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The US government has announced new rules restricting investments in China’s AI and other tech sectors deemed threats to national security, expanding the existing restrictions that were so far limited to exports.

First introduced by the US Treasury in June, the rules are based on an executive order signed by President Joe Biden in August 2023.

They focus on three critical areas: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and certain AI systems.

“This narrow set of technologies is core to the next generation of military, cybersecurity, surveillance, and intelligence applications,” the Treasury said in a statement.

The US already restricts or bans the export of many technologies covered by the new rules to certain countries. The new program complements existing export controls and inbound screening measures by blocking US investments from aiding the development of sensitive technologies in countries of concern, the Treasury added.

Fueling the trade war

This marks the latest development in the ongoing trade war between the US and China, which has already witnessed numerous restrictions.

Analysts are skeptical of the policy’s impact, cautioning that it may further intensify tensions and stifle innovation and growth.

“The scope of restrictions is now expanding beyond the sale of technology IP or chips to include investments in the Chinese tech sector,” said Neil Shah, VP of research and partner at Counterpoint Research. “This move aims to stifle Chinese tech companies on both fronts — limiting financial and technology inflows. Unfortunately, this will make it difficult for Chinese companies to innovate quickly and will further intensify the geopolitical tech cold war.”

This also means that if China retaliates — while protecting its own manufacturing ecosystem — it could affect large and small tech companies that still rely on China as a key market.

In a related move earlier this month, a Chinese industry body called for a security review of Intel’s products, signaling heightened scrutiny of US tech firms operating in the country.

Reports indicate, however, that trade restrictions have had a limited effect on slowing Chinese chip manufacturing as China continues to stockpile chipmaking equipment. There are also loopholes in the restrictions that Chinese companies are able to take advantage of.  

Impact on enterprises

Restrictions could stifle collaboration and knowledge exchange between nations, potentially slowing innovation by reducing opportunities to work on advanced projects.

“Companies might also need to reassess their strategic priorities, which may lead to an unnecessary increase in innovation costs,” said Charlie Dai, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. “On the other hand, regulatory concerns will force enterprises outside the US to further prioritize localization strategies to achieve self-sufficiency in critical areas, potentially leading to increasingly isolated innovation ecosystems.”

The new rules may also require US enterprises to closely monitor both domestic and international regulatory shifts and establish agile compliance programs to adapt swiftly to evolving requirements.

“These constraints can also diminish R&D investments and have profound long-term economic effects, stifling advancement in pivotal sectors like semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI, ultimately hampering overall technological progress,” said Thomas George, president of Cybermedia Research.

Opportunity for emerging markets

For other emerging markets, however, the tightened US restrictions could present new opportunities by attracting redirected foreign investments from US firms.

“As trade tensions rise and new regulations emerge, US companies increasingly move away from Chinese manufacturing,” said George. “Instead, they want to collaborate with countries such as India, Mexico, and Vietnam. This shift is crucial as it enhances companies’ resilience and allows them to navigate new US export controls more effectively.”

Companies should reduce dependency on any single country by diversifying supply chains to mitigate risks associated with regulatory changes in specific regions, according to Dai.

“Engaging with research and advisory firms can help them better understand the potential impact of various regulatory changes, prepare contingency plans, and develop strategies to assess and mitigate risks,” Dai said.

The U.S. government (USG) has issued new guidance governing the use of the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) to handle the threat intelligence information shared between the private sector, individual researchers, and Federal Departments and Agencies. "The USG follows TLP markings on cybersecurity information voluntarily shared by an individual, company, or other any organization, when not in Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

More than six years after the Spectre security flaw impacting modern CPU processors came to light, new research has found that the latest AMD and Intel processors are still susceptible to speculative execution attacks. The attack, disclosed by ETH Zürich researchers Johannes Wikner and Kaveh Razavi, aims to undermine the Indirect Branch Predictor Barrier (IBPB) on x86 chips, a crucial mitigationRavie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

A researcher has released a tool to bypass Google's new App-Bound encryption cookie-theft defenses and extract saved credentials from the Chrome web browser. [...]

Microsoft announced today that inbound SMTP DANE with DNSSEC for Exchange Online, a new capability to boost email security and integrity, is now generally available. [...]

