Taipei, Taiwan – China has launched an antitrust investigation into chip giant Nvidia in what appears to be Beijing's latest act of retaliation against Washington's sanctions on Chinese tech companies. Chinese state media said on Monday that the California-based chipmaker was being investigated by the State Administration for Market Regulation for potentially violating China's antimonopoly laws. Regulators will also review the company's 6.9bn acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-American supplier specialising in computer networking products, state media reports said, without providing further details. Chinese regulators approved the deal in 2020 with several restrictive conditions, including a provision that Nvidia would not discriminate against Chinese suppliers. Nvidia, which designs advanced chips used to power artificial intelligence (AI), is one of the world's most valuable companies, with a market capitalisation of more than 3.4 trillion.

China has opened a probe into Nvidia over suspicions that the U.S. chipmaker broke anti-monopoly laws around a 2020 deal, taking aim at the artificial intelligence heavyweight as Washington ramps up sanctions. The State Administration for Market Regulation opened an investigation into the company's recent behavior as well as the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, the government said in a statement on Monday. Beijing gave approval for the deal four years ago, on condition that Nvidia not discriminate against Chinese companies. The move against Nvidia is Beijing's latest riposte to escalating U.S. technology curbs, coming just a week after the Chinese government banned exports of several materials with tech and military applications. Nvidia's market value has ballooned this year on demand for chips that can run AI programs, making it one of the most valuable publicly traded companies and China's largest corporate target in the tech trade war so far.

A robotic rat on wheels has learned how to interact with real rats while mimicking the rodents' play and fight behaviours. "[The] robotic rats have similar appearances and movements to animals, and even the same odour," says Qing Shi at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China. "It has become an important tool for exploring individual or collective rats' behavioural responses."

China has banned the export of rare but critical earth minerals used in the manufacture of important semiconductors to the United States in the latest move in an ongoing tech war between the two superpowers. Beijing's announcement on Tuesday came just one day after the US ramped up restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China, which affects the country's ability to develop advanced weapons systems and artificial intelligence. So why is a "tech war" brewing between China and the US, and why does it matter? For months, the two countries have been involved in tit-for-tat export restrictions. The US hopes to cripple China's military and artificial intelligence (AI) advances as well as hamper its ambitions to become a global leader in clean energy and other technologies.

China ratcheted up trade tensions with the United States with an export ban on several materials with high-tech and military applications, in a tit-for-tat move after U.S. President Joe Biden's administration escalated technology curbs on Beijing. Gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials are no longer allowed to be shipped to America, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Tuesday. Beijing will also place tighter controls on sales of graphite, it added. The move came after the White House on Monday slapped fresh curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory chips made by U.S. and foreign companies to China. The Biden administration's goal is to slow China's development of advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence systems that may help its military.

The US has announced new export restrictions targeting China's ability to make advanced semiconductors, drawing swift condemnation from Beijing. Washington is expanding efforts to curb exports of state-of-the-art chips to China that can be used in advanced weapons systems and in artificial intelligence. The announcement on Monday came a few weeks before Donald Trump returns as president, where he is expected to bolster Washington's hawkish stance on China. On Monday the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, said Joe Biden's presidency had been especially tough in "strategically addressing China's military modernisation through export controls". Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: "The United States has taken significant steps to protect our technology from being used by our adversaries in ways that threaten our national security."

The U.S. unveiled new restrictions on China's access to vital components for chips and AI, escalating a campaign to contain Beijing's technological ambitions but stopping short of earlier proposals that would have sanctioned more key Chinese firms. The Department of Commerce slapped fresh curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory chips made by U.S. and foreign companies, likely affecting South Korea's SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics as well as Idaho-based Micron Technology. Those components handle data storage and are essential for AI applications. The agency also expanded existing controls on chipmaking gear, including products made by U.S. firms at foreign facilities, but with carveouts for key allies, such as Japan and the Netherlands. That comes after months of negotiations between Washington, Tokyo and the Hague, during which Biden officials floated -- but ultimately did not pursue -- applying U.S. controls to companies like Tokyo Electron and ASML Holding NV.

The United States has launched its third crackdown in three years on China's semiconductor industry, curbing exports to 140 companies, including chip equipment maker Naura Technology Group, among other moves. The latest effort on Monday to hobble Beijing's chipmaking ambitions also hits Chinese chip toolmakers Piotech, ACM Research and SiCarrier Technology with new export restrictions as part of the package, which also takes aim at shipments of advanced memory chips and more chipmaking tools to China. The move is one of President Joe Biden's last large-scale efforts to stymie China's ability to access and produce chips that can help advance artificial intelligence for military applications, or otherwise threaten US national security. It comes just weeks before the swearing-in of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who is expected to retain many of Biden's tough-on-China measures. The package includes curbs on China-bound shipments of high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, critical for high-end applications like AI training; curbs on 24 additional chipmaking tools and three software tools; and export curbs on chipmaking equipment made in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.

TikTok parent company ByteDance is going after a former intern for allegedly sabotaging an AI training project. According to The South China Morning Post, ByteDance is seeking 8 million yuan (about 1.1 million) in damages and a public apology from ex-intern Tian Keyu. The case, which has already been accepted by Haidian District Court in Beijing, centers around accusations of Tian tampering with code related to an AI training project. Tian was fired in August because he "maliciously interfered with the model training tasks," according to a statement from ByteDance. In the same statement, ByteDance disputes rumors that the tampering involved 8,000 GPU cards and lost the company tens of millions of dollars, saying those claims are "seriously exaggerated."

Previous research has provided many intriguing insights into model robustness through the lens of frequency spectrum for the Deep Learning (DL) community. Many of these studies attempted to elucidate the connection between model sensitivity and frequency components. A commonly-held hypothesis is that the utilization of high-frequency components leads to a decrease in model robustnessWang et al. [2020]. Recent research has improved model robustness through a variety of methods, guided by this hypothesis. For example, Addepalli et al. [2022] applies regularization terms to high-frequency components to enhance model robustness.