china

The United States presses the fear button with Claude Mythos and Fable 5. It is a blackout with a clear beneficiary: China

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The United States has turned off the tap most powerful, expensive and advanced AI model ever released by Anthropic, but it has done so in a disconcerting move and with small print. Yesterday, June 12, the White House ordered Anthropic to immediately shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for anyone who is not a US citizen. The order arrived without giving too many explanations about its duration or technical justification, according to Anthropic’s public statement. This government intervention marks a before and after in the modern technology sector: they are not restricting the sale of chips (a common practice), but vetoing access to general access software as a matter of national cybersecurity. What’s happening with Fable 5 and Mythos 5. The US government has issued an export control directive suspending all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for anyone who does not have US citizenship, whether inside or outside the United States. This includes non-U.S. Anthropic personnel. In order to adhere to the directive that came into effect immediately, the company led by Dario Amodei has had to deactivate both models for everyone. At the time of publishing this article, the notice appears when trying to access it. According to Anthropic, the government believes it has discovered a way to jailbreak the model. The company does not agree: after reviewing the demo of this technique to deceive the model, it concludes that the vulnerabilities found are minor, were already located and applicable to other models on the market and can be identified without the need for any circumvention technique. What you see right now if you enter Claude Why is it important. Because Mythos It is a specifically designed model for cybersecurity and its blackout affects both commercial users and those entities in charge of active defense management that are using it. With this measure, Washington turns its cutting-edge AI software into a national security asset. It is worth remembering that Anthropic is already on the blacklist of the Pentagon, so he considers it too dangerous for his Government to use. It is also now too dangerous for foreigners to use. Besides, as Anthropic points outsets a dangerous precedent: if the criterion for withdrawing a model is that someone finds a vulnerability, in practice none will be able to be launched because the company that releases software without a single failure raises its hand. That is to say, if the White House makes this exceptional movement the norm, it will be a shot in the foot to develop cutting-edge models: slower launches due to this “impossible” debugging process, personnel decimated by not being able to count on foreign specialists and if they cannot be marketed abroad there will be less income. Context. This order is the latest chapter in a soap opera of disagreements between Washington and Anthropic that dates back to the beginning of the year. In March, the Pentagon considered that the company was a “supply chain risk.” In its statement, Anthropic has verified that that level of capacity that the government identified as dangerous in Fable 5 is already available in other models on the market, including the GPT-5.5 by OpenAIearlier and more widespread than Mythos. However, that version of ChatGPT has not suffered any suspension. The asymmetry of treatment between OpenAI and Anthropic is evident. The geopolitical context is also important: the United States and China are immersed in a technological race unprecedented in recent decades and each power is playing its weapons, from tariffs to critical materials like rare earths to vetoes on chip sales, EDA software or the Export Control Reform Act 2018, where new technological categories fit, such as the most advanced AI models. Of course, for the Asian giant, every obstacle has worked as a kind of catalyst to advance faster and be increasingly independent of outside technologies. In detail. The order’s enforcement mechanism is supported by the “export control directive” managed by the Department of Commerce. In practice, it means that accessing Fable 5 or Mythos 5 as a foreign citizen (even if you are in the United States) is grounds for infringement. Anthropic tried to anticipate the problem with thousands of hours of testing with the US government, shared it with 40 organizations that manage critical infrastructure and then, with another 150 entities more precisely so that they could find and thus be able to correct vulnerabilities before a third party with malicious interests did so later. It hasn’t been enough. Because Mythos It is a specifically designed model for cybersecurity. Before its public deployment, Anthropic shared it with organizations that manage critical infrastructure precisely so that they could find and thus be able to correct vulnerabilities before a third party with malicious interests did so. Its blackout affects both commercial users and those entities in charge of active defense management. Yes, but. For now, Anthropic complies with the order, but makes it clear that it does not agree and that it is working to resolve it: “We believe this is a misunderstanding and we are working to restore access as soon as possible.” The company behind Claude says it supports the government in blocking really dangerous technologies, but that this process has to be transparent, fair and based on real technical facts. In short, he has not said the last word. On the other hand, the million-dollar question is whether the US government can apply the export control law, initially designed for chips, satellites or critical and specific software, on an AI model available on the internet and in general use. In fact, this regulatory movement puts on the table the importance of having a clear law that defines when, how and with what guarantees a government (in this case, the United States) can intervene. In Xataka | Spain does not want to wait for Mythos to wreak havoc on its companies: that is why it is going to ask for “early access” to Anthropic In Xataka | Claude Fable 5 is the most powerful public … Read more

