Donald Trump's support for data centers is key to winning the AI race against China. Solar power and battery storage offer fast, secure energy to meet soaring electricity demand.

Chinese robots have quickly entered global public consciousness in recent years, appearing as background robo-dancers in pop concerts and as humanoid marathon and sprint runners outpacing elite athletes ( 1). Domestically, robots are deployed as traffic guides and restaurant service staff, while swarms of drones entertain audiences in urban light shows or deliver takeout to high-rises ( 2, 3). These public debuts serve to both normalize automation in everyday civilian life ( 4) while projecting international soft power. Behind the public spectacle lies a bold agenda for global economic dominance. In its geopolitical contest with the United States, Beijing sees robotics as the core engine to project power and dictate the future of global supply chains ( 5).

Flock Once Touted Its Cameras as'Made in the USA.' Now It's Not So Clear Flock reveals little about where its license plate readers are assembled, but the answer could have geopolitical and cybersecurity implications. Flock CEO Garrett Langley has said the company made its first license plate cameras in his Atlanta home, permanently scratching his dining table with drill marks. A decade later, where the company assembles its signature--and fiercely debated --product has become more of a mystery. For years, Flock touted publicly that its devices were produced in the United States. But more recent marketing materials from the company reviewed by WIRED no longer specify where its cameras come from. One US manufacturer that previously identified Flock as a customer quietly removed a mention of the company from its website earlier this year as public backlash against the company's surveillance technology grew.

The burrito chain has enlisted Palantir for a platform that monitors pest incidents, employee illnesses, and other factors. The partnership comes after a nightmare summer for food safety across the US. Fast-casual burrito chain Chipotle is working with the data infrastructure giant Palantir . The company is working on a "food safety risk platform" hosted on Palantir's flagship software platform Foundry, according to screenshots viewed by WIRED. The platform appears to analyze factors like a store's health department scores, pest incidents, and employee illnesses to assign a food safety score--basically, the store's risk level.

Plus: Tens of millions of US and Canadian driver's licenses go up for sale on the dark web, the US military finally tries to tackle the risk online ad data poses to troops, and more. After reporting last week that the surveillance company Flock Safety is building an AI search tool for law enforcement, WIRED reconstructed Flock's latest search tool from code that the company sends to a police officer's browser and uncovered key details about how the tool works. OpenAI said this week that its Astra model, which will have a private release soon, is its first model with cybersecurity-related capabilities that the company defines as posing a "critical" risk in public release. Meanwhile, the AI chatbot platforms Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok all suffered outages on Thursday at nearly the exact same time. But while xAI said the Grok outage resulted from issues at a Memphis data center, the causes of OpenAI's and Anthropic's outages are unclear.

John Ternus takes over as Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence. One of his biggest challenges will be balancing the company's dependence on China while parrying acute political pressure from the White House. Ternus, 51, joined Apple's design team in 2001 and worked his way up to senior vice president of hardware engineering, reporting to Cook. He leads the engineering teams behind Apple's entire product lineup, including the iPhones that generate most of the company's revenue. He gets barely a week to settle in, with Apple holding its annual iPhone event on September 9, where it is expected to unveil its first foldable handset.

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Solid-state batteries are safer and more capable--but harder to mass-produce. They also represent an opportunity for non-Chinese companies to get back in the game. The field of lithium batteries is currently dominated by Chinese companies like BYD and CATL. Not only do they sell the majority of batteries that go into electric vehicles and energy storage projects worldwide, they're also opening up new factories in your backyard . When companies outside China try to compete, like Europe's Northvolt, they quickly realize how hard it is .

For all the constant buzz around AI, broad-based announcements about how AI has boosted profits are noticeably missing. The reason for this loud silence: it hasn't happened--yet. AI is not an immaterial vapor hovering above the economy. The models that will power future change run on a foundation of physical inputs: cables, turbines, chips, and copper. These are bought and sold all over the world.

The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China Global carmakers are facing a reckoning as US, European and Japanese brands lose ground to Chinese rivals setting the pace not only in electric vehicles, but also in batteries, design and software. The BBC visited factory floors in Beijing and Hefei on the sidelines of Auto China 2026 - the world's largest car show - and found striking levels of automation and software development speed, leaving foreign brands that once dominated the Chinese market struggling to keep up. We have no chance against this, Honda chief executive Toshihiro Mibe told Japanese media after visiting a highly automated factory in Shanghai. Ford chief executive Jim Farley has also warned that Western carmakers, are in a fight for our lives as Chinese rivals expand globally. After decades spent investing in joint ventures with Chinese partners to build vehicles, foreign carmakers are now changing the nature of those partnerships to stay competitive.