Chinese energy tech exports found to contain hidden comms and radio devices
Communication devices have been found in Chinese made solar inverters
These have the potential to destabilase the power grid
It's unknown how many were found or the intent behind them
Rogue communication devices have been discovered in Chinese made solar inverters, devices which play a 'critical role' in renewable energy infrastructure, Reuters reports. This has prompted US energy officials to re-assess the risks of emerging technologies produced in China.
Power inverters are primarily produced in China, but used globally to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids, as well as being used in heat pumps, batteries, and electric vehicle chargers.
It's reported that over the last nine months, some batteries bought from Chinese suppliers have been discovered with hidden communication devices like cellular radios – according to sources familiar with the matter. Rogue components
Experts have warned that communication devices could evade firewalls and switch inverters off remotely, posing a huge risk to power grids, as they could change settings, damage energy infrastructure, destabilize the grid, and cause widespread blackouts.
It's not yet clear how many of these communication devices were found, nor the nature of the devices themselves – and the intent behind the planting of these is unknown. That being said, the US Department of Energy has confirmed it continually assesses risks associated 'with emerging technologies and that there were significant challenges with manufacturers disclosing and documenting functionalities.'
This isn't the first time solar grids have been targeted – and security flaws leaving them vulnerable to being hijacked and even disabled. 46 vulnerabilities discovered by Forescout were found to allow hackers to deploy remote code execution, denial of service, device takeover, and access cloud platforms or sensitive information.
It seems likely, given recent events and rising geopolitical tensions, that the US will look to move production to domestic manufacturing plants for a more secure supply chain, It's worth noting though, that Huawei is currently the world's largest supplier of inverters, accounting for 29% of shipments around the world in 2022.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! You might also like
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Moon over Musk
Presented by The Spotlight The alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk — to borrow a phrase from the space community — has undergone a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Yet amid all the fireworks Thursday from the duo's public meltdown, one area of the space world seems to have a brighter future: the moon mission. Context: Musk, the SpaceX founder and well-known Mars enthusiast, has argued against returning astronauts to the lunar surface. But the stunning forced exit of the billionaire's hand-picked nominee for the top NASA job and Musk's massive rupture with the president has handed moon backers in Congress and industry an opening — and they're seizing it. What's happening, Part I: A ton of major space companies — just not SpaceX — are launching an ad campaign going big on the moon, according to two industry officials granted anonymity to discuss the effort. The move is the first sign of real pushback against the behemoth space company and its founder, who only days ago seemed to lock down government contracts every time he blinked. A television ad funded by the companies, who do not go by an umbrella name, will appear on television in the coming days with a pitch clearly aimed at Trump. A narrator, underlaid by dramatic images of America's Apollo missions, implores voters to call senators in support of the moon mission and 'keep America first in space.' A separate letter addressed to the Senate Commerce Committee and obtained by POLITICO backs investments in the moon, and is signed by a lengthy slate of prominent space companies — but not (you guessed it) SpaceX. What's happening, Part II: The Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday evening unveiled a new reconciliation bill that would channel $10 billion to NASA, much of it for the space agency's effort to return to the moon through the Artemis program. The White House's NASA budget had proposed major cuts to Artemis, including slashing a planned lunar space station and moon missions. 'Anybody who's following space will have noticed how deeply committed [the committee is] to getting back to the moon, particularly before the Chinese get there,' said a committee aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss the bill. SpaceX'd Out: All of this is happening amid Musk's very public fall from grace. Trump, during the social media showdown with his former confidante, threatened to cancel Musk's contracts with the government. The SpaceX founder responded by saying he would end the Dragon spacecraft contract, which is the U.S.'s only reliable way of accessing the International Space Station. (But he also suggested late Thursday night that he might not actually do so.) And of course, Trump last week abruptly pulled the NASA administrator nomination for Musk ally Jared Isaacman, just days ahead of his likely confirmation by the Senate. Isaacman, speaking on a podcast this week, linked his ouster to Musk's provocative departure from the White House. 