China looks to include AI in broader trade relationship with Australia | China snaps up mines around the world in rush to secure resources | Japan plans ‘world first’ deep-sea mineral extraction.
And, like many others, Australia joins the race for US academics.
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China is looking to capitalise on Australia’s fraying ties with the United States by enlisting Anthony Albanese in its tech and trade war with Donald Trump via an expansion of an existing free trade agreement to include artificial intelligence and the digital economy. The Australian Financial Review
Chinese mining acquisitions overseas have hit their highest level in more than a decade as companies race to secure the raw materials that underpin the global economy in the face of mounting geopolitical tension. Financial Times
Japan will from January attempt to extract rare earth minerals from the ocean floor in the deepest trial of its kind, the director of a government innovation programme said on Thursday. Dawn News
ASPI
China looks to include AI in broader trade relationship with Australia
The Australian Financial Review
Andrew Tillet
James Corera, Australian Strategic Policy Institute cyber, technology and security policy director, on Sunday warned that deepening co-operation with China on AI and digital technologies was risky because of Beijing's push to monopolise these fields and concentrate controls over supply chains and standards. "This would further reduce Beijing's reliance on Western technology and supply chains, while increasing our reliance on Beijing," Corera said. "Such monopolisation could lock Australia into technology ecosystems shaped by China's interests, not ours. "This could leave Australia vulnerable to coercion, reduce choices for secure technologies, and undermine the resilience of our digital infrastructure. We have made that mistake in other fields like solar and batteries and cannot afford to do so with AI."
Whose cloud is it, anyway? Rethinking sovereignty in the shift to cloud infrastructure
The Strategist
James Corera and Jason Van der Schyff
Cloud infrastructure is now the backbone of everything from social services and emergency response to critical industry operations and defence. The shift has been fast, and often invisible to users. What began as a convenience to save costs and increase flexibility has quietly become a question of national resilience. As more government systems migrate to commercial cloud platforms, the issue is no longer just where the data lives, but who holds real control over the systems that support it. High-profile breaches at Qantas, revealed last week, and Optus and Medibank in 2022 have highlighted the consequences of poor data governance—not just for the organisations attacked, but for the individuals whose information was exposed.
Qantas data breach shows compliance doesn’t always mean protection and resilience
The Strategist
Bart Hogeveen
Cybersecurity requires more than legal compliance; it demands constant vigilance and adaptation. A cyberattack on a third-party platform used by a Qantas customer contact centre in Manila, discovered on 30 June, made this clear. Six million customers, not just Australians, have had names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent-flyer numbers stolen. Cybercriminals may weaponise this data in the days, weeks and months ahead. After major breaches at Optus and Medibank in 2022, then Minister of Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil, introduced a suite of new cyber legislation. The Enhanced Response and Prevention Act 2024, which amended the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 (SOCI), expanded physical and cybersecurity obligations for owners and operators of critical infrastructure. Today, SOCI applies to 11 sectors, including aviation.
ADF's most expensive planes, ships and submarines vulnerable to simple drone attacks, experts warn
9News
Andrew Probyn
Most of the Australian military's most expensive planes, ships and submarines are vulnerable to the simplest of drone attacks, according to experts who say the Defence Force must quickly adapt to the changing dynamics of conflict. Potential adversaries don't have to go any further than Google Maps to see the Australian Defence Force's multiple vulnerabilities. "Unfortunately, Google Maps shows almost everything," says Marc Ablong, senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "You can see the base infrastructure, people on the base, where the guard posts are. You can determine access points, weak points in fence lines. Many of those things are now readily apparent just by studying the mapping capabilities that exist through things like Google Maps."
British public backs defence and security partnership with Australia
The Strategist
Sophia Gaston
Australia was high on the list for Britain’s revamp of its alliances after Brexit, and the stormy geopolitical climate that followed has only reinforced the need for a more ambitious partnership. Looking ahead, public demonstrations of the strategic dimensions of the relationship are needed to ensure that citizens’ remain willing to invest in one another’s security and success. Both countries have been grappling with the urgent security demands of their home regions, but the increasing awareness of the integration of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres has paved the way for greater cooperation.
