The Biden administration is tightening restrictions on China's ability to buy advanced semiconductors, fueling friction with U.S. businesses that sell to the vast Chinese market. From a report: The Commerce Department on Tuesday said it would significantly constrict exports of artificial-intelligence chips, making it tougher for U.S. companies Nvidia and Intel to sell existing products in China -- or to introduce new chips to circumvent the rules. The move aims to close perceived loopholes in export controls announced a year ago, which themselves had faced strong opposition from the global semiconductor industry and escalated tensions with Beijing.

The goal, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters, is to limit China's "access to advanced semiconductors that could fuel breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and sophisticated computers." The chips are critical to Chinese military applications, she said, a nod to concerns that the U.S. could fall behind China in key defense technologies. The updated rules significantly expand the U.S. government's authority to determine what products U.S. companies can and can't sell in the name of national security. Shipments of high-end AI chips, including those developed by Nvidia and Intel for the Chinese market, are banned without a license. And "gray zone" chips just below those thresholds will now require notification to the government, which can then deny their sales.

Baidu's founder Robin Li declared his company's large language model has finally caught up with OpenAI's advanced GPT-4, claiming the lead in his country's race to develop AI that can rival the US. From a report: The billionaire took the stage in Beijing Tuesday to run Ernie 4.0 through a Q&A designed to showcase its ability to provide answers and solve complicated puzzles on the fly. Ernie has matched OpenAI's seminal product in terms of sophistication and general capabilities, Li told a packed house at a converted steel mill that now serves as an auditorium. The marquee Ernie chatbot now surpassed 45 million users -- a milestone that still lags ChatGPT's estimated 180 million, though the US bot launched months earlier. China's search leader, often referred to as a homegrown equivalent to Google, is pinning its hopes on AI to help it surpass rivals from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Tencent that control the rest of the internet.

Baidu is leading a wave of aggressive investment across China after ChatGPT demonstrated the disruptive potential of generative AI -- which can craft video and content from simple commands. It's regarded as a leader in a race with local big tech firms and scores of startups to create a next-generation platform for the world's biggest internet market. They're trying to compete with American names from Microsoft to Google to create services like ChatGPT and Dall-E, but US sanctions on Chinese access to the most advanced chips to train and run AI models, coupled with Beijing's stringent censorship, could cloud their prospects. Washington is tightening curbs on shipments of AI chips to the country, stoking that uncertainty. "Ernie is not inferior in any respect to GPT-4," Li told the audience.

According to a report from Jefferies analysts, Huawei has overtaken Apple's iPhone as the smartphone market share leader in China. CNBC reports: The analysts said smartphone sales in China have showed positive growth year over year, driven primarily by high double-digit growth in Android sales led by Huawei, Xiaomi and Honor devices. But Apple's iPhone has seen a significant, double-digit decline, and its volume growth year over year has been negative since the iPhone 15 launched, according to the analysts.

"We believe weak demand in China would eventually lead to lower-than-expected global shipments of iPhone 15 in 2023," the analysts wrote, adding that the trend suggests the iPhone will "lose" to Huawei next year. The Jefferies analysts wrote that Android's volume growth can't be chalked up to discounts and that discounts on iPhones, excluding the iPhone 15 models, have been stable, while the average discount for Android "is not high." The analysts noted that resale iPhone 15 devices are all "trading at discounts to official selling prices," which also reflects the weak demand in China.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Phys.org: If global temperatures increase by 1 degrees Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State College of Health and Human Development, Purdue University College of Sciences and Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future... Humans can only withstand certain combinations of heat and humidity before their bodies begin to experience heat-related health problems, such as heat stroke or heart attack. As climate change pushes temperatures higher around the world, billions of people could be pushed beyond these limits...

Results of the study indicate that if global temperatures increase by 2 degreesC above pre-industrial levels, the 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India's Indus River Valley, the one billion people living in eastern China and the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa will annually experience many hours of heat that surpass human tolerance... Troublingly, researchers said, these regions are also in lower-to-middle income nations, so many of the affected people may not have access to air conditioning or any effective way to mitigate the negative health effects of the heat.

From the South China Morning Post: Scientists in China say their latest quantum computer has solved an ultra-complicated mathematical problem within a millionth of a second — more than 20 billion years quicker than the world's fastest supercomputer could achieve the same task. The JiuZhang 3 prototype also smashed the record set by its predecessor in the series, with a one million-fold increase in calculation speed, according to a paper published on Tuesday by the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters...

