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• US business leaders are desperately seeking clarity on Donald Trump's executive order that could ban transactions on WeChat, a Chinese payment and messaging app used by 1.2 billion people worldwide.
• More than a dozen companies including Apple, Ford, Walmart, and Disney voiced concerns about how the executive order could affect their businesses in a call with the White House on Tuesday, WSJ reported.
• The executive order bans US entities from "any transaction that is related to WeChat," which businesses worry could obliterate their ability to do business in China.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Over a dozen companies including Apple, Disney, Ford, Walmart, and Intel reportedly voiced concerns about President Donald Trump's sweeping WeChat ban and sought clarity during a call with White House officials on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump signed executive orders last week banning any "any transactions" by American entities with two Chinese companies: TikTok's parent company ByteDance and WeChat's parent company Tencent Holdings. The order is set to take effect in late September.

US businesses are worried in particular about the WeChat ban, which could devastate their ability to compete in the Chinese market. WeChat is a messaging and ecommerce app used by over 1.2 billion people worldwide, and it's used widely in China for mobile payments, shopping, and social networking.

Without the ability to advertise and conduct business on WeChat, US businesses worry, they'll be essentially unable to compete in China and could be edged out of one of the world's biggest markets. American companies including Visa, Mastercard, and Starbucks have direct partnerships with WeChat to use its payments platform in China.

Some analysts remain optimistic that the executive order won't meaningfully affect US businesses. 

"We continue to believe in this game of high stakes poker that this remains a contained risk at this point," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note on Friday. 

A White House spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider that the administration is "committed to protecting the American people from all cyber related threats to critical infrastructure, public health and safety, and our economic and national security."

Trump's Secretary of Commerce will clarify which entities are subject to the order by September, per the executive order.

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A lot of “partnerships” between tech companies don’t get very far beyond a press release and maybe some half-hearted co-selling attempts. When Atlassian sold its chat services to Slack in 2018, the two companies said they would form a new partnership and with Atlassian leaving the chat space, a lot of people were skeptical about what that would really mean.

Since then, things got pretty quiet around the collaboration between the two companies, but today the companies announced some of the deep integration work they’ve done, especially within Slack .

Over the course of the last two years, Slack and Atlassian shipped 11 product integrations, which now see about a million active users every month, with Jira being the most often used integration, followed by Halp, which Atlassian acquired earlier this year.

Every month, Atlassian currently sends 42 million Jira notifications to Slack — and that number continues to grow.

At the core of these integrations is the ability to get rich unfurls of deep links to Atlassian products in Slack, no matter whether that’s in DMs, public or private channels. Coming soon, those unfurls will become a default feature within Slack, even if the user who is seeing the link isn’t an Atlassian user yet.

“Today, if you do drop a Jira link in your channel and you’re not a user — or even if you are and you’re not authed in — you just see a link,” Brad Armstrong said.

“You don’t get the benefit of the unfurl. And so one of the things we’re doing is making that unfurl available to everybody, regardless of whether you are logged in and regardless of whether you’re even an Atlassian customer.”

The two companies also worked closely together on making moving between the products easier. If you are a Jira user, for example, you’ll soon be able to click on a link in Slack and if you’re not currently logged into your Atlassian account, you’ll be automatically logged in. The two companies are taking this even further by automatically creating Jira accounts for users when they come from Slack.

“Even if you’re not a user, when you click on the link, we will then map you from Slack and create a Jira user for you that provisions you and auths you in so you’re immediately becoming a Jira user by virtue of wanting to collaborate on that piece of content in Slack,” Armstrong explained.

That, the two companies argue, turns Slack into something akin to a passport that gives you access to the Atlassian product suite — and that should also make onboarding a lot easier for new users.

“As you could probably imagine, as you know, onboarding is a pain, it’s hard because you have different roles, different size teams, so on and so forth,” said Bryant Lee, Atlassian’s head of product partnerships. “And that’s where you see some of the authentication stuff, the unfurling discovery piece really being an understanding of what those practices are. But the way that we look at it is not just about the product but people, products and practices. So it’s really about understanding who it is that we’re trying to optimize for.”

In addition to these new integrations that are launching soon, the two companies are also expanding their co-marketing efforts, starting with a new 50%-off offer for Atlassian users who want to also use Slack.

“We’re building on the strong foundation of our partnership’s success from the past two years, which has yielded tremendous shared customer momentum and impactful product integrations,” said Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield . “Thanks to our strategic alliance, Slack and Atlassian have become the technology stack of choice for developer teams.”

The tech giant wants to shift its entire portfolio to a consumption-based model in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Robbins says builds on the ‘significant transformation’ it has undergone as it focuses on software, services and subscriptions.

In a Wednesday morning interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber would likely shut down temporarily if it failed to appeal a recent ruling requiring immediate reclassification of its drivers as full-time employees. Currently, Uber’s business model relies on classifying drivers as “independent contractors” who do not enjoy the benefits or stability that come with employment. 

"We think the ruling was unfortunate. We respect, obviously, the law and the court and the judge," Khosrowshahi said. "If the court doesn’t reconsider, then in California, it’s hard to believe we’ll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly, so I think Uber will shut down for a while."

In the interview, Khosrowshahi warned Uber may have to shut down until November, when voters will choose to accept or reject Proposition 22, a $110 million referendum led by Uber and backed by a coalition of gig economy companies to save their business model. Proposition 22 is meant to give drivers more protections while allowing Uber to still minimize labor costs, but researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that the measure would only guarantee $5.64 an hour, not the $15.60 an hour that Proposition 22 advocates promise.

The MSNBC interview is the latest in a round of public relations initiatives Uber has undertaken in order to beat back encroachments on its business model and propose alternatives to classifying drivers as employees. The company’s tooth-and-nail fight to convince lawmakers and the public hinges on the idea that Uber likely would not survive as a juggernaut if it had to treat drivers like other companies treat their employees. This argument is well-worn for Uber, as is the tactic of exiting uncooperative cities. 

When pressed by Ruhle on what Uber would look like once it was AB5 compliant, Khosrowshahi replied: "You would get a much smaller service, much higher prices, and probably a service that's focused in the center of cities versus a bunch of the smaller cities or the suburbs that we operate in right now."

