(This article is part of Today’s Cache, The Hindu’s newsletter on emerging themes at the intersection of technology, innovation and policy. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.)

Apple’s labour challenges

The U.S. National Labor Relations Board has accused Apple of trying to stop employees from discussing their pay, in addition to forcing one employee who was compiling information on these statistics to quit. Per the complaint, Apple stopped employees from using a Slack channel in order to talk about pay equity as well as a policy that covered financial incentives for sales goals.

Apple disagreed with these allegations and said that it would share more information during a hearing. In particular, engineer Cher Scarlett - who was allegedly forced to quit for leading pay-related discourse and collecting employees’ salary information through a survey - and her legal team are looking to hold Apple accountable for what they claim are labour rights violations.

Russian trolls target U.S. elections

U.S. intelligence officials have debunked a video that showed a man claiming to be an immigrant who said that he was carrying out voter fraud in order to help Vice President Kamala Harris win the election. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the video was fake and attributed it to possibly being the work of Russian trolls.

Multiple digital advocates and even Big Tech companies like Microsoft have warned of foreign interference in the 2024 U.S. election, for the purpose of widening existing divisions between people, persuading voters to choose candidates sympathetic to their own regimes, or triggering civil unrest on the ground. Many of these foreign agents or networks leverage popular social media platforms and impersonate American sources.

Microsoft’s AI users in India

Microsoft’s India and South Asia President, Puneet Chandok, said that rather than seeing tech spending go down in the country, people were increasingly engaging with the company’s AI tools such as Copilot. Chandok noted that India was among the fastest-growing regions for Microsoft, and observed that the overall sentiment regarding AI had shifted in a more optimistic direction.

Chandok also reiterated the company’s commitment to complying with India’s regulations when it came to developing and releasing AI products. Microsoft aims to work with India to create an “AI first” nation, or one with a skilled workforce using AI across industries.