Top US and Chinese officials begin talks on AI in Geneva | Facial Recognition software installed in 3 Montenegrin cities | Albanese government ‘not taking AI cyber threats seriously’, industry warns
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Top U.S. and Chinese envoys met in Geneva to discuss AI risks, following an agreement between Presidents Biden and Xi. The talks aimed to ensure AI technologies don't become existential threats, focusing on mutual risks like deepfakes and disinformation. Experts consider the meeting a preliminary step towards AI safety collaboration. The Associated Press
Montenegro’s interior ministry has installed facial recognition software in Podgorica, Bar, and Budva using Any Vision’s technology. The system is not fully operational yet and aims to enhance security but raises privacy concerns. Activists and experts argue it risks misuse and overreaches in surveillance, while ongoing issues hinder its full implementation, and legal oversight remains insufficient. Balkan Insight
Chalmers’s third budget faced criticism for lacking cyber security focus despite AI-driven threats. The budget allocated $676.3m for security measures but was deemed insufficient. Critics highlighted the neglect of small businesses, with experts urging more government support and resources to combat escalating cyber threats and improve cyber defences for SMBs. The Australian
ASPI
Budget: ASPI’s experts give their views
The Strategist
Bec Shrimpton, Mike Bareja, Blake Johnson, Mike Copage, John Coyne and Malcolm Davis
The Albanese government's third budget includes measures to improve cybersecurity for agencies like Services Australia and APRA, addressing low cyber maturity. It emphasizes AI, with $37.3 million allocated for AI centers and policy development. Additionally, $288.1 million is dedicated to Digital ID, and $466.4 million supports a quantum precinct in Brisbane, promoting critical technology advancement.
Australia
Albanese government ‘not taking AI cyber threats seriously’, industry warns
The Australian
Jared Lynch
Jim Chalmers’s third budget has been criticised for being light on cyber security, despite threats from state-sponsored actors and criminal gangs harnessing artificial intelligence to increase the speed and scale of attacks.
Millions of Temu shoppers warned of major problem that could impact their health
7News
Caleb Taylor
Temu shoppers are at risk of developing an addiction to the online retailer, according to an expert. Temu launched 12 months ago in Australia, and has become a popular destination for ultra-cheap household products. The company, which is owned by PDD Holdings, started in Shanghai, but recently moved its headquarters to Ireland.
Powering up for a hi-tech minerals surge
The Australian
Lydia Lynch
At a small facility in Brisbane’s outer eastern suburbs, a group of scientists are transforming trash to treasure. Burgeoning business Lava Blue has developed a method to extract high-purity alumina (HPA) from mining waste that would have been dumped in a tailings dam in north Queensland.
China
China’s spy threat is growing, but the West has struggled to keep up
BBC
Gordon Corera
For years, Western spy agencies have talked of a need to pivot to focus on China. This week, the head of the UK's GCHQ intelligence agency described it as an "epoch-defining challenge". It follows a series of arrests across the West of people accused of spying and hacking for China. And on Monday, China's ambassador was summoned by the UK Foreign Office, after three people were accused of assisting Hong Kong's intelligence services.
Chinese firms make headway in producing high bandwidth memory for AI chipsets
Reuters
Fanny Potkin and Eduardo Baptista
Two Chinese chipmakers are in the early stages of producing high bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors used in artificial intelligence chipsets, according to sources and documents. The progress in HBM - even if only in older versions of HBM - represents a major step forward in China's efforts to reduce its reliance on foreign suppliers amid tensions with Washington that have led to restrictions on U.S. exports of advanced chipsets to Chinese firms. CXMT, China's top manufacturer of DRAM chips, has developed sample HBM chips in partnership with chip packaging and testing company Tongfu Microelectronic.
Chinese nationalist groups are launching cyber-attacks – often against the wishes of the government
The Conversation
Lewis Eves
The UK’s national security agency, MI5, warned in April that British universities participating in military research are targets for cyber-attacks by foreign states. More recently, news broke of a cyber-attack against the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which exposed the personal details of 270,000 armed forces personnel. China is the main suspect behind these attacks.
YouTube to block Hong Kong protest anthem videos after court order
Reuters
Jeffrey Dastin and James Pomfret
Alphabet's, opens new tab YouTube on Tuesday said it would comply with a court decision and block access inside Hong Kong to 32 video links deemed prohibited content, in what critics say is a blow to freedoms in the financial hub amid a security clampdown.
