Mediaboss Marketing

Welcome toForeign Policys South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk meets with Sri Lankas president in Bali, the United States issues travel restrictions on a former Bangladesh Army chief for alleged corruption, and South Asian governments mourn Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe met billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk at a conference in Bali last Sunday, where they spoke about Musks Starlink satellite internet service, which he is launching in Indonesia. Starlinks expansion could be particularly transformative for countries like Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe said in a post on X after their meeting.

Musk is aggressively marketing Starlink around the world: He says that the service is now available in 99 countries. (In 2021, that figure was just 14.) It isnt yet available in South Asia, which is an especially attractive market due to its large and young population, its emerging technology sectors, and government pledges to ramp up digital economies. But financial, legal, and logistical constraints pose challenges that could hurt Starlinks prospects in the region.

In the last few decades, internet penetration rates increased rapidly across South Asia. India and Pakistan rank in the worlds top 10 countries for total internet users. However, this masks the massive number of South Asians989 million people, including more than 683 million in Indiawho remain offline. Only 47 percent of South Asias total population uses the internet, according to DataReportal.

This presents an opening for Starlink, especially given that the services low-orbit satellites are intended to reduce connection problems and better serve remote regions, which Musk describes as a key investment target. Despite rapid urbanization in recent years, most of South Asias population remains in rural areas.

But Starlink faces multiple challenges making inroads in South Asia, mainly because the services drawbacks will be especially glaring there. First, Starlink isnt cheap: In Indonesia, its more than twice the average cost of internet service. In South Asia, recent inflation has resulted in sluggish private consumption growth, including within well-performing economies like India. Many wont want to pay for Starlink.

Additionally, there are mixed reviews of Starlinks ability to withstand the elements. Some users in the West concur with the companys assurances that connections remain strong during extreme weather events, but others report disruptions. In South Asia, where extreme weather is frequent, this could be another turnoff.

Furthermore, many South Asian governments seek influence over foreign firms operations, which may rankle Starlink. This disconnect has played out publicly in Nepal, where Starlink officials have balked at a law that requires foreign companies to agree to a domestic stake of at least 20 percent.

As a result, Starlink may struggle to penetrate South Asian markets with no shortage of cheaper alternatives. Bangladesh is the only state in the region known to have formally agreed to provide a license to Starlink, although its unclear when the service will be available there. (The company says 2025.) India is close to a licensing agreement after Starlink reportedly found a solution to Indian data localization concerns.

Starlinks challenges in the region underscore a broader irony: South Asia is an attractive destination for global tech investors, but the region also throws up a striking number of obstacles: cost and local ownership issues, a lack of skilled workers, and periodic crackdowns on online content.

In India, Musk may fare better with another of his prized companies. New Delhi is rapidly expanding its electric vehicle sector, and it is keen to attract Tesla. But despite repeatedly signaling his desire to enter the Indian market, Musk abruptly postponed a meeting in India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month. He did manage to visit Beijing, though, raising some eyebrows in New Delhi.

For now, at least, when it comes to Musk and South Asia, it seems that the stars have not yet aligned.

U.S. bans former Bangladesh Army chief. On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced travel restrictions on Aziz Ahmed, who served as Bangladeshs Army chief from 2018 to 2021, over alleged corruption. The announcement accused Ahmed of helping his brother evade justice for illegal activities and said Ahmed accepted improper military contracts and bribes. (These allegations and more were laid out in detail in a 2021 Al Jazeera documentary.)

The United States sanctioned Bangladesh for the first time in 2021, focusing on a paramilitary organization accused of human rights abuses. Several unnamed Bangladeshis were also hit with visa restrictions last year related to undermining the democratic election process.

Still, the Monday announcement caught Dhaka by surprise. The United States had taken a softer public line on Bangladesh in the months since the countrys January elections, which the U.S. State Department labeled not free or fair. Public messaging has struck a more positive tone: During a trip to Dhaka last week, Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, spoke of the importance of moving ties forward.

