Soft

• A cybersecurity newsletter covering July 13–17, 2026, highlights a growing trend of state-backed operators using commercial AI coding tools to facilitate attacks on government networks. • The report details a critical security failure where hackers breached a Microsoft IIS server and successfully deployed ransomware across an entire enterprise network in less than 24 hours. • These incidents underscore the disappearing line between legitimate developer tools and malicious attack tooling, as well as the extreme speed of modern intrusions.

• Forrester warns that Europe's multi-billion euro investments in semiconductor fabrication plants will not be enough to break its dependence on U.S. cloud and software providers. • Despite these efforts, tech sovereignty remains dominated by the U.S. and China, with European nations showing minimal growth in their tech capabilities. • Projections through 2030 show marginal increases in tech presence for major economies, with Germany and Spain rising to 36%, France to 35%, the UK to 32%, and Italy to 29%.

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Palantir's Alex Karp have warned enterprises that AI labs are covertly mining customer data and proprietary know-how to develop competing products. • In a separate development, AI safety researcher Alex Turner resigned from Google DeepMind, alleging the company signed a military deal with the Pentagon that violates its 2018 pledge against lethal autonomous weapons. • Additionally, the startup Thinking Machines, which launched in February 2025 with a record-breaking seed round, has reportedly lost several executives to OpenAI.

• A consortium of 44 Japanese companies, led by SoftBank, Sony, and Honda, launched a project on Thursday to develop a sovereign AI foundation model using domestic data. • To support the development of "physical AI," Tokyo plans to purchase 27,500 Nvidia Rubin chips to provide the necessary computational power. • This initiative aims to reduce reliance on foreign AI technology by creating a localized infrastructure tailored to Japan's specific industrial and linguistic needs.

Telco outlines reasons for network failure that hit mobiles, trains and retailers ahead of appearance at Senate inquiryFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastTelstra has blamed the lack of a software update for a key time-keeping system for outage that caused nation-wide chaos last week, with its maintenance teams also unaware of a design change that affected how it would reset.Ahead of an appearance by its chief executive, Vicki Brady, at a Senate inquiry over the mobile outage on Friday, Telstra provided a written submission that revealed the cause. In it, the company stated it didn’t lack redundancy in its network – but the redundancy also did not prevent the outage. Continue reading...

• The tech industry is facing a critical juncture as of July 16, 2026, characterized by record-breaking demand for AI chips colliding with severe energy constraints. • Open-weight AI models are increasingly challenging the dominance of closed AI laboratories, shifting the competitive landscape of artificial intelligence development. • Global regulators are currently rewriting rules to govern AI, while billion-dollar investments continue to pour into the sector despite these legal shifts.

• Asian foreign exchange markets are trading cautiously as a softening U.S. dollar balances ongoing geopolitical risks. • The Bank of Korea implemented a widely expected 25 basis-point interest-rate hike to 2.75%, though the USD/KRW pair still fell approximately 0.4% to around 1,479 won. • Despite the rate hike, the South Korean won faces limited support due to persistent foreign selling in technology shares and regional instability.