US House passes bill that could ban TikTok | Musk's X ignores Australia's legal threats | China establishes new information warfare unit
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The House of Representatives voted 360 to 58 on the updated divest-or-ban bill that could lead to the first time ever that the US government has passed a law to shut down an entire social media platform. The Guardian
Elon Musk’s social media platform X is still allowing users to upload and share distressing content from Sydney’s stabbing attacks days after the platform was ordered to take it down and despite the eSafety commissioner’s threats of fines and legal action. The Sydney Morning Herald
China has established a new information warfare department under the direct command of its top military body as it begins its largest restructuring of the armed forces in more than eight years. The shift of information warfare to the direct command of the Central Military Commission would hand Chinese leader Xi Jinping even more direct control over the military. Financial Times
Australia
Musk’s X ignores Australia’s legal threats to take down ‘distressing’ stabbing content
Paul Sakkal
The Sydney Morning Herald
Elon Musk’s social media platform X is still allowing users to upload and share distressing content from Sydney’s stabbing attacks days after the platform was ordered to take it down and despite the eSafety commissioner’s threats of fines and legal action. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was joined by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in his vow to use “whatever actions necessary to haul these companies into line”, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she was mulling legal action to force X to remove confronting videos in a process that had been “unnecessarily prolonged”.
Government declares Australia 'is not going to be bullied by Elon Musk' after X refuses to remove harmful Wakeley material
Stephanie Borys
ABC
Social media giant X (formerly known as Twitter) has claimed it could face daily fines of $785,000 if it does not take down content that references the stabbing of Sydney bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel. Following the attack on Monday night, politicians from across the country repeatedly called on social media companies to take down any content that risked further inflaming rising tensions. The office of the eSafety commissioner said it had "engaged" with major social media platforms in relation to the resharing and reposting of class one content that depicted "recent violence" in Sydney.
Peter Dutton backs laws to crack down on ‘above the law’ social media companies over misinformation
Tory Shepherd
The Guardian
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has expressed support for a crackdown on the spread of dangerous lies on social media platforms, renewing focus on the government’s misinformation legislation which was shelved late last year. Conspiracy theories and violent imagery spread rapidly on social media after the mass stabbing at Bondi Junction. After video and false information spread in the wake of the stabbing of bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, an estimated 2,000 people gathered at the Christ the Good Shepherd church in the Sydney suburb of Wakeley, where some rioted and allegedly injured police.
Border chief lays out Australia’s ‘seamless’ travel and trade future
Joseph Brookes
InnovationAus
The head of the Australian Border Force will depart later this year, hoping to leave a legacy of the beginnings of “seamless” passenger travel and highly automated border protection systems, all driven by biometrics, troves of data and artificial intelligence. In an interview with InnovationAus.com, outgoing Australian Border Force Commissioner Michael Outram laid out the tech heavy border systems he says citizens want and Australia will need to keep up with growing travel and trade.
Patience, please. AUKUS Pillar 2 is indeed making progress
Tom Corben and Sphie Mayo
The Strategist
Despite efforts to spotlight trilateral innovation activities in the past 12 months, the absence of clear metrics for success, let alone a shiny new trilaterally developed capability carrying an AUKUS sticker, have led some to contend that Pillar 2 is falling short. This has contributed to skewed assumptions about what constitutes success for Pillar 2. On closer inspection, Pillar 2 is actually making substantial progress, both in necessarily preparing the field for future cooperation by harmonising regulatory and policy settings and by maximising operational efficiency and interchangeability of advanced capabilities already in service.
China
Xi Jinping tightens grip on China’s military with new information warfare unit
Kathrin Hille
Financial Times
China has established a new information warfare department under the direct command of its top military body as it begins its largest restructuring of the armed forces in more than eight years. The shift of information warfare to the direct command of the Central Military Commission — the top Communist party and state organ that controls the People’s Liberation Army — would hand Chinese leader Xi Jinping even more direct control over the military, analysts said. The Information Support Force will aim to “speed up military modernisation and effectively implement the mission of the people’s armed forces in the new era”, Xi said at a ceremony in Beijing on Friday.
China's tech sector runs out of steam as government policies tighten grip
First Post
The Chinese tech industry, once viewed as a formidable competitor to the US, is now experiencing a slowdown akin to Japan’s historical stagnation period. Chinese companies, once lauded for their advancements in artificial intelligence, are now lagging behind American counterparts such as OpenAI in generative AI. China’s reliance on foreign AI chips has been challenged by tightening supply lines from the US. Also, domestic semiconductor manufacturers are struggling to produce chips capable of supporting AI training tasks, Nikkei Asia quoted Nina Xiang, Managing Director at TH Capital and author of “US-China Tech War: What Chinese Tech History Reveals About Future Tech Rivalry,” as saying.
Apple pulls WhatsApp, Threads from China app store after Beijing order
Josh Ye and Mrinmay Dey
Reuters
Apple said on Friday it had removed Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China after being ordered to do so by the Chinese government, which cited national security concerns. Telegram and Signal - two other foreign messaging apps - were also removed from the store on Friday, according to app tracking firms Qimai and AppMagic. The removal of the four apps suggests growing intolerance on the part of China's central government towards at least some foreign online messaging services that fall outside of its control. It also signals less leeway for Apple in China.
