US-China agrees on AI and nukes at APEC meeting | Australian police trialling AI to analyse body-worn camera footage | Vietnam expands chip packaging footprint as investors reduce China links
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In their final meeting before Donald Trump takes office, President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping agreed to avoid giving artificial intelligence control of nuclear weapons systems. The surprise agreement on AI marks a breakthrough in the Biden administration’s efforts over the past four years on issues of nuclear safety and proliferation. POLITICO
A Queensland Police Service spokesperson said it is currently conducting an AI trial with “a variety of technology” as part of its work tackling domestic and family violence. The Conversation
Foreign companies are expanding capacity in Vietnam for testing and packaging chips while domestic firms are eyeing investments, as a shifting of industrial activity away from China gathers pace due to trade tensions with the West, executives said. Reuters
Australia
Australian police are trialling AI to analyse body-worn camera footage, despite overseas failures and expert criticism
The Conversation
Kathryn Henne, Charles Orgill Gretton and Kanika Samuels-Wortley
In a statement, a Queensland Police Service spokesperson said it is currently conducting an AI trial with “a variety of technology” as part of its work tackling domestic and family violence. The spokesperson added: “Once the trial is completed, a detailed evaluation will be undertaken before the QPS considers future options for using the technology”. The increased use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement agencies in recent years follows a number of high-profile cases involving police using force. In Australia, for example, a police officer is currently on trial for the manslaughter of a 95-year-old great-grandmother by using a taser.
Social media and online games ban might protect teens — but at what cost?
ABC News
Virginia Tripoli
As Australia's government ponders an unprecedented ban on social media use by under 16s, I can report from the front lines of juvenile social media activity that the troops are nervous. Even pretty angry – revolting even, in the truest Matilda-like sense of the word. I've already heard about dark threats of securing school-ground VPNs (a very 2024 and digital version of bootleg liquor, bearing apparently the same context of social ill) and circumventing said ban come what may.
Adelaide residents blindsided by decision to store AUKUS nuclear waste at submarine shipyards
ABC News
Angelique Donnellan
Last month legislation quietly passed the federal parliament that will allow for the storage and disposal of nuclear waste at the Adelaide shipyard in Osborne, which is 25 kilometres north-west of the city's CBD and near the popular seaside suburb of Semaphore and historic Port Adelaide. Residents said it was the first time they heard about plans for the waste facility. Nuclear submarine construction at Osborne is expected to start by the end of the decade.
Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power
ABC News
Daniel Mercer
Amid the growing warmth and increasingly volatile weather of an approaching summer, Australia passed a remarkable milestone this week. The number of homes and businesses with a solar installation clicked past 4 million — barely 20 years since there was practically none anywhere in the country. At the heart of the concerns about Australia's occasional over-abundance of solar is a technical phenomenon known as minimum demand. The term refers to the demand for power from the grid.
Uber, Melbourne Airport being sued after drivers refuse Melbourne teacher and assistance dog
ABC News
Samantha Jonscher
Melbourne man Peter Frank is suing Uber Australia and Melbourne Airport after two drivers refused to take him and his assistance dog in February 2023. In Australia it's illegal to discriminate against someone because of their disability. The case will be heard in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A 2022 survey by Vision Australia found 64 per cent of handlers had been refused service by a taxi or rideshare service, but the rate was probably much higher for handlers who frequently caught rideshare services and taxis.
China
Xi Jinping-Biden meeting reaps agreement on AI and nukes
POLITICO
Lauren Egan and Phelim Kine
President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden met for just under two hours on the sidelines of the APEC summit Saturday, marking the end to their 15-year diplomatic relationship and ushering in a new era of uncertainty as Donald Trump prepares to return to office. The two leaders agreed to avoid giving artificial intelligence control of nuclear weapons systems, and they made progress toward the release of the two US citizens behind bars in China that the State Department considers “wrongfully detained.” Biden also pressured Xi to rein in North Korea’s support of Russia in its conflict with Ukraine.
