President Trump's haphazard war on Chinese tech has left the Biden administration with a raft of unfinished business involving efforts to restrict Chinese firms and products in U.S. markets.

Why it matters: The Chinese and American tech industries are joined at the hip in many ways, and that interdependence has shaped decades of prosperity. But now security concerns and economic rivalries are wrenching them apart.

Here's where things stand between the U.S. and several key Chinese tech powerhouses:

Xiaomi

• In the waning days of the Trump administration, the Defense Department added Chinese phone maker Xiaomi to its a list of companies with ties to the Chinese military, potentially requiring US investors to sell their stake in the company. Xiaomi denies it is owned or controlled by the military.
• Why it matters: Xiaomi doesn’t sell phones in the U.S., but it does have a significant amount of investment from U.S. funds — and also has long-term ambitions of doing more U.S. business.

SMIC

• China’s largest chip foundry was added to the so-called entity list in late December, notably limiting the firm's access to key gear from the U.S., especially equipment used in the newest generation of semiconductors.
• Why it matters: Much of the gear used to turn silicon wafers into chips is made by U.S. companies like Applied Materials. However, the U.S. move against SMIC also hurts global chipmaking capacity during a time of significant shortage.

Huawei

• The Chinese telecom giant remains the tech company most in U.S. crosshairs, facing actions and restrictions from a range of government entities, including the Justice Department, Commerce Department and FCC.
• Huawei is challenging many of these actions in court, including in a recent suit aimed at reversing FCC-imposed restrictions.
• Why it matters: Huawei is one of a handful of companies around the world that make the gear needed for 5G and other cellular networks.
• The company has been particularly successful in developing countries, partly because its equipment often sells for far less than that from rivals such as Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung.
• Huawei has also been a global leader in smartphones, though its ability to compete outside China has been severely curtailed by its lack of access to Google's Android services and other U.S.-developed technology.

TikTok

• Trump's effort to force a sale of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app by imposing a U.S. ban was his noisiest campaign against a Chinese company. But several key components of the effort ran aground in court, and a deadline for a sale came and went with TikTok still in limbo.
• Officials earlier this month said the Biden administration had paused talks initiated under Trump to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to an investor group that included Oracle and Walmart.
• Why it matters: Some lawmakers have suggested Beijing could force TikTok to hand over Americans' data or otherwise somehow exploit the app for spying or hacking purposes.
• The Trump administration didn't turn up any evidence of wrongdoing in making the case that TikTok should be banned, but suggested the risk alone justified its moves.

WeChat

• When Trump issued his order against TikTok, he paired it with a ban on WeChat, the chat app used globally by Chinese speakers. But that bid, too, got derailed in court.
• In his final weeks in office, Trump then sought to ban WeChat Pay from the U.S., together with a number of other Chinese-owned payment platforms.
• Why it matters: WeChat is widely used not only by people in China but among the global Chinese diaspora. Banning it could cut off a critical communications link between people around the world and their relatives and friends in China.

Between the lines: China is running into growing pains of its own in the push to own the future of technology.

• SMIC, for instance, was struggling to deliver on ambitious expansion and production goals even before facing the Trump administration's restrictions.
• Several leading Chinese tech executives have run afoul of Beijing.
• The Chinese government has also embarked on an antitrust crackdown that could clip several domestic tech giants' wings.

The bottom line: The Biden administration now has to sort out which Trump initiatives to drop — because they were botched, thrown out in court or self-defeating — and which can still serve the U.S.'s long-term goals of competing with China and limiting Chinese security threats.

People who haven't been able to secure appointments for a coronavirus vaccine are turning to Facebook groups and other online forums to find cancelled slots, figure out where to go, or simply to find information local health authorities have not provided.

Why it matters: These ad-hoc online communities have helped people get vaccinated and helped keep doses of the vaccine from going to waste. But they also underscore the confusion and frustration of the U.S. vaccine rollout, and the risk of misinformation is real.

The big picture: "We're a very entrepreneurial country, and using social media to advertise opportunities for vaccination is a good thing. It picks up where our government is not doing an adequate job," said Karl Minges, a professor in the school of health sciences at the University of New Haven.

• "Word of mouth has an important role, but you have to tread lightly with what kind of information you're putting out there," he said.

What's happening: Facebook pages and Reddit threads are emerging all over the country, filled with posts from people seeking vaccines or who have information about vaccine appointments.

