Cyberattack breaches Qantas customer data | Quad ministers announce critical minerals partnership | EU disinformation controls now online
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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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A contact centre for Australian airline Qantas has been the target of a cyber attack, leading to a breach of customer data. ABC News
The United States announced the launch of a critical minerals initiative with Australia, India and Japan on Tuesday as part of efforts to counter China. Reuters
As of July 1, 2025, Europe’s Code of Conduct on Disinformation is officially in effect. What was once a voluntary self-regulatory framework is now locked into the Digital Services Act. Tech Policy Press
World
UNESCO rallies global support for ethical AI at Bangkok forum
The Korea Herald
Ahn Sung-mi
The third edition of the UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of AI drew over 1,200 participants from 88 countries last week in the Thai capital, evaluating how far the world has come since the adoption of the 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, the first global standard of its kind endorsed by all 194 member states.
Australia
Qantas hit by cyber attack, leaving 6 million customer records at risk of data breach
ABC News
Michael Janda and Kirsten Aiken
A contact centre for Australian airline Qantas has been the target of a cyber attack, leading to a breach of customer data. The records of 6 million customers are held on the platform that was compromised and Qantas expects a "significant" proportion of the data has been stolen. Qantas has informed government agencies including the Australian Federal Police and says it will provide support as the investigation continues.
The translation crisis: why our best ideas rarely become national assets
The Strategist
Jason van der Schyff
When it comes to innovation, Australia has a strategy problem as much as a delivery problem. The first is about purpose. The second is about execution. I recently argued that Australia’s innovation system lacks the strategic coherence and delivery posture required to match the pace of threat in a contested Indo-Pacific. But solving that problem starts with one crucial question: how do we get our best ideas across the finish line?
Why Soup and Caleb Finn want to see better protections for the kids of family influencers
ABC News
Rachel Rasker
Like many influencers, 'Soup' has made a name for herself on TikTok by candidly sharing the highs and lows of motherhood. Yet the 18-million-plus followers of the 29-year-old and her partner Caleb Finn — who are some of the biggest creators in Australia — have never once seen the faces of their kids.
Australia’s $17 trillion AI moment
The Interpreter
Michael Harré
The global economy stands on the brink of an unprecedented transformation that artificial intelligence (AI) will drive over the next decade. Goldman Sachs estimates that two-thirds of jobs in Europe and the United States are exposed to some level of AI automation, while McKinsey research suggests AI will generate more than US$17 trillion in annual productivity gains. But policymakers are missing an important insight: the distribution of gains depends entirely on the implementation of AI in the workplace.
Chinese electric car giant races ahead of Tesla in Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald
Nick Toscano
Chinese electric car giant BYD sold a record number of vehicles in Australia last month, reflecting its aggressive local expansion campaign, the growing appeal of cheaper electric cars and the sinking popularity of Elon Musk’s Tesla.
China
China is quickly eroding America’s lead in the global AI race
The Wall Street Journal
Liza Lin, Josh Chin and Raffaele Huang
In Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, users ranging from multinational banks to public universities are turning to large language models from Chinese companies such as startup DeepSeek and e-commerce giant Alibaba as alternatives to American offerings such as ChatGPT. HSBC and Standard Chartered have begun testing DeepSeek’s models internally, according to people familiar with the matter.
Chinese students are using AI to beat AI detectors
Rest of World
Peiyue Wu
Chinese universities are using AI-detection tools to screen student theses, sparking panic during graduation season. Students report false positives, leading some to “dumb down” their writing to pass the checks. A growing industry of AI detectors — and AI tools to outsmart them — is profiting from the confusion.
China is quietly building a tech-driven welfare state
Nikkei Asia
David Tingxuan Zhang
Over the past decade, the country has built vast troves of administrative data. Now, it is moving to make that data interoperable and actionable. Unlike Western democracies where welfare expansion is shaped by political coalitions, China's centralized system enables a more technocratic approach. That creates space for data-driven governance tools to work continuously and at scale.
Has Apple been trapped by China? Not so fast, analysts say
South China Morning Post
Bochen Han
A new book contending that Apple Inc went too far in consolidating its operations in China is prompting debate among analysts of the country – some of whom say the company may have had no realistic alternatives.
