Governance, Regulation, Legislation, Geostrategies

Singapore proposes Digital Infrastructure Bill to strengthen cloud security

(DigWatch) Singapore has launched a public consultation on a proposed Digital Infrastructure Bill that would establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for major cloud computing services and data centres. Published jointly by the Ministry of Digital Development and Information and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the draft legislation aims to strengthen the resilience and security of critical digital infrastructure while introducing mandatory environmental sustainability standards for data centre operations. The Bill recognises digital infrastructure as a foundation of Singapore’s digital economy, supporting services ranging from digital banking and e-commerce to cloud platforms and public administration. Unlike earlier amendments to the Cybersecurity Act, which focused primarily on cyber risks, the proposal extends regulatory oversight to operational resilience, business continuity, disaster recovery and environmental sustainability. – https://www.mddi.gov.sg/newsroom/public-consultation-on-digital-infrastructure-bill/

France and WHO call for stronger safeguards for children online

(DigWatch) French President Emmanuel Macron and World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus have called for stronger governance of digital environments to protect children’s health and well-being. In a joint statement, they argued that social media, gaming platforms, AI and other digital services are increasingly shaping children’s physical, mental and social development. The authors said digital technologies can support education, healthcare access, creativity and social inclusion, especially for children in remote or disadvantaged communities. However, they argued that these benefits depend on how digital services are designed, regulated and governed. – https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2026/07/01/the-digital-choices-shaping-our-childrens-health

UK and Germany deepen AI safety cooperation

(DigWatch) The United Kingdom and Germany have agreed to strengthen cooperation on AI safety and security, expanding collaboration on advanced AI evaluation, cybersecurity risks and research into frontier AI systems. Both governments described AI as one of the most consequential technologies of the era, offering significant economic and societal benefits while creating new security risks that require closer international cooperation. The cooperation builds on the UK–Germany Strategic Science and Technology Partnership, a priority initiative under the UK-Germany Friendship and Bilateral Cooperation Treaty signed last year. – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-germany-joint-statement-on-advanced-ai-safety-and-security

Canada and Germany strengthen semiconductor supply chains

(DigWatch) Canada and Germany have signed a joint declaration of intent to strengthen semiconductor supply chains and deepen industrial cooperation, reinforcing collaboration in a technology that underpins AI, advanced computing and the digital economy. The declaration was signed on the sidelines of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency by Carlos Leitão, Parliamentary Secretary to Canada’s Minister of Industry, and Stefan Rouenhoff, Parliamentary State Secretary at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Canada said resilient and diversified semiconductor supply chains are becoming increasingly important as global demand grows for AI, advanced computing and connected technologies. – https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2026/06/canada-and-germany-strengthen-industrial-partnership-to-build-resilient-semiconductor-supply-chains.html

UN launches “AI for Good” commission

(Ashley Gold – Axios) A new UN-backed commission will bring top tech executives and heads of state to the same table to forge global solutions for AI, per an announcement shared exclusively with Axios. As global AI regulation grows more splintered, this initiative is an attempt to connect the executives building advanced AI with a group of global politicians. The UN and its International Telecommunication Union are convening the AI for Good Global Commission, which will hold its first meeting on July 8 in Geneva, Switzerland. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Rwandan President Paul Kagame will co-chair the commission. Other members include ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Estonian President Alar Karis, and AI and tech policymakers from Kazakhstan, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Nigeria. Tech leaders include Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, Cohere co-founder Aidan Gomez, Microsoft president Brad Smith, and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. – https://www.axios.com/2026/07/01/un-ai-commission-ceos-world-leaders

Saudi Arabia leads world in digital connectivity

(DigWatch) Saudi Arabia has ranked first globally in the International Telecommunication Union’s 2025 ICT Development Index, which measures progress towards universal and meaningful connectivity. The index assessed 164 economies using indicators grouped around universal and effective connectivity. Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space and Technology Commission said the result reflects sustained investment in digital infrastructure and the country’s efforts to strengthen the competitiveness of its technology sector. CST said advanced telecommunications networks have helped support digital economic growth, attract investment and expand the role of technology across the economy. – https://www.cst.gov.sa/en/media-center/news/N2025070301

