Trump tech agenda with $500B AI plan | Russian disinformation targets German election | Google rushed to sell AI tools to Israel’s military after Hamas attack
Good morning. It's Thursday 23rd of January.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
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President Donald Trump set about defining his new administration’s technology policy Tuesday, hosting industry CEOs at the White House to announce a massive private-sector investment in infrastructure for artificial intelligence that could reach $500 billion. The Washington Post
A Russian disinformation campaign is seeking to boost the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), undermine mainstream German parties and sow worries about the economy ahead of the country's Feb. 23 election, a think-tank has found. German think-tank CeMAS said it had tracked down hundreds of German-language posts exhibiting what it said were typical patterns of Russia's Doppelgaenger disinformation campaign. Reuters
Internal documents show Google directly assisting Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces, despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the country’s national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel’s government. The Washington Post
ASPI
Thousands of imports enter Australia from firms blacklisted by US over alleged Uyghur forced labour links
The Guardian
Christopher Knaus and Helen Davidson
Australia is allowing thousands of imports from Chinese companies blacklisted by the US over alleged links to forced Uyghur labour, including a supplier of parts to Sydney Metro vehicles, government documents have revealed. In 2020 the Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated more than 80,000 Ugyhurs had been moved out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019. “Australia, if we look at it from international perspective, there’s very little to no action whatsoever, trying to ban or even paying attention to any products … [that are] actually produced by forced labour,” the Australian Uyghur activist Nurgul Sawut said.
World
Cheap, smart, deadly. The tech industry pitches a new way to wage war.
The Washington Post
Gerrit De Vynck
The demonstration showcased parts of an artificial intelligence-infused vision of warfare it hopes can transform the U.S. military under the new Trump administration. It imagines the nation defended by fleets of deadly aerial and undersea drones that can tirelessly patrol the world with minimal need for human intervention, poised to strike if ordered to.
Australia
"Bulletproof" hosting providers: Cracks in the armour of cybercriminal infrastructure
Australian Signals Directorate
Successful cybercriminals rely on secure, undetectable and resilient infrastructure. Beneath every instance of network compromise, stolen credentials, ransomware, or data theft and sale on illicit forums, is secure infrastructure that enables cybercriminals to operate and remain hidden.
China
China to host world’s first human-robot marathon as robotics drives national goals
South China Morning Post
Phoebe Zhang
Can humans and robots face off in a full race? It will happen in Beijing this spring. For the first time, dozens of humanoid robots are expected to join a half-marathon to be held in the capital’s Daxing district in April, according to local authorities. This comes as China ramps up efforts to develop artificial intelligence and robotics, to gain an edge in the tech rivalry with the US as well as combat the challenges of an ageing society and a falling birth rate.
USA
Trump tech agenda begins with $500B private AI plan and cuts to regulation
The Washington Post
Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku
President Donald Trump set about defining his new administration’s technology policy Tuesday, hosting industry CEOs at the White House to announce a massive private-sector investment in infrastructure for artificial intelligence that could reach $500 billion.
Trump fires cyber safety board investigating Salt Typhoon hackers
DarkReading
Becky Bracken
In a letter sent today, the acting DHS secretary terminated membership to all advisory boards, including the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) tasked with investigating state-sponsored cyber threats against the US.
Why U.S. tech companies struggle to replicate China’s WeChat ‘super app’ model
CNBC News
Jeff Huang
"The regulatory environment in the U.S. today is certainly not as conducive to allowing a super app to develop,” said Dan Prud’homme, assistant professor at Florida International University’s College of Business. “There are still very strong protections on things like peer-to-peer lending, data privacy, antitrust and so on that don’t allow the apps in the U.S. to quite thrive in the same way that WeChat could.”
