Anwar wants to boost Malaysia-Germany ties
KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today expressed Malaysia's intentions to further strengthen relations with Germany.
The prime minister told this to outgoing German ambassador to Malaysia Dr Peter Blomeyer, who paid him a courtesy call at the Prime Minister's Office.
Anwar said Malaysia wants to work with Germany in areas of economy, education and culture, in particular.
"Beyond expanding trade and investment opportunities, cooperation in education including Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) as well as cultural exchange can foster mutual understanding and appreciation of diversity," he said in a Facebook post.
He added that such a comprehensive relationship would further enhance people-to-people ties between the two nations and contribute to sustainable shared progress.
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The Star
28 minutes ago
- The Star
Anwar leaves for Rome to begin week-long working trip in Italy, France and Brazil
SEPANG: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has left for Italy on the first leg of his week-long visit which includes Paris and Rio de Janeiro. The Italian visit, Anwar's first as Prime Minister, is aimed at strengthening bilateral relations with the European nation. The Prime Minister and his entourage left via the Bukit Raya Complex in Sepang in a chartered flight. Anwar is set to meet captains of industry from 36 Italian firms, including multinational companies such as Leonardo SpA, STMicroelectronics and Ferrero during his maiden working visit. Malaysian Ambassador to Italy Datuk Zahid Rastam said the meeting will take place during the Malaysia-Italy Economic Partnership Roundtable on July 2. 'In addition to the 36 Italian companies and several industry associations here, Malaysian companies accompanying the Prime Minister will also be in attendance,' he said in a virtual briefing ahead of the three-day working visit. Leonardo specialises in aerospace, defence and security, STMicroelectronics is a semiconductor company, while Ferrero is one of the world's largest sweet-packaged food companies. All three MNCs have a significant presence in Malaysia. Italy is the third-largest national economy in the European Union (EU) and the world's eighth-largest by gross domestic product (GDP). Its economy accounts for about 12 per cent of the EU's GDP. Besides the business meeting, Anwar, who is also the Finance Minister, is also set to discuss bilateral cooperation on trade, investment, defence, agro-commodity and digital economy with his counterpart Giorgia Meloni. Anwar's visit is at the invitation of Meloni. They are also expected to touch on the Malaysia-EU Free Trade Agreement (MEUFTA). The Prime Minister will be accompanied by five Cabinet ministers - Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, Transport Minister Anthony Loke, Agriculture and Food Security Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu, Defence Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Khaled Nordin, and Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz. Also part of the delegation is Deputy Energy Transition and Water Transformation Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir.
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
Why Mark Zuckerberg and Meta can't build the future
Last week, a notification flashed. 'Add your email address for extra security,' my phone chirped. It was from WhatsApp. I stared at the screen, a single question forming in my mind: Security? Or surveillance? I tapped 'No.' The feeling wasn't anger. It was a cold, familiar déjà vu. Just days earlier, Meta had finally confirmed it: Ads were coming. Mark Zuckerberg had broken his word. Again. 'No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks.' That was the founding promise of WhatsApp. When Jan Koum and Brian Acton built WhatsApp, they were obsessed with simplicity and user trust. Acton even scrawled the motto on a piece of paper and gave it to Koum as a daily reminder. In 2014, when Facebook (now Meta) acquired WhatsApp for US$19bil, Mark Zuckerberg promised to honor these principles. That was then. For a decade, Zuckerberg failed to go beyond the newsfeed. Facebook phone? Flop. Free Basics Internet? Banned. Libra crypto? Dead. Metaverse? Billions burned, no payoff. Now, as AI reshapes the world, Meta's stuck – trailing ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. As of mid-2025, Meta's best model ranks about 140 Elo points behind Gemini and 90 behind Claude – clear proof it's trailing the front-runners in head-to-head arena voting. Surprisingly, Llama 4, the latest model, ranks even lower than its predecessor, Llama 3.1. So the WhatsApp ad play is retreating to the old playbook. Wall Street cheers, and shares soar nearly 3%. But this shift masked a deeper sign of stagnation. Here is a leader who has architected a system to ensure he never has to learn from his mistakes. Either through luck or design, Zuckerberg has pioneered a system of absolute control, cemented by a dual-class share structure that grants him super-voting rights. While he owns 13% of the company's stock, this structure grants him around 54% of the voting power. Zuckerberg remains CEO and de facto emperor of Meta – no matter the crisis, no matter the cost. When you can't be fired, you can't be taught. He holds the wheel, unopposed. And if there's one other founder who stands as the starkest contrast to Mark Zuckerberg in strategy and in style, it's Steve Jobs . The Steve Jobs that people forget I teach innovation at IMD. That means I also hear a fair number of speakers