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Digital Digest – 16 December

  • Dec 16, 2021
  • 4 min read

In this week’s digital digest we look at Amazon’s entry into the PCR test market and Walksafe, the app keeping women safe on the streets.

We then take a look at big tech as the CMA takes on Apple and Google, allegations Huawei is helping the Chinese state with domestic surveillance, and US Department of Labour investigates Apple. 

Closer To Home

Big Tech

Apple and Google’s ‘vice-like grip’ on smartphone markets harms consumers, warns watchdog

The Competition and Markets Authority warns of a duopoly that pushes consumers towards the two firms’ search engines and app stores, harming innovation and consumer choice. The CMA wants to make it easier for consumers to switch between platforms with a wider choice of search engine on their smartphones and tablets. Consumers can only download apps via the App Store on Apple phones which the CMA accuses of being a “total monopoly” while alternative ways to download Apps do exist on Google phones. This comes off the back of increased intervention into technology companies by the CMA as it investigates Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The tech giants have responded, citing “extraterritorial overreach” by the regulator. Both Apple and Google have claimed that opening up their app store monopolies could be harmful to consumers, exposing them to viruses. The CMA’s final decision should be published next summer. Huawei ‘helped create’ tech for China’s state surveillance and ‘re-educating’ of Uighurs

An investigation by the Washington Post has alleged that Chinese tech giant Huawei has developed mass surveillance programmes for Beijing. Technology was reportedly pitched to Chinese government officials using the company logo appearing to be intended for police or government authorities.

Huawei is reported to have helped develop a prison management system to help oversee ideological reeducation classes of detainees, including Uighur Muslims, in the Xinjiang region. It has also been alleged to have pitched facial and voice recognition AI systems in order to track political targets as well as a ‘corporate monitoring’ system for employers in order to map employees’ movements and take action if they are found to be sleeping, playing on their phones or absent from their desk. Apple faces probe over whether it retaliated against whistleblower

Apple is being investigated by the US Department of Labour following a complaint from whistleblower Ashley Gjøvik.

Gjøvik was fired from her job back in September in what she claims was retaliation for reporting concerns about environmental and health safety issues at the Sunnyvale, California office where she worked.

The Labor Department investigation is yet more evidence of the growing tension between Apple and its workforce. In recent months, employees have broken the company’s legendary culture of secrecy to speak out on controversial hiring decisions, alleged pay disparities and remote work policies in an employee movement that has come to be known as #AppleToo.

Also In the News

  1. Apple poised to become the first $3 trillion company as it emerged a secret deal with China helped fuel the company’s growth in recent years. See here. 

  2. Microsoft’s $20bn acquisition of an AI company used by the NHS is under investigation by the CMA after complaints from rivals. See here. 

  3. London Mayor Sadiq Khan bans electric scooters on public transport due to battery fires. See here.

  4. Chinese state backed entities among hackers who launched more over a million attacks to mine cryptocurrency and become part of botnets See here.

  5. The Guardian hits 1m paying digital readers, including 500,000 outside the UK. See here. 

Worth A Read

  1. Wired: Tech’s Center of Gravity is Shifting Away From Silicon Valley

  2. Press Gazette: Former BBC editor Sarah Sands tells Lords broadcaster is ‘institutionally statist’

  3. The Drum: Blocklists are still failing advertisers and minority media

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Under The Radar – 10 December

  • Dec 10, 2021
  • 4 min read

This week, we discuss:

  1. The UK is “on a mission for fission”

  2. Financial sector shifts away from EU and towards the US

  3. Countries line up to boycott the winter Olympics

The UK is “on a mission for fission”

What Happened?

Greg Hands, the UK Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, told the Nuclear Industry Association that “net-zero needs nuclear” during a speech at the annual NIA conference.

What does it mean?

Given the recent energy crisis, highlighted most recently by the impact of Storm Arwen, energy security is an increasingly concerning issue. This is not helped by numerous energy companies going bust over the past couple of months and the entire grid being in dire need of an upgrade.  While it is widely accepted at this point that the UK, and indeed the world, cannot reach net-zero by 2035 without nuclear power, it is clear more needs to be done. The government’s net-zero strategy has established bold targets and positioned Britain as a world leader in the path to a more sustainable planet. However, at a time when the UK is decommissioning its nuclear fleet, failing to replace old reactors at scale, and more importantly, facing an energy shortage, there’s a significant gap between rhetoric and reality.  What the government doesn’t seem to understand is that it takes ten years, at minimum, to build a nuclear power plant. If there is any hope of reaching those goals, action is needed now, and even then, we would likely remain behind schedule. It’s time for less rhetoric, more investment, and faster decision making.  Despite this reality gap, the nuclear industry welcomed Hands’ speech as an indication that government sentiment towards nuclear power is improving. As always, however, the proof will be in the pudding, and all eyes (at least in the nuclear industry) will be on whether or not the government puts its money where its mouth is. 

