governments

The British skipped fuel tax by switching to an electric car. The Government’s solution: create another tax

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The British Government recently announced a new tax for electric vehicles in which drivers would pay per distance traveled (miles), with the intention of it coming into force in April 2028. The measure, which is included in this documenthas drawn criticism from many citizens and experts, and comes at a key moment, as the United Kingdom plans to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars in 2030. Its public coffers are losing revenue from fuel taxes while the adoption of electric vehicles grows. How the system is planned so far. Electric car drivers will pay 3p per mile traveled (about 3.4 euro cents), while plug-in hybrids will pay 1.5 pence. The calculation will be made through an annual mileage estimate that drivers will declare when renewing their road tax, and will subsequently be verified during the technical inspection of the vehicle. According to the Government, an average electric car driver who travels 13,680 kilometers a year you will pay about 255 pounds additional (approximately 295 euros). Why this change matters. Just like share According to The Telegraph, Finance Minister Rachel Reeves justifies the measure as necessary to compensate for the drop in fuel tax revenue. According to Dan Tomlinson, MP and Secretary of the Treasury, if no action is taken, by 2030 one in five drivers will not pay fuel tax while others will continue to contribute an average of £480 annually. According to the media, the Office of Budget Responsibility predicts that this new tax could reduce sales of electric vehicles by 440,000 units in the next five years. Industry reactions. Manufacturers such as Ford and the British manufacturers’ association SMMT have harshly criticized the measure. Ian Plummer, Commercial Director at Autotrader, declared that “we need more carrot and less stick if we are serious about the electric transition.” From Ford they pointed out that the budget sends “a mixed message” about the government’s goal of driving the shift to electric vehicles. Implementation problems. The system presents several practical challenges. Drivers will have to estimate their annual mileage without it necessarily coinciding with the date of their MOT (the equivalent of the MOT in the UK), which complicates the calculation. New cars, which do not require inspection for the first three years, will need additional checks. Furthermore, the Government recognize which could increase odometer fraud, a practice which, according to The Telegraph, already affects 2.3% of British vehicles. A controversial issue. As the current regulations are stated, drivers who use their vehicles outside the United Kingdom They would also pay for those milesdespite not using British roads. The Government justifies this decision by arguing that the percentage of drivers traveling abroad is small, although it recognizes that it will especially affect residents of Northern Ireland, as they frequently cross into the Republic of Ireland. The impact on the pocket. Although the Government insist With the rate equal to half of what gasoline and diesel drivers pay, many electric vehicle owners are already starting to worry. Stephen Walton, a driver who bought an electric car in 2023, counted to the BBC that “it will be my first and last electric vehicle because there are no tax advantages for electric car drivers.” A unexpected advantage for China. Analysts such as Sam Goodman, from the China Strategic Risks Institute, warn that the new tax could encourage British consumers to opt for cheaper Chinese models such as the BYD Dolphin Surfwhich sells for 18,650 pounds compared to the more than 26,000 that some eligible European alternatives cost. During the third quarter of 2025, Chinese models They already represented 11.8% of the British new passenger car market, according to Schmidt Automotive Research. What’s coming now? The Government has opened a consultation period to define the final details of the system before 2028. It also announced an additional investment of 1.3 billion pounds in aid for the purchase of electric vehicles, although only four models currently qualify for the maximum subsidy of 3,750 pounds, the cheapest being the Ford Puma Gen-E (£26,245 applying subsidies). The Office of Budget Responsibility esteem The new tax will raise £1.1bn in its first year and £1.9bn by 2030-31, although the actual figure will depend on how many Britons decide to buy electric cars in the coming years. In Xataka | Your car windshield has hundreds of small black dots. It is not decoration, it is technology to save our lives

A man had access to the Government’s nuclear secrets. Until he uploaded thousands of porn photos to his work computer

