TNB Tech Minute: Trump Halts Canada Trade Talks Over New Tax on American Tech Companies - Tech News Briefing
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Victoria Craig: Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Friday, June 27th. I'm Victoria Craig for the Wall Street Journal. President Trump today terminated all trade talks with Canada, partly over a new digital services tax on American tech companies. The president said the US's northern neighbor has been, quote, a very difficult country to trade with. Trade negotiations have been taking place between the two sides for months. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also considering executive orders aimed at increasing power generation to meet AI demand, according to people familiar with the matter. That could include giving federal land to tech companies to build data centers and expediting grid connections and permitting for advanced power generation projects. Elsewhere, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring certain websites that host sexual content to verify viewers' ages. The Texas law requires websites that contain more than one-third sexual material harmful to minors to use what it calls reasonable age verification methods to determine those visitors are at least 18 years old. Violations are punished with a monetary fine. Search engines and major social media networks are exempt from the state's law. And finally, New York's governor Kathy Hochul signed into law legislation requiring local governments in the state to report cyber attacks on their networks within 72 hours. It also compels organizations to report any ransom payments made to hackers within 24 hours, and mandates security awareness training for New York government employees. The state's new law is in line with pending federal regulations being hammered out by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Monday's Tech News Briefing podcast.
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