China targets critical metal exports in anticipation of further US tech, trade curbs
SEMAFOR
Diego Mendoza
Beijing will expand export controls on critical minerals like tungsten, graphite, and magnesium needed to make electronics, a move analysts say is in anticipation of expected sweeping US tariffs on Chinese goods and increased curbs on advanced semiconductor chips and AI technology to China following the re-election of US President Donald Trump. The restrictions also apply to specific technologies that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. China controls more than 80% of the world’s supply of tungsten and about 90% of global magnesium production, according to one official estimate; the minerals are indispensable in building defense technology, weapons, aviation equipment, and spacecraft.
Beijing plans 12-inch wafer fab, pouring US$4.6 billion into state-backed chip project
South China Morning Post
Wency Chen
Beijing is set to spend 33 billion yuan or US$4.6 billion building a 12-inch wafer fabrication facility, led by state-owned enterprises and funds, marking another step in China’s efforts to boost domestic semiconductor production. Leading firms involved in the new facility include Beijing Yandong Microelectronics, which is listed on Shanghai’s Star Market, and BOE Technology, China’s top display maker. Yandong Microelectronics said on Saturday that it will invest 4.99 billion yuan into Beijing Electronics IC Manufacturing, the subsidiary of state-owned Beijing Electronics Holding that is behind the wafer fab project.
A three beats waltz: The ecosystem behind Chinese state-sponsored cyber threats
Sekoia
Sekoia TDR and Coline Chavane
The Chinese PLA, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Public Security are the three main state actors conducting state-sponsored offensive cyber operations for the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. From 2021 onward, Sekoia observed that operations attributed to China were mostly linked to the MSS rather than the PLA. Still, since the 2015 PLA reform, malicious cyber activity attributed to MSS-sponsored entities increased, while activity attributed to the PLA depleted. Provincial departments of the MSS and the MPS enjoy a large degree of autonomy to conduct cyber operations and rely on private companies to outsource offensive capacities.
China starts first gigawatt-sized offshore solar power project
Bloomberg
China started generating power from its first gigawatt-level offshore solar project in the eastern province of Shandong. The massive open-sea photovoltaic plant made its first connection to the grid, according to its developer, a unit of China Energy Investment Corp. The project, about 8 kilometers off the coast of Dongying city, has a total installed capacity of 1 gigawatt. China, the world’s biggest emitter of climate warming gases, is also leading in deploying renewable energy, with more than 700 gigawatts of solar capacity as of this year, ahead of the US and India.
USA
Trump’s second term is expected to bring big change to top US cyber agency
The Wall Street Journal
Catherine Stupp and James Rundle
America’s primary federal agency for cybersecurity faces an uncertain future in President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. Trump’s expected turn to a business-friendly regulatory approach, and attacks from Republican lawmakers in recent years, might lead to changes in the focus and structure of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Any potential changes would come at a crucial time, as companies closely watch moves that could affect a coming, controversial CISA rule that would force critical infrastructure operators to report cyberattacks
Rand Paul has plans to kneecap the nation’s cyber agency
POLITICO
Magie Miller
Senator Rand Paul is set to take over as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee now that Republicans have clinched the chamber and has a plan for overseeing the nation’s cyber agency: eliminate, or severely curtail the powers of, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Paul, whose committee has jurisdiction over the cyber agency and others, has long had concerns about CISA and its efforts to counter disinformation, particularly around the 2020 US presidential election. The senator has accused the agency of singling out conservative voices and infringing on free speech and has supported calls for an overhaul.
Trump’s anti-regulation pitch is exactly what the AI industry wants to hear
Bloomberg
Ellen Huet
Trump has said he wants to rescind President Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI, which laid out a framework for mitigating some of the technology’s risks. Republicans have been particularly critical of its plans to address the ways that AI could amplify bias or discrimination in hiring decisions. Policy analysts also suspect Trump will dismantle or reshape the fledgling US AI Safety Institute, established last year and led by researcher Paul Christiano, who’s long been focused on AI alignment.
