The Monthly Roundup: Fergus Ryan on the AI hype cycle’s breaking point

ASPI Cyber, Technology & Security Senior Analyst Fergus Ryan on AI’s hype, hard limits, and what Beijing’s strategy gets right — plus his top picks from the Digest this month.

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​​Welcome to another edition of The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest Monthly Update! Each month, an ASPI expert shares their top news picks and provides their own take on one key story. This month, Fergus Ryan, Senior Analyst at ASPI’s Cyber, Technology & Security Program, shares his perspective.

When AI hype meets hard limits

This month brought something that had started to feel a little passé — an open letter warning about the dangers of advanced AI.

If you’re like me, the media coverage focusing on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as signatories nearly made you scroll past entirely.

But it’s worth a closer look. A quick glance at the top of the official site shows this isn’t just celebrity virtue-signalling, it’s a warning from the people who built the field.

The first name listed is Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel laureate and Turing Award winner, who is often called the godfather of AI. As the organisers note, he also happens to be, they claim, the second-most cited scientist in the world.

And what about the most cited scientist in the world? He’s right there too, just below Hinton. In fact, among the familiar celebrity names are roughly 800 Nobel laureates and leading researchers.

More revealing, though, are the non-signatories whose warnings about superintelligence are quoted on the petition website.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, we are reminded, has called superhuman AI “the greatest threat to humanity.” Anthropic’s Dario Amodei puts the odds of catastrophe at 25%. Elon Musk’s estimate is only slightly better at a 20% chance of annihilation. Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman says if we can’t prove it’s safe, we shouldn’t build it.

And yet, all of them are building it, at full speed.

As AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, noted this week, many of the people who understand the genuine risks associated with AI are currently employed by AI companies. In AI terms, their massive paychecks may have made them misaligned with the interests of the rest of humanity.

Another possibility, of course, is that the NDAs these AI insiders have signed are keeping them quiet about an even more inconvenient truth — that “superintelligence” isn’t nearly as close as their bosses would have us believe.

Before the launch of GPT-5, Sam Altman likened it to the Trinity atomic bomb test, with himself, one suspects, in the Oppenheimer role. But GPT-5 has been less an atomic bomb and more a damp squib.

As The New Yorker’s Cal Newport recently put it, the “scaling laws” that once defined AI progress have hit a wall. If GPT-3 was a sedan and GPT-4 a sports car, GPT-5 is just a slightly more souped-up sports car.

Even if the technology has slowed, the money hasn’t. Bain & Company projects that keeping pace with AI’s compute and energy demands will require about US $2 trillion (A$3.1 trillion) a year in new revenue by 2030, a scale-up it warns may be financially unsustainable. Just this week, Altman said OpenAI alone plans to spend US $1.4 trillion (A$2.2 trillion) on infrastructure. But to do that, the company will have to make far more than it currently does. OpenAI’s revenue, about US $13 billion (A$20 billion) this year, underscores how far there is to go.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, the Party-state is hedging its bets. As Matthew Johnson pointed out in Jamestown’s China Brief earlier this month, the CCP is pursuing superintelligence while simultaneously embedding AI deep within the existing economy — using it to boost productivity, modernise industry, and tighten social control. Frontier breakthroughs and applied deployment aren’t competing visions in China’s model, they’re two sides of the same state-directed system.

If the big American AI firms have bet on the wrong strategy, the fallout won’t just be financial. As WIRED put it this week, AI may not just be another tech bubble, it could be “the ultimate bubble,” one that “hits all the right notes” of past manias, from radio to aviation to the dot-com era.

Beijing’s two-track approach, pairing moonshot ambition with hard-nosed industrial policy, might prove the smarter play.

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My must-reads

• The Cost of the AGI Delusion: By Chasing Superintelligence, America Is Falling Behind in the Real AI Race

Foreign Affairs

Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren A. Kahn, two leading U.S. defence and technology policy experts, argue that America’s fixation on AGI is a costly distraction from the real contest: rapidly adopting and integrating today’s practical AI systems.

• What if A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This?

The New Yorker

Cal Newport, a computer scientist and writer on technology and productivity, argues that GPT-5’s underwhelming debut suggests the era of rapid AI breakthroughs may be over, and that it’s time to replace hype with realism.

• The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

Pluralistic

Cory Doctorow, novelist and long-time tech critic, and the guy who coined “enshittification” to describe platform decay, delivers a sharp takedown of the AI economy, arguing that the entire sector runs on hype, debt, and circular accounting. It’s an especially clear and persuasive version of the “bear case” against AI economics.

For more on China's pressure campaign against Taiwan—including military threats, interference and cyber warfare, check out ASPI’s State of the Strait Weekly Digest.

ICC pivots from Microsoft to open-source suite over US tech fears | Brussels to enlist online platforms in hybrid threat fight | Israel demanded Google & Amazon use secret signal to evade laws

Plus Google’s AI-powered Android defences now block more than 10 billion scam calls and messages every month.

Good morning. It's Friday, 31st of October.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.

Follow us on Bluesky, on LinkedIn, and on X.

• The International Criminal Court will switch its internal work environment away from Microsoft Office to Open Desk, a European open source alternative. The switch comes amid rising concerns about public bodies being reliant on US tech companies to run their services, which have stepped up sharply since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second administration. EURACTIV

• Online platforms subject to landmark EU tech rules could be required to detect and tackle hybrid threats in Europe under a proposal set to be announced by the European Commission next month. Reuters

• When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism”. The demand would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world. The Guardian

ASPI

Reaction isn’t enough. Nexperia case shows we must pre-empt China’s tech grabs
The Strategist
Fitriani and Bart Hogeveen
The Dutch government’s decision on 30 September to impose a last-resort restraint order on China-owned Netherlands-based chipmaker Nexperia is more than a trade dispute. It’s the consequence of a belated realisation that technology competition with China is real. Economic security in open and liberal democracies, including Australia, demands foresight, not last-minute intervention. The Dutch order, which prohibits Nexperia moving assets without government consent, was both necessary and overdue. Nexperia is one of the world’s largest producers of semiconductor components for automotive and consumer electronics.

The invisible siege: Securing the Indo-Pacific’s telecom backbone
The Strategist
James Corera and Jason Van der Schyff
Telecommunications once seemed like the passive layer of critical infrastructure—pipes and switches that connected everything yet rarely drew attention. That perception ended long ago, particularly with the transition to 5G ecosystems. Nokia’s 2025 Threat Intelligence Report, issued on 8 October, shows how telecom networks have become targets themselves, recasting them as active domains of strategic competition and control.

🚀 We’ve rebuilt ASPI’s China Defence Universities Tracker from the ground up. The major expansion adds richer profiles, rankings powered by the Critical Technology Tracker, new mapping of links to China’s state-owned defence industry, analysis of China–Russia research ties, and data on the surge in dual-use research centres—now covering 180+ entities with faster search. Be among the first to subscribe and explore new data and exclusive insights: https://unitracker.aspi.org.au/

World

International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative
EURACTIV
German newspaper Handelsblatt first reported on the plans. The switch comes amid rising concerns about public bodies being reliant on US tech companies to run their services, which have stepped up sharply since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second administration. For the ICC, such concerns are not abstract: Trump has repeatedly lashed out at the court and slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. Earlier this year, the AP also reported that Microsoft had cancelled Khan’s email account, a claim the company denies.

