China will conduct its first “digital technology” military exercise next month, state media said yesterday, amid growing concern in Washington and elsewhere about Chinese hacking attacks.
A report by the official Xinhua news agency said the exercise, in northern China’s remote Inner Mongolia region, will “test new types of combat forces, including units using digital technology amid efforts to adjust to informationalized war.”
“It will be the first time a People’s Liberation Army exercise has focused on combat forces including digitalized units, special operations forces, army aviation and electronic counter forces,” the brief English-language report added.
Meanwhile, the security chief of controversial Chinese telecom giant Huawei (華為) said that using the Internet to spy and steal sensitive data is standard practice by all countries.
The comments published yesterday follow allegations that Chinese hackers gained access to secret designs for a slew of sophisticated US weapons programs, and stole the blueprints for Australia’s new intelligence agency headquarters.
John Suffolk, a former chief information officer with the British government and now head of security operations at Huawei, said he was not surprised by claims of international hacking.
“Governments have always done that,” he told the Australian Financial Review, adding that the “harsh reality is every government around the world has a similar strap-line for their security agencies.”
“Some people say that spying is the second-oldest profession, where people have tried to get information off us for somebody else, so I don’t think anyone is surprised that any government around the world is trying to find out what other governments around the world are doing,” Suffolk said.
Huawei has been at the center of cyberespionage concerns itself, with the US Congress last year raising fears that its ties with Beijing meant telecom equipment supplied by the company could be used for spying.
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,
RSS