World Cup stirs up colonial past

0:02Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, July 10th. And this is your FT News Briefing. American Big Tech is selling AI models to blacklisted Chinese companies. And a South Korean chip maker is going to have a splashy debut on the U.S. market today. Plus, the World Cup is creating a set of matchups with a lot of history. I think that people who aren't descended from a country that was colonized often don't realize the extent to which that's the lens through so many of us experience the World Cup. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

0:43The FT has confirmed that OpenAI and Google have been selling advanced AI models to Chinese tech giants blacklisted by the Pentagon. The U.S.-based companies are supplying Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent with access to AI tools. The Chinese companies get these through their Singapore subsidiaries. This makes the sales legal, but it exposes a gap in a U.S. ban on AI models being used by companies with alleged ties to China's military. OpenAI said it had cut off Alibaba from using the software that lets developers access models remotely. Both OpenAI and Google acknowledged that Chinese-owned companies can access its models outside of China.

1:22The news reignited calls for tighter U.S. regulation of AI models similar to its restrictions on exports of the chips used to train powerful models. The Chinese companies did not comment for this story.

1:40South Korea's SK Hynix is listing in the U.S. today. It'll be the biggest ever share sale in America by a foreign company, worth about$28 billion. The memory chip maker has a central role in the current AI boom, but is the sale worth the hype, or is it a sign that the market is in a bubble? Jennifer Hughes writes for our Lex column. Hi, Jen. Hey there. So what can you tell us about SK Hynix, except for the fact that it's, you know, having this massive share sale? You've mentioned the main thing about its business. It's a memory chip maker. It's one of the biggest alongside Samsung Electronics, also Korean.

2:17Chips are famously a really cyclical industry. Either there's lots and lots of demand or there's total oversupply. That pretty much applies to their shares as well. At the moment, since memory chips are so crucial for AI chips, they're about the hottest thing out there. Yeah, tell me a little bit more about investor appetite, because as you pointed out, there seems to be a lot of it. Yeah, absolutely. You've seen it a lot with the Asian chip makers with Samsung, with SK Hynix. I mean, its shares are up something like 200 % in Korea already this year. and also with the Taiwanese chip boundary giant TSMC, they've all gone absolutely crazy and they're driving up their home markets massively.

3:00So SK Hynix coming to the States for the first time, it's kind of like, well, it wants to branch out. It's almost too big for its home market. And because of the demand for chips at the moment, SK Hynix and the other chip makers are building extra capacity. They've got more orders than they can handle. So that money is going to go towards building new fabs, some in the US and some of its work is going to be there as well. Jen, I feel like I ask this every time a company goes public or in this case, you know, has a share sale. Is this a sign that the market is overheating? I feel like we'll only know that in hindsight.

3:37And I probably say this to you every time you ask. You know, it's only really in the rearview mirror that we'll know if things like the dot-com boom, AOL, Time Warner, that when we look back said, oh, this is when we went too far. I mean, and also in market terms, 28 billion would be a lot. It could be enough to oversupply the market. But we're in a place where just in the last few weeks, both Google and SpaceX have really raised more than$80 billion each. So 28 billion doesn't look so big. It might be a peak, but at At this point, we can't say. So should I stop asking this question, Jen? No, no.

4:15Keep asking it. One day we'll get it right. Jen Hughes writes for the FT's Lex column. Thanks so much, Jen. You're welcome.

4:29This World Cup's been the most inclusive one so far. For the first time ever, it started out as a 48-team competition. And that meant more representation from countries in the global south, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Morocco. And so there's something deeper here than what's happening on the pitch. The FT Safiya Ahmed has more. Several matchups in this World Cup have recalled quite a tense history. Emotionally, the World Cup does tend to accentuate the divide between the global north and the global south. That's the FT Simon Cooper. He's been covering this tournament. In the group stages, France played Senegal, England played Ghana, and then just yesterday in the quarterfinal, France played Morocco.

5:15Do you notice any similarities between those games? Well, these are all cases where a formerly colonized nation had to take on their colonizer. And fans either in those countries or who trace their ancestry back to them feel that relationship quite tangibly. Like Afwa Hirsch. She's an author, filmmaker, and host of The Legacy podcast. There is always a more charged atmosphere when a country is playing its former colonizer, because it's the only opportunity to feel that you can meet a country that for centuries told you you were inferior, that your civilization was inferior, your religion was inferior, your culture was inferior.

5:54Afua grew up in England and traces her heritage back to Ghana, two countries with that tense colonized colonizer dynamic. And when they played each other early on in the competition. I'm not very torn. I always support Ghana when Ghana plays England. For me, this is the only opportunity really I ever experienced where it feels like there could be a level playing field between these two countries. So when I see Ghana playing, I'm thinking of the fact that they are now on the world stage and that they are so good, so talented, that they really might have a chance to do something that has never really happened in any other arena in my lifetime.

6:31Now, this World Cup did start out with quite a few teams from the global south that evoked the feeling for fans that Uff was describing. But the quarterfinals started yesterday, and the only teams left now are European nations and Argentina, after France kicked Morocco out, winning 2-0. But of course, Simon says that doesn't mean there aren't any players left in the World Cup that trace their roots back to formerly colonized nations. There's a lot of exchange of players. So many of the players in, say, the empire nation have roots in former colonies, and And many of the players in the colonized nation grew up in the former empire.

7:08Take, for example, France. Their star forward, Kylian Mbappe, his father is from Cameroon, a former French colony. And his mother is of Algerian descent, another former French colony. Then you look at France's great playmaker, Michael Olisse. His mom, like Mbappe's, is French Algerian origin. And his dad is a Nigerian immigrant who was a Nigerian crickets international. so who came to the capital of the former empire. In a more global world with a lot of migration, Afwa says every footballer that traces their heritage back to a different country than they reside in has to ask themselves a pretty hard question.

7:46Do I play for the country I live in or do I play for the country I come from? In some quarters, there are conversations. I've heard some frustrated Ghanaians saying if all of the players of Ghanaian heritage played for Ghana instead of other European teams, we would have a completely different team. In fact, a University of Zurich study pretty much confirmed that sentiment. Through 1 ,500 simulated World Cup matches, it found that if you redistribute players back to their heritage nations, so British Ghanaians playing for Ghana instead of England, and someone like Mbappe playing for Algeria or Cameroon, the formerly colonized nations win nearly twice as often.

8:24But if you are one of those players with multiple identities, making the decision on which country to play for isn't always that simple. Simon says that sometimes it comes down to sheer access and resources. Western Europe is a place in the world where there are most clubs around the corner from you. Those clubs have good fields. They have coaches with diplomas who can show you how to play. Which is why a lot of players who represent formerly colonized countries actually train where the resources are. And then they take that footballing expertise back to their heritage nation. Look at Morocco's squad.

8:57Morocco had never been a great football nation, but in 2022, they got to the semis of the World Cup, which was the best performance ever by an African nation. And I think the change is they launched a very well-organized, aggressive campaign to recruit among their Western European diaspora. Most of their starting players live in Europe, and they trained there too. But then they chose to represent their home country on the global stage instead. Afua says that that can be quite an influential way to funnel resources from empire nations back into formerly colonized ones. I personally think that it's quite powerful when people who have the opportunity to play in Europe choose to play for the team of their heritage instead.

9:42And I think that speaks to the pride in their ancestry and culture, but it also speaks to just the sense of our countries being underdogs. and that that isn't also something that's happened in a vacuum, that they've been systematically disadvantaged from colonialism to today, where globalization and migration are really disadvantaging them in completely new terms. I'm Safiya Ahmed, reporting from New York City. If you want to hear more about the World Cup, specifically about tech making its way into the sport, take a listen to the FT's Techtonic podcast, which tackles those themes this season.

10:14We'll have a link to that in the show notes.

10:21This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back next week for the latest business news. The FT News Briefing is produced by Safiya Ahmed, Sonia Hudson, Katya Kumkova, Fiona Simon, and Victoria Craig. I'm your editor, Mark Filippino. Our show is mixed by Alex Higgins and Sam Giovinco. We get help from Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David De Silva, and Gavin Coleman. Our intern is Colvan Miltenberg. Our executive producer is Topher Forges. Flo Phillips is the FT's global head of audio. and our theme song is by Metaphor Music.

11:16When AI gives an answer, is your brand a part of it or not? Most companies have no idea which. GIST changes that. We show you where you're visible, where you're not, and give you the tools to do something about it. It's time to make AI work for your brand with GIST. Learn more at gist.ai. Capital raising is being redefined in real time, from macro disruptions and shifting investor expectations, to AI-driven demand and the rise of private credit. When headlines can tilt markets overnight, how can companies stay on course? Strategic Alternatives, the RBC Capital Markets podcast, explores how corporates and investors are navigating new pathways to raise capital, create value, and drive growth.

12:00When conditions change, alternatives matter. Listen to Strategic Alternatives, available wherever you get your podcasts.