US imposes new export controls on chips and AI models | Russia disinformation campaign on Bluesky | UK plan to introduce AI to the public sector

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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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• The US is imposing expansive export controls on chips used for artificial intelligence in an effort to make it harder for China and other adversaries to get access to advanced technology with military applications. Financial Times

• The first symptoms of disinformation are emerging on the social media network Bluesky, with echoes of the pro-Russian "Matryoshka" campaign that flooded Elon Musk's X -- but with a few twists. Agence France-Presse

• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer laid out his plans to introduce AI to the public sector, with hopes to make the UK "the world leader" in the technology. The move aims to boost Britain's flagging economy, promising flexible regulations amid concerns about the technology's unchecked use. ABC News

ASPI

University of Michigan ends Chinese partnership after intense pressure from US lawmakers
South China Morning Post
Bochen Han
The announcement was made three months after the House select committee on China sent a letter to the University of Michigan’s president, Santa Ono, arguing that the Chinese university played a “critical role in the Chinese Communist Party’s military-civil fusion strategy”. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, known for its strength in science and engineering, is not on any US government blacklists, although the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think tank, listed it as “high-risk” in its defence-related tracker of Chinese universities.

Australia

Smile, you’re at the tennis! Why the Australian Open is using facial recognition tech
The Sydney Morning Herald
Gemma Grant
All visitors to the Australian Open have agreed to be monitored by facial recognition technology, under a new privacy clause in this year’s conditions of entry. By entering the tournament site, patrons acknowledge that security cameras which “may incorporate facial recognition technology” will be used in order to “enhance security and patron safety”. The program lets visitors skip the long queues at Melbourne Park by uploading a selfie and linking it to their Ticketmaster account. They can then scan their faces instead of a physical ticket.

TikTok banker rejected hush money from Gresham
The Australian Financial Review
Joanne Tran
A former employee of Gresham Partners says she was offered hush money by the investment bank in an attempt to stop her from speaking about her negative workplace experience. Chloe Barry-Hang, 30, was an associate at Gresham until early December, when she resigned from her role after 18 months working in the firm’s Sydney office. She’s also a social media influencer with nearly 100,000 followers on TikTok and is known for sharing glimpses into her life and corporate finance career.

China

Huawei’s ‘Iron Army’
The Wire China
Eva Dou
How the Chinese telecom firm built a global presence by chasing rogue regimes like Iraq — and attracted US ire in the process. Iraq was tricky territory for a company like Huawei. The country had been under United Nations sanctions since the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which meant that sales of telecommunications equipment into the country were largely blocked, with any exceptions requiring a UN waiver. Under the orders of President Bush, in 2001 the US and Britain launched a joint air strike on five targets outside the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. When the dust cleared, the Pentagon announced that the target was a network of fiber-​­optic cables that Huawei was installing for Iraq’s military.

Chinese state-sponsored RedDelta targeted Taiwan, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia with Adapted PlugX infection chain
The Record by Recorded Future
Insikt Group
Between July 2023 and December 2024, Insikt Group observed the Chinese state-sponsored group RedDelta targeting Mongolia, Taiwan, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia with an adapted infection chain to distribute its customized PlugX backdoor. The group used lure documents themed around the 2024 Taiwanese presidential candidate Terry Gou, the Vietnamese National Holiday, flood protection in Mongolia, and meeting invitations, including an ASEAN meeting. From September to December 2024, RedDelta likely targeted victims in Malaysia, Japan, the United States, Ethiopia, Brazil, Australia, and India.

China’s 2024 chip imports surged 10.4% to US$385 billion amid tighter US tech sanctions
South China Morning Post
Ben Jiang
Chinese firms rushed to stockpile semiconductors in 2024, driving double-digit expansion of integrated circuit (IC) imports, as the outgoing Biden administration is set to tighten restrictions on China’s access to advanced chips. China imported a total of 549.2 billion ICs in 2024, a 14.6 per cent increase from a year earlier, according to data published on Monday by the General Administration of Customs. The total value of annual IC imports, or microchips, was US$385 billion, up 10.4 per cent year on year. In comparison, China’s imports of crude oil in 2024 were worth US$325 billion.

USA

Joe Biden imposes export controls on chips used for AI to limit China
Financial Times
Demetri Sevastopulo and Michael Acton
The US is imposing expansive export controls on chips used for AI in an effort to make it harder for China and other adversaries to get access to advanced technology with military applications. The regime creates a three-tier licensing system for chips used to power data centres that process AI computations. The top tier, which includes G7 members in addition to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Ireland, will face no restrictions. The third tier includes nations such as China, Iran, Russia and North Korea to which US groups can, in effect, not export. The middle tier of more than 100 countries will face caps and licences for export volumes over those limits.

