Xi pushes global AI rules at APEC | EU considers critical tech investment fund | Advanced Nvidia chips headed to South Korea

Plus, Ukraine gamifies the war with points for each kill

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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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• Chinese President Xi Jinping took centre stage at a meeting of APEC leaders on Saturday to push a proposal for a global body to govern artificial intelligence and position China as an alternative to the United States on trade cooperation. Reuters

• The European Union is in discussions with the first anchor investors for a fund that will back companies on the continent working on quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other strategic technologies. Bloomberg

• U.S. semiconductor leader Nvidia on Friday said it will supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced AI chips to South Korea’s government and some of the country’s biggest businesses, including Samsung Electronics. Reuters

ASPI

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Australia

Australia supplying China with critical mineral vital for hypersonic missiles and its nuclear program
ABC News
Angus Grigg, Alex McDonald and Will Nicholas
Chinese companies are the largest shareholders in two Australian mines producing minerals vital for Beijing’s hypersonic missiles and nuclear programs, helping it overcome “severe challenges” to accessing key resources. Australia is the world’s largest producer and supplies China with 41 per cent of its imports.

eSafety boss hits back at Trump ally over claims Australia threatens US free speech
The Australian
Geoff Chambers
The eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has hit back at Don­ald Trump’s close ally Jim Jordan after the Republican congressman accused Australia and other nations of undermining free speech in the US and promoting global take-downs of online ­content.

NSW auditor: ‘extra agency-led AI policies needed’
iTnews
Zachariah Kelly
Artificial intelligence is proliferating in NSW government with 357 different tools found to be in use across 21 of 26 of the state’s largest departments and agencies.The audit expressed concern that the whole-of-government framework might be inadequately detailed for some departments and agencies in more advanced phases of AI adoption.

Why the ‘grey zone’ keeps us on a constant war footing
The Australian
Simon Benson
The question for war planners is what state we’re in now. For much of the past decade Australia has been engaged in what is known as a grey zone – neither war nor peace. The fundamental strategic issue is one of intent. Does the grey zone suggest a perpetual state of hostile activity short of war or a prelude to war itself? No one seems to know for sure the answer to this question.

China

China’s Xi pushes for global AI body at APEC in counter to US
Reuters
Chinese President Xi Jinping took centrestage at a meeting of APEC leaders on Saturday to push a proposal for a global body to govern artificial intelligence and position China as an alternative to the United States on trade cooperation. The comments were the first by the Chinese leader on an initiative Beijing unveiled this year, while the United States has rejected efforts to regulate AI in international bodies.

Nexperia China vows business as usual after Dutch wafer supply halt
South China Morning Post
Danielle Popov
Nexperia China moved to reassure customers that production will continue uninterrupted, saying it has secured new wafer suppliers and can meet client demand through to the end of the year and beyond. The announcement underscored Nexperia China’s efforts to operate independently after Dutch authorities took control of its Netherlands parent from Chinese owner Wingtech in September amid concerns over alleged technology transfers.

China to suspend some rare earth curbs, probes on US chip firms
Bloomberg
Hadriana Lowenkron
China will effectively suspend implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminate investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced.

Low-cost killer: can China’s Feilong-300D suicide drone deter rivals and impress buyers?
South China Morning Post
Yuanyue Dang
A Chinese military journal has revealed the surprising cost-effectiveness of China’s mass-produced suicide drones, positioning them as a major threat in modern warfare and an especially appealing acquisition for potential customers such as Pakistan.

Chinese hackers scanning, exploiting Cisco ASA firewalls used by governments worldwide
The Record by Recorded Future
Martin Matishak and Jonathan Greig
China-based hackers are scanning for and exploiting a popular line of Cisco firewalls used by governments in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In a report shared with Recorded Future News, Unit 42 attributed the targeting of Cisco ASA devices to Storm-1849 — a China-based threat group that Cisco previously said has been attacking the tools since 2024.

USA

FCC to rescind ruling that said ISPs are required to secure their networks
ArsTechnica
Jon Brodkin
The Federal Communications Commission will vote in November to repeal a ruling that requires telecom providers to secure their networks, acting on a request from the biggest lobby groups representing Internet providers. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the ruling, adopted in January just before Republicans gained majority control of the commission, “exceeded the agency’s authority and did not present an effective or agile response to the relevant cybersecurity threats.”

Open-source security group pulls out of U.S. grant, citing DEI restrictions
CyberScoop
Derek B. Johnson
The Trump administration’s zeal to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion programs is affecting national cybersecurity research, as a key open-source security foundation announced it would reject federal grant funding.

Police cameras track billions of license plates per month. Communities are pushing back.
NBC News
Kevin Collier
While automatic license plate readers have been fixtures on American roads for decades, Flock, founded in 2017, centralizes their data like never before, creating a vast, interconnected surveillance database for law enforcement agencies using information from its suite of products, including facial recognition cameras, drones and audio detectors.

US defense company Anduril flies its uncrewed jet drone for first time
Reuters
David Jeans
Anduril’s jet-powered drone flew for the first time on Friday, the company and the U.S. Air Force said, marking a significant step for the defense tech company’s drone ambitions. The Los Angeles-based company, which won an Air Force contract last year to produce a prototype drone that could serve as a “loyal wingman” alongside fighter jets, demonstrated the drone’s flight at a California-based testing site, the Air Force said.

Americas

Canada warns of cyberattacks targeting industrial control systems
TechRepublic
Ken Underhill
Canadian authorities have issued a national alert after threat actors successfully breached multiple internet-connected industrial control systems used to manage critical infrastructure, including water treatment, energy, and agricultural facilities. The incidents mark an escalating wave of cyberattacks that threaten the stability of essential public services.