The series uses photons — tiny particles that travel at the speed of light — as the physical medium for calculations, with each one carrying a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information... The fastest classical supercomputer Frontier — developed in the US and named the world's most powerful in mid-2022 — would take over 20 billion years to complete the same task, the researchers said.
The article claims they've increased the number of photons from 76 to 113 in the first two versions, improving to 255 in the latest iteration.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.

According to the New York Times, Chinese-owned bitcoin mining operations in the United States are causing security concerns due to their proximity to important sites and the potential for cyber threats. The Crypto Times reports: There are some mining facilities close to critical sites such as Microsoft data center for Pentagon's Air Force nuclear's missile base in Wyoming USA. Officials in U.S. fear Chinese espionage activities at these places. These mining operations began after China banned bitcoin mining in 2021. These individuals sometimes maintain connections with the Chinese Communist Party or state-owned companies which may be kept concealed through multiple layers of companies.

Texas has turned out to be a haven for Chinese-linked Bitcoin mining, with some US states having restrictions but Texas offers incentives. This might pose a threat to the power grid or essential infrastructure. A new concern has recently been raised in a report related to a potential cyber strike on the US infrastructure by China in case a major conflict arose.

Canon has begun selling its nanoimprint semiconductor manufacturing systems, seeking to claw back market share by positioning the technology as a simpler and more attainable alternative to the leading-edge tools of today. From a report: The Tokyo-based company's new chipmaking machines can produce circuits equivalent to 5-nanometer scale when using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), a field dominated by industry leader ASML Holding NV. Canon expects its device to reach next-generation 2nm production with further advances and improvements, it said in a statement on Friday. Like domestic peer Nikon Corp., Canon has fallen far behind ASML in the EUV race, but its nanoimprint lithography approach may help it close the gap.

Canon's machinery may also add a new front in the US-China trade war, as the import of EUV machines -- so far the only reliable method for fabricating 5nm chips and smaller -- into China is prohibited by trade sanctions. The Japanese firm's technique skips photolithography altogether and instead impresses the desired circuit pattern onto the silicon wafer. Because of its novelty, it's unlikely to be expressly forbidden by existing trade curbs.

Microsoft says Chinese state-backed hackers are exploiting a "critical"-rated zero-day vulnerability in Atlassian software to break into customer systems. From a report: The technology giant's threat intelligence team said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it has observed a nation-state threat actor it calls Storm-0062 exploiting a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server. Microsoft has previously identified Storm-0062 as a China-based state-sponsored hacker.

Microsoft said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the maximum rated 10.0 vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-22515, since September 14, some three weeks before Atlassian's public disclosure on October 4. A bug is considered a zero-day when the vendor -- in this case Atlassian -- has zero time to fix the bug before it is exploited. Atlassian updated its advisory this week to confirm it has "evidence to suggest that a known nation-state actor" is exploiting the bug, which the company says could allow a remote attacker to create unauthorized administrator accounts to access Confluence servers. Atlassian's Confluence is a widely popular collaborative wiki system used by corporations around the world to organize and share work.

South Korea firms Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will be allowed to supply U.S. chip equipment to their Chinese factories indefinitely without separate U.S. approvals. Reuters reports: "Uncertainties about South Korean semiconductor firms' operations and investments in China have been greatly eased; they will be able to calmly seek long-term global management strategies," said Choi Sang-mok, senior presidential secretary for economic affairs. The U.S. has already notified Samsung and SK Hynix of the decision, indicating that it is in effect, Choi said.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is updating its "validated end user" list, denoting which entities can receive exports of which technology, to allow Samsung and SK Hynix to keep supplying certain U.S. chipmaking tools to their China factories, the presidential office said. Once included in the list, there is no need to obtain permission for separate export cases. Samsung and SK Hynix, the world's largest and second-largest memory chipmakers, had invested billions of dollars in their chip production facilities in China and welcomed the move.

Amy Hawkins reports via The Guardian: A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1 million yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China's "great firewall." The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on August 18. The notice said Ma had used "unauthorised channels" to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company. The police confiscated the 1.058m yuan ($145,092) Ma had earned as a software developer between September 2019 and November 2022, describing it as "illegal income," as well as fining him 200 yuan ($27). Charlie Smith (a pseudonym), the co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that tracks internet censorship in China, said: "Even if this decision is overturned in court, a message has been sent and damage has been done. Is doing business outside of China now subject to penalties?"

