TheChek News Flow

Talks that led to expected state savings of nearly $1.5bn described as ‘more an execution than a negotiation’

Pakistan’s powerful security services used heavy pressure to coerce five local utility companies to end electricity supply contracts with the government early, according to people familiar with the talks.

Pakistan’s power ministry has said agreements that were announced on Thursday to end the contracts will save the cash-strapped government Rs411bn ($1.48bn) and help it cut electricity prices for households and businesses.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said the power companies had “prioritised national interest over personal interest” and “voluntarily agreed” to the terminate their contracts.

But energy sector businesspeople said the agreement with the five publicly listed “independent power producers” followed weeks of pressure from security services.

“We will go to any measure even beyond our imaginations to get the issue settled,” one military officer told an energy executive in a text message seen by the Financial Times. “Time has come to give a final blow to such IPPs.”

Senior executives were called to meetings with senior security officials, according to three people in the energy industry familiar with the conversations. Nadeem Anjum, head of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, attended some of the meetings before he retired in late September, they said.

One businessman involved in the process said the talks had been more an “execution than a negotiation”. Security service and government officials threatened to investigate energy investors’ ventures in other sectors if they did not comply with the government’s demands, said the businessman, who like others familiar with the talks asked not to be identified because of their sensitivity.

“Coercion and threats worked. At the end, all sponsors and investors are human and take decisions to ensure their physical and business interests’ wellbeing,” he said.

“The negotiations took place in a cordial and constructive environment, and the allegations of harassment are completely unfounded and baseless,” Pakistan’s power ministry said in statement. The Pakistan Armed Forces also denied any use of threats or intimidation.

The share prices of the five utilities slumped over the past month as investors anticipated the premature demise of their contracts.

Hub Power Company, the country’s largest energy producer, agreed to end early a contract under which the government had committed to buy electricity from one of its power plants until 2027.

In a statement to Pakistan’s stock exchange on Thursday, Hub Power, which is also a partner for a number of Chinese ventures in the country including electric vehicle giant BYD, said its decision was made “in the greater national interest”.

By close of trade on Friday, shares in Hubco had fallen more than 30 per cent since September 18, while those in Lalpir Power, another utility that agreed to end its contract early, were down 32 per cent.

In order to end widespread electricity shortages a decade ago, the Pakistani government used promises of sovereign-backed, dollar-indexed returns as well as purchase commitments to attract billions of dollars from lenders into the country’s power sector.

The move eased crippling blackouts. However, power tariffs in Pakistan have more than doubled over the past three years, as the heavily indebted government cut subsidies and passed capacity payments for about 40,000MW of installed generating capacity — much of it sitting idle — on to consumers.

The surge in electricity bills to some of the highest levels in the region turned independent power producers into public villains and spawned protests demanding their lucrative contracts be cancelled.

In August, Sharif appointed a task force co-ordinated by a military general to find solutions to the country’s spiralling power costs.

Awais Leghari, Pakistan’s power minister, told the Financial Times that the government and the power companies held multiple talks to revise the terms of the agreements and to take into account the companies’ objections.

There was a shared understanding between the parties that a solution was needed “to keep the entire power sector from going bankrupt”, he said, adding: “In spite of the termination of the contracts, they [the power companies] will have still made far higher returns than they would have in any other country.”

He has said the government is still negotiating with other power producers to revise their contracts.

The tough tactics are the latest sign of the creeping influence of Pakistan’s military in managing the crisis-stricken country’s turbulent economic affairs, analysts say.

“Power sector debts are ruining the country’s finances . . . and the military didn’t trust that the civilians, with their own ties to the power industry, could get a deal done,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc, a book on the military’s business affairs, and a senior fellow at King’s College, London.

But analysts warned the state’s approach risked deterring investors from taking part in the government’s planned privatisation of Pakistan’s debt-laden flag-carrier airline and power distribution companies.