In a New York Times op-ed earlier this week, where Khosrowshahi proposed a new law that would force companies including Uber to pay into benefits funds for drivers, he made a similar argument. Khosrowshahi said that "drivers can continue to have the flexibility they have, but they can enjoy the protections—benefits fund, an earnings standard—so that they've got the protections many associate with full-time work." The op-ed also raised the specter of a very different Uber if it classified drivers as employees: expensive rides, fewer cities. 

Indeed, Uber's value proposition to investors, according to its own IPO documents, would be "adversely affected if Drivers were classified as employees instead of independent contractors" because of the threat of unionization, minimum wages, benefits, and other unconscionable costs.

Currently, Uber is facing down a major tab in numerous jurisdictions arising from its mistreatment of drivers. Uber already owes New Jersey $650 million for unpaid unemployment insurance taxes from 2014 to 2018. Additionally, more than 5,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in California have collectively filed over $1.3 billion in wage claims (each company burns through hundreds of thousands of drivers each year). Uber and Lyft are also estimated to owe California $413 million in unpaid state unemployment insurance taxes from 2014 to 2019.

Research has shown that Uber drivers are neither flexible nor independent, but in fact tightly surveilled and controlled by a company that experts have said is likely violating antitrust law—all contrary to Khosrowshahi’s assertions. But there is likely truth to the idea that classifying drivers as employees rather than contractors would come at a major cost to the company. 

It is not as though these conditions are propping up a money-maker. Despite Uber’s ubiquity, the company has never turned a profit and burns billions of dollars annually with spending on subsidies and promotions in order to extend its reach. In a 2019 SEC filing, Uber admitted that this strategy of gaining market share even at a steep financial cost “may adversely affect [Uber’s] financial performance.” 

Uber has engaged in years of heavy-handed tactics to avoid any changes to its business model, including the threat of stopping or suspending service and appealing to the public.

In 2018, Veena Dubal, Ruth Berins Collier, and Christopher Carter, co-wrote a paper detailing how Uber regularly flaunted the law by either mobilizing its apps' users to help the company bully politicians into abandoning talk of regulation, or by simply leaving. When Austin lawmakers tried to require ride-hail drivers to get background checks, for example, Uber and Lyft put forward Proposition 1 to kill the reform—the referendum failed on May 7, and by May 9, Uber and Lyft were gone. Similar finger-printing requirements emerged in Houston and San Antonio. In Houston, Uber accepted the regulation before threatening to leave—it stayed once lobbying successfully overturned the decision. In San Antonio, Uber outright left in protest of the fingerprinting requirement, but returned as the city made fingerprinting optional.

It’s worth noting that Uber has had years to plan for re-classifying its drivers. Drivers have technically been employees since 2018’s Dynamex decision, and AB5 merely codified that California Supreme Court ruling. 

While the goal of Uber’s PR push is to demonstrate its value to the public and to push back against re-classifying its drivers, ultimately, it reminds us that merely existing hurts the company and following the law just might kill it. 

When Motherboard reached out to Uber for comment about its plans to restructure if the appeal failed, a spokesperson directed us to a motion Uber filed asking for a stay on the injunction to allow Uber a few weeks to seek its appeal.

This UC&C security and compliance provider’s forte is real-time analysis for policy enforcement.

Google is releasing a new update to Android Auto that allows the car software to regain some of its smarts. This includes bringing back the Calendar app, which allows you to view information on your next appointment and get driving directions if you’d added a location to the calendar entry. Google previously removed the Calendar app from its last redesign in 2019, replacing it with a button that simply read your appointments out loud using the Google Assistant instead of showing you anything on the screen.

The new update also adds relevant shortcuts to the Calendar app — so if you need to pick up a birthday cake, for instance, you will have the option to either call the bakery or pull up directions to get there. Apple introduced a s...

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Learn about this startup's approach to identity authentication across the customer journey.

Learn how this company's technology is helping automate the detection of regulatory compliance for UCaaS, and more.

Learn how Wire employs end-to-end encryption to keep collaboration secure.

By Dave Michels
Instead of going it alone, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) has decided to leverage RingCentral's global reach in its UCaaS pursuit.

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Google announced on Tuesday a number of new features on the way to help make virtual education easier, including updates to its Google Meet conferencing service and a new homework helper tool that just requires a photo from a phone.

For Meet, Google says that a larger tiled view that can show up to 49 meeting participants, which Google first announced in June, will now arrive in September. Google first launched its tiled view for Meet in April with the ability to see 16 participants at a time. So being able to see 49 people at once will bring Meet’s gallery view on par with Zoom’s. Google will integrate its digital whiteboard product, Jamboard, into Meet in September as well, and in October, Google will add the ability to blur or replace...

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Photo by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Boeing’s 747-400 aircraft, first introduced in 1988, is still receiving critical software updates through 3.5-inch floppy disks. The Register reports that security researchers at Pen Test Partners recently got access to a British Airways 747, after the airline decided to retire its fleet following a plummet in travel during the coronavirus pandemic. The team was able to inspect the full avionics bay beneath the passenger deck, with its data center-like racks of modular black boxes that perform different functions for the plane.

Pen Test Partners discovered a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive in the cockpit, which is used to load important navigation databases. It’s a database that has to be updated every 28 days, and an engineer visits each...

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ABC

In November 2017, Black-ish creator Kenya Barris wrote an episode of his Emmy-award winning ABC comedy titled “Please, Baby, Please” that tackled racism in America, ranging from the Charlottesville protests to kneeling in the NFL. Just a week before it was set to air in 2018, Disney shelved it. Now, the episode will finally see the light of day on Disney’s general entertainment streaming service, Hulu.

“We were one year post-election and coming to the end of a year that left us, like many Americans, grappling with the state of our country and anxious about its future,” Barris wrote in a statement on Twitter. “Those feelings poured onto the page, becoming 22 minutes of television that I was, and still am, incredibly proud of. ‘Please,...

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After topping its own sales records for software, cloud and subscriptions in the third quarter, Avaya CEO Jim Chirico tells CRN that there‘s still plenty of runway for partners to sell Avaya’s portfolio to transformation-minded clients.

Benioff also said he’s not sure how much longer he’ll run the company, according to a report.

• Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang told Business Insider that the US is past due on implementing a four-day workweek to better accommodate American workers.
• As health experts project that life as we know it may not return until next year, Yang told Business Insider in an interview that a four-day workweek could be imperative now more than ever.
• "It would help get us off of this hamster wheel that we're on right now, where we're all sort of racing against the clock in service of this like giant capital efficiency machine," Yang said. "And the race is driving us all crazy."
• "All of the key drivers that make your business a more successful business will improve as a consequence of this strategy," Andrew Barnes, co-founder of the nonprofit platform 4 Day Week Global told Business Insider.
• Two company founders attested to Barnes' assessment, saying that not only will the company reap the benefits of the policy, but employees will experience a better work-life balance as a result.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced some Americans to adjust to a lifestyle within the confines of their own homes.

As many employees (outside those deemed essential) work remotely, companies attempt to adapt their offices with safety precautions in mind — if they even have the intention of reopening them at all.

Former Democratic presidential candidate and entrepreneur Andrew Yang first floated the idea of implementing a four-day workweek in May to better accommodate working Americans in this time of uncertainty, citing the time and mental health benefits that employees can reap from a shorter workweek.

There's not one overarching definition for a four-day workweek. The Washington Post noted: "There are different models for the shortened week, some of which envision the same output condensed into fewer hours while others simply imagine longer hours spread over fewer days." Some see the benefit of a three-day weekend, while others mean a day is taken off mid-week.

For his part, Yang previously tweeted: "3-Day weekends are better than 2-Day weekends."

As health experts project that life as we knew it may not return until next year, Yang told Business Insider in an interview that a four-day workweek could be imperative now more than ever.

"It would help get us off of this hamster wheel that we're on right now, where we're all sort of racing against the clock in service of this giant capital efficiency machine," Yang said. "And the race is driving us all crazy."

One poll found that many Americans seem to agree — according to a June survey by The Harris Poll, 82% of employed Americans prefer to have a shorter workweek, even if it meant longer workdays.

The policy has become so popular in Finland that Prime Minister Sanna Marin called for workforces across the country to introduce a shorter workweek, in which employees would only work six hours a day, four days a week. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the policy as part of an economic recovery effort from the coronavirus pandemic.

Andrew Barnes, CEO of Perpetual Guardian, introduced a four-day workweek to his company in New Zealand in 2018.

Barnes is also the co-founder of the nonprofit platform 4 Day Week Global and author of "The 4 Day Week." He explained that "stress levels drop, creativity goes up, [and] team cohesion goes up" after implementing the policy.

"It's also part of what is making it so hard for so many workers to find a place in our workforce because our entire culture is so efficiency-obsessed that we are replacing workers with machines and software and math," Yang said of the US workforce. "So, to me, a four-day workweek is overdue. It would be immensely helpful to all of us."

Microsoft experimented with a four-day workweek last year at one of their subsidiaries in Japan in an effort to better recognize work-life balance, and the tech giant saw labor productivity jump 40% as a result of closing its offices every Friday in August, compared to the previous year.

"All of the key drivers that make your business a more successful business will improve as a consequence of this strategy," Barnes told Business Insider. "So actually, if you want to have a successful business, not doing this is actually the bigger issue."

"The world has now said, 'Actually, we have this great experiment called COVID-19,'" he added. "We're questioning how the world will work and shape going forward. Your biggest risk now is not getting ahead, because to get ahead of the curve, you got to introduce something like this."

Barnes, who is also an entrepreneur himself, explained that having a four-day workweek doesn't necessarily equate a three-day weekend. Instead, he said it should function to accommodate the time constraints of individual employees, while working toward the goal of accomplishing the company's tasks at hand.

"In our business, some people will take a day off. Some people will take two half days. Some people will work five days, but they will work compressed hours," he said. "So what we're talking about is a reduction in the working week. Not everybody comes out with a three day weekend. For some people, it is, but for a lot of people, actually, the last thing they want is to have a three-day weekend."

Since the onset of the pandemic, entrepreneur Robert Yuen, co-founder of software firm Monogram, said the shorter workweek has become "even more valuable now than it has been ever before."

Yuen has had a four-day workweek policy at the company since 2016. Aside from the productivity benefits of the policy, Yuen told Business Insider that working from home has blurred the line on work-life balance and that implementing a four-day workweek could go a ways to restoring that.

"When you're working from home, there's a little bit less of a barrier between when to stop and when to start," he said. "It's just a little bit murkier between work-and-life separation, just because you're not navigating to the office anymore, and your office might be your bedroom, or your office might be your kitchen now."

"So I think naturally most people are actually working more now than they have prior," he said. "Having a really dedicated mental break to kind of relax and recharge is even more central today than it ever was."

After having the policy for the last four years, Yuen said he "experimented and tried different ways of operating the 40-hour workweek," eventually finding a system that works best for his company.

"The first approach was like taking Fridays off, which I think is the natural way of thinking, like, 'Oh, we have a Friday off and have a long weekend every weekend," he said. "Well, we learned really quickly that that was not super ideal for productivity, like a three-day weekend is just really a long time away from work, which made Monday feel a lot harder to get back into rhythm."

"We finally landed on a really ideal situation ... where we take Wednesdays off — get two days on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday off, and then Thursday, Friday," Yuen said, adding that the company also eventually shortened its week to a 32-hour workweek.

While it has worked well for his company, Yuen said he recognized that having such a policy is not a "one-shoe-fits-all scenario."

As with the coronavirus pandemic, which brought into sharp relief the jobs can be done at home and those that cannot — healthcare, the service industry, the gig-economy, retail — the four-day workweek likely has industry limitations.

"I think [shortened workweek] absolutely has impacts if you're in an industry that is hourly and you get paid per hour, and then all of a sudden, you've just lost eight hours of pay that you normally would get," Yuen said. "I can see that those types of industries having a struggle implementing a four-day workweek. I think we have to go case-by-case, company-by-company, and industry-by-industry to determine if this type of work fits."

Art Shectman, president and founder of Elephant Ventures, a software and data engineering company, began the trial period of a four-day workweek at the beginning of August.

In the few short weeks since trying out the shorter workweek in which Friday is the designated day off, Shectman said he found that working longer days to make up for the Friday hours has removed this "guilt and anxiety loop" from remote work, where he would have to take time out of the workday to tend to things at home, like taking care of his 9-year-old twin girls.

"There's like this cycle of guilt of having to pencil time out and the anxiety that the day is happening without you while you're punching the time out to take care of whatever you need to do," he told Business Insider. "When you remove that anxiety loop and the guilt loop later in the day, you get to stay in that productivity zone the whole rest of the day."

