Telecommunications infrastructure

Netherlands and China in talks to resolve Nexperia dispute

The Dutch Economy Minister has spoken with his Chinese counterpart to ease tensions following the Netherlands’ recent seizure of Nexperia, a major Dutch semiconductor firm.

China, where most of Nexperia’s chips are produced and sold, reacted by blocking exports, creating concern among European carmakers reliant on its components.

Vincent Karremans said he had discussed ‘further steps towards reaching a solution’ with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao.

Both sides emphasised the importance of finding an outcome that benefits Nexperia, as well as the Chinese and European economies.

Meanwhile, Nexperia’s China division has begun asserting its independence, telling employees they may reject ‘external instructions’.

The firm remains a subsidiary of Shanghai-listed Wingtech, which has faced growing scrutiny from European regulators over national security and strategic technology supply chains.

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AWS outage turned a mundane DNS slip into global chaos

Cloudflare’s boss summed up the mood after Monday’s chaos, relieved his firm wasn’t to blame as outages rippled across more than 1,000 companies. Snapchat, Reddit, Roblox, Fortnite, banks, and government portals faltered together, exposing how much of the web leans on Amazon Web Services.

AWS is the backbone for a vast slice of the internet, renting compute, storage, and databases so firms avoid running their own stacks. However, a mundane Domain Name System error in its Northern Virginia region scrambled routing, leaving services online yet unreachable as traffic lost its map.

Engineers call it a classic failure mode: ‘It’s always DNS.’ Misconfigurations, maintenance slips, or server faults can cascade quickly across shared platforms. AWS says teams moved to mitigate, but the episode showed how a small mistake at scale becomes a global headache in minutes.

Experts warned of concentration risk: when one hyperscaler stumbles, many fall. Yet few true alternatives exist at AWS’s scale beyond Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, with smaller rivals from IBM to Alibaba, and fledgling European plays, far behind.

Calls for UK–EU cloud sovereignty are growing, but timelines and costs are steep. Monday’s outage is a reminder that resilience needs multi-region and multi-cloud designs, tested failovers, and clear incident comms, not just faith in a single provider.

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China leads the global generative AI adoption with 515 million users

In China, the use of generative AI has expanded unprecedentedly, reaching 515 million users in the first half of 2025.

The figure, released by the China Internet Network Information Centre, shows more than double the number recorded in December and represents an adoption rate of 36.5 per cent.

Such growth is driven by strong digital infrastructure and the state’s determination to make AI a central tool of national development.

The country’s ‘AI Plus’ strategy aims to integrate AI across all sectors of society and the economy. The majority of users rely on domestic platforms such as DeepSeek, Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, as access to leading Western models remains restricted.

Young and well-educated citizens dominate the user base, underlining the government’s success in promoting AI literacy among key demographics.

Microsoft’s recent research confirms that China has the world’s largest AI market, surpassing the US in total users. While the US adoption has remained steady, China’s domestic ecosystem continues to accelerate, fuelled by policy support and public enthusiasm for generative tools.

China also leads the world in AI-related intellectual property, with over 1.5 million patent applications accounting for nearly 39 per cent of the global total.

The rapid adoption of home-grown AI technologies reflects a strategic drive for technological self-reliance and positions China at the forefront of global digital transformation.

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British Columbia unveils major plan to power economic growth with clean energy

The Government of British Columbia has announced a sweeping economic and energy plan aimed at driving industrial growth through clean electricity. Centred on the North Coast Transmission Line, the plan aims to boost the province’s economy while ensuring First Nations share in the benefits.

Premier David Eby said the new legislation would make British Columbia the ‘economic engine’ of Canada, powered by clean energy and local partnerships. Set to begin in 2026, the NCTL will provide clean, affordable power to major industries such as mining, natural gas, and manufacturing.

