China banned exports of minerals and metals used in semiconductor manufacturing and military applications to the United States on Tuesday, escalating tensions in the growing technology trade war between the world's two largest economies.

The commerce ministry halted shipments of gallium, germanium, antimony and related compounds, citing national security concerns. These materials are crucial components in advanced electronics and military hardware, with China controlling 98% of global gallium production and 60% of germanium output, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. The move comes in direct response to Washington's new restrictions on semiconductor exports to China, including controls on high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI systems and limits on manufacturing equipment sales.

schwit1 writes: Recruiters approach students with tempting offers, often after observing them for weeks. Promising salaries of over $800 per month -- double the average pay for chemists in Mexican companies, along with potential bonuses like cars or housing -- recruiters capitalize on the financial struggles of young professionals.

These "cooks" are tasked with improving fentanyl's addictive quality and finding alternative synthesis methods to mitigate supply chain disruptions caused by stricter chemical export controls from China and pandemic-induced bottlenecks. The Times interviewed seven drug "cooks," three university chemistry students recruited by the Sinaloa cartel, two agents, a recruiter, and a university professor -- all anonymously to avoid cartel retaliation. According to the recruiter, candidates must be passionate, discreet, and indifferent to the ethical consequences of their work.

The university professor highlighted a disturbing trend: students openly expressed interest in synthesizing illicit drugs during lectures.

China has overtaken the United States as the dominant force in critical technology research, according to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The study found China now leads in 57 of 64 critical technologies, up from just three technologies in 2003-2007, while U.S. leadership dropped from 60 to seven technologies over the same period.

China has made significant gains in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, and semiconductor chip manufacturing. The U.S. maintains its edge in quantum computing, vaccines, and natural language processing. The report identified 24 technologies at "high risk" of Chinese monopoly, including radar, advanced aircraft engines, and drone technology - nearly double from last year's assessment. India has also emerged as a rising power, ranking among the top five countries in 45 technologies and displacing the U.S. for second place in biological manufacturing and distributed ledgers.

"Spacecraft, satellites, and space-based systems all face cybersecurity threats that are becoming increasingly sophisticated and dangerous," reports CNBC.

"With interconnected technologies controlling everything from navigation to anti-ballistic missiles, a security breach could have catastrophic consequences." Critical space infrastructure is susceptible to threats across three key segments: in space, on the ground segment and within the communication links between the two. A break in one can be a cascading failure for all, said Wayne Lonstein, co-founder and CEO at VFT Solutions, and co-author of Cyber-Human Systems, Space Technologies, and Threats. "In many ways, the threats to critical infrastructure on Earth can cause vulnerabilities in space," Lonstein said. "Internet, power, spoofing and so many other vectors that can cause havoc in space," he added. The integration of artificial intelligence into space projects has heightened the risk of sophisticated cyber attacks orchestrated by state actors and individual hackers. AI integration into space exploration allows more decision-making with less human oversight.

For example, NASA is using AI to target scientific specimens for planetary rovers. However, reduced human oversight could make these missions more prone to unexplained and potentially calamitous cyberattacks, said Sylvester Kaczmarek, chief technology officer at OrbiSky Systems, which specializes in the integration of AI, robotics, cybersecurity, and edge computing in aerospace applications. Data poisoning, where attackers feed corrupted data to AI models, is one example of what could go wrong, Kaczmarek said. Another threat, he said, is model inversion, where adversaries reverse-engineer AI models to extract sensitive information, potentially compromising mission integrity. If compromised, AI systems could be used to interfere with or take control of strategically important national space missions...

The U.S. government is tightening up the integrity and security of AI systems in space. The 2023 Cyberspace Solarium Commission report stressed the importance of designating outer space as a critical infrastructure sector, urging enhanced cybersecurity protocols for satellite operators... The rivalry between the U.S. and China includes the new battleground of space. As both nations ramp up their space ambitions and militarized capabilities beyond Earth's atmosphere, the threat of cyberattacks targeting critical orbital assets has become an increasingly pressing concern... Space-based systems increasingly support critical infrastructure back on Earth, and any cyberattacks on these systems could undermine national security and economic interests.

To help replace power plants, Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido, "is turning to a new generation of batteries designed to stockpile massive amounts of energy," reports the Washington Post.

