You are no longer for sale in Beijing or Moscow.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Wednesday banning bulk sales of Americans’ personal data to “hostile” countries, including China and Russia. It’s aimed at preventing foreign intelligence agencies from simply buying up chunks of data en masse from data brokers — the companies that follow you all around the internet and suck up whatever information you leave behind. The order isn’t likely to be a massive shock to data brokers’ business models, as there are plenty of fellow Americans eager to buy up swathes of domestic user data, but it does establish boundaries in the previously limitless trading world.

Why Hack When You Can Buy?

Data brokers hoover up data in aggregate so anyone can buy it in bulk and then sift through it to deanonymize the person you’re looking for. Intelligence agencies most certainly buy from data brokers, including the US National Security Agency, which has reportedly been lobbying to preserve its ability to buy data without needing a warrant.

Wednesday’s executive order is aimed at a very specific kind of data incontinence, the wholesale transfer of particularly sensitive data from the US to hostile nations: 

• “Even as the US government blocks illicit backchannel activity like computer hacking, our current policies and laws leave open access to vast amounts of Americans’ sensitive personal data,” a Biden administration official told reporters on Tuesday, per The Wall Street Journal.
• The newly prohibited data transfers will include genomic, biometric, health, geolocation, and financial data, per the WSJ. The order also will restrict data brokers from selling the data of military personnel and government staffers, something which amazingly is for sale.

“Focusing on data brokers’ role in the international sale and transfer of citizens’ data certainly makes sense and I’m surprised it hasn’t gained more political scrutiny before this,” Samuel Woodhams, a privacy researcher at Top10VPN, told The Daily Upside. However, he added that there seems to already be a handful of exceptions to what data can be sold overseas, and the data broker industry might try to widen those loopholes. “It’s not enough to prevent certain data being sent abroad when it shouldn’t be collected and made available in the first place,” Woodhams added.

The China Solution: Burcu Kilic, an expert in digital trade and senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, told The Daily Upside that by focusing on national security the Biden administration was taking a politically savvy move aimed as a warning shot at data brokers. “China sells in Washington,” Kilic said, adding that national security worries around China were legitimate, saying “China is the leading destination for data flows.” She said that Biden’s executive order is a good first step, but that the issue with data brokering isn’t hostile foreign powers, it’s the business model itself. “I think the question is: Who are the data brokers? Who is selling Americans’ data to China?” said Kilic.

If he weren’t zigging while everyone else was zagging, he wouldn’t be Elon Musk.

The mercurial Tesla CEO made a series of posts on his X platform late Tuesday revealing plans to resurrect its high-end performance Roadster model, five years after it was originally unveiled. In his usual understated manner, Musk tweeted: “There will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car.” 

Higher than High-End

We’re pretty sure you can call it expensive. Musk’s tweet flurry was short on some specifics, namely the Roadster’s expected sticker price, but he did say the model will be a collaboration with Musk-owned SpaceX, that there will be an unveiling later this year, and that the goal is to start shipping the car next year. Based on some of the performance metrics cited by Musk, it’s easy to infer that Musk is setting up a competition with the U9 high-end vehicle just unveiled by Chinese rival BYD. That model goes for $233,000, and given that Tesla was originally charging $250,000 for reservations when it originally announced its Roadster in 2017, this is going to cost more than my Civic. 

That, of course, is not at all where the rest of the industry is headed, as EV demand has slumped, causing several industry players to scramble — or roll up the road:

• Late Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Apple is abandoning a decadelong effort to build an electric car, long considered to be one of its most ambitious projects and dashing the hopes of Apple fans and investors that it would eventually scale its hardware ecosystem into a full-sized vehicle.
• Just about every EV maker, including Tesla, has had to cut prices in an attempt to entice buyers. It’s an even more daunting route for startups like Rivian, which loses money on every car it makes.

Trust But Verify: As a profitable large business, Tesla has the luxury to both absorb price cuts as well as build $250,000 vehicles for the handful of buyers with that kind of money. That said, with Tesla’s stock down about 25% in the past five months, detaching its trajectory somewhat from the “Magnificent Seven,” the leash doesn’t seem as long for investors worried about the Roadster’s possible impact on future profit margins.

Anheuser-Busch InBev workers who could strike at 12 brewery locations as early as Thursday think the company should spend more on them – and less on extravagant marketing campaigns that blow up in its face. 

Trying to Make Up for Losses

AB InBev spent $3.5 billion on marketing in the first six months of 2023, 13% more than a year earlier. Part of that spend saw the company’s popular Bud Light brand partner with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a campaign during last year’s March Madness. The resulting controversy resulted in a boycott, losing Bud Light hundreds of millions of dollars in sales it has yet to recover.

AB’s strategy to regain its growth trajectory is to spend even more on marketing. But the Teamsters union, which represents 5,000 workers at 12 AB breweries and whose union contracts end on Thursday, says the best way for the company to rescue its image is to focus on its employees: 

• After the Mulvaney backlash, AB InBev signed a deal worth more than $100 million to make Bud Light the official beer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, spent roughly $21 million on three Super Bowl ads, and hired comedian Shane Gillis as a new spokesperson, in addition to other marketing efforts.
• Last summer, AB posted an ad on its X account that highlights the company’s blue-collar workers  — from barley farmers to truck drivers to security guards. Teamsters spokeswoman Kara Deniz told Bloomberg some employees saw it as a soulless commendation, i.e., a real gesture of good faith would be negotiating better union contracts.

Cup of Joe: In other labor news, Starbucks said it’ll begin negotiations with the Workers United union that represents roughly 10,000 baristas across about 400 US locations. It’s quite the shift for the Seattle-based coffee chain that’s been accused of “union-busting” tactics like closing stores or firing organizers. But 2023 was a banner year for labor unions, with major wins across the automobile, healthcare, and TV and film industries. Looks like Starbucks is finally starting to wake up and smell the coffee.