WORLD NEWS
Japan is still well ahead in funding infra projects across Southeast Asia, data from BMI Research shows. As Japan’ s population ages, the government and companies are searching for new markets overseas. Japan dominates infrastructure investment in the Philippines and Vietnam— among the world’ s fastest-growing economies. But China is ramping up competition with a sweeping push in nations along the route of President Xi Jinping’ s signature Belt and Road Initiative. Asia’ s two biggest economies are jostling to expand influence in the region, one of the world’ s brightest economic spots and home to half a billion people. Governments from Singapore to communist Vietnam are building airports, toll ways, and mass rapid transit to attract investment and create jobs. Infrastructure is increasingly among the region’ s main growth engines. Indonesia boasts a pipeline of over 250 projects, while the Philippines plans to spend USD180- billion on rails, roads, and airports. Singapore is doubling the size of its mass transit system. To reduce strain on government budgets, countries are turning to their richer neighbours, who are only too willing to strike deals. stockarch. com
Japan’ s infrastructure investment since the 2000s— both completed and ongoing— totalled about USD230- billion, while that of China reached about USD155-billion, according to BMI. More than 90 % of the projects have actual or planned construction dates after 2013.
The Osaka road interchange, Japan.
Russian hackers attempted to infiltrate the US civilian aviation industry early in 2017, as part of a broad assault on America’ s sensitive infrastructure. The attack had limited impact and the industry has taken steps to prevent a repeat of the intrusion, said Jeff Troy, executive director of the Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center( A-ISAC). Troy wouldn’ t elaborate on the nature of the breach and declined to identify specific companies or the work that was involved.“ It hit a part of our very broad membership,” Troy said. The intrusion wasn’ t something that would directly harm airplanes or airlines, he assured.“ But I did see that this impacted some companies that are in the aviation sector.” Troy’ s comments confirmed the effects on aviation of a Russian attack that was described more broadly by US government officials. The assault was aimed at the electric grid, water processing plants, and other targets, the officials said. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified aviation as one of the targets but didn’ t provide specifics. Troy said the aviation assault was detected in the early stages, when hackers typically perform surveillance, test a network’ s defences, and devise software weapons to use. In the energy industry attack, the hackers used smaller companies’ networks to insert malware that allowed them to then gain access to power plants’ computers. The focus on the aviation sector highlights the risks to large infrastructure systems from cyber-intrusions, said Lance Hoffman, research professor at George Washington University’ s Department of Computer Science. Corporate networks at some of the 99 nuclear power plants licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were affected by the 2017 hack, but no safety, security or emergency preparedness functions were affected. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also said the incident had no operational impacts on interstate transmission of electricity. dialogplus. ch
The focus on the aviation sector highlights the risks to large infrastructure systems from cyber intrusions.
CEC May 2018- 11