Rajeev Suri, Nokia’s CEO, speaks at the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Photo: Reuters
The US has continued to pressure countries around the world not to use Huawei equipment in their 5G networks. When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s talking head is the US’ key competitive weapon against Huawei, something is not quite right.
Two decades ago, Lucent, an American company, was once the world’s largest telecoms equipment company, until, a shadow of its former self, it was absorbed into Nokia. Still, Lucent’s fate was better than that of Canada’s Nortel, which went bankrupt in 2008. What went wrong?
While the US government is fighting Huawei today, earlier in the last century, it did the opposite – dismembering Western Electric, AT&T’s equipment arm, long before the break-up of AT&T. Its actions led to the creation of two Western Huaweis – Nortel and Alcatel – which became leading competitors of Lucent, the stand-alone American successor of Western Electric.
ITT, a US company which acquired Western Electric’s international operations in 1925, was a key telecoms equipment maker. In the 1960s, through leveraged buyouts, ITT diversified into a range of unrelated businesses, including the Sheraton Hotels chain. Once the largest shareholder of Ericsson, it sold its interests in the company in 1960.
In 1986, an overleveraged ITT sold its telecoms equipment businesses to a French company that would become Alcatel. Meanwhile, the sale of Northern Telecommunications, established by Western Electric to serve the Canadian market, to Bell Canada, resulted in the formation of Nortel.
When Lucent went public in 1996, Alcatel was the world’s largest telecoms equipment company. But in 2006, a struggling Lucent merged with Alcatel; a decade later the combined entity was acquired by Nokia.
More than technological changes and international competition, the fall of the once mighty Lucent may be understood primarily in the American regulatory context and how incentives provided by US capital markets shaped management decisions.
Lucent’s demise was far from inevitable upon its separation from AT&T. Western Electric owed its dominance to being an integral part of AT&T for more than a century. Globally, however, telecoms equipment suppliers usually compete for business outside the umbrella of service providers. Ericsson and Nokia, both from small countries without large service markets, thrive independent from telecoms companies.
More consequential were antitrust actions decades earlier – in 1925 and 1956 when Western Electric’s international and Canadian operations were hived off, resulting in the formation of Nortel and eventually Alcatel which began to compete with Western Electric. Had its limbs not been cut off decades earlier, Western Electric would have been a more dominant global company facing less international competition when it became Lucent.
Lucent, a notable casualty in the dotcom bubble, was a classic case of overextended growth. With aggressive equipment financing, Lucent underwrote a good chunk of capital for new telecoms companies which eventually went bankrupt. Lucent was just as aggressive in engaging in sales and accounting malpractices to deliver “consistent” growth.
Instead of focusing on developing its core products, Lucent spent lavishly on acquisitions which mostly proved to be futile. After the bubble, it made overly drastic cuts to deliver short-term results to the irreparable detriment of its core strengths. Lucent, and ITT earlier, epitomised Anglo-Saxon capitalism’s excesses.
Even though the US lacks a major fully fledged telecoms equipment supplier, it remains a leader in key segments and upstream. Although Huawei may appear to be the global leader in telecoms equipment, market share by segment offers a more useful picture.
For example, Cisco remains the leader in routers. In optical networks, Ciena is a leading competitor. Perhaps, more importantly, the US continues to occupy the top spot in intellectual property, software and chips, through companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Google and Intel. The US can be a much bigger threat to Huawei than the other way around.
Foreign firms’ know-how helped the development of China’s telecoms equipment industry. Technology transfer started with Shanghai Bell, a join venture with Belgium’s Bell Telephone Manufacturing of Belgium, then an ITT subsidiary. Many foreign companies followed suit to gain access to a large and growing market.
Over time, Huawei learned from a range of international peers, through joint ventures with Lucent, Motorola, Siemens and NEC. Nevertheless, the rise of Huawei was probably a contributing factor, rather than the decisive one, in the fall of some of its teachers in the waves of global industry consolidation.
Lucent’s demise is a uniquely American story. The decisions made by its management were shaped by US capital markets which reward short-term results. In contrast, operating in continental European capitalism, Ericsson and Nokia survived the dotcom crisis as they pursued long-term objectives, subject less to the vicissitudes of capital markets. More than competition from dismembered parts of its former self and Huawei, Lucent was destroyed by American capitalism.
From Microsoft to Facebook, Anglo-Saxon capitalism has fostered radical innovations. But it lacks the patience to cultivate incremental innovations over the long term, as the telecoms equipment industry often requires. This patient capital has supported the unrelenting development – through the ups and downs of markets – of the likes of Ericsson and Nokia.
If the US wants Ericsson and Nokia to remain strong Western alternatives to Huawei and ZTE, it would do best to leave them alone, in safe Nordic hands. Otherwise, these last bastions of defence against “Chinese technological domination” may risk perishing under the warped incentives of Anglo-Saxon capitalism.
At $390bn, Tesla is worth a lot to investors. In fact, it’s worth more than all of Germany’s carmakers combined.
Europe started out as the birthplace of the automobile, but it has become the laggard — and not just as far as stock market valuations go.