We have been fearing the Apocalypse for 100 days due to the closure of Hormuz. The blow is going to be given to us by a heat wave in China

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At the end of February, the clocks in the financial markets seemed to stop. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was not a simple geopolitical skirmish; It meant amputating, from one day to the next, the main energy artery of the planet. Classical economics manuals dictated that the abrupt disappearance of 20% of the world’s crude oil would trigger industrial paralysis, widespread shortages and an imminent recession. However, more than one hundred days after the start of the blockade, Western economies are still standing and the barrel of crude oil, far from reaching the catastrophic 200 dollars that some investment funds even predicted, has been contained below the $100 barrier. We have survived what, on paper, is the greatest threat to energy security in history. The question that now resonates in the European chancelleries is unanimous: how have we achieved it and, above all, how long will the truce last? The architecture of an unexpected rescue The fact that the world has not collapsed is due to a complex network of counterweights that have absorbed the blow. The first revealing data it is provided by the agency Reuters: The production of OPEC countries has fallen this May to its lowest level since 2000 (16.13 million barrels per day) as a direct consequence of the siege of Iran. Despite this massive hole in supply, global supply has been reorganized in record time. The analyst Javier Blas unfolds in his column of Bloomberg the keys to this logistical miracle. The main lifeline, paradoxically, has arrived from Beijing. China has plunged its oil imports by ship to decade lows (nearly 40% less than last year’s average). According to Blas, this unexpected destruction of Asian demand has acted as a huge escape valve: “If Beijing were buying the same amount of oil as in the past, global inflation would be out of control.” Added to Chinese containment is a tectonic shift in energy hegemony. As documented Reutersthe United States has taken advantage of the chaos to become the largest oil exporter in the world, overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia by shipping nearly 10.5 million barrels per day in May. Furthermore, the Gulf countries have not sat idly by. The producers They are using a network of pipelines less known through Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that circumvent the Hormuz bottleneck, keeping some five million barrels a day alive, in addition to maintaining “hot” extraction infrastructures for an eventual rapid restart. The silent blow The fact that there are no kilometer-long lines at service stations has generated a false sense of immunity. Hormuz’s economic blow is landing, but it is doing so through the financial system. The war conflict has blown up the roadmap by Christine Lagarde and the European Central Bank (ECB), since the sustained rise in fuel prices has caused eurozone inflation to rise to 3.2% in May. Given the fear that this extra cost will permanently spread to the shopping basket, the ECB has been forced to resume raising interest rates this June, placing them at 2.25%. The true price of the Iran war is already being paid by European households and companies through more expensive mortgages and restricted credit. And the scenario continues to be a powder keg: the extreme volatility of the markets after the latest crossed attacks between the United States and Iran, which have kept Brent crude stressed above $95. The Asian thermometer: the great threat to Spain While the global macroeconomy deals with interest rates, at the local level a perfect storm is brewing for the Spanish consumer in the coming months. And the trigger will not be military, but climate. According to the forecasts of the consulting firm Tempos Energía, collected by Europa Pressthe price of electricity in Spain this summer will not depend on what happens in the Strait of Hormuz, but on the temperatures in Asia. Until now, Europe has been importing American liquefied natural gas (LNG) without much competition because China was not demanding it. However, the general director of Tempos Energía, Antonio Aceituno, warns of an imminent reversal: “When the heat arrives and the thermometer soars in Shanghai, American freighters will be divided between demand from Asia and Europe.” If the Asian market absorbs the supply to feed its air conditioning networks, Europe will be left without cheap alternatives to cover its own summer demand peaks, and with tanks at less than half capacity. The consulting firm’s forecast for Spain is severe: if China breaks into the purchasing market, the electricity bill for July and August could rise to the range of 88 to 95 euros per megawatt hour. This represents an increase of up to 40%, which “would be equivalent to paying double what was paid in 2019.” A truce with an expiration date We have managed to avoid the precipice thanks to the inertia of pre-war inventories, a historic deployment of emergency reserves and the forced reconfiguration of the global market. If diplomacy triumphs, Blas explains how the intact infrastructure of the Gulf would allow 50% of production to be recovered in a matter of days. However, trusting economic stability to an imminent diplomatic agreement is a dangerous game. Emergency reserves are not infinite and the capacity to cushion shocks has a limit. The world has shown astonishing resilience in surviving without its main oil route, but the armor is cracking. If the situation continues and summer demand tightens, the apocalypse that we avoided in spring could arrive in the form of unaffordable bills and an induced recession. The Hormuz bill, sooner or later, will have to be paid. Image | Unsplash 1 and 2 Xataka | Ukraine turned drones into hunters. A helicopter shot down in Hormuz has transformed them into a Spielberg film