'I don't think the timing was much of a coincidence,' he said. What next: This all means Congress may now have a stronger hand in negotiations with the White House over the NASA budget, which was written before Musk's break from Trump and heavily favors Mars. The administration's budget proposes major cuts to spending for the moon in favor of nearly $1 billion for landing an astronaut on Mars. SpaceX, thanks to provisions in the bill, was likely to snag a lucrative contract to build the landing system for any red planet mission. That seems much less feasible now. Senators from states with large NASA centers — think Alabama and Louisiana — are particularly keen to latch onto moon funding. Trump has voiced support for a Mars mission, meaning the idea may not have completely faded. But with Musk's implosion and the latest moon push, a return to the lunar surface is on firmer ground than it was just a week ago. WELCOME TO POLITICO PRO SPACE. It's our inaugural edition and a telling time to start. We've seen deep slashes to NASA's budget, the space agency's nominee pulled, and a feud explode between the world's biggest space contractor and the president. We can't wait for next week. Email me at sskove@ with tips, pitches and feedback, and find me on X at @samuelskove. We're offering this newsletter for free over the next few weeks. After that, it will be available only to POLITICO Pro subscribers. Read all about what we're doing here. Galactic Government MAKE A DEAL: Florida Rep. Mike Haridopolos, who chairs the House's subcommittee on space and aeronautics, told me Wednesday that he was against the White House's massive NASA cuts — making him one of the first Republicans to publicly voice opposition. 'Will a 26 percent cut to NASA hold? Absolutely not,' he said. 'We're going to be talking with the president and his team, with OMB about the paramount importance of space.' China: Haridopolos emphasized competition with China as a driving reason not to slash the space agency's funding. The proposed cancellation of Gateway — a lunar space station partnership with the European Space Agency — opens the way for Chinese influence, he said. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who leads the committee that oversees NASA, underscored a remarkably similar message during Isaacman's confirmation hearing. The Florida lawmaker said he was optimistic that the cuts wouldn't come to fruition. Trump 'believes in the space program,' he said. 'He knows that we want there's no second place to space.' TICKET TO RIDE: Sens. John Cornyn, Ben Ray Luján, Rick Scott, and Mark Kelly introduced a bill Thursday that would streamline licensing processes for commercial space companies, opening the way to a boom in rocket launches. The bill, dubbed the Launch Act, would allow the Federal Aviation Administration to eliminate overly bureaucratic steps in the application process. The law would also create a streamlined process for licensing commercial satellites used to observe the Earth. And it would move the Office of Space Commerce from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and place it directly under the Transportation secretary, a move that would elevate the office's access to key decision makers. Why it matters: Companies such as SpaceX have long complained about the slow pace of launch licensing. Streamlining the process could lead to a significant uptick in an already booming schedule. Companies launched 145 U.S. rockets in 2024, up from 109 the previous year. Military SPACE COMMAND: Lawmakers pressed Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Thursday to keep U.S. Space Command in Colorado as the Trump administration weighs moving the headquarters to Alabama. The Defense Department established the command in 2019 and temporarily placed it in Colorado while the Air Force evaluated permanent sites. Trump chose Alabama as the permanent headquarters but former President Joe Biden reversed that decision and selected Colorado. What he said: Meink, in a House Armed Services Committee hearing, conceded that Space Command would see civilian employees quit if the HQ moved from Colorado to Alabama. 'It would be very important that we manage that move over a period of time, if that occurs,' the Air Force chief said. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) called for the Pentagon to resume headquarters construction at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, calling it the 'most effective' home for Space Command. Context: Officials have paused construction because of a legal requirement to hold off until the Pentagon inspector general and the Government Accountability Office released their reports on the Biden administration's 2023 basing decision. Those reports are out, but Meink said the Air Force is still reviewing the GAO's findings. The Reading Room — Senate Commerce reconciliation bill proposes new space launch fee: POLITICO — Space Force awards BAE $1.2B for missile warning sats in MEO: Breaking Defense — Impulse Space Raises $300M Series C: Payload — Space Force shifts upfront range upgrade costs to commercial firms: Defense News — Some parts of Trump's proposed budget for NASA are literally draconian: Ars Technica Event Horizon TUESDAY: Axiom-4 launches private astronauts to the International Space Station. The Hudson Institute holds a discussio n on defending in outer space with Rep. Jeff Crank. Rep. George Whitesides speaks with SpaceNews on space issues. FRIDAY: The FAA ends public comments on a launch licensing-related issue. Photo of the Week