In the 12 years since Elon Musk released his first full-electric sports car, he’s expanded into battery production at Tesla’s Gigafactory, deployed dedicated charging infrastructure worldwide and developed products that let consumers generate and store energy. His Roadster has become the reference for super-fast travel on a battery and his electric sedans have climbed the rankings to compete with Nissan for the world’s most sold electric car.
Tesla Roadster. Credit: Tesla
In that time frame, prestigious brands in Europe, the likes of Volkswagen and Daimler in Germany but also Renault and Peugeot in France, have mostly struggled with a diesel emissions scandal and displayed a sluggish attitude to shifting to battery-powered cars.
Pessimists say the fate of European carmakers shows the region’s inability to transform even the most brilliant ideas and finest engineering talent into disruptive innovation at scale.
“It’s not lack of vision that is plaguing Europe — carmakers like Renault have long had the vision of a future with electric, connected and autonomous vehicles,” says Francois Veron, the cofounder of investment fund Newfund. “But they failed at industrialising that vision, at adapting their production and supply chains to the new business models of electric cars.”
“Real disruption is more likely to come from an independent player than from the incumbents,” says Veron. “A heavily financed independent player.”
But while Europe does not have a single Tesla equivalent, it does have several companies doing parts of what Tesla does and in many cases doing it better.
Without the media might of the Musk empire, they are less well known, but there are companies such as Rimac making faster electric roadsters, companies like Skeleton Technologies making more powerful ultracapacitors and Einride making electric self-driving trucks.
Here’s part one of our series looking at Elon Musk’s empire and the European technology companies emerging as its rivals. Part one is focusing on cars and batteries, part two on space and part three on hyperloop.
Part one: vroom
Cars are one of the most visible parts of Tesla, and make up the majority of its revenues. In the second quarter of 2020, car sales accounted for 86% of its reported $6bn sales. A newly launched Model Y has got car pundits salivating.
But perhaps the most emblematic of Tesla’s successes lies in its ability to deploy a wide-spanning network of dedicated, ultra-fast chargers called superchargers. They’ve played a key role in helping Tesla’s cars stand out from the rest, by addressing consumers’ fear of running out of juice in an electric vehicle.
In fact, infrastructure that allows for a relatively short charging pit stop along the way is perhaps the only segment where Tesla truly has no equivalents in Europe.
The company boasts nearly 2,000 stations in Europe and the Middle East. Alternatives, even added together and helped by state subsidies, form a smaller network of disparate chargers that are all less powerful — hence slower to refill a battery — and are often faced with compatibility issues.
Every other part of the electric car ecosystem has Europeans in the ring, battling it out with Tesla. Here are the names worth knowing:
Tesla’s hypercar challengers in Europe
Rimac (Croatia)
Tesla’s Roadster makes claims on being the quickest car in the world. According to the company, it’s able to go from 0-60 mph in just 1.9 seconds, and has a top speed of more than 250 mph.
Croatia’s Rimac may be able to just pip Tesla’s record, with claims that its C_Two electric hypercar can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds, a whisker faster than the Roadster. And the C_Two claims a top speed of 258 mph.
Mind you, Rimac’s C_Two isn’t in production yet. Any prospective customers will have to wait for 2021 to take delivery, and there are likely to be only a very limited number of vehicles made. Your likelihood of owning a C_Two is probably a lot lower than owning a Roadster.
Rimac C_Two. Credit: Rimac
Rimac, which began with Mate Rimac trying to pimp up his own very beat-up 1984 BMW when he was just 19, is clearly a very different (and much smaller) business than Tesla. But its mission to build electric motor cars that are, well, super fast, is having a surprisingly big reach across the car industry.
Porsche owns around 15% of the company, and Hyundai Motor Group recently invested €80m as part of a new partnership which will see the two companies collaborate on a range of performance electric cars. A number of other carmakers, including Aston Martin and Pininfarina already use Rimac’s battery packs for their own electric supercars.
With serious investors coming in now, Rimac is professionalising and gearing up to go much bigger. Plus, it just recently hired ex-Tesla engineer Chris Porritt as CTO.
Piëch (Switzerland)
Piëch is based in Switzerland but it has deep roots in Germany and links back to Volkswagen.
The company was founded by Toni Piëch, the son of former Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch, whose own ancestors include Volkswagen founder Ferdinand Porsche.
It’s out to build on Germany’s history of top-notch engineering, combined with an electric motor and reviving iconic elements of classic sports car designs, to become the “leading luxury electric mobility brand”.
Piëch Car. Credit: Piëch
“In spirit, we go back to Ferdinand Porsche’s 1931 vision,” the company says on its website. “We aim to build a company that recaptures the artistry, craftsmanship and heritage of the past, but we emerge into 21st century with a new powertrain, a new business model, and an appetite for technology and disruption.”
The company’s Mark Zero all-electric model, scheduled to go on sale in 2022, can get to 100km/h in 3.2s, charges 80% of its battery in 4 minutes 40 seconds, and boasts a range of 500km on a single charge.