“This gain has come at the cost of breaking investors’ trust,” said Uzair Younus, a principal at The Asia Group consultancy in Washington, adding he believed the savings would be much less than the government expected.

“However, the military will chalk this up as a success, meaning that they’ll increase their interventions even more in the months to come,” Younus said.

Rare move will involve sending American forces to operate THAAD battery for defence against further Iranian missile attacks

The US is sending an advanced anti-missile system to Israel and 100 troops to operate it in a rare move that will boost its ally’s defences as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government plans retaliatory strikes against Iran.

President Joe Biden authorised the Pentagon to send a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery to “bolster Israel’s air defences” following two missile barrages from Iran earlier this year, the US defence department said on Sunday.

Washington will also send approximately 100 soldiers to operate the missile system within Israel, according to a US defence official. The THAAD, a ground-based system designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, can defend a larger area than the more common Patriot system.

The move comes ahead of expected Israeli retaliation against Iran’s ballistic missile attack against the Jewish state on October 1. Iran fired 180 missiles in response to the assassination of Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah late last month and of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Washington has backed Israel’s right to retaliate but Biden has been urging Netanyahu not to hit Iranian nuclear sites or its oil infrastructure. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has vowed his government’s response will be “deadly, precise and — above all — surprising”.

Biden and Netanyahu spoke on the phone on Thursday, a conversation the White House said involved an “honest” and “productive” discussion of retaliation plans.

Many of Iran’s missiles were intercepted, but the assault was regarded as far more severe than a more telegraphed attack in April.

During that round of tit-for-tat exchanges, limited damage was caused and the Biden administration helped contain the escalation as Israel responded with a missile attack on a military base near the Iranian city of Isfahan.

The scale and size of Israel’s response to this month’s barrage will determine how Iran reacts, analysts say, with the fear being that the region is sliding to all-out war, with counterstrike followed by counterstrike.

Israel’s options include targeting the Islamic republic’s nuclear plants, considered the most extreme scenario, its oil infrastructure or military facilities.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza and a wave of regional hostilities last year, Washington has dispatched additional US troops and military equipment, including warships, fighter jets and air defences, to help defend Israel and deter Iran.

Major General Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesperson, said the THAAD deployment underscored America’s “ironclad commitment to the defence of Israel”, and was part of wider regional changes made in recent months.

Israel has its own sophisticated anti-missile defences, including its Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow systems, but US support is considered vital to protecting the country from large missile and drone barrages from Iran.

The US last sent a THAAD battery after the October 7 attack last year having previously deployed one to Israel in 2018 for training and a military exercise.

U.S. officials don’t know who is behind the drones that have flown unhindered over sensitive national-security sites—or how to stop them

U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.

Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors.

For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.

The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.

The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.

Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.

Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.

Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after they first appeared in December last year. Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon’s UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond.

Drone incursions into restricted airspace were already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth.

U.S. officials said they didn’t know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones.

The sightings revealed the dilemma of defending against drones on U.S. soil compared with the ease of deploying or battling them abroad. Drones have become a deadly and cost-effective tool of war, capable of carrying surveillance gear, explosives or lethal chemicals. Yet shooting down suspicious aircraft over the U.S. risks disrupting or endangering the lives of Americans the military is sworn to protect.

Early last year, a suspected Chinese spy balloon crammed with electronic surveillance gear floated across the country for eight days, while military leaders waited for it to reach a spot isolated enough to shoot it down safely. After the balloon made it to the Southeast coast, an F-22 jet from Langley punctured it with a missile.

Ten months later, the phalanx of drones appeared at Langley.

Over 17 days, the drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back. Some shone small lights, making them look like a constellation moving in the night sky—or a science-fiction movie, Kelly said, “‘Close Encounters at Langley.’” They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley, he said, were unlike any past incursion.

VanHerck, who led the military response to the Chinese balloon, ordered jet fighters and other aircraft to fly close enough to glean clues from the drones. He recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorize a full menu of electronic eavesdropping and spycraft to learn more, though the Pentagon is limited in what it can do on U.S. soil.

