Artificial intelligence could lead to extinction, experts warn | Pegasus spyware was deployed in Armenia amid Nagorno-Karabakh war | New DoD cyber strategy tags Russia, China as top threats
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AI could lead to the extinction of humanity, experts including the heads of OpenAI and Google Deepmind have warned. Dozens have supported a statement published on the webpage of the Centre for AI Safety. "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war" it reads. BBC
Researchers from a handful of digital rights organizations have uncovered the first known case of Pegasus spyware being used in the middle of a war. The notorious spying software developed by Israeli company NSO Group targeted Armenian journalists, activists, government officials and civilians during the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Record by Recorded Future
Potential cyber attacks by China and Russia against the US and its allies continue to be one of the pre-eminent threat facing the US Department of Defense, according to the Pentagon's latest cyber strategy. The classified version of the 2023 DoD Cyber Strategy was sent to US congressional lawmakers on 26 May. Janes
World
Antony Blinken, in Europe, sees alignment on China
The Wall Street Journal
Kim Mackrael
The U.S. and Europe are converging in their views on how to approach China, with recent statements from the European Union closely mirroring US policy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
Australia
$49m MMI grant for WA critical minerals project locked in
InnovationAus
Justin Hendry
A sixth Collaboration stream grant from the former Morrison government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative has been signed off by the Industry department, leaving more than half of the funding through the $828 million grants program unaccounted for. Vanadium miner and processor Australian Vanadium on Tuesday revealed it had entered a grant agreement with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources that will see the government provide $49 million for the Australian Vanadium Project.
China
Chinese organisations launched 79 AI large language models since 2020 - report
Reuters
Qiaoyi Li and Eduardo Baptista
Chinese organisations launched 79 large-language models in the country over the past three years as they doubled down on efforts to develop artificial intelligence algorithms, a report by state-run research institutes said. The development of LLMs, trained using deep learning techniques on massive amounts of text data, entered an "accelerated" phase in 2020.
China is flirting with AI catastrophe
Foreign Affairs
Bill Drexel and Hannah Kelley
As the world settles into a new era of rivalry—this time between China and the United States—competition over another revolutionary technology, artificial intelligence, has sparked a flurry of military and ethical concerns parallel to those initiated by the nuclear race. Those concerns are well worth the attention they are receiving, and more: a world of autonomous weapons and machine-speed war could have devastating consequences for humanity. Beijing’s use of AI tools to help fuel its crimes against humanity against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang already amounts to a catastrophe.
Crypto founders optimistic about Beijing paper promoting Web3 despite no mention of cryptocurrency
South China Morning Post
Xinmei Shen
Crypto founders, including Binance chief executive Zhao Changpeng, are talking up the Chinese government’s support for Web3, tying a recent Beijing white paper to Hong Kong’s efforts to become a crypto hub, as they face increasing regulatory scrutiny in other parts of the world.
China sends three into space, says it wants astronauts on moon by 2030
The Washington Post
Christian Shepherd
China sent another three astronauts into space — including the first civilian — on Tuesday morning, a day after announcing plans to land astronauts on the moon before 2030 and setting up a new sphere of rivalry with the United States.
No sign that it is safe yet to reinvest in Chinese tech companies
Nikkei Asia
Henny Sender
Following on the heels of founder Jack Ma's triumphant return to his hometown Hangzhou in late March, Alibaba Group Holding's restructuring into six separate companies was initially greeted with euphoria. The reorganization was driven by Alibaba's board, rather than either Beijing or Ma, according to people familiar with the plan.
China urges Japan to halt export restrictions on chips
Reuters
Joe Cash and Bernard Orr
Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao urged Japan to halt semiconductor export controls, calling it a "wrongdoing" that "seriously violated" international economic and trade rules, a statement from his ministry said on Monday. China's latest condemnation of the export restrictions was made during Wang's talks with Japanese Trade Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura.
The billionaire whose electrode empire powers China’s EV dominance
Financial Times
Edward White
A self-made Chinese billionaire with a fascination for metallurgy is posing a fundamental challenge to a traditional auto industry already struggling to compete with China in the development of electric vehicles and batteries.
USA
New DoD cyber strategy tags Russia, China as top threats
Janes
Carlo Munoz
Potential cyber attacks by China and Russia against the US and its allies continue to be one of the pre-eminent threat facing the US Department of Defense, according to the Pentagon's latest cyber strategy. The classified version of the 2023 DoD Cyber Strategy was sent to US congressional lawmakers on 26 May.
Deepfaking it: America's 2024 election collides with AI boom
Reuters
Alexandra Ulmer and Anna Tong
The Clinton and Biden deepfakes - realistic yet fabricated videos created by AI algorithms trained on copious online footage - are among thousands surfacing on social media, blurring fact and fiction in the polarized world of U.S. politics. While such synthetic media has been around for several years, it's been turbocharged over the past year by of a slew of new "generative AI" tools such as Midjourney that make it cheap and easy to create convincing deepfakes.
Who will make the chips?
Foreign Policy
Rishi Iyengar
Semiconductor chips now underpin nearly every facet of our lives, powering devices ranging from smartphones to washing machines to cars. Crucially, they also power advanced weapons systems and artificial intelligence, making them the focal point of Biden’s escalating competition with China and his desire to burnish American technological leadership.
We’ve been getting cyber wrong for years, new book claims
The Sydney Morning Herald
Chris Zappone
China was last week accused of hacking into American critical infrastructure. The Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance responded by urging companies to protect themselves. But increasingly simply raising defences no longer suffices in the domain of cyber competition.
A Q&A with Wazawaka: The FBI’s cyber Most Wanted says new designation won’t affect his work
The Record by Recorded Future
Dina Temple-Raston and Sean Powers
Just weeks after the FBI announced that it had added Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev — better known in cyber circles as “Wazawaka” — to America’s cyber Most Wanted list, he told Recorded Future News’ Click Here podcast in an interview that the designation would do little to change his behavior: “It won’t affect my work. The dog barks, but the caravan moves on.”
Assault allegations plague a $1.4 billion home eldercare startup
Bloomberg
Priya Anand
If you’ve been to an annual open enrollment fair in the past few years, you may have noticed a new eldercare benefit with the unusual name of Papa. It’s a gig economy version of home assistance, a family-on-demand TaskRabbit for seniors. Businessweek reviewed more than 1,200 confidential complaint reports logged by Papa over the past four years and found dozens of allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
Americas
Brazilian hackers target Portuguese financial institutions
CyberScoop
AJ Vicens
A Brazilian hacking crew targeted users of more than 30 Portuguese financial institutions earlier this year in a campaign that provides the latest example of potent, financially motivated hackers in Brazil hitting targets outside the country’s borders, according to a report released Thursday by SentinelLabs.
Colombian government targeted by suspected cyber partisans
Cybernews
Damien Black
Colombian government websites are under assault by a suspected hacktivist group called SiegedSec, which claims to have leaked 6GB of data, including emails, confidential documents, and ID cards, a threat intelligence analyst says. FalconFeedsio posted notifications on Twitter today and on May 27th regarding the campaign, citing SiegedSec as saying the latest cyberattack marked “our third and final Operation Colombia attack.”
North Asia
Taiwan rushes to prevent China from cutting internet, phones
Bloomberg
Jamie Tarabay and Cindy Wang
Buffeted by earthquakes and the potential of conflict with China, Taiwan’s leaders want to accelerate plans to make the island more resilient to communications breakdowns and direct attacks on its digital infrastructure. It could be an impossible task.
South Korea’s Naver to target foreign governments with latest ChatGPT-like AI model
Financial Times
Song Jung-a
Naver, South Korea’s dominant internet search engine, is set to offer tailored versions of its latest ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence model to foreign governments concerned about US data controls. Unlike Microsoft and Google’s focus on universal AI models, Naver is keen to develop localised AI applications for countries with political sensitivities in the Arab world, as well as for non-English speaking countries.
Southeast Asia
Myanmar’s intelligence war: the battle of wits and wiles against the junta
The Interpreter
Andrew Selth
Myanmar has always been controlled through powerful intelligence agencies. The British colonial government relied heavily on intelligence collected through its police forces. After Ne Win’s coup in 1962, the Military Intelligence Service was an ever-present threat to Myanmar’s citizens. Between 1983 and 2004, the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence and Office of the Chief of Military Intelligence exercised enormous influence over Myanmar’s national affairs. These days, the Office of the Chief of Military Security Affairs reaches into the lives of the population through an extensive network of spies and informers.
South & Central Asia
Pegasus spyware was deployed in Armenia amid Nagorno-Karabakh war
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
Researchers from a handful of digital rights organizations have uncovered the first known case of Pegasus spyware being used in the middle of a war. The notorious spying software developed by Israeli company NSO Group targeted Armenian journalists, activists, government officials and civilians during the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Europe
EU's von der Leyen to meet OpenAI CEO Altman on Thursday
Reuters
Bart Meijer
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, on Thursday, a commission spokesperson said on Tuesday without giving further detail. Altman last week said the ChatGPT maker might consider leaving Europe if it won't be able to comply with the bloc's upcoming AI regulations.