The restrictions on Ahmed are a reminder that human rights and democracy promotion remain a core element of the U.S.-Bangladesh relationship. And given Washingtons desire to ensure a cordial partnership, the decision is actually a fairly safe bet: Its a relatively light punishment that doesnt go after economic assets, and it targets a retired official. Tellingly, Bangladeshs government hasnt come to Ahmeds defense.

South Asian leaders mourn Raisi. Leaders across the region expressed condolences for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi after his death in a helicopter crash last weekend alongside Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and six others. Several South Asian governments declared a period of mourning, including Indias.

As South Asia Brief explained last month, Iran is looking to expand engagement across the region; one of Raisis last foreign trips was a visit to Pakistan and Sri Lanka last month. Although Raisis death isnt likely to directly affect the regions interests, Irans sudden power transition will be watched closely in South Asian capitals, especially given surging instability in the Middle East.

Officials will keep an eye on whether Raisis successor introduces any significant policy shiftsnot only in terms of policy toward the Israel-Hamas war, but also toward Saudi Arabia, a key partner of both India and Pakistan.

Indian election update. India completed its fifth phase of voting in ongoing national elections on Monday, when voters in six states and two union territories went to the polls. They included the major electoral prize of Uttar Pradesh, Indias most populous state and a ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold; and the disputed region of Kashmir.

One of the big storylines in recent days has been the question of anti-incumbency, even as the BJP is expected to win. In private conversations, some Indian political analysts have predicted that Modi and the BJP will struggle to earn the parliamentary supermajority they seek. Some are even predicting that the party will fall short of its margin of victory in the 2019 elections. (Of course, other analysts argue that the BJP could do better than 2019.)

The skeptics have cited relatively low voter turnout compared to 2019 in the early phases of voting, which some analysts think may reflect voter apathy and unhappiness with the BJP. According to initial data released by Indias election commission for the current election phase, turnout was pegged at a robust 60.48 percent, just a bit lower than in 2019.

Some of the highest turnout occurred in states not currently governed by the BJP, such as West Bengal. Meanwhile, turnout in Kashmir rose to its highest level since 1984a boost for the BJP, which has argued that the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir has stabilized since New Delhi revoked its special autonomous status in 2019.

Hundreds of Pakistani students living in Kyrgyzstan have flown home in recent days after local mobs attacked university facilities housing Pakistanis and other foreign students in the capital, Bishkek, last weekend.

The circumstances surrounding the violence are unclear; what is known is that mobs began targeting foreign students after some locals got into an argument with Egyptian students. Because of their relatively large numberPakistanis comprise about 12,000 of the roughly 60,000 international students in KyrgyzstanPakistanis may have been an easy target.

Both the Kyrgyz and Pakistani governments have confirmed that there were several injuries to students and no deathsdespite initial unconfirmed social media reports. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar visited Bishkek on Tuesday. Yet the damage was done: Hundreds of students have left, and the incident angered many Pakistanis, who accused the government of not acting swiftly enough.

In the Print, former civil servant Sanjeev Chopra discusses the idea of adding a second time zone in India, in the countrys east. He asks, Considering that countries like France have thirteen time zones [including overseas territory], and Russia and the US have eleven each, with daylight savingsis it time for India to at least discuss the pros and cons of this issue threadbare?

An Express Tribune editorial laments the frequency of wildfires in Pakistans Margalla Hills National Park, including one this month that spread across a nearly two-mile area. Let this recent incident serve as a call to action. Enhancing our firefighting capabilities will go a long way in safeguarding the Margalla Hills and ensuring their beauty and biodiversity endure for generations to come, it argues.

Journalist Sohrab Hassan decries new rules that forbid journalists from entering Bangladeshs central bank. When the journalists get information from various sources, they need to go to Bangladesh Bank to clarify these stories. If this is seen as conspiratorial or if attempts are made to conceal the facts, this will not bode well for Bangladesh Bank, he writes in Prothom Alo.

Read more:

Will Elon Musk Test the South Asian Market? - Foreign Policy

Elon Musks AI company, xAI, is making progress on adding multimodal inputs to its Grok chatbot, according to public developer documents. What this means is that, soon, users may be able to upload photos to Grok and receive text-based answers.

