Social media tech giants good days are at an end? U.S. lawmakers to introduce anti-trust law case. Pillow Boss is launching its own social media site.
Tuesday Republican U.S. Senator Graham warned that Biden‘s border policy threatens to become the perfect way for Islamic State to enter the U.S.!
The U.S. State Department confirmed Wednesday (March 10) that top Chinese and U.S. diplomats will meet in Alaska on March 18, with the U.S. side announcing five major topics.
Microsoft email software vulnerability continues to fester! Germany‘s 60,000 computers compromised, Australia issues advanced alert.
The commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese Communist Party‘s disinformation and propaganda machine has nearly a million people behind it.
Pillow Boss is launching its own social media site
“Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of My Pillow, said he is launching his own social media site to give people a voice again after his personal and MyPillow accounts were suspended by Twitter.
Pictured is Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, speaking at a rally on Dec. 12, 2020.
“Every influencer on the planet can come here. You will have a platform to have a voice.” Lindell announced on Charlie Kirk’s podcast last week, “We’re launching this big platform so that all the voices in our country can come back and start speaking truthfully again.”
Lindell said that with his social media site, “you won’t need YouTube. you won’t need these platforms …… it [Lindell’s social media platform] will be a place where you can speak freely because we have to get our voices back. People will be able to speak instead of having to be careful what they say.”
Lindell further explained that his social media site will be launched in “four to five weeks,” but did not elaborate on the nature of the site or how it will work.
Lindell’s site will compete with sites such as Parler and Gab, which have attracted conservatives and supporters of former President Trump (R-Texas). Trump and his advisers have also said that Trump is also considering setting up his own social media company.
Lindell said in an interview that Google took “tens of thousands of dollars” in advertising revenue from him before shutting him down.
The company’s main goal is to provide a platform for the development of a new social media company.
U.S. Announces Five Topics to Talk About in Blinken Meeting with Yang Jiechi
The U.S. State Department confirmed Wednesday (March 10) that top Chinese and U.S. diplomats will meet in Alaska on March 18 to discuss five topics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, positions on Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the Chinese Communist Party’s economic embargo on Australia. The Chinese Communist Party has been seeking diplomatic engagement with the Biden Administration since December of last year.
The State Department issued an announcement Wednesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 18.
U.S.-based scholar He Qinglian wrote in a March 10 article in the newspaper that the Biden administration renewed its ban on investment in specific Chinese military companies on Jan. 27, just days after taking office, and that the ban on investment in 44 land-based companies, including SMIC and CNOOC, originally scheduled for Jan. 28, will be delayed until May, during which Time investment in companies with similar names to those already included on the blacklist will be allowed.
The cabinet appointments are mostly pro-communist: Secretary of State Blinken was the founder of the Western Advisory Service, whose strength in soliciting business is their special relationship with the Chinese Communist authorities. The U.S. Department of Commerce is currently reviewing a ban on Chinese Communist tech giant Tencent Holdings, which is owned by new Commerce Secretary Raimondo and her husband, according to a financial filing. U.S. Trade Representative nominee Katherine Tai, who comes from a Chinese Family, came to Guangzhou to teach English at Sun Yat-sen University from 1996 to 1998 as a Yale Yale-China Fellow.
He Qinglian pointed out that all of this, in the eyes of the Chinese Communist authorities, is considered a friendly signal released by the Biden administration, which is only inconvenient to turn around for a while due to domestic public opinion.
Biden will hold the first-ever video conference on Thursday (12) of the leadership-level “quadrilateral talks,” which are seen as a bulwark against Chinese Communist expansionism and include Australia, Japan and India.
Biden administration officials said the focus of the quadripartite meeting will be on technology, with a deal with India to significantly increase production capacity for India’s new coronavirus vaccine at its core.
On the other hand, Secretary of State John Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Japan and South Korea next week before returning to Alaska to meet with Chinese Communist diplomats; as the first foreign trip by a Biden administration cabinet minister, such an itinerary would underscore the importance they attach to the Asia-Pacific region and China (Communist Party of China) issues.
Graham: Biden’s border policy threatens to become a perfect way for ISIS to enter the U.S.
The U.S. border crisis continues to raise concerns among Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned Tuesday (March 9) that Biden’s lax illegal immigration policies could have a major impact on national security and that the southern border could become “a perfect way for terrorists to enter the United States.
Photo: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
In an interview with Fox’s Hannity on Tuesday, Graham accused Biden of overturning former President Trump’s tough border policies to crack down on illegal immigration, leading to a recent surge in immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Graham said that Trump’s policies are being replaced by those of the Biden administration, and that those illegal immigrants will never leave the United States once they get their foot in the door.
Graham said, “By this summer, hundreds of thousands of people (illegal immigrants) will be flocking here. It’s a humanitarian crisis. It will be an economic crisis for our border cities and ultimately a national security crisis because they are children today, but could easily be terrorists tomorrow.”
