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enterprise| enterpriseauthorTom KrazitNoneAre you keeping up with the latest cloud developments? Get Tom Krazit and Joe Williams' newsletter every Monday and Thursday.d3d5b92349
July 23, 2020
Intel is in trouble.
The next generation of the iconic company's once-vaunted chip-manufacturing technology will be delayed, again, following extended delays to the rollout of its current chip-manufacturing technology. Intel is attempting to build next-generation chips using a 7-nanometer processing technology, a feat that most of its rivals in the chip-making game have achieved, but CEO Bob Swan said in Intel's second-quarter earnings release Thursday that customers should not expect those chips until late 2022 at the earliest.
This means AMD, as well as companies building chips around the Arm instruction set — like Apple and AWS — will enjoy years during which they offer the most powerful and power efficient chips on the market. AMD's second-generation Epyc server chips, built on a 7-nanometer manufacturing process, have been available for almost a year, and AWS' head-turning Graviton chips were also built on a 7-nanometer process.
For context, a single human hair is around 80,000 nanometers wide. Intel's 7-nanometer problem is that it isn't seeing the yields it would expect from a normal manufacturing process, or the number of good, working chips that can be cut from a silicon wafer.
The smaller the manufacturing process, the more transistors you can fit on an expensive piece of silicon real estate, which makes for a more powerful chip. Back in the 1960s, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore advanced a dictum that would come to be known as Moore's law: that the number of transistors that could possibly fit on a silicon die of a given size would double roughly every 18 to 24 months.
Amazingly, Intel made that proclamation come true for more than 40 years, but the challenges of building structures that approach the size of individual atoms have proven very difficult for the company over the back half of the last decade. The years during which Intel dictated silicon manufacturing trends would appear to be over.
It's now easier to understand why Apple would be willing to bet on Arm chips for the Mac; a strategically important customer like Apple has years of visibility into Intel's road maps. Taiwan's TSMC, a major supplier to many chip designers, has been shipping 7-nanometer Arm chips for quite some time and is getting ready to start making chips based on a 5-nanometer manufacturing process, which Intel won't duplicate for a very long time.
Swan said during a call with investors that Intel would start looking at using other manufacturing companies to build its own chip designs, a once unthinkable suggestion for a senior Intel executive to make.
Thanks to its monopoly position in both PC and server processors, however, Intel recorded second-quarter revenue of $19.7 billion, up 20% compared to last year. Investors, who no longer hear Intel talk about Moore's law in every presentation for some reason, sent its stock down 10% in after-hours trading.
Updated: This posted was updated at 5:30 p.m. PT to include more information from the earnings call.
Tom Krazit
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
People
Beeper built the universal messaging app the world needed
It's an app for all your social apps. And part of an entirely new way to think about chat.
Beeper is an app for all your messaging apps, including the hard-to-access ones.
Image: Beeper
January 22, 2021
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
January 22, 2021
Eric Migicovsky likes to tinker. And the former CEO of Pebble — he's now a partner at Y Combinator — knows a thing or two about messaging. "You remember on the Pebble," he asked me, "how we had this microphone, and on Android you could reply to all kinds of messages?" Migicovsky liked that feature, and he especially liked that it didn't care which app you used. Android-using Pebble wearers could speak their replies to texts, Messenger chats, almost any notification that popped up.
That kind of universal, non-siloed approach to messaging appealed to Migicovsky, and it didn't really exist anywhere else. "Remember Trillian from back in the day?" he asked, somewhat wistfully. "Or Adium?" They were the gold-standard of universal messaging apps; users could log in to their AIM, MSN, GChat and Yahoo accounts, and chat with everyone in one place.
<p>Migicovsky has spent the last two years building a modern equivalent. It's called Beeper, and it pulls 15 different messaging services — including WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram and iMessage — into a single app. The app launched this week, and will cost $10 a month for anyone who wants to use it. Migicovsky said roughly 40 people have been using the app for the last few months, and that he's come to rely on it completely. "Beeper went down for me a couple of weeks ago, and I had to fix it," he said. "And for the hours I was fixing it, I had to open up Slack, Telegram, Signal, everything. It was like going back to the Stone Ages." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>To explain how Beeper works, and why Migicovsky thinks it's valuable, you have to understand the protocols. In the early days of online messaging (otherwise known as The Adium Era), many messaging services were based on a protocol called Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, or XMPP. When it was designed, XMPP intended to make all kinds of communication on the internet, from text to video to file transfers, into decentralized systems. For a while, it worked: From AIM to Google Talk to the early days of Facebook Chat, some of the biggest messaging services used XMPP. </p><p>A few years later, Google and Facebook — and soon others — decided to stop supporting XMPP. Some argued XMPP was too complicated a protocol and simply didn't work; others said they could develop features more quickly by keeping everything in-house. "Today, group conversations, sharing your day with stickers or emojis and messaging across multiple devices have become second nature to many of us," Google product manager Mayur Kamat <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150704141805if_/https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/ETBvtp9VYav" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote in 2015</a> announcing the switch from Google Talk (which supported XMPP) to Hangouts (which didn't). Whatever the reason, messaging apps soon became walled gardens, with everything run — and stored — in one place.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>In the last few years, though, a group of developers has been building a new protocol, one they hope can offer all the openness and decentralization of XMPP but with all the modern features people need now: encryption, voice and video, integrations with other apps and the like. It's called Matrix. "Matrix is our effort to right the balance" after decades of great tech being turned into walled gardens, said Matthew Hodgson, Matrix's technical co-founder. "If you were going to build the holy grail of messaging," the team asked themselves several years ago — a service where anyone can participate, where everything is encrypted, where nothing is locked off from the ecosystem — "what would it look like?" Some of this tech has been built in the past, but always inside a single company or service. They wanted to build it and give it to the internet.