How Taiwan must prepare to face Chinese drone saturation
The Strategist
Gaurav Sen
Taiwan urgently needs to overhaul its air defence strategy to prevent the rising threat of low-cost drone saturation attacks from China. This demands three major reforms: expanding air-defence capability with low-cost weapons; improving survivability with hardening and greater mobility; and strengthening early warning, logistics and resilience through enhanced cooperation with partners. China’s inventory of drones, encompassing both reconnaissance and strike types, has increased significantly in recent years. Systems such as the CH-4, WZ and the extensively distributed ASN series provide multirole capabilities at various altitudes, ranges and speeds. The most notable aspect of this threat is the deployment of expendable, low-cost drones that could significantly alter the dynamics of the cross-strait conflict. Taiwan’s principal interceptor missiles, such as the Sky Bow and the US-supplied Patriot PAC-3, cost many times as much per round as the drones.
World
A couple tried for 18 years to get pregnant. AI made it happen
CNN
Jacqueline Howard
After trying to conceive for 18 years, one couple is now pregnant with their first child thanks to the power of artificial intelligence. The couple had undergone several rounds of in vitro fertilisation, or IVF, visiting fertility centres around the world in the hopes of having a baby. The IVF process involves removing a woman’s egg and combining it with sperm in a laboratory to create an embryo, which is then implanted in the womb. But for this couple, the IVF attempts were unsuccessful due to azoospermia, a rare condition in which no measurable sperm are present in the male partner’s semen, which can lead to male infertility. A typical semen sample contains hundreds of millions of sperm, but men with azoospermia have such low counts that no sperm cells can be found, even after hours of meticulous searching under a microscope.
Elections at risk in the digital age
OHCHR
“I have written this report on freedom of expression and elections because I’m deeply concerned that there is a perfect storm that is destroying both our right to vote and our freedom of expression at the same time,” said Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. At the 59th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, Khan presented a report on the key vulnerabilities of the right to freedom of expression in electoral contexts in the digital age. The report draws information from extensive consultations led by Khan over the past year, including with civil society organizations, electoral institutions, human rights defenders, journalists, and representatives of social media companies. For Khan, there are three major trends threatening freedom of expression: a toxic political climate marked by authoritarian tendencies and the backsliding of human rights and democracies, social media flooded by disinformation and hate, and weakened traditional media being attacked and unable to debunk lies.
Hidden AI prompts in academic papers spark concern about research integrity
The Japan Times
Tomoko Otake and Yukana Inoue
Researchers from major universities, including Waseda University in Tokyo, have been found to have inserted secret prompts in their papers so artificial intelligence-aided reviewers will give them positive feedback. The revelation, first reported by Nikkei this week, raises serious concerns about the integrity of the research in the papers and highlights flaws in academic publishing, where attempts to exploit the peer review system are on the rise, experts say. The newspaper reported that 17 research papers from 14 universities in eight countries have been found to have prompts in their paper in white text — so that it will blend in with the background and be invisible to the human eye — or in extremely small fonts. The papers, mostly in the field of computer science, were on arXiv, a major preprint server where researchers upload research yet to undergo peer reviews to exchange views.
Australia
CSIRO start-ups merge to create $150m company
The Australian Financial Review
Tess Bennett
Two start-ups being built on technology invented by the CSIRO to detect explosives and critical minerals have merged to form a new company called MagnaTerra Technologies, with an investment valuing it at approximately $150 million. NextOre and MRead had a common major shareholder in RFC Ambrian, a resources advisory firm that also invests in deep tech start-ups, which smoothed the way for the two companies to merge. Following the transaction, NextOre’s shareholders own 65 per cent of MagnaTerra. Both companies were spun out of the CSIRO to commercialise products that use magnetic resonance technology, a sensing technique, to detect minerals, explosives and narcotics at a molecular level. The technology is expected to have a big market among miners, border security and defence.