China will build the world’s largest AI network with its own chips, although they are not enough

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The Chinese Government is launching a project that seeks to invest $295 billion in five years in the deployment of a national network of data centers of artificial intelligence (AI). In the current scenario of confrontation in the technological field between the US and China, this plan is not surprising at all. However, we cannot ignore the fine print: at least 80% of the underlying technology, including AI chips, must come from domestic suppliers, such as Huawei or Cambricon. Early October 2024 the Administration sent Chinese AI companies were given a recommendation asking them to use chips produced in China as much as possible. Ten months later, this recommendation became a requirement. The Chinese government forced state-owned data centers across the country to use at least 50% Chinese integrated circuits in their servers. Now, as we have just seen, this figure rises to 80%. Be that as it may, this scenario clearly favors three companies: Huawei, Cambricon and Moore Threads. Nvidia and AMD no longer count for China Huawei invests more than 25 billion dollars annually in developing your hardware for AIso presumably it will not take long to match the performance of the GPUs produced by Nvidia or AMD. However, this company faces an enormous challenge that will probably prevent it from meeting the demand for AI chips from the Chinese market in the short term. In mid-June 2025 Jeffrey Kessler, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security at the US Department of Commerce, made this statement in Congress: “Our assessment indicates that Huawei’s Ascend chip production capacity by 2025 will be 200,000 units or less, and we anticipate that most or all of that production will be delivered to companies within China.” This limitation has a specific technical basis: yield per wafer The integration technologies used by the Chinese semiconductor manufacturer SMIC to produce Huawei or Cambricon chips have a very wide room for improvement. The per-wafer performance of SMIC integration technologies has a very large room for improvement SMIC already has the capacity to manufacture 6nm integrated circuits, and will soon also be able to produce 5nm semiconductors, but is limited by the performance of the deep ultraviolet lithography equipment (UVP) that you have in your possession. It is commendable that SMIC and Huawei engineers have managed to refine their integrated circuit manufacturing processes enough to be able to produce 5, 6 and 7 nm chips with ASML’s UVP equipment, but a priori it is very unlikely that with these machines they will be able to go beyond 3 nm. And it is because the technique of multiple patterningwhich is what they are using, imposes important limitations. A note: this strategy broadly consists of transferring the pattern to the wafer in several passes with the purpose of increase resolution of the lithographic process. Its problem is that it usually has an upward impact on the cost of chips and a downward impact on production capacity. For Huawei, it is a big problem not to have the necessary technology to produce cutting-edge semiconductors comparable to those manufactured by Intel, TSMC or Samsung, which is why it is working on the development of its own equipment. extreme ultraviolet photolithography (EUV). This scenario has caused the Chinese semiconductor industry to question whether national hardware can maintain the pace demanded by the Government. SMIC co-CEO Zhao Haijun has warned that this hasty addition of capacity can leave data centers idlecomparing this situation to building highways before there is traffic. In addition, several Chinese executives in the chip sector have recognized separately that his country is five to ten years behind in the cutting edge in silicon for AI data centers. In the current situation, the decision has its logic. Another thing is whether China can comply with it. Image | Cambricon Technologies More information | Tom’s Hardware In Xataka | NVIDIA has to deal with the absolute distrust of several US legislators. Your plan in China is in danger In Xataka | The US wants to end Chinese AI chips sold abroad. And China knows how to defend itself