USA
US, Indo-Pacific partners announce minerals initiative as Rubio hosts counterparts
Reuters
David Brunnstrom and Kanishka Singh
In a joint statement after talks in Washington, the countries' foreign ministers said they were launching the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, which they called an "ambitious expansion of our partnership to strengthen economic security and collective resilience by collaborating to secure and diversify critical minerals supply chains."
Joint statement from the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Washington
US Department of State
We are deeply concerned about the abrupt constriction and future reliability of key supply chains, specifically for critical minerals. This includes the use of non-market policies and practices for critical minerals, certain derivative products, and mineral processing technology. We underscore the importance of diversified and reliable global supply chains.
Columbia university applicants’ personal data stolen by hacker
Bloomberg
Cameron Fozi
Personal information about Columbia University students and applicants — including whether they were accepted or rejected by the school — has been stolen, according to a Bloomberg News review of data provided by a person who claimed to have hacked the school in June. The alleged hacker, speaking via text and claiming to work alone, said they sought to acquire information about university applications that would suggest a continuation of affirmative action policies in Columbia’s admissions, following a 2023 Supreme Court decision that effectively barred the practice.
Solar industry says Senate plan would cede production to China
The New York Times
Ivan Penn
After the first Trump administration imposed tariffs on imported solar panels, companies opened or announced plans for new U.S. solar panel factories, reviving a manufacturing business that had largely withered away. Those plans accelerated under the Biden administration, which offered generous tax incentives to manufacturers and developers of solar farms. But now solar manufacturers fear that the Republican policy bill, which is still working its way through Congress after the Senate passed it on Tuesday, would end the nascent revival and hand China virtually complete control of solar panel production.
ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral overnight after Bondi criticism
TechCrunch
Zack Whittaker
Most of ICEBlock’s users — about 20,000 — were in Los Angeles, where ICE raids have become commonplace over recent weeks, according to CNN. Following Bondi’s remarks late Monday, the app went viral overnight. As of Tuesday afternoon, the app is now one of the most downloaded free iPhone apps in the United States.
Congress just greenlit a NASA moon plan opposed by Musk and Isaacman
TechCrunch
Aria Alamalhodaei
Legacy aerospace giants scored a win Tuesday when the U.S. Senate passed President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill that earmarks billions more for NASA’s flagship Artemis program. The $10 billion addition to the Artemis architecture, which includes funding for additional Space Launch System rockets and an orbiting station around the moon called Gateway, is a rebuke to critics who wished to see alternative technologies used instead. Among those critics are SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who Musk proposed as the next NASA administrator.
North Asia
Taiwan is creating an offshore wind industry to fuel its semiconductor factories
Rest of World
Hsiuwen Liu
Taiwanese chips underpin much of the world’s electronics and artificial intelligence models, and making them requires substantial energy. TSMC alone consumed more energy in 2024 than Iceland did the whole year. The sector’s energy needs are expected to grow eightfold by 2028, especially due to AI demands, according to government projections. At present, about 97% of its energy comes from imports, but the government has aggressively pursued offshore wind, carried onshore by thick, armoured undersea cables.
Japan's utilities pour billions into power grid amid data center growth
Nikkei Asia
Shimpei Nakamura
Electricity demand for data centers and semiconductor plants nationwide is expected to soar from a projected 3,600 gigawatt-hours in fiscal 2025 to 51,400 GWh in fiscal 2034, according to Japan's Organization for Cross-regional Coordination of Transmission Operators. Japan has positioned development of the power grid as a critical role of transmission and distribution companies in order to support data center development.
Southeast Asia
Alibaba expands AI cloud services in Malaysia, Philippines
Bloomberg
Debby Wu
The Hangzhou-based company’s cloud unit launched its third data center in Malaysia this week and it also plans to open its second data center in the Philippines in October, it said in a statement released Wednesday. Alibaba Cloud also said it’s launching a global competency center in Singapore to help accelerate AI adoption across industries. It said the center would help more than 5,000 businesses and 100,000 developers access advanced AI models.