Spy agency memo sets rules for artificial intelligence and Americans’ private data
The New York Times
Charlie Savage
A previously confidential directive by Biden administration lawyers lays out how military and spy agencies must handle personal information about Americans when using artificial intelligence, showing how the officials grappled with trade-offs between civil liberties and national security. The results of that internal debate also underscore the constraints and challenges the government faces in issuing rules that keep pace with rapid advances in technology, particularly in electronic surveillance and related areas of computer-assisted intelligence gathering and analysis.
The US Chinese immigrants running Temu shipping centers from their homes
Rest of World
Viola Zhou
Chinese immigrants in America are offering their living rooms and garages as warehouses to cross-border sellers on Temu, TikTok, and Amazon. The mini fulfillment centers help deliver orders, examine returns, and sell excess inventory to local stores. Many sellers ship orders directly from China to the US to keep prices low. But the US government’s moves to crack down on cheap e-commerce parcels from China have pushed sellers to rethink their business strategies. Rather than relying on long-distance shipping, many now use commercial logistics companies or small warehouses.
T-Mobile hacked in massive Chinese breach of telecom networks
The Wall Street Journal
Sarah Krouse and Dustin Volz
T-Mobile’s network was among the systems hacked in a damaging Chinese cyber-espionage operation that successfully gained entry into multiple US and international telecommunications companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Hackers linked to a Chinese intelligence agency were able to breach T-Mobile as part of monthslong campaign to spy on the cellphone communications of high-value intelligence targets. It is unclear what information, if any, was taken about T-Mobile customers’ calls and communications records.
Americas
Door-to-door saleswomen are fueling Shein’s rise in Mexico
Rest of World
Daniela Dib
Catalog saleswomen in Mexico have become shopping intermediaries for Shein and Temu. The women piggyback on the close relationships between sellers and buyers from a decades-old direct-sales industry. Some catalog sales companies say Chinese platforms are partly to blame for the industry’s slow demise. As Chinese e-commerce platforms have gained popularity in the country, some of the 3.1 million people who work in the catalog sales industry have incorporated the platforms’ products into their stock.
North Asia
Japan, US, ROK hold joint training: Nations practice combating maritime, aerial, cyber threats
Japan News
Yomiuri Shimbun
Japan, the United States and South Korea held a three day joint multi-domain exercise called Freedom Edge through Friday. Some of the training were open to media organizations, including The Yomiuri Shimbun. This was the second iteration of the exercise, covering domains including maritime, aerial and cyber defense. The first was held in June, following up on the nations’ August 2023 trilateral leaders summit. The exercise is intended to strengthen cooperation between Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the US and South Korean militaries at a time when tensions are growing East Asia.
North Korea ‘supplying Russia’ with long-range rocket and artillery systems
Financial Times
Christopher Miller
Pyongyang has supplied Moscow’s army with long-range rocket and artillery systems, some of which have been moved to Russia’s Kursk region for an assault involving North Korean soldiers to push out Ukrainian forces, a Ukrainian intelligence assessment has found. In recent weeks, North Korea provided some 50 domestically produced 170mm M1989 self-propelled howitzers and 20 updated 240mm multiple launch rocket systems that can fire standard rockets and guided ones, said the assessment, which was shared with the Financial Times.
As 4B takes the world by storm, South Korea is grappling with a backlash against feminism
The Guardian
Raphael Rashid
As Donald Trump secured victory in the US presidential election, an unexpected phenomenon began trending on social media: young American women declaring their commitment to “4B”, a fringe South Korean feminist movement advocating the rejection of marriage, childbirth, dating and sex.The movement has sparked intense global interest, with millions of views on TikTok and viral X posts heralding it as a women’s rights revolution. Yet within South Korea itself, the picture is more complex and in some places the feminist movement is under attack.