Australia

Home Affairs checks agency cyber homework
The Mandarin
Dan Holmes
Commonwealth agencies have until the end of the week to uninstall software deemed an “unacceptable security” risk to the government. Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster signed a direction last week requiring non-corporate Commonwealth entities to “identify and remove all existing instances of products, applications and web services identified on the deny list of the Commonwealth Technology Standard”. The deny list currently includes TikTok, DeepSeek, and Kaspersky. Other whole-of-government software bans will be made public.

Qantas’ digital and customer head steps down months after cyber breach, internal memo shows
Reuters
Qantas’s chief customer and digital officer ‌Catriona Larritt will step down by the end of December, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Thursday, months after the airline faced one of Australia’s biggest cyber breaches in years. In the note to staff, group CEO Vanessa Hudson said Larritt will leave the group to “pursue external opportunities”.

USA

US Treasury’s Bessent says China has approved TikTok transfer deal
Reuters
David Shepardson
China has approved the transfer agreement for the short video app TikTok, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday, adding that he expects it to move forward in coming weeks and months but giving no other details. “In Kuala Lumpur, we finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval, and I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll finally see a resolution to that,” he told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” following President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

OpenAI, Oracle plan 1 gigawatt Stargate data center in Michigan with Related Digital
Reuters
OpenAI, Oracle and Related Digital will build a data-center campus of more than 1 gigawatt in Saline Township, Michigan, as part of their Stargate push to expand U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure capacity. The announcement made on Thursday underscores the AI industry’s surging appetite for computing power, driven by the pursuit of technology capable of matching or surpassing human intelligence.

North Asia

Nvidia’s Huang meets Samsung, Hyundai in deepening of South Korea ties
Reuters
Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met the chiefs of Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor during his first official visit in more than a decade to South Korea on Thursday, highlighting the company’s deepening AI ties with its tech and auto industries. The technology tycoon, whose company is caught in the cross-hairs of a U.S.-China trade war, said he was looking forward to meeting President Lee Jae Myung on Friday and that Nvidia and South Korea had many announcements to make.

Samsung’s chip profit soars after AI fuels demand for memory
Bloomberg
Yoolim Lee
Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor arm reported a bigger-than-expected 80 per cent surge in profit, suggesting global AI demand is helping drive a recovery at the Korean company’s most important business. The unit, which competes with SK Hynix and US-based Micron Technology, said it will focus next year on mass production of the next generation of high-bandwidth memory or HBM4 – designed to work in tandem with AI accelerators from Nvidia. The company echoed SK Hynix’s prediction that a spending spree in artificial intelligence will persist this quarter and into next year.

Anthropic opens 1st Asia office in Tokyo as regional sales surge ‘tenfold’
Nikkei Asia
Tsubasa Suruga
Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday opened its first Asian office in Tokyo, as part of its rapid expansion plan in a region that the U.S.-based company says contains some of the world’s most active users and has driven a tenfold increase in its revenue this year.

Europe

EU wants to enlist online platforms to fight hybrid threats, EU document shows
Reuters
Lili Bayer and Andrew Gray
Online platforms subject to landmark EU tech rules could be required to detect and tackle hybrid threats in Europe under a proposal set to be announced by the European Commission next month and seen by Reuters. The EU uses the term hybrid threats to refer to coordinated attacks using a combination of economic, technological or other measures that fall short of formal warfare. They can include such things as disinformation campaigns or the use of social media to control the political narrative.

EU country grouping cleared to build sovereign digital infrastructure
EURACTIV
Maximilian Henning
The European Commission on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for a group of four countries to establish a common organisation for building open source alternatives to much-used (non-European) software. France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands will work to develop open, European alternatives in “key areas” such as AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and – curiously – social networks. Regional lawmakers are striking a more serious tone on digital sovereignty in the face of growing geopolitical concern about over-reliance on US tech platforms.

Netherlands faces pressure to surrender control of Nexperia after Xi-Trump summit
South China Morning Post
Ann Cao, Wency Chenin and Iris Deng
The Dutch government is under renewed pressure to end its seizure of the Chinese-owned, Netherlands-based semiconductor company Nexperia, after Washington agreed to suspend its updated export control rule for one year. After a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump on Thursday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said Washington would temporarily halt the implementation of its so-called 50 per cent subsidiary rule.

Italy opens inquiry into alleged price fixing by Chinese drone maker DJI
Reuters
The Italian Competition Authority said it had opened an investigation into the European subsidiary of the Chinese drone maker DJI and its Italian importer over allegations that they pressured retailers to fix the prices of their products. The AGCM has received reports that DJI, the world’s largest drone maker, and local importer Nital monitored the prices charged by retailers. Those who deviated from the ones on Nital’s website received warnings including threats that supplies would be interrupted.

Danish Presidency backs away from ‘chat control’
EURACTIV
Claudie Moreau
The Danish Council presidency is backing away from pushing for mandatory detection orders in a legislative proposal that aims to tackle the spread of online Child Sexual Abuse Material, the country’s justice minister said on Thursday. Earlier in their presidency, Denmark had revived a controversial provision in the draft law that would mean online platforms – such as messaging apps – could be served with mandatory CSAM detection orders, including services protected by end-to-end encryption. However opposition from several other EU countries derailed any agreement in the Council.

Middle East

Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders
The Guardian
Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham
When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism”. The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world, was born out of Israel’s concerns that data it moves into the global corporations’ cloud platforms could end up in the hands of foreign law enforcement authorities.

Data leak outs hacker students of Iran’s MOIS Training Academy
Dark Reading
Nate Nelson
Future members of Iranian state intelligence have been outed in an anonymous data leak. On Oct. 22, British-Iranian activist Nariman Gharib published a list of more than 1,000 people associated with the Ravin Academy to the open Web. Ravin Academy is a sanctioned Iranian cybersecurity school tied to the government’s umbrella advanced persistent threat group APT34.

Big Tech

Palantir sues engineers who left to form ‘copycat’ Percepta AI
Reuters
Daniel Wiessner
Palantir Technologies on Thursday sued two of its former senior engineers, accusing them of using the software company’s secret information to launch a “copycat” firm, Percepta AI. The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court claims that Radha Jain and Joanna Cohen were “entrusted with Palantir’s crown jewels,” including its source code and customer information, and breached agreements they signed with the company to safeguard that information.

Artificial Intelligence

Google’s built-In AI defenses on Android now block 10 billion scam messages a month
The Hacker News
Ravie Lakshmanan
Google on Thursday revealed that the scam defenses built into Android safeguard users around the world from more than 10 billion suspected malicious calls and messages every month. The tech giant also said it has blocked over 100 million suspicious numbers from using Rich Communication Services, an evolution of the SMS protocol, thereby preventing scams before they could even be sent. In recent years, the company has adopted various safeguards to combat phone call scams and automatically filter known spam using on-device artificial intelligence and move them automatically to the “spam & blocked” folder in the Google Messages app for Android.

Google to offer free Gemini AI access to India’s 505 million Reliance Jio users
Reuters
Munsif Vengattil and Aleef Jahan C S
Google will offer 18-month free access to its Gemini AI service for all 505 million telecom users of India’s Reliance Jio, a tie-up that follows similar freebies from rivals including OpenAI to boost adoption in the world’s most populous nation. The move also comes weeks after Google committed to invest $15 billion in AI infrastructure capacity in India, its biggest investment yet in the critical South Asian market.

