At a location he keeps secret, John Honovich was on his laptop, methodically scouring every link on a website for a conference half a world away. Hikvision, the world's largest security camera manufacturer, was hosting the event--the 2018 AI Cloud World Summit--in its hometown of Hangzhou, a city of about 10 million people not far from Shanghai. Honovich, the founder of a small trade publication that covered video surveillance technology, wanted to find out what the latest Hikvision gear could do. He zeroed in on one section of the conference agenda titled "Eco-Friendly, Peaceful, Relaxed" and found a description of an AI-powered system installed around Mount Tai, a historically sacred mountain in Shandong. A video showed Hikvision cameras pointed at tourists climbing the thousands of stone steps leading to the famous peak.

DJI, the world's largest drone manufacturer, has announced it is temporarily halting operations in Russia and Ukraine, in a rare example of a Chinese firm suspending business in response to the war in Ukraine. The Shenzhen-headquartered company said on Wednesday it would suspend its business in the two countries while "internally reassessing compliance requirements in various jurisdictions". DJI, which was founded in Hong Kong in 2006, added it was "engaging with customers, partners and other stakeholders regarding the temporary suspension," according to a company statement. Adam Lisberg, DJI's director of corporate communications for North America, told Al Jazeera the company had taken the action "not to make a statement about any country, but to make a statement about our principles". "DJI abhors any use of our drones to cause harm, and we are temporarily suspending sales in these countries in order to help ensure no one uses our drones in combat," Lisberg said.