Silicon Valley & Technology

Iran claimed on Wednesday it successfully launched an imaging satellite into space, a move that could further ratchet up tensions with Western nations that fear its space technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Iranian Communication Minister Isa Zarepour said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280 miles) above Earth’s surface, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. It was not clear when the launch took place.

There was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch or of the satellite being put into orbit. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran has had a series of failed launches in recent years.

The most recent launch was carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has had more success. Gen. Hossein Salami, the top commander of the Guard, told state TV that the launch had been a “victory” and that the satellite will collect data and images.

Authorities released footage of a rocket taking off from a mobile launcher without saying where the launch occurred. Details in the video corresponded with a Guard base near Shahroud, some 330 kilometers (205 miles) northeast of the capital, Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran’s civilian space program operates.

The Guard operates its own space program and military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces and answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It launched its first satellite into space in April 2020. But the head of the U.S. Space Command later dismissed it as a “tumbling webcam in space” that would not provide vital intelligence. Western sanctions bar Iran from importing advanced spying technology.

The United States has alleged that Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community’s 2022 threat assessment claims the development of satellite launch vehicles “shortens the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.

Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003.

Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. The program has seen recent troubles, however. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, another satellite-carrying rocket.

A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 killed three researchers, authorities said at the time. A launchpad rocket explosion later that year drew the attention of then-President Donald Trump, who taunted Iran with a tweet showing what appeared to be a U.S. surveillance photo of the site.

Tensions are already high with Western nations over Iran’s nuclear program, which has steadily advanced since Trump five years ago withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and restored crippling sanctions on Iran.

Efforts to revive the agreement reached an impasse more than a year ago. Since then, the IAEA has said Iran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels to build “several” nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so. Iran is also building a new underground nuclear facility that would likely be impervious to U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. Both countries have said they would take military action if necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has expressed willingness to return to the 2015 nuclear deal but says the U.S. should first ease the sanctions.
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In Goma, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, residents say plastic and other waste is increasingly polluting Lake Kivu. A new initiative is keeping some of that waste out of the lake. Austere Malivika has this report from Goma, narrated by Aida Issa.
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Wildfires fueled by climate change have ravaged communities from Maui to the Mediterranean this summer, killing many people, exhausting firefighters and fueling demand for new solutions. Enter artificial intelligence.

Firefighters and startups are using AI-enabled cameras to scan the horizon for signs of smoke. A German company is building a constellation of satellites to detect fires from space. And Microsoft is using AI models to predict where the next blaze could be sparked.

With wildfires becoming larger and more intense as the world warms, firefighters, utilities and governments are scrambling to get ahead of the flames by tapping into the latest AI technology — which has stirred both fear and excitement for its potential to transform life. While increasingly stretched first responders hope AI offers them a leg up, humans are still needed to check that the tech is accurate.

California’s main firefighting agency this summer started testing an AI system that looks for smoke from more than 1,000 mountaintop camera feeds and is now expanding it statewide.

The system is designed to find “abnormalities” and alert emergency command centers, where staffers will confirm whether it’s indeed smoke or something else in the air.

“The beauty of this is that it immediately pops up on the screen and those dispatchers or call takers are able to interrogate that screen” and determine whether to send a crew, said Phillip SeLegue, staff chief of intelligence for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The cameras, part of a network that workers previously had to watch, provide billions of bytes of data for the AI system to digest. While humans still need to confirm any smoke sightings, the system helps reduce fatigue among staffers typically monitoring multiple screens and cameras, alerting them to look only when there’s possible fire or smoke, SeLegue said.

It’s already helped. A battalion chief got a smoke alert in the middle of the night, confirmed it on his cellphone and called a command center in San Diego to scramble first responders to the remote area.

The dispatchers said that if they hadn’t been alerted, the fire would have been much larger because it likely wouldn’t have been noticed until the next morning, SeLegue said.

San Francisco startup Pano AI takes a similar approach, mounting cameras on cell towers that scan for smoke and alert customers, including fire departments, utility companies and ski resorts.

The cameras use computer vision machine learning, a type of AI.

“They’re trained very specifically to detect smoke or not, and we train them with images of smoke and images of not smoke,” CEO Sonia Kastner said.

The images are combined with feeds from government weather satellites that scan for hotspots, along with other data sources, such as social media posts.

The technology gets around one of the main problems in the traditional way of detecting wildfires — relying on 911 calls from passers-by that need confirmation from staffers before crews and water-dropping planes can be deployed.

