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Google announced it will invest $15 billion to build a new AI hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, in southeastern India. Pictured from left are: Bikash Koley, vice president of Global Infrastructure and Capacity at Google Cloud; Ashwini Vaishnaw, IT minister; Nirmala Sitharaman, India minister of Finance and
Corporate Affairs; Nara Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh; Nara Lokesh, minister for Information Technology for Andhra Pradesh; and Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. Photo courtesy of Google.

Oct. 14 (UPI) — Google announced it will invest $15 billion to build an AI hub in India, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian announced Tuesday.

The hub will be in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, in southeastern India, and will reportedly be a 1-gigawatt facility.

The investment is Google’s largest Indian investment to date and will create Google’s largest AI hub in the world outside of the United States, Kurian said.

On Monday, Lokesh Nara, Andhra Pradesh’s minister of Human Resources, posted on X about the investment.

“After a year of intense discussions and relentless effort, tomorrow we make history. Google will sign an MOU with the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh for a 1GW project with an investment of $10 billion USD. It is a massive leap for our state’s digital future, innovation, and global standing. This is just the beginning,” he wrote.

The Indian Economic Times reported on Saturday that the investment would come from Google’s Indian subsidiary Raiden Infotech, which will also develop three campuses in Visakhapatnam.

According to an analysis commissioned by Google by Access Partnership, the AI hub is expected to generate at least $15 billion over five years in American gross domestic product because of new economic activity from increased cloud and AI adoption, as well as the American talent and resources involved in developing and operating the AI hub, the Google press release said.

“The Google AI hub in Visakhapatnam represents a landmark investment in India’s digital future,” Kurian said in a statement. “By delivering industry-leading AI infrastructure at scale, we are enabling businesses to innovate faster and creating meaningful opportunities for inclusive growth. This partnership reflects our shared commitment to the Indian and U.S. governments to harness AI responsibly and drive transformative impact for society.”

Part of the investment will be the construction of a new international subsea gateway, including multiple international subsea cables to land in Visakhapatnam, which is on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. This will help India meet its increasing digital demands, giving route diversity to complement subsea cable landings in Mumbai and Chennai and securing India’s digital backbone.

“This significant investment in Andhra Pradesh marks a new chapter in India’s digital transformation journey,” said N. Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, in a statement. “We are proud to host India’s first truly gigawatt-scale data center and Google’s first AI hub in India, which is a testament to our shared commitment to innovation, AI adoption, and long-term support for businesses and startups in the state.”

The Taliban in Afghanistan have imposed a nationwide shut down of telecommunications, weeks after they began severing fibre-optic internet connections to prevent what they call immorality.

The country is currently experiencing a total connectivity blackout, internet watchdog, Netblocks reports.

International news agency AFP says it lost contact with its office in the capital Kabul, including mobile phone service. Mobile internet and satellite TV has also been severely disrupted across Afghanistan.

Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.

Flights from Kabul airport have also been disrupted, according to reports.

Several people in Kabul have told the BBC that their fibre-optic internet stopped working towards the end of the working day, around17:00 local time (12:30 GMT)

Because of this, it is understood many people will not notice the impact until Tuesday morning, when services like banking and border services are due to resume.

Fibre-optic cables transfer data super fast, and are used for much of the world’s internet.

In a post on social network Mastodon.social, Netblocks said:

“Afghanistan is now in the midst of a total internet blackout as Taliban authorities move to implement morality measures, with multiple networks disconnected through the morning in a stepwise manner; telephone services are currently also impacted”.

For weeks internet users in several Afghan provinces have been complaining about either slow internet access or no connectivity.

The Taliban earlier said an alternative route for internet access would be created, without giving any details.

Business leaders at the time warned that if the internet ban continued their activities would be seriously hit.

The blackout is the latest in a series of restrictions which the Taliban have enforced since returning to power.

Earlier this month they removed books written by women from the country’s university teaching system as part of a new ban which has also outlawed the teaching of human rights and sexual harassment.

