The European Union (“EU”) is in the process of rolling out new data privacy laws that target social media and tech giants, like Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, and Google, among others.  The Digital Services Act Package, made up of the Digital Services Act (“DSA”) and the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”), seeks to make the internet safer for European users by protecting user data. The DSA regulates the conduct of social media companies, internet marketplaces, and other content-sharing platforms. The DMA governs the behavior of online platforms that play a part in transactions and interactions between consumers and businesses. Amazon, along with 18 other tech platforms, have been classified as “Very Large…

With the fourth partial government shutdown in a decade on the horizon, many Americans are wondering what impact this will have on them, their benefits, and their day-to-day lives. For anyone who eats, the shutdown should raise serious alarms. Food assistance programs and food inspection procedures are at serious risk. US government operations depend upon the annual budget preparation cycles between the President, Senate, and House. They must agree on spending. After the President submits the annual budget to Congress, the House and Senate work separately to develop budget resolutions. They then come together to resolve differences. If Congress fails to pass the budget or the President disapproves a Congressional…

Those waking up in Ukraine do not greet the morning with the smell of coffee and beautiful blue skies. Rather, they are waking up to loud explosions, smoke-engulfed buildings collapsing, and missiles striking their homes and those of their loved ones. In this war with Russia, Ukrainians are waking up to the utter chaos resulting from pilotless vehicles known as drones. Both Russia and Ukraine are utilizing drones to locate targets and drop bombs. In late May 2023, Russia targeted residential buildings in Ukraine in a wave of drone attacks that killed numerous civilians. While Ukraine has stated that it is not “directly responsible,” eight drone strikes hit Moscow on…

Shadow banks are institutions that engage in the activity of banking, just like other banking institutions, but are not themselves regulated like those institutions. While traditional banking institutions are subject to intense regulation, they have backup protection in the form of the discount window of the Federal Reserve as well as insured deposits protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Examples of shadow banking institutions can include investment trusts, hedge funds, and other nonbank entities that engage in credit, maturity, and liquidity transformation without insured deposit protection. China, which is the second largest economy in the world, faces an economic dilemma that has been brewing for several years. Many assets…

Today’s interconnected world requires us to bring goods to markets all across the world. As the popularity and use of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), such as Tesla’s Model S or Audi’s e-tron GT, increases, the concerns of shipping these cars have also increased. BEVs rely on lithium-ion batteries rather than an internal combustion engine to produce power. These lithium-ion batteries create a difficult situation. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has identified two major risks of lithium-ion batteries: electric shock and thermal runaway. Thermal runaway is of the most concern when shipping BEVs. Thermal runaway occurs when a damaged lithium-ion begins a chemical process creating an exothermic reaction (producing heat),…

As the national security environment, including the behavior of countries and individuals that seek to impair U.S. national security, evolves, the review process of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has continued to adapt in the face of more aggressive forms of adversarial foreign aggression. Biden’s Executive Order 14083, signed in 2022, recognizes that some countries use foreign investment to obtain access to sensitive data, technologies, and prime real estate for purposes that are detrimental to U.S. national security. The Order seeks to ensure that CFIUS remains an effective tool to combat these threats now and in the future. More broadly, it explicitly ties CFIUS’ role,…

Photo Courtesy of FlavourMag. All around the world, the population over 65 is growing faster than any other age group. By 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be aged 60 years or older. At this time, the share of the population aged 60 years and older will increase from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion. By 2050, the world’s population of people aged 60 years and older will double (2.1 billion). By comparison, it was only 9% or one in 11 people in 2019. The trends for the aging population or disproportionate in Europe and North America by the time 2050, comes one and four people…

Photo Courtesy of Marcellus The latest report from UNDESA states that global growth is predicted to slow down from anywhere to 1.7-1.9%, a sharp drop from the 3% growth in 2022. Economists had previously predicted stronger economic growth in 2023. The impacts of the slowed growth will have widespread international impact. Causes Economic growth could be hampered by an unlimited number of factors. Economists have found that the drop likely stems from the war in Ukraine, lasting effects of the global pandemic caused by covid, inflation and even climate change. The expected drop is one of the sharpest in fifty years, and is expected to impact 75% of countries, including…

Photo Courtesy of TIME. The digital revolution, also referred to as the third industrial revolution, began in the 1980s involved the switch of mechanical technology to digital technology and one of the products of this era is deep learning technology and deepfakes. Deep learning technology mimics the human brain and in turn can recognize, classify, and describe objects in the dataset. Deepfakes are created through deep learning technology and appear in either audio, video, textual, image or live form. In 2019 there was approximately 15,000 deepfakes on the internet and experts estimate that the number of deepfakes online double every six months. Deepfakes are often used to impersonate another person…

Photo Courtesy of The Joongang Cultural properties represent the country's identity and history that not only implant national characteristics to the citizens but also function as a cultural diplomat that announces the country's development, philosophy, and history to other states. Recognizing the importance of protecting and preserving them, there were meaningful international efforts to return artworks and prevent illegal trade. However, despite the efforts, restoring looted cultural properties is lethargic due to the limitation of international treaties in many restitution cases. In addition, it is hard to prove that cultural property is stolen, and it is even more complicated if the country of origin lacks a proper act that urges…