Ex-Google chief warns of need for AI co-operation with China | German minister casts doubt on Huawei participation in 5G | US tech giants distributing products building China's surveillance state

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• Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive who chairs the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, says the US will hurt its own innovation by barring co-operation with Chinese researchers in the artificial intelligence field, in a warning that came as some Trump administration officials push to decouple technology from China. Financial Times

• German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Monday cast doubt on whether Chinese telecom equipment vendor Huawei Technologies could participate in the development and construction of the country’s 5G data network. Reuters

• Tech Giants are distributing physical goods and apps from Chinese companies that the US government has accused of abetting human rights violations. The US Commerce Department recently placed three of these companies on an export blacklist for their role in aiding in the surveillance and detention of more than a million Uighur Muslims and other Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s northwest Xinjiang region. Buzzfeed News

ASPI ICPC

ASPI ICPC report examines deepening Sino-Russian technology ties as US tensions mount

China and Russia have not only expanded military cooperation but are also undertaking more extensive technological cooperation, including in 5G, new media, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, biotechnology & the digital economy.

The latest policy report by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre - A new Sino-Russian high-tech partnership: Authoritarian innovation in an era of great-power rivalry authored by Russian specialist Samuel Bendett and China specialist Elsa Kania - maps out the unique ecosystem underpinning expanding technology cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.

Read the report

The World

Ex-Google chief warns of need for AI co-operation with China
Financial Times
Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive who chairs the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, says the US will hurt its own innovation by barring co-operation with Chinese researchers in the artificial intelligence field, in a warning that came as some Trump administration officials push to decouple technology from China.

The Crisis of Social Media
Freedom House
@adrianshahbaz @alfunk
Internet freedom is increasingly imperiled by the tools and tactics of digital authoritarianism, which have spread rapidly around the globe. Repressive regimes, elected incumbents with authoritarian ambitions, and unscrupulous partisan operatives have exploited the unregulated spaces of social media platforms, converting them into instruments for political distortion and societal control.

China

Amazon, Apple, And Google Are Distributing Products From Companies Building China's Surveillance State
Buzzfeed News
@rosalindzadams @RMac18
Amazon, Apple, Google, and other technology giants are distributing physical goods and apps from Chinese companies that the US government has accused of abetting human rights violations, BuzzFeed News has found. The goods and apps come from three companies — Hikvision, Dahua Technology, and iFlytek — which the US Commerce Department recently placed on an export blacklist for their role in aiding in the surveillance and detention of more than a million Uighur Muslims and other Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s northwest Xinjiang region.

Chinese Professor Files Rare Lawsuit Over Use of Facial-Recognition Technology
Wall Street Journal
@ByShanLi
A Chinese law professor has raised a rare legal challenge over how facial-recognition technology is deployed in a country where surveillance cameras are increasingly part of everyday life.

‘Like a movie’: In Xinjiang, new evidence that China stages prayers, street scenes for visiting delegations
The Globe and Mail
@nvanderklippe
The mosque was considered closed. But the officials and police said an inspection tour was being arranged that would bring dignitaries from around the world to Urumqi and they wanted the visitors to see people praying.

United States

The State of California Could Have Stopped 8Chan: It Didn’t
Bellingcat
@iwriteok
Over the course of 2019, the website “8chan” has directly inspired four acts of terrorism around the world, killing 76 people and wounding 80. The State of California missed a potential opportunity to put this problem to rest.

Joint Statement by DoJ, DoD, DHS, DNI, FBI, NSA, & CISA on Ensuring Security of 2020 Elections
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Election security is a top priority for the United States Government. Building on our successful, whole-of-government approach to securing the 2018 elections, we have increased the level of support to state and local election officials in their efforts to protect elections.

United Kingdom

Drone registration made compulsory as UK scheme launches
The Guardian
@GwynTopham
Drone users in the UK must now sit an online test and pay a £9 annual fee or face a £1,000 fine after the launch of a mandatory national registration scheme on Tuesday.

The real people pretending to be 'Boris bots' on Facebook
BBC News
@josephmdurso
Thousands of nearly identical messages of support for Boris Johnson are being posted to Facebook pages. It's prompted concerns about whether "bots", or automated inauthentic accounts, are being used to try to sway voters. While bots do exist, the BBC has spoken to real people, both for and against Brexit, who have posted such comments. They're doing it because they think it's funny - and to try to trick the other side.

Europe

German minister casts doubt on Huawei participation in 5G build-out
Reuters
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Monday cast doubt on whether Chinese telecom equipment vendor Huawei Technologies could participate in the development and construction of the country’s 5G data network.

