fortune--2020-09-17--Apple Watch Series 6 first impressions: A stretchy addition looks great

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Apple’s smartwatch made some major leaps forward in design and functionality over the past two years, but the new Series 6 is more of a modest improvement this time around.
The exterior of the watch retains the thinner design introduced two years ago and the brilliant always-on display from the 2019 models. There’s a few new sensors, and the software has made strides, but maybe the best new feature is the line of new one-piece watchbands Apple calls the Solo Loop.
I’ve been using a review unit supplied by Apple for just about one day (in the new blue aluminum color), so consider this a first impressions review. It’s too soon to tell you much about battery life or the new built-in sleep tracking feature, and I’ll need more time to render a long-term verdict.
In terms of design, Apple made a few tweaks to the materials and colors available this year. The high-priced ceramic case option is gone, but now there are four more colors of cases: red and blue aluminum, as well as graphite and gold stainless steel. The aluminum models start at $400, stainless steel at $700, and titanium at $800, all the same as last year (Apple didn’t send Fortune one of its cheaper new $280 SE models to review).
Those new colors are just fine, but I can tell you right away that the new Solo Loop bands, which also fit some older models of the watch, are a big winner. The bands are made of a stretchy rubbery material so you can just slip the watch on without needing to bother with clasps, pins, or buckles. They come in two versions, a liquid silicone rubber that looks a lot like Apple’s original Sport Band and a braided version made from recycled yarn that truly sparkles. The blue braided band Apple sent me to go with the blue watch creates a dazzling look, for example.
The blue braided band on the Apple Watch Series 6. Aaron Pressman—Fortune
The Solo bands are available as an option on the new Series 6 models or for purchase separately, at $50 for the rubber version and $100 for the braided band.
There’s one tricky aspect to the new bands, however. Since they are a single piece, Apple had to make them in multiple sizes—12 different sizes to be exact—to fit different-size wrists. The company made a little paper cutout you can use to figure out what your size is, but, like ordering many kinds of clothing online, you might want to order two different sizes, see which fits best, and return the other.
This year’s watches gained a couple of new sensors. The headliner is the latest health addition. Apple added the ability to measure blood oxygen levels, or SpO2. That can help track your overall wellness over time and eventually could help diagnose the onset of illnesses (maybe even COVID-19), though the app has not been approved for medical use as yet.
To take an SpO2 reading, there’s an app on the watch that triggers the 15-second process. It’s quick and easy, as the measurement occurs from the underside of the watch shining red and infrared light through your skin and using photodiodes to measure how much light is reflected back. In addition to taking manual readings, Apple says the watch can periodically take readings in the background to create a record for tracking trends. The results are available in the Health app on a linked iPhone.
I’ll need more time to figure out how useful the oxygen measurements really are. Apple says you have to keep the watch snug on your wrist for accurate readings, and I found that wasn’t always the case for my background readings.
There’s also a new altimeter to see how far above or below sea level you are. Kind of cool. In other hardware improvements, the always-on display is a bit brighter than last year, and the watch can now connect to 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks as well as 2.5 GHz networks. And charging speed has been improved. I was able to top up my charge by almost 50 percentage points in half an hour.
One hardware change isn’t so cool, though. Apple has removed the ability of the watch to sense deep presses on the screen, a feature it called 3D Touch on all previous models. This was a handy way to trigger various features, like clearing all notifications in one swoop. Now it’s gone, and the various replacement triggers are generally easy to find but not as convenient.
Apple’s software has added some improved features this year. There are new watch faces that look great. I particularly like the Artist face, featuring drawings by Geoff McFetridge, and the strange Typography face that lets you mess around with a whole bunch of font options. It’s also possible to add new faces for the first time straight from the watch. That used to require a trip to the watch app on the iPhone.
Elsewhere, the software feels a bit zippier than on the Series 5, thanks to Apple’s improved S6 processor chip. The new sleep tracking app appears less sophisticated than similar apps offered by third parties, but I’ll need to test it further. And there is still no Snoopy watch face. Apple, give a Gen Xer a break.
Maybe that’s the big feature for the Series 7?


fortune--2020-09-17--Can emissions cuts and economic growth coexist? Europe is certain they can

Why Accenture thinks the ‘ Henry Ford moment of the digital era ’ is coming

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The European Union’s executive has fleshed out its proposal to force a carbon-emissions cut of 55% by 2030.
The current target, set six years ago, is a 40% reduction compared with 1990 levels. On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her first State of the Union speech to signal a more ambitious goal—and on Thursday, as it published its official communication on the matter, the Commission insisted that ambition could go hand in hand with economic growth.
By last year, it said, the EU had already managed to lop a quarter off its emissions, while over the 1990 to 2019 period the economy had grown by 62%. (During the same period, U.S. GDP grew more than threefold.)
“This proves that we can tackle climate change and ensure sustained economic growth and job creation at the same time,” the Commission said. “The impact assessment accompanying this communication demonstrates that an emissions reduction of 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, is both economically feasible and beneficial for Europe, with proper policies in place.”
Europe is resorting to some qualitative accounting to reveal the value in a low-carbon world, the kind of analysis that’s often left off a country’s national accounts. For example, it found “the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions also reduce[s] morbidity, i.e., chronic bronchitis, hospital admissions, restricted activity days, medication use, days with…respiratory symptoms, and consultations for asthma and breathing problems. Reductions in air pollution therefore trigger potential for growth in economic activity through decreased absenteeism and increased worker productivity.”
Buried deep in the report it offers a trend line analysis that would please most advocates of a Green Deal, showing steadily increasing GDP growth even as greenhouse gas emissions fall.
The old target had to change
The Commission said the EU’s current target would not allow it to reach its goal of climate neutrality by 2050, nor to uphold the terms of the Paris Agreement: The climate deal’s signatories said they would try to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels (the global average temperature already clocked a 1.1°C increase by 2019.)
“Based on existing policies and the plans of [the EU’s] member states, we are on course to surpass our current 40% target for 2030. This shows that being more ambitious is not only necessary, but also realistic,” said Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson in a statement.
In its proposal for a new 2030 target—which will now need to be approved by the European Parliament and the EU’s member states—the Commission admitted that the COVID-19 pandemic had “worsened the conditions” for the investments that are needed to hit a 55% reduction goal by 2030.
The solution? “We will need to enable EU companies to get into the pole position developing, deploying and commercializing low-carbon solutions.”
Renewables in, coal out
Just over three-quarters of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels, along with leaks and irregular industrial discharges of gases other than carbon dioxide. The rest of the emissions come from industry (CO2) and agriculture and waste industries (non-CO2).
The biggest contributors to the proposed emissions cuts will be renewable energy: The Commission wants renewables to account for as much as 40% of total energy consumption by 2030, with coal consumption down 70% from 2015 levels—and increased energy efficiency in the building sector. On that front, the Commission wants to see renovation rates more than double (and it wants those renovations to look good, too).
As for cars, carbon emissions per kilometer should by 2030 be around half of those expected in 2021, the Commission said, adding that “to achieve climate neutrality…conventional cars will need to gradually be displaced by zero emissions vehicles, and greater use should be made of sustainable collective transport services.”
Ultimately, the Commission said, that 2050 target for climate neutrality will mean “nearly all cars on the roads must be zero emissions by that time.” It added that it would in the coming months consider the crucial question of when cars with internal combustion engines will need to be banned from the market.


fortune--2020-09-17--The first volume of Barack Obama’s long-awaited memoir finally has a release date

The first volume of former President Barack Obama’s memoir is coming out Nov. 17, two weeks after Election Day. It’s called A Promised Land and will cover his swift and historic rise to the White House and his first term in office.
The publication date for the second volume has not yet been determined.
“I’ve spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency, and in A Promised Land I’ve tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office: the key events and people who shaped it; my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made; and the political, economic, and cultural forces that my team and I had to confront then—and that as a nation we are grappling with still,” Obama said in a statement Thursday.
“In the book, I’ve also tried to give readers a sense of the personal journey that Michelle and I went through during those years, with all the incredible highs and lows. And finally, at a time when America is going through such enormous upheaval, the book offers some of my broader thoughts on how we can heal the divisions in our country going forward and make our democracy work for everybody—a task that won’t depend on any single president, but on all of us as engaged citizens.”
Obama’s book, like his previous ones, will be released by Crown, a division of Penguin Random House.
The 768-page book is the most anticipated presidential memoir in memory, as much or more because of the quality of the writing than for any possible revelations. He has been called the most literary president since Abraham Lincoln and has already written two highly praised, million-selling books: Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, both of which have been cited as aiding his presidential run in 2008 and making him the country’s first Black president.
Even with a substantial list price of $45, A Promised Land is virtually guaranteed to sell millions of copies, and has an announced first printing of 3 million. But it will face challenges far different from most presidential memoirs, and even from former first lady Michelle Obama’s blockbuster book, Becoming, which came out two years ago and has sold more than 10 million copies.
Because of the pandemic, the former president will likely be unable to have the spectacular arena tour that Michelle Obama had, what was then an unprecedented launch for a political book. Barack Obama also may find his book coming out at a time when the Nov. 3 election is still undecided and the country far more preoccupied with who the next president will be than with events of the past.
Obama has taken longer than most recent presidents to complete his memoir, with the first volume coming nearly four years after the end of his second term. (George W. Bush’s Decision Points, a single volume, came within two years). He has been writing during unusual times, even before the pandemic spread earlier this year. His successor in the White House, Donald Trump, has attacked and upended achievements of the Obama administration ranging from the Iran nuclear treaty to “Obamacare.”
Obama is not the first president to publish more than one volume of memoirs; Dwight Eisenhower also wrote two. But he had been expected to write just one when Penguin Random House first announced, in February 2017, a multimillion joint publication deal with Barack and Michelle Obama. On Thursday, Crown Publisher David Drake cited the scale of Obama’s ambition to write a book that captures the experiences of being president and offers an inspiring story for young people.
“As his writing progressed and the scope of the memoirs continued to grow, he ultimately decided to write two volumes,” Drake said.
The November release will be welcomed not only by Obama readers, but by booksellers and fellow publishers who anticipate that the massive demand for A Promised Land will raise sales for everyone. Its popularity may also present another complication: The publishing industry has struggled with chronic printing shortages in the U.S. over the past two years, leading to frequent delays. Drake said that Crown had taken several measures to minimize disruption, from printing one-third of the copies in Germany to arranging for a U.S. plant that had been scheduled to close in October to remain open for two additional months.
“The president’s book should not impact the U.S. print market more significantly than other major bestsellers of late,” Drake said.