China aims to grow the country's computing power by more than a third in less than three years, a move set to benefit local suppliers and boost technology self-reliance as US sanctions pressure domestic industry. From a report: The world's second-largest economy is targeting more than 300 exaflops of computing capacity across its tech sector by 2025 from 220 this year, according to a joint statement from several agencies including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The goal marks Beijing's latest attempt to construct digital infrastructure to spur a sluggish economy. China also plans to build an additional 20 smart computing centers in two years. Bigger optical networks and more advanced data storage will be installed in the years until 2025, the regulators said. The additional computational power will support manufacturing, education, finance, transportation, healthcare and energy, they added.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters: In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China — a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders...

RISC-V can be used as a key ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence... The lawmakers expressed concerns that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among American companies to advance its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the current U.S. lead in the chip field and help China modernize its military. Their comments represent the first major effort to put constraints on work by U.S. companies on RISC-V...

Executives from China's Huawei Technologies have embraced RISC-V as a pillar of that nation's progress in developing its own chips. But the United States and its allies also have jumped on the technology, with chip giant Qualcomm working with a group of European automotive firms on RISC-V chips and Alphabet's Google saying it will make Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system, work on RISC-V chips...

Jack Kang, vice president of business development at SiFive, a Santa Clara, California-based startup using RISC-V, said potential U.S. government restrictions on American companies regarding RISC-V would be a "tremendous tragedy." "It would be like banning us from working on the internet," Kang said. "It would be a huge mistake in terms of technology, leadership, innovation and companies and jobs that are being created."
One U.S. Representative said the Chinese Communist Party was "abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips.

"U.S. persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade U.S. export control laws."

Lawmakers in the United States last year passed bipartisan legislation intended to maintain US competitiveness with countries such as China by boosting funding for science and innovation. But concerns are mounting that the US Congress will fail to deliver on its promises. From a report: The money allotted to a handful of major US science agencies that had been targeted for a budget boost is likely to fall short of the legislation's goals by more than US$7 billion in 2024, according to a report. And overall funding for those agencies will continue to hover at a 25-year low.

"We're leaving scientific opportunities on the table," says Matt Hourihan, who led the analysis for the Federation of American Scientists, an advocacy group based in Washington DC. "If we drop this ball, others will be happy to pick it up." It was precisely this fear that drove members of Congress to come together to pass the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The legislation promised one of the largest increases in US science funding in a long time, totalling some $280 billion over five years. Much of the spending mandated by the bill was focused on semiconductor research and manufacturing -- areas in which other countries, particularly China, have dominated. Lawmakers also authorized investments in other science and innovation programmes, but these were not mandated, and need to be approved by Congress during an appropriations process each year.

That process has become increasingly contentious as political polarization in the United States has risen over the past few decades. Disputes about overall spending levels and funding for various social programmes have led to repeated delays in crafting the annual budget, at times forcing the government to shut down. This year is a prime example: Republicans, who control the US House of Representatives, blocked legislation that would have allowed the government to increase the federal debt limit and pay its bills, until they were able to secure an agreement with the Democrats in May to limit spending. And last month, a handful of extreme right-wing Republicans sought to close the government down as they pushed for further spending cuts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Belgium's intelligence service has been monitoring Alibaba's main logistics hub in Europe for espionage following suspicions Beijing has been exploiting its growing economic presence in the west. European governments have been increasing scrutiny of the alleged security and economic risks posed by Chinese companies, which has been part of a wider reassessment of the EU's traditional openness to trade with China. In specific reference to Alibaba's logistics arm at the cargo airport in Liege, Belgium's security services told the Financial Times they were working to detect "possible espionage and/or interference activities" carried out by Chinese entities "including Alibaba".

Alibaba, which denies any wrongdoing, signed an agreement with Belgium in 2018 to open the hub in Liege, Europe's fifth-largest cargo airport, ploughing 100 million euros of investment into the ailing economy of the French-speaking Walloon region. But almost two years on from the site being opened, the Belgian State Security Service (VSSE) has continued monitoring Alibaba's operations following intelligence assessments, said people familiar with the matter. One area of scrutiny includes the introduction of software systems that collate sensitive economic information. The security service said the presence of Alibaba "constitutes a point of attention for the VSSE" because of legislation forcing Chinese companies to share their data with Chinese authorities and intelligence services. "China has the intent and capacity to use this data for non-commercial purposes," the agency said.

Concerns about potential espionage at the site were first raised before the hub was built, including in the Belgian parliament. At the time China strongly denied the "unprovoked insinuations" over exaggerated "so-called security risks of Chinese companies." The VSSE's statement to the FT indicate its concerns over espionage still remain after the opening of the hub. [...] The main concern is that this platform, alongside a couple of other logistical platforms that the Chinese have been proposing to European countries, is giving them a lot of insights into supply chains and into eventual vulnerabilities," said Jonathan Holslag, a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. According to a person familiar with Alibaba's relations to China's government, the logistics centers are expected to pass on information about local sentiment and report data about European trade and logistics to Beijing's authorities. "The site in Liege is the only European logistics center run by Alibaba's logistics spin-off Cainiao," reports the FT. The company is reportedly able to access data about merchants, products, transport details and flows. It may also be able to access information about final customers.

