Month: June 2026

hundreds of Chinese boats preying on fishing grounds

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There are maps that speak for themselves, like the ones has disclosed during the last few days the Ecologist Movement of Peru (MEP), an organization dedicated to the defense of the environment. Last week its managers hung up two satellite maps in which dozens and dozens of colored arrows can be seen crowded together in the Pacific, just off the coast of Mollendo. Each one of them, MEP complaintreveals the position of a Chinese ship that goes to the edges of Peru’s national waters in search of its squid schools. His presence already has put on guard to local fishermen. What has happened? That MEP has stirred up an old debate in Peru (and other nations of South America): the impact that the Chinese flag fleet has on the maritime resources of the region. On June 22, the organization published a satellite map online showing the concentration of dozens and dozens of ships just 220 nautical miles off the coast of Mollendo, south of Peru. According to the organization environmentalist, there are around “300 Chinese vessels” dedicated to “exploiting fishing outside the limits” of their national waters. Just one day later, on June 23, MEP returned to the fray with another satellite map that shows a long trail formed over the Pacific by ship marking points. “Satellite images from June 1 to 19 show that the Foreign Squid Fleet has completed its migration (north-south) along the edge of the Peruvian EEZ,” warned the entity. “Around 400 Chinese fishing vessels are concentrated 220 miles off the coast of Mollendo.” @ecocentristas This is what the fleet of around 300 Chinese fishing vessels that are concentrated 220 miles off the coast of Mollendo looks like 🇵🇪 🛰️These are China’s boats, exploiting fishing off the limits of the seas of Peru. 🇵🇪🦑🦑🦑 Ecological Movement of Peru ♬ original sound – Ecologist Movement of Peru – Ecologist Movement of Peru What is the problem? Basically the number and location of that large fleet of fishing vessels. If MEP is correct, these are hundreds of Asian ships mobilized right on the border of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a region in which the coastal States (in this case Peru) have sovereign jurisdiction, which affects, among other things, their natural resources. The EEZ usually extends 200 miles, which would put the Chinese fishing fleet almost on the edge. The problem is that, beyond the demarcations drawn in offices or the distances included in international treaties, the Peruvian EEZ is situated in a much larger context: the ecosystem of the humboldt currentmaking that region of the Pacific especially valuable for fishermen. The UN itself recognizes that it is one of the “most productive areas in the world”, although it has also been warning for years about the serious threat which involves both climate change and the overexploitation of its fishing resources. What impact does it have? The million dollar question. In 2025 the newspaper The Republic public a report in which he echoed several complaints from Peru’s artisanal fishermen: incursions by Chinese vessels into the EEZ, indiscriminate exploitation of resources and fear that squid schools would be depleted. “The Peruvian boats go out, but they don’t bring the amount they used to. The Chinese boats prey on the sea, our boats are small, everything is done by hand. On the other hand, they have machines that take the fish faster,” explained to the newspaper Alberto Sánchez, fisherman from Paita, from Lima. Sailors dedicated to the artisanal capture of Pucusana even have denounced the sighting of large vessels in the 200 miles of the Peruvian EEZ despite the fact that the fleets must transmit their position via satellite. @ecocentristas 🛰️ Satellite images from June 1 to 19, 2026 show that the Foreign Squid Fleet has completed its migration (north-south) along the edge of the Peruvian EEZ. Around 400 Chinese fishing vessels are concentrated 220 miles off the coast of Mollendo. 🇵🇪 @ecocentristas ♬ original sound – Ecologist Movement of Peru – Ecologist Movement of Peru Is it something new? No. In 2024 MEP already launched a similar complaint. He even shared a map showing the accumulation of Asian ships right on the border of the Peruvian EEZ. “Where is the foreign squid fleet located? How many ships are there? What type of vessels are they and how many are in Peruvian ports?” I questioned the organization. A few days ago, after its last complaint, the Peruvian Navy (MGP) carried out an exploration flight which confirmed that, at least today, the foreign fishing fleet operates outside the Peruvian maritime domain, 230 miles away. Does it only affect Peru? No. The debate regarding the presence (and impact) of foreign fishing vessels on the South American coast is not new and goes far beyond Peru, also extending to nations such as Chili. Infoae cites studies that estimate that in 2024, 1,359 vessels will operate in the 500 nautical miles located off the coast of Peru. Of them, 525almost 40%, were ships of Chinese origin, a figure that far exceeds those of other nationalities. MEP’s warning also comes just a few days after Sustainable Fisheries Partnesihp launched a statement resounding in which they warn of the importance of not overexploiting the region’s resources. Hence, among other things, it requires that any legislative change be supported by a “scientific basis”. In the specific case of Peru, the agency warns of the registration of around 2,000 new vessels “built outside the legal framework” at a time when “the fishery has captured 83.27% of the quota” planned for this year. Does context matter? Yes. And not only because of the warnings from environmentalists or the misgivings of the sector. Two years ago the organization The Outlaw Ocean published a report in which he warned that China’s fishing footprint goes far beyond its fishing grounds or Asian flag vessels. The country also operates in other waters of South America, Africa and the Pacific thanks to ‘flagging’, which basically consists of arranging for a ship to fly the … Read more

The US has no alternatives for its gas turbines

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When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping they met Last month, the White House announced that China was committed to reviewing the restrictions it had imposed on rare earth exports. The first item on that list was an unusual choice: yttrium. Neither neodymium nor dysprosium (the usual protagonists of the debate about permanent magnets); a rare earth that until recently barely appeared in geopolitical risk reports. This surprise has an explanation. The focus of the West’s dependence on China in the field of rare earths has been concentrated for years on permanent magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense systems. Yttrium operates in a different segment. And it is the essential component of the thermal barrier coatings that protect the blades of gas turbines and jet engines. Without that coating, those blades would melt. The US depends almost 100% on yttrium imports, and almost all of them come from China. Despite the conversations that these two countries have had, foreign trade data confirm that Xi Jinping’s commitment has not transformed into a real flow. Chinese yttrium oxide exports collapsed after April 2025 controls; they resumed with a dropper starting in October; recorded a specific peak in March 2026, and, in May, China did not export yttrium to the US. Not a single gram. A vulnerability without a substitute GE Vernova, one of the world’s largest gas turbine manufacturers, relies on yttrium coating to make its machines work. The same goes for jet engine manufacturers. Unlike neodymium, which is mined and refined in Australia, Canada or Europe, yttrium lacks a alternative supply chain consolidated outside China. For this reason, dependence on the West is structural, and not circumstantial. The problem was aggravated by the timing of the embargo. The April 2025 checks coincided with the data center boom of artificial intelligence (IA) in the US. The investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates that energy demand of data centers will double before 2027and a good part will come from gas turbines. In this scenario, China not only restricted access to a critical material for the defense industry: it did so just when the infrastructure that fuels the AI ​​race was beginning to scale. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce not only maintains controls, but is tightening them More than a year after the embargo, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce is not only maintaining controls, but tightening them. Beijing has put in place measures to block the rerouting of rare earths through third countries, the mechanism that some Western companies had resorted to to circumvent the restrictions. The remaining window is closing. The lesson that yttrium leaves us transcends this chemical element. And the most dangerous vulnerabilities in the critical technology supply chain are not always the most visible. In this context, neodymium attracted attention, and yttrium went unnoticed until it stopped reaching the West. Then, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s meeting made headlines. But the important thing is that May data generate doubts. Many doubts. Image | Kian Turbo Tec More information | Volt Insight In Xataka | In the midst of the battle of all countries to obtain rare earths, an unexpected actor has raised his voice: Apple

Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

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The increasing incidence of cancer in young adults is one of the most debated topics in recent oncology. In recent years, exhaustive reviews have warned of an increase in diagnoses in those under 50 years of agealthough medical science had long been searching for the underlying mechanism that connects the dots between modern lifestyle and the early onset of this hated disease. The answer. A new study recently published seems to have found a key piece of the puzzle, which is nothing more than that our cells are aging faster than our ID card. This is the conclusion of research published in the journal Nature that indicates that accelerated biological aging is associated with a greater risk of developing early-onset cancers, especially solid cancers such as lung, stomach and also uterine cancer. Two concepts. To understand the finding, we must first differentiate between chronological age and biological age. The first of these is immovable, since it is nothing more than the years that have passed since our birth. But biological age is flexible, since it is calculated by evaluating the physiological state of a person through blood biomarkers and metabolic profiles. It reflects how “old” our tissues and organs really are. How to measure them. To measure this, Tian’s team used models already consolidated in scientific literaturesuch as PhenoAge and the Klemera-Doubal method. With these tools, they crossed the data of more than 150,000 adults from the UK Biobank and approximately 10,000 program participants. All of Us of the United States. The result shows a dangerous imbalance. This means that those people born in more recent decades had a greater tendency to have a biological age higher than that corresponding to their date of birth. And this time “jump” has direct clinical consequences such as the appearance of cancer. To be more specific, it has been seen that every time we have a person with a biological age higher than their corresponding age, they have an 8% higher risk of having early-onset solid cancer before the age of 50. If we compare the extremes, individuals located in the tertile with the greatest biological aging have a 15% greater risk of developing the disease compared to those in the tertile with the least biological wear and tear. The context. The main thing is not to fall into alarmism, since, although it is true that cancer is increasing in the youngest people in society, it is also increasing in all remaining bands due to multiple factors such as general population aging and better screening methods that allow us to detect cancer earlier. However, the specific data on early onset are undeniable, since large studies point to significant increases in thyroid, breast, colon, kidney and endometrial tumors in the 20 to 49 age group. Colorectal cancer, specifically, is the one that worries the most due to its escalation in young adults. The lifestyle. That we are biologically aging much faster than we should is not magic, but rather it seems to be influenced by different factors related to lifestyle. These include rates of youth obesity, prolonged consumption of diets rich in ultra-processed foods, a sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to environmental toxins. What this new work provides is the quantification of the damage, since these risk factors accelerate the biological clock. We must keep in mind that the human body is exposed to pro-inflammatory factors for more years from early stages of life, which makes it easier for DNA damage to accumulate faster than cellular mechanisms can repair it. In Xataka | Experts agree about the sun and hair: “It is one of the most exposed areas and one of the most forgotten”

The IMEC laboratory has found a way to extend the life of silicon

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IMEC just updated your semiconductor journey and the fact that attracts the most attention is a date: 2038. That is the year in which, according to this Belgian research center, the industry will begin the production of class 3 angstrom integrated circuits (0.3 nanometers). This is not the first time we have talked about this milestone; a little over a year ago We analyze in Xataka a slide from IMEC that placed this leap in 2035. The new forecast delays it by three years, but in exchange it gives us something much more valuable: how to get there. And to reach 0.3 nm it is not enough to improve photolithography alone. IMEC states that the contact poly pitchwhich is the minimum distance between transistors that for decades has been the main indicator of technological progress, will no longer be significantly reduced starting with the A10 generation, which is scheduled for 2030 or 2031. From then on, to increase density it will no longer be enough to shrink the transistors; They will have to be stacked. This paradigm shift has its own name: CFET transistors (Complementary FET). This strategy is not new, although until now it was a distant promise. And the interesting thing is that the IMEC itinerary gives it a date, context, and connects directly with everything we have explained in our articles dedicated to IT teams. UVE Hyper-NA photolithography. These machines will be needed to manufacture these chips, although they are still being developed by ASML. Why CFET technology is going to retire GAA transistors The transistors Gate-All-Around (GAA), which the semiconductor industry began to adopt massively in the 2nm generationthey still have a journey. IMEC estimates that this architecture will remain viable until the A10 generation, which will arrive in 2030 or 2031, giving it a useful life of about seven years from its introduction. It is a reasonable period of time if we compare it with previous generations of transistors, but the Belgian research center already makes it clear that it has an expiration date. The underlying problem is geometric. The GAA transistors improved the electrostatic control of the channel by completely surrounding it with the gate, but they still placed the type materials n and p one next to the other, in the horizontal plane. This provision has an obvious physical limit: There will come a time when it will no longer be possible to continue reducing the distance between them without compromising the electrical performance of the chip. This is precisely what will begin to happen when the A10 generation arrives, according to IMEC. Sequential CFET technology will come first, followed by linked CFET structures CFET transistors solve this problem by stacking the type material n directly above type pvertically. IMEC’s ​​itinerary places their arrival as firm candidates for chip production in the A7 generation, which is scheduled for 2033. And, in addition, it explicitly associates them with the need to resort to power delivery systems on the back side of the wafer, which IMEC considers mandatory in this architecture. From there, the itinerary itself anticipates an evolution in two phases: first the sequential CFET technology will arrive, and later the united CFET structures, already in the A3 generation of 2038. The most interesting thing about this approach is that it changes the meaning of the Moore’s Law. IMEC recognizes that the contact poly pitch It will barely move between the A10 and A5 generations. Carry stuck at 42nm for several years. The density gains that we traditionally measured in individual transistor nanometers now depend on the height of the cell and how many layers can be stacked vertically. It is, in a way, a confession: horizontal scaling is exhausted, but the industry has found a third dimension in which it can continue growing. Image | Samsung More information | Tom’s Hardware In Xataka | US adds Netherlands to Pax Silica alliance: ASML host nation enters anti-Chinese bloc