OpenAI confirms GPT-5 is now better at handling mental and emotional distress
Bleeping Computer
OpenAI confirmed that it shipped an update on October 5, which allows GPT-5 to better handle sensitive conversations. After the update, GPT will automatically recognize when the user is not doing well, including situations like emotional or mental distress. However, OpenAI says only GPT-5 Instant has been updated to handle such use cases. GPT-5 Instant is one of the fastest and low-end models in the lineup. It’s also the default model most of the time, especially if you have a free account.

Teenage boys using ‘personalised’ AI for therapy and romance, survey finds
The Guardian
Jessica Murray and Robert Booth
The “hyper-personalised” nature of AI bots is drawing in teenage boys who now use them for therapy, companionship and relationships, according to research. A survey of boys in secondary schools by Male Allies UK found that just over a third said they were considering the idea of an AI friend, with growing concern about the rise of AI therapists and girlfriends. The research comes as character.ai, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot startup, announced a total ban on teens from engaging in open-ended conversations with its AI chatbots, which millions of people use for romantic, therapeutic and other conversations.

Canva unveils world-first AI model as it gears for blockbuster listing
The Sydney Morning Herald
David Swan
Canva has launched what it calls the world’s first foundational AI model trained specifically to understand design, marking the Australian tech giant’s biggest evolution yet as it prepares for a blockbuster share market listing within the next two years. The company on Thursday night unveiled its Creative Operating System, bringing together over a decade of product development with new AI capabilities centred around the proprietary Canva Design Model - a foundational system trained to comprehend design logic, orchestrate layouts and generate fully editable content in seconds.

AI browsers are a cybersecurity time bomb
The Verge
Robert Hart
Web browsers are getting awfully chatty. They got even chattier last week after OpenAI and Microsoft kicked the AI browser race into high gear with ChatGPT Atlas and a “Copilot Mode” for Edge. They can answer questions, summarize pages, and even take actions on your behalf. The experience is far from seamless yet, but it hints at a more convenient, hands-off future where your browser does lots of your thinking for you. That future could also be a minefield of new vulnerabilities and data leaks, cybersecurity experts warn.

Events & Podcasts

The Sydney Dialogue 2025
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is pleased to announce the Sydney Dialogue, the world’s premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies, will return on 4-5 December. Now in its fourth year, the dialogue attracts the world’s top thinkers, innovators and policymakers, and focusses on the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and security. TSD has become the place where new partnerships are built among governments, industry and civil society, and where existing partnerships are deepened.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security Programs team at ASPI and supported by partners.

Former ASD employee accused of selling secrets to Russia | China Unveils New 5‑Year Global Tech Push | Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders

Plus, Radio Free Asia suspends editorial operations amid funding cuts, government shutdown

Good morning. It's Thursday, 30th of October.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.

Follow us on Bluesky, on LinkedIn, and on X.

• An Australian national formerly associated with the Australian Signals Directorate is accused by U.S. prosecutors of selling eight trade secrets to a Russian purchaser between April 2022 and August 2025, allegedly receiving almost US $2 million. ABC News

• China’s new five‑year plan (2026–2030) doubles down on advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, and industrial innovation to counter U.S. and Western competition. Xi Jinping urges “extraordinary measures” to secure technological leadership and strengthen export‑control and resource‑security mechanisms, prioritizing productive capacity over welfare spending to boost domestic consumption. The New York Times

• When Google and Amazon negotiated Israel’s $1.2 billion cloud‑computing deal in 2021, the Israeli government mandated a “winking mechanism”: covert payments tied to international legal orders signalling when Israeli data is handed to foreign authorities. The Guardian

ASPI

Australia’s digital Snowy Hydro moment is here
The Strategist
James Corera and Jason Van der Schyff
Australia has always thrived when it builds for the future. The Snowy Hydro Scheme—a major hydroelectricity system that remains Australia’s largest engineering project—wasn’t developed in response to crisis. It was a bold investment made early, knowing that modern industry, energy security and population growth demanded it. That project, called for by the NSW Labor government in 1949 and delivered with national resolve, became an intergenerational asset. What needs building today is not dams and turbines, but rather the digital foundations for the next generation’s national resilience: data, cloud and control.

Artificial intelligence and the future of espionage
The Strategist
Chris Taylor
Artificial intelligence is not simply another technological tool; it’s a transformative force reshaping the foundations of intelligence and national security. In remarks to the 11 October Aspen-Otago National Security Forum in New Zealand, Anne Neuberger, former US deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, provided an illuminating account of how AI could revolutionise the future of intelligence operations, analysis and organisation, but also challenge democratic governance of national security.

🚀 We’ve rebuilt ASPI’s China Defence Universities Tracker from the ground up. The major expansion adds richer profiles, rankings powered by the Critical Technology Tracker, new mapping of links to China’s state-owned defence industry, analysis of China–Russia research ties, and data on the surge in dual-use research centres—now covering 180+ entities with faster search. Be among the first to subscribe and explore new data and exclusive insights: https://unitracker.aspi.org.au/

Australia

Former Australian Signals Directorate employee accused of selling trade secrets to Russia by US prosecutors
ABC News
Stephen Dziedzic and Olivia Caisley
An Australian man in the United States who has been accused of selling trade secrets to a Russian buyer for almost $2 million used to work for Australia’s signals intelligence agency. US prosecutors have alleged in court documents that Peter Williams — who worked for a US-based defence and cyber intelligence contractor — sold eight “trade secrets” to a “buyer based in the Russian Federation” between April 2022 and August 2025.

• Australian man Peter Williams faces lengthy US jail term after selling trade secrets to Russian broker
  ABC News
  Riley Stuart
  An Australian intelligence insider and cybersecurity executive is facing more than a decade in a US jail after pleading guilty to selling a Russian broker his employer’s trade secrets. Peter Joseph Williams faced the US District Court in Washington DC on Wednesday, local time, charged with stealing eight trade secrets — a business term used to describe confidential and often valuable material that gives organisations a competitive edge.

Sorry, China: Albanese and Rudd work up new tech deal for Trump
The Sydney Morning Herald
Paul Sakkal
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is pushing for a deal with US President Donald Trump on new technological frontiers as the US fights a tech and trade war with China. Months after the Albanese government rejected a Chinese offer to incorporate artificial intelligence in the Australia-China free trade agreement, US ambassador Kevin Rudd has revealed Australia is racing towards making a pact with the US on advanced technologies.

Regulator fines crypto ATM operator Cryptolink as part of crackdown that is too late for many
ABC News
Rhiana Whitson
Australia’s financial crimes regulator has taken action against a second cryptocurrency ATM operator as evidence grows that the machines are used for scams and money laundering. Crypto ATMs have become a major laundering risk, according to AUSTRAC, which imposed new restrictions on the sector in July, including transaction limits. But for 72-year-old Perth pensioner Dorothy Dyall, the regulatory crackdown has come too late.

China

Ahead of Trump-Xi meeting, China doubles down on tech ambitions
The New York Times
Chris Buckley
Days before meeting President Trump in South Korea, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping laid out the next stage in a strategy of long-term competition with the United States and the West that centers on securing a global lead in advanced manufacturing and technology. The plan makes clear that Beijing wants to double down on industrial and technological strength even as its trading partners worry that China’s expanding exports are undercutting their own industries.

