china

The US did not turn off Claude Mythos for fear of a jailbreak, it did so because it suspected someone was watching. That someone is China

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Last Saturday, the White House ordered Anthropic to remove access to Fable 5 and Mythos to any foreign person, regardless of whether they were inside or outside the United States. This order supposedly came after a tip that there was a way to jailbreak the model and bypass safeguards, but according to Wired it came at a time when Washington was already uneasy for another reason. South Korea. They tell it in Wired. According to sources close to the government, the notice of the possible jailbreak came at a time when the US government had already raised its eyebrows over another issue. It turns out that one of the large companies that had access to Mythosthe original model without the safeguards, was SK Telecom, the largest telephone operator in South Korea. The concern, according to these sources, arises from the alleged ties of this operator with China. The logic would have been something like: if SK Telecom has access, China has access. Furthermore, they have told us that there are vulnerabilities. Let them turn it off now. Why is it important. Until now it was believed that the reason behind the decision was the warning about a possible jailbreak in Fable, which was the “trimmed” version of Mythos that was released to the public. It was Amazon’s own CEO, Andy Jassy, ​​who called the treasury secretary to warn him that they had found vulnerabilities in Fable. In this version of the story, the government’s concern was that anyone would bypass Fable’s safeguards and use it for evil. However, with this new information things change: it is no longer just any person, but China, its great enemy in the technological war, which could be looking into the guts of Mythos. They already had them in their sights. As we said, SK Telecom was one of the 150 companies chosen to test Mythos within the framework of what is known as Project Glasswing. According to internal sources consulted by Wired, the US government requested that Anthropic revoke their access earlier this month, to which Anthropic agreed. It seemed like the thing was going to stay there, but when Fable was released to the public and learned that it had a vulnerability, the White House reacted. SK Telecom, Anthropic and China. The relationship between Anthropic and SK Telecom dates back to 2023, when They invested 100 million dollars in the AI ​​startup for the development of AI models focused on telecommunications. Currently, SK Telecom barely has a presence in China (They only have seven employees and their billing is testimonial), but in the past they had a very close relationship with China Unicom, creating a joint venture and investing up to $1 billion in the Chinese operator. Although already They sold their shares in 2009SK Telecom is part of the SK Group conglomerate, which has other businesses beyond telecommunications, such as semiconductors and energy, these with alliances in China. SK Telecom has denied maintaining ties with China. Previous tensions. All this happens at a time when the relationship between the US government and Anthropic is not going through its best moment. In March of this year they starred in a whole soap opera Anthropic’s refusal to allow military use of its models without safeguards. They ended up on what is known as the black list.Anthropic took the US to court and now we have a new season of the soap opera with the whole Mythos thing. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | China has two ideas to win the AI ​​race: invest a fortune and leave NVIDIA with almost no margin

The new Chinese gem of semiconductors is called Enflame. This is the new member of “the four chip dragons” of China

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The name Enflame may not ring a bell yet. But it is very likely that in the coming months it will end up giving us a lot to talk about. And this Chinese AI chip company just got the go-ahead to go public on the STAR market in Shanghai, the preferred market for the country’s large technology companies. After this, we see how the scheme of large chip manufacturers begins to take shape. Enflame enters the select group of the four big technology companies that are dedicated to AI chipsand that are already listed or are about to do so on the public markets. Who is Enflame and where does it come from? The company was founded in Shanghai in 2018 by Zhao Lidong, an engineer who came from AMD, where he led the development of high-performance processors at the American company’s R&D center. Together with his co-founder Zhang Yalin, Zhao set out to replicate that knowledge in Chinese territory and build a domestic alternative to Nvidia. In seven years has developed five AI chips distributed across four generations of architecture, and has built a catalog that includes processors, accelerator cards, computing clusters and software platforms. Its most recent chip, the L600 module, has passed silicon verification testing, although it has not yet entered large-scale commercial production. Why this IPO matters. Enflame plans to raise up to 6 billion yuan (about 888 million dollars) selling between 10% and 15% of its shares. The money, as could not be otherwise in these times, will be used to accelerate the development of its next generation of AI chips in the cloud and build the software that surrounds them. However, the operation also has a certain symbolic character, since it is the fourth and final addition to the group known as the “four little dragons” of Chinese chips. The other three (Moore Threads, Biren Technology and MetaX) have already debuted on the STAR market, and have been received enthusiastically by investors. In fact, Moore Threads, nicknamed “the Chinese Nvidia”, rose 425% on its first day of trading in December of last year, according to Bloomberg. Restrictions. The reason China is betting so big on these manufacturers is that the United States has been applying restrictions on chip exports for years advanced towards the Asian giant. Nvidia’s most powerful models are blocked, which has created a real shortage in the Chinese market and a strategic urgency to develop its own alternatives. Beijing has responded with public moneyincluding a relaxation of STAR board rules to allow loss-making companies to list, and a $295 billion plan to build data centers that do not depend on American chips. In this framework, Enflame and its groupmates become part of an infrastructure of technological sovereignty. What does it look like? Tencent. Enflame’s greatest asset is also its greatest vulnerability. Tencent owns about 20% of the company and in 2025 it represented 84% of its income, compared to 38% the previous year. That is, almost everything that Enflame sells is bought by Tencent. The Chinese tech giant uses its chips to power large-scale data centers, recommendation systems, chatbots and generative AI infrastructure. The company itself acknowledged in its IPO prospectus that “Tencent’s demand has far exceeded its supply capacity.” That’s good in the short term, as it guarantees income. But how they point out In The Next Web, a chip maker that relies on a single customer for the majority of its sales ends up being exposed if that customer changes priorities. The numbers. Enflame is growing at breakneck speed, as revenues have multiplied a compound rate greater than 80% between 2023 and 2025, but still in losses. Net losses were reduced to 1.2 billion yuan in 2025, compared to 1.5 billion the previous year, and the company plans to close the first half of 2026 with losses of about 600 million yuan. For the same period, it expects its revenue to grow more than three times compared to the previous year, reaching between 10.6 billion and 11.5 billion yuan. On the other hand, investment in R&D has exceeded 100% of sales over the last three years, which says a lot about the phase the company is in (still building, not harvesting). Before the IPO, the Hurun Index valued the company at around $2.8 billion. Where Enflame fits in. Not all dragons are the same. Within China, Enflame competes in a market where Huawei and Cambricon They continue to be the benchmarks in the sector and are already profitable. Enflame, Moore Threads, Biren and Iluvatar CoreX make up a second, younger layer that is trying to break through. Technically, Enflame has opted for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), a more specialized architecture, rather than the general-purpose GPUs used by Moore Threads or Biren. Xu Dawei, of Jintong Private Fund Management in Beijing, points out Bloomberg that Enflame “benefits from solid comparatives,” given that its Chinese competitors are already listed on the stock market with valuations well above what their revenues would justify. Companies like ByteDance are actively looking for domestic alternatives to Nvidiaand second-tier manufacturers, including Enflame, are on the radar. Cover image | Enflame In Xataka | TSMC is on the ropes and its biggest problem is not competition: it is water

China has a quantum platform for computing. Now he wants to turn it into an “attack and defense” system.

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For years we have talked about quantum computing as holding the promise of calculation: machines capable of tackling problems that conventional computers cannot solve, or cannot solve at a useful speed. But that same promise also opens a security front that is difficult to ignore. If sufficiently powerful quantum computers ever exist, part of the encryption that sustains our digital lives could be left in a delicate position. That is why the case of Origin Wukong is interesting: the story coming from China not only seeks to show the ability to calculate, it also wants to present it as a piece of cryptographic defense. What is Origin Wukong. The name may lead one to imagine a specific machine, but the case is something more similar to a remotely available quantum computing platform. According to Global TimesOrigin Wukong is part of a Chinese series of superconducting quantum computers and is linked to the Origin Quantum environment and the quantum research carried out in Anhui, in eastern China. The data that gives it dimension is not only technical: the statement collected by the media speaks of more than 1 million quantum computing tasks completed, more than 49 million remote visits from 192 countries and regions. The new defensive layer. The novelty is not only in the use that Origin Wukong has accumulated, but in how that infrastructure is now presented. The media claims that the platform has integrated a post-quantum cryptography framework and that this allows it to offer a double capacity, aimed at both computing and security. The text itself speaks of “defensive security measures”, an early “spear and shield” model and an “attack and defense” system. What post-quantum cryptography means. We are not talking about an automatic solution or a technology that makes any system invulnerable. According to NISTpost-quantum cryptography is based on encryption methods supported by mathematical problems that are difficult to solve both for conventional computers and for future quantum computers. The nuance matters because the risk is not in current everyday equipment, but in a generation of quantum processors much more powerful than those available today. That is the logic that allows us to understand why Origin Wukong is now also presented in a defensive key. Why does it matter anymore?. The problem does not only affect military documents or state secrets. NIST reminds us that encryption protects everything from emails and medical records to banking, e-commerce, personal photos and sensitive information of governments and companies. In addition, there is a particularly uncomfortable threat: that of capturing encrypted data today to try to decrypt it in the future, when more capable quantum machines exist. That is why the transition cannot be left to the last minute: integrating new algorithms into products and services can take between 10 and 20 years. Technical caution. All this does not mean that quantum computing has already solved its major obstacles. NIST reminds that the field is still in an early phase and that there are still significant challenges before building quantum computers powerful enough to break current encryption. IBM also highlights one of the best-known barriers: qubits are delicate, require extreme cooling conditions and can lose stability due to decoherence. Images | Anhui Quantum Computing Research Center In Xataka | Microsoft believed it would take decades to have a useful quantum computer. Majorana 2 just pushed that deadline to 2029

“China sets the pace in technology, costs and development times. We have to learn from them”

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Company with problems, company that looks to China. Not so much to sell more cars in a very complicated market (that too), much more to see how to learn from them and get greater performance from their products. Survive by achieving wider profit margins by producing cheaper and faster. For Nissan, China holds the key. “We have to learn” “China shows us the future of the industry in terms of technology, cost competitiveness and development times. We have to learn from China and export its technical knowledge” This is what Iván Espinosa, CEO of Nissan, has expressed in statements Nikkei Asia. In an interview with the Japanese media, Espinosa has made it clear that Nissan needs to copy China if it wants to survive. The Japanese automaker is going through a very bad economic time and to get out of the hole it wants to look at its neighbor. https://www.xataka.com/movilidad/nissan-leaf-opiniones-primera-toma-contacto-fotos What’s wrong with Nissan? Nissan is going through one of the worst financial and reputational moments in its history. At the end of 2024, the company accepted that it had entered a stalemate from which it would be difficult to get out. Sales were declining, the US market (with its tariffs on Japanese cars) It got complicated, at home they didn’t get back on their feet and in China they were missing. Solution: lay off 9,000 employees. Those days, after a few days of rumors (and everything indicates that with the Japanese Government putting pressure), Nissan and Honda announced an agreement to unite their paths. The idea, it seemed, was that the second company would take over Nissan and take it under its umbrella. That idea was dissolved just a few months later.. We now know that Honda gave, for the first time in its history, losses in 2025 and that its strategy has focused on canceling its electrical projects. In March of last year, the Mexican Iván Espinosa took control of Nissan and has focused its future proposal on a new launch plan and the objective of recovering part of its prestige. Last year, the company continued to lose sales worldwide but the 13% drop in Japan is especially worrying. Reduce times. For Espinosa, one of Nissan’s big problems is in the development and production times of its models. Right now, he explains, the development of a car from when it is drawn on paper and given the go-ahead until it reaches the street is 55 months. Espinosa wants to reduce this to about 30 months. According to their calculations, these long developments prevent them from getting the economic performance they need from their cars and that is why they have proposed that the next Nissan Skyline, the return of a legendary model of the company, has set a deadline for its development of 26 months, they point out in Nikkei Asia. China has demonstrated an ability to develop, modify and produce in record time. Renault has also gone to China to learn how they work there and they presume that The Renault Twingo was developed in 20 months. From Chery they already made it clear that its high capacity to develop and produce in record time is key when it comes to prevailing over Western competitors. More and more notices. These statements by Espinosa demonstrate that traditional firms are doing everything possible to quickly adapt to China’s way of working. Some consultants have already pointed out Japanese brands that their obsession with perfection hinders them when it comes to producing faster and cheaper, which has been taken advantage of by Tesla and Chinese companies. Toyota also sent a similar message a few weeks ago. The company has detected that it is losing money because products with aesthetic defects are sometimes discarded even though these parts are fully functional and are never seen by vehicle customers. This weighs on their production costs but also on the time it takes to produce the car. More cars, more prestige. Account Nikkei Asia that Espinosa’s project involves launching new cars on the market that update the company’s range of products but, above all, it will be based on the search for its own identity with a clear intention of recovering the lost prestige. In fact, in recent weeks it has been rumored that Nissan could bring the latest Z to Europe (now only sold in Japan and the United States so as not to penalize the company’s emissions count) with the aim of attracting the public to the dealership and positioning it as a halo product. On the horizon is also the new Skyline and a future GT-R that has gone through all possible phases when it comes to defining it and moving it forward, from project it as an electric sports car to launch it again with a combustion engine. “We will provide more details in the future,” Espinosa said on this topic. The CEO of Nissan has even referred to the fact that “some of my predecessors only talked about finances all the time”, in a clear message that not everything can be done to save costs if you want to maintain the attractive image of the product. A move that diluted Nissan’s imagethat Stellantis ballast and an idea that Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota, has also rejected. Photo | nissan In Xataka | “We will not survive”: Toyota wants to add the turbo to match the pace of the Chinese brands