In 1967, Ebro moved to the Free Zone of Barcelona. 69 years later, we have seen how Ebro once again manufactures cars in it

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Entering the 500,000 square meters that the Ebro Factory plant in Barcelona occupies is, in large part, a visit to the origins of the brand and its deep connection with the Catalan capital. The same naves and corridors that In 1967 they saw the last Ebro vehicles leave to become later at Nissan Motor Ibérica. In 2026, the factory that opened its doors in the Barcelona Free Trade Zone almost 70 years ago, manufactures vehicles again (and not just assembly) with the Ebro logo on its grille. Ebro has just opened its facilities to the press for the first time, and we have been able to see first-hand what it is like to manufacture a car. What we have found is a factory full of welding robots, automated parts supply lines and state-of-the-art assembly lines that They look more to the future than to the past. A plant with many stories The old Nissan factory closed on December 31, 2021 after 41 years of activity. The cessation of activity left some 2,500 workers on the streets. Three years later, Ebro confirmed his reindustrialization plan of the plant returning its activity. And he did it, to a large extent, with the same workers he had. Of the almost 2,000 employees that the company currently has, nearly 1,000 employees who work here today They were already with Nissan. Of them, about 400 are product engineers, 200 process engineers and 200 welding and assembly line specialists. These employees know every hallway, every corner and, according to those responsible for the factory, they have played a leading role in the start-up of the plant. The factory occupies 500,000 m2 Our guide throughout the visit was Paco DuranDirector of Production Control and Logistics. According to what he said, he himself started at this same plant in 1998, when the Nissan sign still hung on the door. When the Japanese stopped production he spent some time at Stellantis. When Ebro started his reindustrialization plan, he returned to what he considered his Alma mater. Durán is, in all likelihood, the person who best knows how these facilities work. Nissan veterans like him helped design each booth of the new assembly line based on the years of experience that the assembly of Japanese cars gave them. They knew exactly what had worked before and what had failed. That muscle memory acquired by years of automobile production has weighed more than any manual and has contributed to the Ebro Factory will start walking in record time. First as an assembly center, and now as the only Ebro manufacturing plant in Spain and Europe, in which the Spanish brand already manufactures four models with welding, painting, assembly and quality control processes. Barcelona outside and inside There is a very curious detail in how this factory is designed. It is inspired by Barcelona and the two rivers (the Besós and the Llobregat) that frame it. Being called Ebro, it makes sense. Like these rivers, the entire flow of supplies flows from mountains to sea. It is not the only inspiration that Ebro engineers have borrowed from Barcelona when designing it. The interior of the factory has the same structure as the streets of Barcelona Its interior is arranged in streets perpendicular to each other, well-defined islands, without intersections that block the passage or flows that collide with each other. The reference is the Cerdà Plan of 1859who created the orthogonal grid so characteristic of Barcelona that it ordered the Eixample of Barcelona. An urban model that is still a reference in half the world. A small Barcelona within an icon of Barcelona’s industrial past. Under this spatial arrangement, the materials enter at one end of the factory and advance in line to the other, without setbacks or countercurrents. As Durán explained, this flow “towards the sea” reduces errors, improves response times and, as an added advantage, facilitates the evacuation of the plant in case of emergency. The plant works on two levels. All the assembly of the different components occurs on the ground, while the automatic transports of parts and bodies circulate suspended in a complex logistics system that takes the bodies from one section to another without interrupting the assembly work below. To give us an idea of ​​the magnitude of this aerial infrastructure, the equivalent of three days of production of components and bodies was circulating above our heads at all times. 696 meters of line and 20 cars per hour Since November 2024, the factory operated with the M0 assembly line, in which the cars arrived from China semi-assembled and the rest of the parts were assembled at the Ebro factory. However, the heart of the visit, and the new jewel in Ebro’s crown, is the M1 assembly line. There are 696 meters, 97 work stations and a cycle of 160 seconds per vehicle. That is, each operator has that time to assemble the elements assigned to that station. The body is welded in a 23,000 square meter warehouse with more than 150 robots. Around 95% of this process is fully automated. There the floor, sides and roof are welded until forming what is called the Body-in-Whitethe empty structure of the car before receiving any paint or components. From there it travels by air to the painting area which, for safety reasons due to the chemical agents used there, we were not able to visit (we needed PPE and additional protection). In this section, the car chassis go through degreasing baths, paint is applied through cataphoresis and an anti-corrosion treatment. Afterwards, the already painted bodies fly back to the assembly area, but not before disassembling the doors, which travel in parallel, to improve the workers’ access to the interior. Something that caught my attention was that all the cars I saw on the assembly line were Ebro S700 red in color (the Red Blood Stone, to be more exact). When we asked Paco Durán about the reason, he explained to us that instead of responding to color … Read more