USA
Top US and Chinese officials begin talks on AI in Geneva
Associated Press
Jamey Keatten
Top envoys from the U.S. and China huddled in closed-door talks in Geneva on Tuesday to discuss ways to ensure that emerging artificial intelligence technologies don’t become existential risks. The talks, which Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed to launch in last 2023, are meant to open up bilateral dialogue between the world’s two biggest economies — and increasingly, geopolitical rivals — on a fast-moving technology that already has consequences for trade, lifestyles, culture, politics, national security and defense and much more.
US agency settles probes into America Movil undersea cable system
Reuters
David Shepardson
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Tuesday it has resolved two investigations into the America Movil Submarine Cable System that connects the United States to Colombia and Costa Rica. The commission said the undersea cable connections were made without the approval of the commission or a U.S. government committee known as "Team Telecom," which had prevented a required national security concern review.
Why Washington’s new tariffs on Chinese clean tech goods matter
Financial Times
Aime Williams
Joe Biden unleashed fresh tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods on Tuesday, sharply raising the levies on clean energy imports including solar parts and electric vehicles. It was a move designed to appeal to blue-collar voters in America’s electoral swing states — but one that will have ramifications far beyond the US, raising fears of deepening trade tensions between the world’s two economic superpowers.
5G and 6G are among 'the most strategic sectors' in the AI age, a national security advisor says
Business Insider
Rosalie Chan
The US is bolstering its 5G infrastructure in the age of AI. Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging tech, said that 5G and 6G were some of "the most strategic sectors," especially since telecom and data-center infrastructure houses the data required to train artificial-intelligence models.
Secrecy concerns mount over spy powers targeting US data centers
WIRED
Dell Cameron
Last month, US president Joe Biden signed a surveillance bill enhancing the National Security Agency’s power to compel US businesses to wiretap communications going in and out of the country. The changes to the law have left legal experts largely in the dark as to the true limits of this new authority, chiefly when it comes to the types of companies that could be affected. The American Civil Liberties Union and organizations like it say the bill has rendered the statutory language governing the limits of a powerful wiretap tool overly vague, potentially subjecting large swaths of corporate America to warrantless and secretive surveillance practices.
North Asia
How Chinese surveillance technology helps North Korea keep its citizens on a tight leash
The Sydney Morning Herald
Park Chan-kyong
Heavy reliance on Chinese surveillance technology has allowed North Korea to keep its population under tight control and make illegal border crossings difficult, as the isolated country expands digital transformation aimed at controlling “various facets of public and private life”. Experts say North Korea is also setting up a fourth-generation mobile telecoms network to boost its remote online monitoring capabilities while maintaining “highly effective” human-level analogue watch.
Southeast Asia
ASEAN should watch the China-US cyber competition more closely
The Diplomat
Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman
The United States published its new International Cyberspace & Digital Policy Strategy on May 6. The strategy portrays China as “the broadest, most active, and most persistent cyber threat” and affirms that the mutual defense treaties that the U.S. has with its allies apply in cyberspace. ASEAN must promote cyber norms to prevent the region from becoming a theater for cyber conflict between the major powers.
Ukraine - Russia
How AI turned a Ukrainian YouTuber into a Russian
BBC
Fan Wang
Olga Loiek has seen her face appear in various videos on Chinese social media - a result of easy-to-use generative AI tools available online. The accounts featuring her likeness had dozens of different names like Sofia, Natasha, April, and Stacy. These “girls” were speaking in Mandarin - a language Olga had never learned. They were apparently from Russia, and talked about China-Russia friendship or advertised Russian products.
Europe
Facial recognition software installed in three Montenegrin cities
Balkan Insight
Ivan Ivanovic
Facial recognition software has been installed in Podgorica, Budva and Bar, but is not yet fully operational. Montenegro’s interior ministry has bought facial recognition software and deployed it in public spaces in the capital Podgorica and the coastal towns of Bar and Budva, according to information obtained by BIRN from the Agency for Personal Data Protection.
Amazon web services plans $8.4 bln cloud investment in Germany
Reuters
Reuters
Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest 7.8 billion euros (US$8.44 billion) in Germany through 2040 as it builds a cloud computing infrastructure specifically for Europe. AWS last year announced plans to store data on servers located in the European Union to protect data privacy for government and customers in highly regulated industries. The company said it will launch several data centres in the German state of Brandenburg by the end of 2025 which will be available to all customers.
Swedish coalition ‘undermined’ by far-right troll farm scandal
EURACTIV
Charles Szumski
Sweden’s centre-right coalition of the Moderates, Christian Democrats (CD), and Liberals is now facing turbulent waters as revelations about its ally, the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), allegedly running a troll farm, threaten to upset the political balance.
