Cold war efforts needed to tackle AI-Nuclear weapons threat nexus | Saudi Arabia set to become world's largest AI-investor | Heightened risks of youth radicalisation online
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Leading western and Chinese artificial intelligence scientists have issued a stark warning that tackling risks around the powerful technology requires global co-operation similar to the cold war effort to avoid nuclear conflict Financial Times
Saudi Arabia is creating a gigantic fund to invest in A.I. technology, potentially becoming the largest player in the hot market The New York Times
UK counter-terror officer says more young people being radicalised online with 42 people aged 17 and under were detained under the Terrorism Act in 2023 The Guardian
World
Joint statement on efforts to counter the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware
The White House
At the third Summit for Democracy, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Poland, and Republic of Korea joined this first-of-its-kind international commitment to work collectively to counter the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware. The misuse of these tools presents significant and growing risks to our national security, including to the safety and security of our government personnel, information, and information systems.
Australia
Brain chips: the Sydney researchers ‘miles ahead’ of Elon Musk’s Neuralink
The Guardian
Tory Shepherd
Multiple Australian projects are on the cutting edge of neurotech breakthroughs and man-machine interfaces – raising questions of security and privacy for human minds. A University of Technology Sydney project that has received millions in funding from the defence department is currently in the third phase of demonstrating how soldiers can use their brain signals to control a robot dog.
NSW Telco Authority seeks disaster connectivity kits for communities
iTnews
Richard Chirgwin
The NSW government is acquiring mobile systems to help provide wi-fi connectivity to communities cut off by natural disasters. Under that project, the commonwealth and NSW governments are co-funding the $3.6 million provision of community connectivity kits, that could be quickly deployed by the NSW Telco Authority to communities cut off by a natural disaster.
ASD taps Microsoft Sentinel's threat intelligence feed
iTnews
Ry Crozier
The Australian Signals Directorate has added Microsoft threat intelligence into its cyber threat intelligence sharing platform. The directorate said it had connected CTIS with Microsoft Sentinel, which enables it to access “analysis of 65 trillion signals of global threat intelligence every day.”
China
Chinese and western scientists identify ‘red lines’ on AI risks
Financial Times
Cristina Criddle and Eleanor Olcott
Leading western and Chinese artificial intelligence scientists have issued a stark warning that tackling risks around the powerful technology requires global co-operation similar to the cold war effort to avoid nuclear conflict. A group of renowned international experts met in Beijing last week, where they identified “red lines” on the development of AI, including around the making of bioweapons and launching cyber attacks.
Chinese Earth Krahang hackers breach 70 orgs in 23 countries
Bleeping Computer
Bill Toulas
A sophisticated hacking campaign attributed to a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat group known as 'Earth Krahang' has breached 70 organizations and targeted at least 116 across 45 countries. According to Trend Micro researchers monitoring the activity, the campaign has been underway since early 2022 and focuses primarily on government organizations.
USA
What happens to politics if TikTok survives
POLITICO
Derek Robertson
Despite the frequent talk of the law as a ban — and it might be, if China pulls the plug rather than letting ByteDance sell the app — there are plenty of reasons to believe that TikTok will survive more or less as-is. The Senate might never take the bill up; a signed law could lose a constitutional challenge in court.
Yes, TikTok sucks. But the rules for tech giants must be better than ‘it’s only bad if China does it’
The Guardian
Samantha Floreani
More broadly than TikTok, the bill would allow the US president to designate non-US social media apps as national security threats, forcing them to ensure they have no ties to a “US adversary” within six months. That’s a pretty incredible precedent to set. In addition to constitutional concerns about free speech, it flies in the face of notions of a free and open web, instead exacerbating US techno-imperialism.
Joe Biden has just dealt a big defeat to big tech
The Guardian
Joseph Stiglitz
After decades of data brokers and tech platforms exploiting Americans’ personal data without any oversight or restrictions, the Biden administration has announced that it will ban the transfer of certain kinds of data to China and other countries of concern. It is a small, but important, step towards protecting Americans’ sensitive personal information, in addition to government-related data.
Challenge to Biden hectoring of social media firms appears doomed at Supreme Court
POLITICO
Josh Gerstein and Rebecca Kern
A lawsuit aimed at stopping the Biden administration from urging social media companies to take down purported disinformation about Covid vaccines and election fraud got a decidedly chilly reception at the Supreme Court Monday. A clear majority of the court sounded deeply skeptical about the suit brought by the states of Louisiana and Missouri and seven individual plaintiffs claiming Biden officials, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms to suppress or delete posts — mainly from conservatives — that federal officials found objectionable.
