Techmeme: A look at Temu, Shein, Meituan, and other Chinese companies' expansion plans in Brazil, as they face slowing domestic demand and hurdles in the US and Europe (Meaghan Tobin/New York Times)

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Ellen Huet / Bloomberg:

A profile of Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, whose ties to influential people in the AI industry and the GOP could give Meta leverage over its competitors — Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang is such an enthusiastic networker that his former roommate — OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman …

More: CNBC, Wired, Y Combinator on YouTube, Wall Street Pit, and Yahoo Finance

X: @rileyraygriffin, @garrytan, @ycombinator, and @ellenhuet

Alex Heath / The Verge:

Sources: Mark Zuckerberg recently discussed buying Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab, but the talks didn't progress to the formal offer stage

More: CNBC, WinBuzzer, TechCrunch, Cryptopolitan, Entrepreneur, The Decoder, CTech, and The Economic Times. X: @kevinroose

John Sakellariadis / Politico:

Sources: the WH rejected DOD's proposal for the head of NSA and US Cyber Command, extending the agencies' leadership vacuum; