Bats & Bombs Block Tesla’s German Gigafactory

• Stocks Slide as China Rolls Out its Next Deadly Super Virus
• Bats & Bombs Block Tesla’s German Gigafactory
• “Universal” Cancer Cure Discovered
• The End of Privacy

 HEALTH 

Stocks Slide as China Rolls Out its Next Deadly Super Virus

Global stocks dropped today over concerns that China has accidentally made yet another super contagious virus that’s going to kill us all.

The coronavirus (like its cousins the budweiservirus and the molsoncoorsvirus) is a contagious respiratory illness that causes pneumonia-like symptoms.

So far, there have been 294 confirmed cases of the chill-beach-beer-virus, with six deaths on the Chinese mainland that we know of.

At first, experts thought the virus could only be contracted from livestock. (Which was great because chickens typically don’t take a gap year to travel around the world.)

But now it’s becoming clear that the virus can pass from biking enthusiast to raw kombucha maker, from food blogger to shady accountant operating out of the back of a deli, and other relatable examples of human-on-human interaction.

At time of writing, the virus has already spread across China’s borders to South Korea, Thailand, and Japan. And just this morning, health authorities in Taiwan confirmed the first case in the capital of Taipei.

The somebody-dropped-a-piece-of-fruit-in-my-beer-virus bares more than a passing resemblance to our old pal SARS, which killed 774 people in 2002. But health experts believe this new strain of coronavirus to be significantly less deadly (though still a major pain in the ass).

With the Lunar New Year coming up, thousands of Chinese ex-pats will be traveling to Beijing for the celebrations (which I hear is a totally dope time and you should go if you ever have the chance).

But festival-goers risk picking up a contagious souvenir and bringing it home with them, potentially catalyzing a global outbreak of the worst-named deadly respiratory virus.

Fears of everything going all 90s-disaster movie on us have put the wind up investors’ skirts and sparked concerns for the potential economic fallout.

 “The economic consequences could be extremely concerning,” Rajiv Biswas, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at IHS Markit, told the WSJ.

“China’s international tourism has boomed, so the risks of a global SARS-like virus epidemic spreading globally have become even more severe.”

The three major indexes were pulled back from record levels this morning, as resorts and airlines saw visions of their 2020 business going up in a cloud of Corona.

The DJIA is down 0.26%, the S&P 500 fell 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite gave up 0.3%.

 BUSINESS 

Bat Colonies & WWII Bombs Threaten Tesla’s Bottom Line

Tesla’s shares have surged to record highs following the on-schedule completion of its EV gigafactory in China in December. (Because investors love when Tesla does the bare minimum.)

Incredibly, the Shanghai factory went up in just a year, which is unheard of in the car-manufacturing industry, especially in somewhere as unfriendly to foreign business as China. (Though you can probably save a lot of time when you don’t need to install safety railings.)

Now that the Chinese factory is complete (and just in time for a deadly virus outbreak), self-proclaimed “Buff Mage” Elon Musk is turning his attention to Germany, where colonies of bats and unexploded World War II bombs threaten to undermine investor confidence. (Those are not metaphors.)

The new facility in Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin, is scheduled to be completed within a year. But anyone who follows the antics of professional ding-dong Elon Musk knows that he’s notorious for making promises his company can’t keep.

Musk was able to throw enough money at the factory in Shanghai to get it operational within a year. But replicating that success in Germany will not be as easy, given the country’s love of order, rules, and just generally not having factories designed like the Death Star.

“Opening Gigafactory Shanghai in under a year is incredible,” David Whiston, an analyst for Morningstar Research Services, told the WSJ. “I doubt Germany will move as fast as China permit-wise.”

And permits are just the start of Elon’s problems when it comes to The Home of the Brat (or should I say “Home of the Bat”).

The 382-acre patch of pine forest designated for the Tesla factory just so happens to house colonies of protected bats. Before construction can begin, the bats must be relocated.

If the bats can’t be relocated before March, the felling of trees will be suspended under German law (or should I say “German aw”… I’ve got to fire my jokes guy) to protect all the little animals returning to nest in the spring.

Even if Tesla manages to get rid of the bats and clear the forested area before March, there’s still the sticky issue of the UNEXPLODED BOMBS littering the factory site.

“It appears that there are World War II munitions on the property, specifically bombs dropped by American aircraft,” Brandenburg Environment Minister Axel Vogel told the WSJ.