Huawei calls hackers to Munich for secret bug bounty meeting
Tech Crunch
@zackwhittaker
Chinese tech giant Huawei has asked some of the world’s best phone hackers to a secret meeting in Munich later this month as the company tries to curry favor with global governments.

Russia

The Story of Sandworm, the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
Wired
@a_greenberg
For three years, WIRED has tracked the elite and shadowy Russian vanguard of cyberwar.

Russia Steps Up Efforts to Shield Its Hackers From Extradition to U.S.
The Wall Street Journal
@dnvolz @felschwartz
For months, Moscow has pursued what current and former U.S. law-enforcement and diplomatic officials describe as part of a stepped-up and evolving campaign to prevent Russians arrested on criminal hacking charges from being extradited to the U.S.

Misc

Inside TikTok: A culture clash where U.S. views about censorship often were overridden by the Chinese bosses
The Washington Post
@drewharwell @tonyromm
Former U.S. employees said moderators based in Beijing had the final call on whether flagged videos were approved. The former employees said their attempts to persuade Chinese teams not to block or penalize certain videos were routinely ignored, out of caution about the Chinese government’s restrictions and previous penalties on other ByteDance apps.

Why Twitter’s ban on political ads isn't as good as it sounds
The Guardian
@shannimcg
Twitter’s ban on political ads is unnecessarily severe and simplistic, disadvantages challengers, and is likely unenforceable.

Facebook Isn’t Just Allowing Lies, It’s Prioritizing Them
The New York Times
@superwuster
Facebook is now the outlier, and it is increasingly hard to understand why it is insisting on accepting not only political advertising, but even deliberate and malicious lies if they are in the form of paid advertisements.

I worked on political ads at Facebook. They profit by manipulating us.
The Washington Post
@YaelEisenstat
I joined Facebook in June 2018 as its “head of Global Elections Integrity Ops”, focused specifically on political advertising. The real problem is that Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools that allow political operatives to engage in a new level of information warfare.

‘Game-Changer’ Warrant Let Detective Search Genetic Database
The New York Times
@heathertal
Last week a Florida detective announced at a police convention that he had obtained a warrant to penetrate GEDmatch and search its full database of nearly one million users. Legal experts said that this appeared to be the first time a judge had approved such a warrant, and that the development could have profound implications for genetic privacy.

Google’s new chip design protects the cloud where it’s most vulnerable
MIT Technology Review
@HowellONeill
Google today is announcing a new open source chip design based on the lessons the company has learned from their first layer of defense in the company’s 19 data centers on five continents: OpenTitan, the open-source version of the two-year-old Titan chip used in those data centers.

Now Googlers Are Protesting Company’s Deals With Big Oil
Bloomberg
@mhbergen
Activists inside Google are calling on management to ditch deals with oil and gas companies, the latest flare-up inside the technology giant.

Inside Amazon’s plan for Alexa to run your entire life
MIT Technology Review
@_KarenHao
Alexa’s head scientist, has now revealed further details about where Alexa is headed next. The crux of the plan is for the voice assistant to move from passive to proactive interactions. Rather than wait for and respond to requests, Alexa will anticipate what the user might want.

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An example of how researchers could send commands to smart speakers from up to 50m away. Video from University of Electro-Communications; University of Michigan

Hackers Can Use Lasers to ‘Speak’ to Your Amazon Echo or Google Home
Wired
@a_greenberg
By sending laser-powered “light commands” to a smart assistant, researchers could force it to unlock cars, open garage doors, and more.

Shadow Brokers data dump tipped researchers off to a mysterious APT dubbed DarkUniverse
CyberScoop
@jeffstone500
Clues about a hacking group that carried out attacks against targets in countries including Syria, Iran and Russia were included in files leaked by a mysterious group known as the Shadow Brokers.

Research

Coalition of the unwilling? Chinese and Russian perspectives on cyberspace
The Hague Program For Cyber Norms
@DennisBroeders @zetelegraph @MrRogerC
China and Russia have distinct views on the global order and the role of cyber therein, expressed in a conceptual vocabulary that has received little scholarly attention. This vocabulary is also used to frame their concerns and fears about cyber-borne threats.

NetThing Session Recordings
NetThing (auIGF)
@NetThing_au
NetThing is the renewal of an annual forum to strengthen Australia’s Internet governance community, and consists of robust Australia-based Internet policy exploration and discussion. Over time we aim to become the re-birthed, reinvigorated Australian connection to the Internet Governance Forum.

Events

CyberWarCon 2
AESIR
CYBERWARCON is a one-day (Novembre 21st) conference in the Washington D.C. area focused on the specter of destruction, disruption, and malicious influence on our society through cyber capabilities.

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