One specific: Piëch has no plans to invest in its own manufacturing and relies instead on a network of partners for production — carmakers with factories, assembly and supply chains already set up.
Nikola (US-based, with ties to Germany and Italy)
The other, much-hyped challenger to Tesla is Nikola.
Admittedly that’s partly because of the name of the company, which refers to Nikola Tesla, the engineer and inventor who made important contributions during the 1900s to what we know about electrical supply systems. His surname inspired Musk’s company, and Nikola of course picked up on his first name.
Nikola is going head-to-head with Tesla in electric trucks. The company is US-based, but it does have a big European connection.
Germany’s Robert Bosch and Italy’s Iveco, the truck-maker backed by the Agnelli family, each own 6% of Nikola and were instrumental in building the important parts of the company’s trucks.
More than 200 Bosch employees were involved in building important parts of Nikola’s trucks, including the electric motor for the axle, the vehicle-control unit, the battery and the hydrogen fuel cell. The trucks themselves are being built in an Iveco factory in Germany.
Tesla’s trucks challengers in Europe
The Tesla programme for trailer trucks, dubbed Tesla Semi, has been pushed back a bunch of times and the first units are now expected to be delivered sometime in 2021.
Einride (Sweden)
Stockholm-based Einride’s trucks are not for consumers, but for the logistics industry. The company started off focused on developing self-driving trucks that would transport goods entirely autonomously or controlled remotely. Recently it has acknowledged that the transition to full autonomy may take some time, so it is also building trucks that have space for human drivers.
The trucks will still be all-electric, however, and deals with big companies may do more to speed along the battery-powered revolution than any consumer-focused business. Einride recently signed a deal to supply trucks to German supermarket group Lidl, supporting Lidl’s ambition to make its supply chain emission-free.
Robert Falck, founder of Einride.
Others include:
Volta Trucks (Sweden)
The company recently launched a purpose-built 16-tonne electric truck that can drive up to 200 km on a single charge. The company is expecting to sell 500 of the Volta Zero trucks in 2022, rising to 5000 by 2025. It is expecting to find strong demand in cities like London and Paris where diesel vehicles have been banned from the city centres.
Tesla’s Gigafactory challengers in Europe
Musk called the Gigafactory “the machine that builds the machine” — where everything needed by Tesla would be made, most notably a huge number of lithium-ion batteries for its vehicles. Tesla has three such factories in operation so far, in Nevada, New York and Shanghai, with a factory near Berlin expected to be completed next year.
The idea of the Gigafactory was not only to decrease Tesla’s reliance on overseas suppliers of batteries but bring the cost of production down to under $100 per KWh of energy storage, a level at which it becomes cheaper to build an electric powertrain than an internal combustion engine.
The Nevada Gigafactory had a goal of producing 35 GWh per year by 2020. Opened in 2016, the Tesla facility has a clear head start, but in the past year or two a number of challengers have emerged in Europe:
Northvolt (Sweden)
One of Europe’s biggest battery startups was founded by ex-Tesla employees. Peter Carlsson, who was global head of sourcing and supply chain at the company, worked closely with Musk to launch the Model S. Another Tesla alumnus, Paolo Cerruti, helped Carlsson launch Northvolt, which is building a giant battery factory in northern Sweden, aiming to produce 32GWh of capacity annually — just short of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory levels — once it is fully up and running. The company raised $1bn last year from investors led by Volkswagen and Goldman Sachs.
Carlsson says that while China and the US have been in the lead so far when it comes to producing the batteries needed for electric cars, Europe now has an opportunity to catch up.
What the Northvolt battery factory in northern Sweden will look like when ready.
“At present, we don’t have enough factories but looking at the projects being planned and constructed as we speak the future looks promising in Europe,” he says. “In Europe, there is a new momentum. We have seen actions in the regulatory space and Europe has started to flex its muscles by backing and financing car manufacturers and others along the supply chain – and the dynamics are strong. To be frank, the US has lost a bit of headway between the shift from Obama and Trump.”
“Europe now has to decide whether it will focus on satellite factories that rely on supplies from Asia or will it build its own ecosystem. There are advantages to the region to have its own ecosystem with all the actors across the supply chain including subcontractors, factories, support to universities and so on.”
“Strategically, it is possible to build it but we don’t have it ready for raw materials as yet. We have the conditions to create nickel and cobalt but it will take time. We are not alone, even in China they are dependent on building supply chains of raw materials, just look at what they are doing in parts of Africa and South America.”
In the meantime, Northvolt is developing patent-protected ways of recycling batteries more efficiently, so that part of Europe’s raw material needs could be supplied this way.
Verkor (France)
The startup exited stealth mode and unveiled ambitious plans to deliver up to 50GWh of battery production capacity. Production in Verkor’s first gigafactory is scheduled to begin in 2023 with 16GWh capacity and ramp up from there.
Backed by French industrial Schneider Electric, real estate group IDEC and the EU’s European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), Verkor is currently looking for land to set up a gigafactory in France. The initial investment in the project is about €1.6bn.
