The chinese government’s efforts toward decoupling the country’s internet from the rest of the world are often described as the “the great firewall of china”. Due to a variety of political and economic interests Beijing, largely with the help of American companies (Cisco), began to build a censorship and regulation construct. The result is a government-controlled internet, where products and content are banned that are not aligned with the parties interests. For instance, many products and services that are enjoyed by many millions of people in the western world such as Facebook or youtube are not available in China.

As always, with the censorship and regulation came new ways on how to bypass the restrictions. The most common tool to circumvent the firewall are VPNs, that allow accessing the internet with a different IP address. While this process is illegal in China, it was the only solution for many needing to access western internet services. 

The latest news from China however suggests that there might be a new tool that will allow Chinese people to get a glimpse of foreign internet without the use of VPN. China now has a new mobile browser, called Tuber, that includes access to many western mainstream internet services such as google and youtube. While this seems like a major step to opening up, it comes with major drawbacks. First users report that many services such as youtube are still content censored. For instance, search results for politically sensitive requests such as “tianmen” or “xi jinping” deliver no results. Also, users have to sign up to the browser with their personal phone number, implying tight surveillance of the online activity. 

In the past there have been many other services that promised foreign internet access without VPN. However, mostly all of them have been removed or banned after a while. This case of tuber might be different, for the reason that the company is majority state-owned by the chinese cybersecurity agency. However, It still remains unclear whether Tuber has gained official permission from Beijing or not. But, it would be surprising if not. In any case the application definitely gained fast traction as there have been more than 2 million downloads in 2 days.

Do you think that Tuber marks the first step of the chinese firewall opening up ?

Sources:

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/09/new-chinese-browser-lets-users-get-around-great-firewal/

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3104949/chinese-app-called-tuber-provides-still-censored-look-over-beijings

https://www.ibtimes.sg/chinas-tuber-browser-app-lets-users-access-google-facebook-twitter-beyond-great-firewall-52371

https://www.scmp.com/abacus/who-what/what/article/3089836/story-chinas-great-firewall-worlds-most-sophisticated

Drone delivery businesses have cropped up all around the world in the last years. Most of them, focussing on delivering our latest shopping craves even quicker. While this is all fun, the american company, zipline, who is saving lifes by supplying medical equipment with drones in developing countries has been recently valued at $1.2B.

Especially in central African countries such as Rwanda and Ghana, infrastructure is so poor, that when medical supplies become scarce, new supply often does not arrive in time. To battle this issue, the silicon valley based company zipline started operating drones that fly medical supplies such as blood samples or medicines to hospitals in need. The idea gained commercial traction and attracted multiple million dollar investments from both the private and public sector. That solution worked so well that zipline has become an essential partner of the Rwandan government, receiving an exclusive flight permit all over the country. The company is now serving more than 22 million people in the area and operating from more than 2,600 health facilities.

In 2019 the company also announced plans to start operations in their home country, the U.S.A. Due to lower investments in infrastructure and poorly supplied hospitals, particularly in poor regions of the U.S average life expectancy decreased in the last years. Therefore, the company hoped to address medical supply shortages in their home country and opened up operations in North Carolina. This decision especially came in handy during the coronavirus pandemic, when hospitals all over the world and also in the U.S were in dire need of medical supplies. In the U.S. but also in Africa the company was able to successfully supply covid-19 tests and personal protective equipment such as face masks. 

Do you think that drones are the key to solving infrastructural problems?

Sources:

http://emag.medicalexpo.com/drone-start-up-zipline-is-helping-fight-covid-19-in-africa/

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/zipline-medical-delivery-drone-start-up-now-valued-at-1point2-billion.html

https://www.businessinsider.es/zipline-drone-coronavirus-supplies-africa-rwanda-ghana-2020-5?r=US&IR=T

https://time.com/rwanda-drone-zipline