Competitive spirit: tech after the pandemic
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
After a year of breakneck growth, the big five tech companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft—are coming back down to earth. We look at how the pandemic has changed the industry and spurred on smaller firms. Serbia’s military build-up is making its neighbours nervous. The country’s president tells us why he’s been amassing arms. And evolution usually unfolds over millions of years. But new research into Mozambique’s tuskless elephants suggests that it can be turbocharged by humans. Additional audio used with permission from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Shashank Joshi, |
| 0:09.0 | filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events |
| 0:14.5 | shaping your world. It's been two decades since the end of the Yugoslav Wars, but Serbia |
| 0:22.0 | is arming itself again, with jets, missiles, tanks and drones. All of that is making it |
| 0:29.4 | smaller neighbours a little anxious. We speak to Alexander Vucic, Serbia's president. |
| 0:36.5 | And you might think of evolution as something that happens very slowly over millions of |
| 0:41.6 | years, but new evidence from Mozambique suggests that animals can evolve at the pace of human |
| 0:48.3 | conflict, the proof lies in some very special elephants. |
| 0:55.9 | Just up though. |
| 1:02.1 | Today Apple will report its earnings. They'll be just the latest in this round of quarterly |
| 1:07.3 | results from the tech giants. |
| 1:09.0 | Good afternoon, my name is France, and I will be your conference operator today. At this |
| 1:13.6 | time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Facebook 3rd quarter 2021 earnings conference |
| 1:19.8 | call. |
| 1:21.3 | Welcome everyone, and thank you for standing by for the Alphabet 2,3 2021 earnings conference |
| 1:26.8 | call. |
| 1:27.8 | Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to Tesla's 3rd quarter 2021 Q&A webcast. |
| 1:33.4 | Revenue and profits for the five Western tech titans. That's Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, |
| 1:39.2 | Apple and Microsoft. I expected a grow by around 30 percent all told. That may sound like |
| 1:45.8 | a lot, but it marks a significant decrease from last quarter's results when profits grew |
| 1:50.9 | by a colossal 90 percent. The slowdown is a sign of the degree to which the pandemic |
| 1:56.0 | has changed the tech industry, but some have more reason for cheer than others. Smaller |
... |
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