• Los Angeles Covid Vaccine Hunters, a private page modeled after a similar one in New Orleans, has about 2,000 members, and aims to connect young people to vaccine doses set to be thrown out or expire.
• Maryland Vaccine Hunters, with 16,200 members, also helps people find unused doses. And it connects tech-savvy younger people with seniors, to help them schedule appointments.
• The Getting Pittsburgh Vaccinated group has more than 18,000 members, who have recently been discussing how to transfer appointments and lamenting the fact that some people are charging for their help.
• A Florida nurse and elementary school principal started South Florida Covid Vaccination Info, which now has 27,200 members and helps seniors with appointment booking.
• VaccineHunter.org organizes the dozens of "vaccine hunting" pages into one spot. On Reddit, r/VaccineHunters, along with related groups across the country, are highly active forums.

Yes, but: The potential for scams and misinformation is high, despite people's best intentions to help one another.

• This is particularly worrisome for high-risk populations, such as elderly people, who are not as savvy about identifying misinformation online and are more likely to fall for scams, Minges said.
• Facebook recently announced new moves to fight misinformation about theCOVID-19 vaccines. And it enforces its content moderation rules in private groups, though that can be tricky at scale.
• There is also criticism that such "vaccine hunters" are gaming the system or skipping the line ahead of people who are higher priority for the shots.

"I think these groups have been incredibly useful," said Jennifer Golbeck, a professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. "There's always a risk of mis- or disinformation getting in there, but in these community groups, that tends to get shut down pretty quickly; the self-policing has been good."

• Still, she said, it's "really sad that you have to go to a social media forum to figure out this process."

The bottom line: "If there had been a good official system, there would not have been a need for this," said Awi Federgruen, a professor and supply chain expert at Columbia Business School. "It's an unfortunate development."

Child advocate groups led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood leveled a complaint Friday with the Federal Trade Commission against Prodigy Education, accusing the math game company of deceiving teachers and parents into believing the program is free while aggressively marketing a $59 premium membership to children.

Why it matters: As children's screentime has skyrocketed during the pandemic, educational online programs are especially appealing to parents who are more concerned about how kids are spending time online.

Driving the news: 22 groups led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood leveled a complaint Friday with the Federal Trade Commission against Prodigy Education, accusing the math game company of deceiving teachers and parents into believing the program is free while aggressively marketing a $59 premium membership to children.

• Prodigy, which raised $125 million in funding last month and has more than 100 million users worldwide, lets kids explore a fantasy world and battle opponents by answering math questions.
• The company offers a free in-school version, but the at-home version advertises a premium membership that tempts children with virtual rewards like sparkly treasure boxes available only to members, according to the complaint shared with Axios.
• The groups say this creates inequities in that are visible in the classroom version where "bejeweled members sail around on a cloud, while non-members literally tromp in the dirt."

The big picture: Federal enforcers already are scrutinizing how children use and interact with online companies.

• The FTC in December launched a sweeping probe into the privacy and data collection practices of nine major social media and streaming companies, including seeking information on how their practices affect children and teens.

What they're saying: "Prodigy’s insidious business model is creating a new form of inequality in classrooms,” CCFC executive director Josh Golin said in a statement. “Parents are trying to make the most of the educational tools at their disposal during this unprecedented time, and many are struggling to make ends meet."

The other side: The majority of Prodigy users have the free subscription, and no payment is required for students to receive access to the educational content in the game, a company spokesperson told Axios.

• "We’re proud to provide millions of students, families, and schools with completely free access to standards-aligned educational tools to support in-class and at home learning," the spokesperson said in a statement. "To support us in offering all of this educational content for free, we also provide optional memberships for families for use outside of school."

Go deeper: What we overlooked in the switch to remote learning

Facebook pulled the plug on news in Australia on Wednesday night, staring down looming Australian legislation that would force it and Google to pay publishers in the country for content that appears on their platforms.

Axios Re:Cap digs in with Axios media reporter Sara Fischer on why Facebook pulled news articles off its site, what it means for Australian users and publishers, and what it means for other countries that want to pursue similar legislation.

Congress on Thursday announced two tech-related hearings — one featuring major tech CEOs and another meant to kick off new antitrust legislation.

What's happening: On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hear from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a hearing about misinformation on online platforms.

• On Feb. 25, the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee will kick off the first in a series of hearings meant to explore competition for the digital economy.

The big picture: After a busy start of the new Congress with a deadly riot and impeachment proceedings, Congress is setting its sights back to reeling in Big Tech.

