Tech Stories

Issue #58

Hello Reader,

Singapore is so annoyed at persistent cyberattacks that it publicly named the state-sponsored group responsible this week. Separately, Singapore might need to move faster in its herculean effort to thread sustainability, innovation, and data centre growth.

I talk about these two topics today.

China-linked group called out for cyberattacks

For the first time, Singapore this week publicly rebuked cyberattacks it says originated from a China-linked group.

According to Coordinating Minister for National Security K. Shanmugam, Singapore is facing serious threats from state-linked actors. He named the state-sponsored cyber espionage group UNC3886, which experts say is linked to China.

The attackers were reportedly breaking into critical infrastructure to achieve persistence. The objective is to gain deep access to key systems to either steal sensitive information or set up staging areas for future cyberattacks.

To me, this underscores the urgency of rolling out the Digital Infrastructure Act (DIA), expected to be introduced in 2025. Why? Because the same threat actors targeting obvious assets like energy plants, airports, and hospitals, will almost certainly be gunning for data centres owned by private companies with far fewer cybersecurity resources. And Singapore has a lot of data centres.

The DIA is anticipated to provide statutory powers to regulate systemically important digital infrastructure - think major data centre operators and cloud services. Beyond recommending best practices, it will also establish enforceable mandates around incident reporting, resilience standards, continuity, and security. This will include cybersecurity, though with a broader focus on resilience and stability.

I think it's timely, as shown by the hour-long outage I exclusively reported on 31 May this year, and the brief disruption it caused to multiple ISPs in Singapore. Without the DIA, the government has no regulatory teeth to see the broader picture, investigate or demand accountability.

Staying ahead of the data centre race

Last May, Singapore released the Green Data Centre Roadmap, which outlined a strategic vision to thread sustainability, innovation, and continued data centre growth. As a carrot, it also announced 300MW of new data centre capacity, with another 200MW set aside for operators using green energy. That's substantial considering Singapore has built up just 1,400MW of capacity over two decades.

Progress, however, has been excruciatingly slow.

Granted, there are multiple intractable problems that will require finesse and careful consideration. And to its credit, agencies like IMDA don’t just pay lip service to industry consultation — it actually engages with industry players, such as the meeting in June that some wrongly assumed was a call for DC-CFA 2.

But here’s the problem: the data centre landscape, buoyed by AI, is now in a phase of accelerated growth.

Just two examples: Johor had only one 10MW data centre in 2021. It’s now on track to surpass Singapore’s 1,400MW. A short ferry ride away, Batam could also exceed Singapore’s 300MW allocation - once all the announced data centres are built.

In the meantime, there have been just a handful of new data centres since 2019. I may be slightly off, but I can only think of two: Keppel’s SGP 7 and ST Engineering's 7.5MW Data Centre @ Boon Lay. There are two others - Singtel’s DC Tuas and Equinix's SG5 - but both were approved before the 2019 moratorium.

In fact, the data centres under the 80MW allocated in the pilot DC-CFA likely won’t be ready for at least another year. No matter how you see it, it's an incredibly long drought - especially in a time of hyper-accelerated growth.

What once-in-a-lifetime opportunities might Singapore be missing by not going faster?

Perhaps it’s time to make bold moves and lean into action, rather than trying to line up everything perfectly.

As always, you can reach me by replying to this email.

Regards,
Paul Mah.

You can now comment on stories published on techstories.co. If you received this newsletter from me, your account was created automatically.

All you need to do:

Scroll to Member discussion and sign in with the email used for this newsletter.
An email message with a magic link is sent immediately. Click to log in.
Comment away.

Spotlight