Author: Jaxon Bennett

This article is an on-site version of our Unhedged newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newslettersGood morning. The race for secretary of the Treasury is hot. Prediction markets are still favouring Scott Bessent, but three dark horses have emerged: Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, former Fed member Kevin Warsh and Senator Bill Hagerty. Who do you like? Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and aiden.reiter@ft.com.Unhedged will be off next week for some much needed post-election, pre-Trump administration vacation. We will be back in your inboxes on…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldMicrosoft’s president has called on Donald Trump to “push harder” against cyber attacks from Russia, China and Iran amid a wave of state-sponsored hacks targeting US government officials and election campaigns. Brad Smith, who is also the Big Tech company’s vice chair and top legal officer, told the Financial Times that cyber security “deserves to be a more prominent issue of international relations” and appealed to the US president-elect to send a “strong message”. “I hope that the Trump administration…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The idea of carving up Google is back on the agenda. But if US antitrust cops really believe a break-up of parent company Alphabet is the answer, they might be asking the wrong question.The Department of Justice on Wednesday told a court that Google ought to be forced to split off its internet browser, Chrome, to help allay harms caused by the Silicon Valley giant’s internet search monopoly. It also wants Google to share search data with rivals, stop paying device-makers to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Shares in PDD Holdings fell on Thursday after it missed revenue estimates and warned about “intensified competition”, as it became the latest Chinese technology giant to be hit by the country’s economic slowdown. The owner of ecommerce apps Pinduoduo and Temu reported sales of Rmb99.4bn ($13.7bn) in the third quarter, a 44 per cent increase from the previous year, but below the Rmb102.8bn estimated by analysts. Net income rose 61 per cent to Rmb25bn in the same period, but it reported an…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Ultimately, all antitrust enforcement is political. It depends on the will of the government of the day to prosecute violations and pursue sanctions to the full.That has left uncertainty over the latest development in the US case against Google. The trustbusters at the Department of Justice went for broke this week, asking for a sweeping set of sanctions against the company. Whether this becomes a turning point for the company is now as much a political as a legal question.Forcing Google to…

Big Tech has lowered its profile at the UN COP29 climate summit this year, as industry concerns rise about the sector being targeted as the “new oil and gas” as a result of the power demands of data centres to support artificial intelligence.In contrast to previous UN climate summits in Dubai and Sharm el-Sheikh, tech leaders such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon have been less visible in Baku. “We don’t have anything there this year,” a Meta spokesperson said. While tech groups place store in AI for its potential to cut greenhouse gases, as it helps to develop more efficient…

Hi everyone, this is Lauly, sending greetings from rainy and windy Taipei.It’s been two weeks since the US presidential election, and yet the most common topic of conversation among Asia’s tech suppliers is still President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House.An executive with a server and notebook computer supplier told me that the first thing his American client asked him days after the election was: “Are you ready?”Peter Chen, chair of Taiwanese electronics maker Qisda, told an investors conference that his “heart started to worry” and that he still remembered the four years under the Trump administration before and…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Australia has introduced a bill banning social media for children under 16 and threatened penalties of up to A$50mn ($32.5mn) for “systemic” breaches by platforms such as Elon Musk’s X, Meta’s Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. Australia is the first country to suggest legislation that puts the onus on social media platforms, not parents, to stop children accessing their services. The bill, first announced in September, is expected to be passed into law by the end of the year. “We know social media…

Sam Liang, chief executive and co-founder of artificial intelligence transcription start-up Otter.ai, has a plan to save us all from endless, boring meetings. His company is working on personalised AI avatars that will one day be able to attend online meetings on their owner’s behalf. Founded in 2016 and based in Mountain View, California, Otter.ai has evolved from a simple voice-to-text transcription service to offer automatic recordings of live events, meeting summaries and content searches. Liang says he envisages Otter as a productivity tool that can improve attention and save everyone time. It built its speech recognition and summary service in-house and…

Last year, as thousands of customers withdrew their deposits from Silicon Valley Bank in one of the biggest bank runs in US history, British venture capitalist Matt Clifford hit the phones.He spent a frenzied weekend juggling calls with UK ministers, explaining that small British tech companies would be unable to cover their costs, and passing on messages from government to businesses to dissipate panic. When HSBC stepped in to buy the failing bank, entrepreneurs thanked him.Since then, the 39-year-old has gained increasing authority across government, advising successive Tory and Labour administrations on their tech policies. But several media and tech…