Financial sector shifts away from the EU and towards the US

What happened? British financial services exports to the US outstripped those to the European Union last year for the first time, in a sign that the City is shifting its focus away from Europe since the Brexit vote. What does this mean? In 2020, 34% of exports by banks and financial institutions went to America, compared to just 30% to the EU.  The emerging trend is likely to be seized on by Brexit supporters as proof of their claims that the City could prosper outside the EU bloc. And unlike many of their other claims, there is strong data that proves London remains much busier than any financial centre in Europe, with the British banking industry managing assets of $14.3 trillion at the end of June 2021, ahead of France and Germany. However, there are some caveats. The rise in trade with the US has been driven in part by post-Brexit barriers, which are reducing UK exports to the EU, but also by the US economy bouncing back faster than the Eurozone from the damages inflicted by the pandemic, thus providing greater trade opportunities.  Britain is already the second-largest exporter of services in the world, but service exports will need to remain strong if the government is to hit its ambitious target to reach £1 trillion of overall exports per annum by 2030. Whether this is a permanent shift, or a temporary blip due to Brexit teething problems and Covid-19, remains to be seen.

Countries line up to boycott the Winter Olympics

What happened?

Australia has joined the US-led boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The Prime Minister has said that the country was concerned about human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority and will therefore not send diplomats to the games; they will however allow their athletes to compete. What does it mean?

It’s not surprising that Scott Morrison’s government would join the boycott, given the ongoing simmering trade war between the two countries.  But it’s hardly rattled the Chinese, who pointed out that: “No one cares if they come or do not come. The political hyping by Australian politicians for political self-interest will have no bearing on Beijing’s hosting the games successfully.”  And to be fair to China, they’re not wrong. Diplomatic boycotts will do very little to disrupt the Winter Olympics – instead they just highlight a lack of substance behind the Western world’s stance on important human rights issues.  If the US, Australia, and other countries expected to join the boycott – including the UK and Japan – want to take an impactful stance against a powerful authoritarian power, they don’t need to look too far back in the history books for a more effective approach. In 1980, the US implemented a total boycott – including athletes – of the Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Whilst this didn’t directly influence the dramatic fall of the Soviet Union just a decade later (the Mujahideen the Soviets encountered in Afghanistan were much more influential in that respect), it did underline how America and its allies had a substantive strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union.  Fast forward three decades, and this seemingly insignificant sporting spat magnifies how unlike their predecessors, our world leaders have yet to establish a strategy to deal with a gigantic authoritarian superpower.

This week’s must reads

  1. “Boris Johnson is eating reality” by Alex Massie for The Spectator

  2. “There’s nothing ‘civic’ about Sturgeon’s brand of nationalism” by Tom Harris for The Telegraph

  3. “Angela Merkel’s most important legacy: her civility” by Jeremy Cliffe for The New Statesman

  4. “Cruel ministers have made citizenship a tool of dirty politics” by Zoe Williams for The Guardian

Chart of the week

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Santa isn’t the only one struggling in the poles this Christmas!

  • Dec 9, 2021
  • 2 min read

As this week draws to a close, the data team at Trafalgar Strategy tracked and analysed the sentiment of tweets about the Prime Minister. Over a one week period, they tracked a sample of 15k tweets and visualised the data on a swingometer, to assess the Twitter fallout and measure the damage done to a Prime Minister whose time in Downing Street could well be up.

Unsurprisingly, as revelations emerged about a Christmas Party at Downing street last year, the public reaction on Twitter has been visceral and swift. Throughout the week – as shown on the swingometer – sentiment has nosedived. Starting low, the average sentiment expressed on Twitter has fallen by almost 50% over the past seven days.

Angela Rayner perfectly summed up the mood – with the best performing Tweet on the topic – accusing the Prime Minister of consistently breaking rules and taking the British public for fools. Not one to shy away from attacking the Prime Minister, Anna Soubry used similar language in an attack on the Prime Minister that focused not on COVID, or parties, but the Prime Minister’s plans to allow ministers to throw out legal rulings they don’t support.

Although one would expect both Rayner and Soubry to attack the Prime Minister, of more concern should be the normal, non-Westminster Twitter users who’ve reacted with outrage. One such user, @stevewright58 found overwhelming Twitter support when he tweeted: “Hey @BorisJohnson my mum just found out about the Downing Street parties last year, when she was terrified to come to ours. God help you if she gets hold of you.” Despite only having just over 380 followers, the tweet was shared over 2,300 times and liked by more than 13k users.

Commenting on the findings, Giles Kenningham said: “The Conservative party is, and has always been a ruthless electioneering machine – with no compunction in replacing leaders unable to deliver at the ballot box.”


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