CISA shares critical infrastructure defense tips against Chinese hackers
Bleeping Computer
Sergiu Gatlan
CISA, the NSA, the FBI, and several other agencies in the U.S. and worldwide warned critical infrastructure leaders to protect their systems against the Chinese Volt Typhoon hacking group. Together with the NSA, the FBI, other U.S. government agencies, and partner Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies, including cybersecurity agencies from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, it also issued defense tips on detecting and defending against Volt Typhoon attacks. Last month, they also warned that Chinese hackers had breached multiple U.S. critical infrastructure organizations and maintained access to at least one of them for at least five years before being discovered.
North Asia
Trust in AI to fix Japan’s worker shortage, says top recruiter
Financial Times
Kana Inagaki and Leo Lewis
The head of Japan’s biggest recruitment agency says artificial intelligence will resolve the country’s labour shortages, but has warned its usefulness will be limited until people gain more trust in the technology. Hisayuki Idekoba, chief executive of Recruit Holdings, said Japan “needs to go all in on AI”, in a Financial Times interview, pointing to successes achieved by employers using its AI tools to attract more job candidates.
Southeast Asia
Boeing, Meta join U.S. business delegation to Vietnam
Nikkei Asia
Yuji Nitta
The U.S. and Vietnam in 2023 elevated their bilateral relationship to a "comprehensive strategic partnership." U.S. companies are seen weighing additional investment opportunities in the country amid a push toward "friendshoring," in which supply chains are focused in politically friendly nations.
Ukraine - Russia
Drones are key to gain advantage over Russia, Ukraine army chief says
Reuters
The development of unmanned systems, or drones, is key to give Kyiv an advantage over "a numerically superior" Russian forces, Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said late on Monday. "The development of the use of unmanned systems is my priority," Syrskyi said on Telegram after meeting his deputy, Vadym Sukharevskyi. "We are looking for asymmetric solutions to gain a qualitative advantage over a numerically superior opponent."
Ukraine arrests hackers trying to sell 100 million stolen accounts
Bleeping Computer
Bill Toulas
The three suspects, aged between 20 and 40, used specialized software to brute-force account passwords and then steal them. Brute force is the means of guessing account passwords through an automated trial-and-error process that has computers try many possible combinations until the correct one is found.
UK
More young people being radicalised online, says UK counter-terror officer
The Guardian
Josh Halliday
A senior counter-terrorism officer has warned that children and young people are increasingly being radicalised online after spending long periods on the internet during the pandemic. “We have seen a significant increase in online investigations or investigations of individuals who’ve been committing acts of terrorism online.
UK deputy PM launches global push to protect elections from AI, misinformation
Reuters
Josh Smith
Democratic countries around the world should band together to confront the threat of AI used by malign states to threaten free elections and spread misinformation, British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said on Tuesday. In Seoul for the Summit for Democracy, Dowden on Monday announced what he hopes will be a "groundbreaking" new global government compact on countering deceptive use of artificial intelligence by foreign states in elections.
Nearly half of UK families excluded from modern digital society, study finds
The Guardian
Clea Skopeliti
Almost half of UK families with children lack the online skills or access to devices, data and broadband required to participate in today’s digital society, research shows, with an expert saying this divide is an “amplifier of other exclusions”. Households from minority ethnic backgrounds and those with disabled parents were twice as likely to fall below it.
Middle East
Saudi Arabia Plans $40 Billion Push Into Artificial Intelligence
The New York Times
Maureen Farrell and Rob Copeland
The government of Saudi Arabia plans to create a fund of about $40 billion to invest in artificial intelligence, according to three people briefed on the plans — the latest sign of the gold rush toward a technology that has already begun reshaping how people live and work. The planned tech fund would make Saudi Arabia the world’s largest investor in artificial intelligence.
Telecoms groups reroute Red Sea internet traffic after Houthi attacks
Financial Times
Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu and Anna Gross
Telecom and tech groups are being forced to reroute internet traffic after attacks in the Red Sea have made the area increasingly unstable, with damage to undersea cables putting connectivity and services around the world at risk. Multiple companies said they had taken action after reports that submarine cables in the seabed had been cut by an anchor from the Rubymar ship, which was abandoned in February after it was targeted and sunk by Houthi rebels.
Big Tech
TSMC, Intel suppliers delay U.S. plants on surging costs, labor crunch
Nikkei Asia
Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li
At least five suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel have delayed construction of facilities in Arizona, a sign that rebuilding America's chip supply chain is a bigger challenge than expected. Chemical and material makers LCY Chemical, Solvay, Chang Chun Group, KPPC Advanced Chemicals (Kanto-PPC) and Topco Scientific all announced plans and bought land to build facilities in Arizona after the world's two top chipmakers, TSMC and Intel, rolled out their own multi-billion-dollar investments in the state. But construction of these facilities has been put on hold.