the price of goodbye to a symbol

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Telefónica has closed the terms of the sale of its former headquarters in Madrid, the iconic building on Gran Vía 28, to the Cartagena developer Tomás Olivo for around 200 million euros, as announced Digital Economy. The operation could be formalized in August. The panoramic. The Ignacio de Cárdenas building, inaugurated in 1929 and protected with the highest heritage level in Madrid, no longer belongs to the company that gave it its name. Telefónica gives up waiting for an urban reclassification that could have triggered the price, preferring to close the operation now with Olivo, the second largest shareholder of Unicaja and owner of shopping centers such as La Cañada or Nevada Shopping. In detail. The agreement includes a clause that benefits both parties depending on how the municipal file evolves: If the Madrid City Council authorizes a change of use of the property (from residential to residential, commercial or hotel), the final price could rise between 40 and 50 million more, via premium in favor of Telefónica. If this reclassification does not arrive, Olivo is left with a historical asset that can “only” be used for cultural or educational uses, the only ones allowed by the current General Urban Planning Plan. The regulatory risk, before Telefónica, now passes into the hands of the buyer. Why is it important. The sale confirms the pattern that defines Marc Murtra’s management since he became president in January 2025: divest assets that do not contribute to the telecommunications business. No matter how symbolic they are. Before the Gran Vía 28 building, Telefónica It has already sold its subsidiaries in almost all of Latin America: Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia, and only Venezuela remains pending. It is expected to be resolved before the year ends. The context. The sale of the historic building is not an isolated movement. Just a few weeks ago, Murtra rented more than 40,000 square meters of the Las Tablas headquartersempty after successive employment regulation files and voluntary resignation plans that have been reducing the workforce. José María Álvarez-Pallete, his predecessor, had avoided touching both buildings due to their symbolic value, despite internal complaints about excessive teleworking and the consequent underuse of space. Yes, but. Selling offices and subsidiaries reduces debt and frees up cash, but it does not by itself solve Telefónica’s underlying problem: a telecom company competes in a sector where the margin has moved towards whoever controls the software and data, not towards whoever lays cables and antennas. Lightening the balance sheet can buy time, but it cannot buy differentiation. The contrast. Tomás Olivo, with a real estate asset that exceeds 3,000 million euros and a personal fortune estimated at 4,600 million, is betting on an asset that the urban planning regulations themselves limit almost completely. Its investment profile, built on shopping centers in Murcia, Almería or the Canary Islands, anticipates patience in its movements: the real business to be exploited with Gran Vía 28 depends on a decision that sooner or later the Madrid City Council will have to make. In Xataka | Telefónica’s new guard: Marc Murtra and Emilio Gayo, the duo that seeks to create a European champion Featured image | Wikimedia Commons, Telefónica

everything you can do with it (and what you can’t)