“If there are unknown objects within North America,” VanHerck said, the job is “to go out and identify them.”

Solving that mystery, even for the world’s pre-eminent superpower, proved easier said than done. Local police were among the first to try.

For two nights, starting on Dec. 6, Hampton, Va., officers chased the drones, by patrol car and on foot, relaying momentary sightings along with information from Langley over police radios: One was seen in the area of Marshall Street or Gosnold’s Hope Park.

Three more appeared to land but returned to the air before officers could reach them. Another looked like it landed offshore. Police finally gave up.

Gen. Kelly, now retired, said the Pentagon was stumped, too.

What would the U.S. do, he asked, “if this happens over the National Mall?”

This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen government officials and other people familiar with the events, as well as police records, court documents and photographs of the drones.

Flying blind

The drone swarm was reported to the Pentagon office of the National Military Command Center, which is responsible for dispersing emergency messages to U.S. military commanders worldwide.

A report went to the White House Situation Room, and the president learned about it in his daily briefing.

U.S. officials didn’t believe hobbyists were flying the drones, given the complexity of the operation. The drones flew in a pattern: one or two fixed-wing drones positioned more than 100 feet in the air and smaller quadcopters, the size of 20-pound commercial drones, often below and flying slower. Occasionally, they hovered.

They came from the north around 6 p.m. to traverse the base, which sits on a peninsula at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and continued south, beyond the reach of radar. They repeated the pattern and then disappeared, typically by midnight.

Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall convened the White House brainstorming sessions. One official suggested using electronic signals to jam the drones’ navigation systems. Others cautioned that it might disrupt local 911 emergency systems and Wi-Fi networks.

One suggestion was to use directed energy, an emerging technology, to disable or destroy the drones. An FAA official said such a weapon carried too high a risk for commercial aircraft during the December holiday travel season.

Others suggested that the U.S. Coast Guard shoot nets into the air to capture the drones. An official pointed out that the Coast Guard might not have the authority to use such a weapon in this instance. Besides, the drones were too difficult to track closely.

Langley officials had called on U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships to keep a watch out for the drones with little luck. They were much smaller than military aircraft and didn’t always show up on radar. Military personnel had to recalibrate their radar systems, which were set to ignore anything that resembled a bird.

Analysts learned that the smaller quadcopters didn’t use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial drones—more evidence that the drone operators weren’t hobbyists.

Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm, and moved the F-22 jet fighters to another base. Base residents shared their sightings at the local Starbucks and posted blurry photos of the drones on private Facebook groups.

Intelligence officials spotted a vessel floating in international waters off the coast of Virginia and suspected a connection. Coast Guard crews boarded the vessel but found no computers or other gear to support the hunch.

On Dec. 23, the drones made their last visit.

In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case.

‘Worst spy ever’

During a rainy morning on Jan. 6, Fengyun Shi parked a rented Tesla near 65th Street and Huntington Avenue in Newport News, Va., 11 miles from the Langley base. The car was outside a shipyard run by HII, the company that builds nuclear submarines and the Navy’s newest generation of the Ford Class aircraft carrier.

Shi, a student at the University of Minnesota, told nearby residents around midmorning that he was flying a drone that got stuck in a tree. As he tried to free it using his controller, a neighbor called Newport News, Va., police. Officers asked Shi why he was flying it in such foul weather, and they told him to call the fire department for help.

Shi instead returned his rental car an hour later and took an Amtrak train to Washington, D.C. The following day, he flew to Oakland, Calif. By chance, the drone fell to the ground that same day and ended up with federal investigators. FBI agents found that Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard.

On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn’t realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren’t convinced but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk.

U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing.

Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn’t believe Shi’s story—that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. “There’s significant holes,” the judge said in court.

“If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known,” said Shi’s attorney, Shaoming Cheng.

“I’m sorry about what happened in Norfolk,” Shi said before he was sentenced to six months in federal prison.

U.S. officials have yet to determine who flew the Langley drones or why.