It’s not the only French project of the sorts. Energy giant Total and carmaker PSA have set up a joint venture called Automotive Cells Company, which is also aiming to start deliveries in 2023. The first phase of the project involves a €200m investment and a pilot plant built around an existing facility in Nersac, France, owned by Saft, Total’s battery production arm. Total took over startup Saft in 2016 for €950m.
Fast charging
Europe is also developing breakthrough technologies that could significantly increase the charging speeds for electric vehicles. Charging an electric car at a public charging point can still take several hours — even a Tesla Supercharger station will take at least half an hour — so getting charging times down to a point where they can compete with a few minute petrol refuelling stop is crucial.
Ulracapacitors, which discharge energy much faster than batteries, have been seen as a potential part of the solution. Tesla bought ultracapacitor company Maxwell Technologies for $218m in 2019, in hopes of improving the batteries used in its cars. Battery experts speculated that Musk might be looking to apply some of the technologies used in Maxwell’s ultracapacitors to improve the cost, performance and lifespan of its lithium-ion batteries.
Skeleton ultracapacitors
Skeleton Technologies (Estonia)
A European challenger, Estonian Skeleton Technologies, may be close to this already. The company is developing the SuperBattery, a ground-breaking graphene battery with a 15-second charging time and the capability of being recharged hundreds of thousands of times.
The company has just partnered with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology to complete the development of the battery. If this is successful, it would eliminate the three main anxieties of electric car owner: slow charging time, battery degradation over time, and limited range.
Skeleton Technologies chief executive Taavi Madiberk says the technology will “blow existing EV charging solutions out of the water”. He also notes that, unlike Tesla, which seeks to do everything itself, in Europe the key to energy storage breakthroughs will be a collaboration between companies.
Almost nine in ten TikTok users who have used Instagram Reels say that Facebook’s TikTok competitor is basically the same as TikTok. And 61% said they’ll be spending more time in Instagram as a result.
“This strong number for Instagram is driven by the fact that TikTok users who have used Instagram Reels do not think that TikTok is inherently special,” says Tommy Walters, research and insights managers at social media content company Whistle.
That is my sentiment exactly.
TikTok, of course, is being forced to sell to an American company by the Trump administration, although the company is contesting that order in court. That controversy doesn’t have appeared to hurt TikTok: it is still the third most-downloaded app in the United States, according to AppFigures data.
But the controversy is also helping other apps.
Instagram usage is up, but so is Snapchat and other apps.
34% of TikTok users say they’ll spend more time on Snapchat, which is currently the ninth most-downloaded app in the U.S. Only 10% say they’ll spend more time on Triller, a TikTok competitor, and another 10% say they’ll spend more time on Byte.
Interestingly, people don’t seem more worried about Chinese companies getting and using their personal data, which is ostensibly driving the government ruling requiring TikTok’s sale.
Rather, they don’t like it across the board.
“75% are worried about an American company obtaining their personal data,” Whistle says while 67% are very or somewhat worried about a Chinese company obtaining their personal data,” Whistle says, adding that TikTok users aren’t super-happy about copycats. “63% agree that larger social media companies like Facebook, who owns Instagram, should not be allowed to copy newer social media companies like TikTok.”
The sample size is not huge — 686 18-34 year olds — but Whistle says it is nationally representative.
Ultimately, the results cast doubt on whether any company that buys TikTok, if a sale proceeds, will be able to maintain the company’s incredible growth rate, or if that growth might be captured by existing market players like Facebook and Instagram.
And, of course, the news shows once again that no publicity is bad publicity. Even though Tiktok has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, usage is up.
“Since a TikTok ban has been discussed in the news, 44% of daily or weekly TikTok users have been spending more time on the platform, with only 10% reporting spending less time on the platform,” says Tommy Walters.
Figurines of Greek mythical characters Trump ordered removed from the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Paris in November 2018, now on display in the Oval Office. Photographer: Justin Sink/Bloomberg
After Donald Trump’s planned trip to a French cemetery for fallen Marines was canceled in November 2018, the U.S. leader had some extra time on his hands in a mansion filled with artwork. The next day, he went art shopping — or the presidential equivalent.
Trump fancied several of the pieces in the U.S. ambassador’s historic residence in Paris, where he was staying, and on a whim had them removed and loaded onto Air Force One, according to people familiar with the matter. The works — a portrait, a bust, and a set of silver figurines — were brought back to the White House.
The decision to cancel Trump’s visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris is under new scrutiny after the Atlantic magazine on Thursday published a bombshell report that Trump belittled the American servicemen buried there, part of a broader history of disparaging certain people who’ve served in the military. Trump has vehemently denied making the comments about “suckers” and “losers” in the armed forces.
Never previously reported is Trump’s spur-of-the-moment art caper before leaving the ambassador’s residence.
The incident was met with a mixture of amusement and astonishment at the time, but caused headaches for White House and State Department staffers, according to several people familiar with the episode who asked not to be identified due to its sensitivity.
Chic Mansion
The story unfolded like this: While in Paris with other world leaders to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I, Trump stayed at the official residence of U.S. Ambassador Jamie McCourt, the palatial Hôtel de Pontalba. The mansion, in Paris’s chic 8th arrondissement, dates to 1842. It has served as a flagship of the State Department’s “Art in Embassies” cultural diplomacy program, and is open to tours.
