On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Beran provided an in-depth analysis of the CrowdStrike outage that affected approximately 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide and caused disruption to air travel, banks, hospitals, media, federal government agencies, and businesses of all kinds. The outage began when cloud security giant CrowdStrike sent out a flawed software update. CrowdStrike quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, but the impacts continued over the weekend and will likely continue into this week, especially in the travel industry. United, American, and Delta airlines collectively canceled or delayed thousands of flights, with the impacts likely to continue into this week.
On the show, Rebecca talked about how, even though it wasn't a cyberattack, this outage revealed to the world how vulnerable our critical infrastructure systems are, and how it could be a big problem if our adversaries come up with some clever ideas. She also talked about the reputational damage CrowdStrike has suffered, startups that smell blood and are ready to strike, and the possibility that monopolies that provide essential services may need to be regulated.
Back to the topic, now that President Joe Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race and formally endorsed his right-hand man, Rebecca examines US Vice President Kamala Harris' stance on technology. Harris appears to support oversight of big tech companies to protect consumer privacy, as well as AI regulation to prevent companies from prioritizing profits over people and society. While some VCs and tech industry bigwigs supported former President Donald Trump for his laissez-faire approach to regulating AI and cryptocurrencies (something we discussed in last Friday's episode), others in the industry have shown their support for Harris. VCs such as John Doerr and Ron Conway were among her early supporters, and as a presidential candidate, Harris was quickly endorsed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Rebecca also confirmed a Reuters report detailing Nvidia's plans to manufacture versions of its new flagship AI chips for the Chinese market that comply with current U.S. export controls. Although the U.S. tightened semiconductor export controls on China in 2023, a move designed to limit the Chinese military's advances in supercomputing, Nvidia appears unwilling to let go of the Chinese market.
Finally, Rebecca covered TechCrunch's Paul Sowers' in-depth look at Yandex, once dubbed “Russia's Google,” and its comeback from a poor showing on the Nasdaq. Yandex's Dutch-listed company severed all ties with Russia and dumped all of its Russian assets earlier this year. The “new” company has named one of its few remaining assets, a Finnish data center and AI cloud platform, Nebuis AI. The company now operates as something of a hybrid between a large corporation and a startup. Its goal is to become the leader in AI computing in Europe.
Check back on Wednesday for Equity's interview with Sara Deshpande of Maven Ventures about why VCs are bullish on consumer fundraising and how venture firms view AI companies.
Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast produced by Theresa Loconsolo and posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
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