other device makers and partners to provide Google search as a default to users.
The Texas-led case focuses on Google’s control over the technology that delivers display ads across the web. It alleges that Google had reached an illegal deal with Facebook Inc. to maintain a chokehold over the lucrative digital advertising market.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said during a virtual press conference Thursday that the new case goes beyond the Justice Department’s complaint. Unlike the U.S. complaint, the states target Google’s conduct in specialized search services, such as Yelp Inc., saying the company cut off competition from those competitors and made it harder for users to access information from them. Weiser said that the states will move to consolidate the suit with the federal case.
“Probably the most comparable case is 20 years ago, the Microsoft case,” Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson told reporters during the press conference. “We’re in a new time, a new era.”
The antitrust case against Microsoft, which began in 1998 and focused on deals to distribute its software and operating systems, helped set the terms for competition in the emerging tech industry.
Antitrust actions against large technology platforms have escalated dramatically in the final weeks of the year. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission and a group of more than 45 states led by New York filed a pair of lawsuits against Facebook alleging the social-media giant thwarted competition to protect its monopoly. The suits sought court orders to unwind Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Critics have accused Google of using its dominance of the online search market to steal other companies’ content for its own results and starve competitors of vital traffic. They also claim it has made acquisitions in online ads and video that reduced competition, and locked up key distribution channels on browsers and mobile operating systems.
Google says that its search engine is popular and free, that rankings are driven by consumer needs and that prior deals passed regulatory scrutiny. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest case by states.
Google has said that the U.S.-led search case is “deeply flawed” and called Wednesday’s filing “meritless” and “inaccurate.” The search engine says that platforms’ agreements for prime placement before consumers are common in many markets and don’t prevent users from switching to competitors.
Google also says it faces stiff competition from companies including Amazon.com Inc. for the most profitable searches, which show consumer intent to purchase goods and command greater advertiser dollars.


fortune--2020-12-17--Coinbase announces IPO in a milestone for the crypto industry

Cryptocurrency giant Coinbase announced on Thursday that it has confidentially filed for a public offering, becoming the latest in a parade of high-profile startups to pursue an IPO in 2020.
Founded in 2012 as a simple way for consumers to purchase Bitcoin, Coinbase has since become a conglomerate of crypto-related business and the standard-bearer for an industry long regarded with suspicion by regulators and the traditional financial establishment.
Coinbase’s announcement comes at a time when both the IPO market and cryptocurrency prices are red-hot. The price of Bitcoin is currently near a record $23,500, and trading volumes are surging—a boon for firms like Coinbase, which makes the bulk of its revenue from trading commissions.
In its IPO announcement, which came in a company blog post, Coinbase did not provide details about how it would structure its offering. A traditional IPO, whereby banks arrange for institutions to get first dibs on the stock for a fixed price, would likely be anathema to many crypto enthusiasts and Coinbase employees.
In a recent interview, Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam told Fortune the company is “spiritually” built to go public via an offering involving digital tokens on a blockchain—the ledger technology that underpins Bitcoin, and which crypto enthusiasts view as the future of financial infrastructure.
It’s far from clear, however, whether the Securities and Exchange Commission would sign off on such an arrangement. If the agency refuses to do so, another option would be for Coinbase to pursue a direct listing in which it sells shares directly to the public. This model was recently employed by Spotify and Slack, and veteran tech journalist Alex Wilhelm has noted that Coinbase is an “archetypal” candidate for such a listing, in part because of its hefty balance sheet.
Coinbase did not immediately respond to queries about the nature of listing it would pursue.
The company has yet to reveal how much money it is making, though sources close to Coinbase say it has regularly turned a profit in recent years. The company’s last fundraising round, for $300 million, valued it near $8 billion. That figure, however, is from 2018, and it’s likely Coinbase will seek a much higher valuation owing to the booming crypto market and the recent surge in demand for IPOs.
Coinbase’s IPO will give its early shareholders, including CEO Brian Armstrong and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, an opportunity to cash out. But it will also represent a milestone in the crypto industry’s long-running quest for legitimacy.