South & Central Asia
Foxconn pulls Chinese staff from India in hurdle for Apple
Bloomberg
Sankalp Phartiyal, Debby Wu and Mark Gurman
Foxconn Technology Group has asked hundreds of Chinese engineers and technicians to return home from its iPhone factories in India, dealing a blow to Apple Inc.’s manufacturing push in the South Asian country. The bulk of Foxconn’s Chinese staff at iPhone plants in southern India have been told to fly back in a move that began about two months ago, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named as the information is private. More than 300 Chinese workers have left, and mostly support staff from Taiwan remain in India, one of the people said.
Vedanta eyes 'strategic' Indian rare-earth production within 5 years
Nikkei Asia
Sayan Chakraborty
India's Hindustan Zinc is eyeing rare earth minerals but kick-starting production could take up to five years, a top executive told Nikkei Asia, highlighting the difficulties in building a domestic supply chain to counter China's dominance of the sector. Hindustan Zinc was the only private company to win a mining block for monazite—a mineral that contains neodymium—in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh through a government auction in May. However, the need for analysis means it will be some time before the company and country can see the benefits, even as a recent supply chain crisis has highlighted the need to access more rare earths.
Ukraine - Russia
A pro-Russia disinformation campaign is using free AI tools to fuel a ‘content explosion’
WIRED
David Gilbert
A pro-Russia disinformation campaign is leveraging consumer artificial intelligence tools to fuel a “content explosion” focused on exacerbating existing tensions around global elections, Ukraine, and immigration, among other controversial issues, according to new research published last week. The report outlines how, between September 2024 and May 2025, the amount of content being produced by those running the campaign has increased dramatically and is receiving millions of views around the world.
Putin is weaponising AI to target Brits with disinformation campaign in new digital 'arms race', experts warn
The Daily Mail
Tom Cotterill
Vladimir Putin's shadowy cyberspace army is 'weaponising' artificial intelligence to spread disinformation online and confuse Britons into siding with the Kremlin, experts have warned. The new technology is 'already in use' and 'blurring the lines' between fact and fiction, researchers at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) worryingly claimed.
Russia, AI and the future of disinformation warfare
Royal United Services Institute
Claudia Wallner, Dr Simon Copeland and Dr Antonio Giustozzi
As generative AI technologies rapidly evolve, their implications for global information security are becoming more acute. This paper explores how Russian state-affiliated and state-aligned actors are discussing, conceptualising and framing AI within their online communications. Drawing on original analysis of communications from Russian-linked online channels, the paper investigates how actors in the Russian influence ecosystem perceive the role of AI in information warfare and what their narratives reveal about evolving threat trajectories.
Europe
EU disinformation code takes effect amid censorship claims and trade tensions
Tech Policy Press
Ramsha Jahangir
As of July 1, 2025, Europe’s Code of Conduct on Disinformation is officially in effect. What was once a voluntary self-regulatory framework is now locked into the Digital Services Act, requiring the Very Large Online Platforms and Very Large Online Search Engines to meet tougher transparency and auditing obligations aimed at stamping out disinformation. Full compliance with the Code now counts as a key risk-mitigation measure and marker of DSA compliance. And come audit time, tech platforms will have to prove they’re sticking to their commitments – or face scrutiny from Brussels.
Cybersecurity flaws plagued EU border control system, audit shows
Bloomberg
Olivia Solon and Tomas Statius
An information-sharing system used by EU border forces to flag illegal immigrants and suspected criminals in real time was rife with software and security vulnerabilities, according to emails and confidential audit reports obtained by Bloomberg News and investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports. The Schengen Information System II had thousands of cybersecurity issues that the European Data Protection Supervisor, an EU auditor, deemed to be of “high” severity in a 2024 report.
UK
UK launches foreign influence registration scheme
UK Home Office
FIRS is a two-tier scheme: the political tier requires registration of any arrangements to carry out political influence activities in the UK on behalf of a foreign power, including political communications or lobbying senior decision-makers, such as MPs and election candidates. A more stringent enhanced tier applies to foreign powers considered to pose a risk to the UK’s safety or interests—the whole of the Russian and Iranian states have been placed under this tier, after being approved by Parliament.
Middle East
What Israel’s attack on Iran means for the future of war
Al Jazeera
Hossein Dabbagh
Is it morally justifiable to launch such a devastating strike based not on what a state has done, but on what it might do in the future? What precedent does this set for the rest of the world? And who gets to decide when fear is enough to justify war?