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Using your work computer for personal things is a delicate area that can be reason for dismissal. This worker from the US Department of Energy has discovered it by force after uploading hundreds of thousands of pornographic images on his company computer. What has happened? They tell it in 404Medium. In March 2023, the employee wanted to back up his photo collection. He thought he was uploading the images to his personal hard drive, but it was connected to his work computer and he ended up making the copy where it wasn’t. The problem is that it was not a normal collection of photos, but more than 187,000 pornographic images that he had been collecting over several decades. Although he did not lose his job, his mistake has had consequences and the main one is that he has lost his security clearance. To train AI. The employee defended himself by arguing that this happened during a depressive episode in which he felt “extremely isolated and alone.” One of his distractions at this stage was creating images with AI, specifically “robotic porn.” At first he used his cell phone, but tired of using such a small screen, he thought it was a good idea to upload all his pornographic images to the computer to train the AI. The problem is that he did not upload them to his hard drive, but rather they ended up on the network of a government company. Goodbye accreditation. The employee did not realize his mistake until six months later. It was the time it took his bosses to investigate the origin of that enormous amount of porn photos flooding their servers. The result was that his security clearance was withdrawn. The Department of Energy is the in charge of supervising the US nuclear arsenalso we are talking about access to very sensitive information. The worker appealed to get it back, but after an exhaustive investigation, they decided not to return it. If he had not appealed, the story would not have been made public. My boss spies on me. It is one of the reasons that the man presented in his appeal, which compared the investigation to “the Spanish Inquisition.” What does the law say about this? According to expertsAlthough they let us use it for personal things, we should not expect to have privacy on a company-owned computer. Some companies even pre-install software to measure the time employees work. Control programs. Can they force you to install one of these programs? A few years ago we talked about installing software to control the work of remote employees and Joaquín Muñoz, an expert lawyer in digital law, resolved our doubt: the company cannot force us to install a program of this type if the computer we use to work is ours, but if it belongs to the company they can do so. Of course, they are obliged to report in detail about all the functions of said software. Image | Gemini In Xataka | “These are things that a university student would get in trouble for”: Deloitte scammed Australia with a report made with AI

US and China governments threaten their survival in a crucial market

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China is a very important market for Nvidia. During the last fiscal year, which expired on January 26, 2025, this Asian country represented approximately 13% of total income of the company led by Jensen Huang with a figure of some 17,000 million dollars. In Chinese practice it is the third best client of this company only behind the US and Taiwan, but The steps that the Trump administration is taking They threaten their survival in this market. In the middle of last April the US Department of Commerce imposed new restrictions to the export to China of the GPU for artificial intelligence (AI) H20what in practice caused this chip to stop arriving at the Chinese clients of this company. After weeks of negotiations, and even several “face to face” between Donald Trump and Jensen Huang, Nvidia has made the Department of Commerce allow her to re -give her Chinese clients her H20 chip. However, this permission has not left for free: hereinafter will deliver to the US government 15% of income which will obtain in China for the sale of this and other GPU. AMD has run this same luck, so there is no doubt that this Trump administration strategy establishes an unpublished precedent by forcing some US companies to deliver to the State a percentage of their sales income in another country. Nvidia has been dealing with Sale prohibitions in China Of most of his chips for AI, and has now been forced to fit this new blow. The US government ensures that he is protecting his interests and the security of the nation, but along the way he is also promoting that China develop their own technology at a vertigo speed. It is a full -fledged form of Autoboicot. The loss of confidence of the Chinese government has fired Nvidia alarms The future of Nvidia in China is largely in the hands of the administration of the cyberspace of China, known as CAC for its English denomination (Cyberspace Administration of China). This institution is the main Internet regulatory body in China and is thoroughly investigating NVIDIA H20 GPU Because it suspects that this chip could incorporate a back door of difficult location by Chinese experts. If so, the possibility of China to use this GPU could be possible. David reber Jr., Nvidia Security Director, published last week An article in the blog of this company entitled “There are no rear doors in the Nvidia chips. There are no deactivation switches. There are no spy software” in an obvious attempt to defend the company’s reputation and appease the growing distrust to which he faces in China. There is a lot at stake. If the final resolution of the CAC turns out to be unfavorable with all probability NVIDIA will lose a good part of the income currently obtained in this country. If the final resolution of the CAC turns out to be unfavorable with all probability NVIDIA will lose a good part of the income obtained in China However, this is not all. Whatever the CAC verdict is a fact that the Chinese government He is urging Chinese companies that are dedicated to the development of large models of AI to use in their servers integrated circuits of Chinese origin. In this scenario their best bazas are now Huawei and Moore Threads. The first of these companies has lists its own GPU for iathe chips ascend AI, for more than five years. During this period of time it has been refining them and increasing their abilities with the purpose of matching or even overcoming the performance of the chips A100 and H100 of Nvidia. His most ambitious proposal right now is the chip Ascend 910dwhich seeks to overcome the performance of the H100 GPU. However, this Chinese company has also recently presented its chip Ascend 920a solution that is clearly destined to occupy in the Chinese market The H20 GPU space. This proposal will enter large -scale production during the second half of 2025 using 6 NM integration technology that have presumably developed elbow with Huawei elbow and SMIC. On the other hand, Moore Threads He has developed several GPU for AI applications that, on paper, rivaize some of the advanced solutions that have placed in the Nvidia, AMD or Huawei market. The MTT S4000 and MTT S3000 cards are its most interesting proposals right now, although, curiously, in its porpholio the MTT S80 card, a proposal for games and content creation that, according to Moore Threads itself, has a 14.4 TFLOPS calculation capacity also appears in Floating Coma operations of simple precision. It doesn’t impress, but it’s not bad at all. Image | Gage Skidmore | Wikipedia In Xataka | Ten Chinese companies in Chips and IA have allied with a common goal: to put an end to the domain of Nvidia