“This isn’t a tomorrow problem, this is a today problem,” said Tom Karako, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national-security think tank in Washington. “It’s not an over-there problem—it’s an over-there, over-here and everywhere problem.”

U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles.

The move comes as U.S. and Israel are holding talks on a possible Israeli attack on Iran

The Biden administration is planning to send an advanced antimissile system to Israel along with American troops to operate it, moving to bolster its top Middle East ally’s defenses, U.S. officials said Sunday.

The deployment of the Thaad system, a ground-based interceptor designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, would mark a significant step in American efforts to directly protect Israel against an enemy attack by putting U.S. soldiers on the ground.

The move comes as U.S. and Israeli officials have been holding talks on a planned strike on Iran. U.S. officials have urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government not to target Iran’s oil facilities and nuclear sites.

If Iran responded to the planned Israeli strike with an attack on Israel, it would be the third instance of Tehran hitting Israeli territory this year.

The soldiers, just under 100 troops in all, would man the system, a rare U.S. deployment to Israel. How quickly the Pentagon can move the system to Israel wasn’t immediately clear.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In just a few years, its stock has plummeted, reaching in September its lowest level in 10 years.

"What is happening at Ubisoft?" This question is stirring the video game industry as the French giant wobbles on the stock market and faces a new strike starting Tuesday, against a backdrop of buyout rumors. The publisher of franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance enjoyed a successful run in the late 2000s and at the turn of the 2020s, competing with American and Japanese giants. But in recent years, its stock has collapsed, reaching its lowest point in 10 years in September. "Ubisoft is suffering from a series of releases that haven’t met the expected success," says Oscar Lemaire from the specialized site Ludostrie, citing, in particular, the pirate game Skull and Bones and the new installment of Prince of Persia.

At the end of September, Ubisoft's founder and CEO, Yves Guillemot, admitted that the initial sales of Star Wars Outlaws, released at the end of August, were "weaker than expected," forcing the company to lower its financial targets. The release of the next installment in its most popular series, Assassin’s Creed, was delayed by three months to allow the teams to fine-tune it. "They know they can’t afford to miss the mark," anticipates Oscar Lemaire. Another failure would be disastrous for Ubisoft.

Outdated Formula

While its "open-world" game formula—where players can freely explore a virtual universe—was groundbreaking in the 2010s, "it’s starting to feel a bit outdated," notes the creator of Ludostrie. "What’s holding Ubisoft back is its lack of adaptation to the evolution of the industry," adds Martin Szumski, a financial analyst at Morningstar. Since the success of online games like Fortnite, which generate significant revenue each month through in-game purchases, all major publishers have tried to replicate this "live service" model. Ubisoft made this bet in May with the shooter XDefiant, but the game failed to meet "expectations," according to Yves Guillemot. By missing this opportunity, Szumski believes Ubisoft is now "lagging behind the rest of the industry."

With nearly 45 studios in France and abroad (Canada, Italy, China…) and around 19,000 employees, Ubisoft is one of the largest companies in the sector. But it has not been immune to the crisis that the video game industry has been experiencing for two years. Announced in January 2023, its cost-cutting plan resulted in the departure of 1,700 people over 18 months. In France, where Ubisoft employs 4,000 people, discontent is growing over working conditions and wages.

Strikes and Buyout Rumors

After a first strike in February that mobilized nearly 700 people—one of the largest in the sector—several unions are calling for a three-day walkout starting Tuesday to protest against the decision to impose at least three days of in-office work per week. "We are currently exploring ways to fine-tune (our model) to better balance the benefits of remote and in-office work," Ubisoft said after a meeting with unions last Tuesday. On October 4th, Bloomberg reported on a potential buyout of Ubisoft by Chinese tech giant Tencent and the Guillemot family, the group’s main shareholder, to take the company private. Ubisoft "regularly reviews all its strategic options" and "will inform the market in due time, if necessary," the company responded.

