At the state dinner organized during U.S. President Donald Trump’s two-day visit to China, the guest list featured familiar American tech leaders like Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Jensen Huang — alongside an all-star lineup from China’s tech sector.
Seated beside the U.S. invitees were CEOs from Chinese companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo, and ByteDance. These are names that may be lesser-known in the U.S. but are deeply tied to the American tech ecosystem — from precision manufacturing for phones and laptops to leading one of the most popular apps in the U.S.
With topics like tariffs and AI on the table, Trump’s visit underscores how tightly the U.S. and China’s tech industries remain, despite competing on the global stage.
(Image source: CCTV)
A 20-story surveillance tower is about to go live in Ciudad Juárez, and it’s sharing intelligence with U.S. and Texas law enforcement.
In our latest podcast episode, investigative journalist José Olivares takes us inside Torre Centinela, the Sentinel Tower, a massive, dystopian structure that looms over both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez and is operated by a private Mexican corporation called Seguritech.
José toured the tower and dug through thousands of government records. He found a surveillance system growing rapidly with little oversight, and one where Juárez residents are voluntarily connecting their home cameras to the network in exchange for a promise of safety. But is that promise being kept?
We also discuss the recent scandal involving two CIA agents who died during an anti-drug operation with state law enforcement in Chihuahua.
🎙️ 🦂New episode out now at the borderchronicle.com linked in bio.
Governments around the world are rushing to regulate children’s access to social media. From Australia’s social media ban for minors to growing concerns around artificial intelligence, predators, privacy, and screen addiction, there is little global consensus on where the line should be drawn — or who should be responsible for drawing it.
At a Rest of World virtual event, Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, discussed what keeping children safe online actually looks like. He reflected on why blanket bans may backfire, how AI could improve moderation, and why parents are increasingly overwhelmed by digital life.
Head to the link in bio to read the full conversation.
✍️ Itika Sharma Punit, deputy editor
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Beijing this week amid the urgent geopolitical tensions surrounding the war in Iran and the status of Taiwan. The world’s two biggest economies are also likely to address a wide range of technology issues, from competition over artificial intelligence and access to advanced AI chips to the role of Chinese supply chains in American products.
Swipe through the slides for five tech issues that could be on the agenda as the two leaders meet.
✍️ Viola Zhou and Kinling Lo
Big Tech’s reliance on TSMC, the world’s top semiconductor manufacturer, makes the China-Taiwan dispute the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoint, writer Eyck Freymann told Rest of World ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned visit to China this week.
TSMC makes the majority of the advanced chips that power smartphones, electric vehicles, and the artificial intelligence race between the U.S. and China.
“The economic shock from a serious Taiwan disruption would dwarf anything we’ve seen in the postwar period,” says Freymann, a Hoover fellow at Stanford University, and author of a new book, Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War With China.
Head to the link in bio to read our full interview on the global tech industry’s dependence on Taiwan, and how chips might be on the agenda at the Xi-Trump meetings.
✏️ Rina Chandran, deputy editor
📍 San Francisco, USA
Last fall, Rest of World senior reporter @violatypes moved into Mark Zuckerberg’s old Los Altos house — a pale blue ranch home dubbed the Facebook House — which Elvis Wu, the primary tenant, had turned into a social gathering spot for the Chinese community in Silicon Valley. Viola was on a mission to better understand these young, talented, and intensely in-demand Chinese AI researchers who had installed themselves across the biggest tech companies.
Many of the top scientists were being courted like NBA stars. Stories circulated of a Chinese researcher being poached by Meta from Apple with a $200 million compensation package — only to be poached again by OpenAI. More and more Chinese names cropped up in lists of AI startup founders, as authors of influential machine learning studies, or as the architects behind Silicon Valley’s buzziest AI models.
Geopolitically, U.S.-China relations are at their lowest point in decades. But America’s AI boom has created an incredibly lucrative opportunity for these techies. Viola grew up alongside them, and wanted to know what their lives were like: Are they destined to become the next generation of Silicon Valley leaders?
Read her in-depth feature on the Chinese whiz kids of Silicon Valley at the link in our bio.
Art: @joannejooj
India’s Election Commission deployed a network of AI-enabled cameras to monitor polling booths live in West Bengal state on voting day. The devices were intended to flag unusual crowding or commotion, and alert security teams. On April 29, Rest of World visited six polling sites in the capital city of Kolkata, where voters had mixed reactions to the surveillance.
