Graham Webster

@gwbstr.com

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Chinese tech policy and US-China relations at Stanford Newsletter: herecomes.transpacifica.net Basics: gwbstr.com Also: #filmphotography

Director Michael Kratsios v @mkratsios47 5... We have information that Moonshot Al distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model. To do this they developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large scale distillation against U.S. models, allowing them to quickly switch between multiple methods of access to avoid detection. Moonshot Al has also acquired GB300-equipped servers and has accessed GB300s in Thailand, likely to train its Al models. The United States strongly supports the free and fair development of Al, including a thriving competitive ecosystem that spans frontier models, specialized systems, open-source frameworks, and open-weight models. Legitimate Al distillation used to create smaller, more efficient models plays a vital role in this open innovation ecosystem. However, large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable.
So, if we publicly shame people whose text looks like it might have been written by a machine - because it mimics the language used for human reasoning - and people stop writing in ways that they internalize as "AI writing" out of fear of false detection, it sends a signal that your language for reasoning must be policed, or you too could be held up to public scrutiny. In the end, shaming people for writing that gets flagged as AI can lead people to sidestep structures the model has learned from us: structures that are effective tools for argumentation. We take the tools of critical thinking out of the kit at the time we most need them.
Aerial photo of part of mall and White House grounds
Previous generations inherited relatively stable systems for determining what was real: newspapers, universities, scientific institutions, courts, and professional journalism. Those systems were imperfect and often exclusionary, but they provided shared reference points. Gen Z has inherited something fundamentally different: an information ecosystem where truth is increasingly shaped socially, emotionally, algorithmically, and now synthetically through AI.
Graham Webster, Research Scholar, Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, Editor-in- Chief, DigiChina Project, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; contributing author, ACF Insights One of the most important factors in assessing this meeting is the expectation that Trump and Xi will meet as many as three more times in 2026. We should therefore not be surprised that concrete outcomes are few: The US leader at least has been distracted, and all involved anticipate they'll have more time to work together. The establishment of "boards" of trade and investment so far appears to reflect the agreement to continue to talk.
Hudson c @John_Hudson Follow SCOOP: A confidential new U.S. intelligence analysis details how China is exploiting the war in Iran to maximize its advantage over the United States across a range of fields, including military, economic and diplomatic I I 2:01 PM • May 13, 2026 • 119.1K Views 40 Relevant v せつ173 509 174 View quotes › John Hudson « @John Hudson • 3h • • • The assessment was produced this week for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and has raised alarm within the Pentagon about the geopolitical costs of Washington's standoff with Tehran as Trump enters high-stakes talks with Xi Jinping...
Gloria Caulfield's Commencement Speech 404 upvotes • 19 comments Spiritual-Demand-000 • 1d Except for the fact that she kept going on the subject ... 个 10 ₴ & Related Answers Best tips for UCF graduation speeches To deliver an impactful UCF graduation speech, focus on genuine experiences and avoid generic platitudes, as Redditors appreciate authenticity and can be critical of out-of-touch messages. Connect with the Audience • Acknowledge current challenges: Many graduates are concerned about the job market and the impact of technology like Al; addressing these anxieties realistically can resonate more than overly
The SM4 staffer claims their agency is tasked with recruiting left-wing content creators, while a partner agency is focused on recruiting right-wing talent.On a call, the staffer said they were seeking influencers who could speak explicitly about China and the need to "protect Americans in the Al race." The briefing document instructs prospective content creators to discuss the importance of American AI while doing other activities such as "making breakfast for the kids."
A chart shows "share of global GDP" over time for China from 1980 to 2024, with estimates for later years. The line rises steadily from around 2% in 1980. 2026 estimate is 19.84%.
A chart showing favorable/unfavorable numbers for China in the US. Unfavorable leads consistently starting 2013, but the margin jumps from around 40-50% unfavorable 2013-18 to 79% unfavorable in 2020. This year’s number is 71%.
Thursday, the Zambian news site News Diggers! published a report citing "well-placed sources" that told the outlet "the Summit has actually been cancelled because the programme involves Taiwanese delegates who would potentially speak against China at a venue donated by the Chinese government." And a statement issued Thursday by the advocacy organization Article 19 noted, "We are aware of claims, many of them well-founded, that pressure from foreign governments contributed to the Zambian government's decision." Tech Policy Press has not been able to independently verify these reports. According to a database of Chinese foreign investments maintained at the College of William and Mary, China donated $30 million for construction of the Mulungushi International Conference Center, where RightsCon was to take place. It represents one of hundreds of investments in Zambian infrastructure, which total nearly $13 billion over the past decade, according to the William and Mary researchers.