Tencent, with whom the Guillemot brothers formed a partnership in 2022 to maintain control of the company, holds nearly 10% of the capital—a threshold it cannot exceed before 2030 according to the agreement—while the Guillemot family owns about 14%. "If a buyout happens, Tencent will likely push for more control than before," assesses Martin Szumski, "even though the Guillemot family wants to retain as much control as possible over the company." "Tencent is very strong in the Chinese market, especially in mobile games and free-to-play games," explains Oscar Lemaire. A buyout would allow them to gain a foothold in the Western market and into the big-budget games Ubisoft specializes in.

Taking the company private wouldn’t necessarily be negative for Ubisoft, "as it would allow them to implement their strategy without being constantly scrutinized by the markets," says Michael Hodel, an analyst at Morningstar. "In the short term, it’s a way for the Guillemots to have peace of mind. But it leaves a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads," concludes Oscar Lemaire.

En quelques années, son cours de Bourse s'est effondré jusqu'à atteindre en septembre son plus bas niveau en 10 ans.

«Que se passe-t-il chez Ubisoft ?» La question agite l'industrie du jeu vidéo alors que le géant français vacille en Bourse et fait face à une nouvelle grève à partir de mardi, sur fond de rumeurs de rachat. L'éditeur de franchises comme «Assassin's Creed» et «Just Dance» a connu une période faste à la fin des années 2000 puis au tournant des années 2020, rivalisant avec les géants américains et japonais. Mais en quelques années, son cours de Bourse s'est effondré jusqu'à atteindre en septembre son plus bas niveau en 10 ans. «Ubisoft souffre d'un enchaînement de sorties qui n'atteignent pas le succès escompté», estime Oscar Lemaire, du site spécialisé Ludostrie, citant notamment le jeu de pirates «Skull and Bones» et le nouvel épisode de «Prince of Persia».

Fin septembre, le fondateur et PDG d'Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, a admis que les premières ventes de «Star Wars Outlaws», sorti fin août, étaient «plus faibles que prévu», forçant Ubisoft à revoir à la baisse ses objectifs financiers. Et la sortie du prochain épisode de sa série la plus populaire, «Assassin's Creed», a été repoussée de trois mois pour permettre aux équipes de le peaufiner. «Ils savent qu'ils ne peuvent pas rater leur coup», anticipe Oscar Lemaire. Un nouvel échec serait désastreux pour Ubisoft.

Formule «vieillotte»

Si sa formule de jeu «en monde ouvert» - où le joueur peut explorer à sa guise un univers virtuel - faisait autorité dans les années 2010, «elle commence à être un peu vieillotte», souligne le créateur de Ludostrie. «Ce qui freine Ubisoft, c'est son manque d'adaptation à l'évolution de l'industrie», renchérit Martin Szumski, analyste financier chez Morningstar. Depuis le succès de jeux en ligne comme «Fortnite», qui génèrent d'importants revenus chaque mois grâce à du contenu vendu dans le jeu, tous les gros éditeurs essayent de copier cette recette dite de «jeu service». Ubisoft a fait ce pari en mai avec le jeu de tir «XDefiant», mais le titre n'a pas répondu aux «attentes», selon Yves Guillemot. En ratant ce coche, Martin Szumski estime qu'Ubisoft se retrouve «en retard par rapport au reste de l'industrie».

Avec près de 45 studios en France et à l'étranger (Canada, Italie, Chine...) et environ 19.000 employés, Ubisoft est l'une des plus grandes entreprises du secteur. Mais elle n'a pas été imperméable à la crise que traverse l'industrie du jeu vidéo depuis deux ans. Annoncé en janvier 2023, son plan de réduction des coûts s'est traduit par le départ de 1700 personnes en 18 mois. En France, où Ubisoft emploie 4000 personnes, la grogne monte autour des conditions de travail et des salaires.

