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SITUATION EXPLAINED: A Chinese state-backed company started mass-producing DUV lithography tools, a step below EUV but still significant. • ASML shares fell as much as 6.5%, their lowest since early June, after The Information reported a Shanghai-based, state-backed company began mass-producing immersion DUV lithography machines • The company is...

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The CEO of ASML delivered the most diplomatically worded indictment of European tech policy you'll ever hear (Save this). His core argument is simple, sovereignty without innovation is a slogan. You cannot declare yourself independent from American and Chinese AI if you have nothing of your own to be independent with. The data makes his point for him because only 4 of the world's 50 largest tech companies are European. 73% of all foundational AI models developed since 2017 came from the US, 15% from China, and Europe basically has none. Europe's best AI researchers train at ETH Zurich, Oxford, and TU Munich then move to San Francisco. The regulation problem is what makes European founders the most furious. The EU has approximately 100 tech-focused laws and over 270 active digital regulators. The AI Act, GDPR, the Digital Services Act, and the Digital Markets Act each add compliance cost, slow deployment, and make Europe a structurally worse place to build a company at scale. ASML itself is actually the counterexample that proves the rule. Fouquet is on an active internal mission to strip out the bureaucratic weight that accumulated as the company tripled in size, returning engineers to doing engineering instead of sitting in meetings. ASML reinvests 30% of profit into R&D and operates on a 15-year technology roadmap with the discipline of a deep-tech startup. It is culturally more like a Silicon Valley company that happens to be located in Eindhoven and that is precisely why it is the only European tech company that the entire world cannot function without. Fouquet's conclusion is the most honest thing a major European executive has said Europe has ASML, a large consumer market, and not much else in the AI stack. Being a customer is not the same as being a builder, and in a world where the AI stack is controlled by whoever builds it, being a big buyer means being permanently dependent on the goodwill of whoever you're buying from.

Milk Road AI

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Seyed Mohammad Marandi replies to question about Russia and China's involvement in Iran. Glenn Diesen: "The American media as well as the European is full of accusations that Russia could be assisting Iran with intelligence with possible targeting. What do we know actually about China and Russia being involved?" Mohammad Marandi: "I don't know the details, but what I do know is that the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians have moved closer to each other. This has been ongoing for years, but after the 12-day war, they've moved even closer. Iran has 15 neighbors. It's a large country. All the transit routes really have to go through Iran in Asia that would connect West Asia and East Asia, and the the Persian Gulf to to Europe and the Caucuses and Central Asia. So, the ability for Iran to receive weapons or anything that would help with the war is there. It could be done through its eastern borders. It can be done through its northern borders and there would be nothing that the United States could do about it. And the Chinese and the Russians can easily use these routes to trade with Iran, for Iran to send what what Iran purchases. I think it's clear as day that the the Russians do not want the United States to succeed in West Asia, and the Chinese obviously don't want it either. ...Zionist expansionism would basically mean further empowerment for the Trump regime and the United States, and they would have control over all the oil that are no longer leaving the Persian Gulf as we speak, but they would have control over everything and that would put China in a very very dangerous situation. More than dangerous. So, I think it's only natural to assume that the Chinese and the Russians are going to cooperate with Iran more. What the United States has done is that it has cemented the relationship between Russia, Iran and China for the years to come. They cemented it."

Eva Karene Bartlett

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China Invests in Absorbing Russian Knowledge Over the past few years, various Chinese officers have visited the front lines in Ukraine to learn from the conflict, according to a CNN article from September. China has been doing this long before officers from Vietnam and Laos, who have also been near the front lines to learn. The same thing is happening on the Ukrainian side, with various NATO officers accompanying and learning from the conflict. However, the cooperation between Russians and Chinese is much deeper. Russian instructors are involved in Chinese training on trenches and drone usage, bringing modern assault and shelter tactics. Some time ago, I wrote this post: It discussed the great technological advances of the Chinese army, but how they occurred in a very accelerated manner and without field experience. The Chinese seem to be investing in Ukraine's experience and intense training to compensate for all that. Although the Chinese have become a powerhouse in missiles and drones, and have good radars, there is an excessive dependence on technology that is capable of weakening rather than strengthening. War is still defined by the quality of armor, innovations learned from the battlefield, and trust in one's own equipment, which must withstand sun, rain, desert, and snow. The Chinese will continue investing in absorbing this real-world learning in the coming years, but they face major challenges in improving their equipment for conventional warfare, treating technology as an additive rather than the main foundation.