USA
US House passes bill that could lead to total TikTok ban
Maya Yang
The Guardian
The House of Representatives voted 360 to 58 on the updated divest-or-ban bill that could lead to the first time ever that the US government has passed a law to shut down an entire social media platform. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week and Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation. “This bill protects Americans and especially America’s children from the malign influence of Chinese propaganda on the app TikTok. This app is a spy balloon in Americans’ phones,” said Texas Republican representative Michael McCaul, author of the bill, Bloomberg reports. The updated TikTok bill comes as part of House Republican speaker Mike Johnson’s foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
TikTok set to remove executive tasked with fending off US national security concerns over app’s China ties, sources say
Jennifer Jacobs, Kurt Wagner, and Alex Barinka
Bloomberg
TikTok is preparing to remove a key executive responsible for convincing the US government that the company was doing enough to stave off national security concerns about its connections to China, according to people familiar with the matter. Erich Andersen, the US-based general counsel for TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd., has led years-long talks with the American government meant to show that the app was doing enough to prevent China from accessing US users’ data or influencing what they see on their feeds.
US Senate votes to reauthorise controversial surveillance programme FISA
Al Jazeera
The United States Senate has voted to approve the reauthorisation of a controversial surveillance programme widely used by US intelligence agencies abroad, but criticised by civil liberties organisations. Senators voted 60-34 shortly after midnight to pass the bill, and the White House said President Joe Biden will “swiftly sign the bill into law”. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, enables US intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance without seeking a judicial warrant. In particular, it allows them to sweep up communications, including phone calls and emails, of non-Americans anywhere outside of US territory. That includes communications from US citizens to foreigners targeted for monitoring.
Hackers linked to Russia’s military claim credit for sabotaging US water utilities
Andy Greenberg
Wired
Russia's military intelligence unit known as Sandworm has, for the past decade, served as the Kremlin’s most aggressive cyberattack force, triggering blackouts in Ukraine and releasing self-spreading, destructive code in incidents that remain some of the most disruptive hacking events in history. In recent months, however, one group of hackers linked to Sandworm has attempted a kind of digital mayhem that, in some respects, goes beyond even its predecessor: They've claimed responsibility for directly targeting the digital systems of water utilities in the United States and Poland as well as a water mill in France, flipping switches and changing software settings in an apparent effort to sabotage those countries’ critical infrastructure.
North Asia
Nvidia to help Japan build hybrid quantum-supercomputer
Riho Nagao
Nikkei Asia
Japan's government-backed technology institute will work with Nvidia to build a hybrid supercomputer that offers quantum computing capability for use by researchers and companies. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology is building a quantum-AI hybrid cloud system called ABCI-Q, as part of the country's quantum computing initiative. Nvidia, the top designer of artificial intelligence chips based in Silicon Valley, is already supplying graphic processing units to the ABCI-Q, but will also provide quantum computing software via a cloud service. The system will become available for use for a fee from as early as fiscal 2025.
Southeast Asia
'My hell in Myanmar cyber slavery camp'
Suneth Perera and Issariya Praithongyaem
BBC
In August 2023, the UN estimated that more than 120,000 people, most of them men from Asia, had been forced to work in scam centres in Myanmar like the one Ravi found himself in. The centres are fed by a steady stream of aspiring migrant workers from all over the world. The Sri Lankan authorities say they know of at least 56 of its citizens alone who are trapped in four different locations in Myanmar, although the Sri Lankan ambassador to Myanmar, Janaka Bandara, told the BBC that eight of them had recently been rescued with the help of the Myanmar authorities.
Indonesia taps influencers to convince people to move to its new, under-construction capital
Michelle Anindya
Rest of World
As Indonesia prepares to move its capital away from the overcrowded and rapidly sinking city of Jakarta, authorities are relying on influencers to sell Nusantara as a liveable and desirable city. Briefings have been held across the country with influencers, who are regarded as “strategic partners.” In last September’s tour of the future capital, dozens of influencers listened to the president lay out his vision for Nusantara. Jokowi even joked with them and posed for selfies. “We hope influencers can participate in disseminating information [to the public] about Nusantara,” Usman Kansong, director-general of communications at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, said in a separate briefing in the city of Bandung.
Ukraine - Russia
Blinken to warn China over weapons-related exports to Russia
Demeteri Sevastopulo and Lucy Fisher
Financial Times
US secretary of state Antony Blinken will warn China that the US will take punitive steps unless it stops sending weapons-related technology to Russia, as Washington considers putting sanctions on Chinese financial institutions. During a visit to China next week, Blinken will tell his counterparts that the US and its allies are becoming increasingly impatient with Beijing’s refusal to stop providing Moscow with everything from chips to cruise missile engines to help rebuild its industrial base. Blinken does not plan to reveal what measures the US will take, but several people familiar with the situation said it is considering sanctions on Chinese financial institutions and other entities.
