China’s Alibaba has created a new chip that can “infer” answers to unforeseen questions at a high level, the WSJ reported today. While still below the capabilities of the top Nvidia semiconductors, it puts the Chinese on the ladder. 1/8 “The new chip, now in testing, is meant to serve a broader range of AI inference tasks, said people familiar with it,” the WSJ said. Inference is a machine’s ability to use learned knowledge to answer unforeseen queries. (Alibaba’s Qwen, meanwhile, is top of many AI charts.) 2/8

DEEPSEEK JUST DISRUPTED THE AI SECTOR—AGAIN. With minimum fanfare, the Chinese firm launched a new program, V3, which offers cutting edge performance at a fraction of the price of US market leaders. 1/13 The cheeky launch comes just two weeks after the announcement of the US’s “market leader” GPT-5. The Chinese innovators’ product is open-source – meaning it will be picked up and replicated by people around the world. 2/13

Hong Kong’s anti-China campaigner Jimmy Lai served America, fighting on that nation’s behalf against China, which Lai and Washington perceived as “the enemy camp”. How do we know this? Because Lai said so himself. 1/14 Much is being printed about Jimmy Lai as his trial enters closing arguments, but few publications actually covered the trial itself or printed what came out of it. So here’s a partial summary of key points. 2/14

The embarrassed US is gradually discovering that it has outsourced key elements of the coming war against China … to China. Key elements of warfare, from fighter-bombers, Hellfire missiles, nightvision goggles, etc, are being made by the very citizens set to be attacked. 1/15 In 2023, the head of America’s giant military manufacturer Raytheon slammed US talk of separation from China. The company (like its rivals) has “sev­eral thou­sand sup­pli­ers in China and decoup­ling . . . is impossible,” Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes told the Financial Times. 2/15

A group of Chinese researchers in the United States made a breakthrough which scientists hope is set to lead to the creation of data centers which don’t need huge cooling operations, Nature reported this week. It would also supercharge your phone and laptop. 1/7 The boffins developed a new method of layering semiconductors with magnetic elements that boost power while lowering excess heat. The system would produce processors that are far more efficient, both at handheld level and on large scales. 2/7

Taiwan’s increasingly unpopular Democratic Progressive Party lost majority control of parliament in 2024—but intends on taking it back in a blatantly unfair July 26 “power grab”, ousting legitimately elected representatives of the people. 1/9 But western mainstream media did a news blackout on major demonstrations by the people of Taiwan on the issue earlier this year and are this week twisting the story to make light of the unpopular DPP’s outrageously anti-democratic act. 2/9

THE U.S. IS CAUTIOUSLY MOVING AHEAD with long-held but risky plans for a war on China, in which the Taiwanese take the place of Ukrainians as a western proxy to justify a conflict. 1/14 - Deputy war secretary Elbridge Colby asked Japan to define what support it would provide in an upcoming conflict in Taiwan, the Financial Times reported. 2/14 ft.com/content/41e272…

10 TRENDS AT THIS WEEK'S BRICS
1) US Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin said they would end the war in Ukraine. Speaking at the BRICS conference which ended yesterday, Putin said he welcomed Donald Trump’s pledge and "believed it was sincere" 2) China's leader Xi Jinping and India's head Narendra Modi committed to ending their countries' long-term but non-violent border dispute, striking a huge blow against American attempts to divide the two Asian giants.

A thread: 2. US government secretly told TikTok that it would not be banned in the country—if it allowed American agents access to the records of TikTok users, Forbes reported. TikTok has a billion users worldwide, with 150 million in the United States.

OOPS. THIS WAS AWKWARD. In 2012, US defense planners made an embarrassing discovery. Lots of US military gear came from China. This included bits of their jetfighters, the glass in their nightvision goggles, the chemicals in their hellfire missiles, and so on. This was terribly problematic—you see, there were already advanced plans identifying China as a potential target for a future war. In effect the US had outsourced key elements of the coming war against China … to China.

Here are 10 (or more) amazing statistics about the west, that wonderfully creative, dazzling, colorful thirteen per cent chunk of humanity—and which appears to be in decline.
Life expectancy in the United States has fallen from almost 79 four years ago to about 76 now. In poorer parts of the UK, life expectancy has fallen below 75 for women, while men die in their 60s.

The present U.S. administration’s determination to stop the world selling vital semiconductors to China “is an act of economic warfare”, top Financial Times columnist Martin Wolfe wrote on Friday. 2/ The move “is far more threatening to Beijing than anything Donald Trump did,” he added. “The aim is clearly to slow China’s economic development. That is an act of economic warfare.”

1/ MOVE OVER, New York and London. Hong Kong is celebrating its 25th birthday having reached world-class heights in a number of fields, as one of the healthiest, wealthiest, safest places on earth. Here are 12 statistics, a thread: 2/ Blue skies, which became rare in Hong Kong in the 1990s, are now common again: Major air pollutants have dropped between 34 and 80 percent in the past couple of decades years.

Report from yesterday's court hearing #HongKong 1) Andy Li was one of the official leaders of the “Stand With Hong Kong” group, along with Finn Lau, while Chan Tsz-wah liaised behind the scenes with the de facto leaders, Jimmy Lai and Mark Simon, prosecutors said.