Chip exports and US-China relations

Chip exports and US-China relations

Author: BBC World Service October 25, 2022 Duration: 44:01

The Biden administration announced a monumental policy shift earlier this month, set to limit and control the exportation of artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies to China. The restrictions will block leading U.S. chip designers from accessing the Chinese market; selling goods that form the backbone of AI and supercomputing. Gregory Allen from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies explains how these actions could potentially ‘strangle’ large segments of the Chinese technology industry.

Whilst access to the World Wide Web becomes ever more integral to modern day life, the digital divide is growing. Those residing in Africa and the Americas appear to have the least affordable, least reliable and slowest internet. Elena Babarskaite at Surfshark, a VPN service company located in the Netherlands, unpicks their latest investigation into our Digital Quality of Life.

In one Ghana household, an AI powered chatbot tutor called Rori, developed by Rising Academies, helps its student stay up to date with his favourite subject, maths. Lucinda Rouse hears how this smart teacher, available through Whatsapp, could soon reach 200,000 children across West Africa, bypassing expensive tuition fees.

(Image: Semiconductor and circuit board. Credit: Getty Images)

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson

Studio Manager: Giles Aspen Producer: Harrison Lewis


Every week, the team at Digital Planet from the BBC World Service takes you beyond the headlines to explore how technology is reshaping lives, cultures, and economies across the globe. This isn't just a rundown of gadget releases or corporate earnings; it's a grounded conversation about the real-world impact of our digital choices. You'll hear from engineers in Nairobi, policymakers in Brussels, and coders in São Paulo, offering a genuinely international perspective that challenges the usual Silicon Valley narrative. Each episode digs into the human stories behind the innovations, examining both the promise and the peril of our connected age. We tackle questions about ethics, accessibility, and the unintended consequences of progress, making sense of complex issues with clear, thoughtful reporting. Tune in for a nuanced and curious exploration of our technological moment, where the focus is always on the people designing, using, and living with these tools every day. This podcast provides the context you need to understand not just what's new, but what it actually means.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Digital Planet
Podcast Episodes
Big tech platforms to protect women online [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:46
Four of the world’s biggest tech platforms are adopting a new set of commitments to tackle online abuse and improve women’s safety online. This is the first time there has been cross-industry collaboration on ways compan…
YouTube’s rules silencing human rights activists [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:33
Why did YouTube take down video testimonies from family members of people imprisoned in China’s internment camps? To ensure the credibility of these videos, people show proof of identity. Now, YouTube says it has concern…
Bias in AI – what next? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:03
Our own bias is becoming engrained in computer code. There is a huge amount of evidence showing that human bias and ignorance is encoded into our digitally driven world. The impact of this is unsurprisingly impacting the…
Bitcoin’s environmental cost [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:54
El Salvador has voted to recognise bitcoin as legal tender, and there is a great deal of interest globally in digital currencies that provide an alternative to cash. However mining bitcoin, the intensive computation need…
NFT? That’ll do nicely [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:46
‘Non-fungible tokens’ are a kind of digital asset that can be bought and sold. They have captured the imagination of many artists. Art pieces can be given a digital identity as an NFT. However, they have also been used t…
WhatsApp v Indian government [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:01
India has brought in stringent new laws that WhatsApp says will force it to break its end-to-end encryption. In a social media chat that’s been forwarded by multiple users, the new rules require the person who originated…
The first African voice assistant [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:43
Speech smart assistants currently do not support any African language, but now Mozilla’s Common Voice project is building a dataset for Kiswahili which is spoken by more than a 100 million people in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzan…
WhatsAppening with pandemic misinformation? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:47
More than 100 million people worldwide have interacted with Covid-19 misinformation since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a new study in PLOS One. We speak to Professor David Nemer, from the University of Vir…
Urgent calls for mandatory recycling of e-waste [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:11
Pascal Leroy, Director General of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Forum joins us live to discuss their report on a proposed recycling framework for critical raw materials – CEWASTE – and why recycling criti…

«1...678910