"And so, from a morale and mental-tax standpoint of accommodating just everything that normally happens with trying to work from home, it's been fantastic," he added.

Charlotte Lockhart, who co-founded "4 Day Week Global," emphasized that "as employers, we need to remember that we borrow people from their lives."

"What we learned was that different people want different types of time off, and therefore, we have to create a lifestyle that they can work productively, but still have appropriate time off, because our ability to work from home or some other place isn't necessarily uniform," she told Business Insider.

Yang recalled the models of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who, in 1930, predicted that technological change and the vast levels of wealth generated by this time would lead to a 15-hour workweek.

"He was correct about the level of wealth, but obviously incorrect on our work weeks, which have gotten longer, not shorter," Yang said. "So it's past time we head in the right direction and implement a four-day workweek, which would help us all."

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NOW WATCH: Inside London during COVID-19 lockdown

• Microsoft is exploring a deal to buy TikTok's operations in countries including the US as the Trump administration puts pressure on the social-media platform's China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell.
• Some employees have expressed concerns about the prospective deal in internal messages reviewed by Business Insider, including worries that making the acquisition under these circumstances could call Microsoft's integrity into question.
• "This is the first time in a long time that I've had doubt gnawing at the pit of my stomach that maybe we're not doing the right thing," one employee said in a comment viewed by Business Insider. 
• In one internal employee poll, titled "Should Microsoft buy TikTok?," 63% of the 250 respondents at the time it was shared with Business Insider said "no."
• Are you a Microsoft employee? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bill Gates called Microsoft's potential purchase of the social-video app TikTok a "poison chalice" — and it appears that at least some employees of the tech titan he cofounded might agree with him.

The company is exploring a deal to buy TikTok's operations in countries including the US as the Trump administration puts pressure on the platform's China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell.

Employees shared their concerns over the prospective deal on the company's internal Yammer social network — specifically in a group called "CEO Connection," which Microsoft describes as meant "to allow employees to ask Satya and his leadership team questions and discuss topics that are relevant to the entire company." 

In one internal poll, published on the Yammer corporate social network and titled "Should Microsoft buy TikTok?," 63% of the 250 respondents at the time it was shared with Business Insider said "no," 19% said "not sure," and 18% said "yes." That poll represents only a narrow slice of Microsoft's more than 150,000 employees but speaks to the mood within the company amid the uncertainty of the situation.

"Especially since Satya became CEO, I've felt nothing but pride to be part of this company," one employee said in a Yammer comment viewed by Business Insider, referring to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "This is the first time in a long time that I've had doubt gnawing at the pit of my stomach that maybe we're not doing the right thing."

The employee was referring to President Donald Trump's recent comments that any deal between Microsoft and TikTok should also include a payment to the US Treasury. This employee called the idea a "bribe" and said that even the appearance that Microsoft would be willing to make such a deal could make customers and employees question the company's integrity.

Other employees expressed similar sentiments. "This deal is unethical from pretty much any perspective," an employee wrote, adding, "That Microsoft would even be considering stepping into this situation is unthinkable."

"Even if it turns out we were pursuing acquiring them before this, and the POTUS was just [talking] about tax revenue benefits not an explicit payoff, the fact the US government is forcing the sale still looks bad on us. We should walk away," another said.

Experts told Business Insider the portion of the business Microsoft wants to buy could be worth between $25 billion and $40 billion — which could be more than Microsoft's largest-ever acquisition, when it paid $26.2 billion in 2016 to acquire LinkedIn.

Are you a Microsoft employee with insight to share? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).

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By Dave Michels
New video innovations improve how we appear on camera, make eye contact more natural, address security concerns, and much more.

• Bill Gates, the tech billionaire philanthropist who is helping to fund vaccine research for a number of deadly illnesses including COVID-19, is feeling optimistic about COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. 
• Thanks to this work, he thinks the pandemic should be under control by the end of 2021 for the world's richest nations and by 2022 for the developing world, he told Wired in an interview.
• While that represents record-speed scientific progress, it may be disappointing to think about living in a pandemic for another year or longer.
• Meanwhile, Gates warns people not to let their guards down because he thinks COVID-19 could surge again in the fall.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bill Gates is feeling optimistic that, with all the work being done to develop COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, there is an end to the pandemic in sight.

Unfortunately, that end is still at least a year away, he told Wired's Steven Levy.

"The innovation pipeline on scaling up diagnostics, on new therapeutics, on vaccines is actually quite impressive. And that makes me feel like, for the rich world, we should largely be able to end this thing by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022," Gates said.

Gates says that he fears that in nations like Russia and China, the pressure to have a vaccine is so high that regulators may be allowing shots to be given to humans before the vaccines are known to be safe and effective.

But the US FDA is not allowing such short-cuts, he said.

"We probably need three or four months — no matter what — of phase 3 data, just to look for side effects," Gates said. "The FDA, to their credit, at least so far, is sticking to requiring proof of efficacy."

Last month, Gates told Business Insider's Hilary Brueck that he's confident that scientists will develop a vaccine that's "very effective and very safe" in part because there are so many vaccines currently in development: more than 160 worldwide. Two of the four speediest trials that are testing vaccines in humans right now are US-based, too: Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

Gates also told Brueck if the best vaccines are not shared worldwide, that COVID-19 will "just keep coming back."

In the meantime, Gates predicts we're in for a rough fall and winter with the virus, even though this virus does not appear to be seasonal.

"The fall could be tough," he told Brueck. "We'll be indoors more. It will be colder. We know those are things that push the disease up."

• Now read:
• Bill Gates: We will have a coronavirus vaccine, but the disease will keep coming back if there's a US 'leadership vacuum'
• Bill Gates says COVID-19 'will be back in big numbers' in October-November when US temperatures turn lower

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NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

• In an interview with WIRED published Friday, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates talked about the state of US coronavirus testing, vaccines, and Microsoft's potential TikTok deal.
• On Thursday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that banned TikTok's parent company – ByteDance, which is a Chinese firm – from operating business in the US.
• Regarding Microsoft's potential acquisition of TikTok, Gates, who now serves as the company's technology advisor, compared the deal to "a poison chalice."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates described Microsoft's potential acquisition of TikTok as a "poison chalice" in an interview with WIRED published on Friday.