This year, the United States will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Graham warned, “Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) would like nothing better than to attack us again to show that they are still alive and well. The current insecurity at our borders is a great way for terrorists to get into our country.”
The White House has been reluctant to label the current U.S. border situation as a “crisis,” but Graham warned that unless Biden implements positive changes and acknowledges the severity of the situation, “the worst is yet to come.
Graham said, “By late spring and early summer, you’ll see countless families forming caravans (heading to the U.S.) because the word has gotten out in Central America that they (the Biden administration) are changing the policy set by Trump that if you (illegal immigrants) get to the (U.S.-Mexico) border and you turn yourself in, you’ll stay in the U.S., not Mexico. “
A Mexican official familiar with the dynamics of illegal immigration told Reuters that organized crime has been changing its modus operandi “since the day Biden took office” and now shows an “unprecedented” level of sophistication. Assessments show that this includes briefing clients on the latest immigration rules, using technology to hide from authorities and disguising smuggling operations as travel.
The end of the good times for tech giants? U.S. Lawmakers to Introduce Antitrust Bill
A bipartisan group led by Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. David Cicilline will introduce a bill Wednesday (March 10) aimed at making it easier for news organizations to bargain collectively with platforms such as Google and Facebook.
The measure would allow newspapers, broadcast or digital news organizations to join forces to win better deals from Facebook and Google over a four-year period.
Klobuchar said she is optimistic about the possibility of the measure becoming law because of growing concern among lawmakers in both parties about monopolies by big tech companies. “The tech world is relentless,” she said. The bills would allow the negotiating parties to negotiate on “everything from advertising revenue to access to subscriber information.
Most people now get their news online through Facebook and Google, she said.
Social media companies use news to attract users, but news publishers accuse them of not sharing enough advertising revenue with them. This legislation could boost news publishers’ revenues.
It’s undeniable that the news industry is struggling amid declining advertising revenue and changing media habits, with employment at U.S. newspapers halved since 2008, according to Pew Research.
In a statement, Cicilline said, “This bill will give hard-working local journalists and publishers the help they need right now so they can continue to do their important work.”
Smaller publishers that use Google’s ad-selling technology have complained for years that their bigger competitors get more lucrative revenue-sharing deals from the search giant.
The House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, chaired by Cicilline, will hold a hearing on the matter on Friday.
Recently, Facebook and Australia have been engaged in a bitter battle over how much of the profits publishers should get from social media. Legislation proposed in Australia would require Facebook and Google to pay Australian publishers for citing news links or price them through arbitration.
Microsoft breach spreads worldwide, 60,000 computers compromised in Germany
The head of Germany’s cybersecurity watchdog said Wednesday (March 10) that more than 60,000 computer systems in Germany were exposed to a Microsoft vulnerability and that Hackers were hacking them through a Microsoft Corp. email software vulnerability.
The vulnerability is said to have been widely exploited by multiple hackers and has affected more than 20,000 U.S. institutions. In addition, the European Union’s banking regulator and the Norwegian Parliament were also affected.
Initially, most of the targets attacked were think tanks, universities, non-governmental organizations, law firms and defense companies, the vast majority of which were U.S. entities. But now it turns out that “(hackers) deployed vulnerabilities on a large scale against thousands of targets – apparently on a global scale.”
Microsoft identified the culprit of the cyberattack as a Chinese cyberespionage group called Hafnium on March 2 and subsequently provided a software patch to users.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had issued a rare emergency directive last week requiring federal government agencies to immediately patch or disconnect products running Microsoft Exchange software and encouraging patching of systems for fixes.
Australia Issues “Advanced Alert” After Hacking of Over 7,000 Agency Email Systems
Australian Assistant Defense Minister Andrew Hastie warned Wednesday that more than 7,000 agencies in the country, including Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), have had their email systems hacked, and called on agencies to take immediate remedial measures to fix vulnerable system vulnerabilities and, if necessary, disconnect from the Internet.
Brian Krebs, a cybersecurity researcher, published a weblog on Friday, citing anonymous sources who said that at least 30,000 organizations across the United States had been compromised by Chinese hacking groups. Microsoft believes that the cyberattack has been going on for months.
U.S. Indo-Pacific commander shocked: millions behind Chinese Communist Party disinformation propaganda machine
The Chinese Communist Party has been unscrupulous in recent years in its foreign propaganda efforts. The commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, attended a hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday (9) EST and mentioned that the Chinese Communist Party has a huge disinformation propaganda machine with nearly a million people behind it.
According to U.S. Military News, Davidson noted that the Chinese Communist Party authorities use conventional media and social media to spread disinformation, with nearly 1 million people in their propaganda machine, and that the Communist Party’s disinformation campaign is designed to “undermine U.S. interests, spread their own interests, and make our allies and partners doubt the reliability of the United States. “
Davidson emphasized that disinformation is part of a new geostrategic structure that makes competition more difficult.
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