In a move to strengthen its chip supply chain, Japan announced it will provide up to $1.3 billion in additional subsidies for U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology's plant in Hiroshima Prefecture. The Japan Times reports: The move, which comes on top of the up to 46.5 billion yen aid announced earlier, adds to Japan's efforts to ensure a stable supply of chips at a time when rising tensions between the United States and China are increasingly posing a threat to its economic security. Micron has said it plans to invest up to 500 billion yen in Japan in the next few years and will become the first chipmaker to introduce extreme ultraviolet lithography machines -- state-of-the-art equipment for manufacturing advanced semiconductors -- in Japan. The company is slated to start mass production of next-generation 1-gamma dynamic random access memory chips in 2026.

Apple has started requiring new apps to show proof of a Chinese government licence before their release on its China App Store, joining local rivals years that had adopted the policy years earlier to meet tightening state regulations. From a report: Apple began last Friday requiring app developers to submit the "internet content provider (ICP) filing" when they publish new apps on its App Store, it said on its website for developers. An ICP filing is a longtime registration system, required for websites to operate legally in China, and most local app stores including those operated by Tencent and Huawei have adopted it since at least 2017.

To get an ICP filing licence, developers need to have a company in China or work with a local publisher, which has been an obstacle for a large number of foreign apps. Apple's loose ICP policy has allowed it to offer far more mobile apps than local app rivals and helped the U.S. tech giant boost its popularity in China, its third-largest market behind the Americas and Europe. The decision by Apple comes after China further tightened its oversight over mobile apps in August by releasing a new rule requiring all app stores and app developers to submit an "app filing" containing business details with the regulators. Chinese regulators last week released names of the first batch of mobile app stores that have completed app filings, but Apple's App Store was not among those on the list.

This week the UK's conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper published an interesting perspective from their world economy editor.

"Saudi and OPEC officials self-evidently do not believe their own claim that world oil demand will keep growing briskly for another generation as if electric vehicles had never been invented, and there was no such thing as the Paris Accord." OPEC had to slash output last October in order to shore up prices. It had to cut again in April. The Saudis then stunned traders with a unilateral cut of one million barrels a day (b/d) in June. All told, the OPEC-Russia cartel has had to take 2m b/d of production off the table at a high point in the economic cycle, after China's post-Covid reopening and at a time when the US economy has been running hot with a fiscal expansion roughly equal to Roosevelt's world war budget.

That 2m b/d figure happens to be more or less the amount of crude currently being displaced by EV sales worldwide, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Yet the mood was all defiance and plucky insouciance at the 24th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary this month... This skips over the awkward detail that EVs are already on track to reach 60pc of total car sales in the world's biggest car market within two years (not a misprint). The cartel is being hit from two sides. Petrol and diesel cars are becoming more efficient, gradually displacing 1.4bn vintage models disappearing into the scrap yard. BP says that alone will cut up to a tenth global oil demand by 2040. With a lag, EVs are now starting to take a material bite, with an S-curve trajectory likely to go parabolic this decade.

China's EVs sales hit 38pc this summer, even though subsidies have mostly been scrapped. This is far ahead of schedule under Beijing's New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan. China's Chebai think tank says the emerging consensus is that EV sales will hit 17m or 60pc of total Chinese share by 2025, rising to 90pc by 2030, assuming that the grid can keep up... Vietnam is a few years behind but with similar ambitions. Its EV start-up, VinFast Auto, became the world's third most valuable carmaker after it launched on Nasdaq last month, briefly worth as much as the German car industry before the share price came back down to earth...

OPEC's central premise has long been that the rise of a billion-strong middle class in emerging Asia will more than offset declining oil use in the OECD bloc. That notion is 'withering under scrutiny'... The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global oil demand will peak at 105.5m b/d in 2028 and then flatten for a few years before going into decline... The IEA pulls its punches. The Rocky Mountain Institute argues in its latest report — End of the ICE Age — that half of global car sales could be EVs by 2026, reaching 86pc later this decade.
The article closes by citing "the breathtaking pace of global electrification. The decline of oil in car and bus transport may be closer than almost anybody imagined. OPEC as we know it may be on the cusp of a death spiral."

