Tag Archives: technology

US/China AI Wars Escalate as China Effectively Bans Major US Developers.

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By Michael Fennell

Prior to the economic, cultural, and seemingly unending prominence of Artificial Intelligence, the US had unequivocal control in chip development. American companies like Intel and AMD dominated the space. But the industry has changed. A company once known for making graphics cards for gaming PCs is now a multi trillion dollar empire on the cutting edge of the most burdening industry in the world.
Nvidia chips have been viewed as an industry flagship with the ability for massive parallel processing, a crucial part of training AI and the execution of AI prompts. What once lay in the gaming PCs now lines server warehouses across the world. And the country of the company who makes them has a big say in who can buy them and when.


China’s Interest in the AI Industry
AI has undoubtedly become a gigantic industry, one which many speculate is not just here to stay, but to change the world. China wants to be the major player in this space for a number of reasons. Most notably the economic growth; if anything akin to the tech boom of the early 2000s, this has the potentiality to create trillions in GDP growth, tens of thousands of jobs, as well as international esteem. Not only is there a positive ambition, but a defensive one too. A reliance on the US in these tumultuous times with fluctuating relations could cause serious trouble for China. But if the roles were reversed, they would have serious bargaining power.


China Battling US Strategy
Despite the excitement around AI, China has a dilemma on their hands. Unfortunately for them the new major chip manufacturer in the space, Nvidia, is another American company. Almost all cutting edge AI technology is being developed and operated with Nvidia at their core. For China, this means that in order to compete in the present, they need to depend on the United States, who are controlling and regulating Nvidia and their exports.


In July the US Commerce secretary took to the media to explain that the US plan to both profit off of China and prevent any AI leapfrogging from them. He stated the only chip they’d be able to buy was the H20, an inferior chip which he repeatedly referred to as the “fourth best”. He said China would become “addicted to the American technology stack” and that this would stifle their domestic innovation, keeping them from the AI mantle both in terms of chips and software.


Whether it was the interview in which the US Commerce secretary made the US economic strategy abundantly clear, or the Chinese government seeing the writing on the wall, they immediately sought to ban all US chips as quickly as possible, preventing all Chinese companies from the future purchase of Nvidia chips. This was something that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang referred to as “disappointing” in a BBC interview, a comment which was not surprising considering the potential profits Nvidia could have made from a US China arms race with Nvidia in the middle. Now China seeks to develop their own Nvidia, with companies such as Cambricon, one which is working closely with Chinese AI powerhouse Deepseek.

While undoubtedly sub the standard of Nvidia, the prospects of a new chip making powerhouse in the AI space excited investors, thus skyrocketing stock prices. Now seemingly cash rich, it would appear as though the Chinese chip industry is well armed in their race against the US. Even prior to the banning, the Chinese technology company Huawei seemed desperate to catch up to Nvidia in the AI race, massively ramping up funding by billions in the AI chip space.


Consequences for China and the US
In the immediate future, China’s inability to obtain top of the line chips will undoubtedly stifle their ability to adapt and evolve in this ever-emerging industry. Despite backing domestic manufacturers, Deepseek too may take a hit with less access to domestic chips for servers and AI training. Although with their seemingly relentless pursuit from the Chinese government who are providing deregulation to fuel innovation and massive capital investments, a catch up in some way is not out of the realm of possibility. The US opium wars style tactics of dependency against China have failed, but they themselves are also investing heavily in AI both with huge sums of private capital and through the federal government through shared data factories, US AI is being fostered for world domination.


Despite their failure to export to China, the rest of the world seem eager to embrace the top of the line tech, including the UAE who recently secured a billion dollar a year investment agreement with the US for the securing of Nvidia chips.

The Collins Aerospace Cyber Attack – Valuable lessons to be learned in Business Continuity Planning

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Jessica Weld

A recent cyber-attack on aerospace giant Collins Aerospace, has caused widescale outages of its MUSE Software, a check in system used by some of Europe’s largest airports including Dublin Airport and London Heathrow has caused mass disruption, resulting in stranded passengers and endless flight delays, ultimately resulting in mountains of manual work for ground staff.

The EU’s Cybersecurity Agency has since confirmed that this was a malicious ransomware attack. Hackers have deliberately knocked out Collins Aerospace systems for potential monetary gain.

In a time where large ransomware attacks on vital networks and systems are becoming increasingly common, organisations must not only strengthen cybersecurity measures, but it’s becoming increasingly imperative that they also have adequate plans in place for if and when crises like this arise. 

Industry Specific View – Commercial Aviation

The Commercial Aviation industry operates on a tightly coordinated supply chain which in recent decades, has become heavily automated. An issue with one link in the chain can cause a catastrophic domino effect which can, as a result, affect many flights and thousands of passengers. 

Within the European Union, airline passengers are heavily protected against such delays under EU 261 regulations. These regulations entitle passengers to compensation for events such as delays, cancellations and missing luggage. 

Compensation agency Skycop revealed that in 2024 alone, airlines owed passengers €6 billion under EU 261 regulations. One can only imagine the cost of passenger compensation with the amount of flights and passengers affected by this cyber-attack. Alongside this, airlines will have to factor in staff overtime, the cost of repositioning crews and aircraft and additional airport fees. (EU flight delays in 2024 may cost airlines over €6 billion).

For the airline industry, the financial risks associated with such an attack are far too high to not have a robust contingency plan in place. 

The Airline Response  

The Dublin Airport Authority’s Head of Media Relations, Graeme McQueen, informed RTÉ that both Ryanair and Aer Lingus test their manual check-in processes on one flight per week.