Theker achieves 74 million to beat China at its own game

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74 million euros they just got up those responsible for the Barcelona startup Theker. The amount is far from the multimillion-dollar rounds of Silicon Valley AI companies, but it is a vote of confidence for a particularly ambitious project: compete with the Chinese robotics giants from a different perspective. What Theker does. The company was founded in 2022 by Carla Gómez Cano and Jia Qiang Ye Zhu. Unlike traditional industrial robotics, which performs mechanical and repetitive tasks, Theker automates processes where objects constantly change. One of its latest achievements is to automate the process of folding textile garments, an extremely complex task for a robot due to the different textures, thicknesses and materials. A milestone. The financing round obtained by Theker becomes one of the largest venture capital operations in the Spanish technology sector so far this year. The startup, born with the ambition to recover part of the microelectronics production in the West, will use these new resources to expand its production plants in Catalonia, hire talent and accelerate the distribution of its high-precision robotic arms in Europe and the US. This round is added to the one the company obtained in July 2025, which was 18 million euros. Fashion bets on technology. The round is led by the American fund CRV, but Spanish funds such as K Fund, Itnig, Mission and Kibo Ventures also participate. There are striking surprises in the shareholding, which now includes two giants of the fashion world: on the one hand, LVHM. On the other hand, attention, Inditex, which already supported the company in its beginnings. Robots made in Spain. The great contradiction of Theker’s business model is trying to surpass China in terms of price using labor and engineering developed in our country. The European industry has focused on super-specialized and very expensive software or robotics. How to compete with China. Meanwhile, Theker has designed a super-efficient automation architecture that theoretically drastically reduces assembly costs. Their idea is simple: logistical proximity and optimization of algorithms can neutralize the competitive advantage that China has with cheaper labor in its factories. Of humanoid robots, nothing. In an interview they conducted with Itnig, the two co-founders they explained that humanoid robots like the Tesla Optimus are not mechanically prepared to be used industrially: by seeking to be light to walk and use batteries, they use less durable materials and weaker reducers. For industrial applications, where the floors are flat, it is much more efficient to use a robust industrial arm with wheels, capable of operating connected to the power supply uninterruptedly. Humanoid robots, of course, will end up finding their market in household tasks. Artificial vision to adapt to any situation. The real jewel in Theker’s crown is its intelligent automated soldering system for printed circuit boards (PCBs). This company’s robots integrate artificial vision systems (they develop their own Vision-Language Model) and combine them with deep learning algorithms. With these two components, the robots are capable of adapting their movements to the millimeter in real time. Errors under control. This technology, they say, allows imperfections in assembly lines to be corrected without having to stop production. It is an advance that provides operational flexibility to companies that use these robots, since it reduces the rate of defective components to minimum levels. Ideal moment. This financial takeoff of Theker comes at a very significant moment: both Europe, the US and China are seeking their technological sovereignty. Past trade tensions and logistics bottlenecks have demonstrated the risk of outsourcing all hardware. The Barcelona startup proposes a very interesting alternative for Western industries, and benefits from this ambitious trend. Image | UOC In Xataka | Humanoid robotics are striking, but China is clear about which robots make money

only China stands up to BMW and Mercedes

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One by one, line up and see how far they go. Examiners from Norges Automobil-Forbund (NAF), the Norwegian automobile association, has been tested again to the most representative electric cars on the market. This time, the test was carried out in summer and the results, once again, leave us with interesting conclusions. Further. The electric car market has a new king when it comes to going further than anyone else. It is the BMW iX3 which has traveled a total of 781 kilometers before coming to a complete stop. The figure is even higher than that announced by the WLTP approval, which leaves it at 770 kilometers before stopping. The BMW iX3 bases its great result on a gigantic 108.7 kWh battery but its consumption has barely remained at 14.2 kWh/100 km, which is why it combines a huge battery with an enviable consumption for such a large, heavy car with so much frontal surface area. a surprise. If you have been aware of the latest launches in the electric car market, it is very likely that this first position of the German SUV has not surprised you. That honor probably goes to the XPeng X9, a Chinese electric minivan that, at the moment, is not sold in Spain. And this minivan is approved for 580 kilometers according to the WLTP cycle. However, in the Norwegian test it managed to cover 646 kilometers before stopping. That is, he was able to travel 66 kilometers more than expected and was the one who managed to put the most distance between driving in real circumstances and the homologation tests. Those who added. Far from those +66 kilometers, another 11 cars managed to obtain figures above what was expected. Except for the Mercedes GLB and GLC (+30 and +22, respectively), no other managed to travel 20 kilometers more than those stipulated by the WLTP cycle. Of those 11 cars, five are Chinese (taking into account that the Mazda 6e is, in reality, a Deepal car with a Japanese body). In addition to the latter and the Xpeng, the MG S6 EVhe Smart #5 and the Dongfeng Vigo (a huge Chinese SUV) were the Chinese cars that slipped into this category. Among the “traditionals”, in addition to Mercedes and BMW, Kia was the other brand with two cars that offered better than expected performance. Those who remained. On the other hand, there are those who remained. Of the 24 cars, another 12 cars provided lower performance than reflected in the WLTP cycle. If you’ve done the math, you’ll see that one is missing. The Toyota Bz4X nailed the test: it promised 506 kilometers of autonomy and stopped after 506 kilometers of travel. Of those that met the forecasts the worst, the MG IM6 recorded 59 kilometers less than expected, followed by the Hyundai Ioniq 9 (-34 km) and Mercedes CLA (-33 km). From here, all recorded deviations of less than 30 kilometers. More positive than negative If we continue at the bottom of the table, we have four other Chinese cars. In addition to the MG, the Polestar 3 (-24 km), the Deepal S05 (-14 km) and the BYD Atto 3 EVO (-10 km) also fell short of expectations. That is to say, there were more cars classified on the positive side of the comparison and the other half on the negative side, but this is well understood considering their battery type. All the Chinese cars that obtained better results than expected use NCM chemicals, except for the Dongfeng proposal, which is LFP and is the car that is closest to its homologation. On the contrary, almost all the proposals that lose kilometers among the Chinese models are cars that use LFP chemistries. This is not met with the Polestar 3, which does have NCM chemistry and which, unlike the Dongfeng, is the negative exception. And LFP chemistries tend to be more stable. They do not perform as well as an NCM in good weather but, in exchange, they perform better in cold conditions. And how is all this done? On the NAF website you can check all the details of when and how the exams are carried out. The Norwegians test cars twice a year to see how they perform when cold and how they perform when hot. The test is carried out uninterruptedly until the car comes to a complete stop and is used a route that is considered standard what Norwegian drivers are up to, including going up to a pass. Besides, They review the temperature and what the weather was like in every place. This time clouds and mild temperatures predominated. But, in addition, in the test they also note how many kilometers each car traveled before marking an energy reserve of 20% and 10%. They emphasize the importance of the latter because a driver almost always charges in this range, reducing the risk of being stranded before reaching the destination. If you are more curious, in this link leave all the data and Each car has its own technical sheet with the consumption at each moment, the expected kilometers and consumption and those finally reflected. Photo | NAF In Xataka | The big drawback to the electric car is that it takes a long time to charge. CATL has a solution of 6 minutes and 27 seconds

China has just ranked second in intelligent computing capacity. The important figure is not the most striking

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There’s a simple way to hype up artificial intelligence: just talk about models. And there is a more useful way to understand it: look at which countries have the capacity to train them, run them and bring them to millions of users without the system breaking along the way. In that second race, much less showy but much more revealing, China has just presented its numbers. The figure draws attention due to the ranking, yes, but the important thing is what it tells about the foundations of its deployment. The figure. The information comes from Digital China Development Report 2025the document with which the National Data Administration summarizes China’s digital development over the past year. There it is maintained that the country reached 1.59 million PFLOPS in FP16 of intelligent computing capacity and that this volume would place it in second place in the world. There is small print. The aforementioned report places China in second place in the world within a specific category: intelligent computing capacity. That is not the same as saying that the country is second in the entire AI race, where models, chips, talent, investment, adoption, regulation and many other variables come into play. What we are looking at is something more limited: the computing capacity prepared to power large-scale artificial intelligence loads. Unity matters. FP16 stands for 16-bit floating point, a way of representing numbers with less precision than FP32 or FP64. It is widely used in artificial intelligence because it allows you to perform more operations and use less memory, a useful balance when we talk about training or running models. PFLOPS, for their part, serve to express how many floating point operations an infrastructure can perform every second. It’s not just power. The report does not stop at 1.59 million PFLOPS FP16. It adds a very specific physical layer: more than 13.73 million standard racks in operation, 42 large intelligent computing clusters, described in the document as “ten thousand card” clusters, and a national testing and verification platform that already supervises 1,129 facilities. This network, according to the document, allows 110,000 PFLOPS to be coordinated for economic, scientific and government uses. The distance with the US. China is placed second and the reference for first place is the United States. That is the reading that appears in Chinese state sources when they talk about a position “only behind the United States”, and also what external analyzes of high-end AI computing draw. The American advantage is not explained only by having more chips: also by data centers, large technology companies capable of financing enormous-scale infrastructures and a highly developed network. The other half of the data is in the use. According to the report, China had 748 registered generative AI services at the end of 2025, of which 446 had been registered during that year. It also talks about 602 million users of generative AI, with a year-on-year growth of 141.7%. These are official figures and should be treated as such, but they help to understand why computing capacity matters: we are not dealing with an infrastructure designed only for laboratories, but for services that are already deployed on a large scale. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | Unitree is doing with robots what DJI did with drones: becoming inevitable

