Chinese

an arsenal of malware that speaks Chinese

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European companies have been living for years with a reality that is difficult to ignore: many digital threats are not born here, but they can also end up reaching their systems, their emails and their internal documents. Sometimes they do it loudly, other times with disguised messages. In this case, what we have seen is precisely that jump. Proofpoint claims that a Chinese-speaking cybercriminal actor initially observed primarily targeting Asian organizations has expanded its campaigns to the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy with an increasingly broad set of tools. Identifying the problem. Proofpoint identifies to the actor as TA4922 and links it to the Chinese-speaking cybercriminal ecosystem through several indications: metadata in Chinese within malware samples, frequent use of infrastructure associated with Chinese providers and overlaps with campaigns such as Silver Fox either Void Arachne. Even so, the company separates this group from those labels and analyzes it as its own threat, probably motivated by money. Europe enters the map. Specialists began observing campaigns associated with TA4922 in spring 2025, but the change in scale came later. The group’s activity increased notably in March 2026 and maintained a high pace in April, with unprecedented operational diversity in its data on this actor. During this period, campaigns appeared aimed at organizations in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, as well as South Africa, already within a more global expansion, a sign that the group is no longer limited to its most common objectives in Asia. The hook is in the everyday. The gateway is not always a spectacular vulnerability, but rather a message well adapted to the context of the recipient. Proofpoint describes localized honeypots that imitate human resources communications, payroll notices, tax audits, VAT returns, invoices or regulatory compliance requirements. In some cases, the attempt does not remain in the email: the actor also tries to move the conversation to WhatsApp, LINE either Microsoft Teamschannels where you can extend social engineering away from the usual visibility of corporate email. The toolbox grows. Proofpoint notes that TA4922 has notably expanded its arsenal in recent months, something that fits with the increase in activity seen in March and April 2026. The report mentions several pieces: Atlas RAT, a remote access backdoor recently identified by researchers; RomulusLoader, a loader designed to download and execute new loads; SilentRunLoader, aimed at stealing data from Chrome, and ValleyRAT/Winos4.0, an already documented family. Atlas RAT. This malware can collect system information, list and upload files to the command and control server, load additional plugins or modules, and execute new payloads. It also incorporates surveillance functions, such as keylogger, screenshots, clipboard access and audio or video recording via microphone and webcam. Proofpoint maintains the nuance: it evaluates the actor as financially motivated, but warns that these capabilities could be used or sold to espionage groups. Legitimate tools, malicious use. Part of the problem is that TA4922 does not rely solely on recognizable malware. Proofpoint describes the use of RomulusLoader to install remote administration software such as AnyDesk and SyncFuture, tools that may have legitimate uses within an organization, but in this context serve to extend control over the affected environment. SilentRunLoader completes the picture from another angle: it searches for sensitive Chrome data, including credentials, cookies, and history. Additionally, Proofpoint believes with high confidence that the group is likely using LLM to accelerate the development of new Python-based malware. The warning for Europe. Proofpoint describes an actor capable of moving fast, tailoring messages to the country, and combining malicious payloads with legitimate services, cloud hosting, and remote administration tools. That forces you to look beyond the obvious suspicious email. The company’s recommendations are along these lines: control what is executed and from where, monitor anomalous connections, reduce local privileges and limit the software allowed. The threat is not presented as confirmed espionage, but as a very real business risk. Images | DC Studio In Xataka | Apple has already sold so many iPhones to adults that it’s now going after kids. Convincing their parents first, of course.

The Pentagon includes BYD, Unitree, Alibaba and other Chinese giants on its blacklist. It’s taking away competition with cannon shots

