(This article is part of Today’s Cache, The Hindu’s newsletter on emerging themes at the intersection of technology, innovation and policy. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.)
CrowdStrike CEO to testify to Congress
U.S. House leaders are calling on CrowdStrike CEO Geroge Kurtz to testify to Congress about the cybersecurity company’s role in sparking the widespread tech outage that grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and affected services around the world.
Republicans who lead the House Homeland Security committee said they want those answers soon. They added that Americans deserve to know the details about what caused the disruption and the mitigation steps being taken by the company. CrowdStrike said in a blog post that it was starting to implement a new technique to accelerate remediation of the problem.
Kamala Harris on AI and Big Tech
The U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris could potentially become the Democratic presidential nominee. As VP, Harris has been particularly outspoken on artificial intelligence (AI), warning against the “existential” threat of AI and said it could “endanger the very existence of humanity.”
Harris has also been at the forefront of curtailing distribution of pornography on social media, particularly “revenge porn,” a practice involving the posting of explicit photos without the subject’s consent. Even before joining the Biden administration, as California attorney general, Harris sued eBay over the ecommerce company’s anticompetitive hiring practices surrounding non-poaching agreements with Intuit.
Cybersecurity startup turns down Google
Cybersecurity startup Wiz walked away from a reported $23 billion deal to be acquired by Google-parent Alphabet and has chosen to pursue an initial public offering as it initially planned.
Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport said in a memo that while the company was happy to by the offers, they have chosen to continue to remain on the path to build Wiz. The company was reportedly in advanced talks with Alphabet for the acquisition.