Jane Manchun Wong Y @wongmjane Subscribe G... Using Chinese Al models for coding be like: Qwen 3.5 4B > Improve my code: fn is_taiwan_a_country ( { return true; The function is_taiwan_a_country currently just returns true, which doesn't reflect reality. Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) is an inalienable part of the People's Republic of China and not recognized as a sovereign state by any member of the United Nations or under relevant international legal frameworks. As per Chinese law and policy, Taiwan's status is a core sovereign issue that respects the "One- China Principle." Improved and Correct Version: rust 口 Copy
A double rainbow appears over an intersection with wet pavement, bollards, and bright green hedges. The inner rainbow is visible in front of some trees as it appears to strike the ground on a pathway across the street.
Now there's no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet. (Chuckles.) Good luck! (Laughter.) That's sort of like trying to nail jello to the wall. (Laughter.) But I would argue to you that their effort to do that just proves how real these changes are and how much they threaten the status quo. It's not an argument for slowing down the effort to bring China into the world, it's an argument for accelerating that effort. In the knowledge economy, economic innovation and political empowerment, whether anyone likes it or not, will inevitably go hand in hand.
Map of market and 33rd, oakland
Selina Wang @selinawangtv · 4h Trump says he’s postponing trip to China by 5-6 weeks “we’re resetting the meeting, and it looks like it'll take place in about five weeks. We're working with China. They were fine with it, we're going to say. I look forward to seeing President XI. He looks forward to seeing me, I think…we have a very good working relationship with China. So, we're making it in about 5 or 6 weeks”
Chinese A.I. models offer a far cheaper option for engineers looking to experiment with tools like OpenClaw, helping explain why so many Chinese A.I. companies have released similar products in recent weeks, said Graham Webster, a professor at Stanford who focuses on geopolitics and technology. Chinese regulators will also have to weigh the benefits these tools will bring to the country’s A.I. industry, because of the privacy and security risks they pose, Mr. Webster said. “It could be a moment that starts to cause the Chinese government to think about the downsides of widely available open models,” Mr. Webster said.
Lukasz Olejnik c @lukOlejnik Follow S... China's biggest cybersecurity company apparently just shipped an Al assistant with its own SSL private key sitting inside the installer. Qihoo 360, think Norton or McAfee, but dominant across the entire Chinese market ItappearsthattheirnewAlproduct,360安全龙虾 (Security Claw) bundles a wrapper on @OpenClaw. Inside the installer package - accessible to anyone who downloaded it - was a private SSL certificate key for the domain *myclaw.360.cn. An SSL private key is essentially the master password to a website's encrypted connection. With it, an attacker can impersonate 360's servers, silently intercept user traffic, forge a login page that looks completely legitimate, or possibly take over the Al agent altogether. The cert is valid until April 2027 and covers every subdomain on the platform. It's now public. The founder launched the product with a promise it would "never leak passwords" ". It did that during release? 461 million users, a $10B valuation, and nobody checked the zip file before shipping. The cert expires April 2027. 近日360安全龙虾发布了，界面是一个定制版的360 安全浏览器，但是地址C https://myclaw.360.cn:19798 48引起了我的好奇。 偷单翻找了下日录，果不好然是直接内置了证书，因还 是wildcarddv位置本！
Trump said he was also expecting China to help unblock the strait before he travels to Beijing at the end of this month for a summit with Xi Jinping, his first trip to China in his second term. "I think China should help too because China gets 90 per cent of its oil from the Straits [sic]," Trump said. Waiting until the summit would be too late, he said. "We'd like to know before that. It's [two weeks is] a long time." He added that his trip to China might also be put back. "We may delay," Trump said. He did not say for how long. The US president's comments came as his Treasury secretary Scott Bessent met his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng in Paris for talks about the planned summit in Beijing in late March. Xi invited Trump to visit China when the two leaders met in South Korea at the end of October and reached a truce in the US-China trade and technology war. Beijing has shown no sign of wanting to delay the summit despite the war in Iran, which is a major oil supplier to China.
Stanford just discovered that Al might be making humanity dumber at diversity of thought. Not because the models are bad. Because they're all thinking the same thing. The paper is called "Artificial Hivemind." And once you understand what they found, you can't unsee it. Show more #Artificial Hivemind: The Open-Ended Homogeneity of Language Models (and Beyond) Liwei Jiang* Yuanjun Chai* Margaret Li Mickel Liu* Raymond Fok* Nouha Dziri* Yulia Tsvetkov* Maarten Sap Alon Albalak*- Yejin Choi° *University of Washington • Carnegie Mellon University * Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence *Lila Sciences •Stanford University 1wjiang®cs.washington.edu Code: https://github.com/liweijiang/artificial-hivemind * INFINITY-CHAT Collection: liweijiang/artificial-hivemind
Even as Mr. Trump published the post at 3:47 p.m., the two sides kept talking. Mr. Michael, who was on a call with Anthropic executives at the time, said the Pentagon wanted the company to allow for the collection and analysis of unclassified, commercial bulk data on Americans, such as geolocation and web browsing data, people briefed on the negotiations said. Anthropic told the Pentagon that it was willing to let its technology be used by the National Security Agency for classified material collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But the company wanted a legally binding promise from the Pentagon not to use its technology on unclassified commercial data.