The world is running out of data to continue training AI. China has an ace up its sleeve

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The models of artificial intelligence (AI) have a problem that more powerful chips cannot solve: they are running out of data. Epoch AI, a nonprofit research organization specializing in scaling AI models, warns with 80% certainty that the high-quality text available on the Internet will be exhausted sometime between 2026 and 2032. The reason is very simple: AI laboratories have been extracting everything the web has to offer for many years, and current models already train on data sets that approach the theoretical limit of the information available. When that gold mine empties, data volume scaling will stop working. And if this scenario occurs, AI development will most likely slow down. We still do not know what strategy US companies are developing to solve this problem, but we already know what is China preparing. His biggest rival. In fact, Xi Jinping’s government has decided that this shortage is an opportunity. This week the China National Data Administration published a draft outlining its action plan with a clear objective: to build an ecosystem of validated data by 2028 that will fuel the next generation of AI models. China’s bet is already on the table The document prepared by the National Data Administration identifies which specific sectors are priority objectives for information generation and certification. Some of them are scientific research, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, transportation, finance, healthcare, education and e-commerce. However, his plan does not stop at traditional sectors. China has a structural advantage that no Western laboratory can easily replicate And it also plans to cover cutting-edge fields with quality data, such as AI applied to robots, autonomous driving, low-altitude aviation or biomanufacturing. These are, precisely, domains whose data is not on the internet because they come from sensors, actuators and physical environments. Achieving them requires having industrial infrastructure, and in this scenario China has a structural advantage that no Western laboratory can easily replicate. However, this is not all. The document prepared by the National Data Administration explicitly encourages the expansion of the supply of text, code, images, audio and video necessary to train systems capable of complex reasoning, agentic behavior and control of intelligent robots. In fact, it’s an almost exact description of what the industry calls next-generation models. They are not just systems capable of answering questions; They will also be able to plan, act and operate in the physical world. The availability of high-quality multimodal data, especially that coming from real industrial environments, is today one of the least discussed and most determining bottlenecks in the AI ​​career. In a scenario where access to cutting-edge chips is restricted by US export controlsdata becomes a competitive advantage. If China can’t win the hardware race, it can try to win the fuel race that that hardware needs to be truly useful. Image | Daoducquan More information | SCMP In Xataka | The condemnation that afflicts China: after decades of manufacturing a competitive desktop processor, it is six years behind

China had not updated its EREV standards for nine years. Now that they sell a million a year, they are going to catch up

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The EREV (extended range electric vehicles, for its acronym in English), are beginning to have a lot of prominence in China. So much so, that in the country they have changed the regulations, publishing a complete review of their technical standard. This new revision, QC/T1086-2026, replaces a 2017 regulatory framework and will come into force on November 1. And it is that with more than 1 million units sold Every year in the country, the Chinese market begins to assimilate this type of vehicle that, outside of this region, is still relatively unknown to us. Why does it matter? The previous standard, in force since 2017, described the requirements in a mostly qualitative way, since the manufacturer defined its own specifications and the regulatory framework barely provided specific figures. Nine years later, the market has changed a lot. And according to industry data collected by CarNewsChinasales of EREVs in China exceeded one million units in 2024 and reached 1.2 million in 2025. So with those figures, it is logical to think that the regulations had to be revised. What the change consists of. Until now, the rules were somewhat vague, so this regulation aims to take a closer look at some EREV specifications and standardize them. An example is how much energy the gasoline engine delivers in each millisecond. And to give us an idea, now in the smallest generators (up to 67 HP), the maximum margin of error that will be allowed when delivering energy will be just 1.5 kW. For the most powerful engines, the deviation may not exceed 3%. That is, the motor must deliver energy to the battery more precisely and efficiently. According to CarNewsChinathe thresholds have been set based on real production data from manufacturers and suppliers, with the aim that all major manufacturers on the market can meet them without difficulty, but that lower-performance designs are left out of the standard. EMC and noise. One of the most relevant new features of the standard is the introduction of specific electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and noise and vibration (NVH) tests. The first extended range cars were basically standby generators that started when the battery was depleted. Today’s systems now have integrated energy management components that work in constant coordination with the battery, electric motors and vehicle control systems. This greater integration requires more demanding standards in electromagnetic interference and acoustic comfort. In fact, more recent models like the Aito M9which HIMA launched last May with up to 890 HP, or the IM Motors LS8 EREV, with 430 km of electric range, already reflect these changes, and are examples that have served to develop this new regulation. Durability for long term use. The standard also introduces two durability tests: a test of 750 hours with alternating load and another of 100,000 start-stop cycles. Both were developed with real-world usage data and damage equivalence models, and are designed to simulate approximately 300,000 kilometers of real-world driving, including urban conditions with frequent starts. Who is driving the market. The ecosystem of manufacturers that has driven this revision in the regulations includes both established brands and newer manufacturers. Li Auto, Seres, Deepal and Leapmotor have expanded their EREV offerings, while premium models such as the Aito M9 have helped position the technology in high-priced segments. Zeekr, Geely’s electric brandhas gone even further with the Zeekr 9X and 8X, since the former exceeded 50,000 accumulated deliveries in a few months after its launch and is scheduled to be exported to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe during 2026. Cover image | HIMA In Xataka | This Aston Martin DB9 was sold for $57,000, but the craziest thing is not its price: it is the two flamethrowers it hides