• Congress has been looking to legislate tech policy for years now, but calls for action on misinformation intensified after the deadly Capitol riot. At the same time, Big Tech companies are under multiple antitrust investigations in the U.S. and abroad, and the Senate has already started considering new tech antitrust bills.

What they're saying: "Whether it be falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccine or debunked claims of election fraud, these online platforms have allowed misinformation to spread, intensifying national crises with real-life, grim consequences for public health and safety,” Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said in a release.

• The Judiciary Committee hearing kicks off a major legislative series and the start of the committee preparing to roll out new antitrust bills, a committee aide said.
• Witnesses will include former FTC lawyers, advocates, economists and at least one executive from an affected third party who claims to have been negatively impacted by a Big Tech company.

A group of tech industry trade associations sued the state of Maryland Thursday over its newly enacted tax on digital ads targeted at state residents.

Driving the news: Last week, the Maryland legislature voted to overturn Republican Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of the state's first-in-the-nation digital tax law, which aims to raise money for education initiatives in the state by taxing digital advertising from the biggest companies.

What's happening: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Internet Association, NetChoice, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, and TechNet joined in the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Division of Maryland.

• Their lawsuit asserts that Maryland's tax violates the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act and also the Constitution's due process clause “by burdening and penalizing purely out-of-state conduct."

Critics of Maryland's tax say it is unfair, discriminatory, hurts the economy during a pandemic, and is unconstitutional. Maryland has estimated the law would earn the state about $250 million annually.

• States have been forging ahead with their own tech policy laws as the federal government stalls, as Axios reported last week. The legislation resembles similar efforts to tax large American tech companies in Europe.

Between the lines: Most of the groups backing the suit get extensive tech industry funding and generally fight these battles on behalf of the greater industry. The groups also hope the lawsuit will discourage other states from considering similar measures.

What they're saying: "The premise of the law is deeply flawed. ... [T]he Act will raise costs for consumers and make it more difficult for businesses to connect with potential customers," the lawsuit reads.

• “While the legislation is designed to directly target certain large, mostly out-of-state companies, it will ultimately be bad for Maryland businesses of all sizes," said Linda Moore, president and CEO of TechNet. "Instead of spending scarce resources defending a discriminatory charge, the state should repeal the law and focus on policies that support the many businesses already suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Business is also feeling the bite from the Texas winter storm, with a number of chipmakers forced to suspend production.

Why it matters: Even a brief shutdown of chip production in Texas could exacerbate the global chip shortage that's already reducing production of everything from cars to computers.

Driving the news:

• Samsung Semiconductor said it has "gradually halted its operations" in Austin after being ordered to do so by local power utilities.
• NXP Semiconductor, which makes chips for cars, among other uses, has also halted production at two Austin-area plants at the insistence of local utilities.

What they're saying: Once power comes back, Samsung plans to resume production immediately, while NXP will do an impact assessment and determine when it can come fully back online, company representatives told Axios.

Meanwhile: The chip industry has been pushing Congress to fully fund federal investment in the U.S. chip industry that recent defense legislation authorized.

• A variety of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and auto and medical device trade associations, are signing onto a letter being sent today to President Biden to back this federal investment.
• The U.S. once accounted for 37% of global chip production but has seen its share fall to 12% as of last year.

Go deeper:

• Why Intel's troubles should concern us all
• Computer chips are still "Made in USA"

Facebook is expanding the geographic reach of its recently launched online portal to counter misinformation about climate change, and will take new steps to steer users of the platform toward those resources.

Why it matters: Social media platforms have immense reach, and they've come under fire from activists and some lawmakers globally for doing too little to thwart the spread of inaccurate content.

Driving the news: Facebook Thursday morning unveiled several changes to the Climate Science Information Center it first launched in September. The platform steers users to the site when they search for climate-related terms. Changes and additions include...

• Making it available to Facebook users in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Spain, South Africa, and Taiwan. It initially launched in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France.
• Where it's not available, Facebook is directing users to the UN Environment Programme.
• The site has added a section aimed at debunking specific myths about climate change crafted in consultation with experts from Yale, George Mason and the University of Cambridge.
• Facebook is beginning a program in the U.K., which it plans to expand, that starts adding labels to some user posts on climate that steer them to the Center.

What they're saying: “We want to expose people to information that helps them interpret and react to common myths around climate change they may encounter,” Edward Palmieri, Facebook’s sustainability director, tells Axios.