(Kinda ironic that if we had just built our bombs better 80 years ago, they would have exploded and the site would be clear for construction now.)

The baseline of basic competence and the promise of another overseas factory within a year has pushed the turbulent days of FTC hearings and missed deliveries out of investor’s minds.

After a 6% surge in the stock this morning, the price per share of Tesla (TSLA) sits at $541.68, up from $178.97 set in June of last year. This morning’s bump comes courtesy of a report from New Street Research in which it raised its price target on Tesla from $530 to $800.

 TECH 

The End of Privacy

Hundreds of U.S. law enforcement agencies are using an app that may spell the end of privacy as we know it.

(I know destroying privacy is par for the course for an app in 2002. But this one stands on the shoulders of privacy-destroying giants to just piss in the face of the concept entirely.)

The innocuously-named Clearview AI is a facial recognition app that can just look at a single picture or video of your face and spit out your name and other information (basically it’s Instagram but with an added snitch feature).

Clearview’s insane 3-billion-photograph database is scraped from Facebook, Venmo, YouTube, and anywhere else you post drunk pictures of yourself online.

This dwarfs absolutely any comparable database of photos used by law enforcement, including the FBI’s 641-million-photo database (and you know the feds never get your good side).

Law enforcement officials say they’ve used this app to solve crimes ranging from shoplifting to child sexual exploitation to murder. But privacy advocates warn that false matches could lead to wrongful convictions and it could also be used by stalkers and others for wrongdoing.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union demonstrated facial-recognition apps’ potential for misuse by running the members of Congress through Amazon’s facial recognition system, which returned 28 false matches (though I’m pretty sure Ted Cruz did try to sell me weed once).

Now, I’m not saying that Clearview AI is any more or less reliable than Amazon’s system. But the guy who invented Clearview has only one previous app and it’s a photo filter app that puts Donald Trump’s hair on other people.

Currently, the Clearview app is exclusive to law enforcement. But according to a report by the New York Times, both police officers and Clearview investors say the app will be made public in the future. (And I, for one, can’t wait until my creepy neighbor Gary gets his hands on it.)

“The weaponization possibilities of this are endless,” said Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, told the NYT. “Imagine a rogue law enforcement officer who wants to stalk potential romantic partners, or a foreign government using this to dig up secrets about people to blackmail them or throw them in jail.”

In Other News

ONE LAST THING

“Universal” Cancer Cure Discovered

Some British science dudes have discovered a possible ‘one-size-fits-all’ cure for cancer. (But like all one-size-fits-all items, it’s probably best you try it on a human first.)

The Cardiff University science team has discovered a new part of our immune system capable of destroying prostate, breast, lung, and other cancers.

Yup. The power to defeat cancer was inside you all along. All you need to do is activate it with this magic crystal (available for the low low price of $59.99) and whatever Gwyneth Paltrow is hocking on the front page of Goop right now.

(I feel like I shouldn’t need to say this but I’m kidding, of course.)

The treatment is based on reprogramming immune cells, known as T-cells, to attack and destroy the cancer without damaging the surrounding tissue.

T-cells have been successfully deployed in the past to cure terminally ill cancer patients and send them into total remission. But those T-cells have proven ineffective against cancers that form hard tumors in the body.

This new type of T-cell, however, has successfully destroyed a broad array of cancers without damaging the surrounding tissue (you), and very well could form the basis for a universal cancer treatment.

“There’s a chance here to treat every patient,” researcher Professor Andrew Sewell told the BBC. “Previously nobody believed this could be possible.

“It raises the prospect of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ cancer treatment, a single type of T-cell that could be capable of destroying many different types of cancers across the population.”

Now, as with all bleeding-edge emerging tech, this comes with a disclaimer. The successful tests were conducted in a lab setting and have yet to be tested on a human patient.

But needless to say, this biotech has enormous potential and we’re keeping a close eye on this one.

MARKET MOVEMENTS

1/17/2020

• A report by Oxfam, a nonprofit focused on ending poverty, says the world’s 2,153 billionaires control more wealth than the poorest 4.6 billion people combined.
• China introduces measures to drastically reduce plastic pollution.
• Uber is testing a new feature that would allow some California drivers to set fares.

Cheers,

Shane Ormond
Editor, One Last Thing

The post Bats & Bombs Block Tesla’s German Gigafactory appeared first on Laissez Faire.