News Roundup: US election special – from crypto high to the Taiwan Strait

Crypto soars ahead of Trump victory

The value of Bitcoin has hit a record high as Donald Trump is on the cusp of winning back the White House in the presidential race.

The world’s most valuable digital asset has experienced a boost, up over 7% on Tuesday alone, as markets bet on Trump’s victory.

Trump has pledged to make the US the “bitcoin and cryptocurrency capital of the world”. The value of Bitcoin has also jumped by $6,000 (£4,645) to a record high of $75,371.69, surpassing the previous high of $73,797.98 seen in March this year.

At the time of writing, Trump had won 279 seats over Democrat Kamala Harris’s 223 – with four results left to go.

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Taiwan anticipates continued “friendly” relationship with US

The United States will continue its friendly approach towards Taiwan after the presidential election and Taiwan will work to prevent China “making trouble” during the transition, a senior Taiwanese security official said on Wednesday.

The statement followed Donald Trump’s earlier comments on the campaign trail that Taiwan should pay to be protected and accused the island of stealing American semiconductor business.

Speaking to reporters in parliament, Taiwan National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen said:

“On relations across the Taiwan Strait we believe that the United States will continue its current approach of constraining China and being friendly to Taiwan.”

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Whirlwind of misinformation ahead of US election day

The internet was awash with misleading allegations and rumours about voter fraud ahead of the US election, with Republican-affiliated groups on message boards and social networks claiming unfounded irregularities.

The US government has also said that foreign actors, including Russia, are spreading fake videos aimed at undermining confidence in the electoral process.

The BBC reports that it has found hundreds of allegations of electoral fraud, many of which have been shown to be fake.

This week Trump himself claimed there was widespread fraud in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.

The state’s top election official Republican Al Schmidt has urged caution warning voters to beware of half truths and disinformation circulating on social media.

Experts are concerned that if Trump fails to win, he will again turn to social media to claim that the election result had been stolen from him, stoking further mistrust in the electoral process and unrest.

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US election result could have impact on Big Tech antitrust action  

Antitrust action against Big Tech companies has been broadly similar on both sides of the Atlantic during the Biden administration, with regulators seeking to limit the market dominance of companies such as Facebook parent Meta, Google, Amazon, and limit anti-competitive practices.

But a Trump presidency could signal the US adopting a much less adversarial stance, potentially abandoning the parallel antitrust approaches in the US and Europe with a view to breaking up Big Tech companies.

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Trump claims Tech titans have reached out to back him

There’s no doubt where Elon Musk stands on the US presidential election, but Donald Trump has claimed he has the backing of more of the biggest names in US Tech, with a running list of Tech titans including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

During a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Trump shared that he received a call from Sundar Pichai congratulating him on his shift at a McDonald’s restaurant.

“This McDonald’s thing, I want to tell you, it’s one of the biggest things we’ve seen on Google,” Trump claimed Pichai told him. Other Tech Titans who have ‘sucked up’  to Trump include Mark Zuckerberg who spoke to him after the summer assassination attempt. Meta has since asserted that Zuckerberg has not endorsed any candidate for the upcoming election.

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Social media in the spotlight over US election content

As Americans head to the polls platforms such as Meta, TikTok, X and YouTube were under intense pressure to manage what was expected to be a flood of disinformation, heightened by the rise of artificial intelligence.

The issue has been growing since the 2016 presidential election when foreign powers were first identified as hijacking social platforms in an effort to sway the outcome, most notably Russian actors posting false information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. 

Since then, Meta says it has invested more than $20 billion around safety and security for global elections since 2016, and has more recently deprioritised political content on Instagram and Threads.

 On Facebook and Instagram, Meta said it’s adding fact-check labels to election content that’s been debunked. The reach of posts that are deemed false, altered or partly false by fact-checkers will also be reduced.

TikTok said it expects to invest more than $2 billion in trust and safety this year, which includes election integrity and  is partnering with fact-checking organizations that label unsubstantiated content.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said there was only so much companies could do against  “a firehose of disinformation out there.”

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Election experts dismiss Elon Musk’s bid to jettison electronic voting machines 

Elon Musk’s one-man campaign to do away with voting machines because they are a security risk have been widely dismissed by election experts, who state his claims are unfounded.

Vote-counting machines are simply not sophisticated enough to pose a hacking risk because they are secure, offline and highly regulated, insist election regulators.

With 98% of votes cast on physical ballot papers, these are then scanned offline by tabulators, which officials say are far more accurate and cost-effective than hand counting.

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