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The river already sounded at the end of 2025: the Pentagon agreed that Chinese giants like Alibaba, BYD and Baidu They were linked to the Chinese Army. It was unclear at the time whether the companies would be included on the Pentagon’s 1260H list, but it was clearly a warning and came just three weeks before Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to a trade truce. It seemed like things had calmed down, especially with more recent moves like the opening of the market for Nvidia can sell its GPUs H200 for AI or Donald Trump’s visit to China (accompanied by several CEOs of American companies) to ease tensions and maintain a fine balance in that trade truce. But it turns out not and, as they point in Reuters, Alibaba, BYD and Baidu are the new Chinese companies on the Pentagon’s list. And they are not the only ones. Many more Chinese companies on the Pentagon’s blacklist The update of the known list 1260H It had been expected for a long time. The November thing was a warning, but not a real update. It is now, one month after Donald Trump’s diplomatic visit to Beijing, that the Pentagon has launched the new version that reflects interesting changes. Because we have mentioned Alibaba, BYD and Baidu as companies that join that selector ‘club’ of companies for which there are still no direct sanctions, but there is a clear consequence: starting at the end of this month, the United States Department of Defense will have prohibited from contracting directly with any of these companies. And… what are they? Well, it turns out that there are a lot, and from all sectors. Alibaba and Baidu are two Internet giants (like putting Amazon and Google on the list respectively, wow), but there are also the aforementioned BYD -cars and batteries-, CXMT and YMTC -semiconductors and RAM memory-, Unitree and RoboSense -robotics- or WuXi AppTec -biotechnology-. It is a very curious list because they are companies that are competing, directly, against American or Taiwanese companies. For example, we have recently told how the technology industry is looking so much at CXMT like YMTC for get a RAM memory which they cannot access through traditional means due to the component crisis. The United States and China are immersed in the war over robotics and Unitree is one of the most advanced in both humanoid and quadruped robots (something China is exploring for military use). Precisely, Nvidia announced that it was going to work closely with Unitree for the development of robots. And then there is China BlueChemical Limited, a subsidiary of state oil company CNOOC, and Baicells, which makes telecommunications equipment. As we say, there are no consequences in the form of direct sanctions on these companies or with pressure like what happens with Huawei, but according to US law, the Department of Defense will not be able to make deals with these companies starting this month and, starting in 2027, it will not be able to buy their products or services through third parties. What do Chinese companies say? As we read so much in Reuters as in GuardianAlibaba considers that it is something that has no basis because “Alibaba is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy”, ensuring that they will take “all available legal actions against attempts to tarnish the company”. Baidu, for its part, also rejection the measure, ensuring that “the suggestion that Baidu is a military company is completely unfounded”, noting that they will not hesitate to “use all immediate measures to be removed from the list.” This is something that WuXi AppTec has also responded to and it is possible to get off that list, but only if they withdraw from the United States or if they change the name of the entity. “These Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests” – John Moolenaar From the Pentagon it is stated that publicly traded companies have ballots to be classified as “Chinese military companies”, although they can request their removal from the list, according to Pentagon representatives. House Select Committee Chairman Joihn Moolenaar was somewhat more direct, noting that updating the list “It’s a warning to American companiesall levels of government and for the American people themselves”, ensuring that “these Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests.” In Reuters, Craig Singleton, an expert on relations with China, points out that Washington no longer treats Chinese companies as isolated entities, but as a strategic conglomerate that is part of an arm of the Chinese government. In Xataka | A Chinese company has been building AI for years to predict who is going to criticize the government before they do so

A mysterious Chinese structure has remained for five days in one of the most tense points in Asia

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In September 2023, a Philippine patrol cut and removed a floating barrier of about 300 meters that China had installed at the entrance to the Scarborough Shoal lagoon. The scene was so symbolic that it gave around the world: a simple cable supported by buoys had become one of the most delicate geopolitical hotspots in Asia. Five days in suspense. It all started with a series of images by satellite that showed something unexpected at the entrance to the lagoon Scarborough Shoalone of the most sensitive and disputed enclaves in Asia. For several consecutive days, different satellite captures recorded the presence of a reflective object accompanied in some cases by a type of linear barrier that seemed to partially cross the access to the atoll. No one could determine with certainty whether it was a buoy, a floating platform or a more permanent installation, but its mere appearance was enough to trigger investigations in the Philippines and attract the attention of specialized analysts. When new images taken days later showed that the object had disappearedthe questions remained the same: what the hell exactly was it, who placed it, and what was it trying to achieve. Why Scarborough Shoal is much more than a reef. The reaction is explained by the strategic importance of the place. Scarborough Shoal is situated within the exclusive economic zone claimed by the Philippines, but remains under effective Chinese control since the crisis of 2012. Since then it has become one of the main points of friction between both countries. Its waters are valuable for fishing, its lagoon serves as a natural refuge for boats and its position offers an important advantage to control sea routes and airspace in a region through which billions of dollars in commerce circulate each year. In such a sensitive environment, even a structure less than ten meters tall can acquire disproportionate geopolitical relevance. Scarborough Shoal The suspicions behind the mysterious structure. The images showed a visible object for at least five days and a possible barrier similar to those that China has previously used to restrict Filipino fishermen’s access to the lagoon. That sparked speculation about whether Beijing was taking a new step to tighten its control over the atoll. The experts they warned that, if it was a fixed installation, it could be interpreted as a disruption of the status quo in an area whose sovereignty remains disputed. Although no authority has been able to confirm the exact nature of the object, the episode reflects the extent to which satellite surveillance has become in a key tool to detect movements that just a few years ago would have gone completely unnoticed. A dispute that has never stopped escalating. The appearance of the structure also coincided with a particularly tense moment. China maintains an almost permanent presence of coast guard and vessels around scarboroughwhile the Philippines increases its patrols and strengthens military cooperation with the United States. Shortly before the object was detected, US and Philippine forces had carried out new joint maneuvers in the area. Manila also denounced the presence of dozens of Chinese vessels operating within its claimed waters. The result is something like a constant cycle of shows of force where every patrol, every maneuver and every potential construction is watched with enormous attention by all parties involved. The great transformation. What happened in Scarborough also fits into a much broader trend. As we have been countingOver the last decade, China has turned practically submerged reefs into authentic artificial islands equipped with ports, radars, military installations and even landing strips. The transformation of places like Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef or Subi Reef changed completely regional balance and demonstrated that physical construction can become a tool of territorial control as effective as military presence. Each new structure detected satellite arouses concern precisely because there is a clear precedent of how small initial changes can end up becoming permanent bases. A race to consolidate positions. The response of the other claimants has been to assume that the scenario has changed. Vietnam has been expanding reefs under its control for years, building ports and new infrastructure. The Philippines reinforces its existing positions, expands landing strips and strengthens isolated detachments. The feeling that dominates the region is that the multilateral negotiations have failed and that each country is trying consolidate what you already control before circumstances worsen. In this context, the mysterious structure of Scarborough It is especially symbolic. Regardless of what it really was, it reminded all the actors involved that in the South China Sea a simple spot detected from space can become for a few days the center of a geopolitical dispute that affects a good part of Asia and in which China continues to be, by far, the most powerful player. Image | Vantor In Xataka | China has a problem: behind thousands of food delivery restaurants there is no establishment, no kitchen, no restaurant In Xataka | The US had a ship with 2,000 marines ready to invade Iran. Now he has sent it right to the place where China worries the most