Security and Surveillance

Cybercriminals Pose as Interpol in Phishing Emails to Infect Victims With Ransomware

(Danny Palmer – Infosecurity Magazine) Cybercriminals are posing as international law enforcement agencies in a phishing campaign designed to deliver ransomware attacks. As detailed by Bitdefender Antispam Lab in a blog post published on July 1, the phishing attacks target small businesses across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America with emails which claim to come from the ‘Cybercrime Investigation Unit’ at Interpol. The fake Interpol email claims that businesses which received it have potentially been involved with or subject to suspicious or fraudulent activity and that the victims should urgently open a file which purports to contain evidence to be reviewed. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cybercriminals-pose-interpol/

NCSC Shares Tips on How to Make a Pen Tester’s Job Harder

(Phil Muncaster – Infosecurity Magazine) Secure-by-design systems, segmented networks, and logging and monitoring are among the best ways to defeat cyber adversaries, according to penetration testers. That is according to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which explained in a blog post published on July 1, that it asked a group of pen testers it works with: “What can organizations do to make your job harder?”. Their responses could help security teams to improve the resilience of their systems to compromise. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ncsc-tips-make-pen-testers-job/

430,000 FortiGate Devices Exposed in FortiBleed Ransomware Link

(Pierluigi Paganini – Security Affairs) SOCRadar’s Threat Research Unit has connected FortiBleed, a large-scale campaign that harvested credentials from over 430,000 FortiGate firewalls worldwide, directly to two active ransomware operations: INC Ransom and Lynx. The link isn’t circumstantial. An operator with access to FortiBleed’s own infrastructure was found actively logged into the negotiation panels of both ransomware groups, handling ransom demands in real time. FortiBleed has been documented since SOCRadar’s first report. The operation uses a custom tool written in Go called FortigateSniffer, which passively intercepts authentication traffic by abusing FortiOS’s own built-in packet diagnostic command across two dozen protocols. – https://securityaffairs.com/194645/security/430000-fortigate-devices-exposed-in-fortibleed-ransomware-link.html

CISA launches critical infrastructure security partnership

(DigWatch) The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has launched a new advisory framework to strengthen public-private cooperation on critical infrastructure security and resilience. The initiative, called the Alliance of National Councils for Homeland Operational Resilience, or ANCHOR-CI, is designed to improve information sharing between government and industry and broaden participation across critical infrastructure sectors. CISA said the framework builds on lessons from the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council while expanding engagement to a wider range of public and private stakeholders.https://www.govtech.com/security/cisa-launches-a-critical-infrastructure-security-partnership

Bank of England warns agentic AI threatens financial stability

(DigWatch) Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden has warned that rapidly advancing AI capabilities, particularly agentic AI systems capable of autonomously carrying out complex sequences of actions, pose growing risks to financial stability. Breeden noted that open-source AI models may trail the most advanced proprietary models by only four to eight months. She warned that delays in applying security patches can allow attackers to reverse engineer newly disclosed vulnerabilities, echoing the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies’ assessment that the relevant timeline for AI-enabled cyber threats is measured in months rather than years. – https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2026/june/sarah-breeden-panel-at-the-european-central-bank-forum-on-central-banking-2026

Job ads show DeepSeek aims for an AI agent with cybersecurity capabilities

(Alex Colville – ASPI The Strategist) New job postings from DeepSeek show the Chinese AI lab plans to build an agentic model that can find vulnerabilities in code. These details, buried in a hiring round, show DeepSeek’s new strategy following the attention garnered by a US model with such capabilities, Anthropic’s Mythos. DeepSeek has listed dozens of roles as part of a June commitment to nearly double its workforce. An ASPI analysis of the postings shows the company shifting from being a research-oriented lab to a commercially oriented AI developer, with stronger international ambitions and heavier investment in frontier models. These include a planned ‘code agent’ trained by data engineers who can ‘discover attack surfaces and construct attack paths in real-world products’, according to one listing. The hiring spree comes after DeepSeek raised US$7.4 billion last month in its first funding round – prompted, according to a report from news website The Information, by a sense of shock inside the company at the April release of Mythos, which can identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities and engage in offensive cyberattacks. – https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/deepseek-plans-to-build-an-ai-agent-with-cybersecurity-capabilities/