fortune--2020-09-17--Trump warms to ‘Problem Solvers’ stimulus bill—including $1,200 checks and $450 weekly unemployment

Trump warms to ‘Problem Solvers’ stimulus bill—including $1,200 checks and $450 weekly unemployment benefits

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Stimulus negotiations are stalled: Democratic leaders refuse to go lower than a broad package of $2.2 trillion in economic aid, while the White House won’t offer more than $1.3 trillion.
To help end the stalemate and bolster the economy, a bipartisan group of 24 House Democrats and 24 House Republicans offered a compromise bill this week that would set aside at least $1.5 trillion in economic aid, and could rise to $2 trillion depending on the state of the economy in 2021.
The Problem Solvers Caucus proposal would provide another $1,200 stimulus check, $450 in weekly enhanced unemployment benefits, and $500 billion for state and local government funding. The latter is well below the $1 trillion Democratic leaders are seeking for state and local governments.
And the bipartisan proposal would allocate $145 billion for childcare and school funding, $100 billion for coronavirus testing and health care, and $145 billion for Economic Injury Disaster Loans and forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans.
But the proposal by the Problem Solvers Caucus can’t go anywhere without support from House leaders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Wednesday Democrats might not lower their stimulus ask from $2.2 trillion, which was $3.4 trillion in August.
“We did come down…We can only go so far,” Pelosi said. But she added that House leaders will keep representatives in D.C. until they can hash out a deal.
Earlier in the month White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggested going up to $1.5 trillion was a nonstarter for the GOP. However, the $1.5 trillion Problem Solvers Caucus compromise bill got a warm reception from the White House on Wednesday.
“I agree with a lot of it…I heard Nancy Pelosi say she doesn’t want to leave until we have an agreement. She’s come a long way,” President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday.


fortune--2020-09-17--Democracy depends on Washington improving its tech

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.
I read a sad and humbling book this week: Compromised: The Counterintelligence and Threat of Donald J. Trump, by the former FBI agent Peter Strzok. I also interviewed the author for the Commonwealth Club of Northern California. You can watch the interview here.
The book is sad because it is the recounting of the downfall of a dedicated public servant. In clear, methodical language backed up by factual anecdotes and rational thinking, Strzok explains the investigations he led into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of private email servers—an investigation that ultimately helped Trump’s candidacy—and Russian interference in the 2016 election, which also aided Trump.
I defy you to read the book—or, worse, review the Twitter commentary about it—and come away feeling good about the prospects for American comity.
The humbling part of it is how woefully deficient Strzok describes the FBI’s level of digital proficiency when the Russians took their dirty tricks online. He describes an agency stuck in the mainframe era that needed to come up to speed quickly to fight the threat.
It is cliché in Silicon Valley to say the government’s technology lags far behind the private sector’s. What Strzok makes clear is that democracy depends on Washington getting with the program.
Speaking of government, am I the only one dumbfounded by the just-the-facts tone of the public discourse around the TikTok/ByteDance/Microsoft/Oracle debacle?
A president of the United States announces he’ll ban a private company if it doesn’t sell to a non-Chinese buyer. A credible party, Microsoft, emerges, but instead, a non-consumer company, Oracle, whose top executives are tight with the president, becomes a prospective “technology partner,” but not a buyer, of TikTok.
The dance-video company—this is how you know it’s important—already has a technology partner. It is Google, another American company, but one whose leaders are less cozy with Trump. Never mind. The deal intends to shift TikTok’s cloud business to Oracle, which nevertheless doesn’t yet seem to have convinced the caudillo that a non-ownership deal is a good idea.
Strzok believes Trump has been compromised, per the title of his book, by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Remember that Putin executed a series of moves to deprive certain oligarchs of their business interests in favor of oligarchs more favored by him. Trump may or may not be compromised by Putin. But he clearly has learned from him.
And the paragons of America’s business community—”we believe the free-market system is the best means of generating good jobs, a strong and sustainable economy, innovation, a healthy environment and economic opportunity for all,” the Business Roundtable opined a year ago—stand by and watch, as if this were all normal.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Shredding the gnar. As you may have expected if you read Tuesday's essay about cloud database startup Snowflake, or if you called your broker to try and get some shares, the company's stock price in its public debut went up like a rocket. Priced at $120, already valuing Snowflake at over $30 billion, the stock went as high as $319 before settling down at the close at $253 and change, a 112% gain. Afterwards, CEO Frank Slootman told me the action was due to "the frothy, opportunistic retail side" of the market. Easy for him to say—his take is now worth $3.5 billion on paper. And the VC funds that were the early investors also made out well on day one. In a less exciting but still successful debut, software developer tools maker JFrog also went public, raising over $500 million and trading up 47% in its debut.
Après ski. Speaking of expected news, video-game players got the bad but not unexpected word about just how much they'll be shelling out to get the new Sony PS 5. It's $500 for the full model or $400 without a disk drive. That's comparable at the high end to Microsoft's upcoming $500 Xbox Series X, but above the 'softies' $300 stripped-down Xbox Series S. In other new product news, Facebook released its next virtual-reality system, the Oculus Quest 2, for $300, but the reviews are tepid. Facebook also disclosed it's working on making augmented-reality glasses in an effort called Project Aria. And the new GoPro Hero 9 Black camera records your adventures in up to 5K and costs $450, or $350 if you sign up for a year of GoPro Plus.
Wipeout. A senior IT manager at Citigroup is on paid leave pending an investigation into a little side business he had running one of the most prominent websites dedicated to the frightening QAnon movement. Jason Gelinas earned over $3,000 a month from his site, which may have violated the bank's policy on outside business activities by employees.
Cocking the ankles. The Air Force spent decades working on the F-35 fighter, a super-expensive and heavily criticized plane. So it's maybe not surprising that they've tweaked their approach to developing new aircraft. The service says it has flown a brand-new prototype plane created in less than a year. Stay tuned for more details, such as what it's even called.
'Tis the journey not the arrival matters. Are you dying to know how Robert's smartwatch poll came out? Let's just say the most expensive option came out on top. Fortune's ace retail reporter Phil Wahba wants Robert to go off the menu with his advice, however: "Get a Shinola. Less tech in your life and you’re supporting a Detroit company."
Hazy shade of winter. Readers on the West Coast have been dealing with the smoke and haze from wildfires for weeks now, but the fallout is spreading across the globe. It's been obvious in the skies over the East Coast this week and reached Europe on Wednesday.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Here's a mind-bender that Elon Musk might be tweeting about soon: Could the Internet reach a state of artificial consciousness and behave like a living creature? Wired columnist Meghan O'Gieblyn takes a shot at answering, citing the Integrated Information Theory of Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
When asked how we will know when the internet is becoming conscious, Koch replied that the surest sign will be when “it displays independent behavior.” It’s hard to imagine what exactly this might look like. But considering that this process will also involve the waning of human consciousness, you might look inward, at the state of your own psyche.
The early stages of this process will likely be subtle. You might feel a bit scattered, your attention pulled in multiple directions, such that you begin to suspect that the philosophers are right, that the unified self is an illusion. You may occasionally succumb to the delusion that everyone you know sounds the same, as though their individual minds, filtered through the familiar syntax of tweets and memes, have fused into a single voice. You might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are not in your self-interest, mechanically following the dictate to share and spread personal information, even though you know the real beneficiary is not you or your friends, but the system itself.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
3 ways tech stocks resemble the 2000 bubble—and one way they don’t By Anne Sraders
‘Integrators’ and ‘separators’: How managers are helping the two types of remote workers survive the pandemic By Jen Wieczner
Slack hires former Live Nation exec as new chief people officer By Michal Lev-Ram
‘Square is a beast’ By Jeff John Roberts and David Z. Morris
Verizon plans to offer indoor 5G networks by year-end By Aaron Pressman
Will tech stocks stumble or slide? What the fundamentals tell us By Shawn Tully
Why Accenture thinks the ‘Henry Ford moment of the digital era’ is coming By Alan Murray and David Meyer
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
As you read this, Apple's embargo on reviews for the new Apple Watch Series 6 has expired. We reviewers got a grand total of 22-ish hours with the new device, maybe less in some time zones. My tl;dr of the situation is that unlike last year's major upgrade, the Series 6 is a modest but steady improvement with a few cool new sensors (SpO2 and an altimeter!), one major bummer (no more 3D touch), and attractive new colors (that's the aluminum blue model on my wrist pictured below). No need to update a Series 5 yet, but for other buyers, it's an even more useful and sharp-looking purchase.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-09-17--Emily Ratajkowski and the question of why society looks down on models