Wednesday seven U.S. Republican candidates for President held their second debate before the 2024 primary — during which TikTok led to some surprisingly heated attacks against entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy:

Moderator: Mr. Ramaswamy, TikTok is banned on government-issed devices because of its ties to the Chinese government. Yet you joined TikTok at the dinner with boxer and influencer Jake Paul. Should the commander in chief be so easily persuaded by an influencer?

Vivek Ramaswamy: So the answer is, I have a radical idea for the Republican party: we need to win elections. And part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are. So when I get into office, I've been very clear. Kids under the age of 16 should not be using addictive social media. We're only going to ever get to declaring independence from China, which I favor, if we actually win. So while the Democrats are running rampant reaching the next generation three-to-one, there's exactly one person in the Republican party — which talks a big game about reaching young people — and that's me.... [Scattered applause]
Donald Trump declined to participate in the debate. But his former vice president Mike Pence immediately interrupted to say that "TikTok is controlled by the Chinese communist party." Continuing criticisms he'd made in an earlier interview, Pence said that TikTok "compromises the privacy of Americans every day."

Ramaswamy responded "And that is why we will end it once we win this election."

This immediately drew a strong response from from South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (also a former US ambassador to the UN): Nikki Haley: This is infuriating, because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps —

Ramaswamy: Yes it is.

Haley: — that we could have. And once you've got — honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say. Because I can't believe that — here you've got a TikTok situation. What they're doing is these — 150 million people are on TikTok. That means they can get your contacts, they can get your financial information, they can get your emails, they can get —

Ramaswamy: Let me just say —

Haley: — your text messages, they can get all of these things.

Ramaswamy: Hurling — this is important. This is very important for our party —

Haley: China knows exactly what they're doing.

Ramaswamy: This is very important for our party, and I'm going to say it —

Haley: And what we've seen is you've gone and you've helped China go make medicines in China, not America.

Ramaswamy: Excuse me, excuse me —

Haley: You're now wanting kids to go and get on this social media that's dangerous for all of us. You went and you were in business with the Chinese... We can't trust you. We can't trust you. We can't have TikTok in our kids' lives. We need to ban it. [Loud applause]

Moderator: You have 15 seconds, Mr. Ramaswamy.

Ramaswamy: I think we would be better served as a Republican party if we're not sitting here hurling personal insults, and actually have a legitimate debate.

The Associated Press reports: The National Security Agency is starting an artificial intelligence security center -- a crucial mission as AI capabilities are increasingly acquired, developed and integrated into U.S. defense and intelligence systems, the agency's outgoing director announced Thursday. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone said the center would be incorporated into the NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, where it works with private industry and international partners to harden the U.S. defense-industrial base against threats from adversaries led by China and Russia.

Nakasone was asked about using AI to automate the analysis of threat vectors and red-flag alerts -- and he reminded the audience that U.S. intelligence and defense agencies already use AI. "AI helps us, But our decisions are made by humans. And that's an important distinction," Nakasone said. "We do see assistance from artificial intelligence. But at the end of the day, decisions will be made by humans and humans in the loop."

Nakasone said it would become "NSA's focal point for leveraging foreign intelligence insights, contributing to the development of best practices guidelines, principles, evaluation, methodology and risk frameworks" for both AI security and the goal of promoting the secure development and adoption of AI within "our national security systems and our defense industrial base." He said it would work closely with U.S. industry, national labs, academia and the Department of Defense as well as international partners.

Japan's Transport Safety Board on Thursday judged that a cargo ship that spilled 1,000 tons of fuel oil into a pristine marine environment off the coast of Mauritius in 2020 was travelling off course in search of a cell phone signal. From a report: The MV Wakashio was en route from Lianyungang, China to a Brazilian port when, on July 25 2020, it struck trouble near Blue Bay Marine Park, a popular snorkeling spot on the Indian Ocean nation Mauritius. The Japanese-owned vessel was sailing under a Panamanian flag of convenience, and captained by a Indian national. According to the report, two days before it ran aground, the captain changed the 100,000-plus ton ship's route to travel five nautical miles from the coast line instead of the originally planned 22 nautical miles. He ordered the course change without obtaining proper marine charts of the area and therefore did not know that waters in the area are less than 20 meters deep.

The ship subsequently hit a coral reef. "Reefs and obstacles were displayed near the place of occurrence," reads the 89-page Japan Transport Safety Board report in Japanese. "The body buckled due to being knocked to the seabed and broke into the skin near the fuel oil tank. As a result, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil loaded in the tank spilled out to sea," the document states. The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone. It also noted the behavior was not an isolated incident and that safety awareness among the crew at large was lacking.