telling Apple's story. What memory sometimes does to people is that it glorifies failure to the point of hero worship. We flatten timelines. We cherry-pick triumphs. But the worst affront for me isn't when someone gets the facts wrong (though that's bad enough). It's when they get the lessons wrong. I remember one speaker praising Steve Jobs's original Macintosh team and their 'pirate' mentality. Maybe you know the quote. Jobs once said, 'It's better to be a pirate than join the Navy .' He turned the Mac division into a rebel crew inside Apple – a startup within a company. He even hoisted a pirate flag over one part of the campus. The speaker framed it as a masterclass in creativity. A celebration of rebel talent. What the speaker forgot was the ending of that story. The rebellion didn't save Apple ; it nearly sank it. Jobs's pirate flag flew high over a commercial catastrophe. He promised 500,000 Macs sold in the first year. The reality? A humiliating 10% of that. The machine was a marvel of vision and a monument to its creator's ego. Jobs's stubbornness was baked into its very circuits. No cooling fan, because he hated the noise – leading to the nickname 'the beige toaster', as it constantly overheated. No hard drive. Not enough memory to run Word and Excel. The famous '1984' ad promised a revolution against Big Brother. Apple delivered a computer that couldn't handle a spreadsheet. The mercurial, often impulsive young founder continued unabated. By most accounts, he was a terrible manager. His clashes with Apple's CEO had grown so intense that by 1985, the board agreed to oust Jobs from the very company he had founded. This first Steve Jobs wasn't a story of genius; it was hubris. And it ended, as it had to, in exile. But what happened next is a study in personal growth. Is Mark Zuckerberg unteachable? My initial conclusion is that part of the problem is that Mark Zuckerberg is unteachable. I want to clarify what I mean by 'unteachable'. Many observers rightly point out that Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly learned and adapted in business terms – pivoting to mobile, bringing in Sheryl Sandberg , reorganising to counter TikTok. As a strategist, he's remarkably teachable. But the focus of this piece is different: he seems unteachable about the non-market consequences of his empire. The same founder control that powered Meta's business triumphs also insulated Zuckerberg from ever truly reckoning with Facebook's societal costs: the mental health crisis among teens, the erosion of shared reality, the amplification of division. If the founder can't be fired, the company never has to internalise those costs. That raises an uncomfortable question – one Jim Collins might pose: If your company disappeared tomorrow, would it leave a hole that couldn't easily be filled by someone else? The first major test Former Meta insider Sarah Wynn‑Williams writes in Careless People that Facebook never learns, because it never has to. The most damning case of this unteachability? The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar . Throughout the 2010s Facebook raced to dominate South-East Asia . In Myanmar – population 50 million – Facebook became so widespread it often represents the internet itself. Yet in 2015 the company employed just two Burmese‑speaking moderators. The engagement algorithm found its ultimate accelerant: hate. Posts calling the Rohingya people 'dogs', 'maggots', and 'rapists' didn't just appear; they went viral, amplified by Facebook's own systems. Calls for extermination became the platform's background hum. The machine was working perfectly, optimising for clicks and comments, even if the content was pure poison. UN investigators were blunt, concluding Facebook played a 'determining role' in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that saw 700,000 people driven from their homes. This wasn't an accident. It was a business choice. At the peak of the crisis Meta had one Burmese moderator for every 200,000 users. A former UN official put it plainly: 'Facebook has turned into a beast' – a beast that remains wildly profitable. What happened next, of course, is something you already know. The perfect voting machine Mark Zuckerberg learned to talk the talk on privacy. Then he doubled down on selling ads to politicians with zero safeguards. Cambridge Analytica , the now-notorious consultancy, exploited Facebook's lax data-sharing policies to psychologically profile voters and sway them with targeted propaganda. But the scandal went deeper. Later revelations exposed how Facebook's own microtargeting tools powered internal 'deterrence' campaigns. The goal? Lower turnout. Select users – young women, white liberals, Black voters – received dark posts: invisible, nonpublic messages engineered to demoralise and distract. No accountability. No transparency. Just suppression at scale. Facebook didn't write the messages. But it built the system. Then sold it to whoever paid. You'd think a scandal that exposed Facebook's role in influencing a democratic election would trigger sweeping reforms. That governments would rein in the platform. Audit the code. Lock down user data. Enforce real privacy. But no. They didn't confront Facebook . They courted Zuckerberg. They kissed his ring. Over nearly two decades at Facebook's helm, Mark Zuckerberg has made bold moves and big mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable. What matters is whether you learn and adapt. Steve Jobs had to. He was fired from the company he founded. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, never needed to live through that kind of reckoning. Now imagine a parallel universe where the board replaced Zuckerberg after the refugee crisis in Myanmar with a careful, values-driven CEO who delivered only mediocre returns but prioritised societal well-being. Yes, we'd lose the business marvel that is Meta: the incredible execution, the bold bets on AR/VR, the open-source AI strategy. But we might gain something harder to measure: a global communications platform that enhances rather than erodes human flourishing. This piece isn't a rejection of Zuckerberg's business genius. It only asks whether winning that game was worth the price we've all paid. These aren't competing views, I hope – rather, they're complementary lenses for understanding one of history's most consequential companies. The surprising endorsement from every world leader After Trump's election, Zuckerberg addressed a global summit of world leaders. His own executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams , braced for backlash. Instead, it was a bubble bath. 'How do we build the next Facebook in our country?' one prime minister softballed. 'How does connectivity help in actual day-to-day governance?' asked Chile's President Michelle Bachelet . Before Zuckerberg could even reply, Canada's Justin Trudeau jumped in. He praised electronic benefit transfers, internet infrastructure, and online efficiency. He might as well have read from Facebook's press kit. Not a single question about the election. Not one. Of course not. Trump's election didn't scare them. It impressed them. Zuckerberg controls the most influential media platform on the planet. Facebook gets people elected. These leaders want in. But politics doesn't build enduring companies. Innovation does. And in the end, innovation keeps the score. How Apple grew where Facebook didn't What happened to Steve Jobs is not just a comeback story. It's a study in personal growth. After being ousted from Apple in 1985, he spent 12 years in the wilderness. He founded NeXT – a sleek but struggling computer company. He bought Pixar – then a niche graphics studio. Both ventures moved slowly, forcing him to grapple with failure. And, more importantly, with himself. At NeXT, he was chastened. At Pixar, he matured. Working alongside creative giants like Ed Catmull and John Lasseter , Jobs wasn't the star. He was the support. He learned how to support brilliance rather than control it. He witnessed a culture where creativity and technology collaborated, not competed. And when Pixar finally triumphed with Toy Story , Jobs's confidence returned, but now laced with humility. By the time he returned to Apple in 1997, Jobs was transformed. He didn't just launch new products; he killed vanity projects. He simplified the product line. He listened more. Delegated more. Built a world-class team – one that included Jony Ive , Tim Cook , and Avie Tevanian – and empowered them. Most importantly, he gave up being the smartest guy in the room. The young Jobs clashed with Disney's Michael Eisner . The older Jobs built trust with CEO Bob Iger . He once refused to bring iTunes to Windows. Later, when his team made the case, he listened, and then threw his energy behind making the cross-platform experience exceptional. Even the iPhone wasn't a solo vision. It was a masterwork of integration, combining innovations from independent teams into one cohesive breakthrough. He no longer had to own every idea. He had to integrate the best ones across the company. And the most poignant part? His most productive years came after his cancer diagnosis. With time running out, he became obsessed with legacy over ego. Every decision counted. The result? Not just the iPhone or iPad, but a company culture strong enough to outlive him. You can't innovate beyond ads unless the leader evolves Apple's rebirth came from a founder who changed. Meta's stagnation comes from one who won't. Just look at the pattern: 2013 – Facebook phone: A partnership with HTC to launch a 'Facebook-centric' phone flopped so badly AT&T pulled it within months. phone: A partnership with HTC to launch a 'Facebook-centric' phone flopped so badly pulled it within months. 2015–2016 – Free Basics: An effort to offer free internet in developing countries got banned in India for violating net neutrality. for violating net neutrality. 2019 – Libra: Touted as a revolution in global finance, this cryptocurrency unravelled after regulators pushed back and partners like Visa and PayPal jumped ship. and PayPal jumped ship. 2021 – Metaverse/Reality Labs : Tens of billions spent, and still no clear return. Even Zuckerberg began dialing down the hype by 2023. These aren't just failed bets. They're signals: Something deeper isn't working. Now, as generative AI takes center stage, Meta should be poised to win. AI can supercharge its ad empire. Unlike Google, which risks cannibalising its search empire, Meta faces no such internal disruption. And yet … ChatGPT owns the conversation. Claude leads in usability. Midjourney dazzles in image generation. Google's Veo impresses in video. Even China's DeepSeek is gaining traction with developers by embracing an open-source approach.2 Where's Meta? Still tweaking the newsfeed. Still optimising outrage. Still chasing clicks. It's not a talent problem. Or a budget problem. It's a leadership problem. There is no second act. Steve Jobs was exiled, and in the wilderness, he was forced to grow. He returned, humbled and transformed, to build the most valuable company on Earth. Conversely, Mark Zuckerberg has built himself a gilded cage. A kingdom of dual-class shares and unchecked control. He has architected a system wherein he would never need to learn, never have to change, never be fired. And it worked. That's the tragedy. His company, and his legacy, are paying the price. Vision without growth curdles into stagnation. Ambition without humility becomes a liability. Meta's Unteachable King cannot build the future. He can only repeat the past – one ad at a time. – Inc./Tribune News Service
