With help from John Hendel and Mark Scott
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4:33 p.m.: NASAs launch today of Elon Musks SpaceX rocket could catapult the astronauts, the Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur, and the country to fame if it works, that is.
Shareholder talks, commence: Tech employees, civil rights activists and antitrust advocates are using Amazons and Facebooks annual shareholder meetings today to pressure the giants on issues ranging from the environmental impact of their businesses to their acquisitions of rival companies.
Schumers (rare) new tech bill: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to introduce bipartisan, bicameral legislation today to give the National Science Foundation an infusion of government cash and provide more money for research into AI, 5G and quantum computing.
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ON WEDNESDAYS, WE LAUNCH ROCKETS The weeks main event is NASA's launch this afternoon of a 230-foot rocket, outfitted by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, from Cape Canaveral a historic event that both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are expected to attend. If successful, Musk's SpaceX will go down in history as the first private company to carry humans into orbit. Tune in at 4:33 p.m.
NASAs fortunes are tied to Musks, who has made headlines recently for antics like vowing to sell all his houses, denouncing coronavirus lockdowns as fascist and reopening Teslas electric-car factory in defiance of California health authorities, POLITICOs Jacqueline Feldscher reports. SpaceXs role is a major departure from the traditional way NASA has sent its astronauts into space during the decades when it funded, owned and operated its own rockets and shuttles. And it comes as other private businesses aim to take humans to the final frontier, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos rocket company, Blue Origin, and Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic.
EYEBALLS WATCHING EMOJI: SILICON VALLEYS SHAREHOLDER MEETINGS Facebooks and Amazons annual shareholder meetings today are already being met with pushback.
For Facebook, as MT scooped Tuesday, that has taken the form of demands the company be broken up and stop profiting off the pandemic. Change the Terms coalition, a group of civil and digital rights activists that presses tech companies to crack down on hateful activity online, is meanwhile asking the company to ban white supremacists.
For Amazon, the pushback has taken the form of grass-roots groups like Amazon Employees for Climate Justice calling on the board to respond to their environmental concerns, including over warehouse and delivery fleet emissions that workers say are disproportionately hurting communities of color.
Amazons logistics network of trucks spew climate-change-causing greenhouse gases and toxic particles as they drive to and from warehouses that are concentrated near Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, the climate group wrote in a blog post mapping out the racial makeup of neighborhoods occupied by Amazon facilities. They claim the giants infrastructure overwhelmingly pollutes immigrant areas and communities of color particularly around San Bernardino, Calif., home to some two dozen warehouses and demand that Amazon enter a so-called Community Benefits Agreement that would require the company to provide permanent, living wage jobs and health benefits for local residents and zero emissions electric delivery trucks to promote clean air, among other asks.
The demands come as Amazon has seen a wave of fresh scrutiny in Washington during the pandemic and after the coronavirus spread to at least 50 warehouses and took the lives of at least eight Amazon warehouse workers.
OMG: If you were wondering how Amazon planned to respond to the discontent ahead of todays meeting, this might really make your jaw drop.
SAY HELLO TO A RARE SCHUMER TECH BILL A bipartisan, bicameral bill led by Schumer is expected to be introduced today. The Endless Frontiers Act, an uncommon piece of tech legislation from the New York Democrat, proposes a major, renewed federal investment in tech and science research through public-private partnerships and funding by the U.S. government investments intended to help in the race ahead with Covid-19 research in the short term, and to help brace for future threats of this magnitude in the long term.
The numbers: The bill would put $100 billion over five years toward the National Science Foundation (which currently has an annual budget of just $8.1 billion) and toward research and innovation across AI, 5G, quantum computing and other areas. It would also notably give the Commerce Department the ability to allocate billions more in funding to 10 to 15 tech hubs around the country, amplifying similar calls to create regional tech hubs by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is among the co-sponsors of the bill.