South & Central Asia
Tata seals deal with Pegatron for iPhone plant in India's Tamil Nadu, sources say
Reuters
Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra
India's Tata Electronics has agreed to buy a majority stake in Taiwanese contract manufacturer Pegatron's only iPhone plant in India, forming a new joint venture that strengthens Tata's position as an Apple supplier, two sources told Reuters. Under the deal announced internally last week, Tata will hold 60% and run daily operations under the joint venture, while Pegatron will hold the rest and provide technical support, said the two sources, who declined to be named as the details are not yet public. Apple is increasingly looking to diversify its supply chain beyond China amid geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Southeast Asia
Vietnam expands chip packaging footprint as investors reduce China links
Reuters
Francesco Guarascio
Foreign companies are expanding capacity in Vietnam for testing and packaging chips while domestic firms are eyeing investments, as a shifting of industrial activity away from China gathers pace due to trade tensions with the West, executives said. The semiconductor back-end manufacturing sector, which is less capital-intensive than more strategic front-end chipmaking in foundries, is currently dominated by China and Taiwan, but Vietnam is among the fastest-growing countries in the $95 billion segment. South Korean company Hana Micron is investing about $930.49 million until 2026 to boost packaging operations for legacy memory chips
Singapore steps up fight against deepfakes ahead of election
Nikkei Asia
Mayuko Tani
Singapore's public and private sectors are ramping up efforts to combat deepfakes and other digitally manipulated content, planning ahead for a general election to be held by November 2025. In a recent demonstration of Aletheia, a deepfake detection service developed by Ensign InfoSecurity, a person resembling Keanu Reeves took part in an online meeting.
Ukraine-Russia
Russia launches 'massive' nationwide missile attack targeting Ukraine's energy grid
ABC News
David Brennan and Patrick Reevell
Russia launched a major missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight into Sunday targeting power plants and energy infrastructure across the country. The barrage was the largest attack on Ukraine since late August and the third largest so far this year. Missiles and drones targeted cities including the capital Kyiv, forcing people into basements, subway stations and other underground shelters. President Zelenskyy said around 120 missiles and 90 drones were fired into the country, with Ukrainian air defenses downing more than 140 targets.
Biden allows Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range US missiles
New York Times
Adam Entous, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes
President Biden has authorised the first use of US-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, US officials said. The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, the officials said. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine did not confirm the permission to strike but suggested on Sunday that more important than lifting the restrictions would be the number of missiles used to strike the Russians.
Killer robots are about to fill Ukrainian skies
The Wall Street Journal
James Marson and Daniel Michaels
In a front-line dugout this spring, a Ukrainian drone navigator selected a target—a Russian ammunition truck—by tapping it on a tablet screen with a stylus. The pilot flicked a switch on his handset to select autopilot and then watched the drone swoop down from a few hundred yards away and hit the vehicle. The drone that carried it out was controlled in the final attack phase by a small onboard computer designed by the US-based company Auterion.
Europe
EU to press China over drones for Russia, warns of ‘consequences’
POLITICO
Nicholas Vinocur
The EU will press Beijing for answers over reports that a China-based company is producing military drones for use in Russia's war against Ukraine, a senior EU official said Friday. "We have had reports from intelligence sources on the existence of a factory inside China producing drones which are shipped to Russia," said the senior EU official, granted anonymity to speak on the sensitive matter. The EU has previously sanctioned Iran for producing weapons for Russia, but not China. Beijing maintains that it is "not a party" to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Europe’s press goes after Musk’s X
POLITICO
Mathieu Pollet
Reporters Without Borders took X to French court for letting fake news run wild. The NGO's challenge said X failed to take down a video falsely labeled as from the BBC and claiming that RSF was behind a study on Nazi beliefs among members of the Ukrainian army. The video reached nearly half a million views by mid-September and hadn’t been taken down, despite 10 reports of illegal content filed by RSF. “X’s refusal to remove content that it knows is false and deceitful — as it was duly informed by RSF — makes it complicit in the spread of the disinformation circulating on its platform,” director of advocacy, Antoine Bernard, said.