In the U.S., the use of AI cameras to monitor voting had previously been proposed by election deniers during the 2024 presidential polls. The announcement was met with backlash, and no devices are reported to have been installed.
Swipe through the slides for the full story.
✍️ @ananya.bhattacharya , with inputs from @pujabhatta
Much of the world is adopting the electric-vehicle technology the U.S. just banned.
On March 17, the U.S. banned any vehicle with Chinese software from its roads. Beginning with cars arriving at dealerships this July, every automaker selling in the U.S. must certify that its connected systems contain no Chinese-developed code.
Chinese EV companies are the market leaders in much of the world. BYD is the top-selling EV maker globally, outselling Tesla and Ford in many markets. The U.S.’ move in the opposite direction may cut off its automakers from the technology the rest of the world is adopting, analysts and industry executives told Rest of World.
✏️ Indranil Ghosh, editor
Last month, Anthropic said its new artificial intelligence model, Mythos Preview, had discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in “every major operating system and web browser.” About 40 tech firms and institutions have initial access to Mythos to bolster their systems, but these do not include most central banks and governments, leaving much of the rest of the world vulnerable, and dependent on companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google to secure their systems.
Access to Mythos is crucial because cyberattacks are surging worldwide. AI-enabled entities increased attacks by 89% in 2025 from a year earlier, according to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
“The rise of AI systems that are highly capable in cybersecurity poses a real challenge for companies and countries without many resources,” Nick Srnicek, a senior lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London, told Rest of World.
Read the full story at the link in our bio.
✏️ Rina Chandran, deputy editor
📍 San Francisco, USA
In March, Motorola’s India arm sued major companies and their platforms — Google, Meta, X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads — over more than 360 posts by users that allegedly portray its devices as unsafe. The American phonemaker has asked courts to order the removal of this content and also prevent similar posts from appearing in the future.
Such claims have circulated widely online for years. What sets this case apart is Motorola’s decision to name platforms as co-defendants rather than pursuing standard requests to take down specific posts.
The Indian government has been tightening online content regulations in recent years. Against this backdrop, the Motorola case could make platforms more likely to remove content quickly to avoid legal risk, digital rights experts told Rest of World.
"A civil defamation case like this has a similar chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression," said Jayshree Bajoria, Asia associate director at watchdog Human Rights Watch.
Read the full story at the link in our bio.
✍️ Ananya Bhattacharya, reporter
📍 Mumbai, India
Major U.S. hyperscalers running data centers in the Gulf to power apps and online services for millions of users are channeling data out of the war zone through fiber-optic cables that an Iraqi telecom has strung alongside crude-oil pipelines.
“Most if not all the hyperscalers” have bought capacity on the Iraqi route, Martin Frank, strategic adviser at IQ Networks, the company that built the network, told Rest of World.
“Hyperscalers” is the industry term for the companies — led by Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — which run data centers in almost 40 countries.
The data centers serve customers in more than 190 countries, processing transactions, storing files, and running applications for businesses and individuals from Latin America to South Asia. When Iranian drones struck Amazon’s facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on March 1, the effects spread across the region.
Read the full story at the link in our bio.
✏️ Indranil Ghosh, Middle East editor
📍 Abu Dhabi, UAE
South Korea wants to punish its biggest online retailer for a massive data leak. The U.S. is stepping in to shield Coupang, because even though it operates almost entirely in South Korea, it is registered as an American company.
Since last November, Coupang has been under fire after South Korean regulators found a former employee used a stolen security key to access personal information from 33.7 million accounts, about two-thirds of the population, over months without anyone noticing.
Fifty-four Republican lawmakers wrote to South Korea’s ambassador on April 20, accusing the country of a “whole-of-government assault” on Coupang after the data breach. The letter accused South Korea of unfairly raiding Coupang’s offices, imposing fines and tax audits, threatening to revoke its business license.
The dispute underscores a bigger question about who gets to regulate a company that dominates one country’s market while registered under another’s laws. For the U.S., the ability to shield Coupang — a New York Stock Exchange-listed company with significant American backing — signals how well it can protect its business interests on foreign soil.
Read the full story at the link in our bio.
✍️ Ananya Bhattacharya, reporter
