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Contents

* Editorial: Ban Foreigners Owning Key Assets?

* Essays of the Week

* Busting Myths on Foreign Media Ownership as TikTok Ban Looms

* Congress Should Give Up on Unconstitutional TikTok Bans

* Vision Pro is an over-engineered “devkit”

* LLMs have special intelligence, not general, and that's plenty.

* Fintech Unicorns Trot Onto Leaderboard In February

* The Changing Nature of Pre-Seed Syndication

* Screening for Maniacs

* Video of the Week

* NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang

* AI of the Week

* Forget Sora, this is the AI video that will blow your mind – and maybe scare you

* OpenAI Made AI Videos for Us. These Clips Are Good Enough to Freak Us Out.

* News Of the Week

* House passes TikTok bill that could ban app in the U.S., spawning Senate

* support

* HR 7521

* Steven Mnuchin Says He Is Putting Together a Group to Buy TikTok

* Strangulation or Regulation?

* An update on our preparations for the DMA

* Banning TikTok would be both ineffective and harmful

* Coinbase Raises $1 Billion Through Convertible Notes Offering

* Stripe’s growth continues to impress as total payment volume tops $1 trillion

* Startup of the Week

* The Information

* X of the Week

* Cyan Bannister on Space X and Elon Musk

Editorial: Ban Foreigners Owning Key Assets?

As I digested the news that the House had voted to force Chinese-based investor ByteDance to divest ownership in TikTok, I pondered whether the US or US companies owned key strategic assets in other nations. I was pretty sure the answer was yes.

I asked ChatGPT:

What key assets of overseas countries are owned by the United States or US Companies?

The answer was long. There are a lot, covering Real Estate, Energy and Natural Resources, Financial Services, Technology and Telecoms, Infrastructure, Media, Entertainment, Agriculture, and Pharmaceuticals and healthcare.

I asked it to dive deeper into Energy and Natural Resources:Can you expand on energy and natural resources and list the top 5 assets that are US-owned by strategic to the country in question?

ChatGPT

Expanding on the energy and natural resources sector, U.S. companies' overseas investments often focus on areas with significant strategic value, either due to their size, the nature of the resources, or their critical role in the host country's economy. Identifying the "top 5" assets can be challenging due to the dynamic nature of the industry and the sensitivity around such strategic assets. However, I can provide examples that highlight the kind of assets that would be considered strategically significant:

* Oil Fields in the Middle East: U.S. companies have long had interests in the Middle East's oil fields, which are among the world's largest and most productive. An example would be Chevron's stake in the Partitioned Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. These assets are crucial due to their vast reserves and the global oil market's dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

* Natural Gas Projects in Australia: The U.S. energy giant Chevron operates two of Australia's largest natural gas projects, Gorgon and Wheatstone. Australia is a key player in the global LNG market, and these projects represent significant U.S. interests in the region, providing energy to Asia-Pacific markets.

* Mining Operations in Africa: U.S. companies have significant mining operations in Africa. For instance, Freeport-McMoRan's involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's cobalt and copper mining industry is crucial, given cobalt's importance in battery production for electric vehicles.

* Shale Gas in Argentina: U.S. companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil are involved in Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale formation, one of the largest reserves of shale gas and oil outside North America. This is strategic for Argentina, contributing to its energy security and potential as an energy exporter.

* Renewable Energy Investments in Europe: U.S. companies are increasingly investing in renewable energy assets abroad, such as Iberdrola, a Spanish company in which the U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase holds a significant stake. This investment is strategic as Europe transitions towards sustainable energy, and Iberdrola is a major player in wind and solar energy.

These examples illustrate the diverse nature of U.S. energy and natural resource investments abroad, emphasizing assets that are strategically important due to their size, the resources they provide, or their role in the host country's energy sector.

What is the point of this exercise? The goal is to illustrate that global interconnectedness is the norm, not the exception. International relations have had reciprocity—allowing foreign companies to operate in the U.S. fosters a reciprocal environment where American companies can also expand and thrive overseas. The moment the domicile of ownership appears as an issue, the biggest loser will be the largest owner of foreign assets—hint: not China.

TikTok does not represent a threat to the US. And Bytedance’s ownership is not more concerning than Shell’s ownership of oil platforms overseas should be. Indeed, Bytedance, and therefore TikTok, is not even “Chinese” anymore: This is from the FT:

The company is often described by western politicians as a “Chinese” entity. However, as I have noted before, some 60 per cent of the group is actually owned by “international” investors, overwhelmingly American. An estimated $8bn has been invested by private capital companies, including Sequoia Capital, Susquehanna, General Atlantic and Coatue Management. Mainstream investment funds such as Fidelity, T Rowe Price and BlackRock are exposed, too.

Returning to the economic nationalism of the inter-war years and fear-driven politics will not serve humanity at all. Demonizing Chinese ownership will equally have negative results, especially if China reciprocates with US ownership, such as Tesla or Apple in China.

Who benefits from this demonization? - jingoistic politicians seeking cheap votes. I cannot think of any example of jingoism serving good human outcomes.

So, it seems the “predecessor” agrees, but I do not favor a TikTok ban or forced divestiture. I am with the EFF (see this week’s essays) in seeing this ban as wholly negative.

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