‘A hate machine’: St Pauli become first major football club to leave X
The Guardian
Nick Ames
St Pauli have become the first major football club to leave X, describing the social media site as a “hate machine” and expressing concern that it may influence the outcome of the forthcoming German election. The traditionally leftwing Bundesliga club have ceased operating their account and urged fans to switch to Bluesky, an alternative site whose user base is believed to have grown by about 750,000 in the past 24 hours. Germany is to hold a snap election in February after Olaf Scholz’s three-party governing coalition collapsed last week. There is concern about the ground that the AfD, a far-right anti-immigration party that secured 10% of the vote at the most recent federal election in 2021, may gain and the influence sites such as X may wield.
French Navy carrier commander ponders data overload, battle at sea
Defense News
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its strike group are set to deploy over the next few weeks to the Indo-Pacific as part of mission Clemenceau 25, during which it will also take part in three major exercises with allies. Rear Adm. Jacques Mallard has led the French carrier strike group FRSTRIKEFOR since August 2023, focusing his efforts on enhancing how the naval formation shares information and trains in realistic battle conditions. The French Navy has developed data hubs that it has already tested on a ship Fremm Provence and will be deploying several of those inside the FRSTRIKEFOR for the next mission sailing off at the end of the year to the Indo-Pacific.
Meta lobbyist turned EU regulator says big tech rules have gone too far
WIRED
Morgan Meaker
Aura Salla was once the tech giant’s top lobbyist in Brussels. Now, her presence as a regulator in the European Parliament is proving controversial. A member of the European Parliament’s largest group, the center-right EPP, Salla has been quick to establish herself as skeptical of what she calls Brussels’ “regulation tsunami.” That position has prompted alarm among her critics, who worry she will become Big Tech’s voice inside Parliament. Salla is worried that recently passed laws—like the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, or the AI Act—may be stifling potential European rivals to the likes of OpenAI or Apple.
UK
Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners’ ‘reoffending risks’
The Guardian
Ben Quinn
The US spy tech company Palantir has been in talks with the UK Ministry of Justice about using its technology to calculate prisoners’ “reoffending risks”, it has emerged. The proposals emerged in correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act which showed how the company has also been lobbying new UK government ministers, including the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Amnesty International is among the organisations expressing concern about the expanding role Palantir is attempting to carve out after it was controversially awarded a multimillion-pound contract with the NHS last year.
Middle East
NSO – not government clients – operates its spyware, legal documents reveal
The Guardian
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Legal documents released in ongoing US litigation between NSO Group and WhatsApp have revealed for the first time that the Israeli cyberweapons maker – and not its government customers – is the party that “installs and extracts” information from mobile phones targeted by the company’s hacking software. It comes five years after WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Facebook, first announced it was filing suit against NSO. The company, which was blacklisted by the Biden administration in 2021, makes what is widely considered the world’s most sophisticated hacking software, which – according to researchers – has been used in the past in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, India, Mexico, Morocco and Rwanda.
Big Tech
Why X users are jumping across to new platform Bluesky in the wake of US election
ABC News
Georgie Hanson
Bluesky says that unlike traditional social platforms, that operate on centralised servers controlled by a single entity, Bluesky's AT Protocol is designed to "decentralise social networking. This approach aims to prevent any one organisation from having total control over the network or its users' data, creating a more "democratic and accountable digital ecosystem." Bluesky said in mid-November that its total users surged to 15 million, up from roughly 13 million at the end of October, as some X users look for an alternative platform to post their thoughts and talk to others online.
Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT exposes its instructions, knowledge & OS files
Dark Reading
Nate Nelson
The world's leading AI chatbot is more malleable and multifunctional than most people realize. With some specific prompt engineering, users can execute commands almost like one would in a shell, upload and manage files as they would in an operating system, and access the inner workings of the large language model, LLM, it runs on: the data, instructions, and configurations that influence its outputs. OpenAI argues that this is all by design, but Marco Figueroa, a generative AI (GenAI) bug-bounty programs manager at Mozilla who has uncovered prompt-injection concerns before in ChatGPT, disagrees.