The president’s planned visit to the Belleau Wood cemetery was canceled when rainy weather grounded the presidential helicopter, according to a redacted email the White House released to rebut the Atlantic story. The U.S. Secret Service ruled out a motorcade for the 56-mile drive, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That left Trump with about six hours of free time in the ambassador’s residence.
The next day, Trump pointed out a Benjamin Franklin bust, a Franklin portrait and a set of figurines of Greek mythical characters, and insisted the pieces come back with him to Washington.
The People’s House
McCourt, the ambassador, was startled, but didn’t object, according to people briefed on the incident. Trump later quipped that the envoy would get the art back “in six years,” when his potential second term in office would be winding down.
The art, worth about $750,000 according to one of the people familiar with the episode, was loaded aboard Air Force One while Trump visited another cemetery before the flight back to Washington.
“The President brought these beautiful, historical pieces, which belong to the American people, back to the United States to be prominently displayed in the People’s House,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.
Trump’s move prompted some hair-pulling and a furious exchange of emails back home between the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations and White House officials who organized the art transfer. Ultimately, because the art is U.S. government property, the move was deemed legal.
Purchase Policy
Trump, who once used his charity to purchase a large portrait of himself, is known to display in his private West Wing dining room mementos from various official trips and encounters. Over time that’s included a pair of shoes gifted by musician Kanye West and an Ultimate Fighting Championship belt.
A senior White House official said presidents are permitted to display personal gifts from Americans or heads of state while they’re in office, but must purchase them if they want to keep the presents after they depart.
The figurines that caught Trump’s eye found a new home on the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office. Depicting Greek gods, they date to the early 20th century and were made by Neapolitan artist Luigi Avolio, who was trying to pass them off as sculptures from the 16th or 17th centuries, according to London-based art dealer Patricia Wengraf.
Portrait Gallery
In an “Antiques Roadshow” moment, Wengraf described the figurines as “20th century fakes of wannabe 17th century sculptures,” and of little value.
The French art-collection episode comes with a curious footnote. After White House art curators examined the pieces Trump brought home, the president was told that the Franklin bust was a replica. He joked that he liked the fake better than the original, two people familiar with the episode said.
The Franklin portrait snagged from Paris was also a copy — of the one Joseph Siffred Duplessis painted in France in 1785, which was then held by the National Portrait Gallery a mile from the White House.
The curators removed a different portrait of the founding father from the Oval Office and borrowed the original Duplessis from the gallery. That one now hangs in the Oval, not the replica Trump ferried out of France.
TOKYO (Reuters) – In the days leading up to Shinzo Abe’s surprise resignation last month as rumors of his ill health swirled in Japan, the prime minister’s right-hand man, Yoshihide Suga, was courting a ruling party boss whose backing could make him king.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga arrives at the ceremony site where Emperor Naruhito will report the conduct of the enthronement ceremony at the Imperial Sanctuary inside the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Japan, October 22, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-ji
In a secluded dining room in an upscale Tokyo hotel, Suga met with Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), for a traditional Japanese meal. They shared stories from their youth when they both worked as secretaries for powerful politicians, according to a columnist who dined with them.
The dinner, Nikai’s third with Suga in as many months, came little over a week before Abe stepped down as Japan’s longest-serving premier and highlighted the kind of alliance-building that has made Suga the leading candidate to replace him.
At the dinner, Suga thanked Nikai for keeping a firm grip over the LDP, saying it had allowed Abe’s administration to execute its policies with ease, according to Fumiya Shinohara, the political columnist who was there with them.
Two weeks later, Nikai’s group was the first among the party’s factions to endorse Suga for the top job, support that makes him almost certain to be Japan’s next prime minister.
“In an environment where human relationships are paramount, that has been Mr. Suga’s best weapon,” said Shinohara, adding that their exchange over dinner cemented an alliance now poised to control the ruling party.
Suga’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the dinner. Suga has said, when asked on television about their discussion, that he and Nikai share a similar background and that he had introduced him to various people.
Nikai could not immediately be reached for comment.
For the past eight years, Suga, 71, has been the public face of the Abe administration as the government’s top spokesman but long kept a relatively low profile. He became better known to the public when he unveiled the name, Reiwa, of the new imperial era last year, a celebratory moment that marked the ascension of the new emperor and went viral, earning him the nickname “Uncle Reiwa”.
Behind the scenes, associates and analysts say Suga has been instrumental in shifting elements of decision making from Japan’s sprawling bureaucracy to the premier’s office and taming factional rivalries within the ruling party.
Suga is widely expected to stay the policy course set out by his predecessor, maintaining the “Abenomics” pro-growth stimulus policies aimed at pulling Japan out of deflation and keeping the economy afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Suga will carry on the vision Abe is handing over to him,” said Takashi Ryuzaki, a political analyst and former TV journalist. “So there is no need for Suga to have his own vision.”