The great language models ignore the deepest identity of Mexico. The government’s response is to create your own

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Chatgpt, Gemini, Claude, Calls, Deepseek. Today there are dozens of conversational models available to anyone. Some are open, others free. So why did Mexico decided to create its own? What can a national model contribute that Silicon Valley, Europe or Beijing giants do not contribute? The answer has less to do with technology and more with culture. Mexico has announced The development of its own artificial intelligence language model with Mexican cultural identity and inclusion of indigenous languages. When AI does not understand everything. The best known models of today are powerful and versatile, but were not designed to understand the linguistic and cultural diversity of all countries. Their training data prioritizes English and, although many other languages such as Spanish speak, usually sin of low sensitivity to local expressions or original languages. A recent IDB Lab, LlyC and Microsoft study It shows that only 54% of the responses in indigenous languages were correct (the remaining 46% presented errors or mixtures of languages). In particular, in Maya and Quiché the understanding and expression barely reached 1.25/10, while in Nahuatl it was 3.42/10 and in Guaraní 2.77/10 What did the Mexican government say. The Secretary of Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, announced that Mexico will present in November (12 and 13, Expo Santa Fe, CDMX) The advances in its own language during the “Mexico ia + accelerated investment” forum. “If we do not hurry to dominate that alphabet, we will face a very significant disadvantage in this new context that is emerging today,” said. Who does it and how much it costs. The Ministry of Economy, under the direction of Marcelo Ebrard, heads the initiative with the Business Coordinating Council (CCE) and with the technological support of Nvidia, which will provide training and hardware without investing capital in the project. According to the CCE, the construction of the data centers will require an approximate investment of 9,000 million dollars. What will the model be like. The model plans to train with cultural data from Mexico, Mexican Spanish and active indigenous languages. Mexico recognizes 68 linguistic groups and 364 variants (INALI), forces Corpus’s fine collection and healing work. What are other countries doing. In Latin America, a coalition of countries will launch Latam-GPT in September 2025, Led by Cenia (Chile) with the support of more than 30 institutions. It is born to represent regional cultural and linguistic diversity and functions as a regional collaborative project. In Europe, Spain promotes aliaa public infrastructure of models in Spanish and co -official languages. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 Flash In Xataka | The Electoral Institute of Mexico used a synthetic voice such as that of the Dragon Ball narrator. The actors went out

