Daily Digest on AI and Emerging Technologies (31 January 2025)

Top of the Day

Non-binding guiding principles on preventing, detecting and disrupting the use of new and emerging financial technologies for terrorist purposes released in official UN languages

(UN CTED – 29 January 2025) On 6 January 2025, the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee adopted the “Non-binding guiding principles on preventing, detecting and disrupting the use of new and emerging financial technologies for terrorist purposes,” to be known and referred to as the “Algeria Guiding Principles.” The “Algeria Guiding Principles” were prepared with the support of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) in accordance with the “Delhi Declaration” on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes in a manner consistent with international law. As recognized by the Security Council in its resolution 2462 (2019), innovations in financial technologies may offer significant economic opportunities, but may also present a risk of being misused, including for terrorist purposes. The growing scale of such misuse has been highlighted in several reports of the United Nations, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and FATF-style regional bodies, as well as by members of CTED’s Global Research Network and private sector partners. The scale and types of abuses vary considerably depending on regional and economic context, available means, and the targets set by terrorists in terms of their financing sources and methods. – https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/ctc/news/non-binding-guiding-principles-preventing-detecting-and-disrupting-use-new-and-emerging

Throwing Caution to the Wind: Unpacking the U.K. AI Opportunities Action Plan

(Elke Schwarz – Just Security – 30 January 2025) On Jan. 13,  the U.K. government announced its long-awaited “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” which promises to ramp up “AI adoption across the U.K. to boost economic growth, provide jobs for the future and improve people’s everyday lives.” The plan, drafted by venture capital entrepreneur Matt Clifford, features 50 recommendations which outline what might be required for the United Kingdom to supercharge its AI capabilities. This includes building out an expanded data and computing infrastructure, capturing and nurturing AI talent, “unlocking data assets” for both private and public sectors, and removing AI adoption barriers. It also includes the recommendation to create a “U.K. Sovereign AI” unit to serve as a lynchpin for public-private partnerships and as an instrument to support new and existing private sector frontier AI companies with direct investments and other measures that would help such startups and their CEOs thrive in the U.K. The plan recommends that this new government unit “package[e] and provid[e] responsible access to the most valuable UK owned data sets and relevant research” and “facilitate[e] d eep collaborations with the national security community.” The unit must be able to “remove barriers and make deals” and receive sufficient funding to “act quickly and decisively” in a fast-moving environment. – https://www.justsecurity.org/106837/uk-ai-opportunities-action-plan-little-room-responsible-governance/

DeepSeek challenges the supremacy of US tech companies in AI

(Jenny Wong-Leung, Stephan Robin – ASPI The Strategist – 30 January 2024) It shouldn’t have come as a complete shock. US tech stocks, especially chipmaker Nvidia, plunged on Monday after news that the small China-based company DeepSeek had achieved a dramatic and reportedly inexpensive advance in artificial intelligence. But the step forward for China’s AI industry was in fact foreseeable. It was foreseeable from ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker, which was launched in early 2023 and which in its latest update monitors high-impact research (measured as the 10 percent most highly cited publications) over two decades across 64 technologies, including machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). – https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/deepseek-challenges-the-supremacy-of-us-tech-companies-in-ai/

How DeepSeek changed the future of AI—and what that means for national security

(Patrick Tucker – Defense One – 29 January 2025) Days after China’s DeepSeek detailed an approach to generative AI that needs just a fraction of the computing power used to build prominent U.S. tools, the global conversation around AI and national security—from how the Pentagon buys and uses AI to how foreign powers might disrupt American life, including privacy—is changing. DeepSeek’s announcement drew a collective wail from the White House, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. In Washington, D.C., President Trump called it a “wake-up for our industries that we need to be laser focused on competing” against China. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the National Security Council is currently reviewing the app. The Navy has already banned it. On Wall Street, chip maker Nvidia’s stock tumbled. OpenAI, DeepSeek’s closest U.S. competitor, is crying foul and claiming the app essentially  distills their own model. – https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/01/how-deepseek-changed-future-aiand-what-means-national-security/402594/?oref=d1-homepage-top-story

 

DeepSeek shows the limits of US export controls on AI chips

(John Villasenor – Brookings – 29 January 2025) In recent weeks, Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek has released a set of open-source large language models (LLMs) that it claims were trained using only a fraction of the computing power needed to train some of the top U.S.-made LLMs. (There has been some suggestion, as yet unsubstantiated, that DeepSeek actually had access to more computing power than it has disclosed.) – https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deepseek-shows-the-limits-of-us-export-controls-on-ai-chips/

Governance and Legislation

US: Chevron plans 4GW natural gas plants to meet AI’s soaring power demand

(Kapil Kajal – Interesting Engoneering – 29 January 2025) Engine No. 1 and Chevron U.S.A. Inc. have announced establishing a strategic partnership to develop scalable and reliable power solutions for data centers across the United States, specifically powered by domestic natural gas. The initiative is seen as a response to the growing energy demands of the digital economy, particularly as artificial intelligence technology becomes increasingly integral in various sectors. – https://interestingengineering.com/energy/chevron-natural-gas-power-plants

