Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Donald Clarke @donaldcclarke.bsky.social · 16d

Jerome A. Cohen, 1930-2025
donaldclarke.substack.com/p/jerome-a-c...

Jerome A. Cohen, 1930-2025

On Monday night I received the very sad news that Jerome Cohen had passed away that day at 95.

donaldclarke.substack.com

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Joseph Menn @joemenn.bsky.social · 18d

Print version of my dive into the growing threats of hackers getting access to victim organizations’ #AI. Thanks to experts from NCC, SentinelOne, Endor and elsewhere.

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · 20d

This is yet another story about authoritarianism — but one that hits a little different. Phurba is resilience incarnate, a person born for these times. And his tale is bonkers. I hope you enjoy reading it as much we did reporting it. Gift link: www.wsj.com/world/asia/t...

The Daring Caper of a Faithful Tibetan Who Outfoxed China

He escaped from police and crossed thousands of miles of wilderness on a decadelong odyssey toward freedom.

www.wsj.com

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Turquoise Roof @handle.invalid · 20d

Our latest case of #transnationalrepression: a young Chinese woman studying in France has disappeared some seven weeks ago while on a trip to visit her family in Hunan province.

She is an editor for the digital platform “Chinese Youth Stand for Tibet” (CYST)
www.tibetanreview.net/chinese-intl...

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Open Technology Fund @opentechfund.bsky.social · 22d

“This is very frightening,” @interseclab.bsky.social's Marla Rivera explained the technical details of new @opentechfund.bsky.social - supported research into Geedge Networks’ censorship and surveillance technologies to @wired.com.

WIRED @wired.com · Sep 9

Geedge Networks, a company with ties to the founder of China’s mass censorship infrastructure, is selling its censorship and surveillance systems to at least four other countries in Asia and Africa. www.wired.com/story/geedge...

Massive Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great Firewall to the World

Geedge Networks, a company with ties to the founder of China’s mass censorship infrastructure, is selling its censorship and surveillance systems to at least four other countries in Asia and Africa.

www.wired.com

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Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social · 23d

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

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Turquoise Roof @handle.invalid · 23d

The Chinese artificial intelligence engine #DeepSeek often refuses to help programmers or gives them code with major security flaws when they say they are working for #Tibetans, or other communities considered sensitive by the Chinese government, new @crowdstrike.com research shows:

Joseph Menn @joemenn.bsky.social · 24d

New research shows #DeepSeek suggests less-secure code when it is asked to help groups out of favor with the Chinese government. With its open-source model being adopted widely, this soft influence and hackability could spread. Gift link with email address etc. wapo.st/46jEZrb

AI firm DeepSeek writes less-secure code for groups China disfavors

Research by a U.S. security firm points to the country’s leading player in AI providing higher-quality results for some purposes than others.

wapo.st

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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 24d

Exclusive: China’s internet regulator has told the country’s biggest technology companies to stop buying Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips on.ft.com/468o6Rv

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Dake Kang @dakekang.bsky.social · 24d

1/THREAD: @AP has published our investigation into how US tech firms enabled China’s digital police state. We obtained multiple, massive leaks of internal and classified Chinese government and corporate documents running into the tens of thousands:
apnews.com/article/chin...

Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China, internal documents show

U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Dell and Cisco largely designed and built China’s surveillance state, an AP investigation finds. The tech companies deny wrongdoing.

apnews.com

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Open Technology Fund @opentechfund.bsky.social · 24d

New @opentechfund.bsky.social-supported research from @interseclab.bsky.social and partners uncovers how Chinese company Geedge Networks is exporting a comprehensive, turnkey surveillance and censorship system worldwide.

Learn more:
buff.ly/R7FJAyD

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Greg @jamyang.net · 26d

Silicon Valley’s Surveillance Technology Transfer Problem
(Davi Ottenheimer) www.flyingpenguin.com?p=72174

Historians Produce Pattern Recognition

The Associated Press investigation into Silicon Valley’s role in building China’s surveillance state reads like an old 1940s playbook. The birth of Silicon Valley was unlimited federal funding to develop radar technology for Allied forces. Eventually the results threatened American planes over Korea in a devastating turnabout. The cultural shock resuled in a “Top Gun” project that only escalated the cycles. This context matters greatly when considering tech giants like IBM, Dell, Cisco, and Intel spending over two decades essentially building the world’s most sophisticated digital prisons and handing the keys to America’s most obvious geopolitical rival.

The scale of stupidity is sobering. American companies sold billions of dollars in surveillance technology to Chinese police and government agencies, as if emboldened by repeated Congressional warnings that these tools were being used to crush dissent and target minorities.

Can you imagine a CEO at a tech firm giving an executive team presentation that “these elected politicians are telling us if we get rich helping China we also can destroy democracy and instrument racism globally, hell yeah!”