‘SOMEONE YOU WOULDN’T NOTICE’
In contrast to Abe, the scion of a political dynasty in Japan who staked his career on constitutional reform, Suga began his political career an outsider and rose through the ranks in local politics.
At a news conference on Wednesday where he officially announced his bid, Suga spoke about growing up in a farming community in Japan’s northern Akita prefecture.
“He was very quiet,” said Hiroshi Kawai, a former high school classmate who still lives in Suga’s hometown of Yuzawa and works as a local tour guide. “He was someone you wouldn’t notice if he was there or not.”
Suga left town soon after finishing high school and worked in a cardboard factory in Tokyo to save money for university. After graduation, he worked as a secretary for a prominent national lawmaker from Yokohama, home to Japan’s busiest port.
During his time in local politics, Suga pushed an ambitious project to redevelop Yokohama’s waterfront, according to Isao Mori, an author who published Suga’s biography in 2016. In the eight years he spent in the city assembly, Suga rose to be known as Yokohama’s “shadow mayor,” Mori said.
‘ACTOR ON A STAGE’
Suga has said he begins most days at 5 a.m., checking the news before doing 100 sit-ups and taking a 40-minute walk. Even among staffers used to the grueling schedules of politicians, he was seen as an outlier for his relentless work ethic.
Daisuke Yusa first met Suga in 2004 when he was working as a salesman for a garbage company. Suga soon recruited him to work as his secretary.
“He used to say, think of yourself as an actor on a stage and think objectively about what position you’re in now,” Yusa said, when asked about perceptions that Suga is more of a lieutenant than a leader.
Yusa, now a local politician, said Suga always emphasized the importance of doing one’s best no matter what the job.
“I think he’s been able to remain in such a position without school ties or political faction because he doesn’t try to stand out,” he said.
Under Abe’s first administration in 2006, Suga headed the ministry of internal affairs where he introduced a hometown tax program, offering tax deductions for those who donate money to local municipalities.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) speaks to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga before Suga answers questions during a lower house budget committee session at the parliament in Tokyo, Japan, February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Yuya Shino
Matsushige Ono, who served as a vice minister under Suga, said the program met fierce resistance from some bureaucrats, who opposed introducing a novel tax scheme without precedent.
“He continued to make his case because he saw how this would help rural communities,” Ono said.
NAVIGATING BUREAUCRACY
When Abe regained the premiership at the end of 2012, he again tapped Suga.
In 2016, facing an ever-stronger yen, Suga created a framework for joint Bank of Japan, finance ministry and banking regulator meetings to signal to investors Tokyo’s alarm over spikes in the yen.
Officials had wanted to create such a framework for years, but friction between ministries prevented it from being implemented.
Mitsumaru Kumagai, chief economist at the Daiwa Institute of Research who frequently speaks to Suga, said Suga has been particularly adept at navigating Japan’s complex bureaucracy.
“He is aware of who and where the key person is in any ministry and he understands how to move organisations by instructing that person,” Kumagai said.
This year, support for the administration went into freefall as the coronavirus pandemic battered an already slowing economy. When Abe’s health began to visibly falter, speculation grew over Suga’s ambitions.
Shinohara, who joined the August dinner between Suga and Nikai, said the two men had bonded over their similar backgrounds.
“There are a lot of politicians now who can give good speeches and others from bureaucracies who can manage policy, but he’s the kind of professional politician who has his own distinct smell,” he said.
After dinner, the men left the hotel separately as journalists snapped pictures. A day later, Suga was asked on a TV programme whether he was interested in running for the prime minister’s job. Laughing, he said: “Not at all.”
We’ve all seen old science fiction films where, in the future, people are zipping around on their flying cars. Well, the future is now! In Japan, the Toyota-backed startup SkyDrive conducted the first public run of their flying vehicle. Whizzing around the Toyota test field, the single passenger flying car made quite an impression.
Looking like an enormous drone, the vehicle was manned by a pilot and hovered several feet above the ground while maneuvering around the test field. Though the flight lasted just four minutes, it is an incredible achievement for SkyDrive. Designed to be the world’s smallest electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) vehicle, SkyDrive’s SD-03 model takes up the space of just two parked cars. The sleek cabin is surrounded by eight rotors powered by individual engines, which ensures safety during emergency situations.
While the test drive is certainly a breakthrough, there’s still work to be done. SkyDrive is hoping to complete enough test flights in the enclosed area to meet safety provisions that will allow the team to take it for flights outside the test field. Currently, this futuristic mode of transit can only fly for just five to 10 minutes. SkyDrive president Tomohiro Fukuzawa hopes that this can be expanded to 30 minutes, which would make the vehicle helpful in exports.
“We want to realize a society where flying cars are an accessible and convenient means of transportation in the skies and people are able to experience a safe, secure, and comfortable new way of life,” says Fukuzawa.
The aim of SkyDrive is to have its flying car on the market by 2023. To do so, the company will be making a big push in the coming years, helped in part by Toyota’s funding and the expertise of its engineers. Whatever hurdles it faces, one thing is for certain, they’ve brought us one step closer to living out our Jetsons fantasy.