BYD wants to dethrone Toyota in five years. The problem is that first he has to fix what is happening in China

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Wang Chuanfu, president of BYD, has full confidence that the next few years are going to be big for the company. However, the price of its shares is not following to the company’s exploits, and for that reason it has sent a message that is intended, above all, for its investors: the promise of becoming the world’s leading manufacturer in terms of scale. Wang spoke about the issue at the Chinese company’s annual shareholders meeting, held in Shenzhen on June 9. His words come at a delicate moment, since BYD’s actions have fallen more than 45% from its highs in Hong Kong in the last year, and 33% on the Shenzhen stock market. In fact, his promise failed to convince, as the next day, shares fell another 4.3% in Hong Kong and 1.6% in Shenzhen. This is how things are at BYD. Target: Toyota. BYD is already the largest electric car manufacturer in the world by sales, having surpassed Tesla last year. But Wang’s objective goes further, as he wants BYD become number one global in total vehicle volume, ahead of Toyota. And precisely, to achieve this, it would have to sell more than double what it is selling now. In 2025, Toyota sold 11.3 million vehicles; BYD, 4.8 million. The distance is enormous. Technology. At the meeting, Wang assured that the second generation Blade battery was the main growth bottleneck this year and has pledged to accelerate its production. He also highlighted the advances in ultra-fast charging, since this week BYD announced an investment of about 2,000 million euros in Europe to develop its Flash Charge infrastructure, with 1,500 kW of power and that would allow its cars to be charged from 10% to 70% in just 5 minutes. The firm showed it to us last April, when we were able to attend the official presentation of the Denza Z9GT. Along with this, the president of the company claimed that BYD has 3.15 million vehicles with intelligent driving already in circulation, accumulating 200 million kilometers of data per day, and that L3 and L4 level autonomous driving will arrive “sooner than expected.” “As soon as the regulation is ready, BYD will take off quickly,” Wang said. A domestic problem. The great tension of the moment is precisely at home. And the Chinese market, where BYD does most of its business, has become fiercely competitive. The price war between local manufacturers has pressured margins and hampered sales. Between January and May of this year, total deliveries fell more than 20% compared to the same period of the previous year, according to account Reuters. This internal bleeding is what worries investors, and no promises about Toyota have covered it up for now. Your business away from home. Exports are the other side of the coin, and there the panorama is different. In the first five months of the year, international sales grew 65% year-on-yearwith Brazil, the United Kingdom and Australia as the main destinations. In May alone, BYD sold more than 160,000 vehicles outside China, 80% more than in the same month of 2025. The goal for 2026 is to exceed one and a half million units exported, which would represent an increase of more than 40% over the 1.05 million last year. According to share According to CarNewsChina, Wang admitted at the meeting that the current trend aims to exceed even the initial goal of 1.6 million. Europe, opportunity and problems. The firm knows that to achieve its objectives, Europe is key to its expansion. Stella Li, chief international officer of BYD, confirmed to Reuters that the hungary plant will begin assembling cars in the fourth quarter of this year. Manufacturing locally is essential if you want to avoid the tariffs that the European Union has imposed on Chinese electric companies. However, the Hungarian factory is attracting some controversy, since organizations such as China Labor Watch have reported alleged violations of European labor legislation, and local authorities have sanctioned three companies linked to its construction for dumping excavation soils on surrounding agricultural land. The matter remains open. The shadow of the Pentagon. As if the problems in the stock market and the pressure in its domestic market were not enough, this week the United States Department of Defense added BYD to its list of “Chinese military companies”considering it a risk to national security. Beijing responded by calling the decision without a factual basis. BYD does not operate in the US market due to existing tariffsbut the label complicates its image and its possible future movements in that market. In Xataka | A German driver set out to discover how much he could stretch the tank of his old diesel car. And he has done 2,400 kilometers

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

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