The Question
Is it OK to kick a robot dog?
Talking Points
- An FAA systems failure grounded thousands of US flights
- The annual 'debt ceiling' circus returned to Congress
- Naomi Osaka announced her pregnancy
- The beloved Jeff Beck died aged 78
- Authorities in Brazil prepared for a repeat of Jan 8
- The death toll of Peru's anti-government protests reached 49
- Cardinal George Pell died (the less said on this, the better)
- Soledar became the "fiercest" battle of the Ukraine war
- Internet weirdo Andrew Tate was held on sex trafficking charges
- Uganda announced the end of its latest ebola outbreak
Deep Dive
Xi Jinping is acting boldly, but it's not in the direction many feared. This week we delve into the constraints that spurred a widespread softening of China's internal and external policies
Drop the pressure
In October, Xi Jinping gave himself a third term as president of the People's Republic of China. His position was unquestionable; the Standing Committee were loyalists to a man. The headlines were fanciful. The sky was the limit when it came to imagining what an emboldened authoritarian could do. Reports of an imminent invasion of Taiwan came at a dizzying pace. It was typical of the modern news cycle: focusing on the tools available to powerful figures, rather than the constraints they operate within.
China is undergoing a drastic shift under its unshackled leader: it is forsaking Zero Covid, unwinding regulatory crackdowns, softening foreign policies, and projecting a more genial image. Let's get into these fundamental changes, starting with Covid. Right now, the rather artless p ivot from Zero-Covid to "let it rip" is having all the predictable effects . Having successfully suppressed case numbers for years, in 2023 there are millions of new infections every day. China's hospital system is groaning: there are too many sick people to treat. It is likely that the death toll will be significant — perhaps as high as a million.
Beijing weighed the price of continued isolation and found it unbearable. China's economic growth has been steadily decelerating for a decade. Covid-19 and Beijing's severe public health settings sharpened that trend. China will miss its 2022 growth target of 5% by nearly half. Its a far cry from the double-digit growth of yesteryear. This will necessitate a far more aggressive target in 2023: an impossibility while living under self-imposed isolation. And so draconian restrictions have been lifted hastily. Travel controls were eased, and a quarter of a million people arrived in China on the first day.
Red lines and green lights
Some of you will be old enough to remember the reform spree that Chinese regulators went on in 2020. The anti-trust cops went hard at previously tolerated monopolies brandishing their new catchphrase "disorderly capital". Ant Group's planned $34bn IPO on the Shanghai stock exchange was spiked two days out after Jack Ma made some extremely regrettable (and regretted) comments about the banking system. Beijing placed debt controls on property developers which became known as the "three red lines". All manner of industries — from ride-hailing to crypto to private tutoring — were suddenly under the thumb. A new era was dawning in Xi's China, one of "common prosperity".
That's all out the window now. Xi's New Years Eve speech included a nod to lower taxes and a raft of measures to help businesses . Evidently you can't have common prosperity without uncommon prosperity. Those property developers which endangered countless nest-eggs are going to receive significant government investment. The end of the short-lived experiment in reining in "disorderly capital" reveals just how onerous the constraints on Xi Jinping are. A shrinking, ageing population is rarely an increasingly productive one.
In a welcome move, China's foreign relations are beginning to thaw. Australia and its coal reserves are now back in the good books. Diplomats have promised new dialogue with the Philippines over the South China Sea disputes. Wolf warrior diplomacy has given way to shepherd diplomacy. While Russia exhausts itself in a needless land war, China is showing a more benevolent smile. Or is that a rictus?
Worldlywise
Microsoft gets chatty
The San Francisco artificial intelligence startup OpenAI became a household name overnight last year. No doubt you've had a play with ChatGPT. It's clearly the most sophisticated chatbot ever devised — running off an unbelievable amount of training data ripped from the web. If, like Blake Lemoine, you have an inkling that it is sentient, please do not express the thought in public. It is funny, frightening, but certainly not thinking. The time of the large language model has come and Microsoft stands to be a primary beneficiary.
In 2019 Satya Nadella's Microsoft invested $1bn in OpenAI. It was considered that OpenAI's products could supercharge the laughably irrelevant Bing search engine. In the years since Microsoft has tripled its initial stake. Now that ChatGPT is out in the open, Nadella is rumoured to have put $10bn on the table . Right now most of us are still amusing ourselves with the novelty of a powerful chatbot. It is writing students essays, passing medical board tests , and providing plenty of good fodder for your group chat. But a great deal of disruption is on the horizon.
We've known for years that the lower rungs of many white collar industries would be exposed. Now we can see the tools that will exploit that vulnerability. OpenAI will launch paid, professional versions of ChatGPT this quarter: it will erase more jobs than it creates.
Breaking the kayfabe
Here is a normal sentence for you: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund wants to take the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) private. Why would the Public Investment Foundation (PIF) desire a $6bn pro-wrestling league? Why wouldn't it! The WWE turns over a billion each year and is an indispensable American media product. While viewership has taken a hit in recent years, its cultural imprint lingers. It turned Terry Gene Bollea into Hulk Hogan and transformed Dwayne Johnson into The Rock. When the McMahon dynasty placed it on the auction block last month there was interest from Comcast, Fox, Netflix, Amazon, and the group that owns the UFC.
