$1 billion for Australia to build quantum computer | Musk leaves China with Tesla hurdles cleared | EU to probe Meta over Russian disinformation
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The federal and Queensland governments will sink $1 billion into an emerging high-technology company to build the world’s first commercial-scale quantum computer as part of Anthony Albanese’s Future Made in Australia agenda. The Sydney Morning Herald
Elon Musk’s quick visit to China paid immediate dividends, with Tesla Inc. receiving in-principle approval from government officials to deploy its driver-assistance system in the world’s biggest auto market. Bloomberg
European Union regulators are expected to open a probe into Meta Platforms, over concerns that the company is failing to do enough to counter disinformation from Russia and other countries. Financial Times
Australia
$1 billion for Australian project to build first useful quantum computer
Shane Wright
The Sydney Morning Herald
The federal and Queensland governments will sink $1 billion into an emerging high-technology company to build the world’s first commercial-scale quantum computer as part of Anthony Albanese’s Future Made in Australia agenda. The project, which will result in US-based company PsiQuantum establishing its Asia-Pacific headquarters at Brisbane airport, promises to generate 400 jobs and billions of dollars in infrastructure investment as it seeks to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.
‘A playground for degenerates’: The dark corners of an Australian streaming giant
Patrick Begley
The Sydney Morning Herald
Kick.com, the second largest livestreaming platform in the world, was created by an Australian billionaire. Last month, it recorded 152,000 active channels, with a peak viewership of 905,000 and 146 million hours of live content, according to the analytics site Streams Charts. But Kick, which has long been known for edgy entertainment, has a growing reputation as a home for streamers who cross the line, with behaviour ranging from creepy to predatory.
AI, hate speech under scrutiny in online safety review
Kat Wong
The Canberra Times
Australians' opinions on generative artificial intelligence and internet hate speech are being considered by the government as tensions flare between the online safety watchdog, federal politicians and social media giant X. The Online Safety Act, which is aimed at protecting Australians from internet-related harm, is being independently examined by former deputy chair of the consumer watchdog Delia Rickard to determine whether it is effective in its current state or if its reach should be extended to address new and emerging risks.
Leadership vacuum at TikTok Australia as US ban looms
John Buckley
Capital Brief
Viral short form social video platform TikTok has opted against replacing its most senior Australian executive despite mounting political and regulatory pressure on its local operations amid a federal privacy probe and looming US ban. The move to not fill the general manager role in Australia, confirmed by a TikTok spokesperson, comes as calls mount for Australia to follow the lead of its key security ally, the US, which effectively moved to ban the app last week. It also comes as the federal privacy regulator confirmed to Capital Brief that it had “significantly progressed” its probe into the company, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance.
Aussie tech pushes into China, Taiwan despite geopolitical risks
Jessica Sier
Financial Review
Local tech start-ups are pushing on with their Asian expansion plans despite worsening geopolitical risks, hoping to take advantage of a pick-up in export manufacturing and dodge tension between China and Taiwan. Melbourne-based construction software company Matrak opened a new office in Suzhou, west of Shanghai, last week, while Sydney computer chip designer Morse Micro has put staff across the bitterly contested Taiwan Strait. In each case, the concerns about global supply chains that make the geopolitical tension so consequential are also drawing the start-ups to the region.
China
Musk leaves China with Tesla driving software hurdles cleared
Bloomberg
Elon Musk’s quick visit to China paid immediate dividends, with Tesla Inc. receiving in-principle approval from government officials to deploy its driver-assistance system in the world’s biggest auto market. The US carmaker was granted the approval under certain conditions, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because details of all the criteria aren’t clear. Tesla did manage to clear two of the most important hurdles: reaching a mapping and navigation deal with Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc., and meeting requirements for how it handles data-security and privacy issues.
Tesla reaches deals in China on self-driving cars
Keith Bradsher and Chad Ewing
New York Times
Tesla has concluded a series of arrangements with regulators and a Chinese artificial intelligence company during a quick trip to Beijing on Sunday and Monday by Elon Musk, the carmaker’s chief executive, potentially clearing the way for the company to offer its most advanced self-driving software on cars in China. Tesla had faced a couple of hurdles to offering the latest level of autonomous driving, which it calls supervised Full Self-Driving. It has needed approval from Chinese regulators, who questioned whether the company took adequate precautions to protect data. And it has needed access to extremely high-resolution maps across the country.
The cable ties to China’s Digital Silk Road
Sadia Rahman
The Interpreter
Technological competition between the United States and China is transforming the physical connections that make up the digital world and its governance. China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” eventually incorporated digital connectivity under the rubric Digital Silk Road in an effort to leverage Beijing’s technological footprint globally. But the expansion of undersea cable networks across the Indo-Pacific region under the Digital Silk Road offers distinct advantages to China far more than bridging digital gaps. This includes accessing a large pool of foreign data, facilitating the expansion of Chinese technology corporations in the region, and strengthening China’s influence over global technology standards regimes.
‘Everything has changed’: foreign auto groups embrace local technology in China
Edward White
Financial Times
First, it was Germany’s Volkswagen announcing a series of groundbreaking tie-ups with Chinese tech groups. Now, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai, the renowned national brands of South Korea and Japan have decided that the only way to survive in the country’s cut-throat car market is to buy Chinese-made technology. The three deals, according to analysts and industry executives, highlighted how an increasing number of multinationals believe the only way to catch up with Chinese carmakers, which have prioritised electric vehicles and advanced technologies, is to incorporate the tech they use in their own models.
Why China is so bad at disinformation
David Gilbert
Wired
The headlines sounded dire. “China will use AI to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft warns” one read. “China Is Using AI to Sow Disinformation and Stoke Discord Across Asia and the US,” another claimed. The headlines were based on a report published earlier this month by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center which outlined how a Chinese disinformation campaign was now utilizing artificial technology to inflame divisions and disrupt elections in the US and around the world. But what these headlines and Microsoft itself failed to adequately convey is that the Chinese government-linked disinformation campaign, known as Spamouflage Dragon or Dragonbridge, has so far been virtually ineffective.
Angela Huyue Zhang on why Beijing took on the tech giants
Eliot Chen
The Wire China
Angela Huyue Zhang is an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, and a leading expert on Chinese tech regulation. She is the author of High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, a highly acclaimed book that absorbs all that happened during China’s 2020–2022 tech crackdown to explain how the government there regulates its tech sector. In this lightly edited Q&A, The Wire China spoke about when and why Beijing’s attitude towards China’s big tech darlings.
USA
US creates team to counter China’s trade ‘coercion’ tactics
Peter Martin and James Mayger
Bloomberg
The eight-person State Department group, known informally as “the firm” and led by senior State Department official Melanie Hart, operates like a consultancy. Among the first steps for its “clients” is an analysis of trade vulnerabilities to China by the department’s economists. It then looks for ways to help diversify export markets away from China and, if requested, offer a public show of support. The team has also conducted table-top exercises to game out different responses to Beijing. One driver for this strategy is a recognition that the US didn’t sufficiently support South Korea or Australia when China tried to coerce them.
How the right US chip strategy can keep Taiwan free
Dmitri Alperovitch
The Washington Post
Understanding the geopolitics of the next half-century requires understanding this simple fact: China, as large and economically powerful as it is, does not yet possess the ability or knowledge to build the sophisticated machinery one needs to manufacture the most advanced chips. Any U.S. strategy to avoid losing global influence and power to China requires ensuring that China neither achieves a tipping point of domestic independence in the means of production of semiconductors nor seizes Taiwan and its valuable fabs, thereby making the rest of the world dependent on China for chips. To maintain leverage over China in the next quarter-century, the United States needs to ensure that China doesn’t achieve its much-desired “chip breakout.”
North Asia
Japan ramping up investment in next-gen semiconductors
Julian Ryall
DW
Japan is dramatically ramping up its support for the semiconductor industry and invested 3.9 trillion yen in the sector between financial year 2021 and 2023, which ended on March 31. Analysts say the Japanese government has been stung into action as a consequence of significant geopolitical changes involving tech in recent years, as well as lessons learned from the COVID pandemic and the impact of a worldwide crisis on supply chains that were previously considered to be adequate.
Middle East
Iraqi TikTok star Om Fahad shot dead in Baghdad night attack
Al Jazeera
An Iraqi TikTok star, known to hundreds of thousands of online followers as Om Fahad, has been shot dead in a late-night attack outside her home in eastern Baghdad’s Zayouna district. Surveillance camera footage captured the attack on Friday, showing a lone assailant wearing dark clothing and a helmet getting off a motorcycle, walking towards a black SUV and shooting Om Fahad, who was sitting inside. The Ministry of Interior said it had set up a team to investigate the circumstances of the killing.