Gates, who now serves as the technology advisor of Microsoft after stepping down from the board of directors in March to focus on philanthropic efforts, shared his thoughts on coronavirus testing, vaccinations, and Microsoft's potential TikTok deal.

Gates noted that "being big in the social media business is no simple game," telling the publication that Microsoft making the industry more competitive is "probably a good thing." 

When asked about President Donald Trump's demand that TikTok be sold to an American company, with the federal government taking a cut, Gates described the move as "strange."

"I agree that the principle this is proceeding on is singly strange. The cut thing, that's doubly strange. Anyway, Microsoft will have to deal with all of that," he said.

Gates also deflected when he was asked whether he was "wary" about Microsoft jumping into the social media "game."

"I mean, this may sound self-serving, but I think that the game being more competitive is probably a good thing. But having Trump kill off the only competitor, it's pretty bizarre," he said.

Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in July that the US was looking into a potential ban of the TikTok app. At the end of July, the New York Times reported Microsoft was in talks for acquiring TikTok.

In August, Microsoft officially confirmed it has been in talks to acquire TikTok's operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and stated it will complete discussions by September 15th. 

On Thursday, President Trump issued an executive order that banned TikTok's parent company ByteDance, a Chinese firm, from "any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." President Trump mentioned in the order that the popular app could "allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information." 

On Saturday, NPR reported that "a person who was directly involved in the forthcoming suit but was not authorized to speak for the company" stated that TikTok planned to sue the Trump administration as early as Tuesday. 

• Read more:
• Trump just issued 2 executive orders aimed at Chinese-owned apps, barring US companies from doing business with TikTok parent company ByteDance and messaging app WeChat
• TikTok is at the heart of a wild geopolitical dogfight and it could result in Microsoft buying TikTok. Here's what's going on.
• Trump's attempt to ban TikTok and WeChat could face legal trouble for infringing on free speech, according to a First Amendment expert
• Microsoft could be "a great steward" of TikTok's US assets if reported sale talks succeed, says Josh Elman, an investor in the app's predecessor Musical.ly

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How 'white savior' films like 'The Help' and 'Green Book' hurt Hollywood

• The startup UneeQ has created a website that lets anyone build one of their digital humans for free and start talking to it.
• The new site is a sign of the growing access to conversational artificial intelligence and highly realistic on-screen personas — making a conversation with a chatbot just that much more personal. 
• UneeQ previously built a digital twin of a famous Swiss banker the investment bank UBS let clients engage with. It also counts BMW and Vodaphone as clients. 
• UneeQ's CEO says digital humans can be easier to talk to about delicate subjects, such as mental health. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A startup that makes highly realistic on-screen human personas – including a digital twin of a famous Swiss banker – has created a platform where anyone can create a digital human and talk to it for free.  

The new site is an example of the growing affordability of conversational artificial intelligence and digital humans – a way to make interacting with software a little more personal.

UneeQ has been working on digital humans – the hyper-realistic on-screen robots that look and act like humans – since 2010. The firm has worked with BMW, Vodaphone, and top banks in New Zealand to set up the digital humans as customer service helpers, giving a persona to the chatbots that have previously often been simply a box to type into. 

UneeQ has raised $11 million in venture capital, and boasts an artificial intelligence heavyweight — Salesforce's former head of AI, Richard Soucher — as an investor. A $5 million bridge round is coming soon, Tomsett says, and a Series B round is expected next year. The company has small offices in New Zealand, Austin, and San Francisco. 

"This is a giant leap forward in conversational AI," says Danny Tomsett, founder and CEO of UneeQ. The company's digital human creator website "eliminates a complex, multimillion-dollar barrier-to-entry," he says, and compares it to the way Squarespace has helped companies to easily build websites. 

The conversational AI market brought in $4 billion last year, according to Adroit Market Research, and is expected to grow 30% annually until 2025. 

'Judgment actually comes in hand-in-hand with human conversation'

The point of having a digital human that can answer customer questions is "to create a human connection and better online experience," Tomsett tells Business Insider. 

Some might say a highly realistic persona is still not a human, but Tomsett says digital humans actually have some advantages over the real McCoys. "Judgment actually comes hand-in-hand with human conversation, and with virtual humans we see a distinct advantage there." 

In one case, Swiss investment bank UBS built a UneeQ digital human double of its chief economist, Daniel Kalt, that meets with clients. "He's a well-known individual in Switzerland and so they wanted to recreate him and make him available for anyone for financial advice so we recreated him," says Tomsett.

UneeQ Creator, the startup's new website, allows anyone to create a persona based on UneeQ's stock of nine diverse young men and women digital humans. The free trial allows anyone to bring one of the personas to life and have a conversation with it. 

Companies that are impressed with the demo can connect the persona to their existing chatbot to integrate their natural language processing software. UneeQ says its platform integrates with major cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services Lex, Microsoft Bot Framework, IBM Watson Assistant, and others. 

The free demo digital humans and $900-a-month versions are "off the rack" pre-made personas UneeQ sells, but more expensive versions are customizable. 

In what the company says is a good example of the potential for the technology, legendary New Zealand rugby player Sir John Kirwan has used a UneeQ persona in a program to help people discuss depression. 

"For many people struggling with their mental health, going to see a specialist comes with fear of the unknown, anxiety or is difficult due to a lack of finances," Kirwan said in a previous interview about the UneeQ platform.  

UneeQ isn't the only one chasing this idea: In May, Japanese tech giant NTT announced new labs in Silicon Valley where it will build hyper-realistic digital twins of people for medical research. Those digital humans will be exact digital replicas of people for research purposes.  

A brief conversation with a UneeQ digital human

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• Apple refuses to allow major gaming apps from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook onto the iPhone and iPad App Store.
• The reason, Apple said, is because those apps provide access to games that haven't been rated by Apple's review guidelines.
• "Our customers enjoy great apps and games from millions of developers, and gaming services can absolutely launch on the App Store as long as they follow the same set of guidelines applicable to all developers," an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider, "including submitting games individually for review and appearing in charts and search."
• It's a policy that Apple applies to only game services while allowing apps like Netflix and Spotify to provide access to vast libraries that don't need to pass through Apple's App Store review process.
• Both Microsoft and Facebook are publicly pushing back on Apple's policy.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The only way to publish apps onto the iPhone and iPad is through Apple's App Store.

And if Apple decides an app you've submitted for publishing violates its publishing requirements, your app won't be available on the Apple App Store. 