• New US rule aims to block China's access to AI chips and models by restricting the world
  WIRED
  Will Knight
  The administration’s new “AI Diffusion rule” divides the world into nations that are allowed relatively unfettered access to America’s most advanced AI silicon and algorithms, and those that will require special licenses to access the technology. The rule, which will be enforced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, also seeks to restrict the movement of the most powerful AI models for the first time. Companies in other nations not subject to arms controls will be able to obtain up to 1,700 of the latest AI chips without special permission, the rule states.

• Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide AI’s Global Spread
  New York Times
  Ana Swanson
  The regulations have broader goals: having allied countries be the location of choice for companies to build the world’s biggest data centers, in an effort to keep the most advanced AI models within the borders of the United States and its partners. Governments around the world, particularly in the Middle East, have been pumping money into attracting and building enormous data centers, in a bid to become the next center for AI development. The rules, which run more than 200 pages, also set up a system in which companies that operate data centers, like Microsoft and Google, can apply for special government accreditations.

NSO ruling is a victory for WhatsApp, but could have a small impact on spyware industry
The Record by Recorded Future
Suzanne Smalley
When a federal judge recently ruled that a major spyware manufacturer should be held liable for the phone hacks its technology allows, privacy advocates cheered. But within hours of the first-of-its-kind decision, close observers of the commercial surveillance marketplace were asking what impact the ruling might have on the company’s continued operations and on the industry as a whole. The answer could be: not that much. The closely-watched case began in 2019 when the Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp sued NSO Group — which makes the powerful zero-click spyware Pegasus — for allegedly hacking devices belonging to 1,400 of its users.

Russian nationals arrested by US, accused of running crypto mixers Blender and Sinbad
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
Three Russian nationals have been indicted for their alleged roles in running two popular cryptocurrency mixing services called Blender.io and Sinbad.io.The US sanctioned Sinbad in November 2023 and worked with law enforcement agencies in the Netherlands and Finland to take down the platform. Both Blender.io and Sinbad.io were popular among cybercriminals and nation-state actors from North Korea who used the platforms to launder stolen or illicitly obtained cryptocurrency. U.S. officials said Sinbad was the “preferred mixing service” for North Korea’s Lazarus Group — which has been behind several of the largest crypto hacks in recent years

Americas

Death threats by WhatsApp: extortion drains Peruvians’ cash
Financial Times
Joe Daniels
José León long scraped by on $18 a day from driving a bus in suburban Lima. But over the past three years he has been driven further into poverty by a new expense: payments of between $316 and $527 a month to racketeers who send death threats via WhatsApp. Criminal groups engaged in contract killings and the drug trade have moved into extortion, exploiting a political power vacuum in which Peru has cycled through six presidents in as many years. Criminals also find information about businesses and individuals to use in extortion rackets by trawling social media, or by purchasing hacked information on the black market.

North Asia

Naval port Yokosuka transforms into cyberdefense talent hub
Nikkei Asia
Shinnosuke Nagatomi
The city of Yokosuka, home to Japan's largest naval base, is becoming a center for training cyberdefense personnel in an effort that brings together the Self-Defense Forces, the US military and the private sector. The Ground Self-Defense Force's System and Signal/Cyber School, located in the city, was recently reorganized and renamed to reflect its cyber focus. It provides specialized training to around 130 students a year.

Southeast Asia

Malaysia expects surge of Chinese investment, economy minister says
Financial Times
Owen Walker
Chinese chipmakers and technology companies are heading to Malaysia in droves, its economy minister Rafizi Ramli said, as Beijing prepares to face more tariffs when Donald Trump returns as US president this month. Malaysia has been a big beneficiary over the past decade of such “China-plus-one” strategies, where multinational companies complement their Chinese operations with investments in regional countries to diversify risk and lower costs. It has also positioned itself as a crucial player in global supply chains for high-tech industries such as AI, with long-standing semiconductor manufacturing operations in Penang in the north and a burgeoning hub for data centres in the southern state of Johor.

Singapore-based Chinese, US firms drive Thailand's $33bn FDI bounty
Nikkei Asia
Francesca Regalado
Singapore ousted China as Thailand's top source of foreign direct investment in 2024 as Chinese and American companies increasingly used their bases in the city-state to initiate projects, particularly new data centers and electronics factories. The digital and electronics sectors attracted a combined 475 billion baht ($13.6 billion) last year, including pledges from global tech giants like Google to set up data centers in Thailand, the Thai Board of Investment announced on Monday.