South & Central Asia
Most Indians have come across deepfake content online and worry about cyberbullying: Report
The Hindu
Around 22% of Indians surveyed said they recently came across a political deepfake they later discovered to be fake, shared the global security software company McAfee in a report, based on research carried out earlier this year. The launch of new large language models and text-to-image generators last year made it not only easier but also far cheaper to create false media and spread it online, while social media platforms struggle to identify and flag such content. McAfee noted that the actual number of impacted people could be much higher due to them not realising they were fooled by deepfakes and failing to report the same.
Europe
EU to probe Meta over handling of Russian disinformation
Financial Times
European Union regulators are expected to open a probe into Meta Platforms, over concerns that the company is failing to do enough to counter disinformation from Russia and other countries. Regulators suspect that Meta's content moderation does not go far enough to stop the dissemination of political advertising that risks undermining the electoral process, the report said, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. But the European Commission is not expected to single out Russia in its statement, expected as soon as Monday, and will only refer to manipulation of information by foreign actors, the report said.
Ex-Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt was a victim of Chinese hacking
Antoaneta Roussi and Pieter Haeck
Politico
Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and a member of the European Parliament, has been revealed as the latest victim of a Chinese state-linked espionage campaign targeting officials working on an inter-parliamentary committee focused on China. Verhofstadt is the fifth Belgian official to have been targeted by the Chinese hacker group APT31 for his work on China through the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. Other targeted Belgian officials include Samuel Cogolati, a Green MP; Els Van Hoof, the chair of Belgium’s Foreign Affairs Committee; Hilde Vautmans, a liberal MEP; and Georges Dallemagne, a federal deputy.
EU ‘dawn raids’ target Chinese surveillance kit maker Nuctech in latest use of foreign subsidies regulation
Finbarr Bermingham
South China Morning Post
The European Union has targeted another Chinese company under its foreign subsidies regulation, the Post can reveal. On Tuesday morning, EU officials entered the premises of the Dutch and Polish subsidiaries of a Chinese company involved in the manufacture of surveillance equipment, sources familiar with events said. The company has not been named, but sources later confirmed that it was the Chinese firm Nuctech, a manufacturer of airport scanning equipment and other surveillance machines.
TikTok ban in EU is ‘not excluded,’ von der Leyen says
Pieter Haeck
Politico
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted that banning TikTok in the European Union is an option, during a debate this evening in Maastricht, featuring parties' lead candidates for the bloc's 2024 election. "It is not excluded," von der Leyen said, after the moderator referred to the United States, where TikTok faces a national ban unless it is sold by its owner, ByteDance. She immediately added that the Commission was "the very first institution worldwide to ban TikTok on our corporate phones. "
Estonia blames Russia for GPS interference that forces Finnair to suspend flights
Tommaso Lecca
Politico
Finnish airline Finnair today suspended flights to Tartu, Estonia, due to interference with GPS signals over the Baltic Sea region that Estonian authorities blamed on Russia. The airport at Estonia's second city relies solely on a GPS signal for approach and landing. On Thursday and Friday, two Finnair flights from Helsinki to Tartu were forced to turn back because of GPS interference — also called jamming. “The GPS interference in Tartu forces us to suspend flights until alternative solutions have been established,” Finnair said today. The suspension will last until May 31.
Austria calls for rapid regulation as it hosts meeting on 'killer robots'
Reuters
Austria called on Monday for fresh efforts to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems that could create so-called 'killer robots', as it hosted a conference aimed at reviving largely stalled discussions on the issue. With AI technology advancing rapidly, weapons systems that could kill without human intervention are coming ever closer, posing ethical and legal challenges that most countries say need addressing soon.
ChatGPT’s hallucinations draw EU privacy complaint
Mathieu Pollet
Politico
ChatGPT's “hallucinating” and making up of information breaches European Union privacy rules, according to a complaint filed by privacy group noyb to the Austrian data protection authority. Noyb, a Vienna-based non-profit founded by activist Max Schrems, said its complaint was triggered by ChatGPT's failure to supply Schrems' correct birthday, making a wild guess instead. The chatbot doesn't tell users that it doesn't have the correct data to answer a request. A person's date of birth is personal data under the GDPR which sets various requirements for how personal data should be handled.