Mouvement de grève et rumeurs de rachat

Après un premier mouvement de grève qui a mobilisé près de 700 personnes en février - l'un des plus importants dans le secteur -, plusieurs syndicats appellent à un débrayage de trois jours à partir de mardi pour protester contre la décision d'imposer au moins trois jours par semaine de travail en présentiel. «Nous examinons actuellement comment affiner (notre modèle) pour mieux équilibrer les avantages du travail à distance et au bureau», a indiqué Ubisoft après une rencontre avec les syndicats mardi dernier. Le 4 octobre, l'agence Bloomberg faisait état d'un potentiel rachat d'Ubisoft par le géant chinois de la tech Tencent et la famille Guillemot, actionnaire principal du groupe, pour le sortir de la Bourse. Ubisoft «examine régulièrement toutes ses options stratégiques» et «informera le marché en temps voulu, si nécessaire», a réagi l'entreprise.

Tencent, avec qui les frères Guillemot ont scellé une union en 2022 pour garder la main sur l'entreprise, détient près de 10% du capital - seuil qu'il n'a pas le droit de franchir avant 2030, selon l'accord -, tandis que la famille Guillemot en possède autour de 14%. «Si un rachat a lieu, Tencent va probablement faire pression pour avoir plus de contrôle qu'auparavant», juge Martin Szumski, «même si la famille Guillemot veut conserver autant que possible la gestion de l'entreprise». «Tencent est très fort sur le marché chinois, surtout dans le domaine des jeux mobiles et les “free-to-play” (jeux gratuits)», explique Oscar Lemaire. Un rachat lui permettrait de mettre un pied dans le marché occidental et les jeux à gros budgets dont Ubisoft est spécialiste.

Sortir de la Bourse ne serait pas nécessairement négatif pour Ubisoft, «pour mettre en œuvre sa stratégie sans être constamment surveillé par les marchés», affirme Michael Hodel, analyste pour Morningstar. «À court terme, c'est un moyen pour les Guillemot d'être tranquilles. Mais ça laisse une épée de Damoclès au-dessus de leur tête», conclut Oscar Lemaire.

Apple is preparing some additional vision based products, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. We’re expecting smart glasses, similar to Meta’s collaboration with Ray-Ban, as well as AirPods with cameras. These products won’t launch until at least 2027, if they do at all.

According to the report, Apple wants to salvage some of their multi billion dollar R&D investment in Apple Vision Pro’s visual intelligence – by bringing the tech to more products. We already saw this with the announcement of visual intelligence alongside the iPhone 16’s camera control, and Apple’s next step is to reportedly bring this to a glasses form factor.

The glasses wouldn’t be full AR glasses with displays, but rather smart glasses with built in cameras, speakers, and mics – similar to Meta’s Ray Ban glasses, which have become pretty popular. Meta sells those glasses for as low as $299, although there are more expensive frames you can pick.

On top of that, the company is still planning AirPods with cameras, something that’s been reported on previously. It’s unclear why these would be an appealing product rather than just glasses, and it feels like AirPods would be a bad product for outward facing cameras, but Apple is still experimenting with the form factor for visual intelligence features nonetheless.

Meet the Chinese ‘Typhoon’ hackers preparing for war

Of the cybersecurity risks facing the United States today, few loom larger than the potential sabotage capabilities posed by China-backed hackers, which top U.S. officials have described as an “epoch-defining threat.”

In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials said Chinese government-backed hackers have been burrowing deep into the networks of U.S. critical infrastructure, including water, energy and transportation providers. The goal, officials say, is to lay the groundwork for potentially destructive cyberattacks in the event of a future conflict between China and the U.S., such as over a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers earlier this year.

The U.S. government and its allies have since taken action against the “Typhoon” family of the Chinese hacking groups, and published new details about the threats they pose.

In January, the U.S. disrupted dubbed “Volt Typhoon,” a group of China government hackers tasked with setting the stage for destructive cyberattacks. Later in September, the feds hijacked a botnet run by another Chinese hacking group called “Flax Typhoon,” which masquerades as a private company in Beijing and whose role was to help conceal the activities of China’s government hackers. Since then, a new China-backed hacking group called “Salt Typhoon” emerged, capable of gathering intelligence on Americans — and potential targets of U.S. surveillance — by compromising the wiretap systems of U.S. phone and internet providers.

