Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Today’s news: Donald Trump’s tariffs spread confusion like a germ, tech takes two kinds of environmental tolls, Meta faces an antitrust trial, and I’ve been watching two excellent pieces of serialized fiction on Instagram and TikTok.
Topsy-turvy tech tariffs
When the president first announced sweeping tariffs on 75 countries’ exports to the US, analysts predicted the next iPhones Americans would buy would cost north of $2,000. Even holding on to your old phone and repairing it would not grant you a reprieve from device price hikes. Apple reportedly flew 600 tons of iPhones into the country in response – 1.5m devices.
Now, Trump is partly walking those plans back. My colleague Helen Davidson reports: The White House had announced on Friday the exclusion of some electronic products from steep reciprocal tariffs on China. US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery after the announcement. Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.
However, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Sunday that critical technology products from China would face separate new duties along with semiconductors within the next two months.
Lutnick said Trump would enact “a special focus-type of tariff” on smartphones, computers and other electronics products in a month or two, alongside sectoral tariffs targeting semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. The new duties would fall outside Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs on China, he said.
Experts have said there is little possibility of manufacturing an entire iPhone – or any piece of consumer electronics, for that matter – in the US alone. Apple itself has said such a feat is unfeasible. Then Apple got a temporary exemption, perhaps a product of Tim Cook’s favorable relationship with Trump.
Even before Trump’s exceptions were called into question, though, confusion reigned. Why would an iPhone be exempt but not a Nintendo Switch 2, unveiled so unfortunately just one day before Trump’s first tariff announcement? Perhaps because Apple is an American company. The Japanese video game giant has suspended preorders for the console, set to open a week ago, indefinitely. Sony likewise announced yesterday that the price of the Playstation 5 would increase by 25% in the UK, Europe and Australia due to the levy on Japanese goods by the US.
At least one tech company is trying to pacify Trump with an immediate win. Nvidia, a major loser in Trump’s trade war because of a specialized and globalized supply chain, announced Monday that it would manufacture AI supercomputers entirely in the US, Houston in particular.
What is an AI supercomputer? That’s a great question. The concept seems vague and futuristic, so much so that any immediate step the company might take, any jobs it might create in Houston tomorrow, is unclear, though it has commissioned a million square feet of manufacturing space. In a more concrete step, though, Nvidia announced plans to start making its latest chip model, Blackwell, considered the cream of the crop for AI development, at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s plant in Phoenix, Arizona. The announcement is in line with previously publicized commitments to invest in the US, but it seems like a victory for Trump’s tariffs nonetheless.
Ironically, Trump’s fixation on reshoring high-tech manufacturing to the US may spur more immigration into the country. The US does not train enough workers with the specialized technical expertise for semiconductor manufacturing to staff major plants like the once . Enter a new crop of Taiwanese immigrants. A “tiny Taipei” has already sprung up around the Phoenix facility.
Read more about tech and tariffs.
This week in Elon Musk
OpenAI countersues Elon Musk over ‘unlawful harassment’ of company
Federal workers fear Musk’s ‘efficiency’ agency is using AI to spy on them: ‘They are omnipresent’
Tech’s environmental side effects
Twice last week, the environmental side effects of the tech industry’s growing terrestrial footprint came into focus. To do almost anything online – post to Instagram, ask ChatGPT a question, save a Google Doc – you run a request through a datacenter, a large repository of networked computers. Think of datacenters as where the internet physically resides. Those facilities use enormous amounts of natural resources, particularly electric power and water.
Last week, we saw Elon Musk allegedly run roughshod over municipal environmental regulations to get the power he wants and Amazon, Google and Microsoft’s datacenters suck up water in regions without much of it.
Musk’s xAI, his AI company that just bought X, is accused of doubling the number of methane gas burning turbines at its enormous Memphis datacenter.
My colleague Dara Kerr reports: It’s been known that xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, has been using around 15 portable generators to help power its massive supercomputer in Memphis without yet securing permits. But new aerial images obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center show that number is now far higher. The group says these gas turbines combined can generate around 420MW of electricity, enough to power an entire city. The group says the turbines are a major source of air pollution.
Read more about xAI’s alleged incursions on Memphis.
The Guardian co-published an investigation last week in collaboration with the investigative nonprofit SourceMaterial, whose analysis identified 38 active datacenters owned by Amazon, Google and Microsoft in parts of the world already facing water scarcity, as well as 24 more under development.
Datacenters’ locations are often industry secrets. But by using local news reports and industry sources Baxtel and Data Center Map, SourceMaterial compiled a map of 632 datacentres – either active or under development – owned by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
The map and analysis show that those companies’ plans involve a 78% increase in the number of datacenters they own worldwide as cloud computing and AI cause a surge in the world’s demand for storage, with construction planned in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.
Read about datacenters under development in water-scarce regions.
What is Meta without Instagram and Whatsapp?
Facebook parent Meta Platforms faces a high-stakes trial in Washington that began on Monday over claims it built an illegal social media monopoly by spending billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp, in a case in which US antitrust enforcers seek to unwind the deals.
The acquisitions more than a decade ago aimed to eliminate nascent competitors who could threaten Facebook’s status as the go-to social media platform for users to connect with friends and family, the US Federal Trade Commission claims. It filed the case in 2020 during Donald Trump’s first term.
Read more about Meta’s monopoly trial.
This week on my iPhone
I’m watching serialized fiction on social media, as I have been often recently. First, there’s the satire of @bkcoffeeshop on Instagram, a coffee shop that’s so artisanal and tolerant that it’s hostile to its customers. Creator Winnie the Pooj uses Bushwick and its associated countercultural baggage as the setting for a familiar, repeated interaction – customer buys coffee – that interprets a familiar, repeated joke – what’s up with all these new woke milks? – that goes haywire in new and evolving ways. The Bk Coffee Shop is a sitcom on Instagram. Starting with a familiar setup eases the time compression many video creators feel making material for social media. Your Instagram Reel can be up to three minutes, but ideally, it should be 90 seconds. I particularly enjoyed the violin battle between the barista who’s taken a vow of silence against fascism on X and a disgruntled customer who’s just trying to read.
Second, I’m riveted by the tension of The Group Chat on TikTok, a six-part drama about a group of girlfriends just trying to go to dinner together. In the way of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, creator Sydney Robinson takes a simple comedy of social mores – one friend takes the liberty of adding her boyfriend to the restaurant reservation – and elevates it to the highest emotional octave. The series makes use of two aspects of TikTok: sharp editing and the anticipation of the multipart series. TikTok’s For You page is a mishmash of mindless five-second clips about 15 different subjects, but some of the most popular videos on the social network last year were a 50-video diatribe dubbed “Who TF did I marry?” It’s possible to keep viewers coming back with the same shtick. TikTok users see one video they like and want to watch another version of it on their feeds the next day, which is the same reason influencers can do the same viral dance a dozen times in different locations and not scare off their followers.
If you haven’t watched The Group Chat, start here. You won’t believe what Haley did.