Qantas attack reveals one phone call is all it takes to crack cybersecurity’s weakest link: humans
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
All it can take is a phone call. That’s what Qantas learned this week when the personal information of up to 6 million customers was stolen by cybercriminals after attackers targeted an offshore IT call centre, enabling them to access a third-party system. It is the latest in a series of cyber-attacks on large companies in Australia involving the personal information of millions of Australians, after the attack on Optus, Medibank and, most recently, Australia’s $4t superannuation sector. The Qantas attack came just days after US authorities warned the airline sector had been targeted by a group known as Scattered Spider, using social engineering techniques, including impersonating employees or contractors to deceive IT help desks into granting access, and bypassing multi-factor authentication.
‘We’re here’: Australia joins the race for US academics
CBR City News
Kat Wong and Tess Ikonomou
Australia hopes to bring America’s brightest minds Down Under as Donald Trump’s research cuts spark a US brain drain. The US president has taken a chainsaw to science funding, slashing thousands of government grants and transforming the global state of research. Former Labor leader Bill Shorten, now vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, said efforts by the Australian Academy of Science to attract American talent was good national coordination. “I’m very pro-American, but if their current government doesn’t want some of their best to brightest minds, why should we let them go to Europe or Asia?” he told AAP. “We haven’t invented this challenging environment for American higher education … but that doesn’t mean that we should sit back and watch the French, the Germans, the Asian nations, recruit these clever people without at least Australia saying ‘we’re here too’.”
YouTube unleashes its creators in war over social media ban
The Australian Financial Review
Sam Buckingham-Jones
YouTube has warned its creators their channels face a direct hit if the government changes its position and includes the video platform in a ban on social media users under 16. In a note sent to some Australian YouTubers on Thursday, the Google-owned tech giant said it was worried the government would ignore the views of creators and the wider community after the eSafety Commissioner recommended YouTube be included in the ban. “This could directly impact your channel,” YouTube wrote. The Australian government passed a world-first law lifting the minimum age to use social media from 13 to 16 years late last year. It passed with bipartisan support.
China
China snaps up mines around the world in rush to secure resources
Financial Times
Camilla Hodgson, Leslie Hook, and Edward White
Chinese mining acquisitions overseas have hit their highest level in more than a decade as companies race to secure the raw materials that underpin the global economy in the face of mounting geopolitical tension. There were 10 deals worth more than $100mn last year, the highest since 2013, according to an analysis of S&P and Merger market data. Separate research by the Griffith Asia Institute found that last year was the most active for Chinese overseas mining investment and construction since at least 2013. The country’s huge demand for raw materials — it is the world’s largest consumer of most minerals — means its mining companies have a long history of investing overseas.
Nighteagle apt exploits Microsoft Exchange flaw to target China's military and tech sectors
The Hacker News
Ravie Lakshmanan
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a previously undocumented threat actor called NightEagle (aka APT-Q-95) that has been observed targeting Microsoft Exchange servers as a part of a zero-day exploit chain designed to target government, defense, and technology sectors in China. According to QiAnXin's RedDrip Team, the threat actor has been active since 2023 and has switched network infrastructure at an extremely fast rate. The findings were presented at CYDES 2025, the third edition of Malaysia's National Cyber Defence & Security Exhibition and Conference held between July 1 and 3, 2025.
In retaliatory move, China blocks EU companies from medical device contracts
South China Morning Post
Alice Li
China has barred European companies from major Chinese government medical device contracts, hitting back against similar EU restrictions imposed on Chinese firms last month. In a notice on Sunday, the Ministry of Finance said that European Union companies without operations in China were excluded from government medical device contracts valued at more than 45 million yuan (US$6.3 million). Taking effect on Sunday, the restriction does not apply to EU-funded companies operating in China. Non-EU companies taking part in such government tenders must not allocate more than half of the total contract value to importing medical devices from the EU, according to the finance ministry. The Ministry of Commerce said the move was a last resort, after Beijing had “repeatedly expressed through bilateral dialogues its willingness to resolve the differences through consultation and arrangements on government procurement.”