North Asia
Taiwan activates backup communication for Matsu Islands after undersea cables malfunction
The Straits Times
Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said on Jan 22 that undersea cables to the Matsu Islands, which lie close to the coast of China, were disconnected due to “natural deterioration” and backup communications were activated. Deputy Digital Minister Chiueh Herming told reporters in a briefing that no “suspicious” ships were detected when the cables went offline. He said “natural deterioration” was the likely cause, but added that cases of ships damaging Taiwan’s sea cables were on the rise in recent years.
Ukraine - Russia
Russian telecom giant Rostelecom investigates suspected cyberattack on contractor
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
A major Russian telecommunications provider, Rostelecom, said that it is investigating a suspected cyberattack on one of its contractors after hackers claimed to have leaked the company's data.
Europe
Russian disinformation targets German election campaign, says think-tank
Reuters
A Russian disinformation campaign is seeking to boost the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), undermine mainstream German parties and sow worries about the economy ahead of the country's Feb. 23 election, a think-tank has found. German think-tank CeMAS said it had tracked down hundreds of German-language posts exhibiting what it said were typical patterns of Russia's Doppelgaenger disinformation campaign.
Germany proposes tougher EU response to hybrid threats from Russia
POLITICO
Nette Nöstlinger and Hans Von Der Burchard
Germany is calling on EU countries to take a tougher stance on hybrid threats coming from Russia — including by expanding the bloc’s sanctions regime and limiting access to Europe by Moscow’s diplomatic missions.
Tech billionaires want to ‘overthrow democracy’ with social media, Spain PM Sánchez says
POLITICO
Aitor Hernández-Morales and Sarah Wheaton
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday that tech billionaires want to use social media “to overthrow democracy” — adding he’ll push EU leaders to take action. “The technology that was intended to free us has become the tool of our own oppression,” he said during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The social media that was supposed to bring unity, clarity and democracy have instead given us division, vice and a reactionary agenda.”
Trump’s $500B AI plan is ‘slap’ in the face for Europe
POLITICO
Pieter Haeck
The United States just fired the starting gun on an artificial intelligence race where Europe won't be able to keep up. U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled a half-trillion-dollar project to build the infrastructure needed to cement U.S. AI dominance in the years to come, starting with a data center in Texas. The level of ambition has jaws dropping in Europe where political leaders have pinned hopes on AI helping to restore the continent's global leadership.
UK
Stop working for Russia, Britain tells its private spies
POLITICO
Mason Boycott-Owen
In new guidance for security professionals published this week, the U.K. Home Office said such work risks breaking tough new national security laws — and could even see pros sent to prison for up to 14 years. British security companies are being told to carry out due diligence to ensure their clients aren’t working for a foreign power looking to threaten the interests of the U.K.
Britain purged its antitrust watchdog. Big Tech couldn’t be happier.
POLITICO
Tom Bristow
Britain’s chancellor and business secretary sat calmly under the Davos lights on Wednesday morning as they tried to sell the U.K. as a top investment destination. But just the night before, they’d shocked their country’s independent regulators by booting out the chair of the antitrust watchdog — and replacing him with a former tech executive. The message and its timing were clear. Regulators needed to make “pro-business decisions," Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said.
Middle East
Google rushed to sell AI tools to Israel’s military after Hamas attack
The Washington Post
Gerrit De Vynck
The internal documents show Google directly assisting Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces, despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the country’s national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel’s government.
NZ & Pacific Islands
ID card disinformation fuels confusion over PNG hospital policy
Australian Associated Press
Kate Atkinson
However, in the top corner, a URL for the website Break Your Own News is visible. The site allows users to generate fake or parody news reports, and AAP FactCheck easily recreated the same image. The hospital issued a statement confirming the claims are false.
Gender & Women in Tech
Meta’s new policies and Australia’s social media ban: Why marginalised voices could lose the most
Missing Perspectives
Varsha Yajman
“It’s clear that Meta doesn’t accept that technology must be designed with different needs and cultures in mind,” says Notley, who leads the Advancing Media Literacy research program at WSU.
