The fourth Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Executive Committee for Cybersecurity conference kicked of on Wednesday, with experts in the field attending from across the GCC. Hosted by the National Cyber Security Center in Kuwait, the conference covered topics regarding the implementation of the GCC Cybersecurity Strategy, joint cyber drills, and international cooperation frameworks. Discussions also included initiatives to develop a platform for sharing threat intelligence as well as subcommittees on cybersecurity programs and governance.
Author: Angelo Salibi
AIS Business announced the launch of Thailand’s first Hyperscale Cloud platform, fully operated by a Thai company. The initiative comes at a crucial time as demand for AI-compatibility keeps mounting. The platform, “AIS Cloud powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” aims to assist both public and private sector organizations in Thailand smoothly transition into an AI-driven era. AIS Cloud will operate with local data centers, governed by local law, to ensure compliance with cybersecurity standards as well as secure digital infrastructure.
Anthropic launched a new initiative aimed at studying the economic impact of artificial intelligence. The Economic Futures Program will explore how AI technologies influence various sectors and reshape labor markets, productivity, and innovation. The project will predominately focus on three main areas: providing grants to researchers; creating forums to evaluate policy proposals; and building datasets to track AI’s economic impact and usage.
China has expressed strong opposition to Taiwan’s decision to include Huawei and SMIC on its strategic export-control list. Speaking at a press briefing, Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office, stated that China will take decisive actions to protect cross-strait economic and trade relations. Zhu warned that such moves by Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party could harm local businesses and hinder the island’s economic growth. She also emphasized that attempts to block technological exchanges or decouple from China will not impede the country’s progress in innovation and industrial development.
Meta is introducing paid advertising on WhatsApp, as it tries to diversify revenue streams. This marks a significant shift for the world’s largest messaging platform, whose founders vowed the app would remain ads-free when it was created in 2009. The shift aims to capitalize on WhatsApp’s vast user base of over 3 billion active monthly users, and provide new monetization opportunities. Meta said ads won’t affect users’ personal messaging experience. Advertisements will only appear in the app’s Updates tab, not where personal chats are located. End-to-end encryption will still apply to messages, statues, and calls and won’t be used to…
The Trump administration is facilitating a significant deal with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to bolster their artificial intelligence capabilities. The move is part of Washington’s broader strategy to expand American AI technology globally. Companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm are playing pivotal roles in this initiative. Nvidia secured a billion-dollar deal in Saudi Arabia. Qualcomm is re-entering the data center CPU market through Saudi Arabia’s AI cloud project. Meanwhile, the UAE and U.S. will partner to build the largest AI data center outside the U.S. Trump’s AI and crypto ‘czar’,David Sacks said the deals were a game changer, that would…
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) criticized World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm associated with the Trump family, for what he described as a “seriously inadequate” response to a Senate inquiry into its business practices. World Liberty Financial, led by figures close to the Trumps, is a decentralized finance project enabling crypto trading without intermediaries. Blumenthal expressed concern that foreign governments could exploit the company to enrich and compromise President Trump. The senator noted that World Liberty’s reluctance to answer basic questions about Trump’s financial ties raises significant concerns. Inquiries into the crypto dealings of the Trumps is growing in Washington.…
Google has agreed to pay a $1.375 billion settlement to Texas following two lawsuits over privacy violations. The lawsuits were initially brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022. According to a recent press release by Paxton’s office, the state alleged that Google was secretly tracking users “movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services” without consent. According to the statement, the settlement marks “the highest recovery nationwide against Google for any attorney general’s enforcement of state privacy laws.” This is not the first time Google has gone to court for unlawfully…
