Asia In short Amid an investigation into his entertainment expenses, the chief operating officer of scandal-plagued Japanese tech giant Toshiba, Goro Yanase, resigned last week.
Yanase “will not be nominated as a director candidate at the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders,” it read [PDF] an announcement from the Japanese electronics conglomerate. The document explains that the former COO “submitted entertainment expenses without reporting the actual names of the parties with whom he had food or beverage business in violation of Toshiba Group rules.”
News of the resignation came as the company posted [PDF] Q3 revenue was lower than market expectations, and reduced full-year profit guidance from $930 million to $721 million.
The company also acknowledged that it has received the takeover proposal being considered by its board, with no deadline for a decision.
The Chinese province will buy four million servers
China’s Guizhou Province last week announced a plan to invest $2.9 billion in big data infrastructure to inform economic growth. By 2025, the province plans to have four million servers, placed in 800,000 datacenter racks, and access to more than 180,000 5G base stations in the area.
On a smaller scale, South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT released details on Wednesday of a newly opened AI datacenter at Seoul’s Korea University.
The lab boasts 35 petaflops of computing power – enough for nearly 100 people to simultaneously conduct extensive AI research. The ministry said the recent emergence of super-large AI “like ChatGPT highlights the importance of high-performance computing.”
Google Cloud’s nine-day APAC brownout has ended
Google Cloud has fixed a high latency issue that hit the asia-southeast2 region on February 8.
“Users of Google Cloud Networking will be able to observe higher latency due to ongoing issues with Telecom providers” is the ad and search giant’s diagnosis, followed by an analysis of the impact “Our engineering team has reduced of the issue to a regional telecom service provider and reported it to them for further investigation.”
Word continued on Google’s incident status report for more than a week, until the February 17 update was clear. Google is currently “evaluating additional improvement opportunities to determine effective traffic retargeting.” – Simon Sharwood
Singapore rules out silicon investments
Beh Swan Gin, chairman of Singapore’s Economic Development Board, told Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin in an interview last week that the island nation wants to win its “fair share” of semiconductor-related investments while the US and China continue to spar in technology and international trade.
Australia is looking for a space comms network
The Australian government last week issued a tender seeking “progressive and innovative ideas to support a feasibility study of a space-based Data Transport and Relay Network (DTRN).”
“The DTRN is envisioned as a flexible and configurable global converged network in space, drawing on multiple security domains to disseminate Defense data,” the tender states. “It must be robust, enabling the safe and rapid transmission and reception of many types of digital data through an open system architecture on satellite and ground assets using commercial military frequencies. – will be built.” – Simon Sharwood
The majority of AI investment in Southeast Asia goes to Singapore
A report from the US think tank Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) found that Singapore accounted for 81 percent of the observed AI investment transactions in Southeast Asia and 94 percent of all the value of AI transactions.
Japan to start CBDC pilot
The Bank of Japan announced last week [PDF] it will conduct a pilot of its central bank digital currency in April.
“In the pilot program, the Bank will create a system for experiments, where a central system, intermediary network systems, intermediary systems, and endpoint devices are configured in an integrated way ,” the institution announced.
The currency’s adoption is uncertain: the Bank says “Whether the issuance of CBDC should be decided through discussions among the Japanese public. With a view to facilitating such discussions, the Bank will continue to make full preparedness to respond to changes in circumstances in an appropriate manner.”
– Simon Sharwood
Air India has made the largest order of the aircraft
Air India announced last week [PDF] it intends to acquire 470 passenger aircraft from Airbus and Boeing in the largest commercial aviation purchase of all time. The order includes 40 Airbus A350s, 20 Boeing 787s and ten Boeing 777-9 widebody aircraft, as well as 210 Airbus A320/321 Neos and 190 Boeing 737 MAX single-aisle aircraft. The first new aircraft will enter service later this year with the majority arriving from mid-2025 onwards.
Australia continues to seize Chinese cameras from government offices
Australia’s Department of Finance said last week about 122 cameras made by Chinese vendors Hikvision and Dahua were found in the offices of 88 federal MPs. The government is looking to remove them all. More than 900 were found earlier this month by government agencies, spread across 250 sites.
In other news…
Our regional coverage from last week included news of South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter beaming its first images back to Earth.
Berkshire Hathaway vice chair, Charlie Munger said that China is right to ban cryptocurrency and that the probability of the Middle Kingdom invading Taiwan is low. 99-year-old TSMC is also suggesting a buyout now that his company is dumping a load of it.
News of the Omaha-based entity’s decision to sell more than 50 million shares of TSMC was announced the same day TSMC said it would plow $3.5 billion into Arizona fabs and nearly $7 billion into funds capital for other expenses.
China is not immune to the ChatGPT craze and companies including Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu are all working on creating a native version. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology has pledged to support businesses in developing large-scale language models to support services comparable to ChatGPT.
Six businesses have been placed on the US entity list for national security concerns after a faulty Chinese surveillance balloon was sent over US soil.
A Chinese semiconductor trade org released a letter opposing an alliance between Japan, The Netherlands and the US to restrict chip exports to the Middle Kingdom.
Foxconn signed a $62.5 million MOU for the lease of 45 hectares of land in an industrial park in Vietnam’s Bac Giang province, where it already has 50.5 hectares.
Norwegian authorities have announced that they have recovered $5.9 million in cryptocurrency stolen in the Axie Infinity hack. The hack has been attributed to the Lazarus Group, which has links to North Korea.
The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) – the internet registry for 56 countries in the region – has warned that members may receive fake phone calls from people pretending to be members of the organization of attempt to attract their votes in a controversial upcoming election. ®
