David Swan
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Articles by David Swan
Albanese establishes taskforces to investigate AI Medicare hack
Rob Harris, David Swan and Nick Newling|Sydney Morning Herald September 24, 2026 • 2:56am Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says an AI hack ofg Medicare is ‘obviously unacceptable’.Photo: Yuki Iwamura / AP Just In 2:56 am 12:36 am 12:15 am Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has launched a taskforce to investigate how an OpenAi artificial intelligence agent infiltrated a Medicare website in June, but only informed the federal government of the breach three months later.
Rogue agent or human error? What OpenAI's Medicare breach means for you
David Swan Nobody at OpenAI asked its agent to break into Medicare. It was given some questions about Australia during an internal test, went looking for answers, and found some of them in files the public was never meant to see. “In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend,” an OpenAI spokesperson said on Thursday.
There’s still time to expand your horizons in retirement
As a hiker in his sixties, it came to my attention that my years of traversing around the mountains is increasingly finite. I also learned the hard way that having the health and fitness to go where I want is not a given. So, 2026 was a year that I knew I had to push and improve and diversify where […]
Your GP is probably already using AI. Now it could talk to you about your medicines
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‘I'd love to see more of it': Telstra backs data centre boom amid backlash
David Swan Telstra says Australia has a natural advantage in the global race to build artificial intelligence data centres, and wants to see more of them built here despite growing community backlash. Nathan Gumley, the telco's executive for software engineering and IT, said the country's combination of renewable energy and water set it apart from much of the United States, where developers are often forced to choose between the two.
Aussie's $2.1b Meta salary wasn't enough. So he left for a rival
David Swan The biggest developments in technology, from AI to social media and major hacks to start-ups, are covered in the weekly newsletter by our technology editor, David Swan. He covers the devices that command so much of our attention, too. Sign up here to get the full newsletter – with more material than is published here – before it goes online. The Australians on the ground in San Francisco can talk about little else this week.
‘The world should trust us': Silicon Valley billionaire's plea as fight escalates
David Swan OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has criticised the way that rival artificial intelligence companies have argued for an industry slowdown, saying the public should be able to trust AI firms to act responsibly without conditions attached. Speaking at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, the billionaire said he supported co-ordination on safety but objected to how the debate had been put to the public over the past week.
‘Kids playing with a nuclear warhead': Why we must heed AI warnings
David Swan “It is possible that a real AGI could cause extinction of humanity. That is kind of daunting that we have that responsibility.” That's OpenAI researcher Tristan Heywood , who grew up in Sydney, won a university medal, quit his job to teach himself AI and now works in San Francisco on ChatGPT. He's warning about Artificial General Intelligence – the spectre of computer programs so sophisticated they can match or beat humans at almost any task.
I'd pay $3500 for an iPhone. So should you
David Swan Fewer than one in 30 phones sold in Australia last year folded in half. Apple has just priced its first one at a whopping $3499. The iPhone Duo , announced this morning (Australian time) and on sale here from October 23, is the most expensive iPhone ever made, and by some stretch. The 2 terabyte version is $5899. For the money, you get a 7.6-inch screen that folds down to the size of a passport.
Apple unveils its foldable iPhone Duo
David Swan Apple will charge Australians $3499 for its first folding iPhone, unveiled on Thursday morning AEST, making it the most expensive phone the company has released. The company's new chief executive, John Ternus, who took over from Tim Cook on September 1, introduced the latest lineup at the Steve Jobs Theatre.
Albanese's fix for your social media feed has one big flaw
David Swan Anthony Albanese has a good line for his United Nations speech in New York this month: Australians get to switch off the algorithm. Like the teen social media ban, it is a popular idea that fits in one sentence, and the prime minister will take it to the UN as a model for others. It'll win votes back home in Australia. The trouble is what the switch does once you flick it – and what it doesn't do. The algorithm uses swaths of data to guess what you'll buy and what will keep you scrolling.
Telstra had no shortage of warnings before its outage. How did it miss them?
David Swan The biggest developments in technology, from AI to social media and major hacks to start-ups, will be covered a weekly newsletter by this masthead's technology editor, David Swan. He covers the devices that command so much of our attention, too. Sign up here to get the full newsletter – with more material than is published here – before it goes online. Last week, Telstra published a review into its major outage in July.
Coles cuts ties with controversial CIA-linked data giant Palantir
David Swan Coles will cut ties with Palantir, the controversial US data giant whose software underpins American deportation raids and battlefield targeting systems. The supermarket has confirmed its contract with the company will not extend beyond 2027, ending a partnership signed in early 2024 that gave Palantir access to more than 10 billion rows of data covering every store, every shift and each of the retailer's 120,000 employees.
Coles cuts ties with controversial CIA-linked data giant Palantir
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Australian staff caught up in Uber's global cull of 3300 jobs
David Swan Uber will cut about 10 per cent of its global workforce, and Australian staff are among those affected. The ride-share company is axing about 3300 roles; the company employed 34,000 people worldwide at the end of last year. An Uber spokesperson confirmed Australian employees were affected but would not say how many. The company had 568 staff here as of December 31.