UK
UK becomes first country to ban default bad passwords on IoT devices
Alexander Martin
The Record by Recorded Future
On Monday, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to ban default guessable usernames and passwords from these IoT devices. Unique passwords installed by default are still permitted. The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 introduces new minimum-security standards for manufacturers, and demands that these companies are open with consumers about how long their products will receive security updates for.
Chinese-made surveillance kit to be removed from sensitive sites by 2025, says UK
Reuters
Britain expects to have removed Chinese-made surveillance technology from sensitive sites by April 2025, as it seeks to tighten security amid increasing concerns about Beijing's spying activities, the British government said on Monday. Anxiety has mounted across Europe about China's alleged espionage activity. British police last week charged two men with spying for China, including one reported to have worked as a researcher in Britain's parliament for a prominent lawmaker.
Artificial Intelligence
Second global AI safety summit faces tough questions, lower turnout
Martin Coulter
Reuters
Last year, a who’s who of world leaders, corporate executives and academic experts gathered at Britain’s Bletchley Park for the world’s first global AI Safety Summit, hoping to reach consensus on the regulation of a technology some warned posed a threat to humanity. Tesla mogul Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rubbed shoulders with some of their fiercest critics, while China co-signed the “Bletchley Declaration” alongside the United States and others, signalling a willingness to cooperate despite mounting tensions with the West. Six months later, the second AI Safety Summit, a primarily virtual event co-hosted by Britain and South Korea, will take place as hype around artificial intelligence’s potential gives way to questions over its limitations.
Why the military can’t trust AI
Max Lamparth and Jacquelyn Schenider
Foreign Affairs
Despite the enthusiasm for AI and LLMs within the Pentagon, its leadership is worried about the risk that the technologies pose. Hackathons sponsored by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office have identified biases and hallucinations in LLM applications, and recently, the US Navy published guidance limiting the use of LLMs, citing security vulnerabilities and the inadvertent release of sensitive information. LLMs can be useful, but their actions are also difficult to predict, and they can make dangerous, escalatory calls. The military must therefore place limits on these technologies when they are used to make high-stakes decisions, particularly in combat situations.
Friends from the old neighborhood turn rivals in Big Tech’s AI race
Cade Metz and Nico Grant
New York Times
Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, who both grew up in London, feared a corporate rush to build artificial intelligence. Today, they are two of the most powerful executives in the tech industry’s race to build artificial intelligence. Dr. Hassabis, 47, is the chief executive of Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central research lab for artificial intelligence. Mr. Suleyman, 39, was recently named chief executive of Microsoft AI, charged with overseeing the company’s push into A.I. consumer products.
Events & Podcasts
The Sydney Dialogue
ASPI
The Sydney Dialogue was created to help bring together governments, businesses and civil society to discuss and progress policy options. We will forecast the technologies of the next decade that will change our societies, economies and national security, prioritising speakers and delegates who are willing to push the envelope. We will promote diverse views that stimulate real conversations about the best ways to seize opportunities and minimise risks.
JoiningFORCES
ASPI
The JoiningFORCES conference will explore ways to bridge national and international boundaries to deliver more joint, collective and effective defence. It will bring together government ministers, senior defence officials, leading industry figures, and international experts across the two-day event and formal dinner. We will also use collaborative wargaming and scenario exercise techniques to generate insights on enhancing regional deterrence. Our focus will be on strategic and operational level challenges and will consider the vital role of industry in delivering capability at the speed needed to meet the strategic threats Australia faces.
ASPI – CNAS – RUSI | Trilateral AUKUS Dialogue
ASPI
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Center for a New American Security, and the Royal United Services Institute are pleased to convene our Trilateral AUKUS Dialogue on 17-18 June 2024 in Washington, DC. The ASPI-CNAS-RUSI Trilateral AUKUS Dialogue is an initiative across leading Australian, American, and British think tanks to hold robust, pragmatic, and principled conversations about AUKUS and related national security and defense policies.
Jobs
China Analyst or Senior Analyst
ASPI
ASPI has an exciting opportunity for an analyst or senior analyst to explore China's evolving foreign and security policy, political economy and impact on the Indo-Pacific and the world. ASPI’s China analysts conduct rigorous data-driven research, publish impactful reports that shape the public policy discourse and contribute to the wide catalogue of influential China work published by ASPI. The difference between the analyst and senior analyst levels will depend on experience level and demonstration of past work. The closing date for applications is 10 May 2024– an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.