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We are in full heat wave and in many homes andThe air conditioning is not enough. In addition to make our electricity bill go up in summerair conditioning gives us something else: water. Most people throw it away directly, but there are things you can do to take advantage of all those liters of water so that not everything is a waste. The amount of water expelled by the air conditioner depends on several factors such as the type of equipment or the temperature outside, but it is estimated to be between 1 and 2 liters per hour. In my case I have a 5 liter bottle at the water outlet and yesterday I emptied it twice, so I ended up wasting 10 liters of water. Taking into account that we have been in a heat wave for more than a week, I will have about 70 liters wasted. What to do with air conditioning water and what is best to avoid The water that comes out of the air drain is produced by condensation, so it is pure, demineralized water without salts (like distilled water). This makes her perfect for some uses: Clean: one of the uses that we can give to this water is cleaning. As it does not contain any minerals, it is perfect for cleaning windows or shiny surfaces where limescale usually leaves visible marks. Iron: If you iron clothes, you can save distilled water for ironing. This water will also not leave any trace of lime on the fabrics. for the car: Another ingenious use that has to do with cleaning is to use it to refill the water tank for the windshield wipers. If you wash your car by hand, you can also use it to give it the final rinse so that the typical droplets do not remain. We have seen that the absence of minerals is good for some things, but it is also not recommended for others. In addition, it must be taken into account that the water passes through the machine filter and the ducts, so may contain dirt. This is what is not recommended to do: Water the plants: Plants need nutrients and air conditioning water contains none. You can use it to water as long as you supplement it with a fertilizer, but if you only give this water to drink without anything else, in the long run your plants will suffer from a lack of nutrients. Drink it: It is not recommended, nor is putting it on pets. It is not drinking water and as we said, it may contain dirt and bacteria present in the device’s circuit. Cook: It is evident that if it is not recommended for drinking, it is not recommended for cooking either. If we boil it we eliminate possible germs, but it is still better to use drinking water. An even more valuable resource when it is on a large scale What at a domestic level is a few jugs of water, in large buildings can become an important water resource. Rice University in Houston has been collecting condensation water since 2008 of your air conditioning system and reusing it for cooling systems of your power plant. They estimate that the savings are 12 million gallons of water per year, which is equivalent to more than 45 million liters. At the Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago as well They installed a similar system and they calculate a saving of half a million liters per year. There are also other industrial uses, such as using that condensation water. to feed toilet cisternssomething common in many hotels. In airplanes it is also often used to Image | Xataka In Xataka | Showering with cold water before sleeping in a heat wave seems like the best idea. Science warns that it is a big mistake

00 in the third Q&A with editors. Only for Xataka Xtra members

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Is there a better way to close the month of June than with a good virtual meeting between xatakeros and Xataka editors? probably not. One of the many benefits included in your subscription to Xataka Xtra It is the participation (voluntary, needless to say) in the monthly Q&A, online meetings in which there are no predefined topics or agenda, but rather we talk about what you feel like. The session will take place today, June 30, at 5:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time. As on previous occasions, the meeting will be held through Google Meet. The link will arrive in your email in just a few hours, as long as you have the “Xtra Community” box checked in your member area. We leave you a small executive summary with the key data: Day: June 30. Hour: 17:00, Spanish peninsular time (16:00 in the Canary Islands). Assistants: Alejandro Alcolea, Rubén Andrés, John Tones, Javier Pastor, María González and Jose García. Connection link: We will send it to you by mail in a little while. How Q&As work The Q&A are online conversations between xatakeros and in-house editors. They are part of the set of advantages included in Xataka Xtra and its format is very simple: there is no agenda or predefined topics. In these meetings we talk about whatever you want, be it the tech news of the week, the price of the Steam Deck, GTA VI coming out without a disc or the latest tool you have made with AI. It is not a serious meeting by any means, but rather a hangout. chill to see each other, talk and disconnect after a day of work. Like meeting for coffee and catching up, exactly the same. Like previous times, the meeting will take place through Google Meet, so there will be no need to download software. We will send you the link by email in just a moment. Needless to say, using the camera or microphone is completely voluntary, as is participation. If you don’t feel like it or it doesn’t work for you, absolutely nothing happens. As for the participants, we do a rotation in each Q&A so that we can all participate and you can get to know us better. For this third meeting we will have Alejandro Alcolea, Rubén Andrés, John Tones, Javier Pastor, María González and yours truly, Jose García. In Xataka | Subscribe to Xataka Xtra

