China’s social media to comply with new AI law | Von der Leyen’s plane hit by suspected Russian GPS jamming | OpenAI to open India data center in Stargate push
Plus, how ‘clanker’ became an anti-AI slogan
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Major Chinese social media platforms, including Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and ByteDance-owned Douyin, have launched new features to abide by Monday’s roll-out of a new law that mandates labelling of all artificial intelligence-generated content online. South China Morning Post
A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps. Financial Times
OpenAI is seeking to build a massive new data center in India that could mark a major step forward in Asia for its Stargate-branded artificial intelligence infrastructure push. Bloomberg
ASPI
Silence as strategy: Southeast Asia and China’s persistent cyber campaigns
The Strategist
Gatra Priyandita
Google’s revelation that China mounted a cyber-espionage campaign against Southeast Asian diplomats should surprise no one. State-sponsored cyber operations are a permanent feature of the region’s security landscape, and China has long been one of the most active players. Southeast Asian governments are likely to choose silence rather than formal attribution. This restraint reflects a broader pattern of caution that risks underestimating the scale of the challenge.
🚀 We’re rebuilding 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 first to get early-access invites and launch updates: https://unitracker.aspi.org.au/
Australia
Australian report raises concerns over age-verification software ahead of teen social ban
Reuters
Byron Kaye
An Australian government-commissioned report said selfie-based age guessing software could enforce a teen social media ban, but noted that some groups experienced "unacceptable" levels of inaccuracy, raising concerns about the December rollout. The report, published by the government on Monday, said photo-based age estimation products were broadly accurate, fast and privacy-respecting but noted worsening results for people near the age minimum of 16.
China
China’s social media platforms rush to abide by AI-generated content labelling law
South China Morning Post
Coco Feng
Major Chinese social media platforms, including Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and ByteDance-owned Douyin, have launched new features to abide by Monday’s roll-out of a new law that mandates labelling of all artificial intelligence-generated content online. The law, which was issued in March, requires explicit and implicit labels for AI-generated text, images, audio, video and other virtual content.
China is about to show off its new high-tech weapons to the world
WIRED
Lorenzo Lamperti
China is preparing for one of the most anticipated and politically charged military events in recent years. On September 3, in Tiananmen Square, China will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory over Japan in World War II with a spectacular military parade that is not only a ritual of historical remembrance but also a message to the entire world to be prepared for the war of the future.
USA
Historians see autocratic playbook in Trump’s attacks on science
The New York Times
William J. Broad
Just last week, Mr. Trump fired the newly confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her lawyers said the move spoke to “the silencing of experts and the dangerous politicization of science.” Few if any analysts see Mr. Trump as a Stalin, who crushed science, or even as a direct analog to this era’s strongmen leaders. But his assault on researchers and their institutions is so deep that historians and other experts see similarities to the playbook employed by autocratic regimes to curb science.
Americas
Cyberattack on Evertec’s Sinqia hits HSBC, others in Brazil
Bloomberg
Clarice Couto
Hackers on Friday broke into Sinqia, a financial technology provider owned by Evertec, attempting to steal around 420 million reais from several Brazilian financial institutions including HSBC Holdings Plc’s local operations, O Globo reported. Cyber criminals invaded Sinqia’s systems used by Brazilian financial institutions and attempted to make several transfers through a fast-growing electronic payments system known as Pix.
South & Central Asia
‘Real-time, all-climate’ explosives detector could enhance airport & border security—no dogs, no swabs
The Print
Tanzia Alam
A team of scientists at the Bengaluru-based Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, has designed a portable sensor that can detect trace amounts of explosives in seconds—a development that could change the way India conducts security checks at airports, metro stations, and crowded public spaces.
Europe
Ursula von der Leyen’s plane hit by suspected Russian GPS interference
Financial Times
Henry Foy
A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps. A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.
EU to boost satellite defences against GPS jamming, Defence commissioner says
Reuters
The European Union will deploy additional satellites in low Earth orbit to strengthen resilience against GPS interferences and will improve capabilities to detect it, EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said on Monday. His remarks followed an incident on Sunday in which the GPS system aboard European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's aircraft was jammed en route to Bulgaria.
A base deep in the Swedish forest is part of Europe’s hope to compete in the space race
Associated Press
Stefanie Dazio and Malin Haarala
For decades, Europe has relied upon the US for its security among the stars. But the Trump administration’s “America First” policies, plus a commercial market that’s growing exponentially, has prompted Europeans to rethink their approach. The state-owned Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, is among the sites building out orbital rocket programs to allow Europe to advance in the global space race and launch satellites from the continent’s mainland.
Spanish government cancels €10m contract using Huawei equipment
The Record by Recorded Future
Alexander Martin
The Spanish government cancelled a contract that would have seen Huawei equipment deployed in the national academic and research network used to connect the country’s universities, research institutes and parts of the Ministry of Defense.
