ASPI: Mapping a decade’s worth of hybrid threats targeting Australia | Trump to rescind chip curbs after debate over AI rules | Meta bans largest Muslim news page in India
Baidu AI patent application reveals plans for turning animal sounds into words
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Hybrid threats, enabled by digital technologies and fuelled by geostrategic competition, are reshaping international security and global norms. ASPI has been collecting open-source data to examine the nature and frequency of hybrid threats targeting Australia. We’ve built a database that spans nine years, from March 2016 to February 2025, and in that time we have tracked 74 activities. The Strategist
The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg
Meta has banned the largest Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the behest of the government. Muslim, a news account run by Palestinian American journalist Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh, is one of the most-followed Muslim news sources on Instagram. User Mag
ASPI
Mapping a decade’s worth of hybrid threats targeting Australia
The Strategist
Fitriani and Shelly Shih
Hybrid threats, enabled by digital technologies and fuelled by geostrategic competition, are reshaping international security and global norms. Most often, states (commonly working through non-state proxies) are exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities and engaging in economic coercion, information warfare and even physical sabotage. They do so in order to advance their strategic ambitions and undermine the interests of others, while avoiding the threshold for conflict. ASPI has been collecting open-source data to examine the nature and frequency of hybrid threats targeting Australia. We’ve built a database that spans nine years, from March 2016 to February 2025, and in that time we have tracked 74 activities. Understanding the scale that confronts us is the first step to strengthening public awareness and building an effective national response.
Australia
eSafety prepares to hear from platforms, experts on social media ban
Capital Brief
John Buckley
The eSafety Commissioner is preparing to hear from executives, experts and the broader community on world-first social media age restrictions that have become a key battleground for some of the world’s largest tech companies. In an email sent to tech executives and other stakeholders on Monday, the Office of the eSafety Commissioner called for expressions of interest and outlined plans to launch a public consultation process on 5 June. The consultation will focus on how Labor’s proposed social media age rules will be implemented.
Google age ID proposal may not suit Australia’s under-16 social media ban, expert says
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
Google is considering allowing people to store and share identification documents such as their passport or driver’s licence on their phone, as part of the Australian government’s test of technologies to enforce the upcoming social media ban for under 16s. But while the proposed system will likely offer benefits for adults who have access to identification, it will probably be less useful for identifying teenagers without ID documents, raising questions about how helpful the technology would be for the ban.
Commonwealth court breaches Privacy Act in CCTV fiasco
Canberra Times
Connor Pearce
The court empowered to handle complaints under the Privacy Act breached this very legislation in a landmark sexual harassment case, incorrectly granting a barrister access to CCTV footage of more than half a dozen individuals. The Federal Court of Australia has been forced to apologise to seven people after court staff allowed a barrister to watch CCTV footage of them taken inside the court's Perth offices.
UNSW teams up with Luminary for $3.6m deep tech startup boost
Capital Brief
Bronwen Clune
The University of New South Wales has partnered with venture capital firm Luminary to commit $3.6 million in funding for startups emerging from its accelerator programs. The partnership between UNSW Founders and Luminary will see $200,000 invested into 18 startup companies in 2025. According to David Burt, director of entrepreneurship at UNSW Founders, this collaboration represents the largest public–private partnership between a university-based accelerator and a venture capital firm in Australia.
China
Baidu AI patent application reveals plans for turning animal sounds into words
South China Morning Post
Coco Feng
Chinese artificial intelligence giant Baidu is seeking a patent for artificial intelligence technology designed to translate animal sounds into human language. The internet search giant submitted the patent application in December, but it was only published publicly by the China National Intellectual Property Administration on Tuesday.
Tesla loses more sales in China as buyers opt for cheaper, tech-laden domestic models
South China Morning Post
Daniel Ren
Deliveries by Tesla’s Shanghai factory plunged in April, reversing a short-lived turnaround a month earlier, in the latest sign of the US carmaker’s grim situation in the world’s largest electric-vehicle market. The company’s Gigafactory 3 handed 58,459 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to customers in mainland China and abroad last month, representing a 25.8 per cent drop from March, according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association on Wednesday. Deliveries slipped 6 per cent from a year earlier.
USA
Trump to rescind chip curbs after debate over AI rules
Bloomberg
Stephanie Lai and Mackenzie Hawkins
The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter. The repeal, which is not yet final, seeks to refashion a policy launched under President Joe Biden that created three broad tiers of countries for regulating the export of chips from Nvidia Corp. and others. The Trump administration will not enforce the so-called AI diffusion rule when it takes effect on May 15, the people said.