Here’s what we know so far about the Chinese hacking groups gearing up for war.

Volt Typhoon

Volt Typhoon represents a new breed of China-backed hacking groups; no longer just aimed at stealing sensitive U.S. secrets, but rather preparing to disrupt the U.S. military’s “ability to mobilize,” according to the FBI’s director.

Microsoft first identified Volt Typhoon in May 2023, finding that the hackers had targeted and compromised network equipment, such as routers, firewalls, and VPNs, since mid-2021 as part of an ongoing and concerted effort to infiltrate deeper into U.S. critical infrastructure. In reality, it’s likely the hackers were operating for much longer; potentially for as long as five years.

Volt Typhoon compromised thousands of internet-connected devices in the months following Microsoft’s report, exploiting vulnerabilities in internet-connected devices that were considered “end-of-life” and as such would no longer receive security updates. As such, the hacking group subsequently managed to compromise the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure sectors, including aviation, water, energy, and transportation, pre-positioning itself for activating future would-be disruptive cyberattacks.

“This actor is not doing the quiet intelligence collection and theft of secrets that has been the norm in the U.S. They are probing sensitive critical infrastructure so they can disrupt major services if, and when, the order comes down,” said John Hultquist, chief analyst at security firm Mandiant.

The U.S. government said in January that it had successfully disrupted a botnet, used by Volt Typhoon, consisting of thousands of hijacked U.S.-based small office and home network routers, which the Chinese hacking group used to hide its malicious activity aimed at targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. The FBI said it was able to remove the malware from the hijacked routers, severing the Chinese hacking group’s connection to the botnet.

Flax Typhoon

Flax Typhoon, first outed in an August 2023 report from Microsoft, is another China-backed hacking group that officials say has operated under the guise of a publicly traded cybersecurity company based in Beijing. The company, Integrity Technology Group, has publicly acknowledged its connections to China’s government, according to U.S. officials.

In September, the U.S. government said it had taken control of another botnet, used by Flax Typhoon, which leveraged a custom variant of the infamous Mirai malware, made up of hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices.

U.S. officials said at the time that the Flax Typhoon-controlled botnet was used to “conduct malicious cyber activity disguised as routine internet traffic from the infected consumer devices.” Prosecutors said the botnet run by Flax Typhoon allowed other China government-backed hackers to “hack into networks in the U.S. and around the world to steal information and hold our infrastructure at risk.”

According to Microsoft’s profile of the government-backed group, Flax Typhoon has been active since mid-2021, predominantly targeting “government agencies and education, critical manufacturing, and information technology organizations in Taiwan.” The Department of Justice said it corroborated Microsoft’s findings and that Flax Typhoon also “attacked multiple U.S. and foreign corporations.”

Salt Typhoon

The latest — and potentially most ominous — group in China’s government-backed cyber army uncovered in recent months is Salt Typhoon.

Salt Typhoon hit headlines in October for a much more sophisticated operation. As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the China-linked hacking group is believed to have compromised the wiretap systems of several U.S. telecom and internet providers, including AT&T, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), and Verizon.

According to one report, Salt Typhoon may have gained access to these organizations using compromised Cisco routers. The U.S. government is said to be in the early stages of its investigation.

While the scale of the internet provider compromises remains unknown, the Journal, citing national security sources, said the breach could be “potentially catastrophic.” By hacking into systems that law enforcement agencies use for court-authorized collection of customer data, the Salt Typhoon potentially gained access to data and systems that house much of the U.S. government’s requests — including the potential identities of Chinese targets of U.S. surveillance.

It’s not yet known when the breach occurred, but WSJ reports that the hackers may have held access to the internet providers’ wiretap systems “for months or longer.”