</p><p>Ultimately, Hodgson said, Matrix is more than a messaging protocol. "It's a real-time database for any kind of information," he said, from financial tickers to drone flights to VR streams. "Matrix just gives you the building blocks to synchronize it between different deployments." Messaging just happens to be something with which Hodgson and his team have plenty of experience. Not to mention, it's kind of a killer app. Matrix-based messaging can support a whole ecosystem of apps, the way email protocols do. It's all end-to-end encrypted, and it's resilient by virtue of not being housed in a single data center. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>"When Slack goes down for six hours," Hodgson said, "or Signal goes down for 24 hours, people realize, 'hang on, all my eggs are in one basket.'" There are already decentralized, harder-to-kill apps like Slack or Signal running on Matrix, where there's less security risk or possibility of downtime. He added: "The narrative is swinging in our direction." Millions of users use Matrix messaging tools already, he said, including the entire French government, which uses a Slack-like tool called Element that is built by the Matrix team.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUxMjQ3Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MDIzNzU0NX0.NPrsWaIEy9RUG90_cIsyZMFW7foaGyiuP_vHdD2T-Ok/img.png?width=980" id="ce4ab" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="37ea800dd363bb5c0c588b2727990131" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Beeper chats">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Beeper tries to wrangle lots of messaging apps into one. Eventually, that might not be necessary.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Image: Beeper</small></p><p>Matrix is key to Beeper, but in a slightly different way. Migicovsky isn't trying to build a brand-new chat service to compete with WhatsApp; he's trying to wrangle all the services people use into a system that feels more open. So he's taking advantage of a Matrix feature called Bridges, which pulls other apps into the Matrix ecosystem. Sometimes this is easy: Migicovsky said IRC and Telegram have great APIs, making it easy to send and read messages from other apps. Most others are a bit hackier, though Migicovsky said it's rarely impossible: "If you can open something in a browser, we can get to it."<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>One of Beeper's most enticing integrations is with iMessage, which would mean users could access their iMessages on Android or Windows through the Beeper app. This one is stupendously hacky. If a Beeper user has a Mac that's always on and connected to the internet, it's easy; Beeper just connects to the same relay that delivers messages to all your Apple devices, and sends them to Beeper. But if you don't have a Mac that fits the description, there's only one way in. "We wrote an app for jailbroken iPhones that acts as a relay," Migicovsky said. "There's a database on the iPhone called sms.db. And so we just read and write to that." </p><p>But wait, it gets hackier! There's no way to get everyone to jailbreak their iPhones, so Migicovsky found a workaround. "I buy used old cracked-screen iPhones for cheap," he said. "I jailbreak them, and send them to people with the app installed. And they just set it up and leave it somewhere connected to Wi-Fi." There's a box full of semi-busted iPhones, all the way back to the iPhone 4, on his desk right now. The plan works, though it doesn't exactly scale. "We tried a lot of different things," Migicovsky said. "It might not be like this forever." </p><p>There's one part of this setup that Migicovsky actually quite likes. "You control the phone," he said. All the code is open source, and Beeper encrypts all messages; only users have their passwords to access them. But if you really don't want Beeper getting your texts anymore, just unplug that jailbroken iPhone, and you're done.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>Migicovsky has lots of ideas for how to improve Beeper as a product, and messaging in general. "No one has really innovated in chat in the last 10 years," he said, before allowing that maybe Slack and Discord get a little credit. But that's it. He's not sure what better looks like, though. He's intrigued by new ways to sort and organize messages, even how threads could look. "I'm really just excited about having this ... not a blank canvas, a malleable canvas," he said.</p><p>The list of places people message seems to get longer every day, and Migicovsky wants Beeper to support them all. "I want to build LinkedIn and Snapchat, and I'm not dating but a lot of people want Tinder messages on this," he said. He's not trying to replace those apps entirely, though. "Discord's amazing," he said, by way of example. "It has cool animations, you have the audio chat that's really good, it's got this social element." For Discord things, people should use Discord. But texting with friends or sharing photos shouldn't be a Discord thing. Or an Instagram thing, or a WhatsApp thing, or a Signal thing, or a Slack thing. It definitely shouldn't be all of those, separately.</p>"It would be wonderful if we didn't have to build what we built," Migicovsky said. "And you could just look me up, like in a phone book or something, and say, 'I want to talk to Eric.'" In the long run, Matrix might help make that possible — already, it appears some of Twitter's decentralization work through Project Bluesky is <a href="https://twitter.com/bluesky/status/1352302821140549632" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">being done on Matrix</a>, and Hodgson said he's had conversations with a number of big players in the tech world about build a more open and interoperable messaging ecosystem. For now, the best anyone can do is put everything in one place. It's hacky, but it's progress.
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David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
The current state-of-the-art quantum computers are a tangle of wires. And that can't be the case in the future.
Photo: IBM Research
January 15, 2021
Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
January 15, 2021
The iconic image of quantum computing is the "Google chandelier," with its hundreds of intricately arranged copper wires descending like the tendrils of a metallic jellyfish. It's a grand and impressive device, but in that tangle of wires lurks a big problem.
"If you're thinking about the long-term prospects of quantum computing, that image should be just terrifying," Jim Clarke, the director of quantum hardware at Intel, told Protocol.
