How the AP will call the election | "Stop the Steal's" new online army | China has surpassed America in some military arenas
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Through Election Day and beyond, the AP will deploy more than 4,000 freelancers to election offices around the country to track and tally counts in real time. They will call in those numbers to about 800 vote entry clerks, who crunch the numbers and check them for accuracy. About 60 people on the decision team — which exists year-around, even in non-election years — analyze the reports and focus only on making calls. The Washington Post
The online “Stop the Steal” movement that won national attention four years ago was driven by a small, disordered and slapdash group of right-wing fringe accounts echoing Trump’s claims of election fraud. Today, it is an army — organized, widely promoted and shored up by an ideology that has permeated the Republican base. The Washington Post
China, thanks to big investments and extensive testing, had the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal. China has already deployed multiple hypersonic-weapon systems. With other arms that rely on newer technologies it is often difficult to judge who is ahead, not least because they are rarely tested in public. But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2024 found that China ranked top in six out of seven crucial defence-related areas: advanced aircraft engines, drones and collaborative robots, hypersonic detection and tracking, advanced robotics, autonomous systems and space-launch systems. The Economist
ASPI
In some areas of military strength, China has surpassed America
The Economist
The most striking progress by China has come in the area of hypersonic missiles, which fly and manoeuvre at more than five times the speed of sound. Such weapons have forced countries to rethink their defence systems. Earlier this year Jeffrey McCormick of America’s National Air and Space Intelligence Centre told Congress that China, thanks to big investments and extensive testing, had the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal. America is testing faster and more accurate missiles, says Mr Mulvaney. But China has already deployed multiple hypersonic-weapon systems. With other arms that rely on newer technologies it is often difficult to judge who is ahead, not least because they are rarely tested in public. But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, another think-tank, publishes an annual critical-technology tracker measuring high-impact research across countries. Its survey in 2024 found that China ranked top in six out of seven crucial defence-related areas: advanced aircraft engines, drones and collaborative robots, hypersonic detection and tracking, advanced robotics, autonomous systems and space-launch systems. America was ahead only in small satellites.
Australia
Australia is axing a $7bn military satellite project, leaving defence comms potentially vulnerable
The Conversation
David Tuffley
The project’s cancellation would mark a dramatic reversal for a program that was meant to make Australia’s military communications safer at a time when the cyber threat landscape has been steadily evolving.
Encrypted messaging app developer moves out of Australia after police visit employee’s home
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
The founder of an encrypted messaging app who left Australia for Switzerland after police unexpectedly visited an employee’s home says he had left because of Australia’s “hostile” stance against developers building privacy-focused apps.
China
China sues the EU over EV duties
POLITICO
Camille Gijs
Beijing had threatened to do so last week, after the EU finalized its decision to impose duties of 8 percent to 35 percent on Chinese EV brands. The duties came after a year-long investigation found that Chinese manufacturers had benefited from unfair subsidies.
China urges palatable EV trade solution from EU as France defends bloc
Reuters
Liz Lee
Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, in a meeting with French junior trade minister Sophie Primas in Shanghai on Sunday, urged Paris to take on "an active role" to nudge the EU on Chinese EVs. He reiterated the bloc's investigation was a major concern that has "seriously hindered" China-EU auto industry cooperation. Primas told Wang that EU refuses to escalate the situation and continues to trade with China "but will not yield to pressure on the essential points".
Alibaba cuts ‘dozens of employees’ at metaverse unit as hype in sector cools down
South China Morning Post
Ann Cao
The lay-offs, which were first reported by Chinese media on Friday, affected Yuanjing’s operations in both Shanghai and Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province. Yuanjing, which had received “billions of yuan” in investment, previously employed a few hundred workers, according to a report by online news outlet AI Jingxuanshe.
Chinese autonomous driving firm DeepRoute.ai raises US$100 million as adoption accelerates
South China Morning Post
The Shenzhen-based start-up expects nearly 200,000 cars to be equipped with its advanced assisted driving system on Chinese roads by the end of 2025, CEO Maxwell Zhou told Reuters in an interview, up from about 20,000 now.
