While the United States and Europe are moving cautiously forward with clinical trials, China is racing toward the commercialization of brain implants. China has made history by becoming the first nation to approve a commercially available brain chip to treat a disability. NEO, the implant developed by Neuracle Medical Technology, translates the thoughts of a person with paralysis into movements of an assistive robotic hand. After 18 months of testing that proved its safety, China's National Medical Products Administration authorized the implant for people aged 19 to 60 with paralysis caused by neck or spinal cord injuries that prevent them from moving their limbs. According Nature, the implant embedded in the skull is about the size of a coin.

Three people associated with artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer, including its cofounder, have been charged with helping smuggle at least $2.5bn-worth of United States AI technology to China in violation of export laws, according to the US Department of Justice. US prosecutors did not name Super Micro in the complaint, referring only to a "US manufacturer", but San Jose, California-based Super Micro said it was informed by federal prosecutors of the indictment on Thursday. The Justice Department said it had charged Yih-Shyan Liaw, Ruei-Tsang Chang, and Ting-Wei Sun in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, on allegations of a complex scheme to send US-made servers through Taiwan to other countries in Southeast Asia, where they were swapped into unmarked boxes and sent on to China. The US has had export restrictions on China for advanced AI chips since 2022. In a release, FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle said the defendants used fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and used a pass-through company to conceal their misconduct and true clientele list.

Federal prosecutors charged three men linked to Supermicro with allegedly smuggling $2.5 billion in U.S. AI technology to China using fake documents, dummy servers, and shell companies.

A trio linked with a US technology supplier have been charged over a ploy to smuggle American artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, the Department of Justice said on Thursday. The individuals allegedly conspired to sell billions of dollars' worth of technology to buyers in China by faking documents and using dummy equipment to slip past audits, according to the DOJ. The goods in question included Nvidia-made semiconductors, highly coveted AI chips which are subject to export controls. In August 2025, two Chinese nationals were also arrested and charged with illegally shipping millions of dollars' worth of Nvidia chips to China. The DOJ said in a statement on Thursday that it had arrested US-citizen Yih-Shyan Wally Liaw and Taiwanese citizen Ting-Wei Willy Sun, while Ruei-Tsang Steven Chang, a Taiwanese citizen, remains a fugitive.

Inspired by real immigrant stories, H1B.Life captures the uncertainty, trade-offs, and pure luck that shape the lives of people trying to build a future in the US. When Allison Yang moved to the US from China two years ago, she noticed that immigrants often talked about their visa status like they were playing cards. The former Chinese journalist and founder of the game studio Reality Reload was at an event in New York when she heard fellow Chinese immigrants talking in confusing terminologies, like playing a Queen, Knight, or Ace. Everyone introduced themselves by words like H-1B, OPT, L-1, O-1, NIW--names of legal immigration categories in the US. With their cards on the table, they could start talking in greater depth about each person's immigration journey.

An engineer at the AgiBot factory in Shanghai, China, where the 5,000th mass-produced humanoid robot had rolled off the production line. An engineer at the AgiBot factory in Shanghai, China, where the 5,000th mass-produced humanoid robot had rolled off the production line. How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? C hen Liang, the founder of Guchi Robotics, an automation company headquartered in Shanghai, is a tall, heavy-set man in his mid-40s with square-rimmed glasses. His everyday manner is calm and understated, but when he is in his element - up close with the technology he builds, or in business meetings discussing the imminent replacement of human workers by robots - he wears an exuberant smile that brings to mind an intern on his first day at his dream job. Guchi makes the machines that install wheels, dashboards and windows for many of the top Chinese car brands, including BYD and Nio. He took the name from the Chinese word, "steadfast intelligence", though the fact that it sounded like an Italian luxury brand was not entirely unwelcome. For the better part of two decades, Chen has tried to solve what, to him, is an engineering problem: how to eliminate - or, in his view, liberate - as many workers in car factories as technologically possible. Late last year, I visited him at Guchi headquarters on the western outskirts of Shanghai. Next to the head office are several warehouses where Guchi's engineers tinker with robots to fit the specifications of their customers. Chen, an engineer by training, founded Guchi in 2019 with the aim of tackling the hardest automation task in the car factory: "final assembly", the last leg of production, when all the composite pieces - the dashboard, windows, wheels and seat cushions - come together. At present, his robots can mount wheels, dashboards and windows on to a car without any human intervention, but 80% of the final assembly, he estimates, has yet to be automated. That is what Chen has set his sights on. As in much of the world, AI has become part of everyday life in China . But what most excites Chinese politicians and industrialists are the strides being made in the field of robotics, which, when combined with advances in AI, could revolutionise the world of work.

The Download: The Pentagon's new AI plans, and next-gen nuclear reactors Plus: The OpenClaw frenzy has led to a new Nvidia product. The Pentagon plans to set up secure environments for generative AI companies to train military-specific versions of their models on classified data, MIT Technology Review has learned. AI models like Anthropic's Claude are already used to answer questions in classified settings, including for analyzing targets in Iran. But allowing them to train on and learn from classified data is a major new development that presents unique security risks. It would also bring AI firms closer to classified data than ever before. What do new nuclear reactors mean for waste?

Plus: China has approved the world's first commercial brain chip. Where OpenAI's technology could show up in Iran OpenAI has controversially agreed to give the Pentagon access to its AI. But where exactly could its tech show up, and which applications will its customers and employees tolerate? There's pressure to integrate it quickly with existing military tools. One defense official revealed it could even assist in selecting strike targets. OpenAI's partnership with Anduril, which makes drones and counter-drone technologies, adds another hint at what is to come.

China's People's Armed Forces Maritime Militia deployed thousands of fishing vessels in coordinated formations that could disrupt global shipping lanes, analysts warn.

China's OpenClaw Boom Is a Gold Rush for AI Companies Hype around the open source agent is driving people to rent cloud servers and buy AI subscriptions just to try it, creating a windfall for tech companies. George Zhang thought OpenClaw could make him rich, even though he didn't really understand how the viral AI agent software worked. But he saw a video of a Chinese social media influencer demonstrating how it could be deployed to manage stock portfolios and make investment decisions autonomously. Zhang, who works in cross-border ecommerce in the Chinese city of Xiamen, was intrigued enough that he decided to try installing OpenClaw in late February. Zhang is one of the many people in China who got swept up in the craze over OpenClaw recently.