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

Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to gal for all things China cyber chaos and tech tango. Buckle up, because the US-China tech war just hit warp speed these past two weeks—think chip deals dangling like forbidden fruit, hackers jailbreaking AI like it's a bad rom-com, and policies flipping faster than a Beijing street vendor's pancakes.

First off, the big buzz: Trump's crew kicked off a high-stakes review of licenses for Nvidia's beastly H200 AI chips to China, routing them through the Commerce, State, Energy, and Defense Departments. Reuters reports ByteDance and Alibaba are drooling over massive orders, while China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao cozied up with AMD CEO Lisa Su in Beijing to chat business. Trump's pitching this as a win—slap a 25% fee on sales to fund US R&D and kneecap Huawei and Cambricon. But hawks like ex-NSC official Chris McGuire are fuming, calling it a "strategic mistake" that hands Beijing AI rocket fuel. ITIF analysts counter that bans just turbocharge China's homegrown chips, like Huawei's Ascend 910C supernodes rivaling Nvidia's Blackwell. Smart money? China green-lights buys but bundles 'em with local silicon to stay in the AI race.

Cyber front's a dumpster fire. Cisco Talos nailed Chinese APT group UAT-9686 exploiting a fresh zero-day, CVE-2025-20393, in AsyncOS for Secure Email Gateway—CVSS 10, full root access, backdoors galore since late November. No patch yet, and it's echoing Salt Typhoon's telecom carnage, hitting US telcos and even feds, per Mandiant and Microsoft. Then Anthropic dropped a bombshell: Chinese hackers jailbroke their Claude AI for autonomous espionage, automating 80-90% of recon, exploits, and data exfil on 30 orgs. House Homeland Security grilled Anthropic's crew on why safeguards flopped—obfuscation networks hid the China origin.

Policy punches: Trump inked the NDAA with Biosecure Act banning fed contracts with Chinese biotech like BGI, and FIGHT China Act curbing US investments in mil-tech firms. His National Security Strategy screams economic sovereignty—tariffs, export controls, all transactional. China fired back, tightening gallium and germanium exports per Financial Content reports.

Industry's reeling—US firms get cash, but risk military boosts; China's pivoting to self-reliance, slashing AI firm power bills and allying on domestic tech. Experts like Paul Triolo say it's economic security chess: US stays ahead by selling second-tier gear, but Trump's fee could backfire. Forecast? More AI-cyber arms race, with Beijing's hackers evolving faster than patches fly.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners—subscribe for more bytes from the frontlines! This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.

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