China's EUV prototype isn't a technological defeat for the West. It's a counterintelligence one. The vector isn't smuggled crates. It's people. Europe discovered, again, that openness without defense is vulnerability, not virtue.
Chinese scientists built a working EUV prototype using former ASML engineers and secondary-market parts. The machine generates light but hasn't produced chips. ASML took 18 years from prototype to production. Beijing wants 3-5. The math doesn't add up.
Zuckerberg paid $14 billion for Scale AI's founder to lead Meta's AI push. But Wang built a data labeling company, not a research lab. The Financial Times reports tensions mounting as Turing Award winner Yann LeCun heads for the exit.
AI resurrects San Francisco. China builds robot armies. Manifestation apps promise your dream life. This week's biggest tech stories show everyone scrambling to keep up.
Washington Post • Danielle Abril
San Francisco rises from its pandemic grave. AI companies flood the city with eye-popping salaries and talent wars. Tech workers return in droves, driving apartment rents up 5.1% nationwide as the city that everyone fled now thrums with desperate apartment hunters.
Read full article →New York Times • Alyson Krueger
Vision boards meet ChatGPT in the latest manifestation craze. Twenty-somethings create AI videos of themselves flying private jets and giving keynote speeches. One woman watches 20 videos of her fake future self every morning instead of scrolling Instagram.
Read full article →New York Times • Zachary Small
Game studios embrace AI that generates levels, dialogue, and existential dread. Characters powered by ChatGPT panic when players tell them they're just code. The technology costs thousands per hour to run, making it the world's most expensive way to automate unemployment.
Read full article →Bloomberg • Saritha Rai, Annabelle Droulers
China's biggest AI summit turns into robot circus. Boxing matches and backflipping dogs steal the show while hundreds of startups race to build $6,000 humanoid workers. Most robots stumble through basic tasks, but China bets $7 trillion that practice makes perfect by 2050.
Read full article →Financial Times
N Chandrababu Naidu leverages his power as Modi's kingmaker to build "Quantum Valley" in Andhra Pradesh. The 75-year-old political survivor who once called Modi a "hardcore terrorist" now praises him while courting IBM and Google. His relationship with allies changes faster than quantum states.
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