Elon Musk’s satellite internet and AI-powered analysis of tips from civilians are key for Kiev, Eric Schmidt said
Western assistance with IT plays a key part in helping Ukraine fight Russia, Eric Schmidt, the former Google executive, told media after returning from Kiev.
Schmidt, who has close links to US national security, praised Kiev for amongst other decisions, swiftly moving government information into better-protected cloud services. Russia’s attack in late February “gave everybody a political excuse to do the right thing,” he said on Monday, as cited by Agence France Press (AFP).
The tech entrepreneur also praised fellow US billionaire Elon Musk for sending Starlink equipment to Kiev, ensuring that Ukrainian civilian and military officials have reliable access to the internet. The SpaceX CEO is “genuinely a hero here,” Schmidt said.
Musk previously repeatedly claimed credit for successfully defeating alleged Russian cyberattacks aimed at disrupting Starlink access for Ukrainian users. The ground equipment necessary for getting internet through Starlink satellites was reportedly contracted by the Pentagon, though Musk implied that he’d donated it.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian government offered citizens a way to use smartphone apps to report intelligence data, Schmidt said. The tips are being analyzed by AI-powered programs to help acquire targets for Ukrainian military strikes, he said.
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US officials previously claimed that the US intelligence service and their NATO counterparts played a large part in organizing a Ukrainian military offensive in northeastern Kharkov Region last week. Kiev reported retaking some 6,000 square kilometers of land from Russia. Moscow acknowledged pulling troops back for regrouping.
In addition to serving as a top Google executive, Schmidt held top advisory positions in several bodies linked to the US national security apparatus. He served as the chair of the Defense Innovation Advisory Board and the chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
He visited Kiev last week and attended the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kiev, according to photos posted by several top Ukrainian officials, including Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mikhail Fedorov.
Google faced a rebellion among its own workforce in 2018 over its contract to develop AI technology for analyzing drone strike footage. Since the scandal the company is back competing with other giants like Amazon and Microsoft for defense contracts. Earlier this year Google CEO Thomas Kurian announced the creation of a Public Sector division for employees with security clearances necessary to bid for Pentagon-related work.
YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.
A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.
Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.
While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.
When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.
Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.
When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.
Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.
“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.
Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.
They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.
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Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency
Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.
The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.
According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.
One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.
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Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.
“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.
Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”
The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.
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Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones
Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.
The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.
The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.
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“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.
The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.
Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.
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