Tue 08/05 – Spygate At TSMC?

Today’s tech headlines: TSMC security, AI scraping, and creator payouts

This episode covers five high-impact stories shaping technology, business strategy, and policy: alleged trade-secret theft at TSMC over two-nanometer chip work, allegations of stealth crawling by Perplexity, Figma’s controversial IPO pricing choice, Eleven Labs launching commercial AI-generated music, and Google DeepMind’s new Genie 3 world model and Kaggle Game Arena benchmarking — plus Patreon’s milestone creator payouts.

TSMC two-nanometer trade-secret investigation and national security risks

Why it matters: The world’s leading foundry detected unusual access patterns, disciplined personnel, and triggered legal investigations. The story raises supply-chain security and national-security implications for advanced chip process protection and insider-threat monitoring.

AI scraping and robots.txt evasion: Perplexity under scrutiny

Key issues: Cloudflare alleges Perplexity used undeclared user agents, rotating IPs, and AS changes to bypass robots.txt and WAF rules. This episode explains web crawler ethics, bot management, and the limitations of standard site controls against stealth crawlers.

Startup IPO strategy: Figma’s deliberate pricing decision explained

Takeaway: Figma chose a lower IPO price to onboard long-term institutional shareholders, sacrificing potential immediate proceeds to gain investor stability — a clear example of pricing strategy trade-offs for tech IPOs and direct listing alternatives.

AI-generated commercial music and rights management

Eleven Labs launched Eleven Music with licensing deals for independent-label training data and safeguards to avoid imitating specific artists. The episode explores music AI, copyright risk mitigation, and how licensing partnerships can provide legal cover for commercial AI music generation.

Generative 3D worlds and AI benchmarking

DeepMind’s Genie 3 creates minute-long interactive 3D spaces with visual memory and promptable world events. Paired with Kaggle Game Arena, which will host AI chess tournaments with strict rules, listeners get a look at next-gen world models and evaluation frameworks for reasoning and strategic AI.

Creator economy scale: Patreon hits $10 billion in payouts

Patreon now reports over $10 billion paid to creators and 25 million paid memberships. The platform’s pivot to multimedia tools, podcast features, and free-to-paid funnels illustrates recurring revenue strategies for independent creators.

• Security: Monitor insider access patterns and prepare legal recourse for trade-secret leaks.
• Web operators: Harden bot detection beyond robots.txt and track user-agent and AS anomalies.
• Creators and startups: Weigh IPO pricing vs. long-term investor alignment and market signal.

This episode is essential listening for founders, security teams, AI researchers, digital-rights managers, and creators tracking industry shifts in governance, licensing, and product strategy.