The Ferrari Luce has sold all its units in China. And that is the best sign for Chinese manufacturers

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Ferrari Luce in China. With the Luce, of course. The Maranello electric car has posted the “all sold” message on the door of its dealerships. 88 units at almost $600,000. A very high figure for a Chinese market that has also lowered the prices of luxury vehicles. Despite everything, Ferrari is Ferrari. whatever they want. They can sell whatever they want. It is the conclusion defended by multiple analysts and pickup in Xataka during the presentation of Ferrari Lucethe company’s first electric car that created enormous controversy for its design that even surpassed that of having launched an electric car without a trace of gasoline smell. Just a few days later we learned that Ferrari had sold each and every one of the units that I had planned in a first print run. Many or few? It really is not entirely clear because Ferrari’s production capacity is limited and only with the passage of years will we be able to know if the car has been a success or not. What is certain is that Ferrari, by the simple fact of being Ferrari, shows that it can sell whatever it wants. 88 units for China. With a waiting list that already extends until 2027, the Ferrari Luce has had the reception that could be expected. Even though the company has assured that does not force its more traditional clients to buy the car as a preliminary step to get the most special units. Of that waiting list that has already been completed, 88 of those units will go directly to the Chinese market. These Ferrari Luce, ensure in Car News Chinahave been sold with a starting price of $586,600 (almost four million Chinese yuan at the exchange rate). The figure is, they explain, 7% lower than the price sold in Europe. Very important. That sales are advancing at a good pace is huge news for the brand since China has been very quickly turning to its local manufacturers and turning its back on foreign ones. In fact, Ferrari only sold 584 units in 2025 in the Asian country. The fall was serious because in 2024 it signed 814 units and in 2023 it placed 1,221 supercars. That is to say, placing 88 units at once in China has already allowed it to sell 15% of the same amount that it signed last year. Without a doubt, a cushion that allows you to cushion the fall in a market that is clearly moving towards electrical products and, above all, to local ones. Big money. When analyzing car sales in China, in CarNewsChina They talk about “extra luxury” to refer to cars that cost more than a million yuan (just over 120,000 euros at direct exchange rate). It is a market where, curiously, only European cars dominate. The twentieth place last year was the Mercedes-AMG GLS with 83 units. In one fell swoop, Ferrari would have already surpassed it. But this list is not dominated by European cars because they do things better, it is because Chinese manufacturers have entered into a price war that has managed to place the price ceiling of their luxury cars below that million yuan. That is why it is surprising that Ferrari is capable of placing 88 units of a car that multiplies that cost by four. It must be taken into account that only BYD with the Yangwang U8 and its long variant U8L managed to sneak into this list. The rest of the supercars do not appear because, among other things, they cost less money than that million yuan border. Much more for less money. To show what we are talking about, the Huawei Maextro S800a luxury sedan that is half-manufactured by Huawei and the automobile conglomerate JAC, started last year at just over 700,000 Chinese yuan (about $100,000 at the exchange rate) and its top range barely exceeded that million yuan. Only in the last month of December 2025, This car outsold the BMW 7 Series, the Porsche Panamera and the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class. which were consolidated as the next three best-selling cars. While the Chinese car sold 4,376 units, the European options totaled 4,140 units. Chinese manufacturers are offering cars that are more technologically advanced inside than any other European company. The Huawei Maextro S800 has triple screen inside between 15 and 16 inchesendings in wood inside with space to store champagne bottles, individual seats in bucket format in the rear seats, the most advanced ADAS systems and, of course, full integration with the Huawei ecosystem. The path to choose. They assure Ferrari that the Luce is a car that is not aimed at its most classic clients. “It is designed for a different customer profile, not for historical customers to buy, who, obviously, can do so if they wish,” assured Enrico Galliera who has just left his position as the company’s head of marketing. As we said in Xataka It is clear that Ferrari is looking to carve out a niche for itself among a new type of customer. Although it aims at a global market, this was essential in China where the preferred car among the rich also seems to be electric and Chinese but, above all, it aims to be something different from what we traditionally know as a car. That Ferrari has sold all the units there allows it to position itself as a modern company, capable of doing different things. For example, this opinion from a Chinese buyer of a Porsche Taycan in statements to Bloomberg: “It was just an electrified Porsche. That’s all.” In the article, he described the purchase as “terrible” because, simply, it did not provide any differential value. For now, the numbers seem to say that Ferrari is moving on the right path in China. Photo | Ferrari and Sou Jest In Xataka | “It shouldn’t be in a car”: Legendary Apple designer thinks we have a problem with touch screens

