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The Morning Download: Microsoft President Talks Tech Principles; AI in the Enterprise
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Good morning, CIOs. The days are gone where a tech business could just focus on delivering the best product. With debates over data privacy and the use of AI driving the conversation around tech, companies also need to have a clear understanding of the stakes involved.
That was the message from Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith at a New York City event on Friday. “You have to know what you stand for,” Mr. Smith said. “You have to be prepared as a business to some degree to connect the courage of your convictions with a hardheaded focus on business.”
Principles of transparency and privacy can help a company chart a path through the social and political issues of the day. In the case of Microsoft, these principles have caused it to take stances that are at odds with governments. Microsoft has threatened to shut down data centers in undisclosed countries when government surveillance requests come up. “Whenever we’ve been forced to push, governments have backed off,” he said.
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A signboard of AI, 5G and IoT technologies on display during the SoftBank World 2019 exhibition hall in Tokyo, July 18, 2019. PHOTO: RODRIGO REYES MARIN/ZUMA PRESS
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The state of AI in the enterprise. Companies are pushing into artificial intelligence, a shift powered in part by cloud providers, whose advanced AI algorithms, trained models and computing power make experimentation easier. But while part of the technology puzzle has been solved, questions remain over how and when to best employ AI, says CIO Journal columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger.
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Millions of phones may be vulnerable to a newly identified hack. PHOTO: RUSSELL BOYCE/REUTERS
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Hackers use spyware to track SIM cards. Hackers are exploiting a vulnerability in software embedded in the SIM cards of hundreds of millions of phones to track users’ whereabouts.
Simjacker. The technique, nicknamed “Simjacker,” exploits software found on some SIM cards that mobile operators have used to send customers billing information or special offers. Hackers send secret text messages to particular SIM cards, which then send back information like the phone’s location.
Vulnerable: 100s of millions of devices. Phones vulnerable to the hack number in the hundreds of millions across countries in South America, Africa and parts of Europe and the Middle East. (WSJ)
U.S. calls out North Korean hackers. The U.S. hit three hacking groups linked to North Korea's intelligence bureau with sanctions, linking the individual groups to some of the biggest cyberattacks of the last several years, including the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack and an $80 million heist from the Central Bank of Bangladesh’s New York Federal Reserve account. (Reuters)
Hackers find their own one throat to choke. Ransomware hackers are capitalizing on security lapses at managed service providers, which handle the IT needs of small businesses, medical clinics and local governments. (ProPublica)
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler cited ‘growing evidence that a handful of corporations have come to capture an outsize share of online commerce and communications.’ PHOTO: STEFANI REYNOLDS/ZUMA PRESS
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House committee requests tech executives’ emails in antitrust probe. The dozens of executives named in the requests include Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Google’s early leaders Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt.
Among other requests. The bipartisan House Judiciary Committee asked the firms to provide by Oct. 14 executive communications and financial statements as well as information about competitors, market share, mergers and key business decisions. (WSJ)
Cloudflare joins the club. Shares jumped 20% in the cloud-based networking and cybersecurity company's market debut Friday. This year has seen a slew of IPOs in the IT space, fueled by more corporate spending on cloud computing and strong stock-market debuts, the WSJ's Kimberly Chin reports.
Goldman IT departures and arrivals. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced that Marco Argenti, vice president of technology at Amazon Web Services, will join the company as co-CIO. The WSJ has reported that co-CIO Elisha Wiesel, a 25-year veteran who began as a “strat” in Goldman’s commodities-trading unit, is leaving to pursue a philanthropic project that may be affiliated with company.
Also joining Goldman. Atte Lahtiranta will join as a partner and chief technology officer. He comes from Verizon Media Group, where he was chief technology officer. (Goldman Sachs)
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN KUCZALA; GETTY IMAGES
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Will your uploaded mind still be you? The day will come when we will be able to scan our brain and upload a copy of our consciousness to a computer. Dr. Michael S.A. Graziano, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University, in an WSJ essay explores the social, philosophical and moral implications of digital civliization-building that reaches beyond the cloud to the stars.
"The only way for us to become a truly space-faring civilization might be not by building a spaceship environment to house the human body but by building a platform to carry the human mind. Arguably, mind uploading is humanity’s most obvious path into a deep future unburdened by our mortality or the fate of our terrestrial home."
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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Crude prices surged following an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, as Saudi officials said the kingdom was racing to restore roughly one-third of the disrupted production by day’s end. (WSJ)
Factory workers at General Motors went on a nationwide strike, in the United Auto Workers’ largest work stoppage in more than a decade. (WSJ)
Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy protection with a partial deal aimed at resolving thousands of lawsuits filed by states and local municipalities accusing it of fueling the opioid crisis. (WSJ)
Lenders all but gave up on packaging mortgages into securities and selling them after the financial crisis. But now banks like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are getting back in. (WSJ)
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