The New York Times - 19.09.2019

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 B1

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TECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE

3 ENVIRONMENT

President Trump is defending

his plan to end California’s

legal authority to set its own

emissions standards.

6 TECH FIX

The improvements evident in

the new iPhone 11s may not

be enough to make you give

up your current smartphone.

9 SPORTS

The Patriots and the

Cowboys are enormous

favorites on Sunday. So far,

bettors are undeterred.

MIDLAND, TEX. — When Mike Wilkinson moved

to Midland, Tex., in 2017, he hoped the world’s

largest oil field would change his life. His mar-

riage was in tatters. He owed tens of thou-

sands in credit card debt. His morale was bro-

ken.

He soon began working as a “hot shot” truck

driver, carrying loads for drillers who need

pipes or drums in a hurry. The United States is

the world’s largest producer of oil, having sur-

passed Saudi Arabia and Russia, and demand

for “hot shots” has soared.

The epicenter of the oil boom is the Permian

Basin in Texas and New Mexico, a massive

layer cake of shale that’s cracked open with a

blasting technique known as fracking. The

country’s growing energy dominance has cre-

ated tens of thousands of jobs in this part of the

Southwest in recent years, many for people

like Mr. Wilkinson looking for fresh starts.

Mr. Wilkinson has worked as a barber and a

hot tub installer but says he can now make at

least $1,500 a week driving and sees no reason

to do anything else. He has logged roughly

170,000 miles in his Ram truck, which pulls a

40-foot trailer that can carry thousands of

pounds of oil field equipment.

Boom Times and Fresh Starts

Fracking has revived the Permian Basin, creating thousands

of jobs and making the U.S. the world’s largest oil producer.

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

His marriage

failing and deep in

debt, Mike

Wilkinson moved

to Midland, Tex.,

and began hauling

oil-drilling

equipment.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TAMIR KALIFA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

CONTINUED ON PAGE B4

For fans of pro tennis, European

soccer and British tabloids, the

mysterious Twitter account had a

lot to offer.

Beginning last year, it re-

tweeted news, most of it in Eng-

lish, about Roger Federer and the

Premier League, and it shared

juicy clickbait on Zsa Zsa, an Eng-

lish bulldog that won the 2018

World’s Ugliest Dog contest.

Then, suddenly, the account be-

gan posting, in Chinese, about a

different obsession: politics in

Hong Kong and mainland China.

By this summer, it had become a

foot soldier in a covert campaign

to shape people’s views about one

of the world’s biggest political cri-

ses.

The account, @HKpoliticalnew,

and more than 200,000 other Twit-

ter accounts were part of a sprawl-

ing Russian-style disinformation

offensive from China, Twitter now

says, the first time an American

technology giant has attributed

such a campaign to the Chinese

government.

China has long deployed propa-

ganda and censorship to subject

its citizens to government-ap-

proved narratives. As the nation’s

place in the world grows, Beijing

has increasingly turned to inter-

net platforms that it blocks within

the country — including Twitter

Protesters in Hong Kong

Stir China’s Twitter Trolls

CONTINUED ON PAGE B7

By Raymond Zhong,

SANTA CRUZ, CALIF. — Long before Steven Lee Myers and Jin Wu
binge-watching, the streaming
wars and “Netflix and chill,” there
were two guys barreling down
Highway 17 — the California road-
way that connects Santa Cruz to
Silicon Valley — trying to come up
with the next big thing.
One was Marc Randolph, an en-
trepreneur and marketing spe-
cialist who had co-founded a start-
up, Integrity QA. The other was
Reed Hastings, then the head of
the software company Pure Atria.
It was 1997. Mr. Randolph,
whose start-up had been acquired
by Pure Atria, did most of the
pitching. Customized dog food,
customized baseball bats, cus-

tomized shampoo — all sold over

the internet and delivered by mail.

Mr. Hastings was the one with

the cash and the ability to shoot

down ideas without worrying

about hurt feelings.

They flirted with the notion of

challenging Blockbuster Video

with a mail-order videocassette

business, only to decide that mail-

ing VHS tapes would cost too

much. Finally, they thought they

had something: DVDs, sold and

rented online and delivered to

customers by mail.

Although few people had DVD

players at the time, they forged

ahead, with Mr. Randolph as the

chief executive and Mr. Hastings

Pushing the Red Envelope:

A Memoir of Netflix’s Birth

By NICOLE SPERLING

CONTINUED ON PAGE B5

Investors take for granted that the

Federal Reserve controls interest

rates. Rarely do they have to think

about how.

But a surprisingly lively couple

of days in short-term money mar-

kets has meant that the “how” be-

came nearly as important as the

“why.”

The stress started on Monday

in the market for repurchase

agreements, or repos. The repo

market channels more than $1 tril-

lion in funds through Wall Street

every day, usually without fan-

fare. That money is used to pay for

the day-to-day operations of big

banks and hedge funds.

Then the Fed’s key interest rate,

known as the federal funds rate,

hit 2.3 percent on Tuesday. That’s

above the central bank’s target,

and the rise reflected unexpected

strains.

The central bank on Wednes-

day cut interest rates by a quarter

percentage point as part of its ef-

fort to ensure that the economic

expansion continues. In addition,

it took a series of steps to make

sure short-term interest rates do

what it wants. The Fed poured

new money into markets for a sec-

ond straight day and said that it

would cut what it pays banks to

keep excess reserves parked with

it.

In the past, when the repo mar-

Stress in a Key Market

Has Wall St. Buzzing

By MATT PHILLIPS

CONTINUED ON PAGE B3