Women and girls have also been particularly hard-hit: they are barred from accessing education beyond the age of 12, with one of their last routes to further training cut off in late 2024, when midwifery courses were quietly shut down.

The Taliban, a hardline Islamist group, retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 in a lightning advance that lasted just 10 days.

BRITAIN must square up to Russia over its threats to undersea cables or risk a “catastrophic” attack a report by parliament has warned.

The military is “too timid” defending pipelines and seabed internet cables and must adopt a much more “muscular” approach, it said.

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The report by Parliament’s National Security Strategy Committee called for “punitive consequences” for saboteurs that go beyond calling them names.

It warned: “Otherwise, aggressors that are content with implausible deniability can cause damage with minimal risk.”

It comes after Navy chief General Sir Gwyn Jenkins warned Russia’s sub-sabotage unit GUGI was “regenerating”.

The committee of 22 MPs and peers warned Russia was the “primary threat” capable of causing severe disruption to the UK.

They cited “numerous allegations” of Russia and China using proxy actors to sabotage subsea cables in the Baltic and Indo-Pacific.

They panned Labour’s former telecoms minister Chris Bryant for dismissing their concerns as “apocalyptic”.

The report said: “The Minister (Bryant) suggested that exploring the risks of a co-ordinated attack on subsea infrastructure was unhelpfully “apocalyptic”.

“We disagree. Focusing on fishing accidents and low-level sabotage is no longer good enough.”

The report warned the UK faces a “strategic vulnerability”.

Proper “defensive preparations” could reduce the chances of a sabotage attack, it added.

Sir David Omand, a former GCHQ spychief, warned Britain would be in Russia’s “crosshairs” in the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine.

He said: “We really must expect the Russians to pick on us.”

Professor Kevin Rowlands, from the Royal Navy’s Strategic Studies Centre, told the committee that Russia’s GUGI had over 50 vessels including submarines that could dive to 6,000 metres.

He raised fears over vessels deliberately dragging their anchors to sever seabed cables and saboteurs armed with axes cut cables on land.

He said: “Dragging an anchor over a well‑plotted cable is easy and deniable.

“Pre-positioning any timed charges is difficult and risky for whoever is doing that.

“Using divers is difficult and, again, is trackable.”

He added: “In the future, one-way uncrewed underwater vehicles are probably a way ahead for any adversary.”

The MoD said it was investing “in new capabilities to help protect our offshore infrastructure, using the latest technology”.

It said: “This includes through the UK-led reaction system Nordic Warden, to track potential threats to undersea infrastructure, the high-tech RFA Proteus and Atlantic Bastion – high tech sensors above and below the seas to track submarines.”

The Sun understands the advice came from lawyers paid by the Ministry of Defence to act on behalf of the SAS and its veterans.

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Sept. 7 (UPI) — One of Microsoft’s cloud services has been disrupted by severed cables below the surface of the Red Sea, the company said.

Users of Azure will experience delays in Internet traffic as it crosses through the Middle East, and the data has been rerouted, Microsoft said in a statement.

There were reports over the weekend that Internet traffic in the United Arab Emirates and some Asian countries had been affected, the BBC reported.

“Network traffic that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted,” Microsoft said.

NetBlocks, a company that monitors online Internet traffic, said Saturday that India and Pakistan were among the countries affected by the outage.

The cables were severed in water near the Saudi city of Jeddah, according to a social media post by the Pakistan Telecommunications company.

Severed Internet cables are a fairly routine occurrence, often the result of ships dropping anchor. Some cables, however, may have been cut deliberately, including several in 2024 that were severed between Asia and Europe about a month after the Yemeni government issued a warning that Iran-backed Houthi rebels threatened could sabotage communication cables and attack ships in the Red Sea.

The Houthis denied targeting the lines.

Since Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine in 2022, several communication cables and gas lines beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea have also been severed.