2026 Issue 34

Multiple U.S. agencies issued a warning this week that nearly all PRC AI companies are stealing know-how from U.S. frontier labs through industrial scale distillation campaigns and recommending that the labs do more to protect themselves.  This begs the question of whether U.S. Government agencies should be doing more to protect American companies from these kinds of attacks that are clearly supported by the Chinese Communist Party.

While the U.S. and the PRC compete in artificial intelligence, the arms race in space between the two superpowers is accelerating as well.  U.S. News and World Report investigates what each country is doing and describes how space will be an important domain of conflict in any major military clash between the two.

Sam Cooper at The Bureau details how the PRC helps Iran gain access to advanced military technology from the United States through Canada.  For years, Iranians have used Canada as an entrepôt given its lack enforcement while the PRC has provided laundering services and financing.  The team at the outlet, Rest of the World, report on the six year effort by the Taiwanese Government to find and cut off PRC front companies operating in Taiwan that are trying to gain access to semiconductor manufacturing secrets.

The New York Times published an investigation into how a blacklisted PRC company with a footprint in the United States went on providing restricted semiconductors to the PRC by simply changing its name.