Trump says US will start talks with China on TikTok deal Monday or Tuesday
Nikkei Asia
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he will start talking to China on Monday or Tuesday about a possible TikTok deal. He said the United States "pretty much" has a deal on the sale of the TikTok short-video app. "I think we're gonna start Monday or Tuesday ... talking to China, perhaps President Xi [Jinping] or one of his representatives, but we would pretty much have a deal," Trump told reporters on Air Force One. Last month, Trump extended to Sept. 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of TikTok. A deal had been in the works this spring to spin off TikTok's U.S. operations into a new U.S.-based company, majority owned and operated by U.S. investors, but it was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump's announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods.
The Coder ‘Village’ at the heart of China’s A.I. frenzy
The New York Times
Meaghan Tobin
In January, DeepSeek shook the tech world when it released an A.I. system that it said it had made for a small fraction of the cost that Silicon Valley companies had spent on their own. Since then, systems made by DeepSeek and Alibaba have ranked among the top-performing open source A.I. models in the world, meaning they are available for anyone to build on. Graduates from Hangzhou’s Zhejiang University, where DeepSeek’s founder studied, have become sought-after employees at Chinese tech companies. Hangzhou has already birthed tech powerhouses, not only Alibaba and DeepSeek but also NetEase and Hikvision.
USA
U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China in sign of trade truce
CNBC
Dylan Butts
The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip-design software to China, three of the largest players in the space announced on Thursday. In separate statements, semiconductor software designers Siemens AG, Synopsys, and Cadence all said they received letters from the U.S. Department of Commerce informing them that the controls had been lifted. While Siemens is based in Germany, its chip design software subsidiary, Siemens EDA, is based in Oregon, U.S. As a result of export control reversal, Siemens said it had “restored full access” to the recently restricted software and technology and had resumed sales and support to Chinese customers. Synopsys and Cadence both said that they were working on doing the same. The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The Person in Charge of Testing Tech for US Spies Has Resigned
WIRED
Paresh Dave
The head of the US government’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is leaving the unit this month to take a job with a quantum computing company, WIRED has learned. Rick Muller’s pending departure from IARPA comes amid broader efforts to downsize the United States intelligence community, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees IARPA. A person familiar with Muller’s plans confirmed to WIRED his departure from IARPA. Born during the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, IARPA is tasked with testing AI, quantum computing, and other emerging technologies that could aid the missions of spy agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency.
North Asia
Japan plans ‘world first’ deep-sea mineral extraction
Dawn News
Japan will from January attempt to extract rare earth minerals from the ocean floor in the deepest trial of its kind, the director of a government innovation programme said on Thursday. Earlier this week, the country pledged to work with the United States, India and Australia to ensure a stable supply of critical minerals, as concern grows over China’s dominance in resources vital to new technologies. Rare earths — 17 metals difficult to extract from the Earth’s crust — are used in everything from electric vehicles to hard drives, wind turbines and missiles. China accounts for almost two-thirds of rare earth mining production and 92 per cent of global refined output, according to the International Energy Agency. A Japanese deep-sea scientific drilling boat called the Chikyu will from January conduct a “test cruise” to retrieve ocean floor sediments that contain rare earth elements, said Shoichi Ishii, director of Japan’s Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Programme.
Southeast Asia
Data governance and security must be core to Southeast Asia’s public sector digital transformation
GovInsider Asia
Daniel Toh
As Southeast Asia rapidly advances its digital transformation, public sector agencies are at the forefront, shouldering growing responsibilities. From delivering essential citizen services to managing vital national infrastructure, governments are becoming more reliant on complex digital systems and the sensitive data they generate, store, and process. The urgency of this shift is underscored by a clear need for robust security frameworks to keep pace with technological advancements. According to the 2025 Thales Data Threat Report, over 65 per cent of APAC organisations view the rapid pace of AI development, especially generative AI as their top security concern related to its adoption. This is closely followed by concerns around a lack of integrity (63 per cent) and trustworthiness (55 per cent).
