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Happy Friday, and if you’re on a long weekend, enjoy it. In this issue, we break down how fission and fusion work and why they matter, then examine China’s cyber capabilities and its accelerating edge across key tech fronts, including brain–computer interfaces. Dive in, share your take, and stay curious.

• Fission vs. Fusion: Powering the AI Age

• AI Tools

• China’s Pre-Positioned for a Digital Strike on America

• Guess who is Betting on Brain-Computer Interfaces

• AI Guides

📰 AI News and Trends

• DeepSeek, one of China’s leading AI developers, will use Huawei’s AI chips to train some models, a sign it is starting to shift away from Nvidia

• Microsoft AI has launched MAI-Voice-1, a speech generation model that can produce a minute of audio in under a second, and MAI-1-preview, a mixture-of-experts foundation model trained on ~15,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs

• Anthropic users face a new choice: opt out or share your chats for AI training

• Over a billion people now use AI chatbots regularly. Even free models have access to the most powerful tools, such as GPT-5 or Nano Banana.

• The top 100 innovators, leaders, and thinkers in artificial intelligence according to Time Magazine

• OpenAI Says It's Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police

🌐 Other Tech news

• Google is taking steps to make its ad tech unit more of a viable stand-alone business, ahead of a court ruling that could require its spinoff

• ByteDance’s latest share buyback values the company at a whopping $330 billion, with revenue hitting $48 billion

• Pop Mart CEO Wang Ning, the creator of Labubu, is now worth $27.5 billion following the success of the toy line.

• World’s first flying car built by US firm to start operations at Silicon Valley airports

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China’s Pre-Positioned for a Digital Strike on America

China is winning the cyberwar by infiltrating U.S. infrastructure with malware designed for sabotage, not just espionage.

The “Salt Typhoon” operation exposed major U.S. telecoms and revealed China’s ability to pre-position cyberweapons across power grids, water systems, and transportation networks. Unlike China’s centralized, real-time cyberdefense, the U.S. relies on fragmented, privately owned systems with limited oversight.

To catch up, the U.S. must shift from defense to deterrence, building AI-powered “digital twins” of critical infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities and investing in credible offensive cyber-capabilities. Without urgent action, China’s lead will grow, and the U.S. risks falling permanently behind in the digital battlefield.

🧰 AI Tool

Fission vs. Fusion

Powering the AI Age

As we continue to hear, AI is booming, and so is its energy appetite. Training a single large AI model can consume as much electricity as over 100 U.S. homes in a year. Projections show global data center power demand, largely driven by AI, could increase by 165% by 2030. This massive energy need highlights the urgent demand for clean and reliable power sources.

Can Nuclear Energy come to the rescue? And what is Nuclear Power?

Nuclear energy comes in two forms:

• Fission: Splits heavy atoms (like Uranium) to release energy. This is how all current nuclear power plants work. It's a mature technology, providing about 10% of the world's electricity from over 400 reactors in 31 countries.

• Fusion: Merges light atoms (like hydrogen) to release even more energy. This is what powers the Sun. While incredibly promising, fusion is still experimental and has not yet achieved net energy gain at a commercial scale.

Why Fission is Common and What are its Challenges

Fission is widely used because it's a proven, reliable source of baseload power, operating continuously regardless of weather. Its fuel (uranium) is energy-dense and relatively inexpensive. However, fission faces challenges: public concerns about safety (Chernobyl, Fukushima), the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, and the need for long-term disposal of radioactive waste. Regulations are strict, governed by treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and national bodies like the NRC.

The Promise of Fusion and Its Hurdles

Fusion is considered safer and cleaner. It produces no long-lived radioactive waste and carries no risk of runaway reactions. Its fuel sources (deuterium from seawater, tritium from lithium) are virtually limitless. The main hurdle is the extreme conditions required, temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius, making it incredibly difficult to contain and control. Commercial fusion is still decades away. Recognizing its safety advantages, regulatory bodies are developing more streamlined frameworks for fusion, separate from fission.

Environmental Footprint

Both fission and fusion offer significant environmental advantages over fossil fuels, primarily their near-zero operational greenhouse gas emissions. However, they differ in waste:

Fission: Produces high-level, long-lived radioactive waste that requires secure, long-term storage.

Fusion: Produces significantly less radioactive waste, and it's typically short-lived, decaying to safe levels within decades.

Powering the AI Future

AI's energy demands necessitate a dual approach:

• Fission for the Present: Fission, especially through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), can provide the immediate, stable, carbon-free power needed for AI data centers. SMRs are smaller, more flexible, and quicker to deploy.

• Fusion for the Future: Fusion represents the ultimate clean energy solution. Once commercialized, it could provide virtually limitless, clean power, enabling AI to reach its full potential without environmental compromise. AI itself can also accelerate fusion research by optimizing reactor operations and modeling complex plasma behavior.

In essence, fission provides the crucial clean energy bridge for today's AI needs, while fusion holds the key to a truly sustainable and energy-abundant future for AI and beyond.

Guess who is Betting on Brain-Computer Interfaces

China’s brain-computer interface (BCI) industry is growing fast, projected to hit US$777 million by 2027, with 20% annual growth. Backed by strong government support and over 50% of global corporate BCI patents, China is positioning BCIs as a key pillar in its tech strategy.

Non-invasive devices dominate today, but invasive BCIs, used in neurosurgery and paralysis rehab, are gaining traction. Regional plans in Beijing, Shanghai, and Sichuan aim for breakthroughs by 2027 and global leadership by 2030.

BCIs serve both commercial and strategic goals, from improving healthcare to powering China’s shift to high-tech industries. Foreign investors have entry points, but face regulatory and market access challenges.

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🧰 AI Guides