Elon Musk replies to post by far-right Austrian linked to Christchurch terrorist after X account restored
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
A far-right Austrian who received donations from and communicated with the Christchurch terrorist before the 2019 attack has had his X account restored, with X owner Elon Musk replying to one of his tweets. The founder of the so-called Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, who preaches the superiority of European ethnic groups, was banned from Twitter in 2020 under the former management along with dozens of other accounts linked to the movement amid criticism over the platform’s handling of extremist content.
Artificial Intelligence
New Tools are needed to address the risks posed by AI-,military integration
Lawfare
Sarah Shoker, Andrew Reddie, Alan Hickey, Leah Walker
Despite rising geopolitical tensions, where adversarial nations find little to agree on, something of a global consensus seems to be taking shape around at least one issue: the use of artificial intelligence for defense. Efforts to further strengthen this regime will come to the fore this week in Washington, D.C., with the first meeting of signatories to the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy this week (March 19-20).
Big Tech says AI watermarks could curb misinformation, but they're easy to sidestep
NBC News
Kat Tenbarge and Kevin Collier
Watermarking has been floated by Big Tech as one of the most promising methods to combat the escalating AI misinformation problem online. But so far, the results don’t seem promising, according to experts and a review of misinformation conducted by NBC News.
Nvidia: US tech giant unveils latest artificial intelligence chip
BBC
Mariko Oi
Nvidia has unveiled its latest artificial intelligence (AI) chip which it says can do some tasks 30 times faster than its predecessor. The firm has an 80% market share and hopes to cement its dominance. Nvidia is the third-most valuable company in the US, behind only Microsoft and Apple.
Nvidia aims to become 'TSMC for AI' with new software platform
Nikkei Asia
Yifan Yu
Nvidia, the U.S. semiconductor giant that has dominated the AI chip market, said it wants to become the "TSMC for AI" as it expands beyond hardware and taps into software services. At GTC 2024, an annual conference held by Nvidia, CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a series of platforms and tools that will make it easier for developers to custom-build and deploy their own AI products based on pre-built AI models by Nvidia.
As AI tools get smarter, they’re growing more covertly racist, experts find
The Guardian
Ava Sasani
Popular artificial intelligence tools are becoming more covertly racist as they advance, says an alarming new report. A team of technology and linguistics researchers revealed this week that large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini hold racist stereotypes about speakers of African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, an English dialect created and spoken by Black Americans.
Misc
Cyber-flashing convict is first to be jailed under new law
BBC
Lewis Adam
A convicted paedophile who sent a picture of his erect penis to a 15-year-old girl has become the first person to be jailed for cyber-flashing in England and Wales. Registered sex offender Nicholas Hawkes, 39, of Basildon, Essex, also sent unsolicited photos to a woman.
Fierce rivals Honda and Nissan join forces to take on Chinese car makers
ABC News
Oscar Coleman
Rival Japanese car makers Honda and Nissan have announced they will work together to develop electric vehicle technology and auto intelligence – two sectors where Japan's automakers have fallen behind. The partnership could help the two manufacturers develop economies of scale in producing EVs, as automakers face heavy competition from firms such as Elon Musk's Tesla and Chinese manufacturer BYD.
Research
The next paradigm shattering threat? Right-sizing the potential impacts of generative AI on terrorism
David Wells
Over the past year and a half, the rapid expansion in the availability and accessibility of generative artificial intelligence tools has prompted a range of potential national and international security concerns, including the possible abuse of generative AI by terrorists and violent extremists. Terrorists and violent extremists have already started experimenting with generative AI, including by using a variety of tools to generate propaganda material.
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.
Jobs
Director Cyber, Technology & Security
ASPI
ASPI is looking for an exceptional and experienced leader to fill the Director, Cyber, Tehcnology & Security role. The Director will lead our largest team focused on emerging security challenges, particularly in cyberspace and the information domain.
ASPI Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre (NASPC) Administration Officer
ASPI
This role also works across the Head of the NASPC's alternate policy centres, the Strategic Policing and Law Enforcement Program, involving work across illicit drugs, illicit finance, transnational serious organised crime, and modern slavery, and ASPI’s Counter-terrorism Policy Centre. The successful applicant will have the chance to assist with coordinating a project in the first half of 2024 focused on northern Australia's connections with Pacific Island Countries, liaising with senior Government and international representatives.
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 Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.