This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here, your favorite China-watching, packet-sniffing cyber nerd, and this week the US–China tech shield got some serious upgrades…with some very on-brand gaps.

Let’s start on Capitol Hill. According to Akin Gump’s breakdown of the new FY2026 defense authorization bill, Congress just shoved a truckload of cyber muscle into the Pentagon’s toolkit, clearly with China in mind. Lawmakers are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into US Cyber Command, locking in its “dual-hat” link to the NSA, and ordering tougher defenses around critical infrastructure and Indo‑Pacific‑relevant assets. Translation: they’ve finally admitted that Chinese operators don’t just want your data; they want the power grid, the ports, and the rail lines that move the tanks.

JDSupra notes that same bill forces the Defense Department to harden senior officials’ mobile phones with strong encryption, anti‑tracking, and continuous monitoring, and to bake AI-specific threats into everyone’s cyber training. That’s basically Washington saying, “Yes, Beijing’s AI‑driven hacking is real, and no, General, you can’t keep using that sketchy messaging app.”

Now zoom to Congress’s new obsession: Chinese hardware in US networks. Nextgov reports that Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi dropped a bill to phase out LiDAR systems made by companies tied to the Chinese Communist Party from federal use and critical infrastructure. If you’re wondering why lasers suddenly matter, it’s because those sensors can quietly map ports, highways, and energy sites in exquisite detail. Krishnamoorthi calls them a “silent gateway” into American infrastructure, and he’s not wrong; that’s prime targeting data for PLA cyber and electronic warfare.

Meanwhile, on the pure cyber front, The Hacker News says CISA is screaming about active exploitation of a new React2Shell vulnerability. That’s your weekly reminder that while Congress designs grand strategy, Chinese-linked groups are happily smashing unpatched servers today. The government advisories are clear: patch now or become an unwitting node in someone’s botnet.

Here’s the gap: New Hampshire Business Review’s 2025 recap makes it painfully obvious that fragmented tools and checkbox compliance still fail against campaigns like China’s Salt Typhoon, which quietly lived in global telecom backbones for years. The US is throwing laws, budgets, and warnings at the problem, but without integrated defenses and real operational discipline in companies, Chinese actors still live “left of boom.”

Expert take? The upgrades are real and overdue: better funding, AI-aware training, hardware bans, and supply‑chain scrutiny are exactly the right direction. But the US still lags China in deployment speed and ruthlessness. Beijing moves from concept to capability fast; Washington moves from hearing to pilot program to “we’ll report back next year.”

So, listeners, the tech shield is thicker, but it’s not airtight. Think progress, not victory lap.

Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss your next cyber intel drop with me, Ting. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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