TSMC chairman challenges Chinese chipmakers

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TSMC leads the integrated circuit manufacturing industry overwhelmingly. The current market share of this Taiwanese company is approximately 70%, according to the consulting firm TrendForce. Samsung is the second largest producer of chips for third parties, although with a market share of 7.2% is positioned very far from the leader of this industry. And the Chinese company SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is hot on his heels in third position with a share of 5.32%. However, there was a time when Intel dominated the semiconductor industry with a force comparable to that currently held by TSMC. Its rise to leadership began with the 1981 agreement with IBM to supply the processor for the original PC, making the x86 architecture the standard. de facto of personal computing. Over the next three decades, Intel set the pace of technological development in the semiconductor industry, but its decline began in 2015 when it began accumulating delays in the transition to the most advanced nodes. In 2010, probably few analysts in this sector would have predicted that TSMC would take over from Intel both from a technological point of view and from a strictly commercial perspective. Its market share of 70% says it all. Now it is the Chinese chip manufacturers who are slowly beginning to intimidate. SMIC, as we have just seen, is already hot on Samsung’s heels in the fight to manufacture semiconductors for third parties. And Hua Hong and Huawei are pushing harder and harder. So much so, in fact, that TSMC shareholders are starting to get restless. Huawei wants to change the rules of the game that TSMC is winning CC Wei, the current president of TSMC, has assured that his company “is not afraid” of competition from China. This assertion is not accidental. In fact, this executive spoke these words in response to a shareholder’s question during the annual meeting that was held just a few hours ago. wei has pointed out that competition has been a constant throughout the company’s forty years of history. And it’s true. But it is also true that no company has led the chip sector forever. Fairchild Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and, of course, Intel, have led. And all of them have fallen. If we look towards China, the companies that seem to worry TSMC the most are SMIC and Huawei. In fact, their alliance has allowed SMIC to manufacture 7nm integrated circuits using the equipment deep ultraviolet photolithography (UVP) of ASML and without the need to resort to the most advanced machines of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). Also, as we told you last week. Huawei has presented a new scaling law and a new chip architecture capable, on paper, of taking its semiconductors to a lithographic process node equivalent to 1.4 nm by 2031. Huawei’s plan is to continue improving the performance and density of its chips despite the restrictions At the moment the most advanced integrated circuits that TSMC, Intel or Samsung produce are 2 nm. Huawei’s plan is to continue improving the performance and density of its chips despite restrictions that limit China’s access to the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment. And the heart of their strategy is the “tau scaling law.” This principle seeks to reduce the time it takes for signals and data to travel through computer chips and equipment. It proposes a paradigm shift that replaces the traditional geometric miniaturization of transistors with temporal scaling (τ), hence its name. It seems like a very complicated strategy, but it’s actually reasonably simple. We can easily understand what it is by referring to this example. Let’s imagine that we have a city (the chip) with many buildings (transistors) connected by roads (wires). Moore’s Law says: “Make buildings smaller to fit more in the same space“. Huawei, however, proposes: “buildings can no longer be much smaller, so instead let’s make cars (electrical signals) travel faster on the roads, and redesign the urban layout so that they travel less distance.” τ (tau) is, precisely, the time it takes a car to go from one building to another, and Huawei’s bet is to reduce it as much as possible. Huawei’s LogicFolding architecture plays an essential role in this approach. And, if we continue with our example, it proposes a new design of the roads on which cars circulate, so that the chip will perform better without the need to build smaller buildings. Huawei has anticipated that its next generation of Kirin chips, which will arrive next fall, will be the first to implement the LogicFolding architecture. Whatever its Chinese competitors do, TSMC will continue to do very well in the short and medium term. But in the long term his current leadership is not guaranteed. Image | TSMC More information | SCMP In Xataka | The condemnation that afflicts China: after decades of manufacturing a competitive desktop processor, it is six years behind