<p>The problem is scale. When your quantum computer is <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/noisy-intermediate-scale-nisq" target="_self">based on just a few dozen qubits</a>, it's fine to designate one or more wires to each qubit in order to send and receive signals. But quantum computers are growing, and they will need to reach <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">thousands, if not millions, of qubits to truly be useful</a> for <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/machine-learning-ai-quantum-computing-move-beyond-hype" target="_blank">companies and organizations</a> — at which point, using wires is going to become a literal knotty problem. </p><p>"It's no longer sufficient to just be able to make a qubit device and talk about the properties of a qubit," said David Reilly, a quantum researcher at Microsoft. "It's all about scale. And it's all about the infrastructure that you need to get there."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Multiple companies investing in quantum computers are now looking toward this future, and trying to develop better methods of controlling their qubits. These quantum control chips are similar to the silicon wafers produced using CMOS technology, with a few alterations to make them work at ultracold temperatures and with qubits. </p><p>In December, <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-debuts-2nd-gen-horse-ridge-cryogenic-quantum-control-chip/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Intel announced</a> its Horse Ridge 2 control chip, which builds off its predecessor to perform more specific applications, such as manipulating and reading qubits. Research <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01299" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">soon to be published</a> in Nature Electronics looks at Microsoft's quantum control chip, which operates at the coldest temperatures yet: a tenth of a degree above absolute zero. But Microsoft and Intel aren't alone; other companies have also been developing quantum control chips. In 2019, Google debuted <a href="https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/on-path-to-cryogenic-control-of-quantum.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">its own</a>.</p><p>The goal is to help build the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">infrastructure required for a future quantum computer</a> that has actual applications for corporations and research institutes, not just one that can <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">out-speed classical supercomputers in proof-of-principle tests</a>. </p><h3>Going wireless
</h3><p>Quantum computers rely on unsettling properties of the quantum world, such as superposition: the combination of states exemplified famously by Schrödinger's feline, which can be neither dead nor alive, but exists in some superposition of both states. Quantum effects like superposition are fragile, and tend to collapse out in our noisy, warm, macroscopic world. To preserve the qubits' delicate quantum states, they are kept extremely cold, usually below 1 Kelvin (about -457 degrees Fahrenheit)</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>To achieve those temperatures, qubits are kept in dilution fridges, which use liquid helium to keep their contents ultracold. Those devices have limited internal space and limited cooling power, both of which are hampered by a nest of wires. To explain the impetus for better quantum control, Clarke uses an analogy. </p><p>"Imagine that you are in charge of 100 dogs, and you have to take them for a walk," Clarke says. "Do you take them on 100 separate leashes? Or do you have one leash that fans out and do it more efficiently?" </p><p>In classical computers, control chips are small silicon wafers with some input and output pins that connect to billions of transistors. This CMOS technology is well-known, so it's tempting to slap a classical control chip onto a quantum computer, but it's not feasible. There are two main problems: First, quantum control chips have to operate at extremely low temperatures, so circuits must be designed to dissipate far less heat. Second, quantum control chips require alterations to interface with qubits, which are far more finicky than their classical counterparts. </p><p>Solving both problems entails reworking control chips: though hopefully not so much that they can't still be fabricated at scale, with traditional silicon manufacturing techniques.</p><p>Intel claims its Horse Ridge series (named for Horse Ridge, one of the coldest places in Oregon) operates at 4 K — above the temperature of the qubits it can control — and seeks to build on the company's preexisting expertise with semiconductor technology. While Horse Ridge 1 was designed for a wide variety of qubits, the recently unveiled Horse Ridge 2 focuses on expanded applications for spin qubits, Intel's preferred choice in <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/nobody-agrees-on-how-to-build-quantum-computer" target="_self">the qubit wars</a>. The goal, according to Clarke, is to "customize these low-temperature control chips for different applications." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Google's control chip is similar, operating at 3 K, but is designed for yet another type of qubit, called a transmon. The chip has been tested on a few qubits, but not the 53-qubit Sycamore device that <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">made headlines</a> in 2019. <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8865458" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Research from Google</a> has focused on reducing heat dissipation from the quantum control chip. Where a classical control chip outputs about one watt of heat, Google's dissipates less than two thousandths of a watt. "Getting power down is going to be very important for any of these approaches," Joseph Bardin, an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a researcher at Google, wrote in an email to Protocol. </p><p>Microsoft's quantum control chip relies on similar semiconductor technology, but it is designed to work with topological qubits, though it can be adapted for other qubit architectures. (Worth noting: Topological qubits are theoretical, and have not actually been demonstrated.) </p><p>Where it really departs from Intel's and Google's designs is temperature. Microsoft's quantum control chip can dissipate less than a millionth of a watt, allowing it to stay at a chilly 0.1 K, about the same temperature as the qubits themselves.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><h3>Is it hot in here?</h3><p>The companies insist on the advantages of their own approaches.</p><p>"What is really unique is that our signals are generated at low temperature," Intel's Clarke said. By putting its classical CPU — which sends signals to the control chip — with the control chip at these temperatures, Intel hopes to avoid the noisiness inherent to signals generated by CPUs at high temperatures. Microsoft's Reilly disputes this claim of uniqueness, and notes that Microsoft has generated its signals at temperatures as low as 1 K. </p><p>For Reilly, running the control chip at 3 or 4 K — as Google and Intel do — is much too hot: Though the difference between 0.1 K and 4 K may sound small, it's also the difference between the quantum world and the classical world. By operating the quantum control chip at the same temperature as the qubits, Reilly hopes to avoid the bottleneck between shuffling information from quantum to classical or vice versa. </p><p>"If their control system is at 4 Kelvin, then you still have this I/O bottleneck," Reilly said. "You still have a bird's nest of cables that run from four Kelvin to the millikelvin stage where the qubits are." One possible solution to that would be to bring the qubits up to 4 K — and there is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2170-7" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some progress</a> in that direction.</p><p>All three companies will be presenting updates at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which will be <a href="http://isscc.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">held virtually</a> Feb. 13 through Feb. 22.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>For now, though, no one has remotely enough qubits to necessitate these quantum control chips, let alone determine which of those compromises is preferable. Testing is still done on a few qubits, or devices that model qubit behaviors — not even the full ensemble of dozens of qubits that make up the current cutting-edge of quantum computers.</p><p>At any rate, quantum computing is still in its heady early days, where firsts are being made, and — despite some corporate jousting about progress — demonstrating the possibility of the technology often takes precedence over long-term plans to make it practical. And at this stage, we don't even know what all those roadblocks might be.</p><p>"Wouldn't it be ironic if it turned out that making the qubits turned out to be a little bit of a challenge?" Reilly asked. "And the real roadblocks were in the systems integration and the construction of cryogenic control at scale?"</p>
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Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
Politics
You may not know these tech Democrats. Now you need to.