• China pledges ‘immigration system for hi-tech talent’ as part of new 5-year plan
  South China Morning Post
  Zhao Ziwen
  China’s top leadership has pledged to build an immigration system to lure foreign talent in a move that may help increase its competitiveness amid the ongoing technological competition with the United States. In the blueprint for the five-year plan that starts next year, Beijing said it would “establish an immigration system for hi-tech talent”, and “attract and cultivate outstanding talent from around the world”.

Most Chinese AI apps losing customers despite massive 700 million user base, report shows
South China Morning Post
Iris Deng
China’s artificial intelligence mobile apps have over 700 million users, but most services are losing customers as the sector continues to consolidate, according to a new report. The number of monthly active users (MAU) for AI mobile apps – which include AI-native apps as well as those with integrated AI features – reached 729 million in September, according to a report released by research firm QuestMobile on Tuesday. That compared with 680 million in June, based on previous data compiled by the firm.

USA

US government allowed and even helped US firms sell tech used for surveillance in China, AP finds
Associated Press
Garance Burke, Dake Kang And Byron Tau
U.S. lawmakers have tried four times since September last year to close what they called a glaring loophole: China is getting around export bans on the sale of powerful American AI chips by renting them through U.S. cloud services instead. But the proposals prompted a flurry of activity from more than 100 lobbyists from tech companies and their trade associations trying to weigh in, according to disclosure reports.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social to allow trading on election results
Financial Times
Joe Miller and Alex Rogers
Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is to offer users the chance to trade on the outcome of elections and sports games, extending the US president and his family’s involvement in the booming prediction markets sector. The Trump Media & Technology Group, which controls the social media platform, on Tuesday announced it would partner with Crypto.com to introduce “Truth Predict”, which would allow users “to react instantly to developments in major current events”.

• Donald Trump’s Truth Social is launching a polymarket competitor
  WIRED
  Joel Khalili
  Truth Social, the social media platform majority-owned by US President Donald Trump and his family, is launching a cryptocurrency-based gambling service that will compete directly with the wildly popular Polymarket. The new service, Truth Predict, will allow Truth Social users to place crypto bets on the outcome of particular events, from sports contests to political races to shifts in the economy. Truth Social is operated by Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company.

ICE and CBP agents are scanning peoples’ faces on the street to verify citizenship
404 Media
Joseph Cox
“You don’t got no ID?” a Border Patrol agent in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and neck gaiter asks a kid on a bike. The officer and three others had just stopped the two young men on their bikes during the day in what a video documenting the incident says is Chicago. One of the boys is filming the encounter on his phone. He says in the video he was born here, meaning he would be an American citizen.

Why Trump’s White House is using video game memes to recruit for ICE
The Guardian
Alyssa Mercante
Just days after Microsoft announced Halo: Campaign Evolved, the next game in its famous science-fiction series, the White House shared an interesting picture on X. The image, which appears to be AI-generated, shows President Donald Trump wearing the armour of Halo’s iconic protagonist, Master Chief, standing in salute in front of an American flag that’s missing several stars. In his left hand is an energy sword, a weapon used by the alien enemies in the Halo games.

The popular 3D-printed gun globalizing the Second Amendment
Bloomberg
Samantha Subramanian
Does any firearm announce its ideology as explicitly—and profanely—as the FGC-9 semiautomatic? The “9” refers, in millimeters, to the diameter of its bullets, but the “FGC” stands for “F--- gun control.” The exact manner by which the FGC-9 aspires to f--- gun control is built into its very existence: It’s a physible, a portmanteau from “physical” and “printable,” meaning the gun can be 3D-printed into being (or much of it, anyway).

Radio Free Asia suspends editorial operations amid funding cuts, government shutdown
Axios
Sara Fischer
Radio Free Asia, one of several government-funded international broadcasters, announced Wednesday it would suspend operations and formally lay off its furloughed staff on Friday amid fiscal uncertainty. Why it matters: It’s the first time the outlet has gone dark since its founding in 1996. RFA was created to provide free and accurate news and information to Asian audiences following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and the subsequent information crackdowns in China thereafter.

Southeast Asia

Stragglers from Myanmar scam center raided by army cross into Thailand as buildings are blown up
Associated Press
The number of people fleeing from Myanmar to Thailand after Myanmar’s military shut down a major online scam center has slowed to a trickle, a Thai regional army commander said Tuesday, after more than 1,500 had left in the past week. The KK Park site, identified by Thai officials and independent experts as housing a major cybercrime operation, was raided by Myanmar’s army in mid-October as part of operations starting in early September to suppress cross-border online scams and illegal gambling.

Ukraine – Russia

Red hands and pig heads: Russia’s plan to destabilize France goes on trial
POLITICO
Marion Solletty and Laura Kayali
The banks of the Seine were still cloaked in early morning darkness when a security guard at the Paris Holocaust Museum, seated just a stone’s throw from the Notre Dame Cathedral, noticed a suspicious scene. Two men in dark clothes were spraying red paint across the Wall of the Righteous — a stone monument inscribed with the names of those who saved Jews in France during World War II.

Europe

CEO of spyware maker Memento Labs confirms one of its government customers was caught using its malware
TechCrunch
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
On Monday, researchers at cybersecurity giant Kaspersky published a report identifying a new spyware called Dante that they say targeted Windows victims in Russia and neighboring Belarus. The researchers said the Dante spyware is made by Memento Labs, a Milan-based surveillance tech maker that was formed in 2019 after a new owner acquired and took over early spyware maker Hacking Team.

French lawmakers progress tax on American Big Tech amid huge pushback
POLITICO
Mathieu Pollet and Océane Herrero
French lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to double a tax on big tech firms — backing away from a more aggressive push amid fears of provoking U.S. trade retaliation. France’s National Assembly voted Tuesday night in favor of hiking a digital service tax on tech companies including Google, Apple, Meta and Amazon to 6 percent, up from 3 percent.

Big Tech ups lobbying firepower, €€ in Brussels
POLITICO
Mathieu Pollet
Tech firms are spending more than ever on lobbying the EU amid mounting opposition to the bloc’s digital rules, according to new analysis. The 733 digital industry groups registered in Brussels now spend €151 million a year pushing their interests, up from €113 million two years ago, per an analysis of disclosures to the EU’s transparency register by two campaign groups.

Middle East

Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders
The Guardian
Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham
When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism”.

Will Israel’s Algorithmic Counter-Insurgency Proliferate to the West?
War on the Rocks
Muhanad Seloom
Israel’s recent campaign in Gaza marks a turning point in modern warfare: the fusion of counter-insurgency and artificial intelligence. Will Western states, with different traditions of counter-insurgency that emphasize legitimacy and population control, be influenced by Israel’s algorithmic model? This question carries high stakes. If Israel’s approach, which is characterized by automation, scale, and attrition, becomes a template for liberal democracies, it could normalize a form of warfare that values computational efficiency over human judgment.

Big Tech

OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO
The Wall Street Journal
Keach Hagey and Berber Jin
Nearly two weeks ago, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman sat down for a call with California Attorney General Rob Bonta to deliver a simple message: He really wanted OpenAI to stay in California. Behind it was a subtle threat. As Bonta weighed whether to bless OpenAI’s controversial conversion to a more traditional company structure, OpenAI had spent months making the case that it was the economic heart of the California economy—and would be willing to leave if Bonta blocked its plan to convert to a simpler corporate structure.

