Fujitsu worries US tariffs will see its clients slow digital spend

Asia In Brief The head of Fujitsu’s North American operations has warned that the Trump administration’s tariff plans will be bad for business.

In remarks shared with Japanese outlet Nikkei, Asif Poonja, chief executive of Fujitsu's Americas business, said he expects tariffs to impact spending on technology at manufacturers, retailers and the public sector.

Poonja warned that Fujitsu’s forecast double-digit revenue growth target may therefore be hard to achieve. That's unwelcome news for investors given Fujitsu is trying to turn itself into an AI-centric services company with its "Uvance" strategy. It may also be bad news for the US economy, as if major sectors slow technology investment it could impact their productivity and competitiveness.

Pacific nations attacked by China’s APT40

Samoa’s Computer Emergency Response Team last week warned [PDF] it had found evidence of China-linked threat actor APT40 running “campaigns specifically targeting networks hosted in the Blue Pacific.”

“Blue Pacific” refers to a grouping of 11 nations - Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu.

SamCERT warned that APT40 uses “modified commodity malware that allows the threat actor to maintain persistence and command and control in the network” in ways that “avoid detection and enable the exfiltration of sensitive data.”

The US, Japan, and Australia have in recent years made substantial efforts to improve infosec in Pacific nations, even as China courts them with offers of economic support that often include the chance to build telecoms networks and submarine cables.

Papua New Guinea’s tax office recovers from ransomware

Papua New Guinea’s Internal Revenue Commission last week announced it had recovered from a ransomware attack.

Earlier reports suggested the tax agency’s systems were so damaged the restoration could take weeks or months.

Thankfully the commission was back online on February 14th, when it told citizens “Our robust business continuity plan ensured minimal impact on tax administration. IRC remains committed to strengthening cybersecurity and protecting taxpayer data.”

McDonalds China orders Tencent Cloud and wants elasticity with that

China’s Tencent Cloud last week revealed McDonalds China is using autoscaling cloudy compute to cope with fluctuations in customer orders.

We’re told that 90 percent of McOrders in the Middle Kingdom now come through digital channels, and the burger barn long ago recognized that acquiring and operating IT infrastructure capable of handling periods of peak demand would be wasteful.

“The two companies collaborate on auto scaling to reduce costs during low-traffic periods while maintaining an optimal ordering experience during peak times,” Tencent revealed.

The Golden Arches is apparently also using Tencent’s big data services to help find locations for new stores as it seeks to grow its current 6,800-store fleet to 10,000 and beyond.

Loongson replaces x86 at gas stations

Chinese chip designer Loongson, which targets mainstream desktop and server applications with a homebrew processor architecture that blends elements of MIPS and RISC-V, last week announced it’s won a contract to replace x86 systems at gas stations.

The unnamed customer apparently uses Loongson's browser, plus tech that translates binaries written for other platforms so they run on the Chinese company's chips. The tech is currently used at 13 locations, but Loongson has pitched the win as evidence other Chinese companies can thrive if they adopt local products.

China has issued several edicts requiring business to drop imported tech and adopt local alternatives when possible.

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AWS adds Singaporean English

Amazon Web Services’ text-to-speech tool Polly last week added its first Singaporean English voice.

Named “Jasmine”, AWS feels the voice is needed because “Even though Singaporean English is reported to be close to British English, there are some unique pronunciation patterns that we captured while training this voice, such as pronunciation of telephone numbers or postal codes, to make sure that Jasmine sounds like a local speaker.”

China’s broadband-sat-schlepper launches for first time

China’s space agencies last week launched the first Long March 8A rocket, a model designed for payloads such as groups of low-Earth-orbit broadband-beaming satellites.

The launcher is said to have trimmed 200kg compared to the first Long March 8 models, and to have added features that allow it to carry and deploy more satellites and do so more efficiently.

China wants its own satellite internet constellation to rival the likes of SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s planned Kuiper constellation.

AI factory for Oz

Australian cloud aspirant ResetData, which we spotted placing liquid-cooled micro-datacenters in building basements, has announced its first AI factory.

The “multi-megawatt” facility will launch in Q2 and offer high-density NVIDIA H200 GPU clusters. The Nvidia Enterprise stack will also be present, allowing the use of NIM microservices to deploy AI workloads.

DeepSeek puts South Korea in a pickle

South Korea’s national intelligence service last week warned citizens that Chinese chatbot DeepSeek collects excessive personal information, uses all input for training purposes, and shares all user info with advertisers.

The service also pointed out that when asked questions about history and culture, the chatbot provides answers felt to favor Chinese interpretations of past events. Worse still, when asked for the origins of Kimchi – South Korea’s national dish of spicy fermented vegetables – DeepSeek says it’s a Korean dish when asked in Korean but says the dish has its roots in Chinese cuisine when asked in Mandarin.

That’s controversial as Kimchi is considered a key element of South Korea’s national identity. ®