Europe
Vote on EU cybersecurity label delayed to May, sources say
Foo Yun Chee
Reuters
National cybersecurity experts have shelved a vote on a draft EU cybersecurity label allowing Amazon, Alphabet's Google and Microsoft to bid for highly sensitive EU cloud computing contracts to May, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The European Union wants to introduce a cybersecurity certification scheme (EUCS) to vouch for the cybersecurity of cloud services and help governments and companies pick a secure and trusted vendor for their cloud computing business. However, disagreements on whether strict requirements should be imposed on Big Tech to qualify for the highest level of the EU cybersecurity label has hampered efforts.
EU introduces new cybersecurity rules as EVs are deemed “spying machines on four wheels”
Thanos Pappas
CarScoops
Modern cars are full of cameras and high-tech sensors to support the multitude of systems for our safety and convenience. However, all this technology makes them a potential target for hackers and cyber attacks. This threat is taken seriously by the United Nations and the European Union, which introduced strict rules about cybersecurity in automobiles. All new vehicles sold in the European Union from July 7, 2024 onwards have to comply with the UN regulations R155 and R156 which have already been in force for the approval of new models since July 2022. In short, the R155 requires a management system by automotive OEMs, while the R156 ensures that the vehicle software updates are safer from cybersecurity threats.
Middle East
Anonymous hackers threaten to expose IDF’s ‘top secret projects’
Zak Doffman
Forbes
The Anonymous hacking group has released a video claiming to have breached Israel’s military, stealing some of its “top secret” documents. Two weeks after Israel’s Justice Ministry acknowledged a cybersecurity breach, which may—according to those claiming responsibility—have stolen hundreds of gigabytes of data, the Anonymous hacking collective says it has now breached Israel Defense Forces itself, a much more critical target.
How Israel uses facial-recognition systems in Gaza and beyond
Nick Robins-Early
The Guardian
Governments around the world have increasingly turned to facial-recognition systems in recent years to target suspected criminals and crack down on dissent. The recent boom in artificial intelligence has accelerated the technology’s capabilities and proliferation, much to the concern of human rights groups and privacy advocates who see it as a tool with immense potential for harm. Few countries have experimented with the technology as extensively as Israel, which the New York Times recently reported has developed new facial-recognition systems and expanded its surveillance of Palestinians since the start of the Gaza war.
US seeks alliance with Abu Dhabi on artificial intelligence
Chloe Cornish, Andrew England, and George Hammond
Financial Times
The Biden administration is proactively encouraging US tech groups to seek artificial intelligence deals and partnerships in the United Arab Emirates, seeking to cultivate an alliance that would provide it with an edge over China in developing the revolutionary technology. This week, Microsoft announced a $1.5bn investment in G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI group chaired by powerful Emirati royal Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, representing the tech giant’s latest huge bet on AI.
Artificial Intelligence
‘IZAK’ Bangladesh’s first ever AI-generated artist releases debut album
Dhaka Tribune
On April 9 AI-generated artist, IZAK, unveils his debut album, "Kritrim Jogot", marking a historic moment in the Bangladeshi music industry. The visionary behind this project is Bangladeshi AI enthusiast Kazi Ahmed, currently residing in Canada. His album consists of eight original tracks, seven of which Ahmed has written himself two decades ago while working with the bands U-Turn and Alternation. These previously undiscovered gems have been brought to life through the innovative power of Generative Artificial Intelligence. The SUNO AI platform was used to meticulously craft every vocal and instrument arrangement.
Can AI help solve Japan’s labour shortages?
Mariko Oi
BBC
A shrinking population means Japan has a shortage of workers. Many are hoping that artificial intelligence can pick up the slack. In a country that is known to be obsessed with perfection, damaged or misshapen vegetables and fruits are hard to sell. And if you are a specialist maker of Japanese dumplings, like the brand Osaka Ohsho, then selling a packet of gyoza with some damaged is a big no-no. But as demand surged during the pandemic, its parent firm, Eat&Holdings, simply didn't have enough manpower to check every single dumpling, or keep up with demand. So it turned to technology for an answer. In January 2023, it opened a high-tech factory equipped with AI-powered cameras trained to detect any faulty gyoza on the production lines. Today this facility makes two dumplings every second. That's twice the speed of the other Osaka Ohsho production sites.
Research
Germany-Funded Chinese Defence Research Tracker
Data Abyss
Data Abyss released the "Germany Funded Chinese Defense Research Tracker," a specialized tool designed to monitor and provide transparency regarding research activities funded by Germany with Chinese defense institutions. This tool compiles and displays information on research projects, publications, and funders associated with US funding sources and their affiliations with Chinese institutions.
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.
Jobs
Director of Cyber, Technology & Security (CTS)
ASPI
ASPI is looking for an exceptional and experienced leader to lead our largest team focused on emerging security challenges, particularly in cyberspace and the information domain. Director CTS leads ASPI’s largest team to develop and deliver a range of applied research projects on existing and emerging security challenges. CTS’ projects range across cyber and critical infrastructure security, critical and emerging technologies, national resilience and social cohesion, and hybrid threats. The closing date for applications is 22 April 2024 – an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.
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.