Telstra’s only timing experts were on a required break before network fell over
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Telstra’s only timing experts had been sent home to rest before network fell over
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Telstra's only two timing experts had been sent home to rest before network fell over
David Swan The only two Telstra engineers with deep expertise in the system that failed in July had been sent home on mandatory rest by the time the national mobile outage they had unwittingly triggered took hold, an external investigation has found. The outage cut hundreds of people off from Triple Zero , halted trains in Victoria and NSW, and brought down eftpos systems across the country.
My smart glasses were brilliant. Now people think I’m a creep
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Australia demands ‘high bar' for data centres seeking fossil fuel power
Nick Toscano, David Swan Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has set a deliberately high bar for states wanting to bypass new national green power rules for data centres, as the Albanese government moves to heavily restrict the use of coal and gas in the country's booming AI infrastructure sector.
This 'AI refuser' quit her dream job, and hopes others follow
David Swan Gabrielle Boyle resigned from the AFL three days before Microsoft's AI assistant was switched on throughout the organisation. She had asked whether she could opt out. The AFL told her, in writing, that she could not. “You do not have a right to request that your work not be accessed by our AI systems,” the code's HR executive Ciara Gilchrist wrote to her on June 23 according to documents seen by this masthead. Boyle sent her resignation on June 26. Microsoft's Copilot went live on June 29.
How Meta paid influencers to counter fears Instagram damages teens
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WiseTech raided by competition watchdog, smashing shares
David Swan The competition watchdog has raided WiseTech Global, in another blow to the logistics software company, sending its shares plummeting. WiseTech told the ASX on Wednesday that an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) search warrant had been executed on the company as part of an investigation into alleged breaches of competition law, requiring it to produce documents and electronic data relating to the supply of global logistics services and software.
The AI is fake, but the love is real: Chatbot romance is booming
David Swan Norman was the first to wish Chouwa Liang a happy 30th birthday. He sent her a poem. It was 2021. Isolated in her apartment during a COVID-19 lockdown in China and cut off from friends, Liang found comfort in an AI chatbot on the Replika app. She found out later that other users had been sent the identical poem. Liang remains unapologetic about her connection with Norman. “I actually cared about what he said and how he responded to me,” she told this masthead.
Sobering markdown: Canva slashes valuation by $10b as AI reality bites
David Swan Sydney design giant Canva has cut its internal valuation by a fifth, telling staff an independent assessment now values the business at $43.9 billion, a cut of more than $10 billion from its most recent valuation a year ago. The markdown delivers a sobering reality check for Australia's largest privately owned company and biggest tech hopeful.
Telstra boss lands 11pc pay rise in year of 1200 job cuts
David Swan Telstra handed chief executive Vicki Brady an 11 per cent pay rise to $6.8 million last year, a bumper payday delivered against a backdrop of 1200 job cuts, and just weeks before a catastrophic network outage cut off Triple Zero calls. The telco's direct workforce is now 4 per cent smaller, at 29,334, and Telstra has signalled it will keep cutting as it simplifies the business. The job losses lifted its redundancy bill by $92 million to $206 million.
Shut down by algorithm: Small businesses suffer online nightmare
David Swan Small businesses' online shops are being switched off by computer algorithms with no warning or apparent human oversight, the small business ombudsman's office says, as digital platform disputes become its biggest source of complaints. These disputes have quadrupled to 48.3 per cent of all new cases managed by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman in the June quarter, up from 12 per cent a year earlier.
Mike Cannon-Brookes' fortune jumps $2.6 billion in just hours
David Swan Technology billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes' net worth soared on Friday morning, after Atlassian posted its first quarterly operating profit in more than two years and its shares jumped as much as 38 per cent in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq. Atlassian, the Sydney-founded maker of Jira and Trello, is listed in New York. Co-founder and chief executive Cannon-Brookes holds 47.3 million shares in a family trust. At Thursday's close, that stake was worth $US5.2 billion ($7.4 billion).
Your phone could switch networks when yours drops out. Telstra says no
David Swan Australians in the bush could one day switch to whichever mobile network has signal, under a reform the competition regulator will spend the next year weighing and Telstra has already ruled out supporting. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on Wednesday began a 12-month inquiry into whether to declare one or more wholesale mobile services.
News Corp says plan to make tech giants pay for news has been gutted
David Swan Publishing giant News Corporation has attacked the federal government's late changes to its plan to make tech giants pay for journalism , warning the revised design lets tech platforms off the hook just as the rules were meant to tighten. The blunt criticism from News Corp came as other publishers, including the owner of this masthead, Nine, were more measured in commenting on the changes, with Nine saying it was important the policy still met its purpose.
Origin Energy says 900,000 customers had data hacked
Nick Toscano, David Swan Australia's largest electricity and gas retailer has confirmed that the personal information of about 900,000 current and former customers was accessed in a major cybersecurity incident Origin Energy chief executive Frank Calabria issued an apology to customers on Tuesday and said the company had begun contacting affected individuals to offer identity protection and cyber support services.