North Asia

Nvidia to supply more than 260,000 Blackwell AI chips to South Korea
Reuters
Hyunjoo Jin and Eduardo Baptista
U.S. semiconductor leader Nvidia on Friday said it will supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced AI chips to South Korea’s government and some of the country’s biggest businesses, including Samsung Electronics. The deal is the latest for a company at the core of a global race to integrate artificial intelligence into products and services, adding to a flurry of deals it is striking worldwide that helped it on Wednesday become the first $5 trillion firm.

• Nvidia CEO hopes Blackwell chips can be sold in China but says decision up to Trump Reuters

• Nvidia expands AI ties with Hyundai, Samsung, SK, Naver TechCrunch

Ukraine – Russia

Ukraine gamifies the war: 40 points to destroy a tank, 12 to kill a soldier
The New York Times
Kim Barker and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn
The Ukrainian government set up the competition in August 2024, although that was more of a soft launch, a beta version. The more points a unit gets, the better stuff it can buy, ensuring that resources are directed to the teams that best use them. It is a digital-age, instant-gratification twist on time-honored rewards for soldiers like medals and promotions, with the winnings plowed back into the war effort.

Europe

Europe in talks with backers for €5 billion critical tech fund
Bloomberg
Gian Volpicelli, Jorge Valero, Sara Sjolin, and Clara Hernanz Lizarraga
The European Union is in discussions with the first anchor investors for a fund that will back companies on the continent working on quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other strategic technologies. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, eventually hopes to raise €25 billion, a spokesperson said.

Windows zero-day actively exploited to spy on European diplomats
Bleeping Computer
Sergiu Gatlan
A China-linked hacking group is exploiting a Windows zero-day in attacks targeting European diplomats in Hungary, Belgium, and other European nations. According to Arctic Wolf Labs, the attack chain begins with spearphishing emails that lead to the delivery of malicious LNK files themed around NATO defense procurement workshops, European Commission border facilitation meetings, and various other diplomatic events.

European governments opt for open source alternatives to Big Tech encrypted communications
ComputerWeekly
Bill Goodwin
European governments are increasingly turning towards open standards alternatives to end-to-end encrypted messaging and collaboration services dominated by WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams. An open network messaging architecture, known as Matrix, is attracting interest from European governments that are seeking “sovereign” alternatives to encrypted collaboration and messaging tools supplied by US Big Tech companies.

The four horsemen of Europe’s tech dependency
Financial Times
Martin Sandbu
The original four horsemen were Conquest, War, Famine and Death. It’s hard to resist a cute metaphor, and as it happens I think the four biblical scourges rather fit the four ways I ended up thinking about tech dependency. So here are the four horsemen of the Big Tech-pocalypse, which Europe and many smaller economies not naturally allied with any of the big blocs should fear. In a strike of mnemonic fortune, they can all be phrased to start with an S.

UK

Security concerns over system at heart of digital ID
BBC
Brian Wheeler
The government is facing questions over whether the system at the heart of its plans for digital ID can be trusted to keep people’s personal data secure. Digital ID will be made available to all UK citizens and legal residents but will only be mandatory for employment, under the government’s proposals.

Big Tech

Big Tech’s A.I. spending is accelerating (again)
The New York Times
Karen Weise
Four of the tech industry’s wealthiest companies made it clear this week that their spending on artificial intelligence was not about to slow down. But the outlays from Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon — which all raised their spending by billions of dollars, saying they needed to meet demand for A.I. — are increasingly feeding concerns that the tech industry is heading toward a dangerous bubble.

• How OpenAI uses complex and circular deals to fuel its multibillion-dollar rise The New York Times

• Big Tech’s market dominance is becoming ever more extreme Financial Times

Artificial Intelligence

AI browsers are here, and they’re already being hacked
NBC News
Kevin Collier
AI-infused web browsers are here and they’re one of the hottest products in Silicon Valley. But there’s a catch: Experts and the developers of the products warn that the browsers are vulnerable to a type of simple hack.

A.I. is deciding who you are
The New York Times
Maximilian Kasy
Social media platforms use our collective clicks to decide what news — or misinformation — each of us will see. In each case, we might hope that keeping our own data private could protect each of us from unwanted outcomes. But A.I. doesn’t need to know what you have been doing; it only needs to know what people like you have done before.

A.I. is making death threats way more realistic
The New York Times
Tiffany Hsu
Artificial intelligence is already raising concerns for its ability to mimic real voices in service of scams or to produce deepfake pornography without a subject’s permission. Now, the technology is also being used for violent threats — priming them to maximize fear by making them far more personalized, more convincing and more easily delivered.

I tried Grokipedia and I think it beats Wikipedia — in some cases. (Citation needed.)
Business Insider
Katie Notopoulos
The types of pages where Grokipedia seemed to beat Wikipedia were the unloved, scraggly entries on Wikipedia. You know the kind — where it truly seems like a bunch of people added in a single sentence once a year for the last 15 years. Where the writing lacks cohesion, tiny details are given equal prominence alongside big facts, and the result is generally a mess.

Misc

Ukrainian allegedly involved in Conti ransomware attacks faces up to 25 years in jail
CyberScoop
Matt Kapko
A 43-year-old Ukrainian national allegedly involved in the Conti ransomware group pleaded not guilty in federal court Thursday to cybercrime charges that could land him in prison for up to 25 years, according to court documents.

Events & Podcasts

The Sydney Dialogue 2025
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is pleased to announce the Sydney Dialogue, the world’s premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies, will return on 4-5 December. Now in its fourth year, the dialogue attracts the world’s top thinkers, innovators and policymakers, and focusses on the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and security. TSD has become the place where new partnerships are built among governments, industry and civil society, and where existing partnerships are deepened.

The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest is brought to you by the Cyber, Technology & Security Programs team at ASPI and supported by partners.