CRIME
Hackers spying for decade
Hackers, most likely from China, have been spying on governments and businesses in Southeast Asia and India uninterrupted for a decade, researchers at Internet security company FireEye Inc said yesterday. The cyberespionage operations dated back to at least 2005 and “focused on targets — government and commercial — who hold key political, economic and military information about the region,” FireEye said in a report, adding: “Such a sustained, planned development effort coupled with the [hacking] group’s regional targets and mission, lead us to believe that this activity is state-sponsored — most likely the Chinese government.” Bryce Boland, chief technology officer for Asia-Pacific at FireEye and coauthor of the report, said the attack was still ongoing, adding that the servers the attackers used were still operational, and that FireEye continued to see attacks against its clients, who number among the targets.
AUTOMAKERS
VW chair appears isolated
Ferdinand Piech, the grandson of the creator of the VW Beetle and the patriarch of the German automaker for more than two decades, is losing his grip on Volkswagen AG two years before his last term as chairman ends. Piech, 77, has found himself increasingly isolated after his hostile comments toward CEO Martin Winterkorn were quickly blunted by other power players at the Wolfsburg, Germany-based firm. The rebuttal may mark the beginning of the end of an era at Europe’s biggest carmaker. Volkswagen’s powerful works council, the state of Lower Saxony and even Piech’s cousin, Wolfgang Porsche, rallied to Winterkorn’s side after Piech escalated the power struggle by telling Der Spiegel in an interview on Friday that he was keeping himself “at a distance” from Winterkorn.
DEFENSE
Elbit shifts market focus
US military spending may be flat, but that is not proving to be much of a problem for Israeli defense company Elbit Systems Ltd. The company, long dependent on the US for much of its sales, has been shifting its focus to faster growing markets in Asia and Latin America. Elbit said last month that demand from those regions helped push up its backlog of orders to US$6.3 billion at year-end, an 8 percent jump from 2013. The US market accounted for 28 percent of sales last year, still the biggest slice from any single country, including Israel. However, unlike US defense contractors that focus on large programs like airplanes, ships and tanks, Elbit is succeeding with niche products and services in high demand in emerging markets, like upgrading aircraft systems and enhancing cyberwarfare capabilities.
MACROECONOMICS
Australia hurt by ore prices
Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey yesterday said that the low iron ore price was shaving billions of dollars off government revenue forecasts, but he would not increase taxes to make up the shortfall. Hockey said that every US$10 fall in the price of a tonne of iron ore — Australia’s most lucrative export — cuts US$2.5 billion in tax revenue a year for the government. The price has fallen from about US$100 when Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s conservative government was elected in September 2013 to less than US$48 last week due to weakening Chinese industrial demand and increased production. Hockey signaled that plans to return the national budget to surplus would be delayed when he announces his economic blueprint on May 12 for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to