Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems and told staff to sunset the AI platform
Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems and told staff to sunset the AI platform

Meta has erected a data firewall between itself and Manus, the Chinese-founded agentic AI service it acquired for $2 billion in December 2025. Since the start of June, Manus and its staff have been barred from accessing Meta’s internal data systems, an…

OpenAI says China-linked accounts used ChatGPT to fuel opposition to US data centres
OpenAI says China-linked accounts used ChatGPT to fuel opposition to US data centres

OpenAI said a cluster of ChatGPT accounts linked to China attempted to stir up local opposition to US data centres by posing as Americans and posting AI-generated content about rising electricity costs. The company nicknamed the campaign “Data Center B…

A Chinese state-linked botnet has grown to 1,500 hacked routers and is mapping vulnerable targets within hours of disclosure
A Chinese state-linked botnet has grown to 1,500 hacked routers and is mapping vulnerable targets within hours of disclosure

A covert botnet linked to Chinese state-sponsored hackers has more than doubled in size and is now scanning for newly disclosed vulnerabilities within hours of publication. The JDY botnet comprises over 1,500 compromised small office and home office ro…

BYD threatens to sue Trump administration over Pentagon military list
BYD threatens to sue Trump administration over Pentagon military list

BYD is threatening to sue the US government after the Pentagon added the world’s largest EV maker to its list of “Chinese military companies” this week.

Stella Li, BYD’s executive vice-president, said the company will use every legal “weapon” at its…

Microsoft cuts hundreds of Azure jobs in China as the borderless cloud splinters
Microsoft cuts hundreds of Azure jobs in China as the borderless cloud splinters

The cloud was supposed to make geography irrelevant. Microsoft’s latest round of job cuts in China shows how quickly that promise is coming apart. Microsoft is laying off hundreds of staff at its Azure cloud unit in China, according to affected employe…

China is drafting a $295bn plan to build AI data centres, and to lock Nvidia out of them
China is drafting a $295bn plan to build AI data centres, and to lock Nvidia out of them

China wants to win the AI race on its own hardware. A new plan shows just how much it is willing to spend, and how far it will go to cut American chips out of the picture. Beijing is drafting a blueprint to spend around 2 trillion yuan ($295bn) over th…

BYD says demand is double its capacity, but its sales data tells a different story
BYD says demand is double its capacity, but its sales data tells a different story

BYD’s executive vice president Stella Li told CNBC on Monday that China’s EV market will push to close to 80% penetration, a bullish forecast that contrasts sharply with rival Nio, whose chief executive William Li said last month that the industry’s “g…

Pentagon adds Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, and Unitree to its Chinese military companies list
Pentagon adds Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, and Unitree to its Chinese military companies list

The Pentagon has added Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, and robotics company Unitree to a list of entities it says support the Chinese military, the Department of Defense announced on Monday. The updated 1260H list now names 188 companies that the Pentagon identif…

China just approved the world’s first commercial brain implant. The race with Neuralink is no longer theoretical.
China just approved the world’s first commercial brain implant. The race with Neuralink is no longer theoretical.

Controlling a machine with your mind used to be science fiction. Now it is a regulated medical product, at least in China. Earlier this year, China’s National Medical Products Administration approved NEO, a coin-sized brain-computer interface developed…

The US wants NATO allies to spend their new defence budgets ripping out Huawei
The US wants NATO allies to spend their new defence budgets ripping out Huawei

The US has found a new use for Europe’s swelling defence budgets: tearing out Huawei. Whether its allies are listening is another matter. The State Department’s China coordinator, Joshua Young, told officials in Brussels last month that NATO members sh…