China manufactured more solar panels in one year than the planet can absorb. Now the market is devouring itself

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In early 2026, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shook energy markets. Consumers, frightened by the volatility of fossil fuels, looked in all directions for alternatives. What they found was a disconcerting paradox: the planet had—has—a historic surplus of clean, cheap energy. There was no shortage of solar panels. There were plenty of them. And no one really knew what to do with them. Economist Adam Tooze summed it up bluntly in his column Financial Times: “Clean energy, on a scale that would have seemed utopian at the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015, is now within our reach. The price of solar panels has plummeted. And yet factories are paralyzed.” It’s not rhetoric. It’s a diagnosis. After a huge increase in investment since 2020, Chinese companies reached a production capacity of 1,000 gigawatts of solar panels per year. To get an idea: in 2023 global demand was only 451 GW, according to Energy News. Chinese production of solar cells that year—588 GW—already doubled international demand. And they continued building. The result was what economists call “involution”: a spiral of destructive competition where companies destroy each other with none winning. More than 40 Chinese manufacturers have gone bankrupt, been acquired or delisted. A third of the staff of the surviving big five were laid off. JinkoSolar, the world’s largest supplier, registered in 2025 a drop in revenue of 29%, a drop in gross profit of 86% and net losses of 4.45 billion yuan. In this way, in June of last year, more than 30 manufacturers They agreed to an OPEC-style pact to stabilize prices and curb supply. Six months later, the result was a disaster: far from stabilizing, production reached historic highs, installations tripled and losses continued to accumulate. “Since when are solar panels just another commodity? They are a technological miracle. They make us cultivators of the sun,” details Adam Tooze in his column. And in all that time, the price of a solar module fell to $0.10 per watt, according to EnkiAI —well below the $0.16/W production cost of the most advanced TOPCon modules. It is, strictly speaking, the largest climate technology sell-off in history. This is not a steel crisis. It’s something else When economists talk about Chinese overproduction, the debate usually revolves around steel, cement or electric cars. But Tooze makes a distinction worth hearing: Solar panels are no ordinary commodity. They are the result of half a century of research—from NASA spinoff programs in the 1970s to the big energy push of the Carter era—and, along with batteries, they are the master key to a sustainable future. Wasting that surplus is not just an economic problem. It is a civilizational irrationality. According to the OECD, China invested less than $18 billion in sector support over 15 years to build an industry capable of providing more clean energy than the world can easily absorb. That figure is less than the cost of building a medium-sized international airport in Europe, or what the US spent on a single Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier. The concentration of power in the supply chain is also unprecedented in the history of energy. China controls more than 80% of the entire global solar production chaindirect result of the plan Made in China 2025 with which Beijing decided to stop being the world’s cheap factory and become its technological supplier. By the end of 2025, its operational module capacity exceeded 900 GW, several times the total global demand. The five largest Chinese manufacturers concentrate more than 50% of the market. LONGi Green Energy alone shipped more than 45 GW in 2025 – more than the entire US domestic manufacturing capacity (73 GW). Never in the history of energy has a single nation so completely dominated a key technology for the decarbonization of the planet. Not even oil at its peak. And the climate paradox is painful: since the Paris Agreement of 2015, a scale of deployment like the current one would have seemed like science fiction. The goal was to stop global warming. The instruments to do so are manufactured and stacked in warehouses. What fails, Tooze points out, is coordination: what Keynes would call a global “chaos,” a catastrophe of collective planning. The global bet Chaos has its own correction mechanisms, even if they are painful. In China, the crisis has already forced the Government to act a few months ago, Beijing called for ‘concerted efforts’ to end price war. The proposed measures include capacity control, minimum guideline prices, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property protection “to promote the high-quality development of the photovoltaic industry.” In practice: the Chinese State orchestrating an orderly rescue of the sector that it itself encouraged to grow without limits. The consolidation had already started before. In August of last year, several players in the sector launched a plan for large manufacturers to jointly invest $7 billion in buying and closing the least efficient facilities, according to OilPrice.com. In practice, a cartel to stop the bleeding. Prices already reflect the shift. According to ABC SolutionsChinese modules have risen between 10% and 20% in 2026 due to the adjustment of overproduction and new logistics tariffs. Wood Mackenzie forecasts a further rise of 9%. The window for the big bargain is closing, although prices remain historically low. The critical variable for 2027 is how the surplus is resolved: through orderly consolidation or through new business disruptions. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign business continues to boom. As Tooze points out in the FTexports of Chinese solar technology to virtually every country except the United States are skyrocketing. And manufacturers have evolved: they now integrate batteries into systems to offer greater stability to the grid, pushing the product towards the complete solution instead of the isolated module. Storage batteries, which They have also reached historical lows in cost Pushed by the same dynamic of overproduction, they thus complete the package: panel plus storage, at a knockdown price. Domestic demand will also recover. China exceeded 1,230 GW of installed solar capacity … Read more