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! The record number of women running for Congress is official after the last state primary, Barbados will remove the Queen as its head of state, and a model attempts to reclaim her image. Have a terrific Thursday.
– Picture not-so-perfect. Yesterday’s Broadsheet included a link to model and actress Emily Ratajkowski’s essay—”Buying Myself Back”—in The Cut, but life being what it is these days, I didn’t get a chance to read it until yesterday afternoon. I’m very glad I did.
I encourage you to read her words in full (and listen to the follow-up podcast), but the crux of the essay is Ratajkowski’s struggle to assert some ownership over the many images of her that now exist in the world—be they on gallery walls or 4chan—and to stop the men who are profiteering from those photos in ways that go far beyond the typical fashion shoot. The experiences she describes—from being sued by a paparazzo for posting a photo of herself on her own Instagram, to having nudes leaked online, to watching helplessly as several books of photos (taken by a photographer she accuses of sexually assaulting her) are published against her will—are steeped in her feelings of anger and violation.
There’s so much that’s upsetting about Ratajkowski’s story. But what jumped out at me is the contempt that so many of the people involved seemed to have for her simply because she makes a living by posing for photographs (up to and including the people taking those photos). It’s a weird sort of victim blaming that suggests that if someone chooses such a “superficial” profession—and especially if they pose for nude or provocative photos—they deserve whatever they get.
Consider the response of photographer Jonathan Leder when The Cut asked him about Ratajkowski’s allegations of sexual misconduct. Calling the charges “too tawdry and childish to respond to,” he said: “You do know who we are talking about right? This is the girl that was naked in Treats! magazine, and bounced around naked in the Robin Thicke video at that time. You really want someone to believe she was a victim?”
You feel the same weight of condescension from online commenters who post about Ratajkowski’s pictures, fine artist Richard Prince (who appropriates her image for his art), and implicitly, from the many, many people who bought Leder’s unauthorized books of photos or attended the galleries that showed them.
The takeaway is clear: the image-making industry wants to profit from Ratajkowski’s work and an image-consuming public wants to pay to see it. But both seem to fault Ratajkowski for her willingness to comply—and neither is willing to acknowledge the human inside those perfect pictures.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Toodaloo. Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state for 15 countries besides the United Kingdom around the world that were once part of the British empire; now Barbados has decided it will remove the monarch from that role and become a republic. "The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind," says Barbados's Governor-General Sandra Mason. CNN
- Investment impact. Fortune's Maria Aspan digs into what Jane Fraser's appointment as Citi CEO means for other women on Wall Street. "It has to have an impact," predicts Lee Hanson, former investment banker and current vice chairman of the CEO & board practice at executive-recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles. Fortune
- Legislative legacy. Yesterday, lawmakers introduced the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act, legislation that would reform how the military handles sexual assault and harassment, including by allowing victims to file monetary claims within the Department of Defense. The bill is named for the Fort Hood soldier who told her family she experienced harassment from a fellow soldier before she was found killed and dismembered weeks later. Military Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: JPMorgan promoted Chase consumer banking CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett and securities services head Teresa Heitsenrether to its operating committee. Slack hired Nadia Rawlinson, the former chief human resources officer for Live Nation Entertainment, as chief people officer. Imminent Equity founder and CEO Heather Hiles joins Udemy's board of directors. Procore hired ServiceNow chief talent officer Pat Wadors as chief people officer. Defense technology company Anduril Industries hired Megan Milam, previously director of the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning at Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration, as head of government relations and Karat global head of talent and people Meagan Murray as head of people. Jellyfish named Sharon Harris, former VP, alliance relationships at Deloitte, global CMO.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- That's a wrap. On Tuesday, Delaware held the country's last election of the primary season; now that all states have voted, although a few races remain to be decided, the record number of women running as major-party candidates for Congress stands at 318, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. In Delaware, activist Sarah McBride won her Democratic primary, setting her up to become the country's first transgender state senator.
- SOT(E)U. In her first State of the Union speech as president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen spoke out against Poland's "LGBT ideology-free zones," which some towns claim to have established. "Being yourself is not your ideology. ... LGBTQI-free zones are humanity free zones," von der Leyen said. "And they have no place in our union.” Guardian
- Shelton's stalled. Judy Shelton's nomination to the Federal Reserve is looking less likely to go through after GOP Sen. John Thune said Shelton doesn't currently have the votes to get through the Senate. Her nomination has been controversial, thanks to some of her past and current policy views, including on a gold standard. Washington Post
ON MY RADAR
WNBA star Maya Moore marries Jonathan Irons after helping overturn his prison sentence CNN
Trump is dying to run against a 'nasty woman' again The Cut
I directed Cuties. This is what you need to know about modern girlhood Washington Post
PARTING WORDS
"Don’t our students and teachers deserve the same level of care and investment?"
-Cynthia Nixon, the actor and former candidate for governor of New York, on the difference between coronavirus safety measures on film and TV sets and at public schools


fortune--2020-09-17--Why Accenture thinks the ‘Henry Ford moment of the digital era’ is coming

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
I’ve written before about the remarkable acceleration of digital transformation that’s taken place during the pandemic. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet put some meat on those bones for me yesterday.
Sweet reminded me that when we talked in January, she had said the 2020s would be the “decade of delivery on the promise of technology.” Now, because of the pandemic, there has been a rethinking of how fast that needs to happen. “Today we are 20% in the cloud. We are moving to 80%.” But, “instead of happening in a decade, it is going to happen in five years.”
Sweet is in a position to know. Accenture isn’t a cloud technology company, but it is the leading partner for most of the cloud companies in implementing wide-ranging enterprise applications. She calls the coming transition “a complete re-platforming of global business. This is the Henry Ford moment of the digital era.”
To help companies grab that moment, Accenture today is announcing the creation of Accenture Cloud First, which will involve a $3 billion investment over the next three years to help its clients across all industries become “cloud first.” You can read more here.
Also yesterday, Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos spoke at a Fortune virtual event on the links between climate, health and equity. “It is well documented that fossil fuel emission is very harmful to mankind, claiming 9 million deaths yearly,” he told the group. “This is more than the impact of smoking tobacco.” The company announced this week that it is investing $250 million in an initiative to eliminate fossil fuel use across its operations and to collaborate with several research institutions to address related health problems. When I asked if the private sector could take the lead on climate policy, Vounatsos responded:
“I don’t believe we can solve this issue of global warming and pollution and mortality if the private sector doesn’t pull things together. It has to be the effort of everyone all around the world….and eventually a new order of globalization, shifting from the economy and industrialization and getting people out of poverty, to focusing much more on the climate and the zero-emission goal and global warming.”
The Business Roundtable also jumped in on climate change yesterday, releasing a statement of principles that includes putting “a price on carbon where feasible and effective.” In the BRT’s press release, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon called the issue “one of the greatest challenges facing the planet today”; GM CEO Mary Barra said “climate change is real, and we must act”; and ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance said the U.S. needs to adopt “a credible, durable and comprehensive climate change strategy.”
And here’s your surprise fact for the day: Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald told me yesterday his company now has more U.S. stores closed due to environmental risk—fires in the West, hurricane in the Gulf, etc.—than due to COVID 19.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Mastercard pledge
Mastercard will invest a massive $500 million over five years to increase financial inclusion among Black communities and attempt to close the U.S.'s racial wealth and opportunity gap. Among its efforts, the payments giant will work with seven cities to help them more easily distribute financial aid and resources to Black communities. Fortune
TikTok deal
Surprise! There is "uncertainty and friction" over the proposed TikTok-Oracle deal, the Wall Street Journal reports, as Trump administration officials want American investors to get a majority stake in the new company that would run the Chinese-owned video-sharing app outside of China. The President himself said he doesn't like the idea of ByteDance, TikTok's current owner, retaining a majority stake. WSJ
Stocks slip
Global equity markets are down following the U.S. Federal Reserve's indication yesterday that it will hold rates at historic lows until the end of 2023 at the earliest. Some economists had been expecting the Fed to signal it was going to boost its quantitative easing scheme by buying more government bonds with a longer maturity. It didn't. Financial Times
Snowflake boost
Cloud database developer Snowflake had its first day of post-IPO trading yesterday, and its stock price closed up 112%. The company has big-name clients such as Capital One and Office Depot and has fast-growing revenues, along with backers like Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce. Fortune
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Autonomy audit
Deloitte has been fined $19.4 million by the U.K.'s accounting regulator over its audit of software firm and not-so-great HP acquisition Autonomy. The audit took place ahead of the $11 billion takeover in 2011—a deal that was followed by a massive writedown after HP found alleged deception in the presentation of Autonomy's finances. The Financial Reporting Council said Deloitte's audit contained "serious and serial failures." Reuters
Tech stocks
What next for tech stocks? Fortune's Shawn Tully dives into that question, arguing that for investments in the likes of Tesla, Amazon and Nvidia to pay off, "they'll have to deliver not just big, but bigger than big. That's the problem." Fortune
Biden on Brexit
Joe Biden has weighed in on the prospect of the U.K. breaking its signed-just-months-ago Brexit Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. The British government is currently trying to introduce a new law that could in theory lead to the reintroduction of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to its south and west. Biden: "Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the [Good Friday] Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period." Bloomberg
Gaming consoles
Sony has released pricing information for its upcoming PlayStation 5. At $499, the console will match the price for Microsoft's competing Xbox Series X, rather than undercutting it as was the case with the previous generation of the companies' consoles. There will be a disc-free "digital edition" of the PS5 that will cost $100 less, but Microsoft's relatively low-resolution Xbox Series S will still be a lot cheaper at $299. Expect all the new consoles to launch in early November. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-09-17--Trump suddenly turns against TikTok’s delicate deal

