Geostrategies

Emerging economies and the future of global digital governance: data, AI and transnational cooperation

(Wakana Asano – CSIS) In the first article of this two-part series examining how emerging economies are shaping global digital governance, analysis of specific major economies – India, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa – illustrated how emerging countries are creating their sovereign Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs). This second article in the series examines two other dimensions of the approaches to digital governance taken by India, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa: their country-first regulations regarding data, artificial intelligence (AI) and commerce; and the steps they have taken towards transnational cooperation. The international tech order is becoming increasingly disparate. Different systems for data, AI and commerce are being promoted by countries and regional organisations alike – from the European Union, the African Union (AU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to initiatives led by China, Singapore and the United States. Emerging economies must navigate an increasingly varied landscape of digital regulations. This combination of existing and emerging digital-governance frameworks brings with it an escalating risk of fragmentation driven by different principles, domestic politics, and economic and diplomatic ties. Growing fragmentation also has implications for emerging economies in terms of prospective collaboration on digital governance. – https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2026/03/emerging-economies-and-the-future-of-global-digital-governance-data-ai-and-transnational-cooperation/

Security and Surveillance

Blockchain and AI security central to US cyber framework

(DigWatch) The US National Cyber Strategy emphasises support for emerging technologies, including blockchain, cryptocurrencies, AI, and post-quantum cryptography. The strategy highlights the importance of securing digital infrastructure while advancing technological leadership. The strategy rests on six pillars, including modernising federal networks, protecting critical infrastructure, and advancing secure technology. Specific sections reference cryptocurrencies and blockchain, noting the need to safeguard digital systems from design to deployment. – https://dig.watch/updates/blockchain-ai-security-central-us-cyber-framework

Only 24% Of organizations Test Identity Recovery Every Six Months

(Alessandro Mascellino – Infosecurity Magazine) Just 24% of organizations test their identity disaster recovery plans every six months, according to new research which examined how businesses prepare for identity-focused cyber-attacks. The findings suggested that despite rising investment in identity threat detection and response (ITDR), many organizations remain poorly prepared to restore critical authentication systems after a breach. The data comes from Quest Software’s latest report, a global survey of 650 IT and security practitioners and executives. The study found that many companies place heavy emphasis on preventative controls and threat detection while neglecting response and recovery readiness. Identity infrastructure now sits at the centre of modern IT environments, connecting users, applications, automation tools and cloud services. When attackers compromise these systems, they can quickly gain widespread access across networks, data and administrative controls. Survey results suggested many organizations overestimate their security posture because alerts and preventative defences appear to be working. However, when identity protections fail, the speed and reliability of recovery often determine how severe the business impact becomes. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/organizations-test-identity-sec-6/

Cloud Attackers Now Prefer Vulnerability Exploits Over Credentials, Google Cloud Finds

(Danny Palmer – Infosecurity Magazine) Google Cloud has warned that threat actors targeting cloud environments now favor campaigns which gain initial access by exploiting software vulnerabilities over credential-based attacks. Published on 9 March, the Google Cloud Office of the CISO’s H1 2026 Google Cloud Threat Horizons Report, details how the cloud threat landscape evolved based on how attackers attempted to target Google Cloud services during the second half of 2025. “Our team has observed a fundamental shift in the landscape,” said Crystal Lister, security advisor and head of cloud threat horizons report program for Office of the CISO, at Google Cloud. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cloud-attackers-prefer-exploits/

Finnish intelligence warns of persistent cyber espionage from Russia, China

(Alexander Martin – The Record) Finland’s intelligence service warned that Russia and China continue to conduct extensive cyberespionage and influence operations targeting the country’s  technology sector, research institutions and government, according to a new national security assessment released Tuesday. The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO), which is responsible for foreign intelligence as well as domestic counterintelligence, was last year reorganized to “enhance information gathering.” In a major assessment following that reorganization, SUPO warned that foreign intelligence activity targeting Finland was widespread, combining cyberintrusions, traditional espionage and political influence campaigns aimed at gathering sensitive information and shaping decision-making. “The principal threat to Finland arises from the sustained operations of Russian and Chinese intelligence services in various sectors of Finnish society,” the agency stated. – https://therecord.media/finnish-intel-warns-espionage-china-russia

Russian military hackers revive advanced malware to spy on Ukraine, researchers say

(Daryna Antoniuk – The Record) Russian state hacker group APT28 has revived a sophisticated cyber-espionage toolkit to spy on Ukrainian targets, including military personnel, according to a report published Tuesday by cybersecurity firm ESET. ESET said the group’s advanced development team has reemerged since April 2024 with a renewed arsenal built around two implants known as BeardShell and Covenant, often deployed together in espionage campaigns. – https://therecord.media/russia-apt-28-revives-malware-to-spy-on-ukraine

Ericsson US confirms breach after third-party provider attack

(Pierluigi Paganini – Security Affairs) Ericsson Inc., the U.S. branch of the Swedish telecom giant, disclosed a data breach after a service provider was hacked. The attack compromised the personal information of an unspecified number of employees and customers. “On April 28, 2025, our service provider became aware of a suspicious event that may have involved potential unauthorized access to certain data on their system. It promptly initiated an investigation with the assistance of external cybersecurity specialists.” reads the data breach notification letter shared with the California Attorney General. “It also notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation and implemented measures to enhance security and minimize the risk of a similar incident occurring in the future.” – https://securityaffairs.com/189197/data-breach/ericsson-us-confirms-breach-after-third-party-provider-attack.html