Google sued by University of Southern California over imaging technology
Reuters
Blake Brittain
The University of Southern California has sued Google in Texas federal court, alleging that the tech giant’s Google Earth, Maps and Street View applications violate its patent rights. USC said in the complaint, filed Monday that Google’s map and navigation products infringe two patents related to technology for overlaying two-dimensional images onto three-dimensional models.

Nvidia CEO praises Trump in MAGA-themed speech ahead of trade talks
The Wall Street Journal
Robbie Whelan and Amrith Ramkumar
Jensen Huang said Nvidia has helped reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing less than a year into President Trump’s second term and praised his policies days before a key trade meeting that could determine Nvidia’s access to the Chinese market. In a rollicking keynote speech at Nvidia’s first-ever technology conference in the nation’s capital, Huang highlighted a slew of partnerships with prominent American companies, including tech giants like Uber, Palantir, Amazon and Microsoft.

YouTube will age-restrict more content showing ‘graphic violence’ in video games
The Verge
Emma Roth
YouTube is updating its policy to age-restrict more content containing video game scenes with “graphic violence,” the company announced on Tuesday. The update will go into effect on November 17th and will prevent accounts under 18 and signed-out users from watching videos with games focused on showing “realistic human characters” involved in scenes of “mass violence against non-combatants” or torture.

Artificial Intelligence

Inside the data centers that train A.I. and drain the electrical grid
The New Yorker
Stephen Witt
Drive in almost any direction from almost any American city, and soon enough you’ll arrive at a data center—a giant white box rising from graded earth, flanked by generators and fenced like a prison yard. Data centers for artificial intelligence are the new American factory. Packed with computing equipment, they absorb information and emit A.I. Since the launch of ChatGPT, in 2022, they have begun to multiply at an astonishing rate. “I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, recently said.

OpenAI may move forward with new business structure, partnership with Microsoft, regulators say
Associated Press
Matt O’brien and Thalia Beaty
OpenAI said Tuesday it has reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation after two crucial regulators, the Delaware and California attorneys general, said they would not oppose the plan. The restructuring paves the way for the ChatGPT maker to more easily profit off its artificial intelligence technology even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit.

An ex-Intel CEO’s mission to build a Christian AI: ‘hasten the coming of Christ’s return’
The Guardian
Adam Willems
In March, three months after being forced out of his position as the CEO of Intel and sued by shareholders, Patrick Gelsinger took the reins at Gloo, a technology company made for what he calls the “faith ecosystem” – think Salesforce for churches, plus chatbots and AI assistants for automating pastoral work and ministry support. The former CEO’s career pivot is taking place as the US tech industry returns to the political realm as a major revenue stream. Some of its most prominent present-day leaders have funded Donald Trump’s re-election and renewed their pursuit of government contracts as the second Trump administration has revitalized religious conservatism in Washington DC.

Events & Podcasts

The Sydney Dialogue 2025
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is pleased to announce the Sydney Dialogue, the world’s premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies, will return on 4-5 December. Now in its fourth year, the dialogue attracts the world’s top thinkers, innovators and policymakers, and focusses on the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and security. TSD has become the place where new partnerships are built among governments, industry and civil society, and where existing partnerships are deepened.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security Programs team at ASPI and supported by partners.

OpenAI converts to for-profit corporation | China completes first phase of world's first undersea data centre | Nvidia AI chips manufactured in US for first time

Plus, Musk launches 'Grokipedia' to tell the 'truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'

Good morning. It's Wednesday, 29th of October.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.

Follow us on Bluesky, on LinkedIn, and on X.

• OpenAI said on Tuesday it had converted its main business into a for-profit corporation, the conclusion of a lengthy and fraught legal saga. A crucial regulator, Kathy Jennings, the Delaware attorney general, said she approved the plan for the startup, which began as a non-profit in 2015, to change to a public benefit corporation, a type of for-profit entity that expresses commitment to bettering society. The Guardian

• China has completed the first phase of construction of what it claims is the world’s first underwater data center. Located in Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area with a price tag of roughly RMB 1.6 billion ($226 million), it’s a significant milestone in the quest for sustainable solutions to the growing energy demands of China’s computing infrastructure. WIRED

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC conference on Tuesday that its Blackwell graphics processing units — the company’s fastest AI chips — are now in full production in Arizona. Previously, Nvidia’s fastest GPUs were solely manufactured in Taiwan. CNBC

ASPI

Indonesia’s first virtual cyber diplomacy course
The Strategist
Gatra Priyandita
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Universitas Indonesia, with support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, have launched Indonesia’s first virtual cyber diplomacy course developed by Indonesians for Indonesians. This marks a meaningful step toward building the nation’s human capital in an increasingly strategic domain.

🚀 We’ve rebuilt ASPI’s China Defence Universities Tracker from the ground up. The major expansion adds richer profiles, rankings powered by the Critical Technology Tracker, new mapping of links to China’s state-owned defence industry, analysis of China–Russia research ties, and data on the surge in dual-use research centres—now covering 180+ entities with faster search. Be among the first to subscribe and explore new data and exclusive insights: https://unitracker.aspi.org.au/

Australia

Chinese cars stockpiled near Australia’s largest air base labelled a security threat
Canberra Times
Marton Pettendy
New cars continue to be stockpiled in temporary holding yards around Australia as they await pre-delivery and shipment to dealerships, and the latest example uncovered is a large number of Chinese vehicles parked adjacent to Australia’s biggest air base, raising concerns from security experts.

Skies the limit for Aussie hydrogen-powered space drone
Canberra Times
Aaron Bunch
Locally-manufactured military and space drones that would enable Australia’s defence force and its allies to fly faster and further are a step closer under a new international funding deal. Brisbane-based startup Hypersonix Launch Systems is developing reusable unmanned aircraft capable of reaching speeds faster than most military jets, with NASA and the Pentagon backing upcoming test flights.

China

China dives in on the world’s first wind-powered undersea data center
WIRED
Anna Lagos
China has completed the first phase of construction of what it claims is the world’s first underwater data center. Located in Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area with a price tag of roughly RMB 1.6 billion ($226 million), it’s a significant milestone in the quest for sustainable solutions to the growing energy demands of China’s computing infrastructure.

China’s geopolitical competition expands into new frontiers with scientific milestones
South China Morning Post
Mia Nurmamat
China’s geopolitical rivalry with the West is expanding into new frontiers–including the polar regions, outer space, cyberspace and the deep sea–as Beijing unveils a flurry of scientific milestones and state-driven ambitions that analysts say are challenging traditional Western dominance across these critical domains.

China calls for ‘extraordinary measures’ to achieve chip breakthroughs
Financial Times
Ryan McMorrow, Joe Leahy and Edward White
China’s Communist party leadership has called for a nationwide mobilisation involving “extraordinary measures” to achieve “decisive breakthroughs” in semiconductors and other key technologies. The push by the party’s elite central committee to close the gap with the west in chips, machine tools, high-end instruments and basic software comes just days ahead of critical meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump.