Such is the case with a trio of apps from some of tech's heaviest hitters: Microsoft, Facebook, and Google all have major gaming apps that Apple refuses to publish. Microsoft's Game Pass, Google's Stadia, and Facebook's Gaming app all face roadblocks to publishing on the App Store.

The reason? Those companies won't submit each individual game to Apple for review.

"The App Store was created to be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers," an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider this week. "Before they go on our store, all apps are reviewed against the same set of guidelines that are intended to protect customers and provide a fair and level playing field to developers."

Because each company isn't submitting each game, Apple is blocking the apps that enable access to those games.

"Our customers enjoy great apps and games from millions of developers, and gaming services can absolutely launch on the App Store as long as they follow the same set of guidelines applicable to all developers, including submitting games individually for review, and appearing in charts and search," the statement from Apple said. "In addition to the App Store, developers can choose to reach all iPhone and iPad users over the web through Safari and other browsers on the App Store."

Given that Apple allows services like Netflix and Spotify without reviewing every piece of content, why not allow a similar service for gaming?

The difference boils down to the medium, according to Apple: Games are interactive, unlike music and film, and there are consumer expectations baked into the App Store related to gaming.

Those expectations extend to game content, but also to searchability, in-app payment through Apple's built-in services, and App Store charts, according to Apple.

In order to get published on Apple's App Store, Facebook outright removed games from its Facebook Gaming app.

Google removed the core component of its app — the Google Stadia app on iOS doesn't stream video games to your phone, which is what the service exists to do.

And, for the time being, when Microsoft's Game Pass game streaming service launches on September 15, it will only be available on Android smartphones and tablets.

"Unfortunately, we do not have a path to bring our vision of cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to gamers on iOS via the Apple App Store," a Microsoft spokesperson said on Thursday. "Apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass. And it consistently treats gaming apps differently, applying more lenient rules to non-gaming apps even when they include interactive content."

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had similarly harsh words.

"Unfortunately, we had to remove gameplay functionality entirely in order to get Apple's approval on the standalone Facebook Gaming app — meaning iOS users have an inferior experience to those using Android," Sandberg said in a statement shared with Business Insider on Friday. "We're staying focused on building communities for the more than 380 million people who play games on Facebook every month — whether Apple allows it in a standalone app or not."

And in a thread on Twitter, the Facebook Gaming account went further. 

"After months of submissions and repeated rejections by Apple, we've had to remove instant games entirely from the standalone app," a tweet thread from the account said on Friday. "We can afford to spend ~6 months grinding thru Apple reviews, but many others can't. And while we could have tried additional appeals, we didn't want to hold back from launching the version for livestreamers and fans."

Google Stadia representatives didn't respond to a request for comment.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but without support for iPhones and iPads, ambitious services like Xbox Game Pass and Google Stadia will assuredly struggle. iPhone users account for nearly half the US market share of smartphone users, according to Statista, and iPad is even more dominant in the tablet market.

One thing is certain: Given how critical Xbox Game Pass is to Microsoft's future with the Xbox brand, we've assuredly not heard the end of this.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@businessinsider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

SEE ALSO: When Microsoft's ambitious 'Netflix of gaming' service launches in September, it won't arrive on Apple devices – here's why

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has had talks with Simon Property Group about converting some of its mall spaces into fulfillment centers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The conversations started before the coronavirus pandemic, and before the latest wave of bankruptcy filings by mall stalwarts like Lord & Taylor, JCPenney, and Nieman Marcus. It’s a bit of an on-the-nose example of how e-commerce is overtaking the traditional brick-and-mortar retail establishments that used to be at the center of the shopping mall experience.

Simon is the biggest mall owner in the US, and looking to fill empty retail spaces, particularly those left behind by former anchor tenants like Sears and JCPenney. Having its fulfillment center warehouses closer to residential areas...

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Toshiba quietly exited the laptop business once and for all last week, ending a 35-year run by transferring its remaining minority stake in its PC business to Sharp. Two years ago, Toshiba sold an 80.1 percent stake of its PC business to Sharp for $36 million, and Sharp renamed the division Dynabook. Sharp exercised its right to buy the remaining 19.1 percent of shares back in June, and Toshiba released a statement August 4th that the deal was completed

“As a result of this transfer, Dynabook has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sharp,” Toshiba said in a statement.

The company made the first PC laptop in 1985: The T1100 boasted internal rechargeable batteries, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and 256K of memory. ComputerWorld’s 20-year...

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• President Trump has issued a new executive order targeting WeChat, the widely-used messaging app that drives daily life in China.
• The order, citing security concerns, would go into effect in 45 days.
• WeChat is the cornerstone of daily interactions and transactions in China, as it's used for everything from mobile payments to ride-hailing and playing games.
• But reports have also uncovered how the app has been used to censor and surveil people both inside and outside of China. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Trump is continuing his assault on Chinese-owned tech with a new executive order targeting WeChat, the massively popular messaging app that drives daily life in China owned by Tencent.

Trump issued an executive order on Thursday citing national security concerns that is set to go into effect in 45 days. The order would prohibit any transactions related to WeChat by any person — or involving any property — that's under the jurisdiction of the United States. Trump also issued a very similar executive order regarding the social video app TikTok on the same evening. 

In the executive order, Trump wrote that, "the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People's Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."

You may have heard of WeChat, but unless you live in China there's a good chance you probably haven't used it.  WeChat, owned by the Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent, has become a daily necessity in China. WeChat essentially is your smartphone in China — it offers the functions of a myriad of apps all rolled into one.

The app launched in 2011, its development spearheaded by Tencent executive Allen Zhang, and now boasts more than one billion daily active users. Facebook, by comparison, said in its most recent earnings report that it hosts 1.79 billion daily active users. 

How WeChat works

WeChat is much more than just a messaging app. It's a hub for everything from making payments to playing games, dating, making doctor's appointments, buying movie tickets, and just about everything else you might do throughout your day.

When you open WeChat, you're not just opening one app, you're opening a platform that can run mini-apps that let you do everything from edit photos to search recipes and more. 

In 2017, Tencent and China's Ministry of Public Authority even launched a program to create official digital IDs for citizens that would live in WeChat's app. 

People in China can even file for divorce over WeChat. Bloomberg's Dune Lawrence, when writing in 2016 about how pervasive WeChat is in China, wrote that not using the app while you're there is like "refusing to wear shoes."