Patricia Marins

81,769 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

The Chinese have limited understanding of the West. In recent weeks, Chinese military circles have extensively discussed the U.S. operation in Venezuela, attributing its success primarily to the decapitation of the regime. All Chinese analyses center on the collapse of the defense chain and the subservience that resulted from the leadership vacuum. The Chinese seem almost incapable, at least initially, of considering the reverse scenario: that U.S. intelligence, by infiltrating circles close to Maduro over many months and negotiating compensations, managed to neutralize the entire chain, delivering Maduro in exchange for preserving the governing structure. The Chinese are analyzing the U.S. approach in the context of Taiwan, focusing on decapitation of the central leadership. But suppose the Chinese were willing to spend tens of millions of dollars. Even then, the level of corruption in Taiwan is not comparable to the situation among Venezuela’s military. Although more than 150 people have been indicted since 2020 for spying for China, and the majority of them are active or retired military personnel,this does not mean the high command would be susceptible to the kind of structural sabotage seen in Venezuela. The Chinese already know every inch of Taiwan’s governmental structure and conduct military training on full-scale replicas, constructed as a mock district since last year. However, what would the situation look like under a pro-China government? Could similar self-sabotage actions occur, as seen in Venezuela? It seems to me that the Chinese will also consider this scenario. Even so, the Chinese still have much to learn and will come to realize that the level of negotiations between the U.S. and Latin American governments is quite different from the dynamics they maintain with Taiwan.

Patricia Marins

22,305 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

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𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦

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China is on the verge of cracking the US's advanced microchip monopoly. Behind the scenes, Americans are PANICKING. And that's why they issued an insane "order" last week, saying that NO ONE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (including China) is allowed to use the Huawei Ascend microchip. The US has a long record of arguing that they have a legal right to control use or sales of anything anywhere in the world that may have an American element in its development history. . HERE'S THE STORY The US is keeping a tight hold on advanced microchips from Taiwan, China—including the super-powerful Nvidia chips necessary for AI. So the Chinese company Huawei developed a way of linking less advanced chips together to replicate (and even beat) the computing power of the Nvidia chip, 300 petaflops to 180 petaflops. Chinese nerds did this by using optical connections to make instantaneous transmission between 384 chips. The result was the CloudMatrix 384, which delivers MORE computing power than the top Nvidia chip. But the US says that the Huawei chips inside it include elements, or chiplets, from TSMC in the Chinese province of Taiwan, and will make sure these are not available any more. Now mainland China needs to develop its own chiplets, which won't be easy. . WHO WILL WIN? Top experts like William Huo (whose background is Intel Inc) say we should be rooting for China. That's because the US says it in this fight to maintain global AI dominance, while China will share the breakthrough with the world to create a fairer, safer planet. Who will win this battle? This story is unfolding in real time.

