Massive Microsoft breach affects 100 organizations; Google blames China for cyberattacks
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Business Standard
3 hours ago
- Business Standard
Google to invest $6 billion in 1-GW data centre project in Andhra Pradesh
Google will invest $6 billion to develop a 1-gigawatt data centre and its power infrastructure in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in the Alphabet unit's first such investment in India, government sources said on Wednesday. Due to be built in the port city of Visakhapatnam, the data centre investment includes $2 billion in renewable energy capacity that will be used to power the facility, two Andhra Pradesh government sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The search giant's data centre will be the largest in capacity and investment size in Asia and is part a multi-billion-dollar expansion of its data centre portfolio across the region in countries including Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. In April, Alphabet said it was still committed to spending some $75 billion this year to build data centre capacity despite the economic uncertainty resulting from U.S. President Donald Trump's global tariff offensive. Alphabet did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Andhra Pradesh's information technology minister Nara Lokesh, who is in Singapore to discuss investments with thegovernment and business leaders there, did not comment on the Google investment. "We've made certain announcements like Sify, which are public," he said, referring to a 550-MW data centre Sify Technologies plans to build in the state. "There are certain announcements which are not yet public. In October, we will make those announcements." Andhra Pradesh, a state run by a leading ally of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was split into two in 2014, losing its former capital Hyderabad and a major revenue source to the newly created Telangana state. Andhra Pradesh has since been looking to attract investments to ease the financial strains of high debt and social spending. Lokesh said Andhra Pradesh has already been able to finalise investments in data centres with total capacity of 1.6 GW, adding that it aims to build 6 GW of data centres over the next five years from nearly zero currently. He expects the initial 1.6 GW of already agreed data centres to be operational in the next 24 months. That would be more than the 1.4 GW currently in operation in the entire country, according to real estate consultancy Anarock. "We're also working on getting three cable landing stations in Visakhapatnam. We want to create enough of cable network, which will be two times what Mumbai has today," Lokesh said. Cable landing stations - typically located close to data centres requiring fast and reliable connections to global networks - are used to store equipment which receives and relays data from undersea cables. Lokesh also said the state was looking to build up energy infrastructure to meet sustainability requirements of data centres. He said he anticipated power generation capacity requirements of as much as 10 GW from the electricity-intensive industry over the next five years. "Majority will end up being actually green energy, and that's the unique value proposition that we bring to the table," he said. Some of the additional capacity will be coal-fired, however, as data centres require reliable, high volume power throughout the day, he added.
First Post
4 hours ago
- First Post
Microsoft Blames Chinese Hackers for Cyberattack on its SharePoint Software
Microsoft Blames Chinese Hackers for Cyberattack on its SharePoint Software | Firstpost America Microsoft Blames Chinese Hackers for Cyberattack on its SharePoint Software | Firstpost America | N18G Microsoft has warned that Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups, Linen Typhoon, Violet Typhoon, and Storm-2603, are exploiting flaws in its SharePoint software to gain access to sensitive data. The attackers used two vulnerabilities to impersonate authorised users and install malware on internal servers. Nearly 100 organisations, including US government agencies such as the National Nuclear Security Administration, were reportedly affected. China denies involvement. Microsoft has released security patches and urged immediate action. The breach comes amid growing concerns over cybersecurity and follows scrutiny of Microsoft's ties to China-based engineers previously involved in Pentagon cloud support services. Watch to know more. See More
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Business Standard
4 hours ago
- Business Standard
China launches global AI body to rival US in $4.8 trillion tech race