Big Tech
Amazon hiring executives for Asia satellite internet push
Bloomberg
Debby Wu, Matt Day and Cindy Wang
Amazon is looking to hire government sales leads in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, laying the groundwork for its satellite internet business in East Asia. Amazon Kuiper, the Seattle-based company’s satellite unit, is advertising roles for government solutions managers to cover the three major economies. The winning candidates will be expected to build high-performing teams, according to the job postings.
Cloudflare introduces default blocking of A.I. data scrapers
The New York Times
Natallie Rocha
With Cloudflare’s new setting, websites can block — by default — online bots that scrape their data, requiring the website owner to grant access for a bot to collect the content, the company said. In the past, those whom Cloudflare did not flag as a hacker or malicious actor could get through to a website to gather its information. “We’re changing the rules of the internet across all of Cloudflare,” said Matthew Prince, the chief executive of the company, which provides tools that protect websites from cyberattacks and helps them load content more efficiently.
Google’s data center energy use doubled in 4 years
TechCrunch
Tim De Chant
No wonder Google is desperate for more power: The company’s data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google’s most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That’s up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence set to change the workforce, impacting graduate jobs, new research reveals
ABC News
Bronwyn Herbert
Tasks that young lawyers traditionally cut their teeth on are predicted to be significantly disrupted by digital automation, and female graduates will suffer the most as a result, new research has found. Contracts, conveyancing, due diligence and discovery are some of the roles being transformed or hollowed out by digitalisation, according to the research.
The hidden labor that makes AI work
Rest of World
Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender
This industry has been called by many names: “crowdwork,” “data labor,” or “ghost work” (as the labor often goes unattended and unseen by consumers in the West). But this work is very visible for those who perform it. Jobs in which low-paid workers filter out, correct, or label text, images, videos, and sounds have been around for nearly as long as AI and the current era of deep learning methods has been. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we wouldn’t have the current wave of “AI” if it weren’t for the availability of on-demand laborers.
Can the music industry make AI the next Napster?
The Verge
Elizabeth Lopatto
AI is cutting a swath across a number of creative industries — with AI-generated book covers, the Chicago Sun-Times publishing an AI-generated list of books that don’t exist, and AI-generated stories at CNET under real authors’ bylines. The music industry is no exception. But while many of these fields are mired in questions about whether AI models are illegally trained on pirated data, the music industry is coming at the issue from a position of unusual strength: the benefits of years of case law backing copyright protections, a regimented licensing system, and a handful of powerful companies that control the industry. Record labels have chosen to fight several AI companies on copyright law, and they have a strong hand to play.
Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg is offering top AI talent
WIRED
Zoe Schiffer
As Mark Zuckerberg staffs up Meta’s new superintelligence lab, he’s offered top tier research talent pay packages of up to $300 million over four years, with more than $100 million in total compensation for the first year, WIRED has learned. Meta has made at least 10 staggeringly high offers to OpenAI staffers, sources say. One high ranking researcher was pitched on the role of chief scientist but turned it down, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations. While the pay package includes equity, in the first year the stock vests immediately, sources say.
Racist videos made with AI are going viral on TikTok
The Verge
Emma Roth
Racist videos that appear to be created with Google’s AI video generation tool Veo 3 have raked in millions of views across TikTok, according to findings from the nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters. The AI-generated videos uncovered by the organization are filled with racist tropes, many of which target Black people.
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.
Cybersecurity as part of national security and foreign policy
Australian Institute of International Affairs
Kersti Eesmaa
Is cybersecurity now a pillar of national security and foreign policy – or is it still just seen as a tech problem? Using Estonia as a case study, we will explore how one country responded to a major cyberattack by strengthening its digital infrastructure, securing its public services, and making cybersecurity a whole-of-government responsibility.
The evolution of Chinese cyber statecraft
Royal United Services Institute
China’s cyber power is growing. On 7 May at a speech at the UK government’s flagship cyber security conference, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, warned that China is "becoming a cyber superpower". In doing so, he added to a growing chorus of statements from ministers and senior officials that have all emphasised that Chinese cyber operations are growing in scale and aggression.
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.