South & Central Asia

India’s defence industry is benefiting from cooperation with France
The Strategist
Harshit Prajapati
India’s defence industry is benefiting from the country’s switch away from Russia and towards France for weapons acquisition. India and France have cooperated on several key defence projects, such as Kalvari-class submarines, the Chetak and Cheetah helicopters and the Shakti helicopter engine. These projects involved technology transfer to India under licensed production from French companies. Since the 1960s, Russia has been India’s primary defence partner and weapons supplier. However, India’s arms imports from Russia have fallen to a historic low.

Ukraine - Russia

Pro-Russian disinformation makes its Bluesky debut
Agence France-Presse
The first symptoms of disinformation are emerging on the social media network Bluesky, with echoes of the pro-Russian "Matryoshka" campaign that flooded Elon Musk's X -- but with a few twists. The @antibot4navalny collective, which specialises in tracking influence operations, revealed the extent of the so-called "Russian doll" campaign last year. In recent weeks, there are indications of a similar phenomenon on the new US network Bluesky, which claimed to have some 26 million users by the end of December last year, many of them disillusioned former members of X.

Russia-Ukraine drone war enters new phase
Newsweek
Ellie Cook
Russia is striding ahead with its wielding of fiber-optic drones, the head of Ukraine's drone programs told high-ranking Ukrainian officials at the start of the year. "The enemy continues to increase its capabilities in the use of drone control technologies via fiber optics, so it is extremely necessary to level its advantages," Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Tkachenko said, in remarks published by Kyiv's government. Throughout nearly three years of war, the lightning development of drones—and the counter-drone technology to beat each new advancement—has limned the conflict in Ukraine.

Europe

Sweden to contribute up to 3 warships to reinforced NATO presence in the Baltic
Associated Press
Sweden will contribute up to three warships to a NATO effort to increase the alliance’s presence in the Baltic Sea as it tries to guard against sabotage of underwater infrastructure, the government said. The Swedish military also will contribute an ASC 890 surveillance aircraft, the government said in a statement. And the country’s coast guard will contribute four ships to help monitor the Baltic, with a further seven vessels on standby.

Revealed: The robot problem haunting Europe
POLITICO
Mathieu Pollet
Europe is falling behind other regions in having robots take on services and chores. The European Commission is estimating there are on average 22 robots per 1000 employees across the bloc, which is less than the United States (29). South Korea is outpacing all other world regions, the paper showed, with 101 robots per 1,000 employees. The report adds an extra layer of urgency for Europe to get its act together if it doesn’t want to fall too far behind its global peers.

ASML-backed university suspends classes after cyberattack
Bloomberg
Cagan Koc
A top Dutch technical university that’s a key talent feeder for chip machine maker ASML Holding NV has shut down its computer network after a cyber attack. Eindhoven University of Technology, which is located about five miles from ASML’s global headquarters, said there will be no lectures and educational activities at least until Wednesday. Switching off the network was a “becessary intervention to prevent worse outcomes,” Patrick Groothuis, the university’s vice president, said in a statement.

Italy to free Iranian wanted by US for alleged illegal drone tech exports to Tehran
Financial Times
Amy Kazmin and Giuliana Ricozzi
Italy has decided to “revoke” the arrest of an Iranian engineer wanted by the US for alleged illegal exports of sophisticated technology, just days after Tehran freed an Italian journalist from its notorious Evin prison. Mohammed Abedini, 38, was indicted in the US in December on multiple criminal charges stemming from his Switzerland-based company’s alleged supply of navigation systems for Iranian military drones, which were used in an attack that killed three US service personnel and injured 40 others in Jordan last year.

UK

British PM Keir Starmer outlines bid to become AI 'world leader'
ABC News
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has laid out his plans to introduce AI to the public sector to boost the UK economy. The Labour government's "action plan" hopes to use the "full weight" of its half a million strong civil service, and includes 50 recommendations to boost AI-driven efficiency in the public sector, from education to detecting potholes. The UK — which has the third-largest AI industry after the United States and China — does not need to "walk down a US or an EU path on AI regulation", Mr Starmer added, as he looks to attract billions of pounds of investment from AI firms.

