Marketplace Tech

There is high drama in the semiconductor world. That’s not a typo. Singapore-based chipmaker Broadcom has made a hostile takeover bid for it’s competitor Qualcomm. Qualcomm refused the offer, and Broadcom is trying to stack the Qualcomm board to force a yes vote. The deal, should it go through, would be the biggest ever in the tech industry at over $140 billion. All that is just the tip of the silicon iceberg. There are growing national security and privacy concerns coming from the U.S. and the European Union over the deal. Not to mention how it will affect competition. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, to unpack the deal’s implications.

Modern electronics rely heavily on one thing: lithium ion batteries. With carmakers gearing up to increase electric vehicle production, the demand for lithium ion batteries doesn’t appear to be slowing down. These batteries rely on an increasingly important supply of the metal cobalt. Most cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa under brutal conditions. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with the BBC’s Catherine Byaruhanga about Apple’s reported talks to buy cobalt directly from miners and whether it will reduce human rights concerns.

So, your company was hacked. What do you do? Turns out there isn’t much you have to do legally when it comes to informing consumers and investors. That all may be about to change. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued new guidance for public companies asking for faster and more specific notification about hacks. The SEC also laid down new rules about post-hack insider trading. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Michael Greenberger, professor of law at the University of Maryland, about the impact of the SEC’s new rules.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has earned a reputation as a fierce consumer advocate. She's gone after big banks and financial institutions, but now she's setting her sights on credit-rating agencies. Specifically Equifax, which endured a massive security breach last year. Over 100 million consumers had their personal information, like Social Security numbers and addresses, compromised in the hack. Now Warren and Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, are introducing legislation that would levy harsh penalties for similar types of security breaches at Equifax and other rating agencies. Last year, Warren sponsored a bill that would allow consumers to freeze their credit any time for free, a service that rating agencies, including Equifax, have traditionally charged for. (Equifax waived these fees for a limited time after the Sept. 2017 breach.) Warren spoke with Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood about her office's recent report on the Equifax hack and her proposals to combat the cyber threat to consumers.

The war of disinformation is raging online, and bots are the foot soldiers. Bots are fake social media accounts that work together to amplify messages online. That’s how fake news started trending on social media during the 2016 presidential election. In response, U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller recently filed charges against a Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency that had hundreds of employees operating fake accounts during the election. Social media companies have also been trying to fight the army of bots on their platforms but without much luck. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke about bots, and who’s behind them, with Jonathon Morgan, CEO of New Knowledge, a company using artificial intelligence to protect companies from disinformation attacks.

E-commerce is creating a cardboard nightmare. The rise of Amazon and the like has left a deluge of packing waste in many of the world’s largest economies. None more than China, where more than 40 billion packages were shipped last year. That number will likely increase as the Chinese economy grows. There is some pressure on retailers to use less material in their packaging and to switch to reusable alternatives. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with our China correspondent, Jennifer Pak, about how China will cope with the pending cardboard apocalypse.

The tech industry has a bit of a PR problem. From tech addiction to online bullying and foreign influence over elections, consumers are getting skeptical about tech’s impact on our lives. There’s even a push from within Silicon Valley to find solutions to these and other issues. Former employees of Google, Facebook and other tech firms have founded the Center for Humane Technology to address tech addiction, a problem they helped create. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with author and education researcher Audrey Watters about her recent blog post asking whether technologists should be trusted to solve technology’s negative externalities.

The Trump administration wants more privatization in space — specifically, the International Space Station. The administration’s latest budget proposal would see the ISS funded and run by private industry instead of the U.S. government. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with our Kimberly Adams to unpack the most important aspects of the president’s budget proposal.

Watching the Olympics on your phone is great and all, but if you’ve spent a pretty penny on an ultra-high-definition TV, an iPhone probably won’t cut it. How, then, does one watch the winter games in glorious 4K? Well, it’s complicated. NBC is delivering 4K video of some events the day after they air, but that video is difficult to access even with the right TV and set-top box. Sam Machkovech wrote about this problem for Ars Technica. He spoke with Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood about the Olympic 4K rigmarole.

In the tech world, we talk a lot about the applications for virtual reality, when you’re immersed in a totally different world.  But there may be more business applications for AUGMENTED  reality, where you add something to the scene around you.  Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks about it with Tim Merel, managing director of the tech consulting firm Digi-Capital.