“Generally, only one in 20 of these 911 calls are actually a wildfire. Even during fire season, it might be a cloud or fog or a barbecue,” Kastner said.

Pano AI’s systems do still rely on final confirmation, with managers playing a time lapse of the camera feed to ensure it’s smoke rising.

For fighting forest fires, “technology is becoming really essential,” said Larry Bekkedahl, senior vice president of energy delivery at Portland General Electric, Oregon’s largest utility and a Pano AI customer.

Utility companies sometimes play a role in sparking wildfires, when their power lines are knocked down by wind or struck by falling trees. Hawaii’s electric utility acknowledged that its power lines started a devastating blaze in Maui this summer after apparently being downed by high winds.

PGE, which provides electricity to 51 cities in Oregon, has deployed 26 Pano AI cameras, and Bekkedahl said they have helped speed up response and coordination with emergency services.

Previously, fire departments were “running around looking for stuff and not even really knowing exactly where it’s at,” he said. The cameras help detect fires quicker and get teams on the ground faster, shaving up to two hours off response times.

“That’s significant in terms of how fast that fire can can spread and grow,” Bekkedahl said.

Using AI to detect smoke from fires “is relatively easy,” said Juan Lavista Ferres, chief data scientist at Microsoft.

“What is not easy is to have enough cameras that cover enough places,” he said, pointing to vast, remote areas in northern Canada that have burned this summer.

Ferres’ team at Microsoft has been developing AI models to predict where fires are likely to start. They have fed the model with maps of areas that burned previously, along with climate and geospatial data.

The system has its limitations — it can’t predict random events like a lightning strike. But it can sift through historical weather and climate data to identify patterns, such as areas that are typically drier. Even a road, which indicates people are nearby, is a risk factor, Ferres said.

“It’s not going to get it all perfectly right,” he said. “But what it can do is it can build a probability map (based on) what happened in the past.”

The technology, which Microsoft plans to offer as an open-source tool, can help first responders trying to figure out where to focus their limited resources, Ferres said.

Another company is looking to the heavens for a solution. German startup OroraTech analyzes satellite images with artificial intelligence.

Taking advantage of advances in camera, satellite and AI technology, OroraTech has launched two mini satellites about the size of a shoebox into low orbit, about 550 kilometers above Earth’s surface. The Munich-based company has ambitions to send up eight more next year and eventually put 100 into space.

As wildfires swept central Chile this year, OroraTech said it provided thermal images at night when aerial drones are used less frequently.

Weeks after OroraTech launched its second satellite, it detected a fire near the community of Keg River in northern Alberta, where flames burned remote stretches of boreal forest repeatedly this summer.

“There are algorithms on the satellite, very efficient ones to detect fires even faster,” CEO Thomas Gruebler said.

The AI also takes into account vegetation and humidity levels to identify flare-ups that could spawn devastating megafires. The technology could help thinly stretched firefighting agencies direct resources to blazes with the potential to cause the most damage.

“Because we know exactly where the fires are, we can see how the fires will propagate,” Gruebler said. “So, which fire will be the big fire in one day and which will stop on their own.”
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Earlier this year, Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC announced that it was delaying the opening of a computer chip plant in the U.S. state of Arizona because of a shortage of specialized workers. But during a visit to Taiwan this week, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs told officials that the project is back on schedule and should have no further delays. From Phoenix, Arizona, Levi Stallings has our story.
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For decades, Russian and eastern European hackers have dominated the cybercrime underworld. These days they may face a challenge from a new contender: China. 

Researchers at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint say they have detected an increase in the spread of Chinese language malware through email campaigns since early 2023, signaling a surge in Chinese cybercrime activity and a new trend in the global threat landscape. 

“We basically went from drought to flood here,” said Selena Larson, senior threat intelligence analyst at Proofpoint and one of the authors of a new Proofpoint report on Chinese malware.  

The increase, Larson said, could be due to several factors. 

“There might be increased availability, there might be an ease of access to some of this malware, (and there might be) just increased activity by Chinese-speaking cybercrime threat actors as a whole,” Larson said in an interview. 

While Russian-speaking actors continue to dominate cybercrime networks, the Proofpoint report says the recent surge in Chinese language malware “may challenge the dominance that the Russian-speaking cybercrime market has on the threat landscape.” 

Malware delivered via email

The hackers behind the Chinese campaigns use a type of malicious software known as a Remote Access Trojan, or RAT.  This malware is delivered via email and allows the cybercriminals to access a computer from a remote location and steal data or perform other malicious actions. 

