India okay to spy on citizens, says court - Asian Tech Roundup

Plus: European science leaves China

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at India's controversial court ruling, an exodus of European research from China, and a massive hack on South Korea’s leading telco.

The impacts of US tariffs are settling down as Asia adjusts, with the main fallout being seen at low-cost Chinese retailers Shein and Temu this week; although Trump’s move also seems to have galvanised tech investment across the continent, with Chinese chip manufacturers in particular catching up with Nvidia and TSMC.

It’s not all going China’s way, though; its vaguely worded Data Security Law has caused several European providers to pull out of scientific collaboration.

And in India, the Supreme Court has controversially ruled that the government is allowed to deploy spyware for national security purposes, which follows allegations that it had already installed Pegasus to spy on civilians, journalists and rival politicians. There is now a push to get the court to release documents that apparently prove those claims.

Australia

• An AI DJ hosted an Australian music radio programme for months without anyone noticing. Source
• South Australia is about to pass a new law against the propagation of deepfake images and videos. Source

China

• Chinese chipmakers are catching up with Nvidia and TSMC. Rest of World has run a comparison between the leading products and Chinese competitors. Source
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that China is “not behind” in AI, calling Huawei “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world.” Source
• Huawei’s latest AI chips are being readied for testing. They are being positioned as a rival to Nvidia’s H100 processors. Source
• Huawei has delivered new AI clusters to datacentres serving Chinese tech companies that have been hit by US export sanctions. Source
• Alibaba has released Qwen 3 its latest open source hybrid LLM with 235 billion parameters in its largest version. Source
• China’s Data Security Law, which bans sharing vaguely defined "important data" with overseas partners without approval, has led several major European funders to halt scientific collaborations. Source
• Exiled Uyghur leaders were found to have been targeted with a trojanised version of an open-source Uyghur language text editor containing spyware . Source
• China is responding to US tariffs by increasing its use of robots to keep costs low. The country has announced a $137 billion national fund to expand robotics, AI and other advanced tech. Source
• But Shein and Temu are raising their prices to US customers by up to 300% because of tariffs and the abolition of the “de minimis” rule, which allowed items valued less than $800 to be imported without duties . Source
• A China-aligned threat group, TheWizards, has been linked to a lateral movement tool called Spellbinder that can facilitate adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. Source

India

• Adani has reportedly paused discussions with Israel's Tower Semiconductor over a planned $10 billion chip project to produce 80,000 wafers per month in a new facility, saying it does not make commercial sense. Source
• The Indian government has selected Sarvam AI to build its “sovereign LLM”, raising questions about government investment in proprietary, closed-source technology. Source
• Tata reported lower than expected revenues for Q4, with operational income dropping 1.2% to Rs 12.86 billion ($150.6 million) in the January-to-March quarter. Weaker demand for EVs was blamed. Source
• But the company has started producing older Apple iPhone models in Hosur in Tamil Nadu state, Reuters reports. Source
• Samsung said it will invest Rs 10 billion ($117.09 million) in its manufacturing facility in southern India, despite significant industrial action there recently. Source
• India’s Supreme Court says it is permissible for the government to deploy spyware for national security purposes. The judgement comes after allegations that the government has used Pegasus to spy on dozens of citizens. Source
• An Indian court has ordered the blocking of encrypted email provider Proton Mail across the country over a complaint it has been used to send deepfake imagery and other sexually explicit content. Source

Japan

• Logistics company Kintetsu World Express (KWE) says it has been the victim of a ransom attack that has shut down part of its business. Source
• Chip testing equipment maker Advantest reported operating profits of 228.2 billion yen ($1.59 billion) for the year ended March 31, a significant increase on 2024’s 81.6 billion yen. It expects profits to grow 6% next fiscal year on demand for testing tools for AI chips. Source
• Toyota has said that its strategy for EVs made for China will move “from adapting to China to being defined by China” and will feature Huawei’s HarmonyOS, the Android alternative. Source
• Toyota is to begin collaborating with Google’s Waymo to speed up the development of self-driving technology. Source

South Korea

• Samsung has admitted that Galaxy devices can leak information copied to the clipboard – including passwords – as plain text. Source
• Samsung has also spoken of "growing policy risks” for semiconductors and higher prices for phone parts as a result of US tariffs. Source
• SK Telecom has offered to replace SIM cards for its 23 million customers for free after a hack potentially leaked subscriber details. Source
• Internet giant Kakao has launched South Korea’s first multimodal AI model, Kanana, which can interpret text, audio and images. Source

Taiwan

• TSMC is developing a new Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate packaging technology which it says will allow it to produce giant-sized AI chips that will deliver more than 3.5 times the compute performance of current leading designs. Source
• Taiwan is introducing new controls over the export of cutting-edge process technologies and outbound investments by semiconductor companies, notably TSMC. Only technology at least one generation behind what is available domestically will be able to be deployed in overseas facilities. Source
• In contrast to Intel, TSMC will not use high-NA extreme ultraviolet lithography tools for the manufacture of chips on its initial A14 (1.4nm) process. Source
• ‘Within two months, store shelves in the US could start to look like those in developing countries,” said the CEO of Apple and Dell supplier Pegatron. Source

Other Asia

• North Korea: Ten zero day exploits have been attributed by Google to hackers working directly for China and North Korea. Government hackers were responsible for the majority of zero day exploits used in cyberattacks last year. Source
• North Korea: A US man has pleaded guilty to outsourcing US government software work he’d been contracted for to a North Korean developer in China. Source
• Pakistan: Pakistani hackers have attacked Indian websites following a lethal attack in Jammu and Kashmir and a violent reprisals by India. Websites were altered to display messages such as “Hackers are here. Kashmir will be a part of Pakistan. We do not forget.” Source
• Singapore: “Superapp” Grab says it has created an AI agent framework that can “revolutionise automation and app development, enabling AI-powered solutions up to 10 times faster than traditional methods.” Source
• Southeast Asia: Government and telecoms organisations in The Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia are being targeted by a threat actor called Earth Kurma which exfiltrates data via rootkits and keyloggers. Source