His strategy in Europe and Spain speaks directly to governments

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As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms the digital world, so do those who seek to take advantage of it for malicious purposes. Europe, According to MicrosoftIt is low Increasing pressure of attacks Orchestrated by state actors and criminal gangs that no longer operate alone: ​​they rely on AI tools to improve their tactics. Given this new reality, the company has launched a cybersecurity program without cost to European governments, with a clear objective: reinforce the defenses of the continent. The radiography offered by the Redmond giant about the situation in the old continent is clear: the number of attacks does not cease to increase and its complexity as well. The most frequent threats come from groups linked to governments such as those of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, with objectives ranging from the theft of credentials and infiltration in corporate networks to the manipulation of public opinion through digital disinformation. Click to see the message in x According to the company, many of these actors have incorporated AI techniques to refine their campaigns: from automated vulnerabilities recognition to the creation of false content with Deepfakes. In parallel, criminal gangs also evolve. The appearance of platforms of ‘Ransomware as a service‘And forums with instructions to operate complex attacks has democratized access to dangerous tools, amplifying the risk throughout the continent. Microsoft’s proposal: a European cybersecurity program, free and based on AI In response, Microsoft has launched the European Security Programan initiative that offers without cost to all European governments, including the 27 EU member states, the countries in the process of adhesion, the United Kingdom, Monaco, the Vatican and the members of the EFTA. It is not clear how many countries have decided to join at the time of publishing this article, but the company states that the objective is to strengthen cyber -defense from three fronts: Share intelligence on threats based on AI with governments, adjusted to each country and, when possible, in real time. Increase investment in capacity and resilience, including training, technological development and support for NGOs. Expand alliances with police and operators to interrupt criminal networks and cyber attacks before they climb. According to official information, the initiative implies the delivery of personalized intelligence to each country, the expansion of access to the Cybercrime Threat Intelligence Program and frequent updates on foreign influence operations. Priority communication is also included on Vulnerabilities detected and technical orientation to mitigate them. Each participating government will have a direct interlocutor in Microsoft to expedite coordination. In addition, the company details that collaborates with Europol in its European Cybercrime Center in The Hague. Also, in the technological level, there are also concrete actions. Microsoft has launched a fund to protect strategic Open Source projects (such as Log4j) and develop advanced security tools with the British laboratory Lasr. The rise of agents of ia also worries outside Microsoft The use of artificial intelligence in the field of cybersecurity not only worries Microsoft. Several researchers and signatures in the sector, such as Trend Micro or Malwarebytes, warn of an emerging stage in which Autonomous ia agents They could become especially effective attack tools. Although today a wave of cyber attacks fully executed by agents have been detected, some laboratories have already begun to identify their first real incursions. Palisade Research team, for example, has built a honeypot specifically designed to detect AI agents activity. And they have achieved it: they have registered millions of access attempts and have confirmed the presence of at least two agents. Image: Microsoft It is not just attacks aimed at governments or infrastructure. According to a study published in Harvard Business Review By researchers from Harvard, MIT and the World Economic Forum, the generative AI is also transforming mass attacks like him Phishing. And it does it by reducing its cost more than 95 % and maintaining its success rate. Experts point out that language models such as GPT-4 They allow completely automating the phishing cycle, from the choice of objectives to the writing of convincing emails. In their experiments, 60 % of users fell into traps generated by AI, a percentage comparable to that of messages created by human experts. This perspective fits with the reading made by Microsoft about the role of AI in current threats, but also reveals that concern is shared by researchers, academics and actors in the sector who are developing specific detection systems to prevent these agents from going unnoticed. Europe is already taking action The launch of this program does not happen in a vacuum. The European Union has been strengthening its response from digital threats, with initiatives that seek to raise the level of protection both in public administrations and in the private sector. In turn, many countries are implementing their own plans to shield themselves. Spain, for example, has become one of the great objectives of cybercrime: it is the second most attacked country in the world, According to Secure & It. In this context, the government is promoting a millionaire investment To create a “digital shield” that reinforces the country’s defenses. We need to see what role the European Security Program of Microsoft will play within this panorama. At the moment, it is a voluntary, but ambitious initiative. Cover image | Lukas s + Freepik With Photoshop In Xataka | Goal has been spying on everything we did when navigating android mobiles. Neither the incognite mode nor erase cookies avoided it