Tencent renews partnership with Bosch for deeper smart car collaboration
South China Morning Post
Iris Deng
Tencent and Bosch’s China unit signed a new round of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to explore opportunities in cloud computing and mapping for autonomous driving, integrating large language models (LLMs) into smart cockpits, and helping Chinese carmakers venture overseas, among other areas, the Shenzhen-based company announced on Monday.
USA
Who won? How AP calls the election, in ‘single largest act of journalism’
The Washington Post
Elahe Izadi
Through Election Day and beyond, the AP will deploy more than 4,000 freelancers to election offices around the country to track and tally counts in real time. They will call in those numbers to about 800 vote entry clerks, who crunch the numbers and check them for accuracy. About 60 people on the decision team — which exists year-around, even in non-election years — analyze the reports and focus only on making calls.
Four years after ‘Stop the Steal,’ an organized army emerges online
The Washington Post
Drew Harwell, Cat Zakrzewski and Naomi Nix
The online movement that won national attention four years ago was driven by a small, disordered and slapdash group of right-wing fringe accounts echoing Trump’s claims of election fraud. Today, it is an army — organized, widely promoted and shored up by an ideology that has permeated the Republican base. Election deniers have in recent years developed a rapid-response system for amplifying rumors or exaggerating the impact of real voting irregularities, creating the impression of widespread voting fraud that is not backed up by the facts.
‘Chaos and confusion’: Microsoft braces for foreign election interference in days ahead
POLITICO
Steven Overly
Microsoft’s election defense efforts focus on these foreign adversaries because they “have the funding to be persistent over time” and are willing to “pick up on whatever narratives are working, regardless of the source,” Badanes said.
On Telegram, a violent preview of what may unfold on Election Day and after
The New York Times
Paul MozurAdam SatarianoAaron Krolik and Steven Lee Myers
Right-wing groups, which use Telegram to organize real-world actions, are urging followers to watch the polls and stand up for their rights, in a harbinger of potential chaos.
‘Delete, delete, delete’: Musk’s political plans put millions of Americans at risk
The Sydney Morning Herald
David Swan
At a recent rally, Trump said Musk would conduct a “complete financial and performance audit” and make “recommendations for drastic reforms”. Speaking to The Washington Post last week, a Trump insider described Musk’s philosophy as “delete, delete, delete” and said they believed Musk’s first priority if Trump wins would be cutting jobs.
New York Times tech workers go on strike
Semafor
Mathias Hammer
The Guild represents more than 600 software developers, data analysts, and designers whose work upholds the organization’s digital products, including its live blogs and the Times’ election needle. The union has said roughly half of its members are directly involved in supporting the paper’s election coverage, and the increased traffic to the outlet’s website around an election only increases the pressure on the publication’s back-end systems.
U.S. chip toolmakers move to cut China from supply chains
The Wall Street Journal
Liza Lin and Asa Fitch
The U.S. semiconductor industry is uprooting Chinese companies from supply chains, spurred by directives from Washington seeking to suppress China’s involvement in sensitive next-generation technology. Chip toolmakers are telling suppliers that they need to find alternatives to certain components obtained from China or risk losing their vendor status.
North Asia
South Korea pushes AI to bolster military as population shrinks
Nikkei Asia
Junnosuke Kobara
South Korea's military and defense industry are rushing to promote artificial intelligence on the battlefield, seeing the technology as a lifeline for a fighting force grappling with the prospect of a troop shortage as well as North Korea's closer relationship with Russia.
Europe
French families sue TikTok over alleged promotion of self-harm content
POLITICO
Océane Herrero and Victor Goury-Laffont
The families, part of a collective called Algos Victima, are suing the social media platform whose parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing. They accuse it of promoting content tied to self-mutilation, suicide or eating disorders. “Our challenge is to see TikTok held accountable for its lack of moderation, which makes the service flawed,” said Laure Boutron-Marmion, the lawyer for the collective, confirming the civil lawsuit.