UK
China poses ‘genuine and increasing’ cyber risk to UK, GCHQ chief warns
Financial Times
John Paul Rathbone
China poses a “genuine and increasing cyber risk to the UK”, the head of Britain’s signals intelligence agency has said. The remarks by Anne Keast-Butler, director of GCHQ, follow a slew of alleged China-related espionage activity in the UK, including a suspected cyber attack that targeted the records of thousands of British military personnel.
Middle East
Yemeni terrorist financing probe blocks Red Sea cable repair
Bloomberg
Olivia Solon and Mohammed Hatem
The Yemeni government is holding back repairs on a key internet cable that’s been damaged in the Red Sea as it conducts a criminal investigation into the cable owners’ alleged ties to the Houthi militia. The Iran-backed Houthis, designated as a terrorist organization by the US and its allies, control much of Yemen’s telecommunications infrastructure, including a branch of the country’s only international carrier, TeleYemen. TeleYemen is part of a consortium of operators that owns the damaged AAE-1 cable, a 25,000-kilometer (15,534-mile) system that connects Europe to Southeast Asia.
Africa
African security agencies meet in Rwanda to discuss emerging technologies in warfare
Taarifa
Representatives from African military and security agencies are in Rwanda to raise awareness on emerging technologies used in warfare and the need to adapt to the requirements of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
Big Tech
The end of TikTok is a propaganda win for Beijing
The New York Times
Nick Frisch and Dan Wang
When President Biden signed a bill requiring that TikTok be divested from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, members of Congress hailed the law as a blow to Beijing. They shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate. The law would at best partially mitigate the hazards of misinformation or the risks to national security posed by China. The Communist Party, meanwhile, looks forward to a propaganda windfall, prizing off Washington’s mantle as champion of a free and open internet.
Google moves deepfake porn sites lower in its search rankings
Bloomberg
Cecilia D'Anastasio
Google is making it harder for users of its search engine to find websites that host AI-generated deepfake pornography after months of lobbying by victims and advocates of tighter controls.
TikTok creators file suit to block US divestment or ban law
Reuters
David Shepardson
A group of TikTok creators said Tuesday they filed suit in U.S. federal court seeking to block a law signed by President Joe Biden that would force the divestiture of the short video app used by 170 million Americans or ban it, saying it has had "a profound effect on American life."
Artificial Intelligence
The old-fashioned library at the heart of the A.I. boom
The New York Times
Cade Metz
OpenAI may be changing how the world interacts with language. But inside the company’s San Francisco office, there is a very old-fashioned homage to the written word: a library.
Zen and the ‘wicked problem’ of AI and digitalisation
The Mandarin
David Schmidtchen
The history of technological change gives us two lessons. Lesson One. The technology’s developers, evangelists spruiking it, and end-users all have different views on what it does. What the technology delivers in practice is rarely consistent with these views. Lesson Two. The growth in the use of technology and its value to our lives is not threatened, slowed, or stopped because we become bored or the technology is no longer useful. The failure to make the most of technology is generally a failure of effective implementation.
One tech tip: how to spot AI-generated deepfake images
ABC News
Kelvin Chan
AI fakery is quickly becoming one of the biggest problems confronting us online. Deceptive pictures, videos and audio are proliferating as a result of the rise and misuse of generative artificial intelligence tools.
The battle for truth In election seasons: AI-generated deepfakes
Forbes
Emil Sayegh
As artificial intelligence (AI) evolves from an engine of innovation to a conduit for deception, deepfakes – digital media or communications which have been altered with intent to mislead – emerge as a significant threat to the sanctity of election seasons, challenging the very fabric of democratic integrity.
Research
What does It really mean to talk about tech competition?
CSIS
Yinuo Geng
Advances in technological innovations have become central to the ability of companies and countries to compete. The importance of such technologies has placed the concept of “tech competition” at the fore of a significant swath of policy debates. But what does it really mean to talk about tech competition? That depends on who you’re asking and what you’re targeting.
Events & Podcasts
The Sydney Dialogue
ASPI
The Sydney Dialogue was created to help bring together governments, businesses and civil society to discuss and progress policy options. We will forecast the technologies of the next decade that will change our societies, economies and national security, prioritising speakers and delegates who are willing to push the envelope. We will promote diverse views that stimulate real conversations about the best ways to seize opportunities and minimise risks.
JoiningFORCES
ASPI
The JoiningFORCES conference will explore ways to bridge national and international boundaries to deliver more joint, collective and effective defence. It will bring together government ministers, senior defence officials, leading industry figures, and international experts across the two-day event and formal dinner. We will also use collaborative wargaming and scenario exercise techniques to generate insights on enhancing regional deterrence. Our focus will be on strategic and operational level challenges and will consider the vital role of industry in delivering capability at the speed needed to meet the strategic threats Australia faces.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.