Law enforcement disrupted Tycoon 2FA phishing-as-a-service platfor

(Pierluigi Paganini – Security Affairs) The joint effort, led by Microsoft, Europol, and industry partners, aimed to target the infrastructure of Tycoon 2FA phishing-as-a-service platform responsible for tens of millions of fraudulent emails reaching over 500,000 organizations each month worldwide. By mid‑2025, the service accounted for approximately 62 percent of all phishing attempts Microsoft blocked, including more than 30 million emails in a single month. That placed Tycoon2FA among the largest phishing operations globally. Despite extensive defenses, the service is linked to an estimated 96,000 distinct phishing victims worldwide since 2023, including more than 55,000 Microsoft customers. – https://securityaffairs.com/189205/cyber-crime/law-enforcement-disrupted-tycoon-2fa-phishing-as-a-service-platform.html

ShinyHunters Targets Hundreds of Websites in New Salesforce Campaign

(Phil Muncaster – Infosecurity Magazine) Salesforce has urged Experience Cloud customers to audit their website configurations after reports that a notorious threat group has already stolen data from hundreds of companies. The SaaS giant said that it had been tracking an increase in threat actor activity targeting misconfigurations of publicly accessible sites built using its Experience Cloud platform. “Specifically, we have identified a campaign in which malicious actors are exploiting customers’ overly permissive Experience Cloud guest user configurations to potentially access more data than targeted organizations intended,” it explained. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/shinyhunters-hundreds-websites/

Defence and Intelligence

The New Era of Drone Warfare Takes Root in Iran

(Michael C. Horowitz, Lauren Kahn – Council on Foreign Relations) Operation Epic Fury and Iran’s response to ongoing U.S. and Israeli attacks represent clear evidence that we are now in the era of precise mass in war, the high-volume use of low-cost, increasingly autonomous systems with high-accuracy guidance. In other words, there are a lot more drones on battlefields today, but not the ones you remember from the global war on terrorism. This shows that the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, which has now dragged on for more than four years, are shaping the behavior of the United States, Iran, and Israel. The world is seeing the spread of a new form of warfare. The United States is not the passenger it once was in this new format. The first wave of U.S. attacks as part of Operation Epic Fury marked the initial operational deployment of the LUCAS (low-cost unmanned combat attack system). Reverse-engineered from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, the long-range, one-way attack loitering munition was sped through the Pentagon’s acquisition pipeline in just eighteen months, and it was only recently embedded in U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in December 2025. The United States’ deployment of LUCAS illustrates that the Pentagon has internalized some of the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine. In the four years since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the world has watched as the first modern conflict in Europe since World War II has reshaped the way we think about military capabilities. In the same way that the Gulf War came to be known as the first “space war”—given the sudden proliferation and prevalence of space-based capabilities, including satellite communications and GPS—so too are the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict in Iran shaking out to be the first artificial intelligence wars, full-scale cyberwars, commercial space wars, and of course, drone wars. –  https://www.cfr.org/articles/the-new-era-of-drone-warfare-takes-root-in-iran

Anthropic sues DOD, Hegseth, and a dozen other federal agencies

(Alexandra Kelley – Defense One) Anthropic is suing more than a dozen federal agencies and government leaders such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, claiming that the federal government’s blacklist is illegal retaliation. In a March 9 court filing with the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Anthropic claims that defendants named in the lawsuit are illegally punishing Anthropic for its decision not to change the terms of use for its AI product to work with the Department of Defense. The court filing offers background into Anthropic’s product, the large language model Claude, and its extensive work within the federal government, particularly within the Pentagon. – https://www.defenseone.com/business/2026/03/anthropic-sues-over-dozen-federal-agencies-and-government-leaders/411997/?oref=d1-homepage-river

Frontiers

Malaysia expands AI learning across universities with Google tools

(DigWatch) AI tools from Google are now available across all public universities in Malaysia after the nationwide deployment of Gemini for Education. An initiative that integrates AI capabilities into university systems, providing digital research and learning support to nearly 600,000 students and 75,000 faculty members. – https://dig.watch/updates/malaysia-expands-ai-learning-across-universities-with-google-tools

Every emergency department in New Zealand now uses AI scribes

(DigWatch) New Zealand has completed a nationwide rollout of AI scribe technology across all public emergency departments, with approximately 1,250 emergency doctors and frontline staff now using the tool, 250 more than originally announced. Health Minister Simeon Brown described the achievement as placing New Zealand among the fastest health systems in the world to move from pilot to full frontline AI deployment in emergency departments. – https://dig.watch/updates/emergency-departments-new-zealand-use-ai-scribes

AI biotech firm pushes limits of human lifespan

(DigWatch) Longevity research is gaining momentum as AI transforms the way scientists search for new medicines. Insilico Medicine, founded by Alex Zhavoronkov in 2014, combines machine learning and automation to study ageing and accelerate drug discovery. Company research focuses on identifying biological targets linked to ageing and developing molecules to treat related diseases. Several experimental treatments have already received Investigational New Drug clearance, allowing them to move towards human clinical trials. – https://dig.watch/updates/ai-biotech-firm-pushes-limits-of-human-lifespan

Jensen Huang: AI’s biggest buildout is still ahead

(Herb Scribner – Axios) Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a blog post Tuesday that decisions about how fast to build AI, who gets access and how to govern it will determine the technology’s legacy. Huang — whose company underpins the AI boom — rarely publishes long essays about the tech’s broader impact, offering other industry players and investors a rare window into his thinking. Huang argues that chip demand, expansion and hiring are still in the early stages of what he calls a long buildout. “AI is one of the most powerful forces shaping the world today. It is not a clever app or a single model; it is essential infrastructure,” he writes in his seventh blog post since 2016. “Every company will use it. Every country will build it.” – https://www.axios.com/2026/03/10/jensen-huang-ais-biggest-buildout-is-still-ahead