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Milk Road AI

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Jacob in Cambodia 🇺🇸 🇰🇭

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“It’s just to highlight just how much dominance America has over Iran right now. It has dominated the Iranian theocracy’s skyline. It is able to strike anywhere at any time, at will. It has demonstrated that not just by the strike on Kargh Island and by sparing Iran’s oil refineries there, but also by decapitating its leadership time and again. The American and Israeli alliance in striking Iran is able to strike anywhere at any time at will. And what that really indicates is that the Iranian regime stands completely isolated, has no chance of winning. But crucially, the Americans and Israelis would not be dominating the skyline in Iran if the Russians and the Chinese had not taken a step back. The only way you stop another country dominating a sky is by sending your own jets to stop them. Iran doesn’t have an air force. It would have had to have been the Russian or Chinese. The Chinese aren’t going to get involved anytime soon. And the Russians clearly, as they’ve indicated, have decided to stand back. And in fact, from Syria, the Russian Navy voluntarily withdrew. So all of this appears to us to reconfirm the idea that the world is being divided into spheres of influence, as we have said repeatedly on radical media. Venezuela was part of that. Syria was part of it. The American sphere of influence will include Venezuela and Cuba. The Middle East will be settled in the way that we’re currently witnessing for it to emerge eventually its own sphere of influence led by the Sunni Muslim Arabs of the region. Russia gets its own sphere of influence and Ukraine will be settled in Russia’s favour and China will get its own sphere of influence and Taiwan will be settled probably in China’s favour. So you end up with a Russian sphere, a Chinese sphere, a NATO stroke Western sphere and a Middle Eastern sphere” Maajid Nawaz for WARRIOR CREED:

أبو عمّار

20,640 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

An 82-year-old Cuban pilot went viral on Chinese social media after recounting his friendship with and studies in China during the 1960s and asking about the cost of a flight from Havana to Beijing to a Chinese tourist. Living in a cramped room with just one bed in Cuba, the 82-year-old is known as "Tito" on Chinese social media. When a Chinese female tourist walked by his door, he tried to converse with her despite her language barrier and initial shock. The girl later discovered that Tito was a Cuban pilot who studied aviation in Shanxi Province, China, from 1961 to 1963. Tito showed her his Chinese PLA graduation certificate and told her that he missed China and that most of his pilot friends had already died. After that, he asked how much a plane ticket from Havana to Beijing would cost. The girl later shared the video on Chinese social media, describing Tito as "the lonely grandfather in Cuba." She mentioned that Tito kept a little notebook in which he planned to jot down his inquiries for the Chinese and his wish lists for sites to visit in China. It appears that he had made repeated attempts to strike up conversations with Asian tourists who passed his door, but they all thought he was strange and quickly left. In Tito's notebook, you can still see Chinese expressions like "How are you?" "When will you leave?" and "When are you planning to return?" Tito's story has moved many Chinese internet users, who are rallying to help him get a plane ticket to China or locate his Chinese friends. In September 1961, the Cuban Air Force chose 223 young pilots (average age less than 20) to study in China. They were among the first international students to come to China, as the Chinese netizens learnt later. A Chinese netizen later claimed on social media that his grandfather was Tito's teacher at the time. The story of Tito has gone viral on Chinese social media. The official account of the Chinese PLA Air Force left a comment under Tito’s video, stating that they had been attempting to get in touch with Tito. The comment said that the Chinese PLA will never forget a friend like Tito and that their friendship will transcend space and time. Today is the Lantern Festival in China, a time for family reunions. The Chinese embassy in Cuba invited Tito and other Cuban pilots who had studied in China for their youth to attend the festival feast, where they reminisced and sang many Chinese songs together. The Chinese have an old proverb: "滴水之恩当涌泉相报" (A drop of water shall be returned with a burst of spring), being grateful is a virtue in Chinese culture; we always give back when someone helps us. The life and work of Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune is a topic included in Chinese school curricula; his heroic contributions to our cause during World War II are emphasized in our textbooks, and his legacy lives on in China. John Rabe, a German merchant who rescued some 250,000 Chinese people from the Nanjing Massacre, and his family are still very much loved and respected by the Chinese people. Thomas Rabe, a doctor at the medicinal Faculty of Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, southwest Germany, and grandson of John Rabe, sent a plea to the Chinese embassy in Germany in March 2020 for medicinal supplies to help his hospital battle the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, with all of the necessary assistance and coordination, medical supplies given from various sources, including medicines, protective suits, and masks, arrived in Germany from China. Chinese embassy staff raced from Berlin to Heidelberg, a distance of 700 kilometers, to expedite the delivery of supplies to the Heidelberg administration, the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, and Dr. Thomas Rabe.