Once operational, it is projected to create nearly 9,700 direct jobs, contribute around $10 billion to GDP, and cut millions of tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

To manage rising energy demand, the government will limit crypto mining and prioritise projects with strong economic and environmental benefits. A power allocation process for data centres, AI, and hydrogen projects will start in 2026 to support responsible growth.

The plan also enables greater First Nations participation through potential equity ownership in new energy infrastructure. Industry leaders say the project could attract billions in investment and strengthen British Columbia’s position in clean energy and critical minerals.

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Meta changes WhatsApp terms to block third-party AI assistants

Meta-owned WhatsApp has updated the terms of its Business API to forbid general-purpose AI chatbots from being hosted or distributed via its platform. The change will take effect on 15 January 2026.

Under the revised terms, WhatsApp will not allow providers of AI or machine-learning technologies, including large language models, generative AI platforms, or general-purpose AI assistants, to use the WhatsApp Business Solution when such technologies are the primary functionality being provided.

Meta says the Business API was designed for companies to communicate with their customers, not as a distribution channel for standalone AI assistants. The company emphasises that this update does not affect businesses using AI for defined functions like customer support, reservations or order tracking.

The move is significant for the AI ecosystem. Several startups and major players had offered their assistants via WhatsApp, including the likes of OpenAI (ChatGPT), Perplexity AI and others. These will now have to rethink how they integrate or distribute on WhatsApp.

Meta also notes that the volume of messages from these chatbots imposed strain on WhatsApp’s infrastructure and deviated from the intended business-to-customer messaging model. Furthermore, by limiting such usage Meta retains stronger control over how its platform is monetised.

For third-party AI providers, the implication is clear: WhatsApp will no longer serve as a platform for generic assistants but rather for business workflows or task-specific bots. This redefinition realigns the platform’s strategy and draws a clearer boundary between enterprise usage and public-facing AI services.

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EU expands AI reach through new antenna network

The European Commission has launched new ‘AI Antennas’ across 13 European countries to strengthen AI infrastructure. Seven EU states, including Belgium, Ireland, and Malta, will gain access to high-performance computing through the EuroHPC network.

Six non-EU partners, such as the UK and Switzerland, have also joined the initiative. Their inclusion reflects the EU’s growing cooperation on digital innovation with neighbouring countries despite Brexit and other trade tensions.

Each AI Antenna will serve as a local gateway to the bloc’s supercomputing hubs, providing technical support, training, and algorithmic resources. Countries without an AI Factory of their own can now connect remotely to major systems like Jupiter.

The Commission says the network aims to spread AI skills and research capabilities across Europe, narrowing regional gaps in digital development. However, smaller nations hosting only antennas are unlikely to house the bloc’s future ‘AI Gigafactories’, which will be up to four times more powerful.

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Australian students get 12 months of Google Gemini Pro at no cost

Google has launched a free twelve-month Gemini Pro plan for students in Australia aged eighteen and over, aiming to make AI-powered learning more accessible.

The offer includes the company’s most advanced tools and features designed to enhance study efficiency and critical thinking.

A key addition is Guided Learning mode, which acts as a personal AI coach. Instead of quick answers, it walks students through complex subjects step by step, encouraging a deeper understanding of concepts.

Gemini now also integrates diagrams, images and YouTube videos into responses to make lessons more visual and engaging.

Students can create flashcards, quizzes and study guides automatically from their own materials, helping them prepare for exams more effectively. The Gemini Pro account upgrade provides access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Deep Research, NotebookLM, Veo 3 for short video creation, and Jules, an AI coding assistant.

With two terabytes of storage and the full suite of Google’s AI tools, the Gemini app aims to support Australian students in their studies and skill development throughout the academic year.

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Meta champions open hardware to power the next generation of AI data centres

The US tech giant, Meta, believes open hardware will define the future of AI data centre infrastructure. Speaking at the Open Compute Project Global Summit, the company outlined a series of innovations designed to make large-scale AI systems more efficient, sustainable, and collaborative.