A hybrid espionage/influence campaign conducted by the Russian threat group 'UNC5812' has been uncovered, targeting Ukrainian military recruits with Windows and Android malware. [...]

Free, a major internet service provider (ISP) in France, confirmed over the weekend that hackers breached its systems and stole customer personal information. [...]

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The Phoenix fabrication facility of the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker is yielding more usable chips than similar plants in Taiwan, according to the Taipei Times.

Rick Cassidy, president of TSMC’s US division, said during a webinar last week that the share of usable chips from the company’s Phoenix plant exceeds that of similar Taiwanese plants by 4%. If true, the superior performance at the Phoenix fab is notable because the US government has been working to spur a return of the semiconductor manufacturing industry to US shores, where manufacturing tends to be more costly.

Better yields would help offset those higher costs.

“Four percent higher yield is certainly good news,” said Harry Moser, president of the Reshoring Initiative, a non-profit that offers companies assessments on offshoring costs. “To be competitive, we need a higher yield. It is agreed that US factory capital cost and operating cost will be 10% to 20% higher than in most other countries. The 4% will offset some of that difference.”

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted critical gaps in the semiconductor supply chain as imports to the US and other nations ground to a halt, affecting the production of everything with electronics, from smart phones to cars. The CHIPS and Science Act, passed in 2022, earmarked more than $52 billion in funding and tax incentives for use by the US semiconductor industry to create new or expand existing manufacturing and R&D facilities.

The CHIPS Act was created to address both future possible supply chain catastrophes and to re-establish the US as a major chips manufacturer.

To date, the CHIPS Act has allocated more than $32 billion in proposed funding across 18 companies, 16 states, and 26 projects. However, no CHIPS funding has yet been disbursed to any companies, according to the US Department of Commerce.

TSMC is the main supplier of chips for both Nvidia and Apple. The CHIPS Act allocated $6.6 billion in grants and $5 billion in loans, along with a 25% tax credit, to incentivize the company to build three fabs in Arizona. TSMC’s first facility was scheduled to open this year, but the company pushed that back to next year after labor shortages surfaced.

The US reshoring efforts come at a time when the industry doesn’t have anywhere near the workforce — including technicians, computer scientists, and engineers — required to support future needs. By some estimates, the US semiconductor industry will face a worker shortfall of between 59,000 and 146,000 workers by 2029. A minimum of 50,000 trained semiconductor engineers will be needed over the next several years in the US to meet the overwhelming and rapidly growing demand, according to a study by Purdue University.

The broader US economy is set to have a gap of 1.4 million such workers, according to a 2023 study from the Semiconductor Industry Association. So the competition will be fierce over those skilled workers. Compounding the problem is an ongoing exodus of existing talent as older workers retire. A study from Deloitte found that nearly 90% of tech leaders interviewed cited recruiting as their biggest challenge.

A TSMC spokesperson shared statements regarding the Phoenix fab with Computerworld from a third quarter earnings call by CEO C.C. Wei, but declined to comment on Cassidy’s claim directly.

“Our first fab entered engineering wafer production in April with 4-nanometer process technology, and the result is a highly satisfactory, with a very good yield,” Wei said. “This is an important operational milestone for TSMC and our customers, demonstrating TSMC’s strong manufacturing capability and execution.”

Wei said he expects volume production of the company’s first Arizona fab to start in early 2025, and he is “confident” it will deliver “the same level of manufacturing quality and reliability” from our fabs in Taiwan.

TSMC is also building two other fabs in the Phoenix area that will use more advanced technologies based on its customer needs, Wei said. The second fab is scheduled to begin volume production in 2028 and the third fab will begin production by the end of the decade.

“Thus, TSMC will continue to play a critical and integral role in enabling our customers’ success, while remaining a key partner and enabler of the US semiconductor industry,” Wei said.

Reshore Now’s Moser said it would be good to know whether the Phoenix fab uses identical equipment as in Taiwan, speculating that the US plant could have been more modern. “Was it accomplished solely by US workers or significantly by Taiwanese brought over to aid the start-up?” he said.