"The Hokkaido Electric Power Network (HEPCO Network) is deploying flow batteries, an emerging kind of battery that stores energy in hulking tanks of metallic liquid." [F]low batteries are making their debut in big real-world projects. Sumitomo Electric, the company that built the Hokkaido plant, has also built flow batteries in Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, Morocco and California. Hokkaido's flow battery farm was the biggest in the world when it opened in April 2022 — a record that lasted just a month before China built one that is eight times bigger and can deliver as much energy as an average U.S. natural gas plant. "It looks like flow batteries are finally about to take off with interest from China," said Michael Taylor, an energy analyst at the International Renewable Energy Agency, an international group that studies and promotes green energy. "When China starts to get comfortable with a technology and sees it working, then they will very quickly scale their manufacturing base if they think they can drive down the costs, which they usually can...."

Lithium-ion batteries are perfect for smartphones because they're lightweight and fit in small spaces, even if they don't last long and have to be replaced frequently. Utilities have a different set of priorities: They need to store millions of times more energy, and they have much more room to work with. "If you think about utility-scale stationary applications, maybe you don't need lithium-ion batteries. You can use another one that is cheaper and can provide the services that you want like, for example, vanadium flow batteries," said Francisco Boshell, a researcher at the International Renewable Energy Agency...

Flow batteries are designed to tap giant tanks that can store a lot of energy for a long time. To boost their storage capacity, all you have to do is build a bigger tank and add more vanadium. That's a big advantage: By contrast, there's no easy way to adjust the storage capacity of a lithium-ion battery — if you want more storage, you have to build a whole new battery... One major barrier to building more of these battery farms is finding enough vanadium. Three-quarters of the world's supply comes as a by-product from 10 steel mills in China and Russia, according to Kara Rodby [a battery analyst at the investment firm Volta Energy Technologies] who got her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying the design and market for flow batteries. Australia, South Africa and the United States also produce vanadium, but in much smaller quantities. Mines that have been proposed could boost supply. And some flow battery start-ups are trying to sidestep the vanadium problem entirely by using different materials that are easier to buy.

The other hurdle is their up-front cost. Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries, Rodby said, and banks are hesitant to lend money to fund an unfamiliar technology. But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they're easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. "There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion," Rodby said.
Here's an interesting statistic from the article. "Over the next six years, utilities will have to build 35 times as many batteries as there are today to soak up all extra renewable energy that will come online, according to the International Energy Agency."

Meta plans to build a $10 billion private, "mother of all" undersea fiber-optic cable network spanning over 40,000 kilometers around the world, according to TechCrunch. The project, dubbed "W" for its shape, would run from the U.S. east coast to the west coast via India, South Africa and Australia, avoiding regions prone to cable sabotage including the Red Sea and South China Sea.

The social media giant, which co-owns 16 existing cable networks, aims to gain full control over traffic prioritization for its services. The project mirrors Google's strategy of private cable ownership. The construction could take 5-10 years to complete.

Central bank support for digital currencies appears to have fallen sharply, with only 13% of central bankers surveyed by OMFIF Digital Monetary Institute backing CBDCs as a cross-border payment solution, down from 31% in 2023.

The survey found just 10% of respondents are actively developing CBDCs, compared with 21% last year. The decline comes despite major initiatives including the Bank for International Settlements' Project Agora and China's Project mBridge. The BIS recently withdrew from mBridge, creating a potential split between Western and emerging market payment systems. Nearly half of surveyed bankers favor improving existing instant payment infrastructure over CBDCs.

Record numbers of plastic industry lobbyists are attending global talks that are the last chance to hammer out a treaty to cut plastic pollution around the world. From a report: The key issue at the conference will be whether caps on global plastic production will be included in the final UN treaty. Lobbyists and leading national producers are furiously arguing against any attempt to restrain the amount that can be produced, leaving the talks on a knife-edge.

New analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) shows 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry representatives -- more plastic producers than ever -- are represented at the UN talks in Busan, South Korea. Taken as a group, they would be the biggest delegation at the talks, with more plastic industry lobbyists than representatives from the EU and each of its member states, (191) or the host country, South Korea (140), according to the Centre for International Environmental Law. Their numbers overwhelm the 89 delegates from the Pacific small island developing states (PSIDs), countries that are among those suffering the most from plastic pollution.