This is the web version of Eastworld, Fortune’s newsletter focused on business and technology in Asia. Subscribe here to get future editions in your inbox.
President Trump is scheduled to meet with advisors Thursday to review a proposal that would enable TikTok, the wildly popular Chinese-owned short video app, to continue operating in the United States by entering into a “trusted technology partnership” with Oracle Corp., the world’s second-largest software maker.
The proposed partnership, floated over the weekend, had seemed an ingenious solution for extricating the app, which counts more than 100 million American users, from a high-stakes standoff between Washington and Beijing.
Trump initially hinted his support for the idea. But late Wednesday, he signaled a TikTok backtrack.
“Just conceptually, I can tell you I don’t like that,” Trump said after a reporter told him that under the proposed deal, TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, would retain majority ownership of the venture, with Oracle taking only a minority stake.
“I’m not prepared to sign off on anything,” Trump said.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that a group of Trump officials led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and in consultation with unnamed U.S. investors, is pushing an alternative plan that might involve selling substantial stakes in TikTok to Oracle and Walmart Inc., then taking the company public to assure U.S. ownership exceeds 50%.
TikTok’s future has dangled in the breach since last month when Trump, citing national security concerns, vowed to ban the app in the U.S. market unless ByteDance sold TikTok to American owners and surrendered the “Made in China” algorithms that makes the app so popular. Trump’s edict provoked a public outcry in China. Beijing made clear to ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming that it opposes a forced sale. On Aug. 28, the Chinese government expanded the nation’s commercial code to include new restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence.
Oracle’s original solution to TikTok’s predicament, crafted with help from the venture’s American investors, called for transferring TikTok U.S. users’ data to cloud servers run by Oracle. The Redwood City, California-based software giant would vouch for the privacy TikTok user data and guarantee that it remained inaccessible to Chinese authorities. The plan envisioned Oracle as a minority shareholder, thus mollifying Beijing.
It helped, too, that Oracle founder Larry Ellison has been a high-profile fund-raiser for Trump, and that Oracle CEO Safra Catz served on Trump’s transition team. In a speech in Arizona on Tuesday, Trump praised Ellison and said a deal was close. “He’s been, really, a terrific guy for a long time,” Trump said. “So we’re going to take a look.”
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, a vocal proponent of banning TikTok instead of orchestrating its sale, has refrained from criticizing the Oracle proposal.
But then Wednesday, even as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the interagency panel that vets deals for national security concerns, reviewed the proposal, support seemed to unravel. Six Republican senators urged Trump to reject the proposal. Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) said he had “serious questions” about Oracle’s role and how much control the arrangement would give the American company over the app’s algorithms.
“We remain opposed to any deal that would allow China-based or controlled entities to retain, control or modify the code or algorithms that operate any U.S.-based version of TikTok,” Rubio wrote in a letter to the administration.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) separately argued that the Oracle deal “failed to meet the intent of the president’s executive orders” and “raises serious national security concerns.” Bloomberg reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also opposes the deal.
It’s hard to imagine that the Mnuchin alternative, as described by the Journal, will find favor in Beijing. Nor has China’s leadership demonstrated much sympathy for Zhang’s dilemma. This week, while TikTok and its investors scrambled to convince policymakers in Washington that TikTok is an independent subsidiary and would refuse to surrender data or manipulate its algorithms if ordered to do so by the Chinese government, China’s state-controlled press stepped up calls to strengthen Communist Party control of the nation’s growing private sector.
Guidelines issued by the General Office of the party’s Central Committee on Tuesday urged the United Front, an umbrella organization aimed at influencing party control, to “strengthen ideological guidance” and “create a core group of private sector leaders who can be relied on during critical times.”
In this week’s Eastworld Spotlight conversation, Gavekal Research technology analyst Dan Wang argues that, in the face of U.S. moves against TikTok, Huawei Technologies, and other provocations, Beijing has demonstrated remarkable restraint and seems keen to avoid being dragged into a downward spiral of tit-for-tat retaliation before the U.S. presidential election in November. The reason, he contends, is that Chinese leaders recognize there are few U.S. corporations in China that Beijing could target without hurting the Chinese economy.
More Eastworld news below.
Clay Chandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com
This edition of Eastworld was curated and produced by Grady McGregor. Reach him at grady.mcgregor@fortune.com.
Eastworld news
A chippy day for Huawei
Huawei’s day of reckoning has arrived. On Tuesday, the U.S.’s new restrictions on Huawei went into effect, reducing the Chinese tech giant's access to semiconductors by cutting off its access to more foreign suppliers that use U.S. technology. As of Thursday, the Chinese news outlet Caixin reported that U.S. authorities had not approved any chipmaker to continue supplying Huawei with chips, and some Japanese and South Korean suppliers have already begun looking elsewhere for new customers. In China, prices for Huawei phones are surging as consumers fear the company will soon lose the ability to produce new smartphones. Reuters
Mongolian crackdown
In early September, protests erupted in the northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia in opposition to a new Chinese policy to reduce the amount of Mongolian-language instruction given to the province’s ethnic Mongolian students. Students walked out of classes, parents kept their children from schools, and demonstrators even clashed with police. Within days, the Chinese government moved to halt the unrest, deploying riot police, arresting hundreds of demonstrators, and forcing parents to sign pledges to return their kids to schools or face punishment. NPR
Suga and spice
On Monday, Yoshihide Suga was formally elected Japan’s first new prime minister in eight years, following former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s abrupt resignation due to health reasons. Suga, the son of a strawberry picker turned one of Asia’s most powerful figures, has signaled he will maintain Abe’s core vision for Japan, keeping most of Abe’s cabinet in place and retaining strong relations with the U.S. “What the people want is a quick end to the coronavirus pandemic and an economic recovery,” Suga said at his first press conference as prime minister on Wednesday. “That’s what my cabinet will put every effort into first and foremost.” Wall Street Journal
Global vaccine race turns Chinese
China is not only leading the global vaccine race, but it is now shaping it in its own image. This week, the United Arab Emirates approved Sinopharm’s vaccine candidate for emergency use, making the Chinese vaccine maker the first company to receive approval from a foreign government to distribute its candidate. The move also marked the first country outside of China and Russia to employ a controversial emergency-use vaccination program. China has used the scheme to inoculate hundreds of thousands of frontline medical workers and select population groups before completing phase III clinical trials. Fortune
A common foe
Australia and India increasingly have something in common—strained relations with Beijing. In recent months, tensions with China have pushed both powers to reduce their reliance on Asia’s largest economy, and India and Australia are finding more common ground in cooperating on areas like trade, education, and health care. This year, for example, the number of Indian student visa holders eclipsed that of Chinese visas in Australia for the first time. In early September, India, Australia, and Japan also signed a supply chain resilience agreement aimed at countering China’s dominance in regional trade. Bloomberg
Coronavirus by country
Indonesia
Indonesia's health minister called it a blessing from god that Indonesia didn't report a single coronavirus case until March 2, even as the virus rampaged across Asia in February. The lack of cases was more likely related to a lack of testing, and now the country is recording new daily case highs, averaging a record 3,000 new cases per day in the last week. It has roughly 230,000 cases total. In response to the pandemic, Indonesia’s government has avoided nation-wide lockdowns, instead relying "large-scale social restrictions," which have closed public areas, cut off some travel between regions, and limited public transport. But as cases continue to rise, the country’s hopes are now squarely focused on finding a vaccine. The country has become one of the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccine testing grounds, and Indonesia is hoping to leverage the position for early access to tens of millions of doses of a vaccine by early 2021. Bloomberg
Markets and movers
Nvidia – Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate, is selling the British chipmaker ARM to American tech giant Nvidia for as much as $40 billion. But the deal may now face roadblocks in China, where the government is wary of ARM’s critical chipmaking technology falling into American hands. Fortune
Alibaba – The Chinese e-commerce giant is in talks to invest $3 billion into Grab, the Singapore-based ride-hailing company with operations across Southeast Asia. The potential deal may provide the Alibaba-owned Lazada, a Southeast Asian e-commerce startup, with a wider network of potential customers. Deal Street Asia
SMIC – U.S. chipmakers are lobbying the Trump administration not to blacklist SMIC, the Chinese chipmaker, arguing that a SMIC ban would be detrimental to American companies in SMIC’s supply chain. The White House has been considering implementing restrictions on SMIC since at least early September. Reuters
Flipkart – The Indian e-commerce giant may list overseas in 2021 at a value of up to $50 billion, sources told Reuters on Wednesday. The company is likely to choose between Singapore, where it is incorporated, and the U.S., home to majority stake-owner Walmart, for its potential IPO. Reuters
Burger King China – TAB Food Investments, which runs 1,200 Burger King franchises in China, is weighing a sale of its 50% stake in its Burger King China operations. A potential deal may be worth up to $1.2 billion. Bloomberg
Final figure
0.5%
Chinese retail is finally back, growing 0.5% last month in comparison to the same period in 2019. August’s numbers mark the first year-on-year growth in China’s retail industry since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the last few months, retail has lagged behind other economic indicators like manufacturing and investments, signaling that consumers have been wary to return to pre-pandemic spending levels even as the threat of COVID-19 has waned in China. Fortune


fortune--2020-09-17--Biden warns U.K. that peace in Northern Ireland must not become a “casualty” of Brexit

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivered a warning to Boris Johnson, ruling out any U.K.-U.S. trade deal if the prime minister’s plan to renege on parts of the Brexit agreement threatens peace in Northern Ireland.
“We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” Biden said on Twitter. “Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”
Johnson has long touted a free-trade accord with the U.S. as one of the key prizes of Brexit. However, Biden’s intervention underscores how the prime minister is struggling to contain the political fallout from his plan to unilaterally rewrite the divorce treaty he signed with the European Union less than a year ago.
By overriding parts of the accord that deal with Northern Ireland, Johnson is risking the return of customs checks on the 310-mile (500-kilometer) border with the Republic of Ireland, threatening more than two decades of peace.
The government said the legislation aims to stop the EU erecting trade barriers between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland if no agreement can be reached on future arrangements for the region. On Wednesday, Johnson accused the EU of acting in bad faith during their wider trade negotiations.
Yet it’s clear Johnson’s position is not cutting through with some U.S. politicians. Biden also shared a strongly-worded letter signed by four senior members of Congress, which urged Johnson to “abandon any and all legally questionable and unfair efforts” to breach its agreement with the EU.
We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.
Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020
“The United States Congress will not support any free trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom if the United Kingdom fails to preserve the gains of the Good Friday Agreement and broader peace process,” the letter said. “If these reported plans were to go forward, it would be difficult to see how these conditions could be met.”
What Trump, Johnson Want From U.S.-U.K. Trade Deal: QuickTake
The prime minister will be more encouraged by the tone of Donald Trump’s administration. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday trade talks are progressing well, and that he backed the U.K. as a trustworthy partner despite the furor over Johnson’s Brexit plan.
“I am confident they’ll get it right,” Pompeo said at a joint press conference with U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in Washington. “We know the complexity of the situation.”
Still, the risks are real for Johnson, especially with U.S. presidential elections looming in the fall.
Speaking to Irish national broadcaster RTE on Thursday, Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Richard Neal said Raab had told him during their meeting the U.K.’s Withdrawal Agreement is “open to interpretation.” In response, Neal said he told Raab there would be no new trade deal between the U.K. and U.S. if the Good Friday Agreement is undermined.
The approach to the U.K. will be “trust, but verify,” Neal told RTE.
–With assistance from Thomas Penny and Dara Doyle.


fortune--2020-09-17--Mastercard pledges $500 million to promote financial inclusion in Black communities

Mastercard is committing $500 million toward a series of initiatives meant to increase financial inclusion among Black communities and close the racial wealth and opportunity gap in the U.S., the digital payments giant announced today.
Mastercard’s investment, to be made over a five-year period, will be spread across an array of programs designed to help financially underserved Black communities more easily access financial products, services, and support.
Among its efforts, the company will work with seven cities across the country (Atlanta, Birmingham, Dayton, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, and St. Louis) to help them more easily distribute financial aid and resources to Black communities. Mastercard will also look to make digital financial products more affordable and accessible to underbanked Black customers, and will team with community development financial institutions (CDFIs) to increase capital flow to Black business owners.
The commitment sees the company respond to a social climate that—in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and other high-profile incidents of police violence this year—has brought heightened awareness of the systemic inequalities facing communities of color in the United States. That has prompted many companies to publicly reckon with these issues and pursue measures meant to combat racial inequality.
“When the issues around George Floyd’s murder rose to the top of the agenda, it allowed us to focus on the wealth and opportunity gaps faced by Black communities around the U.S., and how the financial system has disadvantaged them,” Michael Froman, Mastercard’s vice chairman and president of strategic growth, told Fortune.
Coupled with the fact that Black-owned businesses have been disproportionately impacted by the economic recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, Froman said Mastercard felt the time was right to organize an effort that, in conjunction with local governments and other stakeholders, would seek to address these inequities.
Broadly, Mastercard’s $500 million pledge involves three major initiatives. First, the company will work with the seven municipalities to help them more efficiently deploy financial support via digital means. In Atlanta, for instance, the company is helping to expand a disbursement program that provides rent relief to struggling residents, and it’s also working with local governments in Los Angeles and New York to deploy similar aid programs in those cities.
Mastercard is also looking to expand access to digital financial products to “unbanked” or “underbanked” people in Black communities, including those who instead rely on costly alternatives like payday lending and check cashing services. The company will work with Black-owned fintech firm MoCaFi on a collection of affordable, digital financial products—such as money transfer and bill payment tools—that seek to “make it less expensive to be poor, and help individuals access their money more easily,” Froman said.
And through its work with CDFIs, Mastercard aims to help Black-owned businesses more easily access the capital they need to grow. The company says it has helped direct $250 million in liquidity to Black-owned small businesses in the U.S. since 2018, and will now look to triple that amount to $750 million. Mastercard will also directly invest in Black- and minority-led startups, and will collaborate with the National Urban League on a new program meant to promote entrepreneurship and job growth in the Black community.
Marla Blow, Mastercard’s senior vice president of social impact, told Fortune that the various initiatives are made possible through the company’s existing relationships with local governments and CDFIs—partnerships that make it possible for Mastercard to “reach into these cities” and seek to make a “catalytic impact” in the communities that need it most.
The company’s commitment, she added, is about “meeting the moment we are in, in terms of racial reckoning, and being a catalyst for change and growth in these communities.”
Mastercard is no stranger to ambitious initiatives meant to increase financial inclusion. Earlier this year, the company said it had reached a goal, set in 2015, of bringing 500 million previously “excluded” people into the financial system. It subsequently doubled down on that target—pledging to bring 1 billion people, and 50 million small businesses, into the “digital economy” by 2025, as well as promising to support 25 million women entrepreneurs.


fortune--2020-09-17--The U.S. has nailed Chinese companies this year. Why hasn’t Beijing retaliated?