Experts already claim that the Chinese GLM-5.2 model is as “dangerous” as Anthropic’s

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The technological gap between the US and China continues to narrow. At least, if we pay attention to what they say the latest analyzes on the GLM-5.2 model. Two independent cybersecurity companies have made their own assessment and their data reveals that in terms of cybersecurity, GLM-5.2 is as good as Claude Opus 4.8. That has notable implications, especially considering how the US government is now restricting access to Anthropic and OpenAI’s frontier models. AI in the face of the threat of cybersecurity. Since Claude Mythos Preview appeared, the discourse on AI has changed significantly. Suddenly the world realized that these models could become weapons with which to find vulnerabilities in all types of systems to exploit them. Anthropic has already warned that Mythos was too dangerous to be publicly available, and it did not matter that it released hidden versions like Fable 5 shortly after: the US Government has temporarily vetoed them and the same has happened with GPT-5.6. The situation is unusual. Beware of Tulongfeng (or not). Last Wednesday, a Chinese cybersecurity company called 360 Security Technology (Qihoo 360) launched a new vulnerability detection tool called Tulongfeng. According to its creatorsTulongfeng is comparable Mythos in this task. The company this on the US “Entity List” since May 2020 and its CEO, Zhou Hongyi, stated that Mythos is equivalent to a “cybernuclear weapon.” The Sputnik moment with GLM-5.2. But the real recent protagonist of the Chinese AI industry is the GLM-5.2 model from the startup Zhipu.ai (Z.ai), which is becoming very popular by demonstrating performance comparable to the best models from US companies. Its fundamental advantage is that it is an open weights model: any person or company can download it, modify it and run it on their own hardware (although it requires a huge amount of video/unified memory to be able to use it, it is a model with 744B of parameters). But he is not only good at programming or at agentic tasks. Better than Claude in cybersecurity? The cybersecurity firm Semgrep stated in a recent analysis that GLM-5.2 was superior to Claude Opus 4.8 regarding cybersecurity and pointed out that “we have a Mythos at home.” Another independent study from Graphistry stated basically the same thing when comparing it with Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5. Not only that, it achieved excellent results at a fraction of the price: one-sixth of what it cost to run tests with Claude Opus 4.8, for example. Axios revealed little cited a cybersecurity researcher who explained that GLM-5.2 is capable of chaining exploits “in the same way that an elite human attacker would.” Chinese mythos before 2027. Jie Tang, CEO of Z.ai, responded to a Twitter thread in which it was pointed out that at this rate, China would have an AI model at the level of Mythos or Fable by the end of 2026. Elon Musk himself intervened saying that in his opinion this Chinese model with such performance would arrive in the first quarter of 2027. Jie Tang was forceful and replied to Musk saying “it won’t take that long.” And we also have Sakana Fugu. These days we also learned the news that Sakana AI, a Japanese AI startup, had launched Fuguan AI model that is actually not so much an AI model as it is a router or orchestrator of other models. What it promises It is to perform at the level of the best models in the US, taking advantage of different models, both open and closed. The internal benchmarks are promising, but some independent analysts they explained Although the idea is not bad, its performance and cost are not as striking as the company claims. While the US blocks its models, China advances. The situation is paradoxical, because what China is doing is precisely taking advantage of a unique moment. The US is restricting the deployment of the most advanced AI models from Anthropic and OpenAI to avoid cybersecurity risks. And while that happens, Chinese companies are apparently closing the gap with truly remarkable open models. In Xataka | The prompt engineering fashion is over. Now what is important is loop engineering

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