There’s no denying it: 2024 was a lot for IT, and that’s just in the US’s neck of the woods. To name a few, there was Broadcom’s contentious takeover of VMware; a seismic election that could result in huge price spikes for IT gear; and the rush to bring generative AI products to the enterprise market.
But it’s a big world out there. As 2025 begins, here’s three of this year’s biggest IT stories from across the globe.
Aussie algorithms
Australia’s equivalent to the National Security Agency (NSA) is ditching old cryptographic models ahead of schedule due to advances in quantum computing.
In December, The Register reported that the Australian Signals Directorate issued guidance instructing government agencies using a category of devices called High Assurance Cryptographic Equipment (HACE) to abandon a number of common cryptographic algorithms, including SHA-256, RSA, ECDSA, and ECDH. The rationale behind the decision is that future quantum computers may be able to crack these algorithms, potentially allowing foreign adversaries to spy on any communications using them.
While US agencies have set the deadline to abandon those algorithms by 2035, Australia is aiming for 2030.
It’s an ambitious target because, as Edinburgh Napier University School of Computing professor Bill Buchanan told The Register: “every single web connection currently uses ECDH and RSA/ECDSA. These methods are also used for many other parts of a secure infrastructure.”
Australia is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, which also includes Canada, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.
China’s AI race focuses
Chinese investors are dropping unprecedented cash into the nation’s domestic generative AI industry, but the funds are going to a smaller number of firms, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Data provided to the SCMP by startup database Itjuzi.com shows 113 generative AI firms landed funding deals between the start of 2024 and Dec. 18, down from 143 in 2023. Yet those firms raised about 35 billion yuan (around $4.8 billion), which is up nearly 71% from 2023’s total of 20.5 billion yuan. The SCMP reported the four largest Chinese firms of Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI, Baichuan, and MiniMax raked in about $2.1 billion of this year’s tally by themselves.
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Chinese investors appear to be growing more discerning, the SCMP wrote, as the “broader AI market” including firms that build and design AI infrastructure saw deals drop from 595 in 2023 to 457 so far in 2024.
That’s still nowhere near the US, which has exceeded China’s annual investment market in AI every quarter. In Q3 2023 alone, according to Crunchbase, AI-related startups raised $18.9 billion.
EU challenges Starlink
The European Union isn’t going to just sit around and let Elon Musk’s Starlink dominate low- and medium-earth orbit, TechCrunch reported: It’s signed a €10.6 billion (around $11.1 billion) deal to launch its own constellation of internet-transmitting satellites.
With a plan to launch around 300 satellites, the program—a public-private partnership known as Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity, and Security by Satellite (IRIS²)—is dwarfed by Starlink, which passed four million global subscribers in September 2024 and had over 6,500 satellites in the sky by October.
A coalition of Chinese firms also recently announced plans to contest Starlink’s network with three separate constellations of satellites (Qianfan, Guo Wang, and Honghu-3), MSN reported. Its goal of 38,000 satellites is just shy of Starlink’s plans to eventually have 42,000 in orbit.
With new satellites comes new risks, such as an unbelievable amount of space trash. Per the Washington Post, the most worrying problem isn’t what might come crashing down on someone’s head, but the junk left in orbit, over 90% of which NASA estimates is untrackable.