While regular testing is useful to familiarise staff with manual processes, it is not sufficient in testing the airline’s capacity to cope with a wide-scale outage. For if the system were to fail, it’s unlikely that it does so for one flight. More often than not, outages are widescale. 

The system outage caused Aer Lingus to revert to fully manual check-in processes for all scheduled flights. As a result, queues for check-in were taking 30 to 40 minutes at times. This caused multiple flight delays and as many as 13 Aer Lingus flights were cancelled on the second day of the outage, Tuesday, September 23rd. 

Better Business Continuity Planning Practice

A fit-for-purpose business continuity plan first and foremost must require a comprehensive risk assessment of potential threats. The instructions of the business continuity plan should comprehensively respond to all of these potential threats so that the organisation is fully prepared for any eventuality.

Secondly, resilience measures are vital to business operations and must be incorporated into business continuity planning. These are the measures taken to ensure that when an incident like this occurs, the recovery time is as quick as possible. A common resilience measure would be the use of backup systems to ensure downtime is minimised. 

Regular testing of business continuity plans is vital to ensure their success in the event of an incident. Testing is important to raise staff awareness of crisis procedures so that response time is quick. Testing is also beneficial to spot any weaknesses in planning and processes so they can be rectified. 

Capacity planning is very important in business continuity planning. As previously noted, outages are usually widespread and rarely occur in single iterations. Organisations need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario and must ensure that their entire business operation can be supported by the business continuity plan in the event of an incident.

Lessons to be Learned by Airlines 

While it is known that airlines had regularly tested contingency plans in place to deal with an issue like this, it is clear that capacity was an unfortunate downfall of the incident response. This flaw wouldn’t appear in testing as usually conducted by Ryanair and Aer Lingus as they only tested on one flight a week. It is apparent that the airlines didn’t account for manpower requirements to handle manual procedures for all scheduled flights.  

Resilience measures also appear to be lacking as there is no back-up system available to assist the recovery effort. Improvement in backup systems would reduce the risk posed by such incidents and in this particular event, would prevent the enormous financial losses. 

Finally, as it almost goes without saying, tightening of cybersecurity measures should be top priority for the airlines, airports and suppliers like Collins Aerospace. In the current climate, ransomware attacks pose detrimental risks to vital, fast-moving industries like commercial aviation. In an ever developing and increasingly automated world, organisations need to prioritise investment in cybersecurity to reduce risk. 

The Implications of Tech Giant Microsoft’s Acquisition of Blizzard

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Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a leading company in “game development and interactive entertainment content publisher,” for $68.7 billion – which is the biggest gaming industry deal to date. Microsoft’s motives in this deal lie in the gaming industry being “the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today,” and its participation in developing metaverse platforms. After Facebook transformed into Meta Platforms to increase its efforts in virtual reality, other tech companies have now followed suit in placing bets on the metaverse. Microsoft acquiring Activision plays a key role in its involvement in the “metaverse arms race.” It will also bolster Microsoft’s venture to grow its gaming business across different platforms such as mobile, PC, console and cloud. 

Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, states that together with Activision, they will be able to “build a future where people can play the games they want virtually anywhere they want.” Activision has released some of the most successful and well known games on the market, including Candy Crush, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, notes that Activision’s “world class talent and extraordinary franchises,” married with “Microsoft’s technology, distribution, access to talent, ambitious vision, and shared commitment to gaming and inclusion will help ensure [their] continued success in an increasingly competitive industry.” 

            Although the prospect of furthering the metaverse and making games more accessible to individuals on more platforms are positive in the advancement of the tech sector, there are antitrust and competition hurdles that Microsoft must jump in order for this acquisition to succeed. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Britain’s antitrust regulator, acknowledges that Microsoft is disposed to be successful in cloud gaming given its leading cloud platform in Azure, PC operating system in Windows OS, and Xbox. However, these strengths combined with ownership of Activision’s games “could damage competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming services.”  If Microsoft refuses competitors’ access to Activision’s games, the gaming industry could be struck with serious damage – which is why the deal requires approval in several major jurisdictions including the United States, China and the EU. 

            The antitrust concerns lie greatly in how the deal would impair game console creators such as Sony and entrants to the new market of gaming subscription services and cloud gaming. Open competition would be severely harmed if Microsoft gains the ability to refuse rivals access to Activision games or provide them on worse terms. The Phase 1 investigation conducted by the CMA requires Microsoft to address its concern over the control the company would gain over popular games post-acquisition. If Microsoft fails to offer remedy solutions, the CMA would initiate its Phase 2 wherein an independent panel would carry out an in depth analysis and examination of competition implications. 

            In response, Microsoft released a statement in an attempt to appease regulators by saying that Call of Duty would not become an exclusive Microsoft Xbox game and would continue to be available on other companies’ game consoles. The company wants to remain committed in its mission to provide people with “more access to games, not less.” Analysts believe that Microsoft should provide specifications around these exclusivities in writing to demonstrate more credibility and legitimacy in its pledges. 

            Microsoft has painted a very exciting picture of its desire to “embrace choice,” for games to “reach the billions of players where they are and no matter what device they play on,” through this expansion. Their Game Pass subscription option and cloud game streaming technology to bring more games to mobile platforms would allow the company to “open up mobile gaming, create new distribution opportunities for game developers outside of mobile app stores and deliver compelling and immersive experiences for players using the power of cloud.”  However, the stricter antitrust regulations, especially on tech giants, stretches out the period of time between the announcement of a deal and its completion – thus increasing the threat of the transaction disintegrating. Microsoft’s response to the antitrust concerns over its acquisition will set an important example and no doubt offer guidance to future mergers and acquisitions, especially in the tech industry where monopolies are scrutinised to prevent giants from gaining and abusing unfettered power.