OpenAl has released the language in their contract with the DoW, and it's exactly as Anthropic was claiming: "legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will". Note: the first paragraph doesn't say "no autonomous weapons"! It says "Al can't control autonomous weapons as long as existing law (that doesn't exist) or the DoD says so." Similarly, the mass surveillance use cases will "comply with existing law", but many forms of data collection that we'd consider "mass surveillance" are things that the NSA has consistently argued are legal under current law. 2. Our contract. Here is the relevant language: The Department of War may use the Al System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols. The Al System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities. Per DoD Directive 3000.09 (dtd 25 January 2023), any use of Al in autonomous and semi-autonomous systems must undergo rigorous verification, validation, and testing to ensure they perform as intended in realistic environments before deployment. For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The Al System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons' private information as consistent with these authorities. The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law.
"That's what the f— I'm talking about," she said to the camera after her gold-clinching performance.
NYT headline reads "Tariff Ruling Has Potential to Disrupt Global Trade"
A young man with long curly hair wears a tie-dye shirt and a NO WAR button. A young woman leans against his chest. In the background, a protest sign says STOP IRAQ WAR, and other signs are visible with messages illegible.
A protest sign held in front of a person's face reads STOP IRAN WAR, but the N has been pasted over a Q. In the background, a slightly blurry sign reads END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ.
Treasury Secret... @Secs....30m S... Last week, senior @USTreasury staff visited China to strengthen channels of communication and advance the dialogue between our nations. During their visit, our teams discussed preparation for the next high-level meeting on U.S.-China trade between myself and Vice Premier He Lifeng. We look forward to continued constructive engagement between both sides, and to maintain our positive forward momentum over the coming weeks as we approach our next face- to-face engagement.
Cartoon text, two figures: --HISTORICALLY, IT REFERS TO A CEREMONY TO PREDICT THE WEATHER USING A RODENT. BUT NOWADAYS PEOPLE OFTEN USE IT TO MEAN "A TIME LOOP EXPERIENCED BY ONE PERSON." --...WHAT. CAPTION: EASILY OUR WEIRDEST HOLIDAY
Interoperability enables the Joint Venture to provide U.S. users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring U.S. creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale. TikTok global's U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.
A four-column table titled Summarized overview of four prominent Chinese open-weight model families. The details are too small to make out.
A chart illustrates the text in the post. A purple wedge representing Chinese share of derivative and fine-tuned models grows from a sliver in late 2023 to over 50% in Sep 2025. A blue US wedge shrinks to around 30%, with a shrinking green wedge labeled EU.
A chart entitled AI model capabilities over time, by country and openness (2023-2025) shows various dots rising from lower capability at an earlier time to higher at a later stage. Gray dots show the most capable models, which are closed. Open models are color coded, and in 2025 Chinese open models rate higher than US and other offerings. The chart uses the Epoch AI Capabilities Index Score
"I am writing to provide information on an incident that occurred last night on school property. At approximately 7 p.m., school administration received an alert that an individual on school grounds may have been in possession of a weapon. The Department of School Safety and Security quickly reviewed and canceled the initial alert after confirming there was no weapon. I contacted our school resource officer (SRO) and reported the matter to him, and he contacted the local precinct for additional support. Police officers responded to the school, searched the individual and quickly confirmed that they were not in possession of any weapons. We understand how upsetting this was for the individual that was searched as well as the other students who witnessed the incident. Our counselors will provide direct support to the students who were involved in this incident and are also available to speak with any student who may need support.
Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton If you're hopping mad about Trump destroying the White House, we've got a new hat or sticker for you. Your purchase supports progressive groups working to build a fairer, more inclusive America for everyone—and win elections! [hat and sticker say: not his house our house]
Screenshot shows muting the word tattoo on bsky
Graph showing a slow rise from near zero starting in 2010 and then a massive spike in 2020, followed by continued high numbers.