• UK pledges huge increase in computing capacity to build AI industry
  Financial Times
  Madhumita Murgia and Anna Gross
  The move is in response to a newly published report on AI opportunities for the UK economy, commissioned by the government and drafted by British venture capitalist Matt Clifford. The supercomputer will join the UK’s two other advanced machines including Isambard-AI at the University of Bristol and Dawn at the University of Cambridge. Clifford’s report advocates reaching the equivalent of 100,000 GPUs in government-owned capacity by 2030.

Africa

Starlink is now cheaper than leading internet provider in some African countries
Rest of World
Khadija Alam and Damilare Dosunmu
Starlink, launched in 2019 by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has become the leading satellite internet provider in the world. Now available in more than 100 countries, Starlink can also be a relatively affordable option for users trying to log on in countries with limited internet service providers. In at least five of the 16 African countries where the service is available, a monthly Starlink subscription is cheaper than the leading fixed internet service provider. Starlink has disrupted the existing internet service provider industry in Kenya.

Middle East

How technology can build trust in the Israeli-Palestinian context
Toda Peace Institute
Adnan Jaber
A peacetech ecosystem is emerging in Israel and Palestine to leverage the power of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, to build bridges between communities and promote peacebuilding efforts. A variety of organisations are using technology to build economic partnerships, new social networks, facilitate dialogue on contentious issues, broaden language acquisition, and strengthen education, entrepreneurship training, and job placement. As a member of the PeaceTech community in Israel and Palestine, I recently surveyed organizations working in this space in a PeaceTech Ecosystem Mapping Report. This article summarizes my findings.

Big Tech

Meta’s ‘free speech’ overhaul sparks advertisers’ concern
Financial Times
Hannah Murphy and Daniel Thomas
Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected ‘free speech’ overhaul of Meta’s content moderation has sparked concerns among advertisers that it will lead to a surge of harmful content and misinformation across the social media platform. Multiple advertising bosses told the Financial Times that Meta’s move to end its fact-checking programme and weaken hate speech policies could cost the platform, where marketing represents the majority of its $135bn in annual sales, if brands fear their adverts might run next to toxic content.

• Meta’s decision to ditch fact-checking gives state-sponsored influence operations more chance
  The Interpreter
  Meg Tapia
  Meta has vast global reach, with more 3 billion users on Facebook alone, most of whom are in India and all of whom use at least one Meta product daily. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has conceded that the change means “we’re going to catch less bad stuff”. But the problem isn’t simply that Meta, like X before it, is abandoning paid, independent fact checking. It’s the model they’ve chosen to replace it. Meta is effectively shifting responsibility for content verification onto its users, many of whom lack the necessary expertise to distinguish between truth and falsehood.

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI courts Trump with vision for ‘AI in America’
The New York Times
Cade Metz and Cecilia Kang
OpenAI released what it calls its economic blueprint for “A.I. in America,” suggesting ways that policymakers can spur development of AI in the United States, minimise the risks posed by the technology and maintain a lead over China. The company has called on policymakers to allow significant investment in American A.I. projects by investors in the Middle East, though the Biden administration has been wary of such investment. OpenAI argues that if countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia do not invest in US infrastructure, their money will flow to China instead.

Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches
The Washington Post
Douglas MacMillan, David Ovalle and Aaron Schaffer
A Washington Post investigation into police use of facial recognition software found that law enforcement agencies across the US are using the AI tools in a way they were never intended to be used: as a shortcut to finding and arresting suspects without other evidence. The Post reviewed documents from 23 police departments where detailed records about facial recognition use are available and found that 15 departments spanning 12 states arrested suspects identified through AI matches without any independent evidence connecting them to the crime — in most cases contradicting their own internal policies requiring officers to corroborate all leads found through AI.

Inside the black box of predictive travel surveillance
WIRED
Caitlin Chandler
Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict who’s safe—and who’s a threat. In Europe, at least four technology companies—Idemia, SITA, Travizory, and WCC—offer governments around the world software that uses algorithms on traveler data to profile passengers. These companies claim their software can detect terrorists, human traffickers, drug dealers, serious criminals, missing persons and increasingly, people migrating without papers.

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, 17 January 2025 – an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.

ASPI Analyst – Hybrid Threats – Cyber, Technology & Security Program
ASPI
ASPI is seeking a motivated and detail-oriented individual to join the Cyber, Technology & Security (CTS) program as an Analyst – Hybrid Threats. This role involves contributing to the analysis of hybrid threats and information manipulation, including election integrity, resilience of critical technologies, and cybersecurity. The closing date for applications is Friday, 17 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.