A Chinese company has been building AI for years to predict who is going to criticize the government before they do so

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In ‘Minority Report‘, Tom Cruise was the head of the pre-crime police, a department capable of arresting criminals before they could commit the crime in question, all thanks to the powers of mutants or precogs. Well, according to the New York Timesthere is a Chinese company that is trying to build a similar system, but their target will be future political dissidents and instead of mutants with powers they will use AI. what’s happening. The leak reported in the New York Times contains internal documents from the Chinese company Geedge Networks and has been published by a group of researchers at Vanderbilt University. In it they detail how the company is building an AI system capable of predicting which citizens will become political dissidents in the future. Geedge is investigating how to use LLM to synthesize large packets of data (including browsing histories, locations, online activity and contacts) and then infer citizens’ behavior, detecting whether they will present a “political risk” in the future. Like the police precrime, but for political dissidents. What is Geedge?. In September 2025 we learned that a Chinese company was exporting the surveillance system known as “Great Firewall of China” to other countries. It was Geedge Networks. The company, which has one of the creators of the Chinese firewall as a key investor, has already sold its solution to countries such as Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. What this great firewall does is analyze the traffic of entire countries, even capturing personal data such as passwords and emails. Why is it important. According to the leak, the system is in the research phase, but it is still a disturbing approach. It is no longer just about using AI to monitor what people do, the next thing is to anticipate what they could do and even think. We see every day that AI models have biases and make many errors, using them as predictors to repress dissent poses a terrifying scenario. Tech authoritarianism as a service. As we said, Geedge is already exporting its solutions to other countries so it is selling technological authoritarianism as a service. The worst thing is that we do not find this only in China, but it is a global trend: the United States too you are delegating critical security functions to private and disreputable corporations like Palantir, and The United Kingdom also wants to follow in their footsteps. The bottleneck. There is good news (if you can call it that) and that is that Geedge has encountered a problem in developing this system: they do not have the power to manage such a volume of data. According to the New York Times, since they cannot access the most powerful chips due to the US blockade, since 2024 they have been forced to use AI models and less powerful chips. In order for the system to be able to manage the enormous amount of data they already collect, they need computing capacity that they currently do not have, always according to US sources. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | We have been hearing for years that China scans the faces of millions of citizens every day. It’s already happening in Europe

Western brands are looking for the perfect car. Their way of achieving this is to sell us renowned Chinese cars