Visa unveils AI-powered tools to boost Philippines e-commerce
The Philippine Star
Keisha Ta-Asan
Global payments platform Visa is bringing a new wave of artificial intelligence-driven technologies to the Philippines, aiming to support the country’s fast-growing digital economy with more secure, seamless and intelligent payment experiences. Visa has announced several innovations under its new “Visa Intelligent Commerce” initiative, which seeks to harness the power of AI to transform everyday transactions in the Philippines and across Asia-Pacific. “The continuously growing digital payment sector in the Philippines makes it a prime environment for technological innovation – one that harnesses AI for the benefit of the digital Filipino business owner and consumer,” Visa Philippines country manager Jeffrey Navarro said. Visa said it has invested over $3 billion globally in AI and data infrastructure in the last decade, helping banks, fintechs, merchants, and developers build new digital commerce experiences securely on its network.
Europe
Falsely reporting commodity price discounts SHEIN was fined 40 million euros by France
Caixin
Caixin Zhang Erxi
The fast fashion brand SHEIN suffered a huge fine from the French government for providing misleading information. On July 3, local time, the French General Directorate of Market Competition, Consumption and Anti-Fraud (DGCCRF, hereinafter referred to as the French General Directorate of Market Competition) announced on its official website that it had reached a settlement with INfinite Style E-commerce LTD (ISEL), a SHEIN sales company, because He was fined 40 million euros (about RMB 337 million) for providing false discount information and unverifiable environmental statements on the official website.
UK
UK government demands overhaul at under-fire AI institute
POLITICO
Esther Webber, Tom Bristow and Joseph Bambridge
The British government is demanding a shake-up at the country’s national institute for artificial intelligence to turn it into a “national security asset,” according to correspondence seen by POLITICO. In a letter to Doug Gurr, chair of the Alan Turing Institute, dated July 3, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said the publicly funded research organization “should build on its existing strengths, and reform itself further to prioritize defense, national security and sovereign capabilities,” with leadership that “reflects” that focus. It follows sustained criticism of the ATI for failing to anticipate major changes to the AI landscape, as well as questions about its governance which resulted in a review last year.
Africa
AI and Gen Z Will drive Africa toward a cashless future, experts say
The Kenya Times
Timothy Osoro
Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to play a transformative role in making Africa a cashless continent within the next two decades. Experts said at Seamless East Africa 2025, held on July 2nd & 3rd at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre. “In 19 years, we will be a cashless Africa,” said Ndungi Hartnell, chief data officer for Africa at Absa Group. “We need to integrate AI, embrace finance, and let Gen Z develop our next phase.” The two-day fintech, payments, and digital commerce summit drew more than 3,000 attendees and featured over 2,000 industry players from across the continent and beyond. The event served as a forum for bold ideas, innovation, and the accelerating role of digital transformation in East Africa’s financial and retail ecosystems.
Big Tech
Meta has found another way to keep you engaged: Chatbots that message you first
TechCrunch
Rebecca Bellan
Imagine you’re messaging some friends on the Facebook Messenger app or WhatsApp, and you get an unsolicited message from an AI chatbot that’s obsessed with films. “I hope you’re having a harmonious day!” it writes. “I wanted to check in and see if you’ve discovered any new favourite soundtracks or composers recently. Or perhaps you’d like some recommendations for your next movie night? Let me know, and I’ll be happy to help!” That’s a real example of what a sample AI persona named “The Maestro of Movie Magic” might send as a proactive message on Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram, per guidelines from data labelling firm Alignerr that Business Insider viewed. The outlet learned through leaked documents that Meta is working with Alignerr to train customizable chatbots to reach out to users unprompted and follow up on any past conversations. That means the bots, which users can create in Meta’s AI Studio platform, also remember information about users.
Musk announces forming of 'America Party' in further break from Trump
Reuters
David Brunnstrom and Bhargav Acharya
The dispute between Republican President Donald Trump and his main campaign financier Elon Musk took another fractious turn on Saturday when the space and automotive billionaire announced the formation of a new political party, saying Trump's "big, beautiful" tax bill would bankrupt America. A day after asking his followers on his X platform whether a new U.S. political party should be created, Musk declared in a post on Saturday that "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom. By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!" he wrote. The announcement from Musk comes after Trump signed his self-styled "big, beautiful" tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk fiercely opposed.