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
AI 版 Google？Perplexity AI 每月查詢量達 7.8 億次，AI 瀏覽器快將推出
Perplexity AI logo is seen in this illustration taken January 4, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration 黃仁勳也曾公開表示喜歡使用的 AI 搜尋引擎 Perplexity，CEO Aravind Srinivas 在 Bloomberg Tech Summit 上透露他們的服務在 2025 年 5 月達到 7.8 億次查詢，同時正以每月 20% 的增長速度快速發展。他預測若維持此增長速度，Perplexity 將在一年內達到每週 10 億次查詢。 Perplexity 的發展正正是以 Google 為模板，因為在 AI 搜尋引擎之後，他們正開發一款名為 Comet 的全新瀏覽器，旨在將 AI 從提供答案升級至執行完整操作。例如，用一條指令完成整個瀏覽流程。Srinivas 稱 Comet 不僅是一個瀏覽器，而是「認知操作系統（cognitive operating system）」，讓 AI 成為用戶生活中的個人化助手。 Srinivas 認為在瀏覽器上的用戶會是有無限的留存率，因為所有發生在搜尋列、分頁、網頁之上的瀏覽、互動，都會成為活躍用戶的一個額外查詢，同時能吸引那些厭倦了傳統瀏覽器（點名 Google Chrome 瀏覽器）的新用戶。 Comet will have a native virtual meets recording, transcription and searches over them. Won't be part of the first release, but very fast follow up. As for release date: it's going to take a min of three weeks and a max of five weeks. Reliability and latency have improved over… — Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) May 13, 2025 Srinivas 在上個月曾經透露過 Comet 瀏覽器將會追蹤用戶活動以支持高效廣告投放，類似 Google 的盈利模式。首個版本的 Comet 預計將會在 6 至 7 月面世，會具備虛擬會議記錄、轉錄及智能搜索等功能。 更多內容： Perplexity received 780 million queries last month, CEO says ChatGPT 唯一對手？主打 AI 搜尋的 Perplexity 是什麼？ 緊貼最新科技資訊、網購優惠，追隨 Yahoo Tech 各大社交平台！ 🎉📱 Tech Facebook： 🎉📱 Tech Instagram： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 社群： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 頻道： 🎉📱 Tech Telegram 頻道：
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
Meet the 'reclusive' tech billionaire making an audacious bid to buy TikTok
AppLovin is in the mix to buy TikTok and save the vertical video app from a US ban. Adam Foroughi, AppLovin's founder, is an uncharacteristically low-key tech billionaire. Foroughi's getting used to the spotlight as the $100 billion-plus company makes its biggest bet yet. Adam Foroughi tends to eschew the typical trappings of a billionaire. He has one car, and would rather it were self-driving. He rarely appears on TV or conference stages. In his downtime, you're more likely to find him at home with his five children than schmoozing on the slopes of Davos. People who know him point to his mild manner and lack of ego. His advertising technology company, AppLovin, is similarly unflashy. With an ad network that reaches around a billion daily users and a market cap more than twice that of Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit combined, it was the technology behemoth you'd never heard of. "We're a $100 billion-plus company, not many people know of us, so that's probably a flaw on me," Foroughi told Business Insider in an interview. Then came April. Ahead of a June 19 deadline, AppLovin and Foroughi, 45, made a last-minute bid to acquire the international assets of TikTok as the Chinese-owned company faces a potential ban in the US. It's an audacious move for any company, let alone one with a founder who usually goes out of his way to avoid the spotlight. It faces an uphill battle. Competition is fierce. President Donald Trump has said he's been negotiating with multiple potential buyers. Investors like Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" fame and former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt have signaled interest, and other tech companies are in the mix. At AppLovin, Foroughi is known for running a ruthlessly efficient ship that drives hard for profit. It's not unusual for the company to reduce head count even when it's doing well. Foroughi executes with a hands-on management style that has, at times, seen him struggle to delegate to execs who don't fit the mold. And the company's recent financial success has also caught the attention of short sellers who have raised questions about its data practices. With TikTok, Foroughi would be taking on an organization with a much bigger spotlight — and the heat that comes from running a user-generated content business popular among teens and often lambasted by parents. Most of the former AppLovin employees, competitors, and business associates who spoke with BI believe he's up to the task. They say Foroughi's smarts, as well as his tendency to forgo the marketing jazz hands and let the product do the talking, position him well to crank up the dial for TikTok's ad business. "We've been competing for over a decade, and I've never seen anyone like him — he's all around amazing, it hurts me to say it," said an executive at one of AppLovin's competitors. "He's the most talented CEO I have ever seen." Foroughi acknowledged that the TikTok bid is uncharted territory for him, but "I don't really care about 'uncomfortable,'" he said. "I do what I think is right for my business." An Iranian export Foroughi and his family fled Iran when he was four years old, in the fallout of the Iranian Revolution. They settled in Laguna Beach, California. His father, once one of Iran's leading real estate developers, left nearly all his wealth behind, and the family had to adjust to a more frugal lifestyle, a new culture, and a different language. "My parents had to give up a lot to get us over here," Foroughi said. "Knowing that, you always have this motivation inside you to perform." After graduating with a degree in finance from the University of California, Berkeley, Foroughi took a job as a derivatives trader. He found it a lonely existence. He wanted to build something of his own, and he wanted to work with people. He worked at a marketing