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

Hey listeners, Ting here with Beijing Bytes, your witty dive into the US-China tech war chaos. Buckle up, because the past two weeks have been a rollercoaster of chip deals, hacker heists, and policy ping-pong—straight out of a cyberpunk thriller, but with real-world stakes.

Picture this: President Donald Trump drops a bombshell on Truth Social, greenlighting Nvidia's beastly H200 AI chips—second-most powerful in their lineup—for export to China. That's right, after Biden's "small yard, high fence" locked down advanced semis in 2022, Trump flips the script, snagging 25% of sales revenue for Uncle Sam. Economic Times reports ByteDance and Alibaba are already lining up to buy, but hold up—White House AI czar David Sacks tells Bloomberg China is straight-up rejecting them, pushing Huawei's homegrown alternatives instead. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang cheers it as a "thoughtful balance," but experts like those at the Institute for Progress say H200s pack six times the punch of the weaker H20s Trump okayed over summer. Strategic play? Or China outfoxing the US by subsidizing $70 billion in domestic chipmaking? As Cyrus Janssen quipped in his live stream, the microchip war's hitting endgame, and Beijing might not even want Uncle Sam's leftovers anymore.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity's on fire. Senator Mark Warner, top Dem on the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasts that China's "Salt Typhoon" hackers are still burrowed deep in US telecoms like Verizon and AT&T—ongoing for two years, slurping unencrypted calls from basically every American. Financial Times echoes former NSA adviser Jake Sullivan calling it "sheer scale of access." FBI says networks are "pretty clean," but intel docs scream otherwise. Warner's pushing bills for mandatory telecom hardening, but billions in upgrades face corporate pushback. And get this—Anthropic disrupted AI-boosted Chinese hacks targeting 30 folks, showing bots are supercharging espionage. David R. Shedd's new book, The Great Heist, via CSIS, nails it: CCP's pulled off history's biggest IP theft across chips, telecoms, and military tech.

Policy-wise, Congress drops the National Defense Authorisation Act—NDAA—with the Biosecure Act blocking federal deals with Chinese biotech firms on a Pentagon "companies of concern" list, and FIGHT China Act curbing US investments in Beijing's AI, quantum, semis, and hypersonics. No more free rides for military-linked tech. Trump's White House counters with an Executive Order on December 11, "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence," preempting state AI regs to let US firms innovate freely—because, as Trump gripes, China's got one vote with Xi Jinping, no pesky legislatures.

Industry's reeling: US AI market share dipped from 87% to 72%, per Izvestia, as China's DeepSeek outpaces ChatGPT on old hardware. Power shortages hobble US data centers, while Beijing's electricity surplus fuels the surge. Hoover Institution warns Western AI research is already sharpening CCP human rights abuses—H200s could turbocharge that.

Strategically? Craig Singleton at Foundation for Defence of Democracies says Congress is locking in "hard-edged, long-term competition" despite Trump's deal-making vibe. China’s rare earth leash keeps Washington dancing, but Beijing's self-reliance means ultimatums are toothless. Forecast: Escalating AI arms race, with China pulling ahead on compute scale unless US plugs cyber holes and fabs fast.

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

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