New York Times

In the months before Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s arrival in Beijing, the Obama Administration quietly held an extraordinary briefing for the Chinese military leadership on a subject officials have rarely discussed in public: the Pentagon’s emerging doctrine for defending against cyberattacks against the United States -- and for using its cybertechnology against adversaries, including the Chinese.

The idea was to allay Chinese concerns about plans to more than triple the number of American cyberwarriors to 6,000 by the end of 2016, a force that will include new teams the Pentagon plans to deploy to each military combatant command around the world. But the hope was to prompt the Chinese to give Washington a similar briefing about the many People’s Liberation Army units that are believed to be behind the escalating attacks on American corporations and government networks. So far, the Chinese have not reciprocated -- a point Hagel plans to make in a speech at the PLA’s National Defense University. The effort, senior Pentagon officials say, is to head off what Hagel and his advisers fear is the growing possibility of a fast-escalating series of cyberattacks and counterattacks between the United States and China.

This is a concern especially at a time of mounting tensions over China’s expanding claims of control over what it argues are exclusive territories in the East and South China Seas, and over a new air defense zone. In interviews, American officials say their latest initiatives were inspired by Cold-War-era exchanges held with the Soviets so that each side understood the “red lines” for employing nuclear weapons against each other. President Obama told the Chinese president that the United States, unlike China, did not use its technological powers to steal corporate data and give it to its own companies; its spying, one of President Obama’s aides later told reporters, is solely for “national security priorities.”

But to the Chinese, for whom national and economic security are one, that argument carries little weight. For that reason, the disclosures changed the discussion between the top officials at the Pentagon and the State Department and their Chinese counterparts in quiet meetings intended to work out what one official called “an understanding of rules of the road, norms of behavior,” for China and the United States.

[Commentary] All of my conversational habits have matured beyond the static phone dates of yore. We are now in constant and continuous communication with our friends, co-workers and family over the course of a day.

These interactions can help us feel physically close, even if they happen through a screen. And because this kind of communication is less formal than a phone call or an email, it feels more like the kind of casual conversation you might have over a meal or while watching television together. These conversations can also be infused with a lot more fun than a regular text message, because they often include cutesy features that let you add digital doodles to video messages, or send virtual kisses or cartoon characters. The downside is that it can be hard to juggle all the various ways to communicate.

But a modern kind of application, including one that we were experimenting with on that lazy Sunday, combines all those interactions -- and is designed with couples in mind. This focus on couples is relatively new. The online and mobile dating industry has built many tools and services for single people who are looking for romantic partners and new friends. They’ve evolved from websites like Match.com and OKCupid to mobile apps like Tinder that let people swipe through potential dates and select the ones that pique their interest. But in recent months, several entrepreneurs have been shifting their attention to people after they meet a mate.

“Tech entrepreneurs, long obsessed with making apps to help you find a relationship, have now begun trying to solve the problem of staying happy in one,” wrote Ann Friedman on The Cut, a blog of New York magazine. Friedman points to apps like Avocado, Couple and Between as smartphone apps that “keep you close with your partner through the power of a smartphone alone.”

[Commentary] Today, even as so many barriers have fallen -- whether at elite universities, where women outnumber men, or in running for the presidency, where polls show that fewer people think gender makes a difference -- computer engineering, the most innovative sector of the economy, remains behind.

Many women who want to be engineers encounter a field where they not only are significantly underrepresented but also feel pushed away. Tech executives often fault schools, parents or society in general for failing to encourage girls to pursue computer science. But something else is at play in the industry: Among the women who join the field, 56 percent leave by midcareer, a startling attrition rate that is double that for men, according to research from the Harvard Business School.

A culprit, many people in the field say, is a sexist, alpha-male culture that can make women and other people who don’t fit the mold feel unwelcome, demeaned or even endangered.

But computer science wasn’t always dominated by men. “In the beginning, the word ‘computers’ meant ‘women,’ ” says Ruth Oldenziel, a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who studies history, gender and technology. Six women programmed one of the most famous computers in history -- the 30-ton Eniac -- for the United States Army during World War II. But as with many professions, Dr Oldenziel said, once programming gained prestige, women were pushed out.

Over the decades, the share of women in computing has continued to decline. In 2012, just 18 percent of computer-science college graduates were women, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. This lack of women has become of greater concern in the industry for a number of reasons.

There are simply more jobs than can be filled by available talent. Some 1.2 million computing jobs will be available in 2022, yet United States universities are producing only 39 percent of the graduates needed to fill them, the NCWIT estimates. Tech’s biggest companies say that recruiting women is a priority. “If we do that, there’s no question we’ll more than double the rate of technology output in the world,” Larry Page, the chief executive of Google, said. Yet at Google, less than a fifth of the engineers are women.

[Commentary] It is hard to say how rugged the questions will be when Comcast goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend its proposed megamerger with Time Warner Cable.