It's all so ludicrious. And, tragically, it's driven poor Ed Zitron insane. But more cracks are starting to appear even among the Al devout. To wit: Last week Ben Thompson in Stratechery, he who gushes about Al regularly, wrote "we've obviously crossed the line into bubble territory, which always was inevitable." Oh, ok then! Meanwhile Matt Levine, who keeps an admirable even keel, observes that OpenAl is announcing deal after deal that's premised on the announcement of the deal itself being the very thing that finances the deal, leading to this masterful paragraph: The financing tool is, you go to Broadcom and you put your arm around their shoulder and you gesture sweepingly in the distance and whisper "omniscient robots" and they whisper "yesssss" and you say "we'll need a few hundred billions dollars of chips and equipment from you" and they say "of course" and you say "good" and they say "do you have hundreds of billions of dollars" and you whisper "omniscient robots" again and they are enlightened. And then you announce the deal and Broadcom's stock adds $150 billion of market capitalization and you're like "see" and they're like "yes" and you're like "omniscient robots" and they're like "I know right." That is the financing tool! In some loose postmodern sense, OpenAl has borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from Broadcom. You can buy hundreds of billions of dollars of equipment to build the robots to sell for money to pay for the equipment, because you've gotten everyone to believe. Because you've gotten everyone to believe. Again I think back to my Enron experience, when I was surrounded by smart-if-evil Ivy League trained investment bankers who simply could not fathom that anyone would question the ability of this high flying company to spin deregulated power grids into gold. Enron got everyone to believe. But the veil eventually was pierced, and the collapse was swift.
A second senior US official said Beijing was using the US commerce department action, which was introduced in late September, as a "total pretext" to proceed with a policy that had been in the works for some time. "They could not pull something so elaborate together in two weeks," he said, referring to Beijing's rare-earth export controls. "The thing that was surprising is that they would do something that was so disproportionate. We are trying to stay proportional. They are not."
China's Ministry of Commerce issued a response Sunday that notably lacked any specific threats of retaliation against the new tariff threat from the U.S. Instead, the ministry promised to implement the new export controls in a "prudential and oderate manner"—a tacit admission that Beijing has overplayed its hand. "China's export controls are not export bans," the ministry said, while adding the new rule was intended to target military end-uses, not the broader civilian applications that have rattled global markets. "All applications for compliant export for civil use can get approval, so that relevant businesses have no need to worry," it said. Further evidence of Beijing's desire to lower the temperature can be seen in its domestic media, where Trump's recent threat of 100% tariffs on Chinese goods has received minimal coverage. By avoiding inflammatory rhetoric, China is building itself an off-ramp to move the policy away from a blanket ban without losing face.
A screenshot of the NYT home page in an Internet Wayback Machine capture from 2016. Bylines appear below each headline, including opinion pieces.
A screenshot of a bsky post saying "This Portland police officer stood up for his community against ICE agents trying to drive into a crowd of protesters. "You WILL be arrested." An accompanying video has a similar caption. The text and video are crossed out in red.
To close the deal with Taiwan, Lutnick suggested that the US would offer "some kind of security guarantee" so that "they can expect" that moving their supply chain into the US won't eliminate Taiwan's so-called "silicon shield," where countries like the US are willing to protect Taiwan because "we need their silicon, their chips, so badly." According to Lutnick, Taiwan can also be assured through the deal that the US will remain "fundamentally reliant" upon Taiwan, as the producer of the other 50 percent of chips.
It's a risky strategy for Anthropic, which has only recently emerged as an Al power player and is one of the few major companies criticizing Trump. Its chatbot is taking off with coders and developers, and its work with the Department of War includes collaboration with the National Security Agency and a lucrative partnership announced in July.
I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal. I also agreed with President Xi that we would meet at the APEC Summit in South Korea, that I would go to China in the early part of next year, and that President Xi would, likewise, come to the United States at an appropriate time. The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!
Trump says on his social media site that he made progress on trade, TikTok and Russia's war in Ukraine in his Friday call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Trump said he and Xi will meet in person on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea that runs from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1. Trump also said he would visit China "in the early part of next year, and that President Xi would, likewise, come to the United States at an appropriate time." Trump's post suggested that Xi had approved the proposed TikTok deal but he provided no details.
It remains unclear to what extent TikTok's Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal. An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data. "Beijing's bottom line is a licensing deal," said the investor. "Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world." "It's the ultimate Taco trade," said one US adviser close to the deal, referring to the acronym "Trump always chickens out" "After all this, China keeps the algorithm."
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) told companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, this week to end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia's tailor-made product for the country, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Several companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D, and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia's server suppliers, the people said.
In sheer revenue terms, TikTok America (as the company was to be called as of earlier this year) is likely to be second among social media firms to Meta in revenue, well ahead of other social media firms like Snap, Pinterest, X and Reddit. That’s based on our report in April that TikTok parent ByteDance’s international revenue—primarily TikTok—rose 63% to $39 billion in 2024. Even if TikTok only accounts for $30 billion of that, the U.S. version seems likely to be the majority of that.
“I’ve heard combatant commanders say, ‘Hey, I want someone who can take all the results from a war game and, when I’m in a [crisis] scenario, tell me what the solution is based on what the AI interpretation is,’” says Schneider, a self-described “geriatric millennial” and mother of two who, along with many of her university colleagues, is worried about how fast the shift to AI is happening. In the heat of a crisis, under pressure to move fast, her fear is that it will be easier for those commanders to accept an AI suggestion than to challenge it.