This was first teased in a blog post last month from xAI which said Grok-1.5V will offer multimodal models in a number of domains. The latest update to the developer documents appear to show progress on shipping a new model.

In the developer documents, a sample Python script demonstrates how developers can use the xAI software development kit library to generate a response based on both text and images. This script reads an image file, sets up a text prompt, and uses the xAI SDK to generate a response.

This is a big update for Grok, which xAI first released in November 2023 and is available to users who pay for the X Premium Plus subscription. The last update was Grok 1.5 in March, which came with improved reasoning capabilities.

The model is trained on a variety of text data from publicly available sources from the Internet up to Q3 2023 and data sets reviewed and curated by ... human reviewers, according to a blog post from X. Grok-1 was not trained on X data (including public X posts), the blog added. However, Grok does have real-time knowledge of the world,including posts on X.

xAI, founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, is relatively new in the AI field and trails behind competitors such as OpenAIs ChatGPT. However, according to a blog post from xAI, their Grok 1.5 model is closing the gap with GPT-4 on various benchmarks that span a wide range of grade school to high school competition problems. Its important to note that benchmarks for large language models are often criticized because the models can perform well on benchmarks if those benchmarks are included in their training data. Its sort of like memorizing test answers, rather than actually learning the material.

Multimodal conversational chatbots seem to be the next frontier for AI, with multiple advancements announced at Google I/O and OpenAI releasing GPT-4o, so Grok lacking multimodal capabilities has put it behind the curve until now.

Read the original post:

Elon Musk's xAI is working on making Grok multimodal - The Verge

Over a month into Chief Executive Officer Elon Musks plans to slash at least10% of the companys workforce, hes still not done. This means anxious employees wake up each dayto check their messages, wondering if they still have a job. The rolling job cuts are likely to extend through at least June, according to people familiar with the matter, who werentauthorized to speak publicly about the layoffs.

Its difficult to imagine the feeling of walking on eggshells every day at work, uncertain whether or not youll be able to pay your bills or feed your family, Michael Minick, a former Tesla sales representative who was laid off in April,wroteon LinkedIn. It would be a relief to know that they can breathe and focus on their work, without the gray cloud of uncertainty looming over.

Teslas workforce already has endured dramatic transformation the last few years the onetime Silicon Valley upstart with a maniacal vision on clean energy is now concentratedin Texasand fixated on other undertakings, includingartificial intelligenceandrobots.

Somestill with the company say Musk has sapped morale by prioritizinga robotaxi over a $25,000 electric vehicle. They also say amission that had inspired legions of Musk acolytes has been muddied.

Musk has yet to give staff an all clear indication that the job cuts are over, leading co-workers to darkly joke with one another about anxiety andinsomnia. One current employee described the atmosphere as akin toSquid Game, the hit television series in which characters facing financial hardship fight for their lives playing deadly childrens contests.

The waves of dismissals, which already have hit thousands across departments including sales, human resources and virtually the entireSuperchargerdivision, are expected to gut significant parts ofTesla, whichstarted the year with more than 140,000 employees. Musk has pushed for a 20% reduction in headcount, Bloomberg reported last month.

In the Supercharger division, some employees found out that Max de Zegher, the director of charging for North America, had been laid off afterhis Microsoft Teams icon suddenly went gray,indicating that he was no longer with the company.

Many on theteam spent the next several dayssaying their goodbyes, cracking jokes and making references to the Titanic,according to Joel Musial,who was laid off from his job as a Tesla construction manager.We were just missing the string quartet! Musialwroteon LinkedIn.

The gallows humor pervaded the Supercharging team, which had set upmore than 6,200 stations and 57,000 connectors worldwide and was in the process ofopening the networkto other automakers, which should increase usage.

Musk says Teslastill plans to growthe network, albeit at a slower pace.Herehiredde Zegher, but hasnt said how many others will be asked to return.

Its also unclear whether the company will have enough personnel to sustain Supercharger stations, after layoffs hit several technician groups. A former employee in California said two dozen people were cut from an 80-person team that maintained and fixedSuperchargersin Northern California, leaving gaps in both geography and specialties.