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There was a day when China lured Europe with the promise of vacant land and cheap labor. Today those days are over. Today the automobile industry has taken the road back. Today, more and more Western manufacturers are partnering with Chinese companies. And the reason is obvious: to sell you a rebuilt Chinese car as your own. What is happening? That traditional manufacturers are assuming Chinese technology to simply sell their product to you cheaper. A product that has little of its own and a lot of Chinese, for better and for worse. The reasons They are different: Pressure to jump to the electric car Complications in making that leap (either due to monetary issues or internal difficulties) Duty A Chinese technology that is above Brands that are on the verge of bankruptcy For some of these reasons (or the sum of several), more and more traditional manufacturers are intertwining with Chinese companies to advance their products. Products that, as we say, are sometimes pure Chinese cars “disguised” as Western. The Stellantis case It is the most recent but far from unique. It is also probably the most complex. The automobile conglomerate has faced serious financial complications in recent years. The cost reduction in many of its models led to the PureTech scandal. With the obligation to manage 14 brands, some of them have lost all types of identity. And their partnership with Leapmotor has shown them that they can get a lot of juice out of the Chinese electric car. During the presentation of its latest strategic plan, the company confirmed that they have reached an agreement of 1,000 million euros with the Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng to produce Peugeot and Jeep cars in China. They will be New Energy cars (NEV). This is what they call electric cars and plug-in hybrids in China. At the moment, not many more details have been given but a key detail does seem confirmed: These are cars designed to be sold in China and exported. That is, they are not cars manufactured in China whose main market is Europe. This suggests that they will probably be entirely Chinese cars that adopt the design language of these two Western brands. Chinese production is not the only one that is compromised. The agreement opens the possibility for European plants to produce Dongfeng cars, specifically the Voyah brand. This allows Stellantis to keep the work committed in its plants (specifically, the Rennes plant in France is targeted) and Dongfeng could sell these electric cars without paying tariffs, as is happening right now. But in addition to this latest news, China has become more and more rooted in the bowels of Stellantis. Since 2023, this automobile conglomerate manages the distribution and sale of Leapmotor outside China. This company is one of those that seems to have greater potential when it comes to selling electric cars at a low price. For now, Stellantis has already confirmed that some of these cheap cars will be produced in Europe. Specifically, Figueruelas (Zaragoza) has been one of the chosen locations. This plant, therefore, will carry out small electric cars from Peugeot, Citroën and Opel and, in parallel, those from Leapmotor because they do not share a platform. However, the latter has already begun to be debated. Tianshu Xin, director of Leapmotor International, pointed out a few weeks ago that “Leapmotor vs Stellantis They are two independent manufacturers and have their own platforms. However, one of the strategic objectives of this alliance is to generate synergies, which could include platforms and their components. “About 65% of Leapmotor components are manufactured in-house, and there are synergies that would allow Stellantis to use Leapmotor parts in its future platforms,” ​​in words reported by forumelectriccars. A few days ago Stellantis presented its STLA Onethe new modular platform that will replace STLA Small for segments B, C and D. This leaves the door for the smallest size, that of segment A, just where the new Citroën 2 CV will arrive, which has fueled rumors about a greater presence of Chinese components or software in the car. To this we must add that A new Opel electric car from 2028 will have Leapmotor technology but German dress. And the relationship between Stellantis and China does not seem to end here. In recent days the rumor has gained strength that the automobile conglomerate could look to JAC for a collaboration to move Maserati forward. The Italian sports car firm has already thrown away billions of euros in its jump to the electric car and JAC manufactures luxury cars together with Huawei in China. Producing them would allow Stellantis to put an electric Maserati on the street without taking more risks. Are you sure it’s western? That a car uses Chinese technology and is re-bodied like a Western one does not have to be bad in itself. In fact, automotive conglomerates such as Stellantis or the Volkswagen Group have made their synergies between brands one of the keys to building their success. However, in some cases yes it can be a problem. When a brand boasts of being different and unique, it has a problem if it only uses a “disguise” to camouflage that what is under its body comes from outside its factories. This is what can happen to Maserati and what Mazda is playing with. Until now, the Maserati customer has bought Maserati because, quite simply, their product was a Maserati. Italian elegance with a heart inherited from Ferrari to conquer a public that preferred its cars to, for example, Porsche. When you buy this type of car, not only buy numbersbuys an aesthetic and a sound and boasts of going against the grain compared to the majority German options such as Porsche or Mercedes. Just give up the engines ferraristas It was a serious problem for his image.. The Mazda 6e and CX-6e have a Chinese heart and soul despite the fact that the brand defends the Japanese philosophy in both cars If Maserati only … Read more

The US opened the door to Nvidia’s H200 chip in China. The Chinese army has been waiting for a long time on the other side

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Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has been forced to “fight” with the US Department of Commerce for months, but he has achieved what he wanted: your company can now deliver some of its Chinese clients its chip to artificial intelligence (AI) H200. As we explain to you On May 14, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com are four of the ten Chinese companies that already have access to this powerful GPU. And they have it because the US Department of Commerce, which is the institution that grants or denies export licenses, has authorized at least ten Chinese companies and several distributors, including Lenovo and Foxconn, to acquire the second most powerful AI chip that Nvidia has. This decision has come almost two months after the US Government confirmed which was going to allow the company led by Jensen Huang to deliver its H200 chip to its Chinese customers. However, Nvidia likely won’t have time to savor this victory. Once again, dark clouds are gathering over it that threaten to compromise, once again, its business in China. And, according to Bloombergat least seven Chinese universities linked to the country’s armed forces and defense industry are trying to obtain H200 chips. This disclosure comes from China’s public procurement records, so it is presumably reliable. Remote rental: the avenue that the Department of Commerce still does not know how to close In the US there is a pressure group that opposes the sale of advanced American AI chips in China. Chris McGuire, senior fellow on China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, holds that “any deal that allows Nvidia to sell more chips to China means fewer Nvidia chips for US companies and a smaller US advantage over China in AI.” Besides, McGuire argues that “it is surprising that President Trump continues to allow himself to be convinced to put Nvidia’s interests before those of America.” Chinese entities increasingly resort to renting airtime on servers equipped with restricted Nvidia chips What is happening right now with Chinese universities is the ideal breeding ground to reinforce the theses of this pressure group in the US. Two of the institutions that have expressed interest in H200 chipsBeihang University and Northwest Polytechnic University, are among China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense”, a select group of universities dedicated to supporting the People’s Liberation Army. Both have been included in the blacklist of the US Department of Commerce for their involvement in the advancement of Chinese military capabilities. And public procurement records reveal that the Beihang School of Cyber ​​Science and Technology, which claims to have “national defense characteristics and aerospace advantages,” is attempting to rent the use of Nvidia chips. Northwestern Polytechnic University’s School of Cyberspace Security is also trying to rent access to H200 chips, according to those same records. Chinese entities are increasingly resorting to time of use rental on servers equipped with restricted Nvidia chips as a way to access prohibited hardware without having to import it directly. This is the strategy that the US Government will surely try to dismantle. What is not clear at the moment is how he is going to do it. Image | Nvidia More information | Bloomberg In Xataka | The US remains committed to stopping China. Now it has targeted the second largest Chinese chip manufacturer

The Chinese brand that sells the most cars in Europe decides on Spain

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MG will manufacture cars in Spain. It is official after weeks of rumors in which we had been hearing that the Spanish region was one of the best positioned to produce cars from the Chinese firm of British origin. It is its first major investment outside China in almost a decade and, without a doubt, an endorsement of its European plans. The advertisement. MG has confirmed it: Galicia is the region chosen for the return to MG manufacturing in Europe. The announcement had been advanced by Alfonso Ruedapresident of the Xunta, this morning but it was not until this afternoon when the MG herself confirmed the news. For months it has been known that the Xunta de Galicia has been in talks with the Chinese brand to settle on Spanish soil for its new arrival in Europe. And in April, Rueda himself held a series of meetings with representatives of the brand between April 23 and 25 in China, according to The Automotive Tribune. The project. The company assures that, from the outset, the project has an investment of 200 million euros and that it will create “more than 2,000 jobs in Europe, establishing a strategic center for the next phase of MG’s growth.” That is, the press release provided by the company does not specify how many of these jobs will be in Spain and how many will be created by the increase in cars in the European market. The company assures that this new plant is scheduled to come into operation in 2028 and that it will have an annual capacity to manufacture up to 120,000 vehicles. At the moment, it has not been confirmed what types of vehicles will be manufactured (pure combustion, hybrid or electric) nor have the models been specified. For its part, in information collected by The Worldthe Xunta raises the figure to 2,300 jobs, of which 1,000 would be direct, another 1,000 indirect and 300 would be related to the company’s activity in As Pontes (a town near Ferrol). In this location, the company is expected to build a components plant. Some doubts. For now, what is known is that the company will establish itself in Ferrol and build an auxiliary plant in As Pontes. The choice of Ferrol is determined by its port, which has already served as a gateway for other Chinese manufacturers for sale in Spain or subsequent distribution throughout Europe. What has not been confirmed, in addition to the type of vehicle used, is what manufacturing method will be carried out. The Chery Group in Barcelona uses the DKD method where the local impact is minimal. The companies (Omoda/Jaecoo/Ebro) have repeated that they will increase the number of operations that will be carried out in Barcelona but, for the moment, the cars arrive semi-assembled in containers and on Spanish soil only the last pieces of the puzzle are being put together. At the moment, in its information SAIC (owner of MG) does not refer to whether the cars will arrive more or less assembled on Spanish soil. The more processes that need to be carried out in the Spanish plant, the more direct jobs and the more work will be given to auxiliary companies in the area. “In Europe, for Europe”. That is, according to MG, the maximum of this landing in Galicia. And the company has found a vein in our continent with the sale of cars with all kinds of technologies at very low prices. In Europe it is the Chinese brand that sells the most carsplacing in 2025 a total of 211,014 units in the European Union and 305,717 units if we put the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom into the equation. These sales are understood because the SAIC Group has found in MG a vein to sell cheaply in Europe. The brand, previously British, is not unknown to the public and both its hybrids and electric ones are cheap compared to traditional European proposals. In Spain, so far this year, the MG ZS is among the 10 best-selling non-plug-in hybrids and is the sixth best-selling car in the sum of all technologies, according to ANFAC data. Furthermore, the brand is the tenth best-selling company in our country. Duty. It remains to be known, as we said, what the bet is in terms of specific models but it is clear that the landing of Chinese brands such as BYD in Hungary and Turkey or the Chery Group in Barcelona is directly associated with the implementation of European tariffs on Chinese electric cars. SAIC, which owns MG, is the company facing the highest tariffs. Manufacturing in Europe may allow them to compete, even more, on price, but the European Union has already made it clear that it will be necessary to make a minimum number of investments to consider that the car is European. This does not mean that the car is electric. Although cars with combustion engines do not have tariffs, rumors point to greater European shielding of their economy. And producing in Europe for Europe can help, even more, to lower the price of cars with combustion engines, partially alleviating the economic effort that the company has to make with electric cars. Photo | MG and Counting Stars In Xataka | Spain has a new brand of Chinese cars and it arrives with an ambitious plan: “Five million units by 2030”