Big Tech
One tech mogul spends inauguration day in China
The Wall Street Journal
Raffaele Huang
For all the tech moguls at President Trump’s inauguration—Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and many more—one was missing: Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive of chip company Nvidia. He is spending time this week in China, where the U.S. has restricted sales of many advanced Nvidia semiconductors used for developing artificial intelligence.
In Davos and Washington, tech execs gather under divergent goals
The Washington Post
Every four years, the elite winter confab falls close to Inauguration Day, but the overlap this year seems less of a coincidence than a stark collision of worldviews over global leadership.
Artificial Intelligence
Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – new research
The Conversation
Chiara Longoni, Gil Appel and Stephanie Tully
These insights pose a challenge for policymakers and educators. Efforts to boost AI literacy might unintentionally dampen people’s enthusiasm for using AI by making it seem less magical. This creates a tricky balance between helping people understand AI and keeping them open to its adoption.
AI isn’t very good at history, new paper finds
TechCrunch
Charles Rollet
A team of researchers has created a new benchmark to test three top large language models (LLMs) — OpenAI’s GPT-4, Meta’s Llama, and Google’s Gemini — on historical questions. The benchmark, Hist-LLM, tests the correctness of answers according to the Seshat Global History Databank, a vast database of historical knowledge named after the ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom. The results, which were presented last month at the high-profile AI conference NeurIPS, were disappointing, according to researchers affiliated with the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), a research institute based in Austria. The best-performing LLM was GPT-4 Turbo, but it only achieved about 46% accuracy — not much higher than random guessing.
Misc
Here come the robots and the companies set to make trillions
The Australian
Electronics titans have tried for years to crack the home robot market, but one company thinks it finally has made the perfect one that will be big business.
Research
A theory of international technology regulation
Review of International Studies
Florian Rabitz
Technology is of increasing importance for international cooperation, yet theory development in rationalist International Relations has not kept pace. I develop a theoretical framework for explaining cooperative outcomes in the international regulation of technology.
Disinformation and cognitive warfare
Perth USAsia Centre
Alana Ford
Disinformation and Cognitive Warfare examines the pervasive threat of disinformation and cognitive warfare in the Indo-Pacific, where open information environments and complex geopolitical dynamics heighten vulnerabilities. From the historical evolution of information warfare to its modern manifestation powered by AI, social media, and data manipulation, the brief unpacks how these tactics are reshaping national security and undermining democratic institutions. Drawing on global examples, it highlights the implications for regional stability and democratic resilience.
Events & Podcasts
Safeguarding Australian elections: Addressing AI-enabled disinformation
ASPI
As artificial intelligence advances, it creates new challenges for democracy and electoral integrity. AI-enabled disinformation, deepfakes, and influence operations are increasingly being weaponised to distort political discourse and erode public trust. This event on Thursday 6 February, 5:30-6:30pm, co-hosted by ASPI and CETaS, will focus on the intersection of AI, electoral integrity and democratic resilience.
Myanmar’s Digital Coup - How the World Responded
Australian Institute of International Affairs
Nicholas Coppel and Lennon Chang
February marks four years since Myanmar's junta seized power in a violent and deadly coup. Four years on, the military's firm grip on Myanmar's telecommunications infrastructure empowers them to weaponise internet shutdowns in regions where anti-coup resistance is strong and, operating under the guise of e-government projects, the regime raises funds and collects resources to strengthen its extensive surveillance infrastructure.
Jobs
ASPI Deputy Director – Cyber, Technology & Security Program
ASPI
ASPI is seeking a talented leader for the Deputy Director of Cyber, Technology & Security (CTS) Operations. This is an exceptional opportunity to contribute to one of the Indo-Pacific’s leading think tanks, focused on advancing policy and research at the intersection of cyber, technology, and national security. The CTS Program is ASPI’s largest program, and includes ASPI’s China Investigations and Analysis team. The closing date for applications is Friday, 24 January 2025 – an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.