Security

AI Incidents: Key Components for a Mandatory Reporting Regime

(Ren Bin Lee Dixon, Heather Frase – Center for Security and Emerging Technology – January 2025) In our past publication, “An Argument for Hybrid AI Incident Reporting,” we proposed implementing a federated1 and comprehensive artificial intelligence incident reporting framework to systematically record, analyze, and respond to AI incidents. The hybrid reporting framework proposes implementing mandatory, voluntary, and citizen reporting mechanisms. This document describes the critical content that should be included in a mandatory AI incident reporting regime and should also inform voluntary and citizen reporting efforts. In this publication, we define a set of standardized key components of AI incidents that can be used as a reporting template to collect vital AI incident data. These components include, but are not limited to, information about the type of AI incident, the nature and severity of harm, technical data, affected entities and individuals, and the context and circumstances within which the incident unfolded. While intentionally high level, our proposed set of components distills information from existing AI initiatives that track real-world events, harms, and risks related to AI, and incorporates lessons learned from incident reporting systems and practices in the transportation, healthcare, and cybersecurity sectors. – https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/ai-incidents-key-components-for-a-mandatory-reporting-regime/

 

Fake Videos of Former First Lady Scam Namibians

(Nate Nelson – Dark Reading – 30 January 2025) Scammers are using the likeness of Namibia’s former first lady to trick people into falling for investment scams. For some time now, Monica Geingos — first lady of Namibia from 2015 until her husband’s passing early last year — has been warning Namibians about criminals using her likeness to perpetrate cheap financial scams. In a video posted online last week, Geingos reported an “uptick” in accounts impersonating her across social media platforms, with some using manipulated videos. – https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/fake-videos-former-first-lady-scam-namibians

 

Police take down two large cybercrime forums, arrest suspects

(Daryna Antoniuk – The Record – 30 January 2025) An international operation has shut down two of the world’s largest cybercrime forums — Cracked and Nulled — which had about 10 million users and earned millions of dollars in profits, authorities said on Thursday. Cybercriminals used the sites to trade illegal goods and services, such as stolen data, malware and hacking tools. The forums also offered scripts to automatically scan victims’ systems for security vulnerabilities, making cyberattacks more effective, Europol said in a statement. – https://therecord.media/cybercrime-forums-cracked-nulled-takedowns-arrests

 

Google Blocked 2.36 Million Policy-Violating Apps

(Alessandro Mascellino – Infosecurity Magazine – 30 January 2025) Google Play has blocked 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published and banned 158,000 developer accounts associated with harmful activities in 2024. More than 92% of Google’s human reviews for harmful apps are now AI-assisted, the tech giant said in a new report. This allows faster and more accurate detection, helping prevent malicious apps from reaching users before they can cause damage, according to the report. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/google-blocked-236-million-policy/

 

Ransomware Attack Disrupts Blood Donation Services in US

(James Coker – Infosecurity Magazine – 30 January 2025) New York Blood Center Enterprises (NYBCe) has been hit by a ransomware attack, disrupting critical blood donation services across the US. The collection of independent community-based blood centers revealed in a statement on January 29 that it had taken certain systems offline to contain the threat. – https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ransomware-blood-donation-services/

Defense, Intelligence, and Warfare

 

Navy ops centers need AI to sift through troves of intel data

(Lauren C. Williams – Defense One – 30 January 2025) Future naval battles could hinge on how quickly information warfare officers analyze and send information from maritime operations centers to the fleet, the chief of the U.S. Navy has said. And while AI can help with that, there are some caveats, said a top naval intelligence official. “I really do think there’s opportunity space here with AI, but AI has the challenges of the data source has to be trusted and curated. And so there’s clearly a lot of work going on in AI, in the world of [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], in the world of PED, but we’re working through that still,” Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare and director of naval intelligence, said Wednesday during a presentation at WEST 2025. – https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2025/01/navy-ops-centers-need-ai-sift-through-troves-intel-data/402626/?oref=d1-homepage-river

 

Trump’s ‘Iron Dome for America’ plan would put weapons in space, at a big cost

(Patrick Tucker – Defense One – 30 January 2025) President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a “next-generation missile defense shield” that can “defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against—any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland” is technically and budgetarily difficult at best, experts said. One disconnect between the dream and the reality appears in the order’s title: “The Iron Dome for America.” Taken literally, this suggests the use of the Iron Dome anti-missile system made by Raytheon and Rafael and used effectively in recent conflicts by Israel. But Iron Dome is designed to protect cities or installations from missiles and drone threats of relatively short range, about 50 miles. Given the terrain and geography of the United States, the system might be useful for protecting a city like, say, El Paso, Texas, from a rocket attack emanating from Mexico, but not much else. – https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/01/trumps-iron-dome-america-plan-would-put-weapons-space-big-cost/402630/?oref=d1-featured-river-secondary

 

Lawmakers push for guardrails, deadline on cyber military study

(Martin Matishak – The Record – 30 January 2025) A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers outlined their “expectations” for a think tank charged with examining the U.S. military’s cyber forces and suggested an end date for the organization’s work. The missive, obtained by Recorded Future News, to the leaders of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) comes after a provision in the annual defense policy bill that would have tasked the nonprofit with evaluating the feasibility of creating a U.S. Cyber Force was significantly altered to instead look at “alternative organizational models for the cyber forces of the Armed Forces.” – https://therecord.media/lawmakers-push-for-guardrails-deadline-cyber-force-study

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