Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots | Myanmar military raids cyberscam hub, seizes 30 Starlink terminals | OpenAI picks up more govt work amid lobbying blitz

Plus, Trump uses fake imagery to attack enemies and rouse supporters

Good morning. It's Wednesday, 22nd of October.

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

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• Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees. The New York Times

• Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday. Associated Press

• US tech giant OpenAI has secured its second federal contract while ratcheting up a policy and sales blitz in Canberra that includes private meeting with Anthony Albanese’s Cabinet and Australia’s mandarins. InnovationAus

ASPI

On US critical minerals cooperation, Canberra gets it right
The Strategist
John Coyne
The new United States–Australia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths is a game-changer for both countries and for producers such as Arafura Resources in the Northern Territory. In a Strategist article published yesterday, I argued that Australia’s government needed to turn deals into dollars and was sceptical about large-scale deliverables. On this occasion, I was wrong, and Canberra looks to be getting it right. The agreement converts strategic ambition into real investment, processing capacity and supply-chain architecture—starting now. That matters a great deal for the Indo-Pacific and for our defence-industrial base.

🚀 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

Amazon struggles to recover as major outage causes chaos
The Australian Financial Review
Amelia Mcguire
Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world’s most popular apps - Snapchat and Reddit - and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected technologies.

Australia

OpenAI picks up more govt work amid lobbying blitz
InnovationAus
Joseph Brookes
US tech giant OpenAI has secured its second federal contract while ratcheting up a policy and sales blitz in Canberra that includes private meeting with Anthony Albanese’s Cabinet and Australia’s mandarins. The US$500 billion artificial intelligence firm followed its inaugural federal contract with Treasury in July with another small deal, this time with the Commonwealth Grants Commission. Like the first, the new deal was struck without competition and covers licences for OpenAI’s flagship product ChatGPT.

Telstra activates Sydney-Melbourne AI fast lane
InnovationAus
Trish Everingham
Telstra has switched on the Sydney–Melbourne leg of its long-haul fibre system, meeting a surge in AI-fueled traffic and marking a key milestone in the telco’s $1.6 billion infrastructure program. The 1,200 kilometre coastal link, dubbed the Aura Network, connects Australia’s two largest cities with what Telstra says are record transmission rates of 700 gigabits per second on a single fibre channel during live tests and a desktop simulated total capacity of 83.6 terabits per second.

Data centres will soon make up 12 per cent of energy demand: AEMO
The Australian Financial Review
Amelia Mcguire
The head of the energy market operator says data centres are set to consume 12 per cent of all power generated by 2040, with co-ordination between governments and companies needed to manage the growth. Daniel Westerman appeared at the Financial Review Energy and Climate Summit after a trip to Virginia in the United States, where about 80 per cent of the world’s internet traffic is processed. He said the region, like Australia, was grappling with how to meet the insatiable energy demand.

NSW puts final touches on next cyber strategy
InnovationAus
Justin Hendry
NSW’s refreshed cybersecurity strategy will strengthen governance and deliver critical support to all agencies across government, regardless of their size or location, according to the state’s cyber chief. Marie Patane, who leads Cyber Security NSW, shared the first public details of the new strategy while fronting a parliamentary inquiry on Monday, saying it would soon go before Cabinet for sign-off. She also revealed that a new assurance framework is being trialed to independently verify agency cyber self-assessments, just weeks after an audit warned that the current approach was unreliable.

Aussie cops launch ClickFit cyber crime awareness campaign
CyberDaily
David Hollingworth
The Australian Federal Police, alongside police forces from all states and territories, has responded to research outlining the poor security habits of Australians with a new cyber crime awareness campaign, dubbed ClickFit by the AFP. “Research shows our online habits directly impact our risk profile, and many Australians overlook simple steps to stay secure online, which can prevent their victimisation,” AFP acting Commander of Cybercrime Operations Marie Andersson said in a 21 October statement.

Ex-envoy on US-Australia push to break China’s minerals grip
InnovationAus
Justin Hendry
The new Australia-US critical minerals pact will turbocharge efforts to build China-free supply chains and help weaken Beijing’s stranglehold on the sector, former senior diplomat Paul Myler says. But Mr Myler, who served five years as deputy chief of mission at the Australian embassy in Washington, says securing the breadth of elements essential to modern technology will remain a challenge. “The thing we have to acknowledge is we walked away from this area 20 years ago,” said Mr Myler, who now runs Perth-based geopolitical risk advisory firm StratQ.

China

China Says Dutch Nexperia seizure places supply chain at risk
Bloomberg
Sarah Jacob and Foster Wong
China’s Commerce Minister warned that the Dutch state’s move to take control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia has “seriously affected” the stability of the global supply chain. The minister, Wang Wentao, urged the Dutch to urgently resolve the issue, according to a Chinese government readout of a call with Dutch Economic Affairs Minister Vincent Karremans.

USA

How Trump is using fake imagery to attack enemies and rouse supporters
The New York Times
Stuart A. Thompson
The era of A.I. propaganda is here — and President Trump is an enthusiastic participant. After nationwide protests this weekend against Mr. Trump’s administration, the president posted an A.I.-generated video to his Truth Social account depicting himself as a fighter pilot, careening through major cities and dropping excrement on protesters. It was the latest example in a yearslong shift by Mr. Trump to deploy fake imagery, generated by artificial intelligence, as part of his social media commentary.

