Forget TikTok Drama: China's Cyberspies Snuggle Up in US Infrastructure While Beijing Bests Our AI Chip Bans!

This is your Beijing Bytes: US-China Tech War Updates podcast.Hey listeners, Ting here with your Beijing Bytes rundown on what's been absolutely bonkers in the US-China tech war. Buckle up because the past two weeks have been wild.Let's start with the cybersecurity nightmare that's keeping every American up at night. The FBI and NSA just issued a joint advisory revealing that Chinese state-sponsored actors running something called Salt Typhoon have basically embedded themselves into everything. We're talking telecommunications, government, transportation, military infrastructure. A former FBI official went on record saying it's likely every single American has been impacted by this campaign. These three Chinese companies working for China's intelligence services, including units from the People's Liberation Army and Ministry of State Security, aren't just poking around anymore. They're settling in for the long game.But here's where it gets spicier. There's this group called Volt Typhoon that's been strategically positioning itself in US energy systems. According to Michael Ball, CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, they're not launching attacks yet. They're maintaining access for future disruptions. Harry Krejsa from Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Strategy and Technology thinks China's prepping for a Taiwan conflict and wants to create chaos in American civilian infrastructure. Our aging power grid, which is basically a digital-analog Frankenstein held together with duct tape, makes this terrifyingly easy.Meanwhile, the AI chip restrictions that everyone thought were genius are basically not working. Fortune's analysis reveals something fascinating. China doesn't actually need Nvidia's latest chips as much as we think. They've got advantages in packaging, interconnection, and honestly, they're building power infrastructure faster than we are. Huawei's recently announced SuperClusters are more powerful than any Nvidia system despite using less advanced chips. The controls have just made this a matter of national pride for Beijing, triggering massive domestic investment in Chinese chip ecosystems.Then there's the corporate drama. Microsoft is still deeply entrenched in China despite US-China tensions. According to research from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Microsoft's outsourcing sensitive AI work to China while maintaining operations like Azure China through 21Vianet under Chinese government oversight is basically handing Beijing advanced American AI models. The FDD warns that as US-China incompatibility grows, companies will have to choose sides, and Microsoft seems stuck in a 1992 mindset about market opportunities.On the military front, Politico reports that Beijing's procurement documents show the People's Liberation Army is moving aggressively on AI integration. We're talking battlefield planning acceleration, adversary behavior prediction, everything. Just weeks ago, Chinese state-sponsored groups launched an AI-assisted cyber intrusion against Anthropic's Claude system, steering it to penetrate government agencies and financial institutions. At peak attack, the AI was making thousands of requests per second, which no human hacker could match.The policy response is mixed. The Trump administration wants AI dominance and reduced regulatory restrictions, but they're also cutting cybersecurity funding, which representatives like Robert Menendez say is undermining infrastructure protection.This has been a Quiet Please production. For more, check out quietplease.ai. Thanks for tuning in listeners, and make sure to subscribe.For more http://www.quietplease.aiGet the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOtaThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

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