The PIF is clearly unconcerned with short-term returns. It has written countless cheques for Masayoshi Son's SoftBank bets. NEOM, history's most elaborate mechanism for putting money in the right peoples' pockets, is an expensive mirage. A Saudi-owned WWE would be distinct from the breakaway LIV Golf competition or its majority stake in Newcastle United. In both of these cases there are safe branding opportunities aplenty (one example is Newcastle's third kit for the 22-23 season which bears more than a little resemblance to that of the Saudi national team). Where do you stick the shahada on an oiled, muscled body that is performing acts of great theatrical violence (not to mention sexual innuendo)? Will Trish Stratus appear in a niqab?
These are all questions which the irrepressible Vince McMahon may have to deal with. It would be a fast turnabout for someone who stepped down as CEO last year under a storm of sexual harassment complaints. But you can never really get rid of someone who holds 80% of the voting stock. McMahon just waited til the dust settled (seven months to be precise). In the New Year he came off the ropes, voted himself in as Chairman, and used the ladder on his opponents. He needs to keep the kayfabe up: the reality beneath is simply far too depressing.
Winners and Losers
📈 Oscar Niemeyer
There are similarities between the Jan 6 riot in Washington and the Jan 8 riot in Brasilia. Both were opportunities for Facebook-addled aunts, the terminally-Evangelical, small-business fascists, and an assortment of sore losers to unleash their resentment on the institutions of government. Neither got within a cooee of being a coup. But while the backdrop of Jan 6 was the typically unimaginative neoclassical Capitol Building, this year we were treated to the breath-taking work of Oscar Niemeyer. His Congresso Nacional is perhaps the finest expression of the International Style in existence. The presence of a canarinho-draped marauder only underscored its solidity, poise, and positive vision of the future.
📈 Antarctic tanners
The hole in the ozone layer is closing thanks to the combined efforts of the Montreal Protocol signatories and Captain Planet. This thin, UV-reflecting layer of the stratosphere is expected to recover to pre-1980 levels in the coming decades. A 99% reduction in chlorofluorocarbons got us halfway there, cartoons did the rest. Great news for the 100,000-odd tourists who will visit our southern-most continent and want to work on their tans without getting cancer.
📉 Binary oppositions
We've spent a good whack of time organising our thoughts and societies around contradistinct pairs. But climate change is eroding the structures we rely on — physical and linguistic. Right now a significant portion of California, is simultaneously suffering through drought and historic flooding . Beyond Good and Evil? Child's play. Try Beyond Wet and Dry.
📉 The twinkle in Rich's eyes
Like a radical Sunni preacher, Sir Richard Branson has made promises he couldn't keep about Virgin and the heavens. The first ever launch from British soil ended in failure this week when a booster failed to fire. A Virgin Orbit 747 lofted the rocket from earthly Cornwall up to 35,000ft but the newly-independent LauncherOne flopped straight back into the Atlantic .
Highlights
The Image
Venice Beached. The Venetians were a proud sea-faring people for the better part of a millennia. Now they mostly just litter the lagoon with distressed dinghies. The wrecks number over 2,000. Photo supplied by The Guardian .
The Quote
"I'd been trying some home remedies, including one recommended by a friend, she'd urged me to apply Elizabeth Arden cream."
– Prince Harry's autobiography Spare recounts the tale of his frostbitten penis in colourful detail. This passage takes a turn for the worse — needless to say it is about how his dear departed mother used said ointment. Paging Dr. Freud. The Palace must be having conniptions. We're still awaiting confirmation on the veracity of Harold's funniest attributed quote: saying "Hello, Granny" while rolling up a 50 quid note to do a line of cocaine.
The Numbers
An 11% haircut
- Stripe has cut its internal valuation to $63bn. It is the third time in less than a year that the payment service has reduced its estimation since boasting a $95bn valuation at its last round.
$200bn missing
- Elon Musk has become the first person in human history to lose $200bn. Impressive .
The Headlines
"It's Time for the French to Work Longer and Retire Later" — Bloomberg Opinion. Pure folly.
"The New Case for Social Climbing"
— The Atlantic. Spoiler: it's the same as the old one.
The Special Mention
Our Special Mention in the field of 'This One Is Earnest, Really' goes to Ke Huy Quan. The Vietnamese-American actor received the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor playing Waymong Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once . His acceptance speech was equal parts vulnerability and joy — a delight.
The Most-Read Article
'Seattle Schools Sue Big Tech Over Youth Mental Health Crisis'
The Best Long Reads
- Businessweek takes a wild ride
- Financial Times goes to war with Disney
- Foreign Affairs cosies up with Japan
Thomas Wharton
Senior Editor
The Answer...
Yes. You may run afoul of property damage statutes but the act itself is ethically spotless. At a point in the near future some wannabe-Promethean, maladapted genius in the Bay Area will manage to mimic pain-responses in robot dogs. Up until that point we'd argue you are morally compelled to upend as many cybernetic hounds as your fragile toes will allow.