Messaging, however, is still a huge part of WeChat's usage. In China, you don't take down someone's phone number or receive a business card. Instead, you scan their WeChat QR code. 

American tech giants have followed in WeChat's footsteps in some ways. Facebook began turning its Messenger app into a platform for accessing apps like Uber and sending money to friends in 2016.

Apple has also integrated similar functionality into its iMessage app around the same time. The iPhone maker also just announced a new feature in June called App Clips, which will let you access services by pointing your phone at or scanning QR codes on objects in the real world.

Surveillance and security concerns around WeChat

As WeChat has grown in popularity, so have concerns about it being used for government surveillance in China. Reports from from the BBC and The Wall Street Journal have detailed how WeChat has been used for censorship and surveillance. 

In June 2019, BBC reporter Stephen McDonell wrote about how he had been locked out of his WeChat account after posting photos from a vigil held in Hong Kong to commemorate the 30-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. A Wall Street Journal report from 2017 detailed how Chinese authorities snoop on WeChat texts to spot blacklisted words and images.

Back in 2015, the Toronto-based Internet research lab Citizen Lab found that 4% of the 36,000 WeChat posts it examined had been censored, according to The Journal. Citizen Lab has since published more recent research showing that WeChat filters images on its Moments section, essentially its equivalent to Facebook's timeline, that match a list of blacklisted images. A separate report from Citizen Lab that was published earlier this year also suggested that surveillance is occuring on non-Chinese WeChat accounts as well. 

In the executive order, President Trump writes that WeChat's data collection "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information."

It's unclear how many people use WeChat outside of China, or in the United States specifically. But app analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates that the app has been installed by approximately 19.3 million people in the US since 2014.

 It also remains to be seen whether Trump's executive order is legal or enforceable. 

SEE ALSO: 'We've all been neutered by what Apple did:' App makers are rallying against Apple's claims that it creates a level playing field for everyone

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• SpaceX safely returned NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth in a Crew Dragon capsule on August 2 — completing the rocket company's first human journey.
• In a briefing after the landing, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and COO, told Business Insider the mission went "surprisingly well."
• It wasn't without issues or quirks, though, such as errant boaters swarming the recovery site amid toxic propellant fumes detected outside the spacecraft.
• The astronauts said riding Crew Dragon through Earth's atmosphere was like being "inside of an animal."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For the SpaceX and NASA officials overseeing the return of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to earth, success wasn't just seeing a spaceship designed, built, and operated by SpaceX safely splash into the Gulf of Mexico. It was seeing the whole, history-making operation go off very nearly without a hitch. 

"The greatest surprise is that this mission was as smooth as it is," Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and COO, told Business Insider in a press briefing held a couple of hours after Demo-2's landing.

But the denouement of the 65-day commercial test mission, called Demo-2, was not without surprises — some concerning, some just curious.

Behnken and Hurley launched May 30 aboard SpaceX's 13.5-ton Crew Dragon spacecraft and returned to Earth Sunday in its crew capsule. By completing the mission, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, not only checked off its first-ever flight of people, but also resurrected crewed spaceflight from US soil, ending a nine-year pause created by NASA's retirement of the space shuttle.

NASA, which has funded Crew Dragon's development and launches with $2.7 billion since 2009, seemed just as awestruck as SpaceX. "It did not seem like this was the first NASA-SpaceX mission with astronauts on board," astronaut Mike Hopkins, who's slated to fly on SpaceX's next Crew Dragon mission, said in the briefing.

Still, Shotwell called out some "foibles" seen during the mission, some of which were highly visible in footage of the mission, and others that were not.

"This was a demonstration mission," Shotwell said. "This is the time that you go learn about these things, and we'll certainly be better prepared next time."

A failed backup generator

Once Behnken and Hurley got the OK to undock from the ISS and return home, SpaceX deployed fleets of ships into the Gulf of Mexico to recover the capsule and the men inside.

But one of its main recovery ships, called "GO Navigator," hit a snag before it left port: Its backup generator failed.

While it didn't materially impact the mission — the ship handled the pickup just fine with its main generator — NASA and SpaceX both want redundancy so that nothing can get in the way of scooping its finest from the sea.

"Next time we're going to have two backup generators," Shotwell said.

Toxic fumes outside Crew Dragon

To stay in orbit — essentially continuous freefall — around Earth from 250 miles up, Crew Dragon must move at a speed of about 17,500 mph. Getting back to the ground requires slowing down, and to do that, the astronauts opened the nosecone of the ship and fired its thrusters against the direction of flight for more than 11 minutes.

The propellant that powers those thrusters is a brownish substance called nitrogen tetroxide, or nitrogen peroxide. Although the hypergolic (spontaneously igniting) fuel packs a lot of punch in a small amount of space, it is also a potent oxidizer that, if inhaled at concentrations as low as 50 parts per million, can kill a person by causing their lungs to fill with fluid.

After the Crew Dragon capsule splashed down near the coast of Pensacola, Florida, recovery crews detected some of the oxidizer outside the vehicle. So they purged the system and waited about 45 minutes for the fumes to blow away.

Steve Stich, the manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program (which funds SpaceX as well as Boeing, which is also planning commercial flights), said during the briefing that the detected levels were "within limits" and recovery crews could have extracted the astronauts if needed. But they decided to play it safe.

"We think there may be some mechanism where it's getting trapped into the service section from thruster firings during entry," Stich said. "We'll go figure out a way to handle it better on the next flight, perhaps starting with a purge as soon as we get on the vehicle."

Space fans who put themselves and recovery operations 'in potential danger'

When the astronauts landed, recovery boats weren't the only ones waiting to greet them: A flotilla of pleasure craft raced out to meet the spaceship, too.

The scene alarmed the Coast Guard and mission managers, who were aware of the dangers of toxic fumes — especially to unwary spectators.

The Coast Guard said it warned boaters multiple times ahead of the splashdown with radio alerts and physical warnings, according to a statement issued to CBS. Yet, because the landing site was in international waters, the Coast Guard lacked the legal authority and enough boats to do much about the problem.

"Numerous boaters ignored the Coast Guard crews' requests and decided to encroach the area, putting themselves and those involved in the operation in potential danger," the statement said.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during Sunday's post-splashdown briefing that the crowd of boats "was not what we were anticipating." In the future, he added, NASA will utilize more resources to clear private boats from the ocean landing area.