Smart glasses for police seemed like science fiction. Some Chinese agents have already started using them

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The image is powerful because it is easy to visualize: a police officer walks down a street in Tianjin, looks around, and connected glasses return useful information in real time. What until not so long ago could have sounded like science fiction is beginning to have much more earthly applications, from ordering traffic to helping locate a lost person. In this city in northern China, according to China Dailytechnology is already part of some police tasks. And that’s the interesting thing: we are not just talking about a futuristic promise, but about a use that is beginning to hit the streets. Smart glasses for police. The key is that we are not just talking about glasses placed on an agent’s face, but about a system designed to be integrated into police routine. They are officially presented as a development of the local public security system, with national software and hardware, and places them in three areas of use: traffic, patrols and urban management. It is a very immediate effectiveness-oriented approach. An invisible screen for the agent. The device works as a layer of information added to police work. It can recognize text, interpret voice commands and provide responses from a connected platform, with the camera as an entry point to identify elements of the environment. In practice, this allows identity checks to be carried out or information associated with a person to be searched without leaving the scene. The source presents it as a responsive improvement, although such a tool also opens up obvious questions about surveillance and privacy. The glasses on the ground. Zhao Baoxin, an officer at the Jiefang Road police station in Heping district, told the aforementioned media that during a patrol they found an elderly man at an intersection who could not express himself clearly or indicate his name or address. According to his version, the glasses made it possible to quickly identify him and, in about 20 minutes, contact his family so he could return home. Traffic as a daily test. Another of the uses described brings the technology down to a very recognizable scene: the entrance and exit of a school. In that case, parents can pre-register their license plates through a mini-program developed with the participation of the public security system, and that information is linked to the platform consulted by the glasses. Thus, agents identify authorized vehicles, order short stops and divert other cars during peak congestion hours. It is efficient on paper, but it also normalizes automated license plate reading. What the numbers say. Sun Yinghua, agent in the science, technology and IT area of ​​the Municipal Public Security Bureau, places the recognition accuracy above 95% and speaks of results in milliseconds. They also explain that the design also seeks comfort: they weigh about 40 grams and offer a first-person perspective that avoids the framing changes typical of a body camera when the agent leans or turns. The autonomy, however, is 1.5 or 2 hours of continuous use. It hasn’t come out of nowhere. Police glasses with facial recognition had already appeared in China years ago. In 2018, SCMP counted that were being used at Zhengzhou East station during Chunyun, the huge Lunar New Year travel period, to locate fugitives and detect cases of identity fraud. What we see now seems less like a one-off test and more like a piece within an ecosystem: China Daily cites uses in different areas of the country, coordination with drones in large operations and plans to connect the glasses with robotic dogs, intelligent police vehicles, humanoid robots and other terminals. Efficiency gains ground, but so do questions about surveillance. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | The metaverse wasn’t dead, it was on a spree. And Meta wants it to flood Instagram and Facebook

DeepSeek is good, pretty and very cheap. And above all, the weapon to create a Chinese hardware industry independent of Nvidia