When Coinbase launched, many dismissed Bitcoin as a fad, while many government officials regarded it as primarily a vehicle for crime and money laundering. While some policymakers—and President Trump—continue to treat the digital currency with hostility, the past two years have seen a surge in acceptance by mainstream institutions. Indeed, a new crypto fund run by cofounder Ehrsam has attracted investments from the likes of the endowments of Harvard and Stanford universities.
Meanwhile, Coinbase has made dozens of acquisitions in recent years to help its diversify its revenue model beyond trading fees. This has included buying custody operations, which involve charging clients to safely store large amounts of cryptocurrency.
The company has been dogged by recent controversy, however, related to a decision by CEO Armstrong to publish a blog post declaring Coinbase to be an “apolitical” company. The post came in the midst of upheaval related to the Black Lives Matter protests and was regarded by many as tone deaf and insensitive. The controversy gained further traction last month when the New York Times published a piece describing how numerous Black employees had left Coinbase, with some of them citing racist attitudes among their coworkers.
In the past few months, Coinbase appears to have been laying groundwork for its IPO with a series of boardroom shuffles. The most recent of these involved adding Cisco CFO Kelly Kramer to its board and elevating the veteran Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen to full board member status.


fortune--2020-12-17--You can now get personalized updates on the COVID vaccine from Zocdoc

With COVID vaccines finally being rolled out to priority groups in the U.S., the nation is now at the starting point of an unprecedented experiment that began nearly a year ago.
Digital health care services and virtual hubs are playing some of the most critical roles in the coronavirus vaccine rollout. Where do you get it? Did you get the right one? Where do you even find such information in the midst of a data and news deluge?
It sounds like something out of a dystopian fever dream. But perhaps the most surprising reality is the extent to which companies large and small have rallied to support this crucial effort. Zocdoc, the New York–based medical appointment startup, is among that arsenal. And it just launched a service specifically tailored toward leading Americans to a COVID vaccine.
That may include directing you to the local pharmacy or hospital which will finally carry the vaccine, and that data is pooled from local health authorities. Those who use the service aren’t even asked for their names or expected to pay money. It is, in Zocdoc CEO and cofounder Oliver Kharraz’s telling, a purely informational tool that can reach the vast majority of the population. And the localized content could prove crucial during the upcoming vaccination campaign, seeing as state and local governments will have disparate strategies in how they allocate various COVID vaccines.
To be clear, Zocdoc isn’t a health care provider. It’s more of a hub. You can find physicians and medical services in what Kharraz describes as a bazaar of sorts for medicine and related information. You can link up with primary care physicians within your network, or in this case, even without being a Zocdoc user, access information about COVID vaccines such as the ones coming from Pfizer and Moderna.
“We understand ourselves really as sort of a marketplace, where consumers can find what’s available to them,” Kharraz tells Fortune. “And we are, in some ways, a neutral entity. So in that respect there’s a broad spectrum of services Zocdoc users can benefit from. We don’t have a horse in this race. We can just try and put forward what you think is objectively the best information for patients and give them the ability to act on this.”
So how does that actually look on the ground? As a private company, Zocdoc doesn’t reveal the nitty-gritty of its metrics. But Kharraz shared some details.
“We cover roughly 70% to 80% of the population without easy access to health services, meaning we have a health care access point close to them,” he says. “And we’re obviously constantly trying to use this for the vaccine effort. You know, honestly, we would try to go beyond the doctors that are bookable on our side as necessary and point patients to other resources where they could get vaccines as well.”
Basically, the goal is to get patients informed about what’s going on during an unprecedented immunization campaign.
“If you want to take advantage of this offering, all you need to do is go to the website, and we can provide you the link,” says Kharraz. “And you can give us some basic information that we believe is going to be relevant to tailoring the information you get to your specific case.
“The reality of it is…the simplification and the absorption of complexity into a system like Zocdoc, and then just providing the patient with information and actionable tools. That’s ultimately the value that we’ve been bringing for over a decade. And I think that’s the value that we continue to bring in this specific situation,” he says.


