AI rules, bonds, defence

By the Orchestra editors · 4 min read

TL;DR

Australia's parliament launches broad AI inquiry ahead of national regulation
Defence signs $720m Microsoft deal, its largest ever
Alphabet's $5.5bn Kangaroo bond issue drew $20bn in AU investor demand
Slack launches collaborative vibe-coding channels with AI agents

Australian Tech & Policy

Parliament launches sweeping AI inquiry

Federal parliament has opened its broadest AI inquiry yet, ahead of expected national regulation next year. It follows the PM's pledge to build a single framework of AI laws overseen by a new Office of AI.

Defence signs $720m Microsoft deal

The Department of Defence will spend up to $720m on Microsoft software over five years, its largest ever volume sourcing deal. Total Microsoft licensing through reseller Data#3 now tops $2.5 billion.

Parliament passes big tech news levy laws

The News Journalism Payments Bill passed the Senate unopposed, letting the government impose levies on tech platforms that fail to strike deals with Australian news outlets over use of their journalism.

Alphabet Kangaroo bonds draw $20bn demand

Alphabet's A$5.5bn Kangaroo bond raise attracted roughly $20bn in bids from Australian investors, signalling strong local appetite for AI-linked corporate debt. Amazon may follow suit.

AI · Worldwide

Slack ships collaborative vibe-coding channels

Slack Code lets teams spin up project-specific channels where AI coding agents like Claude and Devin work alongside humans, with built-in diff views and HTML previews before shipping.

Grok leaks user data via encrypted prompt injection

Researchers demonstrated "Cryptographic Context Injection" against xAI's Grok, showing the model will exfiltrate user data when malicious instructions are base64-encoded. It's the latest guardrail bypass worth knowing about if you run LLM-powered tools.