The Chinese language malware, contained in fake invoices sent to unsuspecting businesses and other targets, is linked to suspected Chinese cybercrime operations, according to Proofpoint.  

The cybercriminals have used several types of malware to carry out hacking operations.  

One of them, called Sainbox, targeted dozens of companies, mostly in the manufacturing and technology sectors, in May. Other recently identified malware, dubbed ValleyRAT, was deployed in at least six hacking campaigns in 2023.  

“Campaigns are generally low-volume and are typically sent to global organizations with operations in China,” the report says.   

The email subjects and content are usually written in Chinese, and are typically related to invoices, payments, and new products, according to the report.  

The targeted users have Chinese names spelled with Chinese characters, or corporate email addresses linked to businesses operating in China, the report says.  

Larson said the proliferation of Chinese-language malware suggests cybercrime remains lucrative and attractive to actors beyond eastern Europe.  

“It may indicate Chinese speakers who conduct cybercrime operations might want to maybe take a larger slice of the financial gain,” Larson said. 

Cybercrime hurts economy 

Cybercrime is a booming industry that poses a grave threat to the global economy.  The FBI estimates cybercriminals inflicted potential losses of more than $10 billion in 2022, a 43% increase from the previous year.

While China is accused of carrying out state-sponsored cyberattacks against the United States, most of the ransomware attacks and other cybercrime in recent years have been chalked up to eastern European groups.   

Proofpoint is not the only cybersecurity firm reporting on Chinese-language malware in recent months. 

In February, digital security firm ESET said it had identified a malware campaign that targeted Chinese speakers in Southeast and East Asia by buying misleading ads that appeared in Google search results.

The campaign used the malware known as Sainbox or FatalRAT, the type that Proofpoint said it had detected in 20 campaigns this year. 
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Germany’s interior ministry has proposed forcing telecommunications operators to curb their use of equipment made by China’s Huawei and ZTE, a government official said Wednesday, sparking warnings of likely disruption and possible legal action.

The interior ministry wants to impose the changes to 5G networks after a review highlighted Germany’s reliance on the two Chinese suppliers, as Berlin reassesses its relationship with a country it dubs both a partner and a systemic rival.

Telecom operators swiftly criticized the proposals, while Huawei Germany rejected what it called the “politicization” of cyber security in the country.

“Such an approach will have a negative impact on the digital transformation in Germany, inhibit innovation and significantly increase construction and operating costs for network operators,” it said in a statement.

Germany’s interior ministry has designed a staggered approach to try to limit disruption as operators remove all critical components from Chinese vendors in their 5G core networks by 2026, the government official said.

They should also reduce the share of Chinese components in their RAN and transport networks by October 1, 2026, to a maximum of 25%, said the official, who declined to be named.

The interior ministry and Chinese embassy did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

‘A major U-turn’

Deutsche Telekom called the deadline unrealistic, comparing it to Britain’s attempts to impose restrictions on Huawei, while Telefonica Deutschland said it would consider seeking damages as well as legal action.

“This represents a major U-turn,” said Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at PP Foresight. “Germany has been much slower than other countries in removing and replacing Huawei.”

Pescatore said the phaseout would take significant investment and be challenging given the ambitious timeframe.

“This will be a major headache for telcos. It could hold back 5G rollout and potentially lead to higher prices for users as well as dealing with disruption in any service issues.”

The interior ministry wants to present its approach to cabinet next week but could face resistance. A digital ministry spokesperson said no decision had been made yet.

The Huawei issue reflects a realization in Berlin that it may need tough political measures to force German companies to reduce their strategic dependencies on Asia’s rising superpower.

An analysis by the IW Institute showed German direct investment in China in the first half of this year remained close to its 2022 record high.

Chinese components not forbidden

Germany is considered a laggard in implementing the European Union’s toolbox of security measures for 5G networks, and Huawei accounts for 59% of Germany’s 5G RAN networks, according to a survey by telecoms consultancy Strand Consult.

Last week, the government said in response to a parliamentary inquiry that it had so far not forbidden the use of any new Chinese critical components in 5G networks.

While some countries like the United States have agreed to compensate telecoms operators billions of dollars for phasing out Chinese gear in 5G, Berlin has underscored that current legislation does not require it to provide compensation.

Juergen Gruetzner, managing director of the VATM industry association, told Reuters a transition period of six to eight years would be needed to avoid extra costs and achieve the phaseout.