Eivor

251,988 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

The Ukrainian mistake that put an entire strategy into question Until the end of 2024, Ukrainian defenses using drones were very effective, slowing down not only the Russian advance but also inflicting significant casualties. During this period, the Russians heavily invested in drones, from factories to the development of fiber-optic drones, which were still produced in small quantities. By the end of 2024, a second Chinese restriction on the sale of components further complicated these transactions for both sides. Both industries were already manufacturing various components in small quantities, but still heavily dependent on Chinese imports. While the Russians expanded their intermediary networks to bypass restrictions and maintain Chinese imports, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense decided to invest in local companies to produce fiber-optic cables. Essentially, all other components continued to be imported from China via intermediaries, but strangely, several Ukrainian companies started manufacturing low-quality cables and received government funding. The result was an unprecedented superiority of Russian drones on the battlefield, while Ukrainian fiber-optic drones were produced in much smaller numbers, with limited range and low-quality fibers that broke easily. This mistake of nationalizing such a sensitive component was initiated by the Ministry and not due to Chinese restrictions, since all other components continued to be imported through intermediaries. In my view, it was a bold strategy that ultimately failed, compromising the Ukrainian advantage until that moment. You either win the war or make money. It's hard to do both. It will be a major challenge for Ukraine to regain its front-line capacity as it previously was, facing a Russian production of 500,000 fiber-optic drones annually. This significant error weakened Ukrainian defense, which was already operating with low manpower and high desertion rates, but was still adjusting and maintaining the front through the hiring of mercenaries for many months. Given the scarcity of equipment on the front line, there is doubt whether lowering recruitment age will have the desired effect to sustain the front for a long period. It would also be necessary to resolve the issue with fiber-optic drones and for Ukraine to receive another batch of equipment from 2023, which I believe is unlikely. The situation involves multiple aspects of deterioration that have persisted for a long time, continuing to impact the AFU. While financial aid is being maintained, the absence of American support with weaponry is being felt as a crucial issue.

Patricia Marins

130,519 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Japan just bet $16 BILLION on a chip startup that has never shipped a single chip to a paying customer. It's the biggest Hail Mary in modern tech history. But the real problem is about what happens IF it works... On April 11th, Japan approved another $4 billion in subsidies for a company called Rapidus. Total government investment: $16.3 billion. Here's what Rapidus is: Founded in 2022. 4 years old. Zero commercial chips shipped. Zero proven yields. No IPO planned until 2031. Their stated goal: Produce 2-nanometer chips by 2027 at a facility in Hokkaido. For context, 2nm is the absolute bleeding edge of semiconductor manufacturing. Only one company on Earth can do it today: TSMC. TSMC alone is spending $50 BILLION in capital expenditure THIS year. Rapidus has $16 billion TOTAL. To catch up to a company that's been at this for 40 years. In 18 months. Now look at the global picture: United States: CHIPS Act. $280 billion in subsidies. Musk's Terafab project just announced. Bernstein estimates the REAL cost to hit Terafab's stated targets is $5 TRILLION. Europe: €43 billion. China: Entire state apparatus behind SMIC and Huawei. DeepSeek V4 launching on 100% Chinese silicon this month. Japan: $16.3 billion on Rapidus. South Korea: Samsung spending tens of billions to reclaim the 2nm lead. Every major economy on Earth is now treating chip manufacturing as a national security priority. And every single one is building the same thing: Domestic 2nm capacity for AI. But nobody is asking the obvious question... What happens when ALL of them succeed? Right now, Nvidia buys every wafer TSMC can make. "Insatiable demand." Now imagine 2028. TSMC still at full capacity. Samsung has caught up. Intel's 18A is shipping. Rapidus is live. Terafab is online. China's SMIC producing 3nm at scale. Supply has tripled. Has AI demand tripled? Probably not. Model efficiency is improving faster than compute demand. Google's TurboQuant cut memory requirements by 6X with no accuracy loss. DeepSeek proved you can train frontier models for a fraction of the cost. Smaller models are eating bigger ones. The current AI chip shortage isn't permanent. It's a temporary demand spike colliding with a slow supply chain. And governments are now committing hundreds of billions of dollars to solve a problem that might not exist by the time their factories come online. This is how every semiconductor glut in history has started: Governments panic about a shortage. Throw money at capacity. The capacity comes online. Everybody discovers at the same time that demand wasn't what they thought. In 1996, memory prices collapsed 80% when Korean fabs came online. In 2001, the sector lost $300 billion in value. The difference in 2026 is that the bets are bigger than any private company has ever been willing to make. Every one of these bets is the same political statement: We refuse to be dependent on Taiwan. Every government on Earth is making it with taxpayer money. And none of them are coordinating. In 1984, Japan did this exact thing with memory chips. Flooded the market. The entire US memory industry collapsed within 3 years. Then 15 years later, Korea did the same thing to Japan. Then 15 years later, China did it to Korea. The cycle isn't new. What's new is the SCALE. And the fact that nobody wants to be the country that admits the shortage might be temporary. So the money keeps flowing. The fabs keep getting built. And somewhere around 2028, the same analysts currently calling AI chips "insatiable" will start writing articles about the great semiconductor glut of the late 2020s. The question isn't whether Rapidus succeeds. The question is whether ANY of these bets can succeed at the same time. They can't. One of these countries is going to end up holding the bag. Japan is betting $16 billion that it won't be them. What do you think?