Defense, Intelligence, Warfare

U.S. Export Control Unpredictability Is Testing the Limits of U.S.-India Tech Cooperation

(McKenzie Cromer – Just Security) U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed several ambitious agreements for increased defense cooperation with India during a recent visit to New Delhi. In response to increased Chinese submarine patrols in the region, for example, Rubio and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar signed a comprehensive Underwater Domain Awareness roadmap and expanded current initiatives to monitor real-time activity in the Indo-Pacific with their two partners in the “Quad,” Japan and Australia. In a joint press conference, Rubio suggested the United States and India have “a tremendous strategic alliance” and noted the intention to move from simply a defense producer-buyer relationship to one of co-development of advanced military technology, something India has been seeking for decades. While the diplomatic rhetoric may increasingly project a partnership of equals, the regulatory environment tells a different story. Washington’s shift from a rules-based export licensing regime to ad hoc horse-trading in a burdened Commerce Department pushes India’s defense tech ecosystem toward architectural choices that will make these agreements more difficult to implement. – https://www.justsecurity.org/143257/us-india-export-control-unpredictability/

China’s military AI logistics: peacetime gains, wartime vulnerabilities

(Gerald Mako – ASPI The Strategist) For decades, Chinese military planners have viewed logistics as the decisive factor in any campaign against Taiwan and across the broader Indo-Pacific. Sustaining large-scale operations across the strait would require moving and supplying forces under intense pressure, making logistics both a critical vulnerability and a priority for reform. China is now placing a big bet that artificial intelligence offers the solution. The Chinese military is incorporating AI into its logistics systems to support what it calls ‘intelligentised warfare’. AI tools promise to improve demand forecasting, routing and the allocation of supplies. The armed forces are also applying AI to predictive maintenance, allowing logistics units to anticipate failures and schedule repairs well before breakdowns occur. Established in 2016 as part of Chinese military reforms, the Joint Logistic Support Force serves as the Chinese army’s centralised logistics command, coordinating support across all services. It manages theatre‑level support centres and depots while drawing data from military units, bases and civilian contractors to develop cross‑theatre sustainment plans. China refers to this as ‘smart joint logistics’, with the force fusing data from military and civilian systems into unified support plans across theatres. Recent work has focused on combining information systems with AI applications to support more automated planning processes. – https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/chinas-military-ai-logistics-peacetime-gains-wartime-vulnerabilities/

Frontiers

Ericsson report says global 5G subscriptions pass 3 billion

(Dig.Watch) Global 5G subscriptions passed 3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, according to Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report. The report says 162 million 5G subscriptions were added during the quarter, bringing the global total to 3.1 billion. Ericsson expects 5G subscriptions to more than double to 6.4 billion by the end of 2031. 5G will also carry around half of global mobile data traffic by the end of 2025. Ericsson projects that 5G networks will account for 85% of mobile data traffic by 2031. – https://techafricanews.com/2026/07/01/ericsson-global-5g-user-base-surpasses-3-billion-as-ai-reshapes-mobile-networks/

OpenAI launches GeneBench-Pro for AI biology research

(DigWatch) OpenAI has introduced GeneBench-Pro, a research benchmark designed to assess whether AI agents can perform the complex, judgment-intensive analysis required in real-world computational biology. Unlike conventional benchmarks that focus on factual recall or routine workflows, GeneBench-Pro is designed to measure what OpenAI calls ‘research taste‘, the sequence of judgement calls involved in scientific analysis, from interpreting ambiguous data and revising assumptions to deciding whether findings are robust enough to inform downstream research. – https://openai.com/index/introducing-genebench-pro/