agency for small businesses, which later morphed into a social media marketing company. Eventually, as the app stores of Apple and Google became dominant, he looked to apps. With a small team of engineers in Palo Alto, Foroughi created a fashion app, then a dating app. "They stunk," Foroughi said. "We got rid of them." In 2012, they launched their third attempt — an app that allowed friends to connect and send recommendations for other apps to download. This one stuck. If you were playing "Words with Friends," the app could send a push notification to your contacts, asking them to join. AppLovin was born. Like many tech companies, AppLovin — which Foroughi insists wasn't inspired by McLovin, the nerdy character in the stoner film "Superbad" — decided to pivot to advertising. It expanded from a ground-floor garage to offices on three continents, and more than 1,500 employees as of December 2024, and a market capitalization of $140 billion at the time of publication. The business model is fairly simple: It helps app developers make money and find users using in-app ads. But under the surface is a highly optimized AI-powered algorithm designed to entice businesses with the promise that chucking $1 into the machine will net $2, $5, or $10 in profit. It's a snug fit for TikTok, where ads for figure-hugging jeans, grip socks for soccer, and campaigns for major brands like Coca-Cola and Apple are slotted between consumable vertical videos. While TikTok has soared in popularity, particularly among Gen Z, its ad revenue lags behind Google, Meta, and Amazon. AppLovin thinks its adtech can help close the gap. AppLovin has also widened its aperture beyond its core gaming roots in recent months. After it opened up its ad platform to e-commerce advertisers, some said that they were excited for an alternative to Meta, which had become increasingly expensive in their hunt for new customers. Mike True, CEO of the e-commerce marketing platform Prescient AI, said AppLovin is the fourth most invested-in channel among its advertiser clients, behind Meta, Google, and Amazon Ads. "The fact that advertisers continue to invest in AppLovin, even amid a cautious market, suggests growing confidence in its long-term role within the performance stack," True said. Last year, the company posted net income of $1.58 billion at 34% margins — a margin profile almost on a par with Meta, and ahead of its closest adtech rival, The Trade Desk, which had a profit margin of 16% in 2024. AppLovin's annual revenue rose 43% to $4.7 billion. But some observers said that while AppLovin helped e-commerce advertisers extract more sales from current customers, it was less effective in driving sales from new ones. Jones Road Beauty was one of AppLovin's early e-commerce clients, but its CEO, Cody Plofker, told BI it's no longer using AppLovin. "We found it not to be very incremental with new customers," Plofker said. Foroughi said that the e-commerce product is still in its infancy and doesn't yet work for everyone. "But it will as we build it out," he added. AppLovin' it One Silicon Valley tech veteran who interacted with AppLovin in the early years said taking meetings with Foroughi was a "breath of fresh air." He cut to the chase, no two-martini lunches necessary. "We got on calls and he'd be very to the point, versus the mindset where relationships precede business — a very Valley kind of guy," the person said. Simon Spaull was AppLovin's first hire in Europe in 2014. He reluctantly entertained the idea at first. "No one had heard of it and it was a rubbish name," Spaull said. He was soon convinced. Spaull stayed at the company for almost seven years, as it continuously posted record annual revenue, mostly growing traction through word of mouth in the gaming community. Foroughi has remained deeply enmeshed with day-to-day operations, including customer service. Up until around a year ago, he ran product and human resources alongside his CEO role. (He said he wanted to "get more involved in making sure our culture is aligned with the principles we had when we started the business.") When he's not traveling, he sits among the engineers. "You don't know what's going on in your business if you don't work with your employees," Foroughi said. Foroughi has said some of the biggest mistakes he made as CEO involved taking outside advice, including briefly hiring a chief operating officer in 2012. "I thought, what's the point of me at this company, I'm hands-on, I'm not going to defer to this hire," Foroughi said at a recent conference held by the investment bank Jefferies. He had a similar reaction after following advice to bring on a chief revenue officer and a brand ad sales team, with staffers who were paid more than the company's best engineer, the person making the actual product. "It bugged the crap out of me," Foroughi said. He scrapped the entire team. The company's strategy has been defined in part by unrelenting efficiency. Foroughi, who said he considers Elon Musk as an inspiration, counts EBITDA — or profit — per employee as one of his most important success metrics. The company recently sold off its entire mobile gaming studio business — developers of hit games like "Mobile Strike" and "Project Makeover" — deeming it surplus after the apps had been sucked for data to use for its advertising algorithms. Foroughi also showed a cut-throat streak in 2022, when the gaming software development company Unity announced its intention to acquire AppLovin's