• John Cook, a George Mason University expert in climate communication working with Facebook, said research shows that simply saying information is wrong is not enough.
• “You also have to explain why or how it is wrong. That is important from a psychological point of view,” Cook said of the new “myth-busting” section of the climate portal.

But, but, but: It's unclear how the new efforts will sit with climate activists who say the social media behemoth should go further by outright thwarting posts from organizations that deny human-driven climate change.

• Facebook officials, for their part, note that they have a fact-checking initiative that runs in parallel to the online portal, and take steps to label and limit distribution of posts with misinformation without nixing them outright.

Our thought bubble: It's comparatively easy to put up an information center on a highly charged topic, notes Axios' chief technology correspondent Ina Fried. But the harder and more important work is preventing misinformation, something that Facebook has struggled to do on many issues.

When the Australian government told tech platforms they had to start paying publishers for the headlines and links that fill their users' posts, Google caved but Facebook walked.

Why it matters: These companies' moves Wednesday — as Google struck a deal with News Corp to evade Australia's forthcoming rules, while Facebook essentially barred news content there — could shape how news companies are compensated for their work online for years to come.

Driving the news: Facebook said it will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content. It will also block links to Australian publishers for its users around the globe.

• The move came hours after Google announced it struck a multiyear agreement with News Corp, the largest owner of newspapers by circulation in Australia, to pay for its content, essentially skirting the law. Google has struck similar deals with several Australian publishers in the past week.

Catch up quick: These efforts are happening in response to the new law, expected to pass imminently, forcing Google and Facebook to pay Australian news publishers for content, including headlines and links, via terms set by a third party.

• Lawmakers said they would avoid passing the measure if Google and Facebook reached payment terms with Australian news publishers on their own.
• Google's deals will allow it to fulfill those conditions.

The big picture: Google and Facebook's opposing decisions set a precedent for how they may handle other global efforts to force them to pay news publishers.

• Restricting people from sharing articles on their News Feeds cuts into Facebook's business far less than Google would be affected if it had to stop Australians from using its search engine, the primary vehicle for sharing links on its platform.
• Facebook has been trying to reduce the amount of news content shared from publishers on its platform, anyway, in an effort to make the social network more intimate. More recently, it said it would try to reduce the amount of political news on its feed.

Be smart: News Corp, the global publishing giant run by Rupert Murdoch, has been aggressively lobbying in favor of the Australian law for years, as it owns a sizable portion of the newspaper market in the country. Google's decision to strike these deals at the last minute marks a huge victory for Murdoch's lobbying campaign.

What to watch: Countries around the world are eyeing ways to force tech companies to pay publishers. In the U.S., Australia’s efforts have caught the attention of some members of Congress, according to sources in the publishing industry.

The other side: Online platforms have long maintained that publishers voluntarily provide the headlines, images and links that users share on social media — and that such sharing serves the publishers' interest, since some users will click through to publishers' own pages.

• Google and Facebook take particular issue with the arbitration clause in Australia's code, under which a government-appointed panel sets the payout rate if the parties can't reach a deal.
• Sources say that the tech giants worry that involving third-party arbitrators could help publishers win unreasonable rates.

Go deeper:

• Tech coughs up money for news as regulatory threats loom
• Facebook to restrict users from sharing news in Australia
• Google strikes 11th hour deals with Australian publishers to avoid new law

Nine of the world's biggest tech companies have come together to establish an industry framework for handling harmful content and conduct online.

Why it matters: Tech companies, facing a threat from U.S. lawmakers who are considering changing the rules around what content they are liable for on their platforms, are eager to win back public trust.

Details: The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership — with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Discord, Pinterest, Reddit, Shopify and Vimeo listed as its members — will develop a best practices framework for handling harmful content and behavior online, based on five commitments to:

1. Anticipate the risks for misuse as part of product design, and develop ways to prevent misuse or abuse.
2. Adopt rules for user conduct and content that are clear and consistent.
3. Enforce the rules. The framework includes examples of best practices for enforcement operations, including investing in wellness and resilience of teams dealing with sensitive materials.
4. Keep up with changing risks and review whether policies are effective in limiting harmful content or conduct.
5. Report periodically on actions taken on complaints, enforcement and other activities related to trust and safety.

Yes, but: This is unlikely to affect the individual companies' existing approaches to moderating content created by their users. The partnership says it's not aiming to create an industry-wide definition of, say, hate speech or misinformation, but to define the internal processes companies should use to develop their own policies.

• "The goal is that there should be sufficient flexibility such that the different companies can have different substantive definitions of these things and still agree on whether you have a set of institutional practices that are addressing them," said Alex Feerst, former general counsel at Medium, who is advising the group.

Between the lines: Lawmakers have been calling for increased transparency into how tech companies moderate content, as well as proposing new laws to address concerns about online harms. This new effort is a way for the companies to respond.

• "Improving all the best practices and getting this out there I think is a step on the road, hopefully to establishing more trust between government and tech companies, especially as it really gets into the details of, 'Here's much more concrete information on exactly what we do,' " Feerst said.

What's next: The companies want feedback, and will conduct both internal and external reviews on how they are implementing them.

• "This puts us on a path to having both transparency, but also having external assessments of whether the company is concretely meeting these commitments," Feerst said.

Our thought bubble: Tech firms, under pressure, have been announcing lots of sweeping efforts to tackle content moderation problems. While they've gotten better about issuing reports about content takedowns, only third-party audits will be able to determine whether the companies are really successful.

• Feerst says an impartial outside reviewer will assess how well the companies are living up to their commitments.

The rise of remote employment and the general erasure of work-life boundaries by the pandemic has led to a boom in calendar-management platforms.

Driving the news: Late last month, Calendly, a cloud-based service that can be used to automatically set up and confirm meeting times, closed a $350 million venture investment that values the Atlanta-based startup at over $3 billion.

• The 8-year-old company now has more than 10 million monthly users, a number that grew by 1,180% last year.
• Clockwise, another calendar-management startup, closed $18 million in funding over the summer and has over 100,000 active business users.

The big picture: Whether or not we're taking on more meetings than in the pre-pandemic days, the reality of remote work means that even what would have been quick in-person check-ins now often need to be formally scheduled.

• As a result, says Clockwise CEO Matt Martin, employees can end up as victims of a kind of calendar tragedy of the commons.
• "Time is this really valuable asset, and everybody is pulling from it, but nobody's coordinating or regulating in any meaningful way."

How it works: Clockwise uses AI tools to help workers organize their calendars in a way that optimizes focus time — blocked-out chunks of two or more hours of individual, uninterrupted work time — by automatically moving around meetings to the least-interrupted slot for all attendees.

• The company's approach is informed by research that frequent distractions — hold on, I have to check a Slack message — eat up as much as 40% of a worker's productive time.

The bottom line: In the age of remote work, you are your own assistant — and it's up to you to protect your most valuable resource: time.

Facebook on Wednesday said it would restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content in response to a new law requiring tech platforms to reimburse news publishers.

Why it matters: The move sets a precedent for how Facebook may handle other global efforts to force it to pay news publishers for their content.

Details: The tech giant says that the changes affecting news content "will not otherwise change Facebook’s products and services in Australia," and specifically points to Facebook's Groups feature as one that it hopes users in Australia specifically continue to use.

• The move will also affect users outside of Australia, according to Facebook's announcement: "Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted."

Catch up quick: Australian lawmakers have said they would avoid passing a new law if Google and Facebook reached payment terms with Australian news publishers on their own.

• The law would have forced Google and Facebook specifically to pay publishers on terms set by third parties if they were unable to reach agreements themselves.
• Facebook's managing director of Facebook Australia & New Zealand William Easton said in a statement Wednesday that the law "fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content."
• "It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter."

The move comes hours after rival Google, which was also subject to the same law, announced it struck a multiyear agreement with News Corp, the largest owner of newspapers by circulation in Australia, to pay for its content.

• Over the past week leading up to the law's passage, Google has struck deals with several Australian publishers, including Nine Entertainment, Junkee Media and Seven West Media.

Be smart: Facebook is taking the opposite approach from Google because it has less to lose than Google, due to the nature of its product.

• Restricting people from sharing articles on their News Feeds cuts into Facebook's business far less than Google would be affected if it had to stop Australians from using its search engine, the primary vehicle for sharing links on its platform.
• "For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal," Easton writes. "News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their News Feed."
• "Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content," Easton said. "On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue."

The big picture: Other countries around the world are also considering laws that would force tech giants to pay for news. These types of threats have forced tech giants to create new features that steer money to news outlets without having to totally reimagine their businesses.

• Facebook has spent millions of dollars paying publishers to be a part of its Facebook News tab. Facebook News launched last week in the U.K.
• Facebook says it was prepared to launch Facebook News in Australia "and significantly increase our investments" with local publishers, but it was only prepared to do that "with the right rules in place."
• Google said last fall it would pay publishers $1 billion for their content to appear in Google News Showcase.

Go deeper: Tech coughs up money for news as regulatory threats loom

China, Russia and Iran — drawing on one another’s online disinformation — amplified false theories that the COVID-19 virus originated in a U.S. bioweapons lab or was designed by Washington to weaken their countries, according to a nine-month investigation by AP and the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab.

Why it matters: Through a series of overlapping, if slapdash, efforts, America's global adversaries benefited from mutually reinforcing counter-narratives propagated online that aimed to falsely place responsibility for the pandemic on the U.S. and often to sow doubt on its actual origin within China.

• The extensive use by these countries of each other's COVID-19 disinformation shows just how international — and mutually reinforcing — these online networks have become.
• The investigation was “based on a review of millions of social media postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other platforms,” says the AP.

Details: Although seemingly less coordinated than other such efforts, extensive anti-American COVID-19 disinformation efforts first popped up in Russia, according to the AP/ DFRLab report.

• A Russian military media outlet was the first identified publication that ran a story advancing the claim that COVID-19 was American, not Chinese, in origin.
• In the first few months of 2020, “more than 70 articles appeared in pro-Kremlin media making similar bioweapons claims in Russian, Spanish, Armenian, Arabic, English and German,” writes AP.

However, “it was China — not Russia — that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about COVID-19’s origins, as it came under attack for its early handling of the outbreak,” says the report.

• By March 2020, Chinese state media outlets, as well as diplomats on social media, were pushing the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a biological weapon created by the United States at Fort Detrick in Maryland and brought to China during the 2019 Military World Games, which were held that October in Wuhan.
• That month, “an anonymous petition appeared on the White House’s now-defunct ‘We the People’ portal. It urged U.S. authorities to clarify whether the virus had been developed at Fort Detrick and leaked from the lab. The petition was lavishly covered by China’s state media, despite getting only 1,426 signatures,” writes AP.
• By May, Chinese state media broadcast “a slick documentary about Fort Detrick set to spooky music that has been viewed on its YouTube channel more than 82,000 times” and “played on China’s Bilibili platform 378,000 times.”
• Chinese diplomats also began extensively posting COVID-related disinformation on Twitter, which is banned in China itself.
• On popular social networks within China like Weibo, viral posts drew from Russian and Chinese disinformation to spread the false “U.S. bioweapons” theory of COVID-19.

Of note: Instead of using botnets or Russian IRA-type troll farms, the Chinese relied on their vast network of state-affiliated news outlets, as well as Chinese government accounts on social media, to propagate these false theories, writes DFRLab.

Iranian leaders, meanwhile, also began to push out false claims — Russian and Chinese in origin — that COVID-19 was a U.S. bioweapon designed to target Washington’s enemies.

• The Iranians’ false allegations “were, in turn, amplified by Russian media and picked up in China, where they fueled further speculation,” writes AP.
• An Iranian disinformation network active on Facebook, Google and Twitter also “activated a network of websites and covert social media accounts to accuse the U.S. of engineering the virus and praise[d] the leadership and benevolence of China,” writes the AP.

Yes, but: The DFRLab report also explores how a separate, earlier stream of disinformation — revolving around the false assertion that COVID-19 was purposefully leaked from a Chinese lab — spread online through U.S.-based far-right networks like QAnon and eventually bled into right-wing media more broadly.

• “The traditional view about conspiracy theories is that they exist along the fringes of the information space, apart from the mainstream and official communications. However, in the United States, these conspiracy theories have permeated all layers of discourse, particularly being embraced by elements of mainstream media and individual conservative policymakers during the Trump administration,” writes DFRLab.
• Chinese government disinformation pushing the false “U.S. bioweapons thesis” about COVID-19 followed this earlier U.S.-based conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a Chinese bioweapon — paralleling and inverting it.

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world — and the afflictions of malware evolved with it, writes the security company Malwarebytes in its 2021 State of Malware report.

Why it matters: “The story of malware in 2020 … is a story of how the tools and tactics of cybercrime and cybersecurity changed against a backdrop of enormous changes to ordinary life,” says the report.

One big trend was the “staggering rise” in the use of stalkerware, writes Malwarebytes, with the company detecting a 1,677% increase in spyware on its Android product from January through June 2020.

• The use of other monitoring apps rose 780% over the same period on Android, says the report.
• “As the world locked down in April 2020, a tool that was once the preserve of nation states and cybercriminals became something otherwise ordinary people used on each other,” writes Malwarebytes about the spyware epidemic.

Some industries saw a sharp increase in malware detections in 2020, while others saw significant decreases.

• For instance, the agriculture industry saw a 607% increase in detections, while detections in the food and beverage industry rose by 67%.
• Meanwhile, detections in the education field fell by 17%, in the health care field by 22%, and the automotive industry by 18%.

Of note: 2020 saw the advent of a new ransomware named Egregor, which was used in “attacks against Ubisoft, K-Mart, Crytek, and Barnes & Noble,” says the report.

Federal investigators levied new charges Wednesday against three North Korean computer programmers accused of wide-ranging cyberattacks, including the 2014 Sony Pictures hack and schemes to extort more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency.

The big picture: The charges expand on the FBI's 2018 case on the cyberattacks targeting Sony Pictures and the WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack.

Driving the news: The Justice Department outlined a range of criminal cyber activities it says were undertaken by operatives working for a North Korean military intelligence agency. The attacks include:

• Cyberattacks on the entertainment industry, including the attack on Sony Pictures in retaliation for the release of "The Interview," a satire that made fun of North Korea's dictatorship.
• Attempts to steal more than $1.2 billion from banks in multiple countries by hacking their computer networks.
• Developing malicious cryptocurrency applications — including Celas Trade Pro, WorldBit-Bot, iCryptoFx, Union Crypto Trader, Kupay Wallet, CoinGo Trade, Dorusio, CryptoNeuro Trader, and Ants2Whale — to give the North Korean hackers backdoors into victims’ computers.

What they're saying: "The scope of these crimes by the North Korean hackers are staggering," said Tracy L. Wilkison, acting U.S. attorney for the central district of California. "The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime."

Go deeper: North Korea's hackers are robbing banks

Axiom Space, a Houston-based developer of what would be the world's first commercial space station, raised $130 million in Series B funding led by C5 Capital.

Why it matters: Axiom represents what many believe is the future of space, whereby NASA becomes a customer everywhere in low-Earth orbit so that it can focus on the Moon, Mars and beyond.

• Other investors include Declaration Partners, Moelis Dynasty Investments, The Venture Collective, Hemisphere Ventures and Starbridge VC.
• More space bucks: SpaceX raised $850 million last week at around a $74 billion valuation last week, per CNBC. Axiom and SpaceX are working together on next January's planned tourism trip to the International Space Station.

The bottom line: "Axiom’s plan for its own space station would begin with the launch of a commercial module that would be hooked up to the International Space Station in the 2024 time frame. Additional modules would be added to Axiom’s complex during the years that follow. If the ISS is decommissioned in 2028, as planned, Axiom would detach its modules and operate them independently as a privately owned space station," Geekwire's Alan Boyle reports.

Verizon's $6.2 billion bid to buy wireless company TracFone has raised concerns that the deal could cut off access to affordable mobile phone service.

The big picture: The deal has flown under the radar, but TracFone is one of the nation's largest providers of subsidized cell phone service for low income people, an especially important program during the coronavirus pandemic — and one that Verizon hasn't traditionally focused on.

Catch up quick: Verizon in September announced it would buy TracFone from billionaire Carlos Slim's America Movil.

• TracFone is the largest pre-paid, no-contract wireless provider in the U.S., with 21 million customers.
• TracFone pays Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to use their network to sell low-cost wireless service.
• AT&T and T-Mobile own prepaid cellphone providers Cricket and MetroPCS, respectively, and Verizon says it wants to compete in the prepaid market by purchasing TracFone.

Be smart: The lines are blurring between prepaid and "postpaid" cell service, which refers to paying at the end of the monthly billing cycle based on usage. Postpaid customers are historically seen as more lucrative because they are under a contract.

• "Prepaid customers used to consume far less data than postpaid, and they paid a lot less," New Street analyst Spencer Kurn told Axios. "Now their usage is still lower, but not that much lower, and they’re paying more. I think Verizon is looking at these prepaid subscribers as more attractive today than they would have 10 years ago."

What's happening: The Justice Department declined to dig deeper into the deal in November, signaling that it didn't raise competition concerns. But the Federal Communications Commission must also approve the deal.

• Criticism has emerged from T-Mobile, Public Knowledge, and the Communications Workers of America.
• Several state attorneys general urged the FCC to thoroughly examine the merger, including its impact on Lifeline, a federal program that subsidizes phone or broadband service for low-income people.