Walmart’s late entry this week into the scramble to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations left some people with a question.
Two questions, actually:
Walmart? Really?
But the proposed teaming up of the giant retailer and Microsoft to run the video app in the United States makes more sense in light of the direction TikTok’s owner has taken its sibling app in China, its home country.
That version of the app, Douyin, which works much like TikTok but is available only in China, has become not only a platform for goofy videos but also an e-commerce destination with the kind of reach among young buyers that Walmart would love to have.
The Chinese social media giant that runs both apps, ByteDance, began testing e-commerce features on Douyin in 2018. That was well before the company rolled out a “Shop Now” button on TikTok in recent months that redirects users to shopping sites.
Smartphone users in China have taken, in a big way, to buying things while they watch people hawk the products — think QVC and late-night television infomercials reinvented for the mobile age. Chinese e-commerce platforms have for years been adding livestreaming to their apps, and video apps have been adding shopping functions. In all, $140 billion in merchandise could be sold in China this year via livestreaming, more than double last year’s amount, according to estimates by the research firm Bernstein.
The sheer size of the Chinese consumer market has created a vast field for retail experiments of other kinds as well. One of the country’s newest e-commerce giants, Pinduoduo, has turned internet shopping into something more like a surreal video game. For Pinduoduo’s fans, the process of stumbling across strange new products, at ludicrously low prices, is a big part of the experience. Actually receiving those products is almost secondary. Currently, nearly 570 million people use Pinduoduo’s app every month.
Douyin started out by allowing video creators to post links to their stores on China’s largest online bazaar, Alibaba’s Taobao platform. Eventually, it allowed users to set up storefronts within the Douyin app itself, and now it is more aggressively pushing creators to sell through those native stores instead of on outside sites.
For most Chinese consumers, Douyin is not about to replace Taobao and other full-fledged shopping sites entirely. The design of the app means the products that sell best are cheap impulse buys, said Fabian Bern, the head of Many, a marketing company that works with creators on Douyin and TikTok.
“You’re scrolling very quick through content,” Mr. Bern said, which means that few people on the app are going to buy, say, a pricey wristwatch. “You will think twice about it, then basically the video is gone already.”
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“That’s why I think the Walmart thing is pretty interesting,” he added. “They can sell their cheaper products directly to that audience in TikTok.”
Bargain-bin prices do not guarantee customer satisfaction. Last year, an anonymous author wrote a widely shared account of buying a half-pound of dried shrimp on Douyin and feeling cheated. The app showed plump, palm-size specimens that had supposedly been grilled at home by a kindly-looking lady. But the shrimp that came in the mail were tiny and smelly, the person wrote. Then, when the person tried to get a refund, little information was to be found.
Mr. Bern acknowledged that ByteDance had much to learn when it came to customer service in retail. He said that if TikTok’s e-commerce features were not yet as advanced as Douyin’s, it was in part because Chinese influencers were more entrepreneurial about trying to convert their appeal as video stars into sales of physical products.
TikTok’s more global audience has also forced ByteDance to be more cautious about making changes to the platform than it is with Douyin.
“We’ve seen that TikTok is going to be exactly like Douyin. It’s just a little bit slower,” Mr. Bern said. “There’s nothing unique to TikTok that was not on Douyin.”
Countries with women leaders suffered half as many COVID deaths on average compared to countries with male leaders, academics have found.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have received praise for their countries’ response to coronavirus, while US President Donald Trump has been criticised. But even with the best and worst outliers removed, statistical analysis of 194 countries by the University of Liverpool still showed that women leaders performed better.
Professor Supriya Garikipati said: “Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities. In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances.
“While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”
With only 19 countries out of 194 led by women, researchers created “nearest neighbour” countries based on a number of factors, such as GDP, population, population age, health expenditure, equality and openness to travel. So Leo Varadkar’s Ireland was compared to Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand; Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh was compared to Pakistan, led by Arif Alvi; and Ana Brnabić’s Serbia was compared to Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Professor Garikipati said: “Nearest neighbour analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”
Researchers found that women leaders tended to lock their countries down earlier. Rather than an example of gender stereotypes around risk aversion, the researchers argue that women leaders were willing to risk their economies to preserve human life.
The researchers argue that “having a clear, empathetic and decisive communication style made a significant difference to immediate outcomes of the COVID pandemic in women-led countries”.
Professor Garkipati said: “Our findings show that COVID outcomes are systematically and significantly better in countries led by women and, to some extent, this may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted. Even accounting for institutional context and other controls, being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.”
The authors hope that the paper will serve as a “starting point” in the debate about how national leaders affected the pandemic.
Travel planning has changed — and not in a good way. In addition to booking a flight and hotel, travelers are faced with questions that were unthinkable just six months ago.
Where can I go? Do I need a negative Covid-19 test result to enter? Must I quarantine upon arrival?
If I’m allowed in, should I go? Are Covid-19 infections on the rise? Will the holiday be what I want — or will shops, restaurants and beaches be closed?
Cutting through the chaos
A new website answers all but one of these questions (whether you should go is on you).
