China breaks more records with surge in solar and wind power | CATL to bring battery-swapping technology to Europe | US: ICE is using a new facial recognition app to identify people
Plus, Microsoft is struggling to sell Copilot to corporations - because their employees want ChatGPT instead
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The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
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China’s installations of wind and solar in May are enough to generate as much electricity as Poland, as the world’s second-biggest economy breaks further records with its rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure. China installed 93 GW of solar capacity last month – almost 100 solar panels every second, according to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. The Guardian
CATL, the world’s largest maker of electric vehicle batteries, plans to bring its battery-swapping and recycling technology to Europe, amid a global battle to secure more sustainable EV supply chains. In an interview with the Financial Times, Jiang Li, the Chinese group’s board secretary, said battery swapping — in which EV drivers exchange depleted cells for fully charged ones — had “huge potential” in Europe. Financial Times
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them, according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. 404 Media
ASPI
Digital dai-ichi: with right balance, Japan can shape its hyperscale future
The Strategist
Nishank Motwani
Japan’s digital rise hinges on adopting hyperscale cloud computing without ceding strategic autonomy—a balance it has yet to strike. Japan’s hyperscale strategy must walk a tightrope—balancing the immense benefits of cloud infrastructure with the imperative of national control. The solution is not isolation, but integration: fusing trusted foreign hyperscalers with sovereign policy, secure design and a workforce capable of defending it. Japan’s ambitions, from the Society 5.0 vision to regional tech leadership, depend on hyperscale infrastructure.
Russian espionage-linked Kaspersky software discovered in government agencies, critical infrastructure despite ban
The Australian
Noah Yim
Australian Strategic Policy Institute cyber, technology and security director James Corera said the risk was that Kaspersky software “could enable or facilitate malign states and non state actors or some non-state actors to disrupt that critical infrastructure”. “We only need to look at Europe right now and the extent of Russian aggression, not just targeting Ukraine, but through the use of hybrid threats, including but not limited to sabotage, and how that’s playing out across continental Europe,” he said. “That is what should concern us."
Deep-sea mining: Is the ocean floor the next battleground?
Think China
Poh Hwee Hoon
Cynthia Mehboob, a hybrid threats analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, warned in an interview with Lianhe Zaobao that if deep-sea mining is allowed to proceed at scale, it will pose serious threats to existing underwater infrastructures, particularly submarine cables and pipelines that support global internet traffic and energy transmission, by physically disrupting cable routes. Consequently, tensions between states that depend on uninterrupted connectivity and those prioritising seabed resource extraction will escalate. However, Mehboob criticised the redefinition of deep-sea minerals as a geopolitical necessity during her interview. She argued that mining companies, facing financial pressure and declining investor confidence, are actively marketing deep-sea mining as a cure-all solution for the West to reduce its dependence on China’s critical mineral supply chains.
China
China breaks more records with surge in solar and wind power
The Guardian
Amy Hawkins
China’s installations of wind and solar in May are enough to generate as much electricity as Poland, as the world’s second-biggest economy breaks further records with its rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure. China installed 93 GW of solar capacity last month – almost 100 solar panels every second, according to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Wind power installations reached 26 GW, the equivalent of about 5,300 turbines.
How China’s Yangtze River Delta became a tech powerhouse
South China Morning Post
Alice Li
In Suzhou, eastern China’s Jiangsu province, the start-up Magic Lab specialises in full-sized humanoid robots designed to interact with people and work in factories – just one example of the Yangtze River Delta region’s transformation into a national innovation hub. “More than 90 per cent of the components, including critical parts like torque motor joints, actuators, control units and dexterous robotic hands, are developed in-house and locally manufactured,” said Wu Changzheng, the company’s president and a graduate of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “The other 10 per cent is in central processing units.” Magic Lab is one of thousands of cutting-edge ventures reshaping Jiangsu and neighbouring Zhejiang province. Once known for producing textiles, chemicals and machinery, the Yangtze River Delta is now home to a new generation of firms developing technologies critical to China’s future.
The world wants China’s rare earth elements – what is life like in the city that produces them?
The Guardian
Amy Hawkins
Central Baotou, an industrial hub of 2.7 million people that abuts the Gobi desert in north China, feels just like any other second-tier Chinese city. Large shopping malls featuring western chains including Starbucks and KFC stand alongside street after street of busy local restaurants, where people sit outside and children play late into the evening, enjoying the relative relief of the cooler temperatures that arrive after dark in Inner Mongolia’s baking summer. But a short drive into the city’s suburbs reveal another typical, less hospitable, Chinese scene. Factories crowd the city’s edges, with chimneys belching white plumes of smoke.
USA
ICE is using a new facial recognition app to identify people, leaked emails show
404 Media
Joseph Cox
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them, according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. Now, that system is being used inside the U.S. by ICE to identify people in the field.
The Trump Phone no longer promises it’s made in America
The Verge
David Pierce
When the Trump Organization launched the Trump Mobile wireless carrier, it also launched a flagship phone called the T1 Phone 8002 (gold version). One of the phone’s main selling points was that it was to be made in America. We figured that was unlikely to be true. And we were right: sometime in the last several days, the Trump Mobile site appears to have been scrubbed of all language indicating the phone is to be made in the USA. (Like, for instance, the huge banner on the homepage that says the T1 is “MADE IN THE USA.” Just to name one example.)
