China slams US 'bullying' over new warnings on Huawei chips
Beijing condemned on Wednesday new US warnings on the use of AI chips by Chinese tech giant Huawei, vowing it would take steps against "bullying" efforts to restrict access to high-tech semiconductors and supply chains.Washington has sought in recent years to curb exports of state-of-the-art chips to China, concerned that they could be used to advance Beijing's military systems and otherwise undermine American dominance in AI.US President Donald Trump's administration last week rescinded some export controls on advanced computing semiconductors, answering calls by countries that said they were being shut out from crucial technology needed to develop artificial intelligence.Some US lawmakers feared the restrictions would have incentivised countries to go to China for AI chips, spurring the superpower's development of state-of-the-art technology.
But Washington also unveiled fresh guidelines warning firms that using Chinese-made high-tech AI semiconductors, specifically tech giant Huawei's Ascend chips, would put them at risk of violating US export controls.
In a statement Wednesday, Beijing's commerce ministry described the warnings as "typical unilateral bullying and protectionism, which seriously undermine the stability of the global semiconductor industry chain and supply chain".
China accused the US of "abusing export controls to suppress and contain China"."These actions seriously harm the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and endanger China's development interests," the commerce ministry said.It also warned that "any organization or individual that enforces or assists in enforcing such measures" could be in violation of Chinese law.And it vowed to take "firm steps to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests" in response.
Chips on the table The United States warned last week about the potential consequences of allowing US AI chips to be used for training Chinese AI models.And those found using Huawei's Ascend chips without clearance from Washington, the guidance read, can face "substantial criminal and administrative penalties, up to and including imprisonment, fines, loss of export privileges, or other restriction".The US commerce department said its policy was aimed at sharing American AI technology "with trusted foreign countries around the world, while keeping the technology out of the hands of our adversaries".Previous US rules divided countries into three tiers, each with its own level of restrictions.Top-tier countries like Japan and South Korea faced no export restrictions, while countries in the second tier, which included Mexico and Portugal, saw a cap on the chips they could receive.Chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD lobbied against the tiered restrictions and saw their share prices rise when the Trump administration indicated it would rethink the rule.Speaking at Taiwan's top tech show on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described US export controls on AI chips to China as a "failure", since companies are using locally developed technology. "The local companies are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development," Huang said.
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Economic Times
25 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Operation Social Media: Digital dogs of war bark loud, bite little in Pakistan's info ops
Live Events When bots go off louder than bombs Indian jets capturing Lahore and Karachi. Arrest of Pakistan's army chief and an alleged military coup. A Pakistani cyberattack disabling India's power grid. India bombing Afghan territory or surrendering in key battlefronts. Pakistan's playbook Videos from Lebanon's 2020 explosion being shared as missile strikes on Indian cities. Drone footage from Jalandhar fires framed as attacks. Game footage falsely portraying Pakistani military success. Recycled images from other conflict zones passed off as Indian casualties. Inside Pakistan's covert spy ring Open-source intelligence: Boon or bane? Newsrooms under fire Cyber Frontline: 1.5 million attacks, but only 150 breaches India's response AI fact-checkers Truth is the first casualty, but not the last word (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel 'Indian forces wave the white flag!'"Karachi captured!""Pakistan Army Chief arrested!"None of it was true. All of it went India and Pakistan teetered on the edge of open warfare this May following a gruesome terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 civilians, a parallel battle unfolded, not on land or in air, but in the boundless terrain of was not merely a war of missiles and drones; it was an orchestrated campaign of perception warfare, fuelled by a deluge of misinformation and psychological operations designed to distort, distract and is how 'Operation Social Media' unfolded -- an invisible front that exposed how deeply disinformation can influence modern conflict, and how India, despite facing a sophisticated hybrid threat, sought to maintain both operational focus and digital crisis began with a terror attack at a popular tourist spot in Kashmir. The assault bore the fingerprints of Pakistan-based terror outfits, prompting New Delhi to launch Operation Sindoor , a series of precision strikes on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on May immediately, unverified claims began saturating social media. According to reports from The Guardian and The Washington Post, X (formerly Twitter) became a hotbed of false triumphs, premature victory laps, and fictionalised videos, repurposed war clips, and even footage from video games like Arma 3 flooded social media platforms during the India-Pakistan standoff, giving rise to a parallel narrative war. These posts were amplified by a mix of anonymous accounts, official handles, and even journalists acting on unverified internet observatory NetBlocks reported that 65% of these viral false posts originated from IP addresses linked to Pakistan, while another 20% came from untraceable bot to the Washington-based non-profit think tank, the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate, 'X emerged as the primary hub for both misinformation and disinformation.' The think tank analysed 437 such posts and found that 179, or nearly 41%, originated from verified accounts, which are often perceived as credible due to their blue-check status. These included posts by politicians, influencers, media personalities, and retired military officials.'What was particularly alarming,' the report noted, 'was the credibility lent to these falsehoods by high-profile sources.' Despite the scale of this disinformation, only 73 posts, just 17%, were flagged by X's Community Notes, the platform's crowd-sourced fact-checking feature. This, the think tank argued, pointed to a serious lapse in content moderation at a time of high geopolitical Hameed Naik, director of the think tank, described the information war as 'a global trend in hybrid warfare'. 'This wasn't ordinary nationalist chest-thumping,' said Joyojeet Pal of the University of Michigan. 'This had the potential to push two nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink.'The social media campaign didn't begin with Operation Sindoor; it was already underway. On April 25, days before the Indian Air Force strike, India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had announced the banning of 16 YouTube channels and several Instagram accounts for spreading 'provocative and communally sensitive content.'Of these, six were Pakistan-based and ten operated from within India, with a combined viewership of over 680 million.A key inflection point came when Pakistan lifted its year-long ban on X during the peak of the crisis. According to minutes from a Pakistani Senate committee meeting, this move was deliberate and strategic, intended to enable Islamabad to 'participate in the narrative war.'NetBlocks confirmed that access to X in Pakistan was restored precisely as tensions with India escalated, giving Pakistani agencies and allied influencers a wide window to flood the platform with misleading and often provocative the aftermath of the operation, and as misinformation swirled on social media, India's Press Information Bureau (PIB) Fact Check division stepped in to debunk dozens of viral claims. These included:Together, these examples offer a window into the scale, coordination, and intent behind the disinformation campaign, aimed not just at misleading the public but also at distorting the global perception of India's military and political a related espionage probe, Indian intelligence uncovered a Pakistan-backed operation recruiting social media influencers as spies. Naushaba Shahzad Masood, known as 'Madam N', runs Jaiyana Travels and Tourism in Lahore. She was building a network of 500 spies inside India, focusing on Hindu and Sikh YouTubers like Jyoti Malhotra and Jasbir six months, Naushaba arranged travel for about 3,000 Indians and 1,500 expatriates to Pakistan, fast-tracking visas through direct contacts at the Pakistani High Commission in Delhi. She also managed Sikh and Hindu pilgrimage tours with the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB), charging inflated fees that funded ISI trails include Naushaba's phone number found on arrested spies' devices and two Pakistani bank accounts linked to transfers from India. Her network recruits through agents operating in major Indian cities, including situation also highlighted the double-edged nature of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). Originally conceived to empower citizens through satellite images, open data, and social media monitoring, OSINT's decentralised model became a tool for mass manipulation.'Anyone with an internet connection could now pose as an OSINT expert,' observed an analysis published by ET. The danger lies in viral misinformation being passed off as expert assessments, especially when retweeted by influencers and news outlets under pressure for real-time Indian newsrooms too fell for the deluge of fake to The Washington Post, in one case, a journalist reportedly received a WhatsApp message, allegedly