fortune--2020-12-17--‘There simply isn’t the trust’: The fight to overcome vaccine skepticism in the Black community

Now that a much anticipated coronavirus vaccine is being distributed across the United States, Cheryl Stokes is looking forward to eventually getting some of her pre-pandemic life back—as long as her doubts about vaccine safety can be resolved.
“I’m excited that there is a vaccine. Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, thank God! Maybe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,’” says Stokes, a partner at executive-recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles.
“But it’s really early days, and I’m looking for data,” adds Stokes, a longtime corporate executive and MIT-trained engineer, and a Black woman who says that “as a woman of color, nine out of 10 people I know well are saying they will not get the vaccine. There simply isn’t the trust.”
She’s in good company with her skepticism—especially among Black adults and other people of color, who are all too aware of the medical establishment’s current racist inequities and horrific history of mistreating them in the name of research and scientific progress. The U.S. track record includes the government’s 40-year Tuskegee experiment, which deliberately failed to treat hundreds of Black men with syphilis, so that doctors could study the course of the disease; the painful experiments by J. Marion Sims, the 19th-century gynecologist who developed now-commonplace techniques by performing surgery without anesthesia on enslaved women; and the current stark disparities and widespread discrimination embedded in the health care available to many people of color, which have contributed to the pandemic’s disproportionately deadly impact on Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities.
“Currently Black people do get unequal treatment, and less treatment. The evidence is very stark and shocking,” Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, vice president of health care delivery system reform at the Commonwealth Fund, said at a Fortune Most Powerful Women event last week. “There’s active distrust of government, and many Black people say they don’t trust the medical establishment. And it’s really important to understand that.”
These grim realities have all combined to make those who have been most devastated by the coronavirus also the most wary about the new vaccines against it. Only 28% of Black adults said they would be willing to get a vaccine for COVID-19 as soon as possible, according to a Fortune and SurveyMonkey poll earlier this month.
And it’s not just Black communities that remain skeptical of or outright opposed to vaccines. While overall willingness to get inoculated against COVID-19 is increasing, recent surveys also show pockets of reluctance among Republicans, millennials, rural residents, and even essential workers. Only 40% of U.S. adults say they’d want to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible, with another 39% saying they’d want to wait a while, according to Fortune and SurveyMonkey—and 19% say they never want to take it.
Public health authorities and community organizations, well aware of this wide-ranging skepticism and its various causes, have spent the fall trying to answer questions and build confidence in an eventual coronavirus vaccine. But now, as Americans receive the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and anticipate the regulatory approval of Moderna’s version this week, there’s a new urgency to the campaign to win over vaccine skeptics. Their reluctance, if sustained, will undermine the country’s ability to reach the threshold of 75% to 80% that public health experts say is necessary for the country to achieve “herd immunity” to the coronavirus—and finally end the pandemic.
“It’s our job to answer the really tough, legitimate questions that people have, because this science is really complicated,” says Amy Pisani, the executive director of vaccine advocacy organization Vaccinate Your Family.
But “our biggest hurdle is to try to help people understand that we’re all in this together,” she adds. If that fails, “we’re never going to go back to normal.”
Waiting on Congress
After several months of low national confidence in vaccines, there’s some reason to be increasingly optimistic: 71% of all people recently surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they will “definitely or probably” get a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a survey published Tuesday, up from 63% in September. Black adults are also more willing to get the vaccine than they were in September, according to Kaiser, but 35% still say they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated, citing worries about possible side effects, distrust of the government, or distrust about vaccines in general.
Public health experts, including leading Black doctors and scientists, have warned about this reluctance for months—and have already mobilized vaccination-education efforts, from national to grass-roots levels. Groups including the Black Coalition Against COVID-19 are working with community organizations, historically Black colleges and universities, and community leaders to combat misinformation about vaccines; the National Institutes of Health is funding outreach and education among communities of color in 11 states that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19; and President-elect Biden has appointed Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale professor who studies racial disparities in health care and is cochair of his transition team’s COVID-19 task force, to run a White House task force devoted to health equity.