Inside the Trump administration’s Bluesky invasion
WIRED
Makena Kelly
Since at least February, the White House had considered creating a Bluesky account. What began as talk of setting up an experimental account turned into a more strategic decision last week. As the government continued into shutdown, members of the White House’s digital team decided to take its shutdown messaging to the predominantly left-wing platform as part of a coordinated blitz with several other federal agencies that officials described as an effort to “reach all audiences.”

Americas

Google’s moonshot factory to review Rio’s grid for data centers
Bloomberg
Peter Millard
Alphabet’s Google moonshot factory plans to review Rio de Janeiro’s power grid ahead of the potential construction of data centers that would put the city at the forefront of Latin America’s artificial-intelligence industry, according to the city’s vice mayor. The work with Tapestry, a division of the Moonshot Factory that focuses on grid management, is expected to be one of four initiatives the city announces early next month at an event tied to the C40 World Mayors Summit, Vice Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere said in an interview.

North Asia

Japanese convenience stores are hiring robots run by workers in the Philippines
Rest of World
Michael Beltran
Occasionally, when a bot dropped a can, someone would don a virtual-reality headset and use joysticks to help recover it. The AI robots are designed by Tokyo-based startup Telexistence, and run on Nvidia and Microsoft platforms. Since 2022, the company has deployed the machines in the back rooms of over 300 FamilyMart and Lawson stores in Tokyo. It is also planning to use them soon in 7-Elevens.

Japan’s ‘Silicon Island’ businesses lure Indonesian chip talent
Nikkei Asia
Shotaro Mori
Fukuoka Financial Group is partnering with Japanese human resources conglomerate World Holdings and a network of technical high schools in Indonesia to start offering work placement for Indonesian talent at Japanese manufacturers, especially in the semiconductor industry. “We hope to bring in young people from Indonesia to work in Japan as one part of addressing the declining labor force in Kyushu,” said Katsuhiro Kuriyama, CEO of World’s HR and talent unit World Intec, referring to Japan’s southernmost main island at a news conference last Wednesday.

Southeast Asia

Myanmar military raids cyberscam hub, seizes 30 Starlink terminals
Associated Press
Grant Peck
Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday. Myanmar is notorious for hosting cyberscam operations responsible for bilking people all over the world. These usually involve gaining victims’ confidence online with romantic ploys and bogus investment pitches. The centers are infamous for recruiting workers from other countries under false pretenses, promising them legitimate jobs and then holding them captive and forcing them to carry out criminal activities.

Europe

Apple attacks EU crackdown in digital law’s biggest court test
Bloomberg
Samuel Stoltan
Apple lashed out at the European Union’s attempts to tame the power of Silicon Valley in the most far-reaching legal challenge of the bloc’s Big Tech antitrust rules. The iPhone maker’s lawyer Daniel Beard told the General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Digital Markets Act “imposes hugely onerous and intrusive burdens” at odds with Apple’s rights in the EU marketplace.

Middle East

The world needs more spaceports. Oman wants to help
Rest of World
Laura Jedeed
Oman’s dream for a spaceport sits in a swath of desert overlooking the Arabian Sea. If all goes according to plan, three separate complexes here will launch everything from small suborbital rockets for scientific experiments to superheavy behemoths into space, bringing payloads of satellites to the stars. There will be a large mission-control building, warehouses for rocket assembly and testing, and a business park. If the spaceport succeeds, by 2027 Oman will join the small number of countries — just a dozen to date — that possess the facilities to launch objects into space.

Big Tech

Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots
The New York Times
Karen Weise
Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees. Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.

How Sam Altman tied Tech’s biggest players to OpenAI
The Wall Street Journal
Berber Jim
Jensen Huang was wrapping up a trip celebrating the Lunar New Year in Asia this past January when Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, stood alongside Sam Altman at the White House to unveil what was billed as the largest AI infrastructure project in history. For almost a decade, the Nvidia chief executive had supplied the AI chips that powered OpenAI’s rise. Huang wanted to be the one unveiling such a giant deal with OpenAI’s CEO, according to people familiar with his thinking.

TikTok won’t say if it is giving ICE your data
Forbes
Emily Baker-White
Earlier this year, TikTok quietly changed its policies about when and how it would share data with governments. As the company negotiated terms with the Trump Administration that would allow its app to continue operating in the U.S., it added language to its policies that covered data sharing not just with law enforcement, but also with “regulatory authorities, where relevant,” and weakened promises to inform users about government requests for their private data.

Big Tech’s green pledges threatened by carbon-accounting overhaul
Financial Times
Kenza Bryan
The world’s leading authority on carbon accounting has proposed stricter disclosure rules that are set to make it more challenging for large power users such as Amazon and Meta to hit their climate targets. The EU, California and the International Financial Reporting Standards all draw on the voluntary Greenhouse Gas Protocol oversight body in their guidelines on how companies should disclose their carbon footprints.

Meta tops spending again as AI lobbying heats up
Axios
Ashley Gold
Meta was the top lobbying spender in the third quarter of 2025, and AI and semiconductor companies increased their quarterly spend, per federal filings. Why it matters: Big Tech companies are still outspending companies focusing purely on AI and hardware, but the gaps are getting narrower.

Artificial Intelligence

Wikipedia says AI is hurting traffic
CyberDaily
Daniel Croft
The Wikimedia Foundation said it detected an 8 per cent year-on-year decrease in real human traffic between March and August 2025. “We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content,” Marshall Miller, senior director of product at Wikimedia Foundation, said.

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.