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The arrival of DeepSeek-V4-Pro It hasn’t caused that much of a stir. like the one caused by DeepSeek R1 a year and a half ago, but we may be facing an even more important model. If that version revealed to the world that China was advancing spectacularly in this race, this other one is beginning to allow us to glimpse something else more interesting. What most people see is a very decent model and above all “low priced”. Which hide the company It’s another more important thing: achieve independence from Nvidia and US hardware. what has happened. Last Friday, those responsible for DeepSeek announced something surprising: their promotional offer with a 75% price cut to use their DeepSeek-V4-Pro model will be maintained permanently. That makes this model offer very decent features (but not exceptional) for a really low price: 1M entry tokens 1M tokens output DeepSeek-V4-Pro 0.435 0.87 GPT-5.5 5 30 Opus 4.7 5 25 Gemini 3.5 Flash 1.5 9 Good, pretty and very cheap. It is true that the performance of DeepSeek-V4-Pro is inferior to that of rival models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. Artificial Analysis tests indicate that the DeepSeek model is at a very good level, but it is also much cheaper than its competitors. This is especially relevant for agentic tasks that consume many tokens and that with this model become accessible and very affordable. According to Artificial Analysis, DeepSeek is close to the performance of the best models in the industry, and although it is slower in its responses, it is also much cheaper than the frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. A different strategy. How is this company going to make money? It does not have subscription plans like its local competition (GLM, Kimi) or the western one (ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro). It also does not have voice or image models. It does not have an AI agent for programming that competes with Claude Code. It publishes the open weights of its models and shares its technical innovations with the industry (and with its competitors). For those who closely follow the company and these decisions, the strategy is clear. DeepSeek’s goal is not to win the AI ​​model race. Their goal is to build a Chinese AI hardware industry that doesn’t depend on Nvidia or TSMC… and get paid their share in that process. Hardware independence. China has a structural problem in this AI race: sanctions and vetoes imposed by the US make you unable to access the most advanced chips nor to ASML UVE photolithography. And since China cannot currently compete in terms of computing power, what its companies are doing is ensuring that their AI models need less computing power to achieve similar results. Efficient architectures. The Mixture of Experts (MoE) and Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) architectures are two key weapons in this strategy. The first already existed but was adapted by DeepSeek for their model: with it only part of the total parameters of the model are activated to answer the query without losing precision. What MLA does is compress the attention information (the so-called KV Cache) with which the model maintains the context of a conversation, reducing it by 90%. Both techniques allow us to reduce the need to use high-speed HBM memories, something that is also striking in order to reveal DeepSeek’s probable strategy. The importance of KV Cache. As the GDP analyst explains in Xthat use of MLA allows that for one million tokens, DeepSeek-V4-Pro only needs 5.48 GB of HBM memory. Competitors like Zhipo AI, which develops GLM 5, need 60 GB for the same, while Alibaba’s Qwen 3 needs 89 GB. This advantage allows DeepSeek to offer much lower prices to obtain performances similar to those of its competition, but it also means that DeepSeek models can run on Chinese memory chips that cannot compete in speed with HBM modules. Goodbye HBM, hello NAND and SSD. These innovations open the door to the use of NAND memories and even SSD drives to process this data, and there YMTC enters the scenea Chinese Flash memory manufacturer that is slowly becoming a global giant. Also CXMTwhich manufactures DRAM memoriesbecomes an alternative here and the reason is equally interesting: DeepSeek introduced a memory search module in LLMs called Engram which is also intended to avoid excessive dependence on HBM memories. How to bypass the CUDA monopoly. Nvidia continues to have a fundamental element in CUDA to maintain its market dominance, but here DeepSeek too has proposed an alternative. Is called Tile Kernels and these are software cores created with TileLang (a variant of Python for this field) that allow governing advanced AI chips (GPUs). Huawei as an invisible ally. Those responsible for Huawei recently indicated that its new Ascend AI supernodes fully support DeepSeek v4 models. Precisely this provides another fundamental advantage to the company, which thus avoids (at least in part) total dependence on the use of Nvidia chips and prepares to further strengthen Huawei’s relevance in a market in which until recently Jensen Huang’s company was queen and mistress. Open models to attract the hardware industry. US companies continue to maintain their closed and proprietary models, but DeepSeek is one of the many Chinese startups that publish them with open weights. With this, what she and the others intend to do is not only attract AI developers and users, but also create a hardware ecosystem that adopts these architectures. DeepSeek invites its rivals to use techniques such as MoE or MLA precisely so that all these advances become a de facto standard and hardware manufacturers also adopt them and integrate them in an optimized way into their designs. A round of 10,000 million to advance. The company is also preparing a financing round in which they intend to raise 10,000 million dollars and with which they would achieve a valuation of between 45,000 and 50,000 million dollars. Still far from the mammoth valuations of OpenAI or Anthropic (already close to a billion dollars) but certainly … Read more

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