Individual health care workers are also taking on the responsibility of vaccine advocacy. Sandra Lindsay, the Black nurse at a New York hospital who on Monday became the first American to receive the Pfizer vaccine outside of clinical trials, said she wanted “to inspire people who look like me, who are skeptical in general about taking vaccines.”
Zephyrin, a former director of reproductive health at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said last week that she’s “really excited by what I’m seeing” so far. “From a racial equity standpoint, building trust is central,” she says. “If we want people to trust systems and governments, that trust needs to be created.”
But as Pisani points out, all of these efforts take time, personnel, and especially money—funding that Congress has the power but apparently not the will to fully grant, even if it can finally agree on a stimulus bill this week. Public health departments have requested more than $8 billion in funding to support vaccine distribution, but the latest bipartisan proposal for a $748 billion stimulus bill would allocate only $6 billion to fund federal, state, and local efforts to vaccinate residents.
“It’s unbelievable that Congress has not passed a bill to support the delivery and education on COVID vaccinations,” Pisani says. “If we can’t get Congress to authorize the $8 billion that we’re requesting to help disseminate this vaccine, it will never be equitable, because we’ll just vaccinate that top tier of people who want to get vaccinated. And then all these communities that may be skeptical will still be skeptical, and they’ll still be at risk.”
And there are many types of skepticism to overcome. The country’s highly politicized response to the pandemic, in which wearing a mask became a partisan statement and President Trump exhorted pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine in time for the presidential election, has had the side effect of making various communities reluctant or outright opposed to getting inoculated. According to Kaiser’s poll, 42% of Republicans now say they probably or definitely would not get a vaccine, even if it were available for free and deemed safe by scientists.
And then there are the long-standing and disparate vaccine skeptics who make up the “anti-vaxxer” movement, ranging from parents worried about the potential side effects of vaccinating their young children to anti-government conspiracy theorists. All of these doubts have been fueled by the spread of misinformation on social media, a problem that’s only gotten worse during the pandemic. (“The spread of misinformation about the vaccine development process…certainly doesn’t help,” as Zephyrin puts it.)
Pisani’s group has long tried to overcome this skepticism by working with patient advocacy groups, government agencies, organizations that do outreach to communities of color, and the mothers who make most vaccination decisions for their families. She’s encouraged by the increasing confidence people are expressing in recent surveys—and she points out that, practically, the monthslong wait that most Americans will face to get a vaccine will at least give them more data about how it affects the health care workers and others who are first in line to get their shots.
“We’re really looking forward to everyone doing their best to help their fellow neighbors by getting vaccinated,” Pisani says. “We’ve got to get that [herd immunity], or we’ll be stuck in this chamber forever.”
“Trust, but verify”
Stokes, speaking the day after Sandra Lindsay’s groundbreaking vaccination photo made national news, said that she’s somewhat reassured by the promises of prominent Black leaders, including former President Barack Obama and incoming Vice President Kamala Harris, to get vaccinated. But she also wants to see government officials, pharmaceutical companies, and health care authorities do more to communicate about the vaccine’s effects on people who look like her.
“I think it’s really important for leaders and community leaders to be role models,” she says. “But at the same time, I believe in ‘Trust, but verify.’ I’m an engineer by training, and I want the data.”
The data is often the problem in pharmaceutical clinical trials, which have long skewed very white and very male. This longstanding lack of diversity undermines efforts to develop vaccines and other treatments that will work on everyone, across race, sex, age, and preexisting conditions. Pfizer and Moderna have both done better than usual in this regard, although there’s still room for improvement: Both companies said that about 10% of the participants in their clinical trials were Black, a few percentage points short of the 13% share of the overall population accounted for by Black people; about 80% of trial participants were white.
“It’s not ideal, and one would have liked to have seen a more robust recruitment of people of color onto the trials. But I think from a science point of view, it is adequate,” Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the Obama years, said at the Fortune event last week.
“While we’re seeing very marked racial disparities in burden of disease from COVID, there isn’t reason to really believe it’s because of genetic differences” between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, Hamburg added.