Trump signals US might ease chip export curbs on some Gulf countries
Reuters
Jeff Mason
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will soon have an announcement on whether the U.S. will ease microchip export restrictions to some Gulf countries. "We might be doing that, yeah," Trump said. "And it will be announced soon." Trump is preparing for his first major diplomatic trip next week that includes a three-country Middle East tour that begins in Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration imposed strict controls on exports of American AI chips to the Middle East over fears the prized semiconductors could be diverted to China and harnessed to bolster Beijing's military. But Trump has made improving ties with some countries in the region a key goal of his administration.
U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Musk’s Starlink, cables show
The Washington Post
Jeff Stein and Hannah Natanson
Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink. The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly 2 million people awarded Musk’s firm the nation’s first-ever satellite internet service license, slated to last for 10 years.
SpaceX’s Starlink has become a big benefactor of Trump’s tariff trade war, leaked memos show
TechCrunch
Julie Bort
SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, is directly benefiting from the Trump Administration’s tariff trade war, according to leaked State Department memos obtained by the Washington Post. The memos show the U.S. pushing countries to adopt Starlink. Some show that countries believe that doing so could help lubricate their U.S. trade and tariff negotiations. One memo about the tiny African nation of Lesotho, which the U.S. imposed a 50% tariff against, flat-out said so about its new 10-year deal with Starlink, the Post reported.
Unsophisticated' hackers targeting systems used by oil and gas industry, CISA says
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
Cyberthreat actors are targeting complex systems used by the oil and natural gas industry, according to a one-paragraph notice published by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The agency is warning of “unsophisticated cyber actor(s)” targeting technology used by U.S. critical infrastructure sectors — particularly in "Energy and Transportation Systems." The advisory says the hackers are targeting the industrial control systems and supervisory control and data acquisition technology typically used by companies in these sectors for a variety of operational tasks. CISA, the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy also published a more general guide on threats to such systems.
U.S. AI leadership needs smarter controls
Foreign Policy
Nury Turkel
The DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence model has been a wake-up call for the U.S. technology sector, prompting calls for stricter export controls to curb China’s access to advanced technologies. But as AI increasingly redefines global power—through its proven use in battlefield decision-making, mass surveillance, automated cyberoperations, and application of state propaganda—Washington’s strategy must also increase investment in research and development, foster domestic innovation, and enhance international collaboration to promote AI that is free from state-imposed censorship and aligned with democratic values.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says losing China would be ‘tremendous loss’ amid US-China AI race
South China Morning Post
Ann Cao
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said losing China’s artificial intelligence market would be a huge loss, with the market poised for significant growth in the coming years, as the chip designer faces tightening export restrictions from Washington. China’s AI market is likely to grow to US$50 billion in the next two to three years, Huang said in an interview with US broadcaster CNBC on Tuesday. “It would be a tremendous loss not to be able to address it as an American company,” he said. Selling to China would also help bring revenue back to the US, contributing to taxes and helping to “create lots of jobs”, he added. “The world’s dynamic today. You just got to stay agile.”
DOD cyber policy nominee vows to ‘revaluate’ offensive cyber guardrails
The Record by Recorded Future
Martin Matishak
President Donald Trump’s pick to be the Defense Department’s next digital policy chief on Tuesday said she would reassess policies for offensive cyber operations to ensure the Pentagon is keeping pace with the “exponential” changes to the domain. Katie Sutton, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, specifically pointed to a directive from Trump’s first term, known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 13, that relaxed the rules on the use of cyber weapons, as well as defense policy legislation from around that time that deemed digital operations as a "traditional military activity.”
Cisco shows quantum networking chip, opens new lab
Reuters
Stephen Nellis
Cisco Systems on Tuesday showed a prototype chip for networking quantum computers together and said it is opening a new lab in Santa Monica, California, to further pursue quantum computing. The chip uses some of the same technology as current networking chips and would help link together smaller quantum computers into larger systems. But Cisco also believes it will have practical applications before those computers become mainstream, such as helping financial firms sync up the timing of trades or helping scientists detect meteorites.
Americas
G-7 leaders eye talks on North Korea’s crypto hacks at summit
Bloomberg
Alberto Nardelli and Andrew Martin
Group of Seven leaders may discuss North Korea’s malicious cyber activities and crypto hacks at a summit in Canada next month, according to people familiar with the plans, reflecting mounting global concerns over Pyongyang’s growing online thefts. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said North Korea’s nefarious cyber operations are alarming as the stolen proceeds have become a key funding source for the regime and its programs. They cautioned that the agenda for the summit taking place in Alberta in mid-June has yet to be finalized. Discussions at the gathering will likely be dominated by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the trade standoff between the US and most of the other G-7 nations, the people said.