6 of the biggest challenges facing Musk’s new political party
The Washington Post
The richest man in the world said Saturday he has started a new U.S. political party, which he says will represent “the 80%” of voters “in the middle.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk last year went all in on using his wealth to support Republican Donald Trump’s successful 2024 run for president, cementing him as the country’s largest political donor. He later led the formation of the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service in an effort to cut the size of government. However, Musk, who also leads SpaceX and owns the social platform X, appears to be done with supporting Trump and most Republicans in Congress. Motivated by what he has suggested is his disdain for high government spending, Musk recently vowed to create “the America Party” if Congress approved the massive tax policy and spending bill backed by the president.
The companies betting they can profit from Google search’s demise
The Wall Street Journal
Katherine Blunt
A new crop of startups are betting on the rapid demise of traditional Google search. At least a dozen new companies are pouring millions of dollars into software meant to help brands prepare for a world in which customers no longer browse the web and instead rely on ChatGPT, Perplexity and other artificial-intelligence chatbots to do it for them. The startups are developing tools to help businesses understand how AI chatbots gather information and learn how to steer them toward brands so that they appear in AI searches. Call it the search-engine optimization of the next chapter of the internet. “Companies have been spending the last 10 or 20 years optimizing their website for the ‘10 blue links’ version of Google,” said Andrew Yan, co-founder of Athena, one of the startups. “That version of Google is changing very fast, and it is changing forever.”
The deep ties between Google and the Israeli military
Updates for Palestine
Afzal
Since opening its offices in Israel in 2013, Google has shown ongoing admiration for the state's role in the global tech scene. Early Google CEO Eric Schmidt has repeatedly praised what he sees as a "miracle", a small country outperforming industrial giants. In 2017, on the tenth anniversary of Google’s R&D center in Israel, Schmidt stated: “Israel succeeds because it doesn’t follow the rules.” A year later, at a Tel Aviv conference, he shared what he called the formula for success: “It begins with extraordinary talent and excellent education. It continues through military service, particularly in Unit 8200, which provides a significant advantage.”
YouTube pirates are cashing in on Hollywood’s summer blockbusters
The New York Times
Nico Grant and Tripp Mickle
After spending about $100 million on “Lilo & Stitch,” a live-action remake of a 2002 animated film, Disney had plenty to celebrate. The film pulled in $361 million worldwide on its opening weekend in May and bested “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” at the box office. But the company also had cause to be concerned. In the days after the Disney film’s opening, a pirated version of “Lilo & Stitch” proved to be a hit on YouTube, where more than 200,000 people viewed it, potentially costing Disney millions of dollars in additional sales, according to new research from Adalytics, a firm that analyzes advertising campaigns for brands. The findings of the research shed new light on the copyright issues that once threatened to upend YouTube’s business. They also show how advertisers have unwittingly supported illicit content on YouTube, and they provide rare data about piracy on the platform. YouTube has long tried to tamp down piracy, but users who upload stolen films and television shows have employed new tactics to evade the platform’s detection tools, the research showed, including cropping films and manipulating footage.
Bad data leads to bad policy
Financial Times
Georges-Simon Ulrich
The world now faces geopolitical and environmental crises as well as a profound digital transformation. Data has become a strategic asset. Controlling it today means influence over the future. The rapid rise of AI, powered by vast volumes of data, presents the UN with a daunting challenge: those who control data today will shape AI tomorrow — and with it, the narratives that define public life. As the influence of commercial platforms and algorithmic systems grows, public institutions are falling behind.
Artificial Intelligence
Meta’s AI climate tool raised false hope of CO₂ removal, scientists say
Financial Times
Kenza Bryan
Meta has been accused of using faulty data to train an artificial intelligence climate tool, with scientists claiming the Big Tech group raised false hopes about the feasibility of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at scale. The tech company said last year that it had helped researchers with the elusive problem of identifying materials to efficiently remove carbon dioxide from air, by publishing a “groundbreaking” data set on which it also trained free-to-use machine learning models.
