The Weekly Cybers #52
Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s sookage echo around the world, the Tech Policy Design Institute is launched in Canberra, Services Australia keeps on keeping on with debt recovery, and much more.
Welcome
Even with our Australian focus, it’s almost impossible to ignore what’s happening in the US. The alliance between President Donald Trump and a selection of tech billionaires will set the agenda globally.
Australia now has an independent digital think tank, the Tech Policy Design Institute.
And there’s the familiar fears of cyber attacks, and stories of dodgy debt recovery processes at Services Australia.
Tech billionaires are Trump’s front bench
Newly-inaugurated POTUS Donald Trump has made it clear who’s going to be running the show — at least for now — seating tech billionaires ahead of his own cabinet picks at Monday’s ceremonies.
Elon Musk has a White House office to run his Department of Government Efficiency, although it’s not clear how that will work.
Trump announced a US$500 billion AI investment program called The Stargate Project — sigh — funded jointly by OpenAI, Oracle, Softbank, and MGX, Abu Dhabi’s state AI fund.
Those companies are only putting in a total of US$100 billion initially, however. The rest is supposedly coming over the next four years.
The billionaires who missed out are bickering. Musk is particular is taking it as well as you might imagine, given his investment in his own xAI, posting a photo of a crack pipe with the message: “Leaked image of the research tool OpenAI used to come up with their $500 billion number for Stargate”.
Trump paused the TikTok ban. The Conversation explains what this will mean for Australia.
Meanwhile Trump has rescinded Biden’s executive order on AI safety, and sacked members of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB).
And in a reward for his Libertarian supporters, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht the creator of dark web marketplace Silk Road. Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for his role in drug trafficking, conspiring to commit computer hacking, and money laundering.
Government and industry back an independent Tech Policy Design Institute
After three years as the Tech Policy Design Centre within the Australian National University (ANU), the think tank has gone independent under the name Tech Policy Design Institute (TPDi).
According to Information Age, which is published by the Australian Computer Society (ACS), TPDi will be run through the Tech Policy Design Fund. Founding contributors include the ACS, the federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the Department of Finance, and tech companies including Apple, Amazon, and Atlassian.
The founders of the TPDi are Johanna Weaver, Zoe Jay Hawkins, and Sunita Kumar.
“Weaver previously served as Australia’s independent expert and chief cyber negotiator at the United Nations; Hawkins has worked for the Australian government across communications, innovation and foreign policy; and Kumar is a prominent entrepreneur.”
Given the tech policy dramas which are already on the agenda for 2025, they’ll have a busy first year.
LISTEN TO TPDI LEADERS: I’ve spoken with two of the TPDi’s founders on my podcast. You might like to check out The 9pm Devilish Deepfakes of Democracy with Zoe Hawkins from June 2024, or The 9pm International Cyber Law without Vodka with Professor Johanna Weaver from March 2024.
Also in the news
- The Australian Electoral Commission’s Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce has published some backgrounders on the potential threats to this year’s federal election, outline threats relating to foreign interference, physical security, cyber security, and misinformation and disinformation. Meanwhile the AEC says it has no plans to use AI in this election cycle.
- Commonwealth Bank is trialling the use of sharing Medicare cards via a QR code and Tex, the myGov trust exchange., as a proof-of-concept. This validates the customer information without providing the Medicare number itself.
- Services Australia is chasing $4.9 billion in unpaid debts, including some which may have been unlawfully calculated. It’s déjà vu all over again.
- “CyberCX says Australians should beware of “demonstrably unsafe” Chinese IoT devices, such as those made by Dahua,” reports Cyber Daily. Dahua said it takes claims of vulnerabilities seriously, because every company says that.
- According to a report (PDF) from Qustodio, Roblox was the most-used gaming app for Australians aged 4–18, playing an average of 137 minutes per day. It’s also the gaming app most blocked by parents.
- Should you need a refresher, here’s the current ministry list from Canberra.
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Elsewhere
- The UK is going all in on AI, including one that supposedly summarises the responses to public consultations. Its official name is Consult, but it’s been nicknamed Humphrey. Oh well, at least it isn’t Stargate.
- Cloudflare says it’s fought off a record-breaking denial of service attack (DDoS), with malicious traffic peaking at 5.6 terabytes per second.
- It’s been around a while but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before: European alternatives for digital products. “We help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products,” which is also handy for Australians wishing to dump American products in this new era.
Inquiries of note
- The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) has launched an inquiry into the Transport Security Amendment (Security of Australia’s Transport Sector) Bill 2024. Submissions close 13 February.
What’s next?
Parliament is currently on its long summer break until Tuesday 4 February 2025, which is 11 days away. Expect a flurry of announcements next week as politicians lay out their preferred narratives.
DOES SOMETHING IN THE EMAIL LOOK WRONG? If there’s ever a factual error, editing mistake, or confusing typo, it’ll be corrected in the web archives.
The Weekly Cybers is a personal look at what the Australian government has been saying and doing in the digital and cyber realms, on various adjacent topics, and whatever else interests me, Stilgherrian, published every Friday afternoon (nearly).
If I’ve missed anything, or if there’s any specific items you’d like me to follow, please let me know.
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This is not specifically a cyber *security* newsletter. For that that I recommend Risky Biz News and Cyber Daily, among others.