China just launched a rocket without telling anyone. It turns out that it is the most ambitious in its history

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China has taken seriously that “first come, first served” thing. Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty states that No State can claim sovereignty over the Moon, Mars or any other celestial body, what does apply is that the geostationary orbital positions and frequency bands work as “first come, first served”. What does this mean? Well, the country or company that first registers and coordinates a constellation or a position with certain frequencies gets priority of use. This context is necessary to understand why SpaceX or Amazon are so interested in mass launching satellites into low orbit, and also why China has been accelerating the pace for months with their rockets in an aggressive expansion maneuver. So aggressive that finish of surprise and secret launch of a Long March 12B rocket with a double objective: to continue feeding its satellite constellation and to demonstrate that its reusable rocket can compete against the Falcon 9 from SpaceX. China and the space sprint This past Monday, the operators of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, in the Gobi Desert, had work. In the American early morning, a rocket Long March 12B It left for low orbit with a cargo of satellites that will feed the Qianfan megaconstellation. This is China’s response to SpaceX Starlink and it seems that the mission went well because the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation declared the flight a success. There is a double reading here. On the one hand, the Long March 12B is one of the responses to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It is a reusable rocket that has a first stage intended to land by propulsion on a recovery platform on Earth. It can transport 20 tons to low Earth orbit and this was its first flight… although was not done no recovery attempt. The other reading is that China is in aggressive mode launching things into space. It has been a very busy few months with different missions both in low orbit and in its Tiangong space stationbut the interesting thing about this launch of the Long March 12B is that people found out through social networks. When a mission is going to be carried out, whether it is more or less media-related, a series of prior notices are made to both the international authorities that control the air and maritime space in case something goes wrong. However, This mission has been carried out in absolute secrecybeing an unusual practice in both government and private programs. In the end, it is one more demonstration of what we were talking about: China has stepped on the accelerator to claim a space that can only be claimed by getting there and occupying it, and that is vital within the framework of user service (satellite Internet, wow) and, above all, for strategic reasons and technological sovereignty. Because it may seem that companies and countries want to bring the Internet everywhere, but the strategy is different: Controlling constellations and their orbital resources means controlling critical infrastructure such as satellite Internet, Earth observation, and military communications. Geopolitical advantage by arriving first in a space that the rival might want to occupy with other types of satellites. Arriving first forces the others to play on their board. And most importantly: the space you are interested in occupying is finite and everyone wants their land as soon as possible. In the end, this “secret” flight marks number 647 of the Long March series and is one more example that China is deeply involved in a new space race in which it competes directly against the United States, but in which Europe is also working to have something to say. In Xataka | Europe has almost ready something that, until recently, seemed practically a dream: its first reusable spacecraft

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