While humanoid robots faced off in a boxing ring at China's flagship artificial intelligence conference in Shanghai, a fight in the US-China tech war was fought in suits nearby over who gets to set the rules in the AI age. China's answer is a new global organization to convene countries to foster safe and inclusive use of the powerful new technology. At the annual World AI Conference over the weekend, Chinese Premier Li Qiang warned of AI 'monopoly' and instead called on foreign officials in the room — mostly from developing countries — to cooperate on governance. The new group, known as the World AI Cooperation Organization, embodies China's plan to jostle with the US for sway by positioning itself as a champion of AI for all. More favorable rules may give a global boost to Chinese companies competing with US firms to sell hardware and services in a market estimated to hit $4.8 trillion by 2033. For many of the countries represented at the conference, Chinese firms already offer competitive solutions, even if the US dominates the supply of cutting-edge AI chips. 'The Chinese are coming to the table with a very different AI product mix that is going to be extremely appealing to lower-income countries that lack the computing and power infrastructure needed for large-scale implementation of OpenAI-like AI systems,' said Eric Olander of the China-Global South Project. Over 800 AI companies from more than 70 countries and regions attended the conference, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Using technology as both carrot and calling card, Beijing's approach appears to take a page out of its earlier Digital Silk Road initiative, which put Chinese companies at the center of telecommunications networks spanning continents. China for years has strived to define the global parameters for emerging technologies such as 5G, seeking to influence development and set the stage for its companies to win market share abroad. Huawei Technologies Co.'s prominent role in standard-setting groups became the subject of scrutiny of the US government when it cracked down on the use of its equipment. Global AI governance has emerged as a new battleground for the world's leading powers, both seeing the technology as critical not just for their economy but national security. President Donald Trump declared last week that his country will 'do whatever it takes' to lead in AI, with his plan for actions including countering Chinese influence in international governance bodies. While there are no binding global rules for AI development, China's action plan calls for building more digital infrastructure that uses clean power and unifying computing power standards. The country also said it supports the role of businesses in creating technical standards in security, industry and ethics. Details about the Chinese body, to be headquartered in Shanghai, are scarce. In brief public remarks before media were ushered out of the room, a Chinese Foreign Ministry senior official, Ma Zhaoxu, said the organization would work to establish standards and governance frameworks. China would discuss details with those countries that are willing to join, he added. As US and Chinese companies race to develop systems that could match or even surpassed human intelligence, safety concerns have also prompted calls for guardrails. AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who spoke at the Chinese event, expressed support for international bodies to collaborate on safety issues. Part of Beijing's AI strategy appears to come from its diplomatic playbook, which urges support for Global South countries to step up in international affairs. In his address to kick off the Saturday event, Li emphasized helping those nations develop AI. These countries made up most of more than 30 nations that were invited to the high-level governance talks, including Ethiopia, Cuba, Bangladesh, Russia and Pakistan. A handful of European countries including the Netherlands, France and Germany, the EU and several international organizations were also represented. No nameplate for the US was seen by Bloomberg News. The US Embassy in Beijing declined to comment on any official presence. Achmad Adhitya, special adviser to Indonesia's vice president who attended the meeting, told Bloomberg News that China's initiative is 'very appreciated by the Indonesian government.' His country is preparing AI curricula to be rolled out across 400,000 schools and is training 60,000 teachers about the tech, he said. Beijing's emphasis on openness — a word used 15 times in its governance action plan — appears to ride on the success of Deepseek earlier this year. The AI upstart stunned the world not just by releasing AI models that are almost as capable as those of OpenAI but also made them freely available for anyone to download and customize for free. A succession of Chinese companies has done the same, with companies from incumbent giants like Alibaba and newcomers like Moonshot releasing cutting-edge large language models that are similarly open-weight. That accessibility may be especially important to developing countries who may not have the resources to gather vast datasets and train their own AI models from scratch, a process that would involve expensive chips made by companies such as Nvidia Corp. China also emphasizes internet sovereignty, something that may appeal to more autocratic regimes around the world. 'We should respect other countries' national sovereignty and strictly abide by their laws when providing them with AI products and services,' according to the country's Global AI Governance Initiative issued in 2023. In contrast, Trump's AI plan vows that the US government will only work with engineers who 'ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.' The US-China rivalry presents a familiar dilemma for countries that may feel pressured to choose a side, but Solly Malatsi, minister of communications and digital technologies of South Africa, rejects the binary choice. 'It's not a case of one model over the other,' Malatsi said from the conference. 'It's about an integration of the best of both worlds.'