UK
Capita hack: 90 organisations report data breaches to watchdog
BBC
Chris Vallance
Around 90 organisations have reported breaches of personal data held by Capita, the outsourcing giant, according to a privacy watchdog. The company suffered a cyber attack in March this year and it then emerged that Capita had left a pool of data unsecured online. Hundreds of thousands of people are now being warned that they could have been affected by the hack.
Middle East
Saudi Arabian woman arrested over Twitter and Snapchat posts promoting reform
The Guardian
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old certified fitness instructor and artist who frequently promoted female empowerment on her social media accounts, was arrested in November 2022. Among other charges, Otaibi was accused by Saudi authorities of using a hashtag – translated to #societyisready – to call for an end to male guardianship rules.
Africa
'People find us easy targets': Women politicians face a torrent of online abuse but say they won't stop their work
CNN
Adie Vanessa Offiong
Doreen Nyanjura is a modern politician. She announced on Twitter that she would be standing in Uganda's 2026 presidential election; has a name for her supporters -- the Nyanjuraholics -- and has characterized her platform with a catchy hashtag: #ThePoliticalAntidote. But with this presence online, Nyanjura says she faces the now-standard challenges of being a woman in politics: in addition to the tweets of support or derision that most politicians on social media have become accustomed to, Nyanjura also receives tweets of misogynistic mockery.
Big Tech
A popular Android app began secretly spying on its users months after it was listed on Google Play
TechCrunch
Zack Whittaker
A cybersecurity firm says a popular Android screen recording app that racked up tens of thousands of downloads on Google’s app store subsequently began spying on its users, including by stealing microphone recordings and other documents from the user’s phone.
Video: Inside Samsung’s and Apple’s manufacturing moves outside of China
The Wall Street Journal
A range of geopolitical factors are pushing tech giants to relocate their operations from China. Here’s a closer look at the strategy behind Samsung’s and Apple’s manufacturing moves outside of China.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence could lead to extinction, experts warn
BBC
Chris Vallance
AI could lead to the extinction of humanity, experts including the heads of OpenAI and Google Deepmind have warned. Dozens have supported a statement published on the webpage of the Centre for AI Safety. "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war" it reads.
Statement on AI risk
Center for AI Safety
AI experts, journalists, policymakers, and the public are increasingly discussing a broad spectrum of important and urgent risks from AI. Even so, it can be difficult to voice concerns about some of advanced AI’s most severe risks. The succinct statement below aims to overcome this obstacle and open up discussion. It is also meant to create common knowledge of the growing number of experts and public figures who also take some of advanced AI’s most severe risks seriously.
Artificial intelligence will entrench global inequality
Foreign Policy
Robert Muggah
The AI race is gathering pace, and the stakes could not be higher. Major corporate players—including Alibaba, DeepMind, Google, IBM, Microsoft, OpenAI, and SAP—are leveraging huge computational power to push the boundaries of AI and popularize new AI tools such as GPT-4 and Bard. Hundreds of other private and non-profit players are rolling out apps and plugins, staking their claims in this fast-moving frontier market that some enthusiasts predict will upend the way we work, play, do business, create wealth, and govern.
Could AI carry out coups next unless stopped now?
Al Jazeera
Erin Hale
AI is already shaking up industries from the arts to human resources. Goldman Sachs warned in March that generative AI could wipe up 300 million jobs in the future. Other research shows that teachers could be among the most affected. Then there are more nightmare scenarios of a world where humans lose control of AI – a common theme in science fiction writing that suddenly seems not quite so implausible.
Misc
‘I feel constantly watched’: the employees working under surveillance
The Guardian
Clea Skopeliti
Employees use Hubstaff, one of the myriad monitoring tools that companies turned to as the Covid pandemic forced many to work remotely. Some, such as CleverControl and FlexiSPY offer webcam monitoring and audio recording.
Events & Podcasts
The Biden administration’s cyber plans for critical infrastructure: Focus on pipelines, rails, aviation
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Securing critical infrastructure from cyber threats through mandatory minimum standards is a core pillar of the Biden Administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy. The executive branch is utilizing existing authorities to implement minimums where they exist and developing new mandates where there are gaps. Join CSIS for a discussion on pillar one of the National Cybersecurity Strategy on June 1, 2023: 2:00 – 3:00 pm EDT.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the team at ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre.