This is your US-China CyberPulse: Defense Updates podcast.

So, listeners, imagine this: it’s Friday, July 25th, and the digital showdown between the US and China is somehow even messier and spicier than last week. I’m Ting, your resident cyber-guru, here to slice through the thicket of headlines, breaches, executive orders, and defensive geekery with a little sparkle—because, honestly, who said hacking news has to be dry?

Let’s waste zero time and get to the core. The big headline? This week marks the official rollout of the White House’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” fresh off the presses on July 23rd. That’s over 90 new policy actions, and, not-so-coincidentally, a heavy focus on outmaneuvering China in the AI and cyber arms race. Picture this as a triple-decker sandwich: accelerate innovation, build impenetrable AI infrastructure, and flex international muscles. And yes, listeners, those muscles have China’s name all over them. The administration even put out three executive orders at the same time—one to block so-called “woke AI” in federal government, and another specifically to speed up building AI data centers faster than I can reset a password. Most importantly for us hackers-at-heart, it prioritizes new federal guidance on cybersecurity and launches an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center within DHS, which is basically a cyber Batcave for US agencies and the private sector.

Now, speaking of the private sector, if your cloud runs on Microsoft SharePoint, you might want to sit down. Microsoft, already under fire for past vulnerabilities, reported last week that not one but two Chinese nation-state crews—Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon—have been exploiting flaws in on-prem SharePoint servers. There’s a third group, Storm-2603, trying classic ransomware tactics. Microsoft’s blog says only on-prem servers are hit, but let’s agree: not the summer vacation anyone wanted. This comes just as the Pentagon’s forced to do a hard reset: a bombshell investigation this week revealed China-linked engineers had, for over a decade, contributed to sensitive US military software through a major contractor. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put a stop to Chinese involvement in DOD cloud services—pronto—and ordered a complete review. National security insiders now call for a “cybersecurity mindset shift,” and frankly, I couldn’t agree more.

For the policy buffs: President Trump’s Executive Order 14306 last month, updating earlier directives, once again names China public enemy number one for cyber threats targeting US businesses and infrastructure. There’s also momentum for a public-private cybersecurity update via NIST’s Secure Software Development Framework, tightening how code is written and monitored—because surprise, surprise, we don’t want any more mystery “digital escorts” patching our defense networks.

Globally, the US continues its “tech decoupling” marathon—escalating bans on AI chips to China until there’s barely a trickle. And politically, US allies from Brussels to Tokyo are squeezed to support Washington’s measures or risk their own chip supplies. It’s not all one sided though; China is working its angles through regional partnerships in ASEAN and the Digital Silk Road—picture Beijing hosting cyber drills, shaking hands in Singapore, but always with an eye on influence.

The upshot is clear: we’re entering a new kind of arms race—one fought with updates, protocols, and legal frameworks, not just firewalls. And if you’re in tech, law, or just shopping for a super-secure VPN, you’d better stay nimble and read the fine print.

Thanks for tuning in to US-China CyberPulse: Defense Updates. Hit that subscribe button for more takes from yours truly—Ting! This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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