Schumer first announced the bill in a recent USA Today op-ed with co-sponsors Khanna, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), highlighting the dangers of our decades-long underinvestment in the infrastructure that would help prevent, respond to and recover from an emergency of this scale namely, scientific and technological discovery. They also stress the need to keep up as China gains ground outpacing the United States by investing in technological innovations essential to Americans future safety and prosperity. The group is looking to package the proposal into the upcoming NDAA, according to a senior Senate aide familiar with the group's efforts.
THE NEXT 5G AIRWAVES FRONTIER? A mix of wireless industry trade groups and think tanks is nudging the FCC to issue an item ASAP to make the 12 GHz band airwaves more available for 5G use. The current technical rules for 12.2-12.7 GHz are obsolete and burdensome, preventing use of this spectrum for 5G wireless services, wrote the Competitive Carriers Association, Incompas, Open Technology Institute, Computer & Communications Industry Association and Public Knowledge.
One likely (and unmentioned) beneficiary: DISH Network, a satellite TV company affiliated with some of the signatories and currently on the hook for building out a 5G wireless network as part of the federal governments T-Mobile-Sprint merger approval. DISH holds much of this spectrum and, despite some industry pushback from players such as OneWeb, is adamant that the commission should act.
THE CASE AGAINST EUROPES DIGITAL SERVICES TAX The business-friendly Tax Foundation crunched the numbers to see whether digital taxes affecting major Silicon Valley companies operating in Europe are legal under international tax, trade and European law (mostly because current DSTs come from EU governments). The answer? Probably not.
In its analysis, the group looks at how current levies from the likes of France or Italy represent potential discrimination under existing trade law (like the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services), as well as under international tax rules if the digital taxes breach existing bilateral agreements between countries (say France and Ireland, where several of Silicon Valleys biggest companies, including Apple and Facebook, have a major presence outside the U.S.).
As for existing EU rules? Country's digital taxes may run afoul of the 27-country bloc's fundamental freedoms, though such a fight would likely wind its way to Europe's highest court and take years to conclude.
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Alison Watkins, a privacy litigator who has counseled clients on compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act and Europes GDPR, has joined Perkins Coie as a partner in the firms litigation and privacy and security practices in the Palo Alto office. ... Jack Westerlund, a director of sales at Microsoft, is now director of sales at Microsoft partner RapidDeploy, an Austin-based software company working to reduce response time for first responders.
(More) gig grumblings: Uber and Lyft drivers in New York, where two rulings have deemed gig workers as employees eligible for the states unemployment insurance, are now suing over allegations that they have not been paid unemployment benefits in a timely manner, NYT reports.
Turning the other cheek: As Facebook did some soul-searching to study how the platform shapes user behavior, executives were warned that our algorithms exploit the human brains attraction to divisiveness, WSJ reports but ultimately, Mr. Zuckerberg and other senior executives largely shelved the basic research ... and weakened or blocked efforts to apply its conclusions to Facebook products.
Land of layoffs: Many leading Silicon Valley firms are feeling the layoff pains most outside the Bay Area, The Information reports.
Its good to be Google: In Sundar Pichais latest update on working from home, the Google CEO said that his employees, who will be largely working from home for the rest of this year, would receive a $1,000 allowance to go toward work equipment and office furniture.
ICYMI: "Twitter took a small stand against a pair of unsubstantiated President Donald Trump tweets about voting fraud on Tuesday by adding fact-check warnings," Cristiano reports, "but the move was unlikely to stem the onslaught of criticism the company is facing about tweets it hasn't acted on, including those peddling conspiracy theories about a deceased congressional staffer."
Podcast OTD: The latest episode of FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcels Broadband Conversations podcast features Julie Samuels, executive director of Tech:NYC. Listen through Google Podcasts, GooglePlay, iTunes or the FCC.
Opinion: Samuels spells out in the Daily News how tech jobs and investment will be a key component of New Yorks post-pandemic economic recovery across all five boroughs.
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TTYL and go wash your hands.
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Could this be Elon Musk's biggest day yet? - Politico
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