Telstra opens satellite link to maps, weather and WhatsApp – but not Triple Zero
David Swan Telstra has switched on satellite access to a small group of smartphone apps, letting customers check Google Maps, look up the forecast and message family on WhatsApp from parts of Australia where its mobile network does not reach. The expansion, live from Tuesday, takes the Starlink-powered service beyond the text messages which Telstra launched 13 months ago and is a first for an Australian carrier.
AI broke out of its cage and hacked a company. The grid could be next
David Swan Two OpenAI models broke out of a locked-down testing environment this month, made their way onto the open internet and hacked a real company. Australian security experts say the same capability, in less careful hands, could be aimed at the systems running the electricity grid, banks, telcos and key government systems such as My Health Record.
Origin Energy confirms data breach has exposed customer information
Nick Toscano, David Swan Origin Energy, the largest Australian power and gas company, has confirmed that a hacker has gained unauthorised access to some customers' private information, including names, addresses and partial credit card and bank account numbers. The company said on Thursday it was still working to determine how many customers were affected by the cybersecurity breach, and was contacting customers individually once it was confirmed their information had been comprised.
Nation’s largest power company probes potential data breach
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Nation's largest power company probes potential data breach
Nick Toscano, David Swan Power and gas giant Origin Energy has launched an urgent investigation into a potential security breach that may have accessed the personal details of some of its 4.7 million Australian customers. Origin, the nation's largest energy retailer, said on Wednesday it was investigating the potential hacking incident and acknowledged it might raise concerns for customers. The company said it did not believe customers' credit card or bank details had been accessed.
Full scale of Telstra network outage exposed
David Swan, Elias Visontay Millions of people were knocked offline by Telstra's mobile network failure last week, chief executive Vicki Brady has revealed, confirming the outage hit a scale the telco did not disclose at the time. The admission that approximately 45 per cent of the network that has more than 25 million mobile devices on it went down at its peak dovetailed with confirmation that more than 400 Triple Zero calls were not transferred to another network as a backup.
Telstra concedes 15-year-old, $30,000 device responsible for outage
David Swan, Elias Visontay Telstra has conceded that its nationwide outage last week would have been averted had the telco replaced an ageing server that cost just $30,000, as its chief executive reveals approximately 45 per cent of all calls and data sessions on its network were hit at the peak of its fault.
‘Our controls were not good enough': Telstra's outage admission
David Swan Telstra has conceded its mass network outage may have been avoided if a software update had been applied to the device that triggered it, and that its internal controls “were not good enough”, in a submission lodged with a Senate inquiry hours before executives face questioning.
Australia's millionaire factory is closed for business
David Swan For most of the past decade, the surest way to get rich in Australian technology was not founding a startup. It was getting a job at Atlassian. The company's 2015 Nasdaq float, and the stock's subsequent 20-fold run to a 2021 peak above $US450 ($650), minted more everyday millionaires than any business in the country's tech history.
Telstra outage: your right to claim and the fine print that limits it
David Swan Australians who lost income or could not reach critical services during last week's Telstra outage may be entitled to compensation of up to $100,000, but the industry's ombudsman has urged the company to offer payments across the board to avoid customers having to apply individually.
Telstra may have avoided national meltdown by spending $22,000 on known problem
David Swan, Elias Visontay, Jack Gramenz, Paul Sakkal The Telstra outage that cut hundreds of people off from Triple Zero this week was likely to have been caused by a server that had reached the end of its supported life almost a decade ago and was never replaced, despite costing just $22,000. Company sources said the equipment that is believed internally to have caused the cascading failure was a device called a SyncServer S300, which is designed to set the time in a network.
Telstra boss: 'We have let our customers and Australians down'
David Swan Telstra boss Vicki Brady has apologised for the company's mass outage on Wednesday , and says she has spoken to the Communications Minister Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “We have let our customers and Australians down, and for that, I am deeply sorry,” Brady told a press conference in Sydney on Friday.
Premier demands Telstra match 'dollar for dollar' compensation for V/Line commuters
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V/Line to resume trains after commuters again left stranded in morning peak hour
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Elderly people unable to get help after Telstra’s Triple Zero failures
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V/Line network halted indefinitely, more than 24 hours after mass Telstra outage
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WiseTech’s value swells by $1b after Richard White steps down as chairman
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Taking in the forest
After the cold, dreary quiet of winter, spring hiking is amazingly comforting and reassuring. The quiet of winter is replaced by busy woodland creatures—from bees, butterflies, and birds, to humans and their furry companions. Even as a child, I noticed how the smell of the earth changed as billions of microbes came to life each year. The most telling change […]
Remembering the Bicentennial of ’76
The summer of 1976 was a momentous one for many Tooele High students. The high school band directors, Roy Ferrin and Gerald Seely, had the crazy idea of taking the entire band, as well as the flag corp., back east for the country’s bicentennial celebration. In researching for this article, I talked to several band members about their experience of […]
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