A government entity and a religious organization in Taiwan were the target of a China-linked threat actor known as Evasive Panda that infected them with a previously undocumented post-compromise toolset codenamed CloudScout. "The CloudScout toolset is capable of retrieving data from various cloud services by leveraging stolen web session cookies," ESET security researcher Anh Ho said. "Through Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Apple’s week of Mac began today with a newly announced iMac, now beefed up with an M4 chip and more internal memory. Apple says the iMac is up to 4.5 times faster than an equivalent all-in-one Intel Core 7 Windows PC — and promises the machine will deliver up to six times the performance of the most popular Intel-based iMac.

The inference is obvious: if you use your iMac professionally, you might want to think about an upgrade. Reinforcing the point, Apple says the iMac is up to 1.7 times faster for most tasks and 2.1 times faster for more advanced tasks when compared to the M1 model.

Apple sets the scene for its AI

Part of the reason for this improved performance is the big boost to 16GB of unified onboard memory (configurable to 24GB). That memory boost is to support Apple Intelligence, which is also available for Macs running macOS Sequoia 15.1 or above. The Neural Engine in M4 chips is 3x faster than the M1. (Apple Intelligence is also now available for iPhones and iPads running iOS/iPad OS 18.1.)

Be warned, the entry-level $1,299 iMac might not reach these performance heights as it ships with an 8-core CPU; the rest of the range offers 10 cores. You do get hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which is going to make a big difference when you use the Mac.

Apple’s AI platform play means all its current devices will now support Apple Intelligence, meaning the company now offers the world’s biggest AI ecosystem.

What else is new?

The iMac display continues to be the same 24-in. 4.5K Retina display we all know and love, with a new nano-texture glass option available if color fidelity and anti-reflection matters to you.

Starting at $1,299, the new iMacs are available in a “parade” of colors, including green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. Buyers get: a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with support for Desk View; a brilliant microphone and speaker system; and four USB-C ports, all of which support Thunderbolt 4. You can even run two external displays. Wrapping it up, you’ll find Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1 along with TouchID support, thanks to a button on the keyboard.

Overall, this is a solid and update, but it has to be said that it doesn’t seem to be the main attraction — that honor this week is likely to be all about a smaller machine….

We’re still waiting for the Mac mini

I can’t help but feel the iMac is being seen through a lens of pre-announcement speculation for the Mac mini. That product is already attracting lots of interest — just look at the pre-release headlines:

• “This is the Mac Mini’s big moment” (The Verge).
• “A tiny Mac mini could be the ultimate travel companion and I can’t wait for it” (TechRadar).
• “Apple Mac mini with M4 chip could be a game-changer for creatives, here’s why” (Hindustan Times).

Talk about setting the scene.

Even Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has put his well-connected assessment out there; he obliquely tells us that even if you are quite happy with your M1 Mac mini, the move to M4 processors “could feel as significant as that first shift from Intel machines to Apple chips.” 

That’s borne out by Apple’s iMac claims above. What we can piece together from the iMac introduction is that the new Mac mini will also deliver huge performance boosts in contrast to the M1 or M2 models already in use.

That’s an upgrade productivity benefits are built on in some industries, and it suggests that if your business has M1 (or older) Mac minis in its fleet, the new M4 models seem to be a tempting upgrade. After all, you don’t even need to replace the display….

Will a M4 Mac mini be the new Mac for business?

This introduction is expected to be about more than the silicon inside these Macs — it’s also the new design around them. If reports are correct, the new mini may be significantly smaller as Apple’s designers draw yet another benefit out of the energy and heat dissipation advantages of the company’s Arm-based chips.

Expect it to be a small aluminium box that’s taller but otherwise similar in size to the current Apple TV. I visualize this as being a box about half the size of a regular paperback book and perhaps as thick as three average length novels stacked atop each other. That’s really small. And it should now come with 16GB of base memory and support for Apple Intelligence.

Speaking just last year, MacStadium CTO Chris Chapman told me his existing server farms full of Mac minis used so much less power that his data center providers were, “always calling us up to tell us we’re not using enough power for the space.”

If the smaller size means lower energy consumption (and given what we know of Apple’s silicon evolution so far, it probably does), then for enterprises handling hundreds of these machines — or any other Mac, come to that — the M4 upgrade promises significant reductions in energy costs. 