Huawei sanctions. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act. The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. A demand that TikTok’s U.S. operations be sold and the threat to ban WeChat. These are all regulations the U.S. has imposed on China this year.
Despite that barrage from Washington against Chinese firms, Beijing’s response has “broadly been restrained” against U.S. companies, said Gavekal Research technology analyst Dan Wang, who’s based in Beijing. The reason? There are few U.S. corporations in China that Beijing could target without hurting itself.
“Anything that really hurts these companies also significantly hurts China,” he said, adding that U.S. companies—like Apple, Starbucks and McDonald’s—are big employers in China, and China still depends on American technologies like semiconductors. Since China’s unemployment is still relatively high, Beijing is hesitant to take any action that would cost jobs. There’s less incentive for Beijing to “hit these companies very hard,” Wang said, since the Chinese economy remains “sort of weak and fragile.”
In a Eastworld Spotlight interview with Fortune’s Clay Chandler on Monday, Wang talked more about U.S. sanctions against China, the implications of TikTok’s proposed deal with Oracle, and U.S.-China relations under a possible Biden administration. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Fortune: You’ve argued that, all things considered, China’s response to the recent barrage of new sanctions from the United States against Chinese tech companies has been restrained. How so? And why?
Dan Wang: Since the start of the trade war, analysts, my peers, have been wondering, what are good targets for Beijing to hit? And actually, we’ve sort of concluded that there are not a great number of targets that Beijing can hit without hurting China much more broadly. China still needs quite a lot of U.S. technologies, and U.S. firms are very large employers in China. There’s another timing issue in which China has now been very concerned about employment after the COVID outbreak. There have been no growth targets set [in China] this year. Instead, the Premier is targeting more employment. While the economy is sort of weak and fragile, [Beijing] doesn’t really want to hit these companies very hard.
Another factor is that Beijing can see that many of these U.S. companies are doing what Beijing wants them to do, which is to sell as much product as they can to Chinese companies and lobby hard in Washington, D.C., to maintain their access to the Chinese market.
The last bit I should mention is that in around 50 days, the U.S. [will have] a general election. Right now it seems like Vice President Biden has a fairly commanding lead over President Trump. But so long as there’s a pretty good chance that the administration changes hands, I think Beijing does not need to hit really hard and cut off future room to maneuver.
TikTok has rejected Microsoft’s acquisition bid, and Oracle emerged as the dark horse partner. How would a partnership, as opposed to a sale, be satisfactory to the Trump administration?
CGTN [China Global Television Network] has also just reported that the sort of deal that ByteDance has struck with Oracle does not even constitute a sale; it’s much more of a hosting arrangement. If it is a partnership, maybe a company like Oracle can guarantee that all the user data is remaining on U.S. soil. And if there are concerns that the video recommendation algorithms are used in nefarious ways, then perhaps [a partnership] might allay national security fears from the Trump administration.
What implications does the TikTok deal have for other Chinese tech companies, particularly Internet companies, who have global aspirations?
The Trump administration seems to be succeeding in limiting the expansion of Chinese companies. We can examine the case of both Huawei and TikTok together. I consider Huawei to be China’s most important hardware company; it’s certainly the hardware leader in actually generating exports. And ByteDance is the undisputed leader in software…[It is] China’s major breakout app.
After the designation to the U.S.’s Entity List in May 2019, Huawei phones overseas do not have access to Google mobile services, which means losing access to a whole host of apps that include Google Maps, the Google Play store, and also a lot of apps that require Google integration to work, like Snapchat and Tinder. Sales [in Western Europe] year over year in the second quarter have halted; it’s fallen by around 50%. In Latin America, sales have fallen by around a third year over year. We can see that Huawei’s handset sales are not succeeding, and it also seems like European governments, and governments all over, are turning against Huawei’s 5G business as well under considerable U.S. pressure.
So on one hand, the hardware company is getting squeezed. And on the other hand it seems like at least TikTok might not necessarily remain in ByteDance’s hands. So both of these companies may lose a lot of their overseas exposure. This will make it more difficult for Chinese companies to stay on the cutting edge of technological trends and have the revenue to really invest more in R&D for the future.
Beijing has been critical of Trump’s action to force a sale of TikTok. The Chinese press has vilified Zhang Yiming for even considering selling out to American owners. Is there a way for ByteDance’s proposed “trust partner” arrangement between TikTok and Oracle to be palatable to both Beijing and the Chinese public?
It is very difficult to reconcile this. The Chinese public would rather not have TikTok sold to any foreign firms, and the U.S. government is demanding a sale. But I think the ByteDance strategy here is to adhere a little bit more closely to the concerns of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and to try to mitigate as many of its issues as it can. And that means probably finding the best deal for itself and then hoping that the outrage domestically cannot bedevil it for a very long time.
If the U.S. elects Joe Biden in November, do you expect these kinds of conflicts to persist? Or are they likely to go away?
I think they probably will not go away. As far as I can tell, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are very united on holding China to account; to exact a price on Beijing for doing the various things it does, for example, in Hong Kong. The Congress has proposed an extraordinary number of bills…At least in Congress, there is a united sense that China is now a strategic adversary, as designated by the U.S. Department of Commerce and its national security strategy.
President Donald Trump designated Huawei to the Entity List after trade talks collapsed in May 2019 and after some nudging from National Security Adviser John Bolton. There was little deliberation on imposing this blacklist of China’s most important technology company, very little consultation with the industry that sells a lot of goods to Huawei. And I think the Biden administration will not be so rash and impulsive in making these designations. But these designations will continue if [a Biden administration] decides China is a bad actor in any sort of way.
Do you see further deterioration in the U.S.-China relationship as we approach the U.S. presidential election in November?
Huawei will no longer receive semiconductors; this is from a rule in May. In a week or so, the Department of Commerce will enforce sanctions and restrictions on WeChat and Tencent. It is possible that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s leading semiconductor maker, ends up also being designated to the Entity List. And as part of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, Congress is ordering Treasury to determine if any foreign banks are working with sanctioned Chinese or Hong Kong officials, [which would subject banks to secondary sanctions]. So there’s already a lot of regulatory deadlines coming up.
Now, there could still be more. I think what folks are most concerned about is if President Trump loses the election in early November, he still has two more months to push through whatever sort of agenda he wants. And so that might be the most dangerous time. President Trump, with the help of the hawks in the White House, [could] push through a lot more actions on China, because this is sort of their chance.
This story is part of Eastworld Spotlight, a series of conversations on matters of business, tech, and finance with executives, experts, entrepreneurs, and investors in Asia. Subscribe to Fortune’s Eastworld newsletter to get them in your inbox.


fortune--2020-09-17--Citigroup puts employee who ran QAnon website on paid leave

Jason Gelinas, an employee at Citigroup Inc., has been placed on paid leave pending an internal investigation after he was identified as the operator of the most prominent website dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Gelinas, who lives in New Jersey, was identified Sept. 10 as the operator of the website QMap.pup and its associated mobile apps by the fact-checking site Logically.ai. Since then, the website has shut down and now simply provides links to alternative websites offering information on the QAnon conspiracy.
Gelinas earned over $3,000 a month on a crowd-funded Patreon site dedicated to supporting the QAnon site, which he said helped cover the monthly operating costs.
“As outlined in our Code of Conduct, employees are required to disclose and obtain approvals for outside business activities,” Citigroup said in a statement, declining to comment on Gelinas’s status.
Gelinas didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.
Gelinas is a senior IT group manager, holding the rank of director, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
QMap.pub received more than 10 million visitors in July according to web analytics company SimilarWeb. The site served as an aggregator of “Q drops,” which are anonymous posts on the website 8kun by someone claiming to have a high-level government security clearance providing inside information.
The QAnon theory posits that President Donald Trump is battling a “deep state” ring of child-sex traffickers. Some adherents of QAnon are running for public office, but some others have committed violent acts or threatened them, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Because 8kun is difficult to navigate and rife with other disturbing content, many people interested in QAnon instead use aggregators that collect and present the Q drops. QMap.pub became the most popular by offering user-friendly features like tags on posts to allow people to search more easily for themes, said Travis View, a researcher who co-hosts the podcast QAnon Anonymous. “It was very effective because it allowed people to go down their own rabbit holes,” he said.
Reached outside his home last week, Gelinas declined to comment on the site, and said that QAnon is “a patriotic movement to save the country.”


fortune--2020-09-17--Global stocks tumble as the Fed’s ‘near-zero’ rates pledge leaves investors unsatisfied

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning. From Tokyo to London, stocks are in retreat, as are U.S. futures. Investors clearly didn’t like the Fed’s hold-the-line stance on interest rates and asset purchases yesterday. Dollar bulls, however, are smiling this morning.
Let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are in the red in afternoon trading, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 1.5% .
are in the red in afternoon trading, with down . President Trump is no fan of the proposed Oracle– TikTok deal . He’s yet to sign off on it, and is said to be pushing for, among other things, a minority stake for owner ByteDance , the Wall Street Journal reports.
is no fan of the proposed Oracle– . He’s yet to sign off on it, and is said to be pushing for, among other things, a for owner , the Wall Street Journal reports. Sony finally gave details of its PlayStation 5 release as the video game console wars heat up for the holiday season. Investors are unimpressed. Shares in Tokyo are off 0.8%.
Europe
The European bourses were down out of the gates with the STOXX Europe 600 falling 1% .
were down out of the gates with the falling . Brexit is becoming a bigger deal in U.S. politics. Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden yesterday declared on Twitter that any post-Brexit deal must honor the Good Friday agreemen t. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made similar waves last week.
is becoming a bigger deal in U.S. politics. Democratic Party candidate yesterday declared on Twitter that any post-Brexit deal must honor the t. House Speaker made similar waves last week. Europe is doubling down on its Green New Deal pledge. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her first state of the union address pushed for more stringent carbon emission cuts.
U.S.
U.S. futures are pointing to a rough open. That’s after tech stocks sunk in the final hours of trading on Wednesday, plunging the Nasdaq ( -1.25% ) and the S&P 500 ( -0.46% ) into the red.
are pointing to a rough open. That’s after tech stocks sunk in the final hours of trading on Wednesday, plunging the ( ) and the ( ) into the red. That’s despite the Fed’s extremely dovish move to hold interest rates steady at near-zero (congratulations, mortgage holders; sorry, savers) for another three years.
steady at (congratulations, mortgage holders; sorry, savers) for another three years. One notable standout in yesterday’s tech sell-off was Snowflake. Ticker: SNOW soared 112% in its debut yesterday, the highest valued software IPO ever. After day one, it’s more valuable than Uber, Dell and General Motors.
soared in its debut yesterday, the highest valued software IPO ever. After day one, it’s Uber, Dell and General Motors. It’s expected that another 850,000 Americans filed for insurance benefits in the past week. We’ll get the update before the opening bell.
Elsewhere
Gold is down, trading near $1,950/ounce .
is down, trading near . The dollar is up.
is up. Crude is off, sending Brent down 1%.
***
Buzzworthy
I’m going to try something different today for this space. If it works, I’ll make it a weekly feature. Let me know what you think.
Snowflake IPO
Too pricey?
Too cheap?
Just right?
A dovish Fed
Good for the dollar?
Price action reversed steadily throughout the course of Powell’s press conference, and the dollar ended broadly stronger than pre-statement release, as guidance was not perceived to be particularly forceful or binding. All in all, FX price action indicates that USD bears seemed disappointed by lack of assertive Fed communication on forward guidance. — BofA Securities
Good for the labor market?
Reflecting the sharper-than-expected decline in the unemployment rate to 8.4% in August, the median Fed forecast for the unemployment rate at year-end 2020 declined to 7.6% from 9.3% previously. The Fed expects the unemployment rate to drop to 4.0% at year-end 2023, nearing its pre-pandemic rate of 3.5%. — Berenberg Bank
Good for the stock market?
The Fed confirmed what we all thought, rates at 0% are here to stay, probably for years. That wasn’t a surprise, but what was a pleasant surprise is how much they increased their full-year GDP decline, to down 3.7% from down 6.5% in June. This helped confirm economic activity in the third-quarter has greatly surprised to the upside. A better economy and a dovish Fed, that is a nice combo. — Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist for LPL Financial.
Bad for society?
The main beneficiary of monetizing the debt has been the stock market, which is a de facto requirement at the Fed. Since 2009, the growth of the Fed’s balance sheet has had an 82% correlation with the S&P 500. The upshot is this continued policy is the driving factor behind the increasing inequality divide, which Fed officials never seem to be capable of recognizing. — Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist of Quill Intelligence.
***
Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
Is Big Tech overpriced? Or is the recent pullback a mere temporary stumble? Fortune's Shawn Tully does one of his famous deep-dives—this time into tech stock—to highlight a number of worrying metrics. One that jumped out at me: the combined market cap of the Nasdaq's top ten hit $9.42 trillion at Tuesday's close, a 58% increase in the past year. By contrast, earnings dropped 8%. Even if you're not a traditionalist P/E investor, that's not a good sign.
Wine futures. Wildfires. Droughts. Freaky weather. These have become standard risks for winegrowers these days. Even so, 2020 could go down as one of the most troubled harvests ever. Here in Italy, the familiar refrain among winemakers is "reduced quantity = increased quality." That's probably PR spin. Climate change is wreaking havoc on winemaking. When you hear winemakers saying that they've had to harvest the grapes weeks earlier than normal, that's a sign they either have to change where they grow the grapes, or change the grapes they grow, scientists in Bordeaux explained to me last year.
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Market candy
Quote of the day
Sure, we could have pushed higher on price, but then the quality of our investor group would have steadily deteriorated... Our whole game was to develop a shareholder base that we could live with for the next five-to-10 years. We discover where they are in price and we don't push it to the point where everybody starts to squeal.
That's Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. He got a lot of questions yesterday, including from Fortune's Aaron Pressman, on whether he left money on the table by pricing the IPO at a mere 120 bucks a share.


