Geopolitics & Trade

Monday, October 26, 2026

GEOPOLITICSPOLICY
China Reserves Right to Counter US Plan to Widen AI Investment Curbs
China’s Commerce Ministry called the draft discriminatory and said it breaks a leaders’ consensus; the US plan would ban investment in any Chinese AI developer.
CHIPS & COMPUTEGEOPOLITICS
US Think Tank Says China’s AI Compute Could Nearly Double by 2027
The Institute for Progress expects about 65% of China’s end-2027 compute to run on US chips, with rented overseas cloud capacity growing fastest.
MODELSGEOPOLITICS
Alibaba’s Qwen Underpins Nearly Half of South Korea’s New AI Models
Of 1,845 models posted by Korea-based Hugging Face accounts from January to August, 864 were built on Qwen, against 14.7% for Google’s Gemma.

GEOPOLITICSPOLICY
DeepSeek and MiniMax Clear China’s New AI Export Registration, State Media Says
A CCTV-affiliated account says both labs have registered and completed open-source releases and overseas licensing under rules covering 23 AI technologies.
GEOPOLITICSPOLICY
US Treasury Proposes Wider Outbound Investment Curbs on China AI, Chips and Biotech
The draft would bar covered US investment in any Chinese AI developer, adds biotech and hypersonics, and takes public comments until December 7, 2026.

APPLIED AIGEOPOLITICS
Microsoft Ties China-Linked Hackers Using AI Agent Tool ARTEX to ConnectWise Breach
Storm-0940 used stolen ConnectWise app identities to try more than 2,250 Microsoft 365 tenants, at up to 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute.

CHIPS & COMPUTEGEOPOLITICS
Samsung and SK Hynix Upgrade China NAND Plants as YMTC Takes Market Lead
Samsung’s Xi’an plant, about 40% of its NAND output, is moving to 286-layer chips with a 40,000-wafer monthly target for December 2027, sources told Reuters.

GEOPOLITICSFUNDING
US Sanctions MiraclePlus and Four Other Chinese Entities Over Stolen Google AI Secrets
The State Department targeted Lu Qi’s startup accelerator, two of its funds and Linwei Ding’s firm Zhisuan, and China’s commerce ministry vowed a response.
GEOPOLITICSSOCIETY
Japan’s GMO Says Chinese AI Pentest Tool ARTEX Was Used Against Local Firms
The finding follows Korean bank intrusions tied to the same tool, whose developer works at Beijing security firm ThreatBook, now selling an Artex Pro edition.

GEOPOLITICS
US Bars DeepSeek and AI Tools Built on It From Federal Civilian Agencies
A Homeland Security order under a 2018 supply chain law makes agencies remove DeepSeek products and third-party services using its models.
GEOPOLITICSROBOTICS
UBTech Signs Ras Al Khaimah Deal to Test Humanoid Robots in Gulf Climate
Signed in Shenzhen before the emirate’s ruler, the memorandum has UBTech send humanoid robots and engineering teams to Ras Al Khaimah for live demonstrations.

CHIPS & COMPUTEGEOPOLITICS
Runjian signs a US$200 million deal to sell China AI tokens overseas
An unnamed foreign client will pay per token to run AI models in Runjian’s Nanning data center for a year, with a minimum spend of about RMB1.338 billion.
GEOPOLITICSPOLICY
China’s draft AI export curbs bring adjustment costs for developers expanding abroad
MOFCOM says API, app and SaaS access would not count as a large-model export, while local overseas deployment of a restricted model falls under export control.

GEOPOLITICSROBOTICS
Chery plans UAE robotaxi agreement with Abu Dhabi’s K2
Chery says it will showcase a factory-integrated Level 4 robotaxi at its Wuhu summit, scheduled for October 19–23, alongside a planned K2 signing.

POLICY CHIPS & COMPUTE
Taiwan Prepares a New AI Hardware Checkpoint for China
Taiwan is preparing a change that could put its own law directly into the path of China-bound AI hardware shipments. The immediate development is not a new ban or an operating permit system.
POLICYGEOPOLITICS
China’s AI Export Consultation Puts Technology Transfers Under a New Lens
China has opened a consultation that could reshape how specified AI technology moves across its borders, while immediately requiring registration for covered transfers. The practical change is not a shutdown of Chinese models for overseas users.

CHIPS & COMPUTEGEOPOLITICS
Huawei’s Advance Presses Nvidia’s China Lead
Reuters, citing an IDC study of China’s data-center AI-accelerator shipments in the first half of 2026, found Nvidia still in front but Huawei much closer behind. IDC put Nvidia at 34% of that market, or 678,000 accelerators, while Huawei held 28%, or 572,000.

GEOPOLITICSCHIPS & COMPUTE
U.S. Reporting Identifies China-Linked Data-Center Equipment
Reporting Names Several Equipment Categories China-linked equipment has moved into the U.S. data-center conversation, but the reporting points to several different kinds of hardware rather than one uniform problem. A Washington Post analysis focuses attention on China-linked equipment in U.S. data centers.

BIG TECHGEOPOLITICS
Alibaba’s Joe Tsai Puts Europe’s Open AI Choice on the Factory Floor
Joe Tsai has put a pointed choice before Europe’s manufacturers: retain industrial data, adapt an open-source model around it, and run the resulting systems on European compute, or send that data through a closed-source API.
GEOPOLITICSBIG TECH
TikTok USDS Faces Questions Over ByteDance Workplace Apps
TikTok’s U.S. data-security operation may have a new ownership structure, but the software its employees use at work is now drawing attention to the boundary that structure is meant to create.