The region now has just one employee in an over 200-mile stretch between Santa Rosa and Eureka, said the person, who was cut two weeks after the initial layoff announcement.

Another person in a similar role based in Canada predictedchaos after he and dozens of others were let go, since many Tesla charging stations are hours apart,and the amount of work requiredwill only increase once more companies customers get access.

He said hed worked for two weeks after the initial layoff announcement in a state of distraction and uncertainty, where an ever-growing workload and constantly disappearing co-workers made it difficult to concentrate. On his last day at Tesla, he said he was dispatching technicians and attending his daily slate of meetings,only to find himself locked out of his company laptop at 10:45 p.m. By 11:01 p.m. that night, hereceived the layoff noticeat his personal account.

The cuts are hitting at a time of sluggish demand for the broader EV industry, which is heapingpressure on a workforce already coming to grips with changes in the companys culture, according to a former sales employee.The person saidhed already seen significant turnover in his near-decade with Tesla, and that each departurecostthe carmakercrucialinstitutional knowledge.

Great companies are made up of equal parts great people and great products, and the latter are only possible when its people are thriving,Rich Otto, who resigned as Teslas head of product launches this month, said in a LinkedIn post that he deleted after media outlets reported on it. The recent layoffs that are rocking the company and its morale have thrown this harmony out of balance, and its hard to see the long game.

Go here to see the original:

Elon Musk still hasn't finished his 10% layoffs at Tesla and employees are 'walking on eggshells every day' - Fortune

By Martin Coulter

PARIS (Reuters) -Tesla founder Elon Musk told tech investors in Paris on Thursday that he was against tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, intended to boost U.S. manufacturing, saying he didn't favour measures that distorted the market.

U.S. President Joe Biden has rolled out new tariffs on imports of Chinese electric vehicles and batteries, in an attempt to protect American auto jobs.

"Neither Tesla (NASDAQ:) nor I asked for these tariffs, in fact I was surprised when they were announced. Things that inhibit freedom of exchange or distort the market are not good," Musk said.

He said Tesla competes "quite well in the market in China", adding "I'm in favor of no tariffs".

The Tesla mogul was speaking via videolink at the annual "Viva Technology" conference in Paris, where leading tech executives and political figures -- including ex-Google Eric Schmidt and former U.S. climate envoy John Kerry -- also took to the stage.

See the rest here:

Elon Musk says he's against Biden tariffs on Chinese EV's - Investing.com

Xan Barksdale, a basketball coach and former professional catcher, took to X to ask Elon Musk a question. In his post, he shared that despite loving the microblogging platform, there is one feature on X that he thinks is the "worst." His post went viral and gained attention from many, including Elon Musk. The tech billionaire replied to the post, confirming that the company is working towards fixing the issue mentioned by Barksdale.

Hey Elon Musk, I love Twitter, but the worst feature by far is that every time I open the app I see a tweet that looks interesting then the feed refreshes and I cant ever find it again. I cant be the only person this happens to, right!?Barksdale wrote.

Elon Musk commented on the post, Yeah, were fixing this so you can scroll back to see interesting posts. In response, Barksdale shared, Thanks!PS: You replying to this tweet just made my day!

Since being shared a day ago, the post has gone viral, with over 1.4 million views. The share has also accumulated tons of comments.

Im pretty sure that is a feature, not a bug, posted an X user.

Yep. Happens all the time and then when it refreshes (as it does constantly) I see the same 2-3 tweets all day long, shared another.

I agree 1000% we need a back button like web browsers have, expressed a third.

You have to quickly move your finger and hold it down; otherwise, its forever lost in the matrix, commented a fourth.

Sometimes, I remember keywords in the tweet, and I'll do a search and be able to find them again, wrote a fifth.

Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 and subsequently changed its name to X. He also changed the iconic bird logo of the platform into X. In a recent tweet, the tech billionaire informed everyone of the platforms complete domain transition from twitter.com to x.com.

What are your thoughts on this post on a feature of X? Do you face the same problem while using the microblogging platform?

Continue reading here:

Elon Musk reacts to baseball coach's 'worst' X feature post: 'I love Twitter, but' - Hindustan Times