OpenAI signs $30bn data centre deal with Oracle
Financial Times
Cristina Criddle, Tabby Kinder and Rafe Uddin
OpenAI has agreed to lease 4.5 gigawatts of computing power from Oracle in a deal worth around $30bn a year that is one of the largest cloud agreements to date for artificial intelligence. The deal marks a big expansion of OpenAI’s “Stargate” data centre project, which it launched with SoftBank in January to gain access to vast amounts of computing power to develop its powerful AI models and meet consumer demand for products such as ChatGPT. Oracle will develop multiple data centres across the US in order to satisfy the new Stargate contract, which was first reported by Bloomberg, according to people close to the plans.
How hopeful can we be about AI climate tech?
Financial Times
Pilita Clark
Can artificial intelligence stop the planet burning? There is both good and less good news about the answer to this question. But since this column is being written at the end of yet another sweltering UK heatwave, let’s start with the more pleasing thought that AI could soon help to cut a non-trivial chunk of global transport, power and food emissions every year. So says a new paper from a research team led by British economist, Nicholas Stern, that is worth reading on several counts. For a start, the transport, power and food sectors account for roughly half of global emissions, so anything that shrinks their emissions matters.
AI ‘band’ The Velvet Sundown officially confirm they’re AI— and a ‘provocation’
Rolling Stone
Brian Hiatt
The AI band The Velvet Sundown, who currently have over 900,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, have officially admitted — in a new revision to their Spotify bio — what was obvious to experts and non-experts alike: their music is, in fact, AI-generated. “The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” the band bio now reads. “This isn’t a trick — it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.” The “band” went viral and attracted extensive media coverage after emerging out of nowhere in June and appearing on popular Spotify playlists.
The Grammys chief on how AI will change music
The Wall Street Journal
Anne Steele
An AI-generated song using fake vocals from Drake and the Weeknd went viral two years ago, racking up millions of listens across Spotify, YouTube and TikTok before being removed. The episode rattled the music business, demonstrating how the rapidly progressing technology could upend long-held standards, protections and processes. Since then, the music industry has been grappling with how to use AI to generate growth while battling with tech giants who say they should be able to freely train their models on record companies’ vast intellectual property. Harvey Mason Jr., chief executive of the Recording Academy, which presents the Grammy Awards, is among those on the front lines as the industry pushes for legislation aimed at protecting artists from having their voices, images and likenesses used in AI-generated digital replicas without their consent.
Silicon Valley's winner-take-all era
Business Insider
Amanda Hoover and Pranav Dixit
100-million-dollar pay packages aren't just for the Shohei Ohtanis and Cristiano Ronaldos of the world anymore. In Silicon Valley, nine-figure pay days are reportedly now being floated to the world's top talent as the race to own AI enters a new frenzied stage. Meta has made at least 10 high-pay offers of up to $300 million over four years to top OpenAI researchers for what it's calling its Superintelligence Lab, Wired reported this week. Sam Altman claimed in June that OpenAI workers had been offered $100 million signing bonuses to jump ship. Meta spokesman Andy Stone called news of the reported pay "untrue," saying "the size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented all over the place." Whatever the actual figures are, it seems a select few researchers could see bank account balances that rival or surpass CEOs at other Big Tech companies — and they would out-earn other tech workers by numbers that are hard to envision.
Events & Podcasts
Disasters, distrust, and disinformation
National Security College, Australian National University
Jodie Wrigley, Anthony Bradstreet, Allison Curtis, and David Andrews
What are some of the challenges societies face because of mis- and disinformation during disaster response? How can Australia adapt to deal with these challenges? What lessons can we learn from incidents around the world? What does the future look like if we don't adapt to this changing environment? In this episode, Jodie Wrigley, Anthony Bradstreet, and Allison Curtis join David Andrews to discuss the evolving challenges posed by mis- and disinformation in crisis response scenarios.
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.
