"Before 2008, firms on the east coast of America brought its economy to the brink of collapse. They are still at it," wrote VA Nageswaran. "Now they have been joined by firms on the west coast whose products and business practices have emerged as threats both to the economy and the society." Technology is making workers redundant: "Citigroup announced that it had planned to eliminate up to half of its 20,000 technology and operations jobs because those jobs could be automated". Silicon Valley giants have become "near-monopolies". "Monopolies invest less and innovate less" and buy up "emerging start-ups to reduce competition" which is a "misuse of productive investment to maintain monopoly rents". "Google and Microsoft did not expect that a book-retailer, Amazon, would become a competition in their highest-growth market, cloud services," wrote Prof V Wadhwa. "For that matter, the global taxi industry never imagined that a Silicon Valley start up, Uber, would become its greatest threat. Telco providers never dreamed that some smartphone applications, WhatsApp and Skype, would decimate their text and mobile revenues." As electric cars become cheaper and more capable demand for oil will fall. "Imagine the effect on Ambani's oil refineries when there is a massive shift away from fossil fuels." People are not just in danger of losing jobs. Banks in the UK have closed hundreds of branches to reduce cost and increase profits, exposing customers to internet fraud as they are forced to transact business online. Customers do not receive adequate compensation in case of fraud. Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated everyday and are using tools developed by national agencies which they have stolen by hacking. A major attack on global financial systems will cause damage in trillions of dollars. Recently hackers employed by the Chinese government hacked into computers of a naval contractor in the US and obtained huge amounts of highly sensitive data. There are specialists who can hack into computers used by hackers by tracing their malware, but this is illegal under US law. the Laskar-e-Taiba, which wants to destroy the Indian state, has developed a mobile phone which automatically connects to the nearest telecom tower of any service provider and immediately disconnects if any attempt is made to trace the call. Nothing can be safe from hackers. Luckily the Indian government has taken precautions to save our biometric details by storing all the data behind walls which are 5 feet thick. These are not firewalls but walls made of brick. Wonderful.
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