Instead, she attributes the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on people of color to “the underlying structural racism and the longstanding history of inadequate access to health care” for communities of color, as well as the greater exposure among essential workers who had to risk their health in order to keep their jobs. “We’re seeing that reflected in the burden of disease, but not because of genetic differences,” she says. “Getting the right diversity in clinical trials has been a longstanding challenge…in this case, it’s adequate, but I hope we can do better going forward.”
Stokes says she was somewhat reassured by the representation of Black people in the Pfizer trials. With the initial vaccine rollout mostly restricted to nursing home residents and health care workers, she should have weeks or months to closely watch for reports of side effects among the early recipients—and says that, at least for now, she’s leaning toward getting inoculated when she can.
“It’s still early and I’m waiting to see more data,” she repeats. “But I feel reasonably comfortable in what I have seen so far.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify that only one COVID-19 vaccine has so far been approved and distributed in the United States.


fortune--2020-12-17--All that’s redacted in the Texas lawsuit against Google

That old expression that the second time is a charm may apply in antitrust. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and nine fellow AGs dropped a 130-page lawsuit against Google on Wednesday that’s quite a bit more interesting than the Justice Department’s lawsuit filed in October.
As you may have guessed from the page count, this one is a Texas-sized doozy of blockbuster allegations that Google has illegally monopolized each and every part of the market for digital advertising: the ad servers that host the ads, the exchanges where online publishers sell space for ads, the networks where advertisers list ads, and the tools everyone uses to help them manage the complex system in real time.
Unfortunately and bizarrely, the Texas complaint is riddled with redactions, those blacked-out lines of text that are typically used to shield proprietary or confidential information from the public. Here, every single internal Google email, memo, code name, joking code name, and quotation is redacted. For example:
In a couple of places, the AG’s complaint even blacks out its own legal reasoning. And at least twice, something is redacted in one part of the complaint but then revealed in a later part.
So, for your education, for your edification, and for your general amusement on a snowy day here in Boston, here is the gist of the Texas AG’s antitrust case against Google based on many of the redacted texts:
Google’s percentage share of the digital ad market
Number of ads Google’s ad servers process per day
The cut of every ad sale Google collects
Something a Google exec “frankly conceded” about the design of Google’s ad exchange
The true design goal of Google’s ad tool for small web sites
Google’s commission rate on ads from small advertisers
The percent of time customers using Google’s ad tools spend buying or selling ads from Google’s ad exchange
Something Google said to the FTC in 2008 about its ad server
Google’s estimate of the percent of online publishers using its ad server
Google’s description of publishers’ difficulties in switching to rival ad servers
Just how Google violated the privacy of WhatsApp users in “egregious ways”
The name of the team within Google’s New York office that designed a program called RPO to make ad bidding less competitive
The name of one of Google’s bid rigging programs
A screenshot of said bid rigging program
Something Google employees discussed at an October 13, 2016 meeting
The code name of a program Google developed to compete with a publisher-developed technique called header bidding
A Google slide deck about the pain caused by Facebook’s support of header bidding
An October 5, 2016 internal presentation to senior Google execs about Facebook and header bidding
Something Facebook VP Dan Rose told Mark Zuckerberg in an email about Google and header bidding
Details of an agreement Facebook and Google struck in 2018 allegedly to undercut header bidding
The Star Wars character Google used as an internal code name for the agreement
A word that appears 20 times in that agreement
The way Google’s mobile format, AMP, actually hurts publishers
Google’s strategy in withholding YouTube ad inventory from competing ad tools
Google’s name for a restricted access data set that combines information from its search ads, YouTube ads, and display ads
Google’s name for its scheme to arbitrage ad pricing
The name of Google’s future project to turn the entire web into a walled garden it controls
A summary document of the walled garden plan
It’s more than likely that this lawsuit will be consolidated with the DoJ one (and any subsequent lawsuits to come), or all will be tried before a common judge. And maybe that judge will order a few of these redactions removed. A reporter can hope! Have a great day and, if you’re on the East Coast, enjoy the snow.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
***
In this week’s episode of our Brainstorm Tech podcast, Michal Lev-Ram talks to Lise Buyer of Class V Group about non-traditional methods of going public: SPACs and the auction model. Both are gaining popularity; Buyer explains why. Then, Brian O’Keefe speaks with Threshold Ventures’ Emily Melton about how the rush to go public looks from the VC world, and what trends she’s seen that will carry over into 2021. Listen to the episode here.