Middle East
Abu Dhabi works with Microsoft on AI push in energy industry
Bloomberg
Anthony Di Paola
Abu Dhabi’s main oil company and AIQ agreed on a deal to use artificial intelligence to make the energy industry more efficient. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. will for the first time use agentic AI — developed by AIQ in collaboration with Microsoft Corp. and G42 — to analyze massive amounts of data to identify operational improvements in the energy industry, Chief Executive Officer Sultan Al Jaber said at the opening of the Adipec conference on Monday.
Big Tech
Wall Street frenzy creates $11bn debt market for AI groups buying Nvidia chips
Financial Times
Tabby Kinder
Wall Street’s largest financial institutions have loaned more than $11bn to a niche group of tech companies based on their possession of the world’s hottest commodity: Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips.
The budget hawk atop a tech giant’s $64 billion spending spree
The Wall Street Journal
Tom Dotan
Microsoft’s chief financial officer of 11 years, Hood has long offered pragmatic balance to Nadella’s starry-eyed ambitions. Now she’s at the center of a bet-the-company dive into AI, figuring out how to steer tens of billions in new spending without it letting it spiral out of control.
Physical intelligence, a robot A.I. specialist, raises millions from Bezos
The New York Times
Michael J. de la Merced
The company wants to make foundational software that would work for any robot, instead of the traditional approach of creating software for specific machines and specific tasks.
Facebook, Nvidia ask US Supreme Court to spare them from securities fraud suits
Reuters
John Kruzel
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider bids by two tech giants - Meta's Facebook and Nvidia - to fend off federal securities fraud lawsuits in separate cases that could make it harder for private litigants to hold companies to account.
Artificial Intelligence
AI hallucinations caused artificial intelligence to falsely describe these people as criminals
ABC News
Anna Kelsey-Sugg and Damien Carrick
German journalist Martin Bernklau made a shocking discovery earlier this year when he typed his name into Microsoft's AI tool, Copilot. "I read there that I was a 54-year-old child molester," he tells ABC Radio National's Law Report. The AI information said Bernklau had confessed to the crime and was remorseful. The tool had conflated Bernklau's news reporting with his personal experience and it presented him as the perpetrator of the crimes he'd reported on.
Wall Street frenzy creates $11bn debt market for AI groups buying Nvidia chips
Financial Times
Tabby Kinder
Wall Street’s largest financial institutions have loaned more than $11bn to a niche group of tech companies based on their possession of the world’s hottest commodity: Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips.
I took a ‘decision holiday’ and put A.I. in charge of my life
The New York Times
Kashmir Hill
Generative A.I. took over my life. For one week, it told me what to eat, what to wear and what to do with my kids. It chose my haircut and what color to paint my office. It told my husband that it was OK to go golfing, in a lovey-dovey text that he immediately knew I had not written.
Instagram Plans to Use AI to Catch Teens Lying About Age
Bloomberg
Curtis Heinzl and Kurt Wagner
With a proprietary software tool it calls an “adult classifier,” Meta will categorize users into two age brackets — older or younger than 18 — based on the person’s own account data, according to Allison Hartnett, Meta’s director of product management for youth and social impact. The software can sift through a user’s profile, see their follower list and what content they interact with, and will even scan unsuspecting “happy birthday” posts made by friends to predict a user’s age.
Research
Delegitimizing the Messenger: the Assault on Fact-Checkers
Council on Foreign Relations
Allie Funk, Kian Vesteinsson and Grant Baker
As a result, disinformation experts in the US now have fewer resources, institutional support, and access to platform data, all of which are necessary to provide the same type of analysis in 2024 that was possible in 2020.
Events & Podcasts
USSC Briefing Room | Former Trump admin official on technology, energy and competition with China
United States Study Centre
Jared Mondschein
USSC Director of Research Jared Mondschein talks to former Trump administration official Erik Jacobs about the intersection of technology, energy and competition with China.
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