app advertising rival, IronSource. Seeking to derail the merger, AppLovin put in an unsolicited $20 billion bid to merge with Unity, but only on the provision that Unity drop the IronSource deal. Rather than make his offer to Unity's management team and the board, Foroughi went public to appeal directly to Unity's main shareholders: the investment firms Sequoia and Silver Lake. Unity's management team wasn't happy, and they rejected the hostile takeover bid. Foroughi has no regrets. "The only way to disrupt that deal" was for AppLovin to make its takeover offer public, Foroughi said. "Yes, it was a little uncomfortable, obviously." Those within Foroughi's orbit say the billionaire has a generous side. A banker who worked on AppLovin's 2021 initial public offering recalled receiving an updated draft of the registration statement and noticing that Foroughi had recently sold off around $10 million of stock, at a low price, pre-IPO. He asked Foroughi why. "He's like, 'Uh, I'm surprised you found that. Yes, I sold some stock back to the company to distribute it to the team that was under-equitized," the person said. A busted China tie-up and the attack of the short sellers The TikTok suitor is no stranger to US-China tensions. In 2016, Foroughi signed a deal with a Chinese private-equity firm that valued AppLovin at $1.4 billion, and would provide a $1 billion cash injection. The deal was blocked by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States on national security grounds. "CFIUS saved my ass," Foroughi said at the Jefferies Private Growth Conference earlier this year, referring to AppLovin's financial performance since. The company's methods have been called into question in recent months with four short-seller reports, published in quick succession. The most high-profile, from Carson Block's Muddy Waters Research, said AppLovin was "impermissibly extracting" data from top apps like Meta, Google, and TikTok, and targeting ads at "high value users" without their consent. The report also said AppLovin was using underhanded techniques to claim credit for sales it didn't generate. In an email to BI, Block said that Muddy Waters believed Foroughi "lied" in a March blog post, when he pushed back on the idea that the company "uses persistent user identifiers without their consent." Persistent identifiers follow users across different websites and devices, and it can be difficult for users to delete them or even know they exist. Muddy Waters said AppLovin's use of these IDs violates various platforms' terms of service and privacy laws in some jurisdictions. Block also said that Foroughi's background pre-AppLovin "supports our opinion that he should not be trusted." He was referring to Foroughi's tenure at a company called Claria, which owned a controversial eWallet software called Gator, that was said at the time to have distributed "adware" that collected users' browsing habits, and bombarded them with pop-up ads. One of Foroughi's early ad networks, SocialHour, was removed from Facebook in 2009 for violating its platform policies. Foroughi has previously said in blog posts that the short-seller reports were "littered with inaccuracies and false assertions" and were aimed at driving down AppLovin's share price for their own financial gain. He told BI that he worked at Claria for a few months as a 25-year-old. In response to questions about SocialHour, he said all companies that monetized Facebook's inventory were removed when Facebook brought monetization in-house. Some industry insiders saw the reports as confirmation of their bafflement at AppLovin's success, particularly in light of its reliance on mobile games, which are not always highly valued by big brands and agencies. In the running for TikTok AppLovin has proposed merging its company with all of TikTok's international business — not just TikTok US. Foroughi describes this as an "enhancement" to Oracle, which is TikTok's cloud provider in the US. Under AppLovin's proposal, Oracle would still provide data storage and security. Oracle didn't respond to requests for comment. AppLovin has also pitched itself as a salve for TikTok's woes. "There are really big national security and data issues, and I think we could solve them," Foroughi told BI. AppLovin says it has expertise in both handling user data and controlling complex algorithms, which it believes could help it remove biases from TikTok's content recommendation system. "I see what folks in the administration are doing now, what someone like Elon has sacrificed to give back to the country, and I think we could play a small part here," Foroughi said in an interview that took place before Musk and Trump's spectacular falling out this week. TikTok didn't respond to a request for comment. Ari Paparo, a former Googler and adtech exec who now runs the marketing media company Marketecture, said AppLovin has some big advantages in its TikTok bid: Its monster market capitalization makes the financial side feasible, it has proven monetization capabilities that could make ads on TikTok better, and it isn't "Big Tech," which has drawn antitrust scrutiny. On the other hand, he said, "The company is a bit of an unknown in DC." That may soon change. In April, Foroughi was spotted at the launch party of Donald Trump Jr.'s private members club. "I'm reclusive by design, so part of the challenge has been that I have to get out there, and get to be known, and I just wasn't before this," Foroughi said.