The shifting sands of data privacy law
POLITICO
Alfred Ng
In the long absence of any federal rules on data privacy, state after state has stepped into the gap. First was California, whose groundbreaking privacy law went into force in 2020 — followed by 18 other states that passed their own versions. The laws protect online consumers, giving them varying rights to their data and limiting how companies can use it. The tech industry and a host of other businesses have long complained that this is a frustrating patchwork — a hard-to-follow set of rules that make doing business more expensive and less predictable. And now a twist is emerging: Right now, in one capital after another, the patchwork is changing.
Trump’s return-to-office push could make the U.S. less efficient
Time
Gleb Tsipursky
After the Trump Administration intensified its push for federal workers to return to the office, a new study highlights the potential downsides of this mandate. Conducted by Alessandra Fenizia and Tom Kirchmaier, researchers from the George Washington University and the London School of Economics, the study focuses on productivity impacts of work-from-home arrangements for public sector jobs. They found that working from home boosts productivity by 12% compared to in-office work.
RFK Jr’s new vaccine panel votes against preservative in flu shots in shock move
The Guardian
Jessica Glenza
A critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability. The panel was unilaterally remade by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic who has urged against the use of thimerosal despite a lack of evidence of real-world harm.
Europe
CATL to bring battery-swapping technology to Europe
Financial Times
Kana Inagaki and Edward White
CATL, the world’s largest maker of electric vehicle batteries, plans to bring its battery-swapping and recycling technology to Europe, amid a global battle to secure more sustainable EV supply chains. In an interview with the Financial Times, Jiang Li, the Chinese group’s board secretary, said battery swapping — in which EV drivers exchange depleted cells for fully charged ones — had “huge potential” in Europe to make batteries cheaper and longer-lasting.
How Switzerland transformed itself into a deep tech global leader
Forbes
David Prosser
Most people asked to name the world’s leading locations for technology innovation would probably point to Silicon Valley or, on the other side of the Atlantic, Cambridge and Oxford in the UK, or even Israel. However, new data charts the quiet rise of another global leader: Switzerland has developed into one of the world’s most exciting deep tech ecosystems, the report claims. The Swiss Deep Tech Report 2025, published by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, Dealroom.co, Startupticker and the venture capital investment firms Founderful and Kickfund, reveals that Swiss deep tech companies have now collectively created more than $100 billion worth of enterprise value.
Big Tech
Microsoft is struggling to sell Copilot to corporations - because their employees want ChatGPT instead
TechRadar
Mike Moore and Ellen Jennings-Trace
AI chatbot models like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are gaining huge traction in the workplace and beyond, but OpenAI's model is reportedly starting to show dominance in the business world. A Bloomberg report has claimed even businesses which have purchased Copilot plans are struggling to convince users to make the switch, with drugmaker Amgen buying a 20,000 user plan, only to have employees continue using ChatGPT over a year later.
Meta wins artificial intelligence copyright case in blow to authors
Financial Times
Cristina Criddle
Meta’s use of millions of books to train its artificial intelligence models has been judged “fair” by a federal court on Wednesday, in a win for tech companies that use copyrighted materials to develop AI. The case, brought by about a dozen authors, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Kadrey, challenged how the $1.4tn social media giant used a library of millions of online books, academic articles and comics to train its Llama AI models.
Elon Musk’s lawyers claim he doesn’t use a computer—despite the billionaire’s own X posts saying the opposite
Fortune
Beatrice Nolan
Lawyers for Elon Musk have claimed that the billionaire “does not use a computer” after OpenAI accused Musk of not complying with the discovery process in his lawsuit against the company. In a letter addressed to the judge overseeing the OpenAI case in Oakland, Musk’s attorney, Jaymie Parkkinen, accused OpenAI of making false statements when the company asserted that Musk’s legal team had “no plans to collect any documents” from either Musk himself or xAI, his competing artificial intelligence firm.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is starting to wear down democracy
The New York Times
Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson
Artificial intelligence has long threatened to transform elections around the world. Now there is evidence from at least 50 countries that it already has. Ahead of Canada’s election in April, an A.I.-generated photograph purporting to show one of the candidates for prime minister, Mark Carney, with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein appeared on X.
Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be scrapped by 2027, Gartner says
Reuters
Zaheer Kachwala
More than 40% of agentic artificial intelligence projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to escalating costs and unclear business value, according to a report by Gartner. Tech giants such as Salesforce and Oracle have embraced AI agents, systems that can autonomously complete goals and take action, pouring billions into the technology in the hopes of boosting margins and optimizing costs.
Research
Crash (exploit) and burn: Securing the offensive cyber supply chain to counter China in cyberspace
Atlantic Council
Winnona DeSombre Bernsen
If the United States wants to increasingly use offensive cyber operations internationally, does it have the supply chain and acquisition capabilities to back it up—especially if its adversary is the People’s Republic of China? Strategic competition between the United States and China has long played out in cyberspace, where offensive cyber capabilities, like zero-day vulnerabilities, are a strategic resource. Since 2016, China has been turning the zero-day marketplace in East Asia into a funnel of offensive cyber capabilities for its military and intelligence services, both to ensure it can break into the most secure Western technologies and to deny the United States from obtaining similar capabilities from the region.
Events & Podcasts
The Sydney Dialogue 2025
ASPI
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.
Brand China is having a moment
The Economist
China recently got a boost in the popularity polls, courtesy of a popular livestreamer who hails from Ohio. IShowSpeed (whose real name is Darren Watkins Jr) made a whirlwind tour of the country, showcasing the best of its technology and history. His visit, which went viral, came at a time when Brand China is on the ascendant. Chinese technology, blockbuster video games and popular consumer brands have boosted the country’s image abroad—helping to build soft power.
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.