UK
‘Scan your face’ laws for the web are having unexpected consequences
The Washington Post
Drew Harwell
When the United Kingdom began requiring thousands of websites to verify their users’ ages last month, one group saw an enormous burst of traffic: pornography sites ignoring the law. The sites that complied — by mandating that users show their government IDs or scan their faces through their webcams, so an algorithm could estimate whether they were adults — saw visits from British internet addresses collapse. But some of the biggest porn sites that disregarded the “scan your face” rule entirely have been rewarded with a flood of traffic, a Washington Post analysis found.
Middle East
Egypt rounds up teenaged TikTokkers in crackdown on social media
Reuters
Menna Alaaeldin, Mohamed Ezz and Yazan Kalach
Egyptian authorities have been rounding up teenaged TikTokkers with millions of followers, detaining dozens in recent weeks on accusations ranging from violating family values to laundering money. Police have announced dozens of arrests and prosecutors say they are investigating at least 10 cases of alleged unlawful financial gains. They have imposed travel bans and asset freezes and confiscated devices.
Abu Dhabi’s G42 eyes chip options beyond Nvidia
Semafor
Kelsey Warner
Abu Dhabi-backed G42 is still negotiating with major American technology firms — with no agreements yet — to become tenants at the planned UAE–US AI Campus, and aims to diversify chip suppliers beyond Nvidia, a person with direct knowledge of the talks told Semafor.
Big Tech
OpenAI plans India data center in major Stargate expansion
Bloomberg
Mackenzie Hawkins and Sankalp Phartiyal
OpenAI is seeking to build a massive new data center in India that could mark a major step forward in Asia for its Stargate-branded artificial intelligence infrastructure push. The ChatGPT-maker is currently scouting local partners to set up a data center with at least 1-gigawatt capacity in the world’s most populous country, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the information is private.
Amazon to invest $4.4 Billion in New Zealand data centers
Bloomberg
Matthew Brockett
Amazon said it plans to invest more than NZ$7.5 billion in data centers in New Zealand. Amazon Web Services will establish the AWS Asia Pacific Region to “help serve the growing demand for cloud services across the country and empower organizations of all sizes to accelerate their digital transformation,” Amazon said in a statement Tuesday in Wellington.
Artificial Intelligence
How ‘clanker’ became an anti-AI rallying cry
The New York Times
Eli Tan
Clanker has become a go-to slur against AI on social media, led by Gen Z and Gen Alpha posters. The increasing popularity of clanker is part of a rising backlash against AI Along with the online vitriol, people are holding real-life rallies against the technology in San Francisco and London. Clanker has emerged as the rallying cry of the resistance, a catchall way to reject AI-generated slop, chatbots that act as therapists and AI’s automating away jobs.
Humanoid robots showcase skills at Ancient Olympia. But they’re on a long road to catch up to AI
Associated Press
Derek Gatopoulos and Matt O'Brien
AI is racing ahead thanks to vast amounts of data readily available online. But training material for humanoid robots is scarce. It involves real-world actions that are slower, more expensive and harder to record than digital data like text or images. By one measure, humanlike robots are roughly 100,000 years behind AI in learning from data, according to an article in the current edition of the journal Science Robotics.
Japan's MUFG Bank eyes AI tie-up to save 200,000 hours a year
Nikkei Asia
Yuki Sekiguchi
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will buy into Japanese artificial intelligence company LayerX, using its platform to streamline processes at the Japanese lender's banking unit. LayerX, established in 2018, offers clients generative AI platforms to turn internal know-how into more accessible databases. The bank expects to slash by 50% to 90% the two hours a day on average that marketing reps spend drafting proposals.
Sakana AI devising unique Japanese AI, CEO says
Nikkei Asia
Koji Nozawa
Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based startup valued at more than $1 billion, is expanding its business by taking advantage of the nation's geopolitical prerogatives. The unicorn is promoting the development of artificial intelligence unique to Japan by making use of US and Chinese technologies. "Japan should play a role in [directing] AI research -- not just follow direction [by the US and China] ... It should ensure that the country is self-reliant [in AI]," David Ha, the CEO of Sakana AI, said in an interview with Nikkei.
AI ‘bikini interview’ videos flood internet, sparking sexism concerns
South China Morning Post
Agence France-Presse
The videos are strikingly lifelike, featuring bikini-clad women conducting street interviews and eliciting lewd comments – but they are entirely fake, generated by AI tools increasingly used to flood social media with sexist content. Such AI slop – mass-produced content created by cheap artificial intelligence tools that turn simple text prompts into hyperrealistic visuals – is frequently drowning out authentic posts and blurring the line between fiction and reality.
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.
Uncle Sam to become Intel’s biggest shareholder
FT Podcast
The Trump administration announced that it is taking a 10 per cent stake in troubled chipmaker Intel. What does it mean that the federal government is getting more involved in the free market? The FT’s Richard Waters and the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Strain discuss.
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