Launched in May, Covid Controls was developed by a team who met while working at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology (SMART), a research center created in 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in partnership with the National Research Foundation of Singapore.
“We were a team conducting research at the intersection of big data, design and travel,” said Mohit Shah, who along with three colleagues launched the website four months after leaving SMART.
“We created it because we saw there was no comprehensive Covid-19 dashboard specifically geared toward travelers,” he said, “especially at a time when the situation is changing so rapidly.”
What the site can tell you
Covid Controls tracks travel restrictions and Covid-19 data from around the world to provide “everything a foreign visitor needs to know” before traveling, said Shah.
Information is presented in color-coded maps, and countries can be clicked or searched by name to determine which places are allowing tourists (and which are banning them), whether airports are open, and whether documentation and medical testing are required to enter.
Covid Controls is a dashboard to locate Covid-19 travel information for countries across the globe.
Lockdown details, if any, are also provided, allowing travelers to check whether curfews are in effect and if restaurants, bars, shops and tourist attractions are open — with or without restrictions.
The Covid-19 data is particularly helpful to understand the extent of a country’s current outbreak. Travelers can review new daily cases, the number of people presently sick, containment statistics and outbreak trends, the latter being Shah’s favorite part of the site.
“It shows where the curve is flattening, growing or declining,” he said.
Data can be found for each of the 50 states of the United States, Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, Russia’s eight federal districts, and Australia’s six states plus two major territories.
At the bottom of each destination page, a list of sources is available, followed by links to recent media coverage of the area. For example, you can see that while the Dominican Republic is open to tourists, the Miami Herald reported that hospitals there reached capacity with Covid-19 patients about two weeks ago, which may affect your decision to travel there.
The website added a new feature this week. Users can now indicate where they live (or have recently traveled) to see which countries they can visit.
“This way you’ll be able to visualize, for example as an American resident, exactly which countries you are allowed, allowed with restrictions, or completely prohibited,” said Shah.
The designation of some countries as “partially allowed” is based on how welcoming the government is to tourists. Factors for that determination include: the number of entry points, limits on tourist activities (such as closed regions or attractions) and quarantine and entrance requirements (such as medical tests, tracing apps, insurance or other documents).
What the site can’t tell you
Not every country is covered. Information for some small nations, such as Bermuda and Vatican City, aren’t included on the site (yet), though countries like Monaco and the Marshall Islands are.
Separately, it’s difficult to obtain accurate information from some areas, particularly African countries that are not popular tourist destinations, Shah said.
Some U.S. states and the U.K. do not report recoveries. The team now uses a methodology to estimate that data; if a case is not marked as a death or hospitalization after six weeks, they assume it to be a recovered case. Those assumptions will be clearly marked as estimates, Shah said.
How does the website work?
Covid Controls tracks over 500 official sources, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, various tourism boards, official foreign travel advisories and local news agencies. It’s updated daily, and information is curated both algorithmically and manually.
Medical data comes from the World Health Organization, The Covid Tracking Project (a volunteer organization launched from The Atlantic) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Users are also instrumental in fine tuning the website, Shah said. When a Singapore-based CNBC editor pointed out that Singapore households can accept up to five guests per household, not 10, Shah sent the newspaper article that his team relied on for that information.
“We will update this right away,” he said (which they did). “This is exactly why we have added a chat button on the website. People can quickly point out if something has changed in their country.”
Portraits commemorate people as well as a moment in time. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is often considered the archetype of Renaissance portraiture. Similarly, Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring is sometimes referred to as the “Mona Lisa of the north.” Even today, these two masterpieces continue to inspire generations of young creatives. Spanish artist Tati Moons reimagines the enigmatic sitters of these paintings as contemporary women in trendy digital portraits.
“I was planning on painting the Mona Lisa just for fun for a few years as I really enjoy doing fan arts, and one day I was kinda bored and I just did it,” Moons tells My Modern Met. Not only did Moons modernize the Mona Lisa‘s wardrobe with a black sleeveless dress, but she also gave her shimmering makeup and an assortment of whimsical tattoos. Beneath Mona Lisa‘s collarbone is typography that reads, “Timeless,” and an illustration of Adam and God’s hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. Then, on her bare shoulder is an image of a square in a circle and the phrase, “OG Muse.”
“At first I wasn’t planning on publishing it and keeping it to myself like many other artworks, (I knew some people could find it disrespectful for the tattoos and so on) but I don’t know why I went ahead and posted it,” Moons tells us. “It got a pretty good response regardless and people motivated me to paint the Girl With a Pearl Earring, and by now I have plans on keeping up with the series!” Just like the Mona Lisa fan art, the artist updated the clothing and hairstyle of the Girl With a Pearl Earring. So, instead of Vermeer’s yellow headdress, this modern version sports a stylish high pony. She also wears sparkling makeup and a tiny heart tattoo underneath her eye.
You can commission your own digital portrait by visiting Moons’ website, and keep up to date with the artist’s latest creations by following her on Instagram.
Similarly, Moons reimagined the Girl With a Pearl Earring with glittery makeup and a high ponytail.