These are the people who will be at the frontlines of the tech industry's efforts to influence an entirely new Washington.
Airbnb's Chris Lehane, Amazon's Jay Carney, Apple's Lisa Jackson and Uber's Tony West are tech Democrats you need to know now that Joe Biden is president-elect.
Image: Pupkin8r /Protocol
November 17, 2020
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
November 10, 2020
Now that Joe Biden has been elected to the presidency, it's time to update your contacts.
We're entering a new phase in Washington, and that means there are new power players who merit attention. Over the coming months, tech Democrats with ties to Bidenworld will help shape the future of the industry, one friendly phone call at a time.
<p>There's a list of obvious Democrats to watch during a Biden administration. It will be fascinating to see how Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskowitz and Sheryl Sandberg spend the next four years. But there's a different cast of characters to pay attention to in a Biden administration: the lesser-known Washington Democrats working in tech who have ties to his campaign and inner circle. </p><p>We've assembled a list of the Democrats in tech that you need to know over the next four years, according to tech lobbyists, tech executives and Democratic Hill aides that spoke to Protocol. Some of them could be considered for jobs in the administration; others will have an outsized voice on tech issues thanks to their links to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Either way, they will be at the frontlines of the tech industry's efforts to influence and adjust to the new administration. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>You might not have heard them all yet, but it's time to change that.</p><h3>Jay Carney, Amazon, SVP of global corporate affairs</h3><p>D.C. insiders have been chattering about the future of Amazon executive Jay Carney, the former Obama White House spokesman who served as Biden's press secretary from 2009 to 2011 and acted as a bundler for his campaign. One source close to Carney said they hadn't received any indication that he's interested in leaving his <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/28/amazon-pr-and-policy-chief-jay-carney-gets-a-bigger-profile.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prime position at Amazon</a> to join a Biden administration; a tech executive said, "I don't see Jay having any intention of leaving Amazon." But his close ties to the president-elect and his orbit could benefit Amazon as the company faces intensifying scrutiny of its labor practices and antitrust issues in a Democratic Washington. </p><h3>Tony Russo, T-Mobile, VP of federal government relations<br></h3><p>Biden is literally the <a href="https://twitter.com/twoclubchampion/status/1325213696247861248?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">godfather of Tony Russo's daughter</a>. The two men have shared a close bond for decades, since Russo served as Biden's legislative counsel in the mid-1990s. </p><p>Today, Russo heads legislative affairs at T-Mobile and has access to Biden's ear on tech and telecom issues. "Tony is in that small universe of people who not only know the vice president but also understand his history, and his thought processes, and how he looks at these issues," said one longtime Biden advisor.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The president-elect has a much longer history dealing with telecom issues than the Silicon Valley giants. And Russo will play a role as the administration grapples with the best approach to the future of 5G and closing the so-called "digital divide."</p><p>"I'm very happy where T-Mobile is situated for some of the goals of this administration," Russo told Protocol. "We have a lot of similar interests. The devil's in the details always, but I would say that we're very optimistic."</p><h3>
Chris Lehane, Airbnb, head of global policy and communications</h3><p>Chris Lehane is best known in tech circles as the fiery Airbnb executive with a direct line to CEO Brian Chesky and a penchant for <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/airbnbs-spin-master" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">picking (and winning) fights</a>. But in Washington, he's widely known as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/magazine/chris-lehane.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prominent Democratic strategist</a> who helped defend the Clintons through a string of scandals and served as the spokesman for former Vice President Al Gore. Those positions have left him with friends and respect among the Democratic players who will fill a Biden administration. </p><p>An operative with equally bold reputations in Washington and Silicon Valley, Lehane will certainly use his political savvy to make Airbnb's case over the next four years.</p><p>Lehane told Protocol that he believes the tech industry should be focusing energy and attention on how to help fight COVID-19. "Tech should not be asking the Biden administration what it can do for tech, but what tech could do for the country," Lehane said. </p><p>Airbnb is well-positioned to work with a Biden administration, considering many senior staff have <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12268130/airbnb-goes-all-out-dnc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ties back to Obamaworld and Democratic politics</a>. Nick Papas, Airbnb's director of global corporate and policy communications, formerly worked in the Obama White House and administration. And two Airbnb employees, Courtney O'Donnell and Kim Rubey, are currently on leaves of absence to work for the Biden campaign. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><h3>Tony West, Uber, chief legal officer</h3><p>The next four years could be particularly rough for Uber as a Biden administration takes on gig economy companies regarding how they treat their workers. Both Biden and Harris have pledged to side with drivers in their ongoing labor disputes with Uber and Lyft — which leaves Harris at odds with her brother-in-law Tony West. </p><p>West, one of Harris' top political advisors since 2003, was the public face of Uber's fight against Proposition 22 in California. A Harris spokesperson <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-09-12/kamala-harris-uber-family-campaign-drivers-labor" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told the LA Times</a> that West has never lobbied Harris or anyone on her campaign on behalf of Uber, but it's hard to imagine that the connection will be irrelevant during a Biden-Harris administration. Gig economy issues will likely be a focus of the new Labor Department under Biden. </p><p>West was a <a href="https://joebiden.com/asmfr200830jkl/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bundler</a> for Biden, and Protocol has learned of some speculation within Uber that he could leave his job for a Biden administration position. </p><h3>Jason Mahler, Oracle, VP of government affairs</h3><p>Over the last four years, Oracle has solidified its reputation as a Trump-friendly tech company: Its CEO, president and top lobbyist all maintained ties to Trumpworld. Democrats recently <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=tiktok+wyden+statement+oracle&oq=tiktok+wyden+statement+oracle&aqs=chrome..69i57j33l4.2195j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">criticized the company</a> over its handling of a possible deal with TikTok, accusing Oracle of capitalizing on its ties to the president.