Sixteen lobbyists from the plastics industry are at the talks as part of country delegations. China, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Finland, Iran, Kazakhstan and Malaysia all have industry vested interests within their delegations, the analysis shows. The plastic producer representatives outnumber delegates from the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty by three to one. Approximately 460m tonnes of plastics are produced annually, and production is set to triple by 2060 under business-as-usual growth rates.

The Philippine Army is recruiting civilian hackers to bolster its cybersecurity defenses amid rising digital threats from China, army officials said. The 120-member Cyber Battalion has hired 70 tech experts in their 20s and 30s since 2020, offering them military training and the opportunity to serve the nation despite lower wages than private sector jobs.

The initiative follows cyber attacks on Philippine government servers, including those of the Coast Guard and President Marcos Jr., which authorities traced to China. Beijing denies involvement. The Philippines ranks among the countries most vulnerable to cyber threats, with recent attacks compromising millions of citizens' data through state and private institutions.

Chinese companies are aggressively recruiting foreign tech talent as a key strategy to gain technological supremacy, prompting national security concerns across Western nations and Asia, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing multiple intelligence officials and corporate sources. The campaign focuses particularly on advanced semiconductor expertise, with companies like Huawei offering triple salaries to employees at critical firms like Zeiss SMT and ASML, which produce essential components for cutting-edge chip manufacturing.

These recruitment efforts intensified after Western export controls restricted China's access to advanced technology. While Taiwan and South Korea have implemented strict countermeasures, including criminal penalties for illegal talent transfers, the U.S. and Europe struggle to balance open labor markets with national security concerns.

Chinese firms often obscure their origins through local ventures and persistent recruitment tactics. The strategy has shown results: Former employees have helped Chinese companies advance their technological capabilities, including SMIC's development of 7nm chips with help from ex-TSMC talent.

Singapore is positioning itself as a key testing ground for autonomous vehicles, attracting major Chinese firms and establishing unified national guidelines that contrast with fragmented regulations in the U.S. and China.

China's WeRide launched the country's first public autonomous bus service on Sentosa island in June, while multiple companies are deploying self-driving vehicles for logistics and transportation. The controlled rollout aligns with Singapore's strategy to address labor shortages and land constraints.

Singapore topped KPMG's Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index, with companies citing its political neutrality and stringent safety standards as major draws for testing operations.

Qualcomm's interest in acquiring Intel is cooling due to the complexity of the deal, Intel's debt, and regulatory hurdles. However, according to Bloomberg, Qualcomm may still explore acquiring certain divisions of Intel to expand into markets like PCs and networking. Tom's Hardware reports: [T]he proposed acquisition faced significant obstacles, including Intel's $50 billion debt, dropping CPU market share, and its struggling semiconductor manufacturing unit, an area where Qualcomm lacks expertise. A deal of this magnitude would also likely trigger extensive regulatory scrutiny, particularly in China, a key market for both companies.

Intel is undergoing significant restructuring under CEO Pat Gelsinger to reclaim its competitiveness in the semiconductor market in terms of products and process technologies. Still, for now, both Intel and Qualcomm are quite successful standalone companies. While the combination would make a formidable firm (probably facing unprecedented antitrust scrutiny), it does not make much sense for Qualcomm to make such a massive takeover. These factors have collectively made a complete takeover less appealing to Qualcomm. Meanwhile, selling off a part of the company to Qualcomm may not make sense for Intel.

Qualcomm aims to generate $22 billion in annual revenue by 2029 by expanding into markets like personal computers, networking, and automotive chips. Although Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm's chief executive, has stated that his company did not need a major takeover to achieve this goal, the company initiated preliminary discussions with Intel regarding a potential acquisition in September. Yet, it does not look like the deal is going to happen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Huawei has announced its new Mate 70 series smartphone lineup, which will be the first offered with the company's new HarmonyOS Next operating system that doesn't rely on Google's Android services and won't run any Android apps, according to a report by Reuters. The four models of the Mate 70 also don't feature any US hardware following a half decade of US sanctions.

The Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro, Mate 70 Pro Plus, and Mate 70 RS will also be offered with Huawei's HarmonyOS 4.3, which first launched in August 2019 as an alternative to Google's Android OS and is still compatible with Android's extensive app library. Users who decide to opt for Huawei's new Android-free HarmonyOS Next will have less choice when it comes to the apps they can install. Huawei says it has "secured more than 15,000 applications for its HarmonyOS ecosystem, with plans to expand to 100,000 apps in the coming months," according to Reuters.

Starting next year, Huawei also says all the new phones and tablets it launches in 2025 will run HarmonyOS Next. [...] Huawei hasn't confirmed what processors are being used in the Mate 70 lineup, but the company has previously used chips made by China's SMIC for last year's Mate 60 series and other smartphones.

The U.S. is preparing to impose new sanctions targeting 200 Chinese chipmakers and potentially restricting the export of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The move is intended to further hinder China's semiconductor and AI advancements. Tom's Hardware reports: The update sheds light on the Biden administration's recent efforts to impose stricter regulations on chip manufacturers in China. The latest swarm of sanctions reportedly targets roughly 200 Chinese firms. US companies are prohibited from exporting select technologies or products to the targeted firms. The report suggests that the US Department of Commerce aims to push these new regulations before the Thanksgiving break - or November 28. Neither the Department of Commerce nor the Chamber of Commerce responded to Reuters' request for comments.

Moreover, another wave of sanctions is set to follow in December - targeting the export of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) - primarily to choke China's advance in the AI domain. The impacts of these restrictions are materializing given that Huawei's Kirin SoCs and Ascend AI accelerators will reportedly remain stuck at 7nm technology until 2026 as SMIC fails to procure cutting-edge Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) machines from ASML.

Apple's upcoming slim iPhone model faces potential sales obstacles in China due to design limitations that prevent fitting a physical SIM card tray, which is mandatory in the Chinese market.

The new device, planned for release next fall, measures 5-6 millimeters thick compared to the iPhone 16's 7.8mm, The Information reported Monday [non-paywalled source]. The company aims to revitalize iPhone sales in China, where revenue has declined for three consecutive years amid competition from Huawei and Vivo. The thin iPhone relies on embedded SIMs (eSIMs), which Chinese regulators haven't yet approved for smartphone use. Engineers are also struggling with battery placement and thermal management in the slim design, the report added.

"At points there was fear the talks would implode, as groups representing vulnerable small island states and the least-developed countries walked out of negotiations Saturday," according to a new report from CNN.

But after weeks of international climate talks at COP29, "the world agreed to a new climate deal... "with wealthy countries pledging to provide $300 billion annually by 2035 to poorer countries to help them cope with the increasingly catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis." The amount pledged, however, falls far short of the $1.3 trillion economists say is needed to help developing countries cope with a climate crisis they have done least to cause — and there has been a furious reaction from many developing countries. a fiery speech immediately after the gavel went down, India's representative Chandni Raina slammed the $300 billion as "abysmally poor" and a "paltry sum," calling the agreement "nothing more than an optical illusion" and unable to "address the enormity of the challenge we all face."

Others were equally damning in their criticism. We are leaving with a small portion of the funding climate-vulnerable countries urgently need," said Tina Stege, Marshall Islands climate envoy. Stege heavily criticized the talks as showing the "very worst of political opportunism." Fossil fuel interests "have been determined to block progress and undermine the multilateral goals we've worked to build," she said in a statement...

There was also a push for richer emerging economies such as China and Saudi Arabia to contribute to the climate funding package, but the agreement only "encourages" developing countries to make voluntary contributions, and places no obligations on them... Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, which has pushed against ambitious action at past climate summits, seemed even more emboldened in Baku, publicly and explicitly rejecting any reference to oil, coal and gas in the deal.
The package "is also being criticised as short-sighted from the richer world's perspective," notes the BBC: The argument runs that if you want to keep the world safe from rising temperatures, then wealthier nations need to help emerging economies cut their emissions, because that is where 75% of the growth in emissions has occurred in the past decade.
But "Delegations more optimistic about the agreement said this deal is headed in the right direction," writes the Associated Press, "with hopes that more money flows in the future." The text included a call for all parties to work together using "all public and private sources" to get closer to the $1.3 trillion per year goal by 2035. That means also pushing for international mega-banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, to help foot the bill. And it means, hopefully, that companies and private investors will follow suit on channeling cash toward climate action. The agreement is also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Longtime Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from Gizmodo: Hackers for the Chinese government were able to deeply penetrate U.S. telecommunications infrastructure in ways that President Joe Biden's administration hasn't yet acknowledged, according to new reports from the Washington Post and New York Times. The hackers were able to listen to phone calls and read text messages, reportedly exploiting the system U.S. authorities use to wiretap Americans in criminal cases. The worst part? The networks are still compromised and it may take incredibly drastic measures to boot them from U.S. systems.

