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

Listeners, Ting here, and you’re plugged into Beijing Bytes—the only place you get the latest US-China tech war scoop with just the right dose of snark, straight talk, and expert analysis.

Let’s slice right into the past two weeks. Did you hear about the showdown in South Korea? Trump and Xi somehow managed to hit “pause” on their economic slugfest, hammering out a one-year truce on tariffs and tech controls, but, as the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post pointed out, this is a cold war with a slightly more polite handshake. Trump dropped his 100% tariff threat, lowered fees on Chinese chemical precursors, and China agreed to buy a mountain of soybeans—good times if you farm beans, but honestly, neither side budged on semiconductor or AI export controls. These remain the battleground, and global markets just exhaled in relief that nobody stormed off the chessboard.

That brings us right to chips. Last week, Trump dropped the hammer: China is locked out of Nvidia’s bleeding-edge AI hardware. If you’re a tech watcher, this is escalation—plain and simple. Beijing isn’t saying much publicly, but you can feel the hush before the next strategic countermove. US restrictions also widened: now any company majority-owned by a Chinese entity is under the microscope, more than 20,000 entities globally according to Modern Diplomacy. Expect China to double down on indigenous chip design, commercializing its own AI—because Xi absolutely does not want permanent dependency.

While Washington spars in public, adversaries duel in shadows. Cybersecurity? The US Homeland Security Committee sounded alarms: one in six data breaches in 2025 was AI-driven. PRC-affiliated hackers ramped up attacks by 300%, with hits on the energy grid, financial services, media, and manufacturing. Salt Typhoon, a China-linked crew, compromised telco providers in 80 countries—yes, that included snooping on wiretap requests and presidential candidates' phones. Not to mention PRC operatives camped inside Littleton, Massachusetts’s public power network for months. Industry is still catching up, and the average cost of a breach in the US just shot to ten million dollars.

October saw Chinese threat actor Jewelbug infiltrate the Russian tech giant Positive Technologies and UNC5221 filch vulnerability data from F5’s BIG-IP platform—fueling fresh supply chain jitters. In fact, the US is considering a ban on TP-Link routers fearing backdoors and Beijing’s supply chain leverage. And now, China’s amendments to their Cybersecurity Law—set to kick in January 2026—will up scrutiny and penalties for foreign firms, tightening controls on data flows like never before.

Both sides see AI not just as the next economic growth engine, but the fulcrum for military advantage. Washington wants to write the global rules for military AI, urging responsible use and pushing Beijing to at least agree that when it comes to nuclear weapons, humans—not code—should have the final say. Diplomatic opportunities flicker, but there’s little trust and even less transparency.

So what’s next? Experts suggest the truce is fragile. China will likely accelerate self-sufficiency in key tech sectors, weaponize rare earths and supply chains if pressed, and push for broad adoption of advanced digital tech across industry. The US, meanwhile, will keep tightening the screws on advanced hardware exports and drive international norms for safe AI. Anyone betting on a happy tech detente is either delusional or selling reality distortion software.

Listeners, thanks for tuning in to Beijing Bytes with Ting. Smash subscribe and stay spicy for next week’s battle update. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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