fortune--2020-09-17--There’s growing consensus that oil demand won’t make a comeback

Oil demand is in a slump and it won’t recover any time soon.
In its September Oil Market Report, published Tuesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted annual demand would contract by a volume equivalent to 8.4 million barrels per day, compared to 2019. That’s steeper than the 8.1 million bpd slump the IEA predicted last month.
“In last month’s report, we said that the market was in a state of ‘delicate re-balancing.’ One month later, the outlook appears even more fragile,” the IEA said, attributing demand disruption mostly to the pandemic. Next year, the IEA expects demand to rebound by 5.5 million bpd but still warns “the path ahead is treacherous.”
The IEA wasn’t the only oil group to make a depressed forecast this week. OPEC revised its forecast for the year down by 400,000 bpd; the cartel now predicts 2020 average demand will slump a total 90.2 million bpd. OPEC revised down its 2021 predictions, too, saying that “structural changes to the global economy are forecast to persist.”
Next on the list: BP. In the British oil and gas giant’s Energy Outlook, published Monday, BP outlines three possible growth scenarios between now and 2050—dubbed Rapid, Net Zero and Business as Usual. In all scenarios, oil demand peaks within the next decade, although the first two scenarios suggest the peak has already come.
While I call these outlooks “depressed,” I mean it only in an economic sense. It’s good that oil demand is waning as the world should be in a rush to wean itself off of fossil fuels. The transition will be disruptive, but the sooner industry leaders recognize the reality of it, the better they can mitigate the economic fallout that will inevitably come.
More below.
Eamon Barrett
eamon.barrett@fortune.com
CARBON COPY
New Arctic
A new climate is emerging in the Arctic, one that is warmer, with snow thawing to rain and glaciers ceding ground to dry land. Arctic sea ice has already retreated 31% since 1979 but the change is now happening so fast modeling the future is increasingly difficult.
Fanning flames
President Donald Trump conflated climate with weather, telling a meeting of Californian officials that “it will start getting cooler” soon. For weeks, California has been battling wildfire, which Trump blames on forest mismanagement rather than climate change. A year ago, I argued both were a factor. But Trump's emphasis on forest management doesn’t only ignore climate change, it also ignores the major role the federal government plays in forest services.
2030
Google hasn’t pledged to run on “carbon-free energy” by 2030, as headlines suggest, but it has said it is “aiming” to do so. That’s maybe not as admirable as definitively committing to the target, but the difference is mostly moot since there’s no mechanism to hold Google and other tech giants to their various climate pledges.
(Dis)Like
Facebook launched a Climate Change Information Center—a content hub intended to provide current and factual information on climate change. The platform is Facebook’s latest belated step to address climate misinformation shared on the social media site. In announcing the hub, Facebook also claimed its global operations will be “100% supported by renewable energy” this year.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Why fighting climate change is key to America’s health by Erika Fry
Wildfire smoke and COVID-19 are a one-two punch for indoor air quality across the U.S. by David Z. Morris
50 years later, Milton Friedman’s shareholder doctrine is dead by Colin Mayer, Leo E. Strine Jr., Jaap Winter
Europe’s leaders want to create a ‘new Bauhaus’ as part of its Green Deal. But what does that even mean? by David Meyer
CLOSING NUMBER
79.6 million tonnes
Wildfires across California have burned 79.6 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere this year. Fires in Oregon have emitted 26.8 million tonnes, and those in Washington state have sent up 5.1 million tonnes, according to the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. In total, wildfires across the U.S. have fumed a total 200 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere this year—already 28% more than during the entirety of 2019.


fortune--2020-09-17--Sony debuts new PlayStation for the holidays. Here’s how much it costs

Sony said the latest version of its gaming console, the highly anticipated PlayStation 5, will go on sale Nov. 12 in the U.S. for $500, matching the price on Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox Series X as the two companies prepare to battle for market share this this holiday season.
Sony will also release a digital edition of the PS5 for $400, the Tokyo-based company said at a virtual event Wednesday. That version doesn’t have a disc drive and requires customers to purchase and download games digitally.
Price tends to be a significant factor in the success of a video game console. Historically, the less-expensive systems sell more units, driving an increase in revenue from games.
Console games have been priced at $60 since the early 2000s, but that appears to be changing. Take-Two Interactive Software had previously announced that the next entry in its NBA 2K series would retail for $70 on Xbox Series X and PS5. In a blog post on Wednesday, Sony said that the PS5 games it develops and publishes will sell for between $50 and $70. The PS5 games Demon’s Souls and Destruction All Stars, which will launch alongside the console, will both cost $70.
Sony also announced that Final Fantasy XVI, the next entry in the popular role-playing game series, will be a console exclusive for PlayStation, a significant coup for the Japanese publisher. The previous game, Final Fantasy XV, was released for PlayStation and Xbox.
Other games showcased for PlayStation 5 included Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world role-playing game based on the Harry Potter franchise, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which will be released this fall alongside the console for $50. A package including Miles Morales and a remastered version of the PlayStation 4’s Spider-Man will cost $70. Sony also teased a sequel to the PlayStation 4’s God of War to be released in 2021.


fortune--2020-09-17--Wildfire smoke and COVID-19 are a one-two punch for indoor air quality across the U.S.

They have killed dozens of Americans and destroyed hundreds of homes, but the biggest threat of the wildfires raging on the U.S. West Coast may be invisible. The tiny airborne particles of ash and chemicals generated by the fires can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles, and can cause not only short-term symptoms like flareups of asthma or watery eyes, but serious longterm cardiovascular damage that increases the risk of death for potentially millions of people.
The guidelines for staying healthy while big fires burn have long been simple: stay inside and, when possible, use air filters to capture those dangerous microparticles. But the coronavirus pandemic has caused shortages of key air-quality supplies, and is forcing some difficult tradeoffs on indoor air safety.
Both fine smoke particles and the coronavirus can be captured by a class of air filters known as MERV-13, which can be installed in many existing heating and air conditioning systems. But because these filters weren’t in wide use before the pandemic, a sudden surge in demand has created ongoing MERV-13 shortages.
Mike Gallagher, president of HVAC contractor Western Allied, believes that’s going to catch commercial building managers by surprise once the current wave of fires dies down.
“Once the smoke clears, it smells okay outside, but you walk into the building and it smells like smoke. That’s when they realize they need new filters,” says Gallagher. But with waiting lists for MERV-13 filters as long as two months, Gallagher expects many buildings in smoke-affected areas will be forced to temporarily resort to MERV-8 filters, which are not capable of clearing the coronavirus from the air. That could increase the infection risk in shared spaces including offices, restaurants, and movie theaters.
The coronavirus is forcing a second difficult choice as the fires rage: whether to let in outside air to reduce the risk of infections, or seal buildings up tight to keep out smoke particles.
“For [protection against] COVID, you want to get the [outside air] ventilation rate as high as possible,” says HVAC veteran Tom Javins. “But with wildfire smoke, you want to have the ventilation rate as low as possible. Because the pollutant is in the outside air, not the inside air.”
Javins sits on a committee of the American Society of Heating Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), which is developing best practices for heating and ventilation under wildfire conditions. Though the double-bind of the coronavirus and smoke is challenging, his bigger concern is widespread indifference: “Most [commercial] building managers don’t do anything” to adjust for dangerous outside air quality, he says, and he frequently finds that the vents controlling outside air flow for big buildings have broken down entirely. Most often these vents, known as air dampers, are stuck closed, helping keep out fire particles but increasing COVID-19 risk for occupants.
A separate set of challenges comes with trying to protect private homes from wildfire smoke. According to Sarah Coefield, an air quality specialist with the Missoula, Mont. county government, many homes in the west and Pacific Northwest don’t have central HVAC systems capable of filtering out smoke particles. That leaves them reliant on portable air filtration devices, which are often effective but can also be hard to find right now due to coronavirus-driven demand.
Even when they’re available, portable air filters can be expensive, easily costing up to several hundred dollars for a device big enough to clean the air in a single room. That highlights a larger issue: As seen with the coronavirus, the well-off are more able to protect themselves from the health impacts of wildfires. On top of the cost of filters, lower-end homes or apartments may have more leaks around windows and doors that let in contaminants. And, again as with COVID-19, not all workers are equally able to protect themselves—farmworkers, for instance, can’t work from home to get away from smoke.
That’s one reason that, despite his professional background, Javins is uneasy with focusing on better air filtration to combat the health risks of wildfire pollutants. “We’re talking about how to deal with the symptoms,” he says, “and we’re not really talking about how to deal with the problem”—the accelerating rate and intensity of wildfires. Experts blame the wildfire surge on a combination of poor forest management and human-caused climate change. Those are problems no air filter can solve.