“Simply upgrading and retrofitting tens of thousands of mobile phone masts is not technically possible. We are already working at full capacity,” he said. “All the capacity we have at the moment is needed to build 5G and fiber networks.”

The interior ministry plan foresees Chinese tech not being used at all in especially sensitive regions such as the capital Berlin, home of the federal government, the official said — a distinction that Strand Consult called “arbitrary.”
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Google announced Tuesday that its Bard chatbot would be integrated into Gmail, YouTube and other applications in a push to broaden Alphabet’s user experience.

Google has spent years refining its generative AI without immediate plans to release a chatbot, until OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT late last year and partnered with Microsoft to popularize the cutting-edge tool. Google scrambled to put together its response: Bard.

Google cleared hurdles earlier this year to release Bard across the globe in dozens of languages, squeaking past European regulators who raised questions about the chatbot’s effect on data security.

The search engine giant is now waging a campaign to win public support.

These new updates — Bard extensions — represent the company’s most ambitious attempt at popularizing generative AI. Going forward, Bard can work as a plug-in with Google Drive, Gmail, YouTube and more.

A user might ask Bard to distill a string of lengthy and confusing emails into a pithy summary or order the chatbot to find the quickest route to an address using Google Maps.

The plug-in can be used by students and professionals who might want Bard to scour dense PDFs and Google Docs and return a list of bullet points.

A common criticism of chatbots is their inaccuracy and apparent ability to falsify information. Computer scientists call this flaw “hallucinations.” The Bard plug-in will include a button to fact-check the chatbot’s answers against search engine results in real time to determine if Bard is “hallucinating.”

Generative AI combs vast databases for linguistic patterns and other information in a process known as data-scraping. Data-scraping is what empowers Bard and ChatGPT to create unique, humanlike answers to queries in an instant. Essentially, chatbots imitate what is already available on the internet.

Activists have long worried that companies might train their chatbots on unsuspecting users’ personal information. Google said that Bard will access private data only with permission.

Google also said that any data-scraping it might perform on what users have stored in their personal Docs, Drive or Gmail accounts would not be used in targeted advertising or training Bard. Nor would private content be accessible to Google employees.

“You’re always in control of your privacy settings when deciding how you want to use these extensions, and you can turn them off at any time,” Google said in a blog post.

The Bard extensions come after Microsoft similarly incorporated ChatGPT into Bing earlier this year but ultimately failed to gain ground in its war on Google’s search engine dominance.

According to market analytics, ChatGPT, Bard’s top competitor, has been suffering marked declines in its user base as mania over generative AI has waned in recent months. Google is hoping to capitalize on ChatGPT’s losses and for Bard to catch up.

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse.
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Britain has invited China to its global artificial intelligence summit in November, with foreign minister James Cleverly saying the risks of the technology could not be contained if one of its leading players was absent.

“We cannot keep the UK public safe from the risks of AI if we exclude one of the leading nations in AI tech,” Cleverly said in a statement on Tuesday.  

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants Britain to become a global leader in AI regulation and the summit on Nov. 1-2 will bring together governments, tech companies and academics to discuss the risks posed by the powerful new technology.

Britain said the event would touch on topics such as how AI could undermine biosecurity as well as how the technology could be used for public good, for example in safer transport.  

Cleverly, who last month became the most senior minister to visit China in five years, has argued for deeper engagement with Beijing, saying it would be a mistake to try to isolate the world’s second largest economy and Chinese help was needed in areas such as climate change and economic instability.

“The UK’s approach to China is to protect our institutions and infrastructure, align with partners and engage where it is in the UK’s national interest,” Cleverly said on Tuesday.  

London is trying to improve ties with Beijing but there has been growing anxiety about Chinese activity in Britain in recent weeks after it was revealed that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of spying for China.

The Chinese embassy in London was not immediately able to say if China would attend the AI summit.

Britain has appointed tech expert Matt Clifford and former senior diplomat Jonathan Black to lead preparations for the summit.  

The Financial Times reported that government officials want a less “draconian” approach to regulating the technology, compared with the European Union’s wide-sweeping AI Act.  

Under the incoming EU legislation, organizations using AI systems deemed “high risk” will be expected to complete rigorous risk assessments, log their activities, and make sensitive internal data available to authorities upon request.  

Clifford told Reuters last month that he hoped the UK summit would set the tone for future international debates on AI regulation.
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