North Asia
NTT to make NTT Data wholly owned unit via tender offer worth up to $20bn
Nikkei Asia
Kazuhiro Noguchi
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone plans to turn NTT Data Group into a wholly owned subsidiary through a tender offer expected to be worth up to $20 billion, Nikkei has learned, accelerating its shift from telecommunications to the technology sector by leveraging the unit's strength in corporate IT services. Japan's top telecom provider and one of the country's largest listed companies holds around 58% of NTT Data, which oversees the group's international operations. The tender offer for the remaining shares likely will carry a 30% to 40% premium, with the parent expected to spend 2 trillion yen to 3 trillion yen ($14 billion to $20.9 billion) on the deal. NTT Data will be delisted afterward.
Japan's KDDI and NEC to partner on supply chain, infrastructure cybersecurity
Nikkei Asia
Japanese telecom company KDDI and IT group NEC plan to start a joint cybersecurity business as soon as this year, Nikkei has learned, eyeing demand for protecting crucial infrastructure and supply chains. Japan's cybersecurity field is dominated by the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group, which provides a nearly full range of services. Rival KDDI hopes to find a path to growth overseas by partnering with NEC.
South Asia
Meta bans largest Muslim news page in India
User Mag
Taylor Lorenz
Meta has banned the largest Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the behest of the government. Muslim, a news account run by Palestinian American journalist Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh, is one of the most-followed Muslim news sources on Instagram. Videos on Al-Khatahtbeh's account have amassed more than 866 million views and the account is a crucial news source for Muslims around the world. It offers up to the minute news and information about stories affecting the Muslim community, often featuring stories that the Western media ignores.
Europe
France’s mistral releases AI model tailored for businesses
Bloomberg
Mark Bergen
Mistral is releasing a new artificial intelligence model that’s tailored for business use cases, as the French startup tries to capitalize on Europe’s concerns about being overly reliant on technology from Silicon Valley. The model, called Mistral Medium, is designed to power AI services that can generate text and process documents and other images. Mistral Chief Executive Officer Arthur Mensch said the product is “optimized for private deployment,” meaning companies can run AI models on their own computing resources rather than through public cloud providers.
UK
Britain warns that China is becoming a ‘cyber superpower’
The Record by Recorded Future
Alexander Martin
China is “well on its way to becoming a cyber superpower” a senior British government minister warned on Wednesday, adding that it now simply wasn’t feasible to decouple from Beijing given the country’s role in global supply chains. Pat McFadden, the most senior minister in Britain’s Cabinet Office, told the CYBERUK conference that Beijing had “the sophistication, the scale and the seriousness” to pose an exceptional national security challenge.
UK Cyber Security Chief names China as dominant hacking threat
Bloomberg
Alex Wickham
The UK has named China as the dominant threat to national cybersecurity after a series of hacks and breaches involving British government departments and critical infrastructure. “China remains the pacing threat in the cyber realm,” Richard Horne, the chief of Britain’s National Cyber Security Center, said in a rare speech on Wednesday. “The continued activity that we’re seeing come from the Chinese system remains a cause for profound and profuse concern,” he warned, describing Beijing as an “adversary.”
US lawmakers criticise UK backdoor order to Apple, warn of cybercriminal risks
Reuters
Foo Yun Chee
U.S. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast warned Britain on Wednesday that its order to Apple to create a backdoor to its encrypted user data could be exploited by cybercriminals and authoritarian regimes. Apple, which has said it would never build a so-called back door into its encrypted services or devices, has challenged the order at the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The iPhone maker withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature for UK users in February following the UK order. Users of Apple's iPhones, Macs and other devices can enable the feature to ensure that only they — and not even Apple — can unlock data stored on its cloud.
Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites
The Guardian
Daniel Boffey
A pro-Russian hacking group has claimed to have successfully targeted a range of UK websites, including local councils and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, during a three-day campaign. In a series of social media posts, the group calling itself NoName057(16) suggested it had made a number of websites temporarily inaccessible, although it is understood the attacks were not wholly successful.
Africa
South African Airways says cyberattack disrupted operational systems
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
South Africa’s state-owned airline said a cyberattack on Saturday temporarily disrupted its website and several internal operational systems. South African Airways said the attack also affected its mobile application but noted the IT team was able to contain the incident and “minimize disruption to core flight operations.”
Middle East
Israeli spyware giant NSO Group ordered to pay nearly $170M to WhatsApp for hacking accounts
POLITICO
Maggie Miller
Israeli spyware company NSO Group was ordered by a U.S. federal court on Tuesday to pay WhatsApp and its parent company Meta almost $170 million in damages after its cyber tools were used to hack around 1,400 WhatsApp accounts. NSO Group has become the poster child in recent years for the mostly underground spyware market, used increasingly by governments to surveil dissidents, journalists and politicians. The ruling, the latest step in a process that began in 2019, is a major win for privacy advocates and those pushing back against NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus software.
Big Tech
Amazon debuts a warehouse robot with a sense of ‘touch’
TechCrunch
Kyle Wiggers
Amazon says that it has developed a new warehouse robot, Vulcan, that can “feel” some of the items it touches. The two-armed Vulcan, which can maneuver goods inside the storage compartments Amazon has in its warehouses, uses force sensors to help it know when it makes contact with an object. One arm rearranges items in a compartment, while the second arm — which is equipped with a camera and suction cup — grabs items.