USA

Jensen Huang says Nvidia’s AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona
CNBC
Kif Leswing
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC conference on Tuesday that its Blackwell graphics processing units — the company’s fastest AI chips — are now in full production in Arizona. Previously, Nvidia’s fastest GPUs were solely manufactured in Taiwan.

Silicon Valley chip start-up raises $100mn to take on TSMC and ASML
Financial Times
Tim Bradshaw
Silicon Valley investors, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, have invested more than $100mn in a secretive US start-up with an ambitious plan to challenge the dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and ASML in cutting-edge chipmaking.

• US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML Reuters

• Thiel-backed chip startup named Substrate is seeking to crack ASML’s dominance Bloomberg

US agency votes to tighten restrictions on Chinese tech companies deemed threats
Reuters
David Shepardson
The United States tightened rules on telecoms gear made by Chinese companies deemed a national security risk, the latest move in a broader crackdown on Beijing. The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-0 on Tuesday to block new approvals for devices with parts from companies on its “Covered List” and to allow the agency to bar previously approved equipment in certain cases.

Lawsuit against NYPD alleges its surveillance system is unconstitutional
The Record by Recorded Future
Suzanne Smalley
A New York-based anti-surveillance advocacy group is suing the New York Police Department, arguing that its centralized policing platform and the technologies that power it are unconstitutional. The city’s Domain Awareness System uses video cameras, biometric tools, digital communications monitors and data and financial aggregation analytics to track and profile New Yorkers, according to the lawsuit.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social to allow trading on election results
Financial Times
Joe Miller and Alex Rogers
Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is to offer users the chance to trade on the outcome of elections and sports games, extending the US president and his family’s involvement in the booming prediction markets sector. The move comes after Trump’s elder son, Donald Trump Jr, has taken on advisory roles at the two industry-leading prediction market companies, Kalshi and Polymarket.

North Asia

US, South Korea to sign deal boosting AI, quantum cooperation
Bloomberg
Hadriana Lowenkron
President Donald Trump’s administration is slated to sign a deal with South Korea aimed at bolstering cooperation in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 6G, according to a US official — part of a bid to maintain a competitive edge with China in an expanding race for tech supremacy.

Europe

EU officials rush to resolve dispute with China over rare earths and chips
Financial Times
Laura Dubois
EU officials are rushing to find a solution to the escalating trade spat with China over rare earths and chips, as the bloc finds itself stuck in the middle of a larger confrontation between Beijing and Washington. China this month imposed sweeping export restrictions on rare earths in response to US measures. Many European businesses rely on those critical minerals to manufacture technologies such as electric vehicles or fighter jets.

Clearview AI sued in Europe over alleged privacy violations
The Record by Recorded Future
Suzanne Smalley
A prominent European digital privacy advocacy group on Tuesday filed a criminal complaint against Clearview AI and its executives, asserting that the facial recognition company is illegally scraping photos of individuals off of the internet and selling them.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s new power play is exporting A.I. to the world
The New York Times
Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur
For generations, Saudi Arabia exported oil. Now it wants to export one of the digital era’s most coveted resources: computing power. Few nations can match the kingdom’s cheap energy, deep pockets and open land — the ingredients that tech firms need to operate the vast, power-hungry data centers that run modern A.I.

Big Tech

OpenAI completes conversion to for-profit business after lengthy legal saga
The Guardian
OpenAI said on Tuesday it had converted its main business into a for-profit corporation, the conclusion of a lengthy and fraught legal saga. A crucial regulator, Kathy Jennings, the Delaware attorney general, said she approved the plan for the startup, which began as a non-profit in 2015, to change to a public benefit corporation, a type of for-profit entity that expresses commitment to bettering society.

• OpenAI restructuring pushes Microsoft’s valuation above $4tn Financial Times

Elon Musk launches Grokipedia to compete with online encyclopedia Wikipedia
Associated Press
Elon Musk has launched Grokipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia that the billionaire seeks to position as a rival to Wikipedia. Writing on social media, Musk said that Grokipedia.com is “now live” and its goal is the “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

• How Elon Musk’s Wikipedia-alternative ‘Grokipedia’ describes Elon Musk Time

Nvidia to take $1 billion Nokia stake, supply network AI chips
Bloomberg
Jillian Deutsch and Ian King
Nvidia plans to make a $1 billion equity investment in Nokia Oyj, as the AI sector’s kingmaker bets on the Finnish company’s pivot from mobile networking kit into artificial intelligence. Nokia shares jumped the most in more than a decade.

Amazon to cut 14,000 corporate jobs
Bloomberg
Rachel Rees and Tim Bradshaw
Amazon has outlined plans to cut 14,000 jobs across its corporate workforce, as the company looks to cut costs amid increased spending on artificial intelligence. In a message to employees on Tuesday, Beth Galetti, a senior executive at the Seattle-based tech group, said Amazon needed to be “organised more leanly” to capitalise on the opportunities from AI.

• AI’s brutal equation is clear: More dollars mean bigger job cuts The Australian Financial Review

Google agrees deal to reopen US nuclear plant with NextEra
Financial Times
Jamie Smyth
NextEra has agreed to reopen a nuclear power station in Iowa that will primarily provide power to Google as the tech giant races to secure clean energy to drive its artificial intelligence data centres. The largest renewable energy company in the US will lead the redevelopment of Duane Arnold Energy Center after Google signed a 25-year agreement to buy electricity from the power station.

Qualcomm shares jump as it launches new AI chip to rival Nvidia
Financial Times
Michael Acton
Qualcomm’s shares surged as much as 20 per cent on Monday as the US chip company launched its first data-centre processors for artificial intelligence, seeking to grab a share of a multibillion-dollar market dominated by Nvidia. Saudi Arabia’s Humain, an AI company backed by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, will be Qualcomm’s first customer, as they build on a partnership announced in May.

I led product safety at OpenAI. Don’t trust its claims about ‘erotica.’
The New York Times
Steven Adler
I believe OpenAI wants its products to be safe to use. But it also has a history of paying too little attention to established risks. This spring, the company released — and after backlash, withdrew — an egregiously “sycophantic” version of ChatGPT that would reinforce users’ extreme delusions, like being targeted by the F.B.I.

Misc

Privacy laws can’t keep up with ‘luxury surveillance’
The Verge
Janus Rose
With Meta’s new range of smart glasses, Mark Zuckerberg is pitching a vision of the future that sci-fi authors have been warning about for decades — one where privacy is truly dead, and everyone is recording everyone else at all times.

CISA warns of two more actively exploited Dassault vulnerabilities
Bleeping Computer
Sergiu Gatlan
The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency warned today that attackers are actively exploiting two vulnerabilities in Dassault Systèmes’ DELMIA Apriso, a manufacturing operations management and execution solution. DELMIA Apriso is used by enterprises worldwide to manage warehouses, schedule production, allocate resources, manage quality, and integrate production equipment with various business applications.

Panic as breached details of 183m accounts, including Gmail, emerge
The Sydney Morning Herald
Tim Biggs
Google has called for calm amid a frenzy of sensational reports suggesting a Gmail security breach is affecting millions of accounts. In fact, the source of the hubbub is a massive collection of breached credentials and data — comprising 183 million individual accounts — being uploaded to data breach information website Have I Been Pwned. Most of it is not newly breached information. Here’s what you need to know.