Not even Spotify is safe from AI slop
The Verge
Elizabeth Lopatto
AI covers of popular songs and getting them onto popular playlists so normal people will stream them. Another involves bots “listening” to songs. A sophisticated fraud operation will use multiple fake labels and multiple distributors in order to avoid having a single point of failure. Besides bot accounts, a number of bad actors have access to real people’s compromised accounts. Fraudsters also used to dig up old, obscure albums and digitise them or slightly alter a song that already existed. AI has just cut down on the amount of work that’s required to make the fake song needed to get the streaming money.
This 'AI Granny' bores scammers to tears
PC Magazine
Jibin Joseph
UK-based mobile operator Virgin Media O2 has created an AI-generated "scambaiter" tool to stall scammers. The AI tool, called Daisy, mimics the voice of an elderly woman and performs one simple task: talk to fraudsters and "waste as much of their time as possible." Here's how Daisy works: O2 added phone numbers linked to its AI tool to the lists used by scammers to target vulnerable people. When a scammer dials a number linked to Daisy, the AI tool can have random conversations about its made-up family and hobbies or provide fake bank details to beat scammers at their own game.
How a Hong Kong start-up’s AI-powered smart bin plans to tackle recycling
South China Morning Post
Eric Ng
Green AI Technology, the first company in Hong Kong to develop an artificial intelligence-driven waste sorting system, will launch a smart collection bin early next year that could help boost recycling in the city. The Hong Kong Productivity Council-backed start-up said the smart bins would be initially targeted at owners and tenants of shopping centres, hotels and commercial buildings, many of which are owned by listed companies. Hong Kong stock exchange rules require companies to disclose data on waste generated from their operations and set targets to reduce them as part of their sustainability reporting.
Research
A computational analysis of potential algorithmic bias on platform X during the 2024 US election
Queensland University of Technology
QUT Working Paper
This technical report presents findings from a two-phase analysis investigating potential algorithmic bias in engagement metrics on X (formerly Twitter) by examining Elon Musk’s account against a group of prominent users and subsequently comparing Republican-leaning versus Democrat-leaning accounts. The analysis reveals a structural engagement shift around mid-July 2024, suggesting platform-level changes that influenced engagement metrics for all accounts under examination. The date at which the structural break (spike) in engagement occurs coincides with Elon Musk’s formal endorsement of Donald Trump on 13th July 2024.
Building a new US-Korea technology alliance: Strategies and policies in an entangled world
Carnegie Endowment
Chung Min Lee
South Korea lies on the fault line of the US-China divide. This report focuses on three key aspects of this geopolitical situation. First, it explores how South Korea can make key contributions as a “critical technology wingman” of the US and the potential benefits of such an arrangement for both sides. Second, it delves into how America’s Asian allies are coping with the growing dilemma of wishing to reduce their dependence on the Chinese market but being unable or unwilling to decouple from China due to its immense economic potential even as these US partners seek to strengthen their security and defense ties with the United States. Third, the report examines how the US and the ROK can forge and sustain a robust technology alliance in a way that acknowledges the leading role that the private sector will play in making more resilient and secure supply chains.
Events & Podcasts
Stop the World: Climate change and security with ‘Climate General’ Tom Middendorp
ASPI
In this episode of Stop the World, Justin Bassi speaks to retired General Tom Middendorp – also known as the ‘Climate General’ – about the links between climate change, defence and security. They discuss the impact of climate change on the military and its role in disaster preparedness and response. With a growing global population meaning a growing demand on natural resources, the conversation also explores how we can adapt and learn to do more with fewer resources. They consider the role that technology and innovation can play in responding to climate change, as well as the importance of supply chain security. They also discuss the different climate risks in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and how countries like Australia and the Netherlands can work together to support these regions and help address the combined climate and security threats we face.
Navigating digital safety: Exploring security and trust in online spaces for young Australians
ASPI
Join us from 6:00 – 8:30pm on 27 November at ASPI in Canberra for an important discussion on the challenges of privacy, internet security, and online safety. As users of online platforms, young Australians are exposed to varied and increasing risks, including risks to their personal data privacy.
The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security team at ASPI.