Behnken said Tuesday that he and Hurley "had absolutely no awareness" of the unwelcome flotilla of boaters after landing, but had a message for them.

"Just a word to the wise for folks who have ideas of coming that close again in the future," Behnken said: "We take extreme precautions to make sure it is safe, and we do that for a reason."

Glitchy iPad Minis

Most of the apparent issues the astronauts experienced were not nearly as serious as the toxic fumes and errant boaters, and some fell into the category of spaceflight curiosities.

For example, after undocking and flying away from the ISS, Behnken paged SpaceX's mission control center in Hawthorne, California for some tech support. He reported experiencing issues with an iPad Mini loaded with apps that the astronauts use as digital manuals for their spaceship and mission.

"The timeline application on my tablet gives me an error message that Safari cannot open the page," Behnken said, noting the app said it couldn't load the app due to not being connected to the internet.

The error appeared to be a caching issue, according to Space Explored, and occurred after SpaceX tried to beam updated mission timeline data to the tablet.

Riding back to Earth 'inside of animal'

And while both Behnken and Hurley had each flown to space twice before Demo-2, those flights were aboard NASA's space shuttle: a 100-ton orbiter with wings that landed on runways. It made for a much different ride than a 10.5-ton, gumdrop-shaped capsule plunging into water.

As Business Insider's Morgan McFall-Johnsen reported, the landing experience — though they were ultimately pleased with it — caught the astronauts off-guard.

"I would say it was more than what Doug and I expected," Behnken said in a press briefing on Tuesday. "I personally was surprised at just how quickly events all transpired."

Behnken said the ship "came alive" and "it felt like we were inside of an animal" as it fired thrusters to keep a proper orientation during atmospheric reentry. He added: "It doesn't sound like a machine — it sounds like an animal."

The astronauts also said the splashdown felt "very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat," Behnken said.

Though not problems per se, the astronauts' impressions of landing will help future crews know what sensations to expect as they slow down from 17,500 mph to bobbing on the ocean's surface.

'You can never get complacent with a space vehicle'

SpaceX is now poring over a mountain of mission data with NASA "just to make sure that there's nothing untoward," Stich said during the briefing.

He added that aerospace engineers from both sides will be paying special attention to telemetry data related to undocking, spaceflight, atmospheric reentry, and parachute performance.

The goal is to certify Crew Dragon for routine spaceflight, possibly within the next couple of months. That way operational missions can proceed, NASA can make the most use of its $100 billion investment in the ISS, and private passengers like Tom Cruise can, too.

Based on an early look, no SpaceX or NASA officials flagged any showstoppers. Bridenstine said the spaceship was "in pretty good shape" heading into its review, which seeks to reuse the capsule on future flights.

But Hurley — a Marine Corps test pilot — said Tuesday that he believes Crew Dragon needs a few more missions before he'd consider the vehicle "completely tested" and safe for flying civilians.

"The space business, like a lot of those technically challenging businesses, is not forgiving," Hurley said. "Don't just assume, because the last flight went perfectly, that the next flight is going to go perfectly. You have to do that rigor and that analysis and that attention to detail."

He added: "You can never get complacent with a space vehicle."

Morgan McFall-Johnsen contributed reporting.

Have a story or inside information to share about the spaceflight industry? Send Dave Mosher an email at dmosher+tips@businessinsider.com or a Twitter direct message at @davemosher. More secure communication options are listed here.

SEE ALSO: Trump falsely said NASA 'was closed and dead' before he was president and appeared to take credit for a private SpaceX launch

DON'T MISS: New video shows SpaceX's astronaut crew plummeting through Earth's atmosphere, floating under parachutes, and landing in the ocean

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NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US

Whether a significant number of people will actually download and use the app from Virginia remains to be seen.

The President of the United States, facing a global pandemic killing more than 1,000 Americans daily, declared TikTok, a video sharing app beloved by more than a hundred million Americans, a “national emergency” Thursday and said it would be illegal for anyone in the country to do transactions with its parent company in 45 days.

The executive order puts pressure on its parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok to an American company. Microsoft has shown interest in purchasing the social media platform.

The executive order is the latest salvo in a decaying relationship between China and the United States; a separate executive order hit WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Donald Trump claimed that “TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users,” a statement that applies to nearly every smartphone app. It comes on the same day that Facebook launched Reels, a TikTok clone, on Instagram, and comes immediately after an antitrust hearing in which various lawmakers said that Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google had concentrated power and created a series of tech monopolies. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, represents the only real threat to Facebook’s dominance in the social media space.

The order comes after weeks of fearmongering by the Trump administration about TikTok’s potential use as a surveillance or disinformation vector for the Chinese Communist Party. While TikTok does indeed collect information about its users, ByteDance says that American data is not stored in China and that it would not hand over data about Americans to the Chinese government. While there is certainly the risk that China could use TikTok as a spying vector, the federal government has yet to point to any specific evidence that it has done so, or any specific security vulnerabilities in the TikTok app. In recent weeks the Trump administration has made TikTok one of its top priorities even as coronavirus continues to ravage the country and more than 40 million Americans are out of work. TikTok has been downloaded 175 million times in the United States and is both a widespread form of free expression in the United States and a crucial means of income for influencers on the platform.

Trump’s executive order claims that TikTok “may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.” It did not provide any more specifics about what videos it was referring to and did not mention that Trump has been repeatedly censored by American social media companies for spreading disinformation about coronavirus. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook have also been used to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories about coronavirus. 

Whether the executive order, which bans Americans from performing any “transactions” with ByteDance after a waiting period of 45 days, holds any water or will actually go into effect is yet to be seen. Microsoft has shown an interest in buying TikTok, and ByteDance’s American subsidiary can challenge it. In the meantime, Trump’s executive order looks like the kind of censorship and protectionism we’ve seen from the Chinese Communist Party. 

Phil Gallagher, thrust into the top job at the global component distributor four days ago, is working to navigate the coronavirus crisis while laying a foundation for renewed growth

The telecommunications company is seeing a ‘marked change’ in enterprise engagement as businesses look to speed up digital transformation efforts as a result of COVID-19. But on the other hand, the pandemic has slowed SMB sales; a segment of customers that have felt the worst impact of the resulting economic downturn, CenturyLink executives said.