Malaysiakini
2 hours ago
- Malaysiakini
PM chooses key people in govt, not the royals
YOURSAY | 'You either don't understand your role or you don't have the courage.' PM pushes back against lobby to extend CJ's term, calls it politicisation GP20257: Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, if you haven't figured it out yet, let me spell it out. The issue isn't that every retiring civil servant should have his/her tenure extended, but the excellent ones should, especially when there's a vacuum in key positions. There was no lack of candidates for the MACC chief or IGP posts, but they were duly filled, not according to normal promotion procedures. In Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat's case, it's very clear that a very good CJ is being bypassed, even according to normal procedures. It's not just ordinary people who are asking for her extension, but the Malaysian Bar, respected leaders, and other professionals. To us, it means; 1) Your judgment is flawed and unreliable; 2) You don't understand your role, or you don't have the courage to advise the king on your choice. It's the prime minister who chooses the key people in his or her government, not the royals, as the royals in this country, according to the Federal Constitution, do not govern. Top appointments to the government are the PM's choices. As long as the choices are made according to the constitution, the king makes the PM's choices official. That's the meaning of the king acting on the advice of the PM. It takes a PM with a backbone, not a glib mouth, to advise the king on his role. Apparently, Anwar can't do the job. Just resign and spare us this misgovernance. BobbyO: What a lame excuse. Anwar, do you think the people are fools, or do you think that power is in your hands and you will decide according to your own selfish agenda, just as you did in extending MACC Azam Baki's tenure not once but thrice? Remember, even the toughest and cruellest dictator has fallen, as they think that power is theirs to wield as they like. Remember Umno and jailed former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak. They thought that they were unbeatable as they had the finance, resources, and manpower. Look at where they stand today. Such a lame excuse, and Malaysians can very clearly see through you and your motive if you do not want to extend Tengku Maimun's tenure. Why then did you extend Azam's tenure? Is it because it worked in your favour? Was it not a political move? Why were the others due for promotion made to wait? What about the inspector-general of police and his deputy? Why was the deputy not promoted to the next level? It is so clear to see that you are frightened of promoting decent and honest civil servants. Seriously, Anwar, stop taking the people for granted. Umno did, and they lost big - four states to the opposition. What will be PKR's position at the next election? Reduced to the level below MIC and MCA? Half full Cup: Let's face it, our PM does not welcome most of the people's opinions, especially the professional group and his supporters, because he feels he is now the maharaja of the day. In fact, he has even forgotten or refused to recognise who his supporters are for the past 20 over years. The fault lies in his supporters (especially the urban citizens). If we look at what he did when he was in Umno, he was a very racist leader, hence his meteoric rise to be the deputy president of Umno. He was almost on the verge of becoming the president (prime minister). Most of his reforms at the time were very much at the expense of a certain group of people. We have been badly mistaken, or maybe we have fooled ourselves. Has DAP also taken advantage of the people's foolishness to gain power and enjoys that power now? BetterMY: Thank you for shooting yourself in the foot once again! The rakyat is fully aware of your administration's tactics of only retaining those subservient to you. Where you should have retained talent, you let them go, and where you should have dispensed with them, you gleefully retained. We will keep this in mind when voting in the 16th general election. Mind you, we're not racist to completely dispel of BN and PN, there are good administrators there too. It's just a matter of ridding BN and PN of the extremist and corrupt voices. Once that is done, we'll have a credible alternative to your incompetent administration. We have given you an opportunity, and you squandered it. We have given you that opportunity despite your entitled attitude towards the top post since 1998. Your days at the administration are numbered, and you will soon join the one-term PM list. And before any ardent and blind supporters of Pakatan Harapan jump on this, please be known that I have voted for Harapan since GE10. So my thinking is both reflective of the groundswell against Harapan and also the maturing of our electorate. The above is a selection of comments posted by Malaysiakini subscribers. Only paying subscribers can post comments. In the past year, Malaysiakinians have posted over 100,000 comments. Join the Malaysiakini community and help set the news agenda. Subscribe now. These comments are compiled to reflect the views of Malaysiakini subscribers on matters of public interest. Malaysiakini does not intend to represent these views as fact.
