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

Welcome back to Beijing Bytes! I’m Ting, your digital raconteur and self-confessed cyber addict, here to zap you through the sparks and subroutines of the US-China tech war’s past two weeks—all from my bunker of screens and caffeine in Beijing. Buckle your seatbelts! Let’s byte right in.

First, cybersecurity. The US Justice Department just unveiled indictments against two Chinese hackers, Xu Zewei and Zhang Yu, who allegedly worked with Shanghai Powerock Network and Shanghai Firetech, all under the cozy wing of the Shanghai State Security Bureau. SentinelOne’s latest report breaks down how these firms developed intrusive cyber tools, like remote cellphone evidence collection, hinting that China’s Ministry of State Security is now running a cyber contractor ecosystem so intricate that even their own propaganda campaigns synchronize with cyber threat reports. US agencies aren’t taking this lightly: indictments, sanctions, and a lot of public saber-rattling, but this “Silk Typhoon” of state-backed hacking just keeps evolving. Attribution has become a cat-and-mouse game—tools bounce between government offices faster than you can say VPN.

Meanwhile, on the home front, the US is exposing its own underbelly. The Trump administration’s sweeping layoffs, driven by the Department of Government Efficiency, have left the federal cyber workforce gutted. Experts like Michael Daniel, former White House cyber czar, are warning that the US digital shield is now full of holes just as China, Russia, and every black hat with a grudge are looking for a way in. State governments, says Tarah Wheeler from the Council on Foreign Relations, just don’t have the muscle to patch these gaping vulnerabilities.

Trade policy’s next. The summer’s main event: Trump extended the US-China trade truce, now set to expire August 12. Tariffs are paused at 30% for US and 10% on China’s side. A sliver of stability—AI chipmakers like NVIDIA are dancing on this fragile wire. Following the July decision to re-allow certain AI chip exports to China, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang wasted no time dropping hints about China-only RTX Pro GPUs, designed to slip through export restrictions while sidestepping Huawei’s Ascend series. According to Bloomberg, Chinese companies are pouncing, with Beijing’s more favorable rules fueling ambitions to challenge US dominance in the $4.8 trillion global AI market.

Behind the curtain, Washington’s approach is shifting. Rather than blanket bans, officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick talk of making Chinese developers “addicted” to US technology—hello, dependency management! Meanwhile, TSMC, as always, is stuck in the silicon crossfire, its fabs and licensing drama still making global markets nervous—investors everywhere are recalibrating portfolios in this 90-day window.

China, for its part, is doubling down on AI strategy, accusing Washington at the World Economic Forum of weaponizing trade to suppress Chinese innovation. And Beijing’s recent AI Action Plan suggests the rivalry is only heating up.

As for what to expect: unless policymakers on both sides find reasons to pull back, we’re heading for deeper digital segmentation—each side nurturing walled gardens of tech, standards, and alliances. Others, including Europe, are anxiously watching, trying neither to freeze nor fry in this power circuit.

Thanks for tuning in to Beijing Bytes—where the only thing more dynamic than the news is the firewall. Don’t forget to subscribe for your next byte. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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