from a public broadcaster, claiming that Pakistan's army chief had been arrested. Within minutes, this falsehood became prime-time 'breaking news.'Speaking to The Post, Former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao described the atmosphere as one of 'hypernationalism' and 'parallel reality,' cautioning that the lack of authoritative government briefings created a vacuum often filled by not everyone was Press Information Bureau, along with a 24/7 monitoring centre set up by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, worked to counter misinformation in real time. Fact-checks were issued, social media handles were flagged, and broadcasters were warned for violating verification social media churned with false claims, the real-time cyber threat was no less intense. According to Maharashtra Cyber, over 1.5 million cyber attacks were launched against Indian infrastructure by seven Pakistan-allied Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) barrage of cyberattacks not only came from the neighbouring country but from Bangladesh and the Middle Eastern hacker collectives such as APT 36 (also known as Transparent Tribe), Pakistan Cyber Force, and Team Insane PK launched a coordinated series of cyberattacks in the days surrounding the arsenal included malware campaigns, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, GPS spoofing attempts, and website defacements aimed at sowing panic and disrupting public trust in India's digital to officials familiar with the matter, India faced over 1.5 million intrusion attempts during this period. However, only 150 attacks were successful, a tiny claims that the hackers had penetrated Mumbai's airport systems or Election Commission portals were found to be baseless. Addressing reporters, a senior official of Maharashtra Cyber debunked claims of hackers stealing data from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, hacking aviation and municipal systems, and targeting the Election Commission website."The probe discovered that cyber attacks on (government websites in) India decreased after India-Pakistan ceased hostilities, but not fully stopped. These attacks continue from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Morocco, and Middle Eastern countries," he Indian government's 'Road of Sindoor' report, a classified cyber threat assessment, showed these attacks were part of a coordinated hybrid warfare strategy involving both digital and psychological the information war raged online, Indian armed forces maintained disciplined silence and strategic clarity. Official statements were sparse, but targeted. Operation Sindoor focused solely on dismantling terrorist infrastructure, confirmed in a press conference by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, who clarified that India did not target civilian the scenes, India's cyber defence grid was activated, fact-checking units expanded, and social media protocols for military updates tightened. The government also advised citizens to avoid unverified content and rely only on official the misinformation torrent intensified, social media users increasingly turned to AI chatbots for verification, only to find more confusion and falsehoods. Platforms like xAI's Grok, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini became common go-to tools for instant fact-checking amid the crisis.'Hey @Grok, is this true?' became a viral plea on Elon Musk's platform X, reflecting the surge in users seeking quick debunks. However, these AI assistants often propagated misinformation under renewed criticism for inserting far-right conspiracy theories into unrelated answers, misidentified old video footage from Sudan's Khartoum airport as missile strikes on Pakistan's Nur Khan airbase during the conflict. Similarly, unrelated fire footage from Nepal was wrongly claimed as Pakistani military Sadeghi of the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard warned, 'The growing reliance on Grok as a fact-checker comes as X and other major tech companies have scaled back investments in human fact-checkers. Our research has repeatedly found that AI chatbots are not reliable sources for news and information, particularly when it comes to breaking news.'The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found that AI chatbots were 'generally bad at declining to answer questions they couldn't answer accurately, offering incorrect or speculative answers instead.' For instance, AFP fact-checkers in Uruguay asked Google's Gemini about an AI-generated image of a woman; it confirmed the image's authenticity but fabricated details about her identity and digital front of the India-Pakistan standoff reveals the complex landscape of modern warfare, where victory is measured not just in ground gained but in narrative despite the storm of falsehoods, India's response, though understated, was layered, methodical, and largely effective. As the lines between social media warfare and statecraft blur, it's clear that the next great conflict won't just be fought with missiles, but with memes, metadata, and misinformation.
Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- Indian Express
BA (Hons) History or BA (Hons) Political Science: Which one should a student choose
('The Right Choice' is a series by The Indian Express that addresses common questions, misconceptions, and doubts surrounding undergraduate admissions. You can read the stories here.) — Aparna Sharma History and political science may seem like two sides of the same coin. Both options tend to discuss the philosophical and practical implications of political decisions and cultural movements. A history degree programme contributes to a deep understanding of the cultural and historical context of political decisions, social movements and cultural shifts over time. On the other hand, a political science degree focuses primarily on past and current events through the lens of politics. History programme allows students to cultivate a profound appreciation for past events and how they impact the present. History takes students through a dynamic curriculum that provides students with the opportunity to gain valuable critical thinking, research and analytical skills. While political science programmes tend to focus coursework on government and policy, history majors often examine events in a broader context. By studying topics such as world history, American history, philosophy and foreign policy, students gain a general understanding of history and have the chance to dive deeper into specific topics of interest. This historical awareness is then put in the context of current events, including politics. History and political science studies are nuanced. Both political science and history degrees allow students to develop their communication skills, as well as their ability to synthesize information. In addition, students often complete an experiential internship, capstone or seminar, where they are able to apply their studies to real-life situations. For those enrolled in a history programme, this is an opportunity to tailor the application of skills learned to specific areas of interest. 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History graduates also have a strong foundation for civil services and roles in journalism, NGOs, and think tanks. BA in political science might be better if one is keen on understanding political systems, governance, law-making and current affairs, and aim for a career in public policy, government or international organisations. Political science tends to be more relevant to understanding current global events, political dynamics, and governance, as it focuses on contemporary issues and international relations. BA in political science leads to further study in political science, international relations, public policy, law, or related areas, which can widen your opportunities in diplomacy, public administration, political consultancy, or international organisations. It offers a direct route to careers in government, public administration, diplomacy, political analysis, policy-making, or work with international organisations (UN, WHO). It also prepares you for civil services (similar to history), journalism (political reporting), and jobs in NGOs and think tanks related to governance and policy issues. [Prof. (Dr.) Aparna Sharma is dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Noida International University]
Time of India
30 minutes ago
- Time of India
'Supremacist and racist mentality': Iran slams US travel ban; cites 'deep hostility towards Muslims'
Iran on Saturday condemned the US travel ban targeting Iranians and citizens of 11 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries, calling it a reflection of a "supremacist and racist mentality. " These remarks came following US President Donald Trump 's executive order reinstating broad travel restrictions, citing national security concerns after a recent firebomb attack at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado. It is "a clear sign of the dominance of a supremacist and racist mentality among American policymakers," director general for the Department of Iranian Affairs Abroad at Iran's foreign ministry, Alireza Hashemi Raja said in a statement released by the ministry. He further stated that "US government's decision to ban Iranian nationals, solely based on their religion and nationality, not only reflects deep-seated hostility toward the Iranian people and Muslims but also constitutes a violation of fundamental principles of international law, including the prohibition of discrimination and basic human rights." The US travel restrictions, starting June 9, will apply to citizens of Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trading CFD dengan Teknologi dan Kecepatan Lebih Baik IC Markets Mendaftar Undo Seven additional countries face partial restrictions. Hashemi-Raja further indicated that, "depriving hundreds of millions of people of the right to travel to another country solely based on their nationality or religion is an example of racial discrimination and systemic racism within the American ruling establishment." The ministry official noted the ban's discriminatory nature would "entail international responsibility for the US government", without providing details. The minister also declared that Iran would take all necessary steps to protect the rights of its citizens against the impact of the US government's discriminatory decision. Diplomatic relations between Iran and the US ended shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with tensions persisting since. The United States hosts the largest Iranian diaspora globally. Tehran's foreign ministry data shows approximately 1.5 million Iranians resided in the United States in 2020. Trump's directive followed Sunday's incident at the Colorado rally, where officials reported over a dozen injuries. The accused is an Egyptian national who remained after his tourist visa expired.