Cadence unveils new Nvidia-based supercomputer as it pushes into engineering, biotech software
Reuters
Stephen Nellis
Cadence Design Systems unveiled on Wednesday a new supercomputer based on chips from Nvidia that will speed up its software offerings for everything from designing chips to jets to new drugs. Cadence supplies software that firms such as Apple use to design chips. But over the past several years, it has expanded to help customers such as Boom, a startup making supersonic jets, design their planes, or biotech startup Treeline Biosciences find new drug candidates by simulating molecules.
Apple's plan to offer AI search options on Safari a blow to Google dominance
Reuters
Aditya Soni and Jody Godoy
Apple's plans to add AI-powered search options to its Safari browser are a big blow to Google, whose lucrative advertising business relies significantly on iPhone customers using its search engine. The news slammed shares of Google-parent Alphabet, which closed down 7.3%, wiping off roughly $150 billion from its market value.
Snap Map reaches new milestone of 400M monthly active users
TechCrunch
Aisha Malik
Snapchat announced on Wednesday that Snap Map now has more than 400 million monthly active users, a new milestone for one of the app’s core features. Launched in 2017, Snap Map was originally a way for users to see their friends’ locations and browse public snaps from around the world. Over time, the feature has evolved and now offers ways for users to discover local hotspots and find things to do. Snap Map’s success is important for Snapchat, as it’s a crucial part of the social network and gives it a competitive edge over rivals like Instagram and TikTok, both of which don’t offer real-time social discovery in the way that Snap Map does.
Mark Zuckerberg’s AI ad tool sounds like a social media nightmare
TechCrunch
Maxwell Zeff
Tech executives have long talked about how AI is going to revolutionise the advertising industry. In particular, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been quite vocal about how exactly he wants his company to lead the transformation. Speaking onstage at Stripe’s annual Sessions conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Zuckerberg laid out his plans to automate the entire ad industry with a black-box, end-to-end AI ad tool.
New court filing shows that Meta execs agreed that Facebook was losing to TikTok
TechCrunch
Sarah Perez
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and other Meta execs thought that TikTok was beating Meta at its own game. That’s according to a new filing in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, published on Monday. The document, dated February 2022, includes conversations among a number of Meta execs discussing Facebook and Instagram’s strategy and market position. In one message, Zuckerberg called Facebook a “challenger” that has “lost the mindshare and momentum,” while adding that TikTok creates a “feeling of shared context” where friends see the same memes, he said.
Google partners with Elementl Power on nuclear energy sites as power demand for AI grows
Associated Press
Google is partnering with Elementl Power on three project sites for advanced nuclear energy as the energy required to power burgeoning artificial intelligence projects rises sharply. Under the agreement announced Wednesday, Google will provide capital for the projects, which the companies say will each produce 600 megawatts of power capacity. No dollar figure for Google’s investment was given.
Alibaba collaborates with social media platform RedNote in fresh domestic e-commerce push
South China Morning Post
Ann Cao
Alibaba Group Holding is expanding the reach of its primary online marketplaces, Taobao and Tmall, through a collaboration with popular Chinese social media platform RedNote, known on the mainland as Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book”. The cross-platform collaboration will enable merchants on the two Chinese e-commerce sites to embed product links directly in social-media posts, according to a joint announcement on Wednesday by Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba’s domestic e-commerce business unit, and Shanghai-based RedNote. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Artificial Intelligence
Netflix debuts its generative AI-powered search tool
TechCrunch
Lauren Forristal
After hinting at a new AI-powered search experience during its recent earnings call, Netflix officially unveiled the feature at its tech and product event on Wednesday. This new search experience will utilize OpenAI’s ChatGPT to provide users with a conversational discovery experience. Users can enter their preferences using natural phrases like “I want something funny and upbeat” or even more detailed requests, such as “I want something scary, but not too scary, and maybe a little bit funny, but not haha funny.”
OpenAI wants to team up with governments to grow AI infrastructure
TechCrunch
Kyle Wiggers
OpenAI is launching a program, OpenAI for Countries, that the company says will enable it to build out the local infrastructure needed to better serve international AI customers. As a part of the new program, OpenAI will partner with governments to assist with efforts like building out data center capacity and customizing OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT, for specific languages and local needs. Funding for the program will come from OpenAI as well as from governments in each country, according to the startup. The goal is to pursue 10 international projects to start, but OpenAI hasn’t said where they’ll be located yet.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security Programs team at ASPI and supported by partners.
For more on China's pressure campaign against Taiwan—including military threats, interference and cyberwarfare, check out ASPI’s State of the Strait Weekly Digest.