Meta, one of the OCP’s founding members, said open source hardware remains essential to scaling the physical infrastructure required for the next generation of AI.

During the summit, Meta joined industry peers in supporting OCP’s Open Data Center Initiative, which calls for shared standards in power, cooling, and mechanical design.

The company also unveiled a new generation of network fabrics for AI training clusters, integrating NVIDIA’s Spectrum Ethernet to enable greater flexibility and performance.

As part of the effort, Meta became an initiating member of Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking, aiming to strengthen connectivity across increasingly complex AI systems.

Meta further introduced the Open Rack Wide (ORW) form factor, an open source data rack standard optimised for the power and cooling demands of modern AI.

Built on ORW specifications, AMD’s new Helios rack was presented as the most advanced AI rack yet, embodying the shift toward interoperable and standardised infrastructure.

Meta also showcased new AI hardware platforms built to improve performance and serviceability for large-scale generative AI workloads.

Sustainability remains central to Meta’s strategy. The company presented ‘Design for Sustainability’, a framework to reduce hardware emissions through modularity, reuse, and extended lifecycles.

It also shared how its Llama AI models help track emissions across millions of components. Meta said it will continue to

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Google and Salesforce deepen AI partnership across Agentforce 360 and Gemini Enterprise

Salesforce and Google have expanded their long-term partnership, introducing new integrations between Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 platform and Google’s Gemini Enterprise. The collaboration aims to enhance productivity and build a new foundation for intelligent, connected business operations.

Through the expansion, Gemini models now power Salesforce’s Atlas Reasoning Engine, combining multimodal intelligence with hybrid reasoning to improve how AI agents handle complex, multistep enterprise tasks.

These integrations also extend across Google Workspace, bringing Agentforce 360 capabilities directly into Gmail, Meet, Docs, Sheets and Drive for sales, service and IT teams.

Salesforce highlights that fine-tuned Gemini models outperform competing LLMs on key CRM benchmarks, enabling businesses to automate workflows more reliably and consistently.

The companies also reaffirm their commitment to open standards like Model Context Protocol and Agent2Agent, allowing multi-agent collaboration and interoperability across enterprise systems.

A partnership that further integrates Gemini Enterprise with Slack’s real-time search API, enabling users to draw insights directly from organisational data within conversations.

Both companies stress that these advances mark a major step toward an ‘Agentic Enterprise’, where AI systems work alongside people to drive innovation, improve service quality and streamline decision-making.

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Microsoft warns of a surge in ransomware and extortion incidents

Financially motivated cybercrime now accounts for the majority of global digital threats, according to Microsoft’s latest Digital Defense Report.

The company’s analysts found that over half of all cyber incidents with known motives in the past year were driven by extortion or ransomware, while espionage represented only a small fraction.

Microsoft warns that automation and accessible off-the-shelf tools have allowed criminals with limited technical skills to launch widespread attacks, making cybercrime a constant global threat.

The report reveals that attackers increasingly target critical services such as hospitals and local governments, where weak security and urgent operational demands make them easy victims.

Cyberattacks on these sectors have already led to real-world harm, from disrupted emergency care to halted transport systems. Microsoft highlights that collaboration between governments and private industry is essential to protect vulnerable sectors and maintain vital services.

While profit-seeking criminals dominate by volume, nation-state actors are also expanding their reach. State-sponsored operations are growing more sophisticated and unpredictable, with espionage often intertwined with financial motives.

Some state actors even exploit the same cybercriminal networks, complicating attribution and increasing risks for global organisations.

Microsoft notes that AI is being used by both attackers and defenders. Criminals are employing AI to refine phishing campaigns, generate synthetic media and develop adaptive malware, while defenders rely on AI to detect threats faster and close security gaps.

The report urges leaders to prioritise cybersecurity as a strategic responsibility, adopt phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, and build strong defences across industries.

Security, Microsoft concludes, must now be treated as a shared societal duty rather than an isolated technical task.

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