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Now, the company and its lobbying shop will have to pivot if it hopes to save face with the new Biden administration, lobbyists and Hill aides told Protocol. </p><p>"They're going to have a lot of work to do here," said one tech lobbyist. "It's the flip of a coin. The more you leaned into Trump, the more cleanup you've got to do." </p><p>At least for now, some of that work will fall on Jason Mahler, the company's top Democratic lobbyist and a well-respected veteran of tech policy circles.</p><p>Mahler, who formerly served as a legislative assistant to California Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo, has lobbied for Oracle since 2010 and mostly maintains a low profile. But several sources said Oracle would be smart to put him out front more often in the coming months — and to hire some new Democrats, too. </p><h3>Allen Thompson, Intel, VP of US government relations</h3><p>Allen Thompson came on as the head of Intel's lobbying shop only four months ago, and his hire was likely a good bet for the company as the Democrats come into power. Thompson worked for Democrats on the House Committee on Homeland Security and was a principal at the prominent lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. He spent the past six years at Raytheon Technologies and maintains relationships within the Biden camp. </p><p>The next administration's decisions on U.S.-China relations will be consequential for Intel, and Thompson will be a friendly face for establishment Democrats as he leads the company's lobbying efforts in D.C. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>"The big thing we're looking to work with a Biden administration [on] is continuing the Congress' work to incentivize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing to maintain America's technological leadership," Thompson told Protocol.</p><h3>Lisa Jackson, Apple, VP of environment, policy and social initiatives</h3><p>Apple arguably has the quietest and most fastidiously nonpartisan lobbying shop of the four Big Tech companies. It's also known to stay out of the fray when it comes to some of the most divisive issues in tech, remaining narrowly focused on specific policy areas like tariffs and trade. But sources close to the company said one of Apple's biggest assets in a Biden administration will be Lisa Jackson, an Apple policy executive and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama. Jackson and Biden worked together on energy issues and maintain a positive relationship now — not to mention that Cynthia Hogan, who worked under Jackson at Apple, is now a <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/the-web-inventors-new-invention" target="_self">prominent staffer on Biden's transition team</a>.</p><h3>Tom Manatos, Spotify, VP of government relations </h3><p>Tom Manatos spent the first 12 years of his career as a big Democrat-about-town: nine years in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, a year and a half as a senior adviser to the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and two months as a deputy director on Obama's presidential inaugural committee in 2012. He's since veered into the world of tech lobbying, first at the Internet Association and now as Spotify's head of government relations, but he maintains deep ties within Democratic circles and the Biden campaign. Last year, he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UDBidenInstitute/photos/a.2035704850005533/2425490904360257/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spoke at an event</a> held by the University of Delaware's Biden Institute.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>Since 2016, Manatos has led Spotify's efforts on antitrust in the U.S., and his voice will remain pivotal as the Department of Justice and state attorneys general continue to pursue antitrust investigations into the tech giants. </p><h3>Amanda Anderson, Square's head of policy and government relations for the Americas </h3><p>There aren't many tech lobbying shops headed by Democrats in Washington, but Amanda Anderson is one of the best-known and connected Democrats leading a government affairs team outside of the Big Tech companies. Anderson spent five years at Uber before becoming Square's head of policy and government relations last September.</p><p>Before that, Anderson spent seven years working in the Obama White House, first as a special assistant to the chief of staff and then in the legislative affairs office. She's seen as a fresh, energetic voice on tech issues and will likely know many of the Democrats flooding into the White House. </p><h3>Rebecca Prozan, Google, senior manager for government affairs and public policy </h3><p>Rebeca Prozan is one of the main D.C. tech players who maintains a close relationship with Harris. Prozan was Harris' campaign manager the first time she ran for San Francisco District Attorney and currently boasts "Alum for VP Elect @KamalaHarris" in her Twitter bio. Harris is expected to play an important role in shaping tech policy during the Biden administration, considering her familiarity with the issues and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/technology/kamala-harris-ties-to-big-tech.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">close ties to Silicon Valley</a>, and Prozan will be at the forefront as Google continues to navigate a new maze of thorny issues including antitrust and Section 230. </p><p>Other prominent Democrats at Google include Johanna Shelton, Google's director of public policy and former counsel for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Alexandra Veitch, a former Obama White House staffer and YouTube's public policy lead in the Americas and emerging markets.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><h3>TBD, Facebook</h3><p>Several lobbyists and executives said it's hard to name a top Democrat focused on policy and government relations at Facebook, a gap that the company will surely need to fill in order to save face as it deals with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-spox-russo-shares-deletes-tweet-suggesting-facebook-animosity-2020-11" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">escalating scrutiny</a> during a Biden administration. </p><p>Of course, Sandberg is a reliable Democrat at the top of the company who was <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/progressives-sheryl-sandberg-treasury-facebook-230175" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">once considered</a> for Hillary Clinton's Treasury Secretary (though she <a href="https://www.protocol.com/tech-political-donors-2020-amazon-apple-facebook-google-microsoft" target="_self">stayed away</a> from contributing directly to Biden's campaign this year). And Facebook executive Nick Clegg was formerly the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the U.K. But Facebook's D.C. office is dominated by Republicans, including Joel Kaplan, Kevin Martin and Greg Maurer.</p>Some sources named Brian Rice, a former legislative assistant to John Kerry and Verizon lobbyist, as one of the best-known Democrats in Facebook's policy shop. But the company's government relations team is going to have to work aggressively to shake off its <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-17/facebook-and-mark-zuckerberg-need-trump-even-more-than-trump-needs-facebook" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Trump-friendly reputation</a>. "I would not be surprised if you see some changes there," said one tech executive.
