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Source Code at CES: All tech is politics

Hello! It's day two of CES. We're talking politics, education, chips, crazy gaming chairs, tech-enabled face masks, laptops, some more laptops, a bunch of laptops and all the ways your grill's about to get smarter.
Also, we're doing a live CES roundtable event with some Protocol reporters and some fun guests, on Thursday at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT. Register now and come hang with us!
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Emily Birnbaum writes: As the world has changed, so has CES. While Big Tech faces a dizzying number of antitrust investigations and small- to medium-sized tech faces the prospects of imminent regulation on everything from privacy to AI, participants have to talk about the elephant in the room: the government.
Meanwhile, Democrats on Capitol Hill are pledging that they'll use their new control over the House, Senate and White House to crack down on the tech companies, which played an undeniable role in providing a platform to many of the key organizers involved in the riots — including President Trump.
Brian Deese, Biden's incoming National Economic Council director, said at CES that there's a lot the Biden administration will do to support the tech industry.
Privacy executives from Amazon, Google and Twitter predicted on a panel later in the day that figuring out a resolution to the death of the privacy shield and the future of cross-border data flows will be one of many priorities in the first 180 days of Biden's presidency.
Talk about education has been everywhere at CES. That's in part because we spent 2020 realizing just how terrible most ed tech really is, and partly because, with so many people unemployed and the skills required in the modern economy changing so quickly, digital education is now a lifelong process.
I caught up with Alex Kaplan, who leads IBM's work on education and blockchain, just before his panel on fostering the next generation of tech leaders. He told me we're in the middle of a complete infrastructural shift in how education works:
There are plenty of questions left to be answered, Kaplan said, including how much to make this a tech problem at all. By quantifying everything, he said, "we lose something, which is the intangible of how a teacher works with a student in the classroom, and understand who that person really is. We're human beings, we're not a bunch of data points."
But still: Creating an open and trustworthy system for sharing qualifications and skills could make it easier to find jobs, apply for and receive new qualifications and skills, and start to improve a lot of really messy employment systems. (No wonder the government's really interested in what Kaplan and IBM are up to.)
For Raj Hazra, who is senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications at Micron, there has never been a more thrilling time than this golden age of data. In this interview, Hazra describes how "we are now at the doorstep of taking things that we thought were science fiction and making them real, and it's only going to be exponentially faster going forward". Read more from Micron's Raj Hazra.
The chip industry is pretty sure Intel is vulnerable and is coming hard for the PC market.
Intel's being attacked from all sides: Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others are making data-center chips, Nvidia is cleaning up on the graphics side of things, and even Qualcomm is starting to build chips for desktops and laptops.
So far, though, nobody has been able to take on Intel's dominance in the enterprise-PC market, which is the real prize in the laptop world. After announcing its own ambitious chip roadmap, Intel still has a chance to stay at the top of the market. But that won't be true forever. Apple and AMD are both proving there's a lot more to be done with PC chips than Intel has been doing.
Every year, Razer comes to CES with a bonkers concept or two. (Remember the three-screen laptop?) This year's is my favorite ever: Project Brooklyn, a gaming chair that has an integrated 60-inch display, haptic feedback, a built-in desk, whatever "4D armrests" are and basically everything you'd need to turn your chair into your ultimate battle station. It reminds me of the haptic rigs from "Ready Player One," except you sit all day instead of running around. So it's even better.
For Raj Hazra, who is senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications at Micron, there has never been a more thrilling time than this golden age of data. In this interview, Hazra describes how "we are now at the doorstep of taking things that we thought were science fiction and making them real, and it's only going to be exponentially faster going forward". Read more from Micron's Raj Hazra.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Anna Kramer and Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Damian Kieran's name. This story was updated on Jan. 13, 2021.
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