This is your Beijing Bytes: US-China Tech War Updates podcast.

Hello, cyber-curious listeners! Ting here, your byte-sized expert in all things China, hacking, and the great digital tug-of-war. Let’s short-circuit the filler—because the US-China tech war just rebooted with more plot twists than a hacker convention’s afterparty.

The big bang these past two weeks? President Donald Trump’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan” dropped July 23, exploding onto the scene with 90+ new policy actions. Let’s be real—this is no containment shuffle. Trump kept the core export controls from the previous Biden days, but with rebranded, adrenaline-pumping rhetoric. Think: secure “AI export powerhouses,” aggressive deregs, and the Commerce Department getting a turbocharged license to close every chip loophole left in America’s firewall. Tech titans—Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft—are already throwing patriotic confetti.

But, plot twist: pragmatic capitalism struck. The U.S. quietly greenlit Nvidia and AMD to resume selling “mid-tier” AI chips—like the H20 and MI308—to China. Nvidia rejoiced, watching shares pop 5% overnight, and AMD beat that with 8.5%. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick clarified: this move is stitched into a bigger trade negotiation tapestry. America's message? We’ll sell some tools, but not the crown jewels (the high-performance Blackwell Ultragigs still get the “nope” stamp). It’s AI chips for rare earths and calmer trade winds. The U.S. can't afford to cut China off entirely—Xinjiang still holds the keys when it comes to rare minerals and industrial supply chains.

Now, cyber’s shadow loomed large. Early July, Microsoft confirmed attackers—believed state-sponsored from China—took over Microsoft servers at hundreds of US government agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Admin. Even Microsoft’s vaunted “Active Protections Program” (MAPP) got pwned: a Vietnamese researcher at Pwn2Own outed a SharePoint zero-day, and next thing you know, a group dubbed “ToolShell” went wild before the official patch. Former GCHQ head Ciaran Martin and Jen Easterly said, cyber espionage is now “everything, everywhere, all at once.” This isn’t just about lost documents—it’s patient hackers hiding in the digital wallpaper, able to “live off the land” for months.

Meanwhile, over in China, resourceful engineers flipped constraints into superpowers. With tight U.S. controls on bleeding-edge chips, Chinese AI labs doubled down on efficiency—leaner models, smarter training, you name it. The DeepSeek R1 story is the ultimate flex: starved of fancy GPUs, they still shot up from 33 million to 97 million global active users in under four months. This shift could see China dominating emerging markets with cost-cutting, adaptable AI—leapfrogging the whole brute-force arms race.

Industry’s shell-shocked, wondering: Are we building two global tech stacks—an American fortress and China’s efficiency empire? Experts like Bo Zhengyuan think this is a marathon, not a sprint: expect divergent AI ecosystems, growing geopolitical influence, but no knock-out winner any time soon.

Forecast? The cyber clash is just heating up. The U.S. is optimizing for control; China’s playing the long game, autonomy and adaptation. Both sides are racing to secure their supply chains, lock down talent, and shape the next digital battlegrounds—from chips to rare earths and beyond.

That’s the download on Beijing Bytes: US-China Tech War Updates! Thanks for tuning in—make sure you subscribe for your next dose of Ting’s cyber wit and wisdom. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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