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
People
How the pandemic has changed tech business travel to China
In 2020, visiting China for business can be a bit like playing the lottery.
After concluding his 14 days in isolation, startup adviser Kevin Yang was free to continue his business trip.
Photo: Kevin Yang
October 21, 2020
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
October 21, 2020
Kevin Yang has traveled to China countless times. As a former Huawei and Oppo executive, he used to visit the country almost every quarter. However, when Yang recently got ready to visit a Chinese startup he is advising, he quickly realized that the pandemic would make this a very different trip.
Yang has been documenting his trip in a series of LinkedIn posts, which offer some fascinating insights into the state of business travel during COVID, the ever-growing importance of WeChat in a country recovering from the pandemic, and shifts in the Chinese tech industry as it adapts to a rapidly changing world.
<p>One of Yang's most striking observations is the omnipresence of WeChat in China, and the way the pandemic has reinforced its importance to the Chinese. To prepare for his trip, Yang joined a number of WeChat groups, which helped him get his documents in order. (To get a special visa, China currently requires an invite, a negative COVID test and more from foreign visitors). He also joined a dedicated WeChat group for passengers of his flight, and one to chat with people who had taken this very flight in recent weeks. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Once Yang landed in China, WeChat became even more important. Instead of filling out a customs form on paper, he prepared his customs declaration in a WeChat mini-app, which then generated a QR code that was scanned by customs officials. At the airport, he was prompted to scan another QR code to prepare for his local travel — all within WeChat. "The Chinese government wanted to make all the processes contactless," Yang told Protocol.</p><p>WeChat has long been a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/wechat-china-united-states.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">daily utility in China</a> for everything from communication to cashless payments. However, the embrace of WeChat as an essential tool for international travel during the pandemic comes at a time when the Trump administration <a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/wechat-ban-judge-halt" target="_self">is pushing to ban the app from U.S. app stores</a>. "It would make the process very difficult for foreign travelers," Yang said about a possible WeChat ban.</p><p>Once Yang arrived in China, he had to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine in a randomly assigned hotel. "Finding out the quarantine hotel is like opening a mystery box in 2020," he wrote on LinkedIn. On one of his WeChat groups, people had crowdsourced a number of hotels used to quarantine international travelers, complete with reports on whether the hotels allowed guests to order outside food. "Some were overjoyed to find that they were assigned to the so-called 'Lottery Hotels,'" he wrote. "Some were disappointed when they got a crappy hotel."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Yang ended up staying in two relatively basic hotels, one of which didn't allow outside food. Instead, hotel staff dropped off meals outside of his room three times a day. Yang was a bit disappointed by the choice of food, but some of his fellow international travelers had a much harder time. One visitor from Spain in particular wasn't exactly familiar with some of the traditional Chinese dishes, including chicken feet. "He complained all the time," Yang said.</p><p>One day, an ambulance arrived at the hotel to pick up one of the quarantined guests. On WeChat, other travelers started freaking out, worried that one of the guests had gotten COVID. But soon after, they learned that it was the Spaniard, who was being relocated to a Western-style hotel. He hadn't been ill; he just didn't like chicken feet.</p><p>Yang used much of his time in quarantine doing video chats to catch up with friends and colleagues, including some who he got to work with as a procurement director for Huawei. Many of the folks working in the chipset industry were especially upbeat, he noted on LinkedIn: "China is investing heavily […] in replacing American chips with homegrown solutions." Prompted by the escalating trade war, and attempts of the Trump administration to cut off companies like Huawei from the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, the Chinese government has rolled out massive incentives to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/china-semiconductor-industry-tries-to-catch-up-with-us-chip-makers.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">kickstart homegrown chip production</a>. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>These measures include direct financial assistance from the government, as well as easier access to land and real estate to build out manufacturing capabilities. A year ago, it was still challenging to raise money for chip manufacturing in China, Yang said. These days, it has become one of the country's hottest investment areas. "This moment is huge," Yang said. "It's a gold rush."</p><p>Yang was able to leave quarantine after 14 days and another negative COVID test. Since then, he has been able to move about in China with few restrictions. He's taken taxis, subways, airplanes and other forms of transportation, noting at one point on LinkedIn that this alone felt like "a luxury in a world terrorized by COVID." "It's a very different feeling," he told Protocol.</p><p>In the end, Yang is glad that he traveled to China, even with the hassle of mandatory quarantine. Still, he cautioned that it can be especially challenging for anyone not fluent in Chinese. "Right now, it's difficult to travel to China for foreigners," Yang said. "Be prepared," he advised. "Do some research." </p><p>And, one might add, get ready to expand your culinary horizons.</p><p><em><strong>Correction</strong>: The caption on the photo for this story misrepresented how many days Kevin Yang spent in quarantine. It was 14, not 11.</em><br></p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
People
Why programs to diversify tech so often fall apart
Gabriela González, the deputy director of the Intel Foundation, says we need to rethink how we educate young girls about STEM.