We do know that Comcast is feeling pretty confident about its chances. In a recent interview with C-Span, David Cohen, an executive vice president at Comcast and the man who will represent the company, said, “ I have been struck by the absence of rational, knowledgeable voices in this space coming out in opposition or even raising serious questions about the transaction.” Really? How can the largest cable company in the country bid to buy the second-largest and gain control over 19 of the country’s top 20 markets -- corralling a 30 percent market share in cable and a 40 percent share in broadband -- and there be no serious questions? Well, I’ll chime in:

1. Is the merger good for the American consumer?
2. Why isn’t there more competition in the cable business?
3. Should one company own a lot of the pipes and much of what goes through them?
4. Is the cable merger about cable? Cable is a declining legacy business, shrinking even as the merger works its way through the regulatory process. “We want to be a tech company, not a wire company,” Roberts told my colleague James Stewart. In that context, the fact that Comcast is willing to divest about three million cable customers to remain below the threshold of 30 million is far less important than the fact that post-merger, it will own 40 percent of the high-speed broadband in the country.
5. Is the deal really good for innovation?
6. Will a bigger Comcast allow other broadband options to flourish? In 20 states, there are significant obstacles and in some cases, outright prohibitions, for municipal broadband efforts and much of that was engineered by the cable industry. In Colorado, North Carolina and elsewhere, well-funded lobbying efforts and public information campaigns supported by companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have fought back homegrown alternatives for cheap, reliable broadband.

Since announcing plans to take over Time Warner Cable two months ago, Comcast has steadily beat the drum with one big message: The merger will not limit consumers’ choice in picking a cable-television or high-speed Internet service provider.

Comcast is expected to repeat this message twice -- during the first Senate hearings on the $45 billion deal, and again in legal filings it is expected to give to the two government agencies reviewing the merger.

But in highlighting how the two companies do not compete with each another in any metropolitan market, Comcast has exposed a potential weakness in its argument, legal experts say. The lack of overlap in cable TV is the legacy of government-granted local monopolies.

But the government never granted monopolies in the unregulated, highly lucrative business of high-speed Internet service -- an area where the two companies face little to no competition. As a result, regulators are likely to focus as much on how the merger will affect the market for high-speed Internet, also known as broadband, as how it will affect cable TV service. Comcast, however, might have provided evidence that it faces little competition in high-speed Internet in dozens of Federal Communications Commission petitions filed over the last few years seeking to get out from under local cable rate regulation.

In the petitions, Comcast argues that the nation’s two satellite television companies, DirecTV and DISH Network, meet those requirements in many markets by accounting for at least 15 percent of television service. While a few markets also have telecommunications, usually AT&T or Verizon, competing to provide television service, most of the petitions cite only the satellite companies as rivals. But satellite companies do not offer high-speed Internet service, as the technology prevents it. That means that in those markets, Comcast is usually the only provider of high-speed broadband using a cable modem -- the fastest service going, next to fiber-optic cable, which is not widely available in the United States.

The top data protection official for the European Union called for member governments to restore public trust in the Internet by pressing ahead with an overhaul of the bloc’s electronic privacy laws by the end of 2014.

The official, Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor, also called on President Barack Obama to stick to his pledge to review American privacy rules in the wake of disclosures that have exposed the vast reach of government surveillance that has shaken trans-Atlantic relations. Another bill, aimed at providing more equitable access for companies and consumers to the Internet -- “network neutrality” -- and making mobile phone roaming less costly to consumers is now before the European Parliament, which is scheduled to vote on that legislation.

Hustinx stressed the urgency of keeping the privacy legislation moving through the Council of the European Union in Brussels, the body in which national governments meet to adopt laws and coordinate policies. Hustinx called on the bloc’s 28 member states to reach a deal with one another and with the Parliament by the end of 2014, because “the 21st century requires stronger rights, stronger responsibilities, more consistency across Europe.” Hustinx also challenged the United States government to do more in updating its own rules.

“There are some interesting movements in Washington, but we’d like to see much more,” he said. “If trust should be rebuilt, then it certainly takes a number of actions at the other side as well.” Hustinx suggested that European governments could be given added reassurance they would be in sync with the American approach to data privacy, if a group led by John Podesta, a special adviser to President Obama, issues its report on data privacy this spring as expected.

The Chinese government called on the United States to explain its actions and halt the practice of cyberespionage, after news reports said that the National Security Agency had hacked its way into the computer systems of Huawei, China’s largest telecommunications company.

Even as Washington grapples with the diplomatic and political fallout of the Snowden leaks, the more urgent issue, companies and analysts say, is economic.

It is impossible to see now the full economic ramifications of the spying disclosures -- in part because most companies are locked in multiyear contracts -- but the pieces are beginning to add up as businesses question the trustworthiness of American technology products. Despite the tech companies’ assertions that they provide information on their customers only when required under law -- and not knowingly through a back door -- the perception that they enabled the spying program has lingered.

Media General said that it would acquire LIN Media for $1.6 billion in a cash and stock deal that will create the second-largest local television broadcasting company.

Both Media General and LIN Media operate local television stations that act as affiliates to the big broadcast networks like ABC, CBS and NBC. The combined company will own 74 stations in 46 markets and reach 26.5 million households, or 23 percent of the market in the United States. It will rank behind only Sinclair Broadcast Group in terms of number of stations operated.

As the messaging wars heat up, security seems to be the big differentiator -- the levels of security range from “military grade” to lightweight, depending on the app. But all of them have one thing in common, said the cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier: You shouldn’t use them if your life is on the line.