Problems between US and Taiwan governments begin. And the chips industry is at the center of everything

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The government led by Donald Trump is determined to do everything necessary for the US to recover leadership in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. At the moment In Asia they are manufactured 90% of memory chips, 75% of microprocessors and 80% of silicon wafers. However, the most outstanding country in this continent in this sector is Taiwan, with a production of 90% of high integration chips and 41% of microprocessors. The US administration is already taking the necessary measures to promote US companies to buy integrated circuits manufactured in the US. The tariffs you are approving They largely pursue this objective, and, despite the alignment in the geopolitical field that support the US and Taiwan, the manufacturers of Taiwanese chips are not at all safe from the tariffs. In fact, Donald Trump made a statement at the end of January which he exposes his intentions with total: “In the very close future we will impose tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors and pharmaceutical products to return the manufacture of these essential goods to the US (…) went to Taiwan; now we want them to return. We do not want to give them billions of dollars in the ridiculous driver program. They already have billions of dollars. incentive will be that they do not want to pay a tax of 25, 50, or even 100%”, The current US president declared. The Taiwan government is putting limits to TSMC The express mention to Taiwan that the US president has made is a very clear allusion to TSMC. On this Asian island there are other semiconductor manufacturers, such as UMC, but its relevance in the chip market is much lower than that of the company currently leading CC Wei. TSMC dominates the integrated circuit market with A quota of approximately 60%so your leadership in the chip manufacturing industry is indisputable. Anyway, the step forward that the US administration is not going to take TSMC by surprise. This company has been outlining its strategy for more than four years to extend its semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure Beyond Taiwan’s borders. And he is doing it for two reasons. On the one hand it is an effective way to protect your business if at any time it is triggered A war conflict between China and Taiwanand their plants on the island were useless. TSMC is preparing an offer to control the integrated circuit manufacturing plants of Intel But, in addition, TSMC is significantly developing its infrastructure in the US. His plan is that their new Arizona factories not only serve to protect their business from a possible conflict between China and Taiwan; They also protect it from US tariffs. This is not all. Although there has not yet an official confirmation of this information, according to The Wall Street Journal TSMC is preparing an offer to Control manufacturing plants Intel integrated circuits. It prosper or not, at the current situation this strategic decision makes sense. And it has it because it would allow TSMC to definitely consolidate its semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure in the US, as well as be present in countries where it now does not have production plants. However, The Taiwan government does not see this possibility with good eyes. Its economy depends deeply on its chip industry in general, and TSMC in particular, so the US ambition to recover its leadership in this sector directly enters into conflict directly with Taiwan’s survival as it is currently. Kuo Jyh-Huei, Taiwan Economy Minister, has warned TSMC in a resounding way: “No one can shake the foundations of the Taiwan semiconductor industry. We must have confidence in TSMC, and the government will fully support the ‘sacred mountain’ that protects the country (…) so that TSMC expands its global presence and establishes a joint company in any location, definitely needs the government’s permission.” It is evident that the possibility that TSMC acquires such a solid production infrastructure outside Taiwan is detrimental to weight That has this island in the sector that feeds it. Right now we cannot assume that TSMC will control Intel plants, but we can be safe: 2025 will be a very exciting year in regard to the development of the integrated circuit industry. More information | Reuters In Xataka | What’s behind the chips megafabrica that TSMC and Samsung plan to build in Arab Emirates

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