The "Million Girls Moonshot" is a collaborative project to engage 1 million girls in STEM learning opportunities over the next five years.
Photo: Getty Images
October 6, 2020
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
October 6, 2020
The U.S. government, nonprofits, foundations and corporations for decades have poured millions of dollars into programs to attract more women and minorities into the STEM fields — often to little avail. So how does a new program hope to succeed where others have failed?
Gabriela González, the deputy director of the Intel Foundation, is helping to helm the "Million Girls Moonshot," a collaborative project with the Intel Foundation, the STEM Next Opportunity Fund, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and an array of community partners to engage 1 million girls in STEM learning opportunities over the next five years.
<p>González says there's "a lot of duplication and redundancy" in STEM outreach programs that have gone before. "Targeting the same girls in the same communities who may already be aligned, who are doing well in math and science, who may have parents that are engineers and scientists, who may be receiving tutoring and have additional resources," is a big part of the problem, she said in a recent interview with Protocol.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In fact, González, determined to help fix the problems that have beset outreach in the past, is now <a href="https://sfis.asu.edu/spotlight/gabriela-gonzalez" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">working on a doctorate</a> to figure out how the confluence of ethnicity, gender, class and culture may influence the success of STEM programs. So maybe this time it can be different.</p><p>Protocol spoke with González about how the Million Girls Moonshot is navigating structural issues like a lack of internet access for young girls, redundancy in STEM education programs and what advice she gives students about discrimination in the workplace.</p><p><em>This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p><p><strong>What is the Million Girls Moonshot? </strong></p><p>The Million Girls Moonshot is a movement, it's not a program. It's several organizations that came together as inaugural funders to launch this movement. It's really a nationwide movement designed to help close the gender gap in STEM by engaging an additional one million more girls in after-school STEM learning opportunities. We're taking a page from the original moonshot. The key thing is this is a collaboration involving several companies, organizations, that are like-minded and that share values, to try to minimize redundancy and duplication in our efforts. Again, this extends to all fifty states in the U.S. so we're working with public partners, private partners, nonprofit partners, to try to divide and conquer in an effective and productive way. </p><p><strong>What role does Intel play in getting to that 1 million?</strong></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Everybody brings their strength to the movement, so we're leveraging the <a href="https://www.mott.org/work/education/afterschool/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CS Mott Foundation's after-school networks</a> across all 50 states. They reach about 10 million youth in 100,000 programs across all 50 states. And so by working through that infrastructure that's been already invested [in] and built over time, the Intel Foundation will then leverage that after-school network in order to help bring STEM education resources. </p><p>Beyond the funding that we provide to help fund additional after-school network resources and nonprofit resources and activate those, we're also activating our employees by asking them to engage through volunteering, by either mentoring, role-modeling, [or] doing online activities around STEM skills. We're also going to leverage our future skills, challenges and activities to help students develop design thinking skills and solving problems, right alongside with the engineering mindset. So that's what Intel brings, as well as we've been working very closely with inaugural funders on how we are going to make all this work across all the 50 states and across all the partners. </p><p><strong>This seems so difficult to do, and it occurs to me that one of the primary challenges you might face when trying to do something this large is getting poor and disadvantaged girls connected to the internet and getting them devices to engage with the full breadth of STEM opportunities. So how does this initiative plan to get girls connected and devices they need if this is really going to work? </strong></p><p>One way that Intel is helping with that is we recently convened a partnership group with First Book to launch the <a href="https://firstbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Creating-Learning-Connections-Initiative_Press-Release_FINAL-8.11-8.7.20-002.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Creating Learning Connections Initiative</a>, which was designed to support students in Title I eligible school districts affected by the COVID pandemic. What this provided was access for educators to critical tools and resources, including internet connectivity and technology devices. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p><strong>Is that connected to the Million Girls Moonshot or is that a separate initiative? </strong></p><p>Everything we do is connected. We work in unison and in parallel in support of each other, even if we approach it from different angles. Again, this initiative around creative learning also expanded to several states across the U.S., which again, is just connecting the dots. </p><p><strong>For the Million Girls Moonshot, you say you're going to be contributing resources, volunteer manpower. Are you contributing any technological products, or what are the resources you're going to be giving to the movement? </strong></p><p>Intel Corp. is the product piece. The Intel Foundation, we don't provide any products per se. But again through the funding, we will enable each of the states to determine how to best use that funding and apply it to acquire whatever equipment they need, whatever resources they need. The decisions on how to apply the funding will be made at the state level. </p><p><strong>How are you ensuring that this initiative effectively gets through to young girls in underserved communities, Black and Latinx girls across the country? </strong></p><p>Of course, we will have an evaluation methodology in practice to ensure that these resources are reaching those specific communities. But it's also embedded and integrated in what I mentioned before, in terms of the shared values. When we got together, one of the shared values was to be very intentional about reaching out to those specific communities: rural areas, border towns, areas that have been historically left out of quality STEM resources and access to high-quality STEM education. So we are working on acquiring new partners, what we call implementation partners, that have a track record of being able to reach those particular communities and have trusted relationships with those particular communities. So again, we're being very intentional in our approach, and as we gather strength for the movement, we are engaging additional nonprofit partners that have a proven track record of working with the communities we care about.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p><strong>An unbelievable amount of money has been spent to improve diversity in STEM fields, particularly when it comes to women and minorities. Why is this influx of cash not translating into significant demographic changes in the tech industry workforce? Where are these things breaking out?