NEWSWORTHY
Just play every hand, you can’t miss them all. A third lawsuit is brewing against Google, looking at how the company treated search results from rivals like Yelp in its rankings for consumers. Yesterday's joking about a private equity rollup aside, the suits are likely to be consolidated and heard by a single judge.
I wanna be a bitcoin billionaire so freaking bad. The price of Bitcoin was around $17,000 at the end of November but has since been on a rocket ride. It hit an all-time high of $23,770.85 this morning, according to CoinDesk. Think it's topped out? Guggenheim Investments chief investment officer Scott Minerd says it is going to $400,000. The Pressman family basket of crypto held by PayPal is up 31% in the past month. Thought you'd want to know.
The last dance. After getting the drop on the latest Air Jordans, online sneaker exchange StockX is raising money for itself. The startup run by former eBay exec Scott Cutler raked in $275 million from VC investors in a deal valuing the company at almost $3 billion. At the other end of the shopping spectrum, bargain retailer Wish may wish they had not gone public on Wednesday. The company's new shares lost 16% after they began trading, the second-worst debut of any major IPO over the past five years, Renaissance Capital says.
I see what you did there. The logjam of streaming holdouts seems to be easing. Google is adding the Apple TV+ service to its Chromecast and other Google TV device next year, ending one of the last major holdouts against Tim Cook's video aspirations. And Roku is adding AT&T's HBO Max, also closing the loop of major streaming platforms for AT&T CEO John Stankey's key strategic priority.
So much water running underneath the bridge. After settling the gender discrimination lawsuit from its former COO Francoise Brougher for more than $20 million, Pinterest is also planning additional reforms of its workplace culture. The company disclosed the results of a review that recommends creating a more transparent system for promotions, adequately investigating complaints, and championing diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other steps.
Predictions Incorporated. We need your business predictions about next year, anything from from the broad (where will be the strongest areas from M&A?) to the specific (who will Microsoft buy next? Who is the next WeWork?). Term Sheet author Lucinda Shen is compiling the results. You can email her at lucinda.shen@fortune.com or tweet at this Twitter thread by end of day Thursday.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
There is plenty of talk of "reskilling" or "upskilling" the American workforce. John Seely Brown, who ran the famed Xerox PARC lab back in the day, served on the board of Amazon, and did many other impressive things, wants to take a step back to reconsider how we learn–and how we unlearn–as adults.
Unlearning is a cute phrase – it doesn’t really happen explicitly. It’s about being generous enough to not think that there is only one solution. Somebody comes in from a different discipline that approaches the problem differently – do I listen to how they are looking at the problem? Or, do I pull out a rote solution or framework? Am I willing to engage in probing the system together? You’re expanding your own aperture for how you think about solutions, expanding the sources and resources you use, and approaching problems in new ways that you never believed in, but suddenly you see them in action.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
America needs a National Guard for scientists By Dario Gil
What are your top business predictions for 2021? By Lucinda Shen
Coinbase adds Cisco vet to board ahead of rumored IPO By Jeff John Roberts
Germany prepares to put some financial securities on the blockchain By David Meyer
Bosses are expressing gratitude all wrong. 7 better ways to be thankful this holiday season By S. Mitra Kalita
How A.I. can make digital advertising less creepy By Bob Lord
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Some people knit in their spare time, some paint, some tinker with old cars. But musician Martin Molin of the band Wintergatan is taking things to a whole other level with his hobby building...what? It's a massive metal music-making machine powered by marbles–tens of thousands of marbles. He's made more than 100 videos about the construction of the machine and the latest one is pretty mind-melting. And the music is catchy too.