fortune--2020-09-16--Trump says he doesn’t like what he’s heard of TikTok deal

President Donald Trump said he’s not happy with what he’s heard about the terms of Oracle’s bid for the Chinese-owned video app TikTok but added he won’t be briefed on details until Thursday morning.
“Just conceptually, I can tell you I don’t like that,” he said after a reporter told him that TikTok’s Chinese owner, Bytedance, would retain a majority of the company’s assets, with Oracle acquiring a minority stake.
“I’m not prepared to sign off on anything,” Trump said, adding that he needs to hear more details of the proposal.
Top Trump administration officials have raised concern that Oracle’s proposal for TikTok’s U.S. operations falls short of satisfying national-security concerns, according to people with the matter. Their position could sway whether the bid succeeds or fails, but Trump has the authority to approve or deny any deal.
The officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, worry that Bytedance could still access the data of around 100 million app users in the U.S. even if the transaction is approved.
Oracle would be responsible for storing user data in the U.S. under the proposed restructuring.
Oracle’s bid is still under consideration at the Committee for Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, which vets deals for national-security consideration. The panel, which includes the Departments of Treasury, State, Justice and other agencies, was set to meet Wednesday to discuss the potential sale, following a similar meeting on Tuesday.
TikTok has become a target for Trump as he seeks to punish China for the coronavirus pandemic ahead of the November presidential election. Trump has sought to play up his get-tough approach on China to contrast himself with Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who leads in the polls.
Trump spoke favorably of the Oracle proposal on Tuesday, saying that an agreement is “very close” and praising the company’s chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison as someone who has been “a terrific guy for a long time.”
Trump has repeatedly insisted that any sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations would have to include a substantial payment to the U.S. But on Wednesday, he told reporters that lawyers told him the U.S. has no authority to require that.
“Amazingly, I find that you’re not allowed to do that,” Trump said. “You’re not allowed to accept — I said, ‘What kind of a government — what kind of a thing is this?”’


fortune--2020-09-16--Why fighting climate change is key to America’s health

In a week where smoke from widespread, West Coast wildfires is affecting air quality across the United States, compounding the challenge of managing a still-raging pandemic and the health disparities it has laid bare, it’s not hard to grasp the urgency for action on the dueling crises of climate, health, and equity in the US.
But what may be lost on many, experts speaking at a Fortune virtual event said on Wednesday morning, is that those problems and solutions are related—and should be conceived as such.
“Equity is at the center of every climate or health discussion,” said Surili Patel, a director of the Center for Climate, Health, and Equity at the American Public Health Association. “We’re talking not just about the distribution of power, but we’re talking about making sure every community has the ability to bounce back from a climate event.” She noted that with the ongoing wildfires, there are certain communities who can’t shelter in place or evacuate their neighborhoods to escape the polluted air.
Air pollution, which the WHO says contributes to 7 million deaths each year, has also been linked in preliminary studies to worse COVID-19 outcomes.
“You look anywhere, the people most exposed to pollution are those who are most economically disadvantaged and often historically discriminated against,” says Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician who leads Harvard’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment. Bernstein notes that while further study is required, there is evidence that air pollution affects birth outcomes—babies are more like to be born pre-term or at low birth weights—and development. Very young children exposed to air pollution are more likely lifelong disabilities and mental health issues; it is also thought to play a role in diabetes and a host of other health problems.
He stressed the importance of making links between health issues and climate change to further drive home the importance and urgency of the latter: “What is critical to recognize here is that the solutions on the table for climate change—renewable energy, for example—these aren’t just solutions for carbon pollution, but solutions to health and equity solutions. In actions that address climate change, there are actions that can promote equity, actions that can help us forestall pandemics, and that can at some of the biggest disease burdens in the world.”
What can be done to bring about action? And what role should the private sector play?
Jane Burston, executive director of the Clean Air Fund, urged business leaders to be more vocal and public in their support of combating climate change and social and health inequities. “In a lot of countries around the world there’s a false narrative that you have to choose between economic development and clean air,” she said. “And that isn’t the case, and it needs to be businesses that explain that isn’t the case because they’re the trusted voices when it comes to the economy. Advocating for the economic benefits of cleaning the air is a biggie.”
She encouraged companies to be creative and thoughtful as to how they use their business assets to support the cause. She notes that Google does pollution monitoring and that IKEA has started buying up crop stubble, which is typically burned and a major source of pollution in India, to turn into products.
“If we have the right incentives in place, we’re not going to fail for lack of ingenuity,” said Bernstein. “What we really need is a price on carbon. Without that we don’t have the incentives to accelerate change at the pace we need.” He noted that as a society, we’re already paying a price for carbon in terms of its health impacts. (Earlier today, the Business Roundtable called for a price on carbon.)
He called on American companies to unleash their lobbying power to make the case to Congress that action on climate is good for all: “Corporations need to step up and bust the myth that economic prosperity and a thriving private sector or incompatible with being socially responsible.” He argued out that as much of the world moves forward with green technology and the Paris Climate Agreement agenda, U.S. businesses will become less competitive. “There’s a great opportunity for businesses to lead here.”
Biogen, the Boston-based biotech, is working hard to engage its employees on the intertwined issues of climate, health, and equity. CEO Michel Vounatsos noted the company, which has been carbon neutral since 2014, has set targets and created an employee resource network to engage workers in thinking more carefully about personal and professional behaviors—how they drive, how they heat their homes, how they work in the office. He said the response has been enthusiastic.
“We need to have the courage to set metrics,” said Vounatsos. “Talking without measurement is wishful thinking.”


fortune--2020-09-16--‘Integrators’ and ‘separators’: How managers are helping the two types of remote workers survive the

‘Integrators’ and ‘separators’: How managers are helping the two types of remote workers survive the pandemic

As the coronavirus pandemic wears on into its seventh month, a dichotomy has emerged among employees: those that enjoy the flexibility remote work affords—think laundry in between meetings!—and those feeling stifled by constantly juggling home and family responsibilities with professional ones.
“One interesting thing we were looking at is the concept of people who are integrators, and people who are separators,” Ali Rayl, vice president of customer experience at Slack, said Wednesday at a Fortune virtual event on the topic of business resiliency. “For integrators—I’m one of them—it’s fine having this fluid life situation where they blend together. For separators, this is an extraordinary difficult environment to live in.”
Companies are searching for ways to support the latter group—short of welcoming them back to the office, which for many companies remain closed.
“So much of this is realizing where we are, accepting where we are, and not anchoring our judgments of ourselves to what we were able to accomplish a year ago, but what does it look like today,” Rayl added.
That’s especially important as the pandemic wears on into the school year, and the reality sets in that employees will be dealing with these issues for a while yet—and that some of the changes may be permanent.
“We will never go back to normal,” said Rachel Mushahwar, vice president of the sales, marketing, and communications group at Intel.
Mushahwar, for her part, has four kids at home, juggling homeschooling with her work day. “It’s kind of a disaster; it just is, some days.”
Leaders and managers need to set the tone, executives advise, by both giving employees the room and flexibility they need, as well as making employees feel seen, even when physically, they’re not.
“One thing we’re seeing is that people are working longer and harder because they feel less visible,” said Rayl.
That’s not necessarily a good thing: “I recognize that that can’t last, and it actually can have a damaging impact on work-life balance,” said Dan Maslowski, global head of distributed engineered systems and storage at Citi.
One strategy Slack has implemented to help people cope is “Friyays,” where the company institutes a holiday one Friday a month. The benefit, according to Rayl, is by everyone taking the same day off, there’s no pent-up crush of workload when people return—because no one else was assigning work while they were out either.
Another tool: Slack bots. The messaging company has implemented a couple of internal automated games and gimmicks, like a bot that reminds people twice a day to check in on a game called Animal Crossing, fostering connections between employees.
They’ve also deployed a bot called “Donut,” which pairs random people across the company and encourages them to have a (virtual) coffee meetup—something Slack has used to help welcome new employees. “It looks for somebody you are unlikely to have met,” Rayl said. With everyone remote, “it takes a little bit more effort to keep up with people,” she added, “So we’re using that to lower the bar to help people to connect.”
Correction, September 17, 2020: This article has been updated to clarify Slack’s “Friyays” policy, which a prior version of this story incorrectly referred to as “Free Fridays.”