</strong></p><p>That was the trigger that got me to go back to school and get my Ph.D. I think there's a lot of duplication and redundancy. There's also some systemic cycles, always going after the same girls in the same communities because it's easier to do or because they're maybe already aligned to pursue STEM education. So I'll give you an example. Let's just say, in a community in Anytown, USA, we have several nonprofit organizations that are funded by private industry or by government agencies to deliver a STEM curriculum. They may all be working with the same schools because of their location or because of their ability to have access to resources. And it just makes it easier if the girls have their own transportation to get to the STEM education sessions. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>A lot of that is just perpetuating those cycles. We're targeting the same girls in the same communities who may already be aligned, who are doing well in math and science, who may have parents that are engineers and scientists, who may be receiving tutoring and have additional resources.</p><p>What happens, then, is you just kind of keep pounding the same pavement all the time versus really fanning out and reaching out to those communities that have been left out. Because they're difficult to reach, because the kids don't have parents that can drive them to the sessions, because the young people may have part-time jobs that they need to do in order to help their family, so they don't have that extra time. So there's a lot of inequities, systemic inequities, built into some of the STEM program outreach designs that we have, which I think have prevented us [from making progress]. I think we've been duplicating rather than really collaborating. This whole idea around collective impact and the methodology, I think, is really compelling as an argument to say, "Let's make better use of our resources."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NzEyOC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NDE5ODk1NH0.XPSui3Rc0O-3VKNHC6N5sM1IWXDfuFg4o-THqfOOqIg/img.png?width=980" id="e44a9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="95c05db3cd9c4745d1bb21db571d736c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Gabriela González, the deputy director of the Intel Foundation, says there's "a lot of duplication and redundancy" in STEM outreach programs that have gone before.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo: Intel Foundation</small></p><p><strong>You say they keep coming back to these same schools and communities. Are those disproportionately white, wealthy and urban?</strong><br></p><p>I think primarily urban. I think rural communities tend to have one of the largest disadvantages. Sometimes it's just a matter of infrastructure; access to internet may be difficult in some rural communities. Access to companies that are situated or located in large urban areas and not in rural areas, and access to those resources, just by the nature of their location, sometimes rural communities are largely disadvantaged. I think within urban communities, too, there's pockets. Again, it just really depends on how the development of the area or the resources that schools have, there's a lot of dependencies. </p><p><strong>Do you see the Million Girls Moonshot addressing some of these breakdowns you've identified?</strong></p><p>That's what we're going after. We've never done it before. We're putting our bets on the fact that by working together and distributing the challenge, and getting more partners … It's not easy work at all, collective impact work is really difficult, and I think that's why for many years, people shied away. It's easier to do it alone. But by doing it alone, it's also hard to sustain because we have limited resources. So when you have limited resources, and everybody wants a cut of the pie, the pie becomes so diluted that you can't really get any impact at the end of the day. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p><strong>I'm wondering about retention, too. You do these programs, get people in the room to engage with STEM and coding. How do you keep them in the room even when there are so many structural forces that would drive them out? </strong></p><p>We have some of the brightest minds working on curriculum and creating an engineering mindset. What's really important is to make it fun and to make it engaging and to make it relevant, so connecting what they're learning to their daily lives. And seeing the connection of what they're learning to how they can help solve big, complex problems around the world is, I think, what inspires young people. I think by making those connections to something they can relate to, something that is meaningful to them, something where they can see an immediate impact through their contributions, that's how you keep them engaged. </p><p>There is no formula per se because each young person is different in how you engage with them and how they engage with you is going to vary. That's why this problem has been so persistent. So again, we're not claiming that we're just magically going to make those problems go away, but we're going to give this movement a try in a different way by working together versus working separately. </p><p><strong>We know that when Black and Latinx engineers go into the tech industry, they're often met with racism and structural barriers that keep them locked out of the highest levels. How do you talk to a young person about that?</strong></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="8">
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</div></p><p>I know that doing nothing is not an option. I've been on the other side for most of my career. I'm a Latina electrical engineer, bachelor's, master's in engineering, now i'm going for my Ph.D., so I've been that girl. And so I use a lot of my own experience because I've also been doing practice in STEM outreach for over 25 years, and I know what I was missing. </p><p>I have explored and experimented, if you will, with a lot of different approaches. And based on my own experience and academic training, I've come to the conclusion that in order to really break through the persistence of having gender and inequity gaps in STEM, we have to chip away at the systemic barriers and put more focus there than focusing on fixing what we think is broken: people. Our people are not broken, they have the talent, they have the ambition, they have the intelligence, if only the systems and the policies and the institutions are there to support them. </p><p>So we have to shift our focus from the people to the systems, and fixing the systems and investing in fixing the systems, because I believe if we do that, then the retention problem goes away and the ability of people to see themselves as engineers and scientists increases. They feel a sense of belonging when they're not being pushed out, when they're not feeling like they're being discriminated against or treated differently or treated poorly. I think of the medical community and how [it] took years for them to embrace gender and different diverse backgrounds. I think we'll get there, it's just engineering and science have been a little bit more resistant to change. But I think the time is now, and I think that the current environment demands it. We can't afford to leave anyone behind. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="9">
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
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January 22, 2021 11:32 EST
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