A good start to a week of Mac

Combined with the faster chip, these tiny desktop Mac minis or larger iMacs are going to run just about anything you want as effectively as a hot knife through butter.

That’s why the upcoming Mac mini has generated so much interest, even before its introduction. Combined with the impressive iMac rollout today and anticipation around the expected powerful MacBook Pro improvements, Apple’s big week of Mac news is off to a strong start. But will it distract or focus interest on the company’s end of year results announcement Thursday?

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

OpenAI plans to release its next major flagship model, Orion, by December, according to The Verge — and Microsoft, which has invested heavily in Open AI, is said to be ready to launch Orion on Azure as early as November.

Orion is intended to be the successor to GPT-4 and is said to be up to 100 times stronger. However, unlike Open AI’s last two models, GPT-4o and o1, it will not be released first through the AI assistant Chat GPT. Instead, OpenAI plans to first give a collection of companies access to the AI model so they can use it to build their own products.

It’s unclear whether the new model will be called GPT-5 or something else. Both Open AI and Microsoft declined to comment on the report, though OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix told The Verge the company doesn’t “have plans to release a model code-named Orion this year.”

The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have disclosed that Chinese hackers breached commercial telecommunication service providers in the United States. [...]

Microsoft has moved to simplify how Office app files are opened on mobile devices after users cited uncertainty around the process. 

Opening a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file on a mobile device typically means the Microsoft 365 mobile app will start up rather than the relevant standalone app.  

This has been the case since Microsoft introduced an Office mobile app for Android and iOS in 2019. The Office app combined Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps into a single app to create an “integrated experience” and reduce the need to switch between tools, Microsoft said at the time. 

(The Office mobile app was rebranded as Microsoft 365 in 2022.)

After user feedback, Microsoft announced last week that the standalone apps will be used to open files instead — as long as the standalone Office apps are installed on a user’s device; if not, files will continue to open in the Microsoft 365 app.

Aside from reducing confusion, opening the standalone app will make it easier to multitask, Microsoft said in a blog post, with multiple Office apps open at once. 

“For customers who want to open more than one Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file at once, the standalone apps can better handle side by side and windowing scenarios that modern tablet and mobile operating systems support,” said Samer Sawaya, a principal product manager at Microsoft.

Microsoft has started apply the change across its Office apps for iOS and Android, beginning with OneDrive. Outlook will follow this month and in November, while the timing for Teams has yet to be confirmed.

Cybersecurity news can sometimes feel like a never-ending horror movie, can't it? Just when you think the villains are locked up, a new threat emerges from the shadows. This week is no exception, with tales of exploited flaws, international espionage, and AI shenanigans that could make your head spin. But don't worry, we're here to break it all down in plain English and arm you with the Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

A suspected Russian hybrid espionage and influence operation has been observed delivering a mix of Windows and Android malware to target the Ukrainian military under the Telegram persona Civil Defense. Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant are tracking the activity under the name UNC5812. The threat group, which operates a Telegram channel named civildefense_com_ua, was created on Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Three malicious packages published to the npm registry in September 2024 have been found to contain a known malware called BeaverTail, a JavaScript downloader and information stealer linked to an ongoing North Korean campaign tracked as Contagious Interview. The Datadog Security Research team is monitoring the activity under the name Tenacious Pungsan, which is also known by the monikers Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

The Dutch National Police seized the network infrastructure for the Redline and Meta infostealer malware operations in "Operation Magnus," warning cybercriminals that their data is now in the hands of law enforcement. [...]

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a spike in phishing pages created using a website builder tool called Webflow, as threat actors continue to abuse legitimate services like Cloudflare and Microsoft Sway to their advantage. "The campaigns target sensitive information from different crypto wallets, including Coinbase, MetaMask, Phantom, Trezor, and Bitbuy, as well as login credentials for Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Operational Technology (OT) security has affected marine vessel and port operators, since both ships and industrial cranes are being digitalized and automated at a rapid pace, ushering in new types of security challenges. Ships come to shore every six months on average. Container cranes are mostly automated. Diagnostics, maintenance, upgrade and adjustments to these critical systems are done The Hacker Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]