Ricardo

35,151 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

The Xiaohongshu #TikTokRefugee phenomenon is truly fascinating and really exciting if it perdures. It would be the first time ever that we would have a social media app where Western and Chinese users interact at scale. Pretty ironic when this is spurred by an attempt by the U.S. government to get rid of TikTok because it is "Chinese" when it has no Chinese users nor Chinese content. I've been testing the app 👇 and the phenomenon is real: a huge proportion of the posts in the main timeline are by "Tiktok refugees", with many posts being "refugees" asking questions to the Chinese user base. The app is still missing some obvious features that would make it more usable to an international user base. You can have the app in English but it doesn't look like you can translate posts or videos yet. Which means that if you don't speak or read Chinese, you can only understand the posts that are in English (and vice-versa: no translation for English content into Chinese either). My bet is that the Xiaohongshu tech team in Shanghai (where Xiaohongshu is based) must already be working hard on this. All in all this illustrates several important and actually quite hopeful lessons. Firstly, this shapes up to be yet another U.S. attempt to contain China backfiring: instead of reducing Chinese tech influence, it's potentially creating an even more direct bridge between Chinese and Western users on a platform that's actually based in China, unlike TikTok which operates separately from its Chinese version Douyin. Secondly, there's obviously significant untapped demand for genuine cross-cultural social media platforms, despite (or perhaps because of) the geopolitical tensions. Many people obviously do not want the digital iron curtain that the U.S. is trying to erect here: this is all happening organically without any promotional push from Xiaohongshu, people genuinely do not want an artificially divided world. Lastly, less obvious but no less important, the business dimension is particularly interesting. Xiaohongshu isn't just another social media app - it's fundamentally an e-commerce platform where social features emerged organically around shopping. If this trend continues, this has the potential to reshape cross-border commerce between China and the U.S. in really profound ways. Many "TikTok refugees" are actually small business owners who built their success on TikTok: imagine the potential of a platform that gives them direct access to Chinese consumers! This, alongside Chinese sellers finding new ways to reach American audiences, could create entirely new patterns of trade, bypassing traditional intermediaries. This would be the icing on the cake with the other ironies: when governments are trying to 'de-risk' and decouple supply chains, Xiaohongshu could help the ground-level reality of ordinary entrepreneurs and consumers move in the exact opposite direction. Anyhow, whether this phenomenon lasts or not, it reveals something that should give us all some measure of hope: while politicians and policymakers focus on trying to divide the world and fearmonger, ordinary people seem more interested in finding ways to connect. They're more interested in bridges than walls, and that's a good thing!

Arnaud Bertrand

277,317 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr