Part of the Trump administration’s hard line against China is focused on intellectual property concerns. One fear is that widespread investment of Chinese money in startups gives the Chinese too much access to cutting-edge American tech innovations. That’s why legislation was passed to limit foreign investment. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, is now able to probe foreign investments in startups. And that is making investors, especially Chinese, balk. Deals are being abandoned. Silicon Valley watchers say Chinese money has pretty much stopped coming into the Valley. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks about it with Heather Somerville, a tech reporter for Reuters, based in San Francisco. (01/08/19)

If there’s one thing that’s clear from the 2016 election, it’s that the internet and social media have a huge influence on the political process. These days if you want to run a successful campaign, you need an effective digital strategy. Fortunately for politicians, Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook provide representatives to embed within a campaign. They help navigate digital platforms and give tech support. But are those tech reps getting too much access to politicians and future leaders? We talk about it with Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, D.C. (01/08/19)

Hardly anything happens these days that isn’t caught on video. Cell phones, security cameras, drones, even doorbells have cameras built in these days. All of that video would seem to be evidence galore for law enforcement, except for a few problems. First: there’s so much of it. Companies and law enforcement agencies are developing algorithms and machine learning to sift through all that video, looking for patterns or places or people. Second: that technology can have all the same biases and flaws as the people who designed it. Molly Wood talks about this with Kelly Gates, associate professor at the University of California San Diego, who’s studied the rise of forensic video evidence. (1/7/19)

If you live in a city with a lot of tech companies, expect that city to be pretty empty next week. That’s because tens of thousands of people are headed to Las Vegas for the annual tech trade show, CES. It’s the place where companies roll out their newest technologies, from huge televisions to gaming laptops to virtual reality gear to Wi-Fi connected plant feeders. It’s all there, but the tech industry has also changed a lot in the many years that CES has been happening. For one thing, it used to be called the Consumer Electronics Show. But the name has since officially changed to just CES. Because it’s not just all about the gadgets anymore, says Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Thompson about what to expect at the trade show this year. (01/04/19)

This week we’re looking ahead at what to expect in tech and business in 2019. Today we’re diving into tech policy and regulation. There’s the possibility of federal privacy legislation, net neutrality is still on the table, tons of state laws are in the works, and, in 2018 we saw the first big challenges around Section 230, the law that says tech platforms aren’t legally responsible for everything that gets posted on their platforms. That language in Section 230 is really crucial to the digital economy. But in 2018, Congress passed a law holding Google, Facebook and others responsible for sex trafficking posts on their sites. Molly Wood talks with Cecilia Kang, who covers tech policy for The New York Times. (01/03/19)

All this week, we’re looking ahead to 2019 and what’s likely to be big in business and technology. This year, expect the space economy to really take off. According to Space Angels, an investment firm that specializes in aerospace, private investment in space-related businesses has gone from a handful of companies and a couple hundred million dollars in 2009 to 375 companies and $15 billion today. The Trump administration is making space a huge economic priority, as well as a military one, creating a new Space Command in December to oversee and organize the country’s space-based operations. Kimberly Adams, a senior reporter at Marketplace and our resident space expert, says those moves are all part of an international race to space that’s got money at its core. (01/02/19)

It is New Year’s Eve, and that means we made it to the end of 2018, which was by any account a huge year in the world of business and technology. It was a year of gigantic data and privacy scandals, Amazon’s search for a second headquarters and MoviePass turning out to be too good to be true. This week, we look back at the year that was and ahead to the stories that will be big in 2019. Molly Wood talks with Tom Merritt, host of the “Daily Tech News Show.” (12/31/18)