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Greg @jamyang.net · 24d

China controls ~70% of global cellular #IoT modules. Dependence risks go beyond supply chains: firmware backdoors or sudden cut-offs could be weaponised, argues Charles Parton:

Council on Geostrategy @congeostrategy.bsky.social · 24d

🚨 Governments remain ignorant to the threat posed by dependence on 🇨🇳 cellular IoT modules in our critical national infrastructure

Warns Charles Parton OBE, Chief Adviser to our #ChinaObservatory, in fDi Intelligence

We must face China’s rare earths 2.0 moment

Western reliance on Chinese cellular IoT modules can spiral into another pernicious addiction

www.fdiintelligence.com

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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 25d

In Opinion | “Even if you regard widespread surveillance as a reasonable precaution against crime, there is no way to be sure how this data could be used in the future, and no system in place to protect or regulate it,” Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez writes.

Opinion | What You Need to Know About Police Surveillance

New tools allow law enforcement agencies to track us at an unimaginable scale.

nyti.ms

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 25d

the CCP is going to collapse after a cult forms around an AI chatbot claiming to be Jesus and 50 million people die.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The chatbots claiming to be Jesus: spreading gospel or heresy?

Jesus chatbots aren't the only AI technologies seeping into religious practice. Some worshippers don't agree with the use of them.

www.nature.com

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China Digital Times @chinadigitaltimes.net · 29d

CDT Quote of the Week:
chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/09/inte...

"When building circumvention tools, we should be investing in smaller, frankly shorter-lived bits of technology that might only stay up for 18 months, so that we're making a lot of small bets, rather than one big bet. I think as a strategy that will be more robust against a state-actor adversary." - Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University, on future developments for circumventing Chinese government internet censorship. Edelson and Jessica Batke are co-authors of the recent report "The Locknet: How China Controls Its Internet and Why It Matters."

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Turquoise Roof @handle.invalid · 26d

#Surveillance systems used to monitor #Tibetans are sometimes built with Silicon Valley technology- exported, repurposed, and weaponised for repression.

turquoiseroof.org/weaponising-...

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Greg @jamyang.net · 26d

积至公司与MESA实验室：防火长城史上最大规模文件外泄分析 gfw.report/blog/geedge_... @gfw.report.web.brid.gy

gfw.report/blog/geedge_...

Geedge & MESA Leak: Analyzing the Great Firewall’s Largest Document Leak

The Great Firewall of China (GFW) experienced the largest leak of internal documents in its history on Thursday September 11, 2025. Over 500 GB of source code, work logs, and internal communication re...

gfw.report

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Greg @jamyang.net · 26d

Silicon Valley’s Surveillance Technology Transfer Problem
(Davi Ottenheimer) www.flyingpenguin.com?p=72174

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Catalin Cimpanu @campuscodi.risky.biz · 26d

Suspected Indian APT group Sidewinder is using the recent Nepalese Gen-Z protests to phish and infect with Android malware whatever is left of the local government

strikeready.com/blog/sidewin...

Sidewinder APT leverages Nepal protests to push mobile malware

Sidewinder APT is leveraging the ongoing turmoil in Nepal to distribute mobile malware.

strikeready.com

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Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 29d

look at the dismissive tone in this article (gift link). Is it because it's Nepal and not, say Taiwan? Because the protestors have been branded young? or just a determination to keep following the disingenuous line that the protests were about social media bans and now there's ✨irony✨?

Nepal’s Social Media Ban Backfires as Politics Moves to a Chat Room

www.nytimes.com

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Global Voices @globalvoices.org · 27d

The Israeli military “offers an important insight into how the latest technologies can be adopted for widespread monitoring and control.”

‘Smart’ (or Machiavellian?) surveillance: The power of terminology

The Israeli military “offers an important insight into how the latest technologies can be adopted for widespread monitoring and control.”

globalvoices.org

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Turquoise Roof @handle.invalid · 27d

How Gen Z protestors chose #Nepal first woman PM on #Discord news.google.com/search?q=nep...

Google News

Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, aggregated from sources all over the world by Google News.

news.google.com

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Greg @jamyang.net · Jul 16

The retreat of the US from the #InternetFreedom agenda is not just a geopolitical shift but a normative collapse, argues Konstantinos Komaitis www.techpolicy.press/the-us-just-... @techpolicypress.bsky.social

The US Just Logged Off from Internet Freedom | TechPolicy.Press

The retreat of the United States from the digital rights arena creates a vacuum that authoritarian states are eager to occupy, writes Konstantinos Komaitis.

www.techpolicy.press

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Greg @jamyang.net · 29d

In a matter of days, #Nepal has gone from a fragile democracy to a digital battleground where the future of the nation is being shaped not in parliament, but on #Discord servers, explains @techschmuck.bsky.social

techpolicy.press/lessons-from...

Lessons from Nepal on the High Cost of Controlling Online Expression | TechPolicy.Press

The Nepalese government attempted to control the information ecosystem and lost control of the state itself, writes Samik Kharel.

techpolicy.press

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Greg @jamyang.net · 28d

RAND: (2014) Internet freedom gains #resilience from synergy across projects, and many small bets: a portfolio of diverse, redundant tools beat any single solution, any day. #InternetFreedom www.rand.org/pubs/researc...

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