Events & Podcasts

The Sydney Dialogue 2025
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is pleased to announce the Sydney Dialogue, the world’s premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies, will return on 4-5 December. Now in its fourth year, the dialogue attracts the world’s top thinkers, innovators and policymakers, and focusses on the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and security. TSD has become the place where new partnerships are built among governments, industry and civil society, and where existing partnerships are deepened.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security Programs team at ASPI and supported by partners.

Australia sues Microsoft over AI pricing | Sweden probes power grid data breach | US, China finalize TikTok deal

Plus, teenagers can’t tell AI fakes from real videos

Good morning. It's Tuesday, 28th of October.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.

Follow us on Bluesky, on LinkedIn, and on X.

• Australia’s competition regulator on Monday sued Microsoft, accusing it of misleading millions of customers into paying higher prices for its Microsoft 365 software after bundling it with artificial intelligence tool Copilot. Reuters

• Sweden’s power grid operator is investigating a data breach after a ransomware group threatened to leak hundreds of gigabytes of purportedly stolen internal data. The Record by Recorded Future

• The United States and China are ready to move forward on a TikTok deal, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent had already said last month that the two countries reached a “framework” on a deal during discussions in Madrid, and President Donald Trump subsequently signed an executive order to facilitate the transaction. TechCrunch

ASPI

🚀 We’ve rebuilt ASPI’s China Defence Universities Tracker from the ground up. The major expansion adds richer profiles, rankings powered by the Critical Technology Tracker, new mapping of links to China’s state-owned defence industry, analysis of China–Russia research ties, and data on the surge in dual-use research centres—now covering 180+ entities with faster search. Be among the first to subscribe and explore new data and exclusive insights: https://unitracker.aspi.org.au/

Australia

Australia sues Microsoft over AI-linked subscription price hikes
Reuters
Australia’s competition regulator on Monday sued Microsoft, accusing it of misleading millions of customers into paying higher prices for its Microsoft 365 software after bundling it with artificial intelligence tool Copilot. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged that from October 2024, the technology giant misled about 2.7 million customers by suggesting they had to move to higher-priced Microsoft 365 personal and family plans that included Copilot.

• ACCC sues Microsoft for allegedly misleading millions of Australians with Microsoft 365 subscription hikes ABC News

• ACCC takes Microsoft to court over allegations of ‘misleading millions of Australians’ CyberDaily

Australia signs UN cybercrime treaty in Hanoi
InnovationAus
Francesco Guarascio and Khanh Vu
A landmark UN cybercrime treaty, aimed at tackling offences that cost the global economy trillions of dollars annually, was signed in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi by around 60 countries over the weekend. The convention, which will take effect after it is ratified by 40 nations, is expected to streamline international cooperation against cybercrime, but has been criticised by activists and tech companies over concerns of possible human rights abuses.

On the dark web, paedophiles are sharing tips on how to abuse children in child care
ABC News
Adele Ferguson, Chris Gillett, Jade Toomey and Dylan Welch
Paedophiles are using the dark web to share information about how to gain access to childcare centres to sexually abuse babies and toddlers while avoiding getting caught. Warning: This story contains discussion of child sexual abuse. A Four Corners investigation has uncovered private forums where predators coach each other and post proof of their abuse. The forums give an insight into how organised and strategic these predators have become. Inside these encrypted forums, predators swap tactics and advice. One of the most chilling questions posted is, “Where do I find a child?”

Bad for humanity, good for business’: Australian firms help Europe arm for war
ABC News
Eliza Goetze
As European countries rush to shore up their defences amid the war in Ukraine, Australian companies are capitalising on a new age of drone warfare. Australian defence technology is in demand and stocks from related engineering and software innovators have skyrocketed in recent years as a result. Analysts warn that, despite the apparent peace deal in the Middle East, demand for defence tech is unlikely to let up soon. And they believe Australian companies are leading the way in a crucial field: anti-drone technology.

Breakthrough Victoria commits $75m to VC funds
InnovationAus
Trish Everingham
Breakthrough Victoria will invest $75 million into five venture capital funds in a bid to support early-stage companies and accelerate the commercialisation of research across key sectors, including climate technology, life sciences and artificial intelligence. The funding will be split between Virescent Ventures Fund II, SYNthesis BioVentures Fund I, Scale Venture Fund I, Galileo Ventures Fund II, and a new North American healthcare fund establishing an Australian base in Victoria.

Labor rules out giving tech giants free rein to mine copyright content to train AI
The Guardian
Dan Jervis-Bardy
The Albanese government has explicitly ruled out handing tech companies free rein to mine creative content to train their artificial intelligence models, after a fierce backlash from authors and from arts and media groups. The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, will confirm the decision on Monday, shutting the door on a contentious proposal floated by the Productivity Commission and backed by tech companies.

We’re fighting disinformation in all the wrong ways
Crikey
Fan Yang, Robbie Fordyce and Luke Heemsbergen
Regulating disinformation merely as “content” to be prevented or corrected by fact-checkers is unproductive and limiting. The real task is to interrogate the system that feeds it. Our RECapture research team tracks how disinformation impacts Australian democratic processes as it spreads across Chinese and American social media platforms like WeChat, RedNote and YouTube. To better prepare us for the elections of the future, we suggest it’s time to consider how regulators and fact-checkers may have been focusing on the wrong fight against disinformation.

China

Insight: Robot dogs and AI drone swarms: How China could use DeepSeek for an era of war
Reuters
Eduardo Baptista and Fanny Potkin
China’s state-owned defense giant Norinco in February unveiled a military vehicle capable of autonomously conducting combat-support operations at 50 kilometres per hour. It was powered by DeepSeek, the company whose artificial intelligence model is the pride of China’s tech sector. The Norinco P60’s release was touted by Communist Party officials in press statements as an early showcase of how Beijing is using DeepSeek and AI to catch up in its arms race with the United States, at a time when leaders in both countries have urged their militaries to prepare for conflict.

DeepSeek and Qwen AI models crush Western rivals in cryptocurrency trading challenge
South China Morning Post
Iris Deng
Chinese artificial intelligence models DeepSeek and Qwen have surged ahead of Western rivals, including GPT, with returns exceeding 100 per cent in just nine days during an ongoing real-market cryptocurrency trading competition. DeepSeek’s Chat V3.1 model grew its initial capital of US$10,000 to US$22,500 by 4pm on Monday – a 125 per cent gain since trading began on October 18 – according to the latest update from Alpha Arena, a crypto investment project launched by US research firm Nof1.

Could China ‘militarise’ cryptocurrencies to sanction-proof its economy?
South China Morning Post
Jane Cai
Digital currency is emerging as a powerful, disruptive tool in global geopolitics, fundamentally reshaping the financial battlefield in times of conflict, according to a commentary in a key Communist Party publication. Nations are increasingly leveraging digital assets to bypass international sanctions, mobilise vital resources and maintain economic stability during regional conflicts, according to the author of an article published on Monday in Study Times, the official newspaper of the Central Party School.

Hong Kong businesses lose US$11 billion to digital fraud in past year, TransUnion says
South China Morning Post
Danielle Popov
Hong Kong businesses reported HK$92 billion in financial losses from digital fraud over the past year, despite the city’s overall digital fraud rate being lower than the global average, according to a new report by credit reference agency TransUnion. Conducted from late May to early June, the survey gathered data from 1,200 respondents worldwide, including 200 in Hong Kong, all in managerial roles overseeing risk and business fraud. In Hong Kong, only companies with an annual revenue of at least HK$200 million were polled.