By the numbers: TracFone has roughly 1.7 million Lifeline customers, but Verizon has not been a major player in the program.

• "The concern is Verizon will prove to be unsuccessful in its efforts to run a Lifeline company and will just abandon the market," Public Knowledge senior vice president Harold Feld told Axios. "Nothing forces Verizon to continue to offer Lifeline service is the big problem. They say that they will, but they don't say for how long."
• The transaction would make Verizon the second big network operator to be heavily involved with Lifeline, after T-Mobile inherited a large Lifeline service through its acquisition of Sprint.

What they're saying: Verizon has previously called for the government to rethink its approach to affordable internet service, suggesting a new, permanent broadband benefit program of $20 to $50 per month for low-income consumers.

• That's more than the $9.25 monthly subsidy provided by the Lifeline program, and Verizon's plan includes a federally funded electronic benefits card consumers could use to purchase broadband service.
• Separately, in response to criticism of its TracFone deal, Verizon told the FCC it will continue TracFone's Lifeline supported services.
• "When TracFone’s customers become part of Verizon, they will benefit from the enhanced choices, better services, and new features that follow from Verizon’s investment while still enjoying the flexibility and control that they have come to value with TracFone’s prepaid plans," Verizon told the agency.

What we're watching: People who are disproportionately hurt by the pandemic are the ones most likely in need of low-cost phone service to stay connected, so scrutiny will remain high even if the FCC approves the deal.

A Manhattan-based hedge fund on Tuesday agreed to buy local newspaper giant Tribune, representing the latest blow to the local news industry, which is already struggling to survive the pandemic — let alone the internet era.

Why it matters: The deal means that some of the country's most historic local newspapers, from the Chicago Tribune to New York Daily News, will be in the hands of an investment firm known for cutting journalists at local papers to maximize profits.

• The acquisition will also create one of the largest local publishing giants in America.
• Alden Global Capital already owns hundreds of local papers through its majority ownership of MNG (MediaNews Group) Enterprises, which controls papers like the Denver Post and the Boston Herald.
• As a part of the agreement, Alden agreed to sell Baltimore Sun, The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, and a few other smaller papers, to a Maryland-based nonprofit.

The big picture: The rollup of big newspapers chains like Tribune has killed thousands of local newspaper jobs over the past few years. Research shows those jobs aren't usually being replaced, leading to thousands of local news deserts across the country.

• Tribune rival McClatchy, home to papers like the Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, was bought by a hedge fund last year as a result of a bankruptcy auction.
• Alden tried to buy out local media giant Gannett, parent company to USA Today, in 2019. It failed, leaving the Gannett to merge with rival newspaper giant Gatehouse.
• Axios reported on Tuesday both of those newspaper giants are now teaming up together to try to sell more ads.

What to watch: Americans trust local news more than any other type of news. But without a sustainable business model for local, newspaper companies are getting gobbled up for close to nothing.

• Alden purchased the remaining shares of Tribune Publishing Tuesday, valuing the entire company for $630 million. McClatchy and its 30 titles sold last year for $312 million.
• By comparison, the buzzy new audio app Clubhouse, which launched in September, is valued at $1 billion.

Go deeper: Big city papers face headwinds

Epic Games is taking its legal battle against Apple global, filing an antitrust complaint in Europe against the iPhone maker.

Why it matters: The move adds another layer to the protracted dispute and brings it to a jurisdiction that has historically been tougher on U.S. tech companies.

Catch up quick: Last September, Epic added its own in-app purchase mechanism to Fortnite, knowingly setting up a confrontation with Apple, which doesn't allow payment systems other than its own. Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store and Epic immediately filed suit.

• A similar chain of events took place with Google on the Android side, though in that case, Epic can continue to distribute Fortnite on its own outside the Google Play store, while no similar option exists for iOS.
• Apple also countersued Epic in October, claiming breach of contract.

Between the lines: Europe uses different standards than the U.S. when it comes to antitrust issues, focusing more on harm to rivals than the U.S., which tends to focus more on the impact on consumers.

• The complaint itself is confidential, but the EU already has a pending investigation into Apple.

What they're saying: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement that Apple's practices are bad for both consumers and developers.

“What’s at stake here is the very future of mobile platforms.” Sweeney said. “Consumers have the right to install apps from sources of their choosing and developers have the right to compete in a fair marketplace."