ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Qwen will disable humanlike and user-created agents before July 15, as China's anthropomorphic AI interaction rules take effect (Wency Chen/South China Morning Post)

Wency Chen / South China Morning Post:
ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Qwen will disable humanlike and user-created agents before July 15, as China's anthropomorphic AI interaction rules take effect  —  Two of China's major consumer-facing artificial intelligence apps, ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen …

Data centers offer US a chance to get ahead in the next key technologies and to build domestic supply chains based on demand rather than subsidies and tariffs (Josh Zoffer/Financial Times)

Josh Zoffer / Financial Times:
Data centers offer US a chance to get ahead in the next key technologies and to build domestic supply chains based on demand rather than subsidies and tariffs  —  America must not repeat the mistakes that handed China rare-earth dominance … America's China policy over the past decade …

Chainalysis: addresses linked to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and other US-sanctioned entities received $100B+ in crypto last year, almost 8x the amount in 2024 (Patricia Kowsmann/Wall Street Journal)

Patricia Kowsmann / Wall Street Journal:
Chainalysis: addresses linked to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and other US-sanctioned entities received $100B+ in crypto last year, almost 8x the amount in 2024  —  Blacklisted entities handled $100 billion in crypto in 2025, financing terrorism and weapons  —  Iran, Russia, North Korea …

Analysis: ~1M $TRUMP retail buyers lost a combined $3.81B, while ~500K mostly-early wallets captured $4B in gains, a textbook memecoin wealth transfer (New York Times)

New York Times:
Analysis: ~1M $TRUMP retail buyers lost a combined $3.81B, while ~500K mostly-early wallets captured $4B in gains, a textbook memecoin wealth transfer  —  A report from a cryptocurrency analytics firm details how those who bought the Trump memecoin have fared, with most retail investors having lost money …

A look at the troubled rollout of the EU's automated biometric entry/exit border system, as airport operators warn of severe delays ahead of the summer holidays (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
A look at the troubled rollout of the EU's automated biometric entry/exit border system, as airport operators warn of severe delays ahead of the summer holidays  —  Automated system first mooted in 2008 was meant to keep out criminals — instead, it is delaying travellers

How ByteDance is making Hollywood inroads with its Seedance video generator, thanks to low pricing, striking realism, and features like timeline-based prompting (Nilesh Christopher/Los Angeles Times)

Nilesh Christopher / Los Angeles Times:
How ByteDance is making Hollywood inroads with its Seedance video generator, thanks to low pricing, striking realism, and features like timeline-based prompting  —  - 8 min Click here to listen to this article … - A viral AI video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise sparked industry outrage …

Q&A with Doug Brooks, senior product manager of Apple silicon, about Mac minis becoming preferred AI agent machines, future of on-device AI, and more (Jason Hiner/The Deep View)

Jason Hiner / The Deep View:
Q&A with Doug Brooks, senior product manager of Apple silicon, about Mac minis becoming preferred AI agent machines, future of on-device AI, and more  —  W  —  alk into any of the frontier AI labs, and you'll find wall-to-wall Macs.  —  Decisions Apple made years ago …

Official data shows Hong Kong accounted for 50%+ of China's $239B in chip imports in the first five months of 2026, a record share, up from ~33% a decade ago (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Official data shows Hong Kong accounted for 50%+ of China's $239B in chip imports in the first five months of 2026, a record share, up from ~33% a decade ago  —  Hong Kong has become a vital conduit for high-tech products moving in and out of China, emerging as one node in a $2 trillion network …

Filing: GoDaddy challenges a New Delhi court ruling requiring domain sellers to stop offering privacy by default, saying it could expose website owners globally (Reuters)

Reuters:
Filing: GoDaddy challenges a New Delhi court ruling requiring domain sellers to stop offering privacy by default, saying it could expose website owners globally  —  The world's biggest internet domain seller, GoDaddy, has warned that India's crackdown on fake websites impersonating famous brands …

Sources: Alibaba has banned employees from using Claude Code and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers, citing security concerns (The Information)

The Information:
Sources: Alibaba has banned employees from using Claude Code and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers, citing security concerns  —  Alibaba Group has banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code, and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers …

The US DOJ says Peter Stokes, a 19-year-old dual US-Estonian citizen, was extradited from Finland to face charges of participating in Scattered Spider hacks (Joe Warminsky/The Record)

Joe Warminsky / The Record:
The US DOJ says Peter Stokes, a 19-year-old dual US-Estonian citizen, was extradited from Finland to face charges of participating in Scattered Spider hacks  —  A 19-year-old man with dual U.S. and Estonian citizenship was extradited from Finland to Chicago this week to face criminal charges …

Germany-based Quantum Systems, which sells surveillance drones used by Ukraine, raised $1.2B led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, and Advent at an ~$8B valuation (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg)

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg:
Germany-based Quantum Systems, which sells surveillance drones used by Ukraine, raised $1.2B led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, and Advent at an ~$8B valuation  —  Quantum Systems has raised $1.2 billion in a funding round, more than doubling the German drone startup's valuation …

The US sentences Guo Wengui, a self-exiled billionaire Chinese tycoon who defrauded his online followers out of hundreds of millions, to 30 years in prison (Associated Press)

Associated Press:
The US sentences Guo Wengui, a self-exiled billionaire Chinese tycoon who defrauded his online followers out of hundreds of millions, to 30 years in prison  —  A self-exiled billionaire Chinese business tycoon once believed to be among China's wealthiest men was sentenced Monday to 30 years …

Q&A with Grindr CEO George Arison on turning Grindr into an "AI-native company", "impos[ing]" AI on staff, facing "opposition", using AI as a CEO, and more (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)

Jordyn Holman / New York Times:
Q&A with Grindr CEO George Arison on turning Grindr into an “AI-native company”, “impos[ing]” AI on staff, facing “opposition”, using AI as a CEO, and more  —  George Arison, the gay dating app's chief executive, is aiming for all code to be eventually written …

Meituan open-sources LongCat-2.0, a 1.6T-parameter model that it says was trained on a 50K-chip cluster of domestic Chinese processors, without giving details (Reuters)

Reuters:
Meituan open-sources LongCat-2.0, a 1.6T-parameter model that it says was trained on a 50K-chip cluster of domestic Chinese processors, without giving details  —  China's food delivery giant Meituan (3690.HK) said on Tuesday it had released and would open-source its next-generation LongCat …