USA

Trump and Xi will ‘consummate’ TikTok deal on Thursday, treasury secretary says
TechCrunch
Anthony Ha
The United States and China are ready to move forward on a TikTok deal, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent had already said last month that the two countries reached a “framework” on a deal during discussions in Madrid, and President Donald Trump subsequently signed an executive order to facilitate the transaction. In a Sunday morning appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Bessent said the U.S. and China have reached “a final deal on TikTok.”

ICE is building a social media panopticon
The Verge
Emma Roth
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement carries out raids across the country, the agency is working rapidly to expand an online surveillance system that could potentially track millions of users on the web. Federal records uncovered by The Lever reveal that ICE is paying $5.7 million to use an AI-powered social media monitoring platform called Zignal Labs, something Will Owen, the communications director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, calls an “assault” on democracy and free speech.

CISA releases warning about Windows Server Update Service bug, orders agencies to patch
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
Federal agencies and businesses are being urged to immediately patch a vulnerability affecting a widely used Windows update tool after experts warned that it is being exploited by hackers. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sent out an urgent alert on Friday evening about CVE-2025-59287 — a vulnerability Microsoft included in its monthly set of security updates about two weeks ago. The vulnerability affects the Windows Server Update Service in Windows Server versions 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025.

Big tech makes Cal State its A.I. training ground
The New York Times
Natasha Singer
On the first day of A.I. Camp, a new summer program at California State University, Savannah Bosley got a hands-on introduction to Amazon Bedrock, a system for building artificial intelligence apps. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to put it on the résumé, to learn a new tool that’s maybe marketable,” said Ms. Bosley, a computer science major who graduated this year from California Polytechnic State University, a Cal State campus in San Luis Obispo. Dozens of students attended the five-day program, which was held on the Cal Poly campus and “powered by” Amazon Web Services.

Ukraine – Russia

Chatbots are pushing sanctioned Russian propaganda
WIRED
Matt Burgess and Natasha Bernal
ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds. Openai’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI’s Grok are pushing Russian state propaganda from sanctioned entities—including citations from Russian state media, sites tied to Russian intelligence or pro-Kremlin narratives—when asked about the war against Ukraine, according to a new report.

Kremlin claims new ‘Skyfall’ nuclear-powered cruise missile success
The Australian
Tom Parfitt
Russia is preparing to deploy a nuclear-powered cruise missile after a successful test flight in which the weapon stayed airborne for 15 hours, President Putin said on Sunday. Described by the Kremlin as “invulnerable”, the Burevestnik missile is said by Russia’s military to have an effectively unlimited range because it is powered by a small nuclear reactor rather than a conventional, fuel-constrained jet engine. US intelligence sources previously claimed that multiple tests of the missile, designated Skyfall by NATO, had been unsuccessful.

Europe

Sweden’s power grid operator confirms data breach claimed by ransomware gang
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
Sweden’s power grid operator is investigating a data breach after a ransomware group threatened to leak hundreds of gigabytes of purportedly stolen internal data. State-owned Svenska kraftnät, which operates the country’s electricity transmission system, said the incident affected a “limited external file transfer solution” and did not disrupt Sweden’s power supply. “We take this breach very seriously and have taken immediate action,” said Chief Information Security Officer Cem Göcgören in a statement.

Europe’s tech sector outperforms as AI boom bolsters demand
Bloomberg
Chloe Meley
European tech earnings resoundingly beat expectations, as growing investment in artificial intelligence lifts demand and counters trade headwinds. The MSCI Europe Technology index has delivered earnings-per-share growth of 16% for the third quarter so far, with more than 86% of the index’ market capitalization having reported. That’s well above pre-season expectations of 4.2% growth and far ahead of any other sector in the region.

Middle East

For air-and-missile defence, Israel offers the economic solutions
The Strategist
Sam Goldsmith
An Israeli solution may offer the best value-for-money for the integrated air-and-missile defence capability that Australia urgently needs. The Australian Defence Force and Australian civilian infrastructure are facing a plethora of advanced air and missile threats, including fast, hard-to-intercept ones such as ballistic missiles, hypersonic boost-glide missiles and now weapons that reach orbit before descending.

Big Tech

OpenAI says hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT Users may show signs of manic or psychotic crisis every week
WIRED
Louise Matsakis
OpenAI released initial estimates about the share of users who may be experiencing symptoms like delusional thinking, mania, or suicidal ideation, and says it has tweaked GPT-5 to respond more effectively. For the first time ever, OpenAI has released a rough estimate of how many ChatGPT users globally may show signs of having a severe mental health crisis in a typical week. The company said Monday that it worked with experts to make updates to the chatbot so it can more reliably recognize indicators of mental distress and guide users toward real-world support.

Meta’s threads adds disappearing posts for ‘unfiltered’ thoughts
Bloomberg
Kurt Wagner
Threads, the X competitor from Meta Platforms Inc., is launching disappearing posts to encourage more people to share “unfiltered thoughts” on the network without fear that they’ll exist forever on a user’s profile. Ghost posts, as they’re called, will show up alongside regular ones in the main feed, but will vanish after 24 hours, similar to the popular Stories feature inside Meta’s other apps, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Replies sent to a ghost post will be sent as a private message instead of a public comment.

Artificial Intelligence

Teenagers struggle to tell if videos are real or fake as AI floods social media
ABC News
Cale Matthews and Nicholas Maher
As he watches a video of a fisherman get tugged and pulled into the water, Fahad, 16, is confident his eyes do not deceive him. “That looks real to me, I think,” he says. “Nothing’s off about it, and I think the floor was pretty natural as well.” His confidence is misplaced. The video he is watching was generated using AI. “That’s AI? Oh … oh, I’m terrible at this.’‘ He might say he is terrible, but he is not alone. As Sasha, 17, watches the same AI fisherman, she falls into the same trap.

‘Do not trust your eyes’: AI generates surge in expense fraud
Financial Times
Businesses are increasingly being deceived by employees using artificial intelligence for an age-old scam: faking expense receipts. The launch of new image-generation models by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google in recent months has sparked an influx of AI-generated receipts submitted internally within companies, according to leading expense software platforms. Software provider AppZen said fake AI receipts accounted for about 14 per cent of fraudulent documents submitted in September, compared with none last year.

Not ‘OK Computer’: OpenAI is reportedly developing a generative AI that creates music
CyberDaily
Daniel Croft
At a time when AI-generated music is causing frustration and controversy in the music industry, OpenAI is reportedly developing a tool that would allow users to create musical compositions. According to a report by The Information, OpenAI has been working with students from the Juilliard School in New York to collect training data for the new tool. While details of the tool are currently unknown, including a launch date, AI music has been causing issues in the music industry, with many artists frustrated with the amount of AI-generated artists and music popping up.

Events & Podcasts

The Sydney Dialogue 2025
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is pleased to announce the Sydney Dialogue, the world’s premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies, will return on 4-5 December. Now in its fourth year, the dialogue attracts the world’s top thinkers, innovators and policymakers, and focusses on the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and security. TSD has become the place where new partnerships are built among governments, industry and civil society, and where existing partnerships are deepened.

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