The hackers behind the infiltration of U.S. telecom infrastructure are known to Western intelligence agencies as Salt Typhoon, and this particular breach of U.S. equipment was first reported in early October by the Wall Street Journal. But Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, spoke with the Washington Post and New York Times this week to warn the public that this is so much worse than we initially thought, dubbing it "the worst telecom hack in our nation's history." And those articles based on Warner's warnings were published late Thursday.

Hackers weren't able to monitor or intercept anything encrypted, according to the Times, which means that conversations over apps like Signal and Apple's iMessage were probably protected. But end-to-end encryption over texts between Apple devices and Android devices, for instance, aren't encrypted in the same way, meaning they were vulnerable to interception by Salt Typhoon, according to the Times. The details about how the hackers were able to push so deeply into U.S. systems are still scarce, but it has something to do with the ways in which U.S. authorities wiretap suspects in this country with a court order.

Baidu's new Apollo Go robotaxi brings significant advances in affordability and scalability that should make U.S. competitors like Waymo a bit nervous, according to The Verge's Andrew J. Hawkins. From the report: The RT6 is the sixth generation of Apollo Go's driverless vehicle, which made its official debut in May 2024. It's a purpose-built, Level 4 autonomous vehicle, meaning it's built without the need for a human driver. And here's the thing that should make US competitors nervous: adopting a battery-swapping solution, the price for one individual RT6 is "under $30,000," Baidu CEO Robin Li said in an earnings call. "All the strengths just mentioned above are driving us forward, paving the way to validate our business model," Li added. [...]

We still don't know the net effect of Baidu's cost improvements. But bringing down the upfront cost of each individual vehicle to below $30,000 will go a long way toward improving the company's unit economics, in which each vehicle brings in more money than it costs. There are still a lot of outstanding costs to consider, such as hardware depreciation and fleet maintenance, but from what Baidu is signaling, things are on the right track. From the looks of it, the company is passing those savings along to its customers. Base fares start as low as 4 yuan (around 55 cents), compared with 18 yuan (around $2.48) for a taxi driven by a human, according to state media outlet Global Times. Apollo Go said it has provided 988,000 rides across all of China in Q3 2024 -- a year-over-year growth of 20 percent. And cumulative public rides reached 8 million in October.

China has overtaken Germany and Japan in terms of robot density, according to an annual report by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). Reuters reports: South Korea is the world leader with 1,012 robots per 10,000 employees, up 5% since 2018, said the IFR. Singapore comes next, followed by China with 470 robots per 10,000 workers - more than double the density it had in 2019. That compares with 429 per 10,000 employees in Germany, which has had an annual growth rate of 5% since 2018, said IFR.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A recent survey from Global System for Mobile Communications Association Intelligence (GSMA), the research wing of a U.K.-based organization that represents mobile operators around the world, found that 4.6 billion people across the globe are now connected to mobile internet -- or roughly 57% of the world's population. Now, the rate of new mobile internet subscriber growth is slowing. From 2015 to 2021, the survey consistently found over 200 million coming online through mobile devices around the world each year. But in the last two years, that number has dropped to 160 million.

Rest of World analysis of that data found that a number of developing countries are plateauing in the number of mobile internet subscribers. That suggests that in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Mexico, the easiest populations to get online have already logged on, and getting the rest of the population on mobile internet will continue to be a challenge. GSMA collects data by surveying a nationally representative sample of people in each country, and then it correlates the results with similar studies.

[...] In countries including China, the U.S., and Singapore, a high share of the population is already connected to mobile internet -- 80%, 81%, and 93%, respectively. So it's no surprise that the rate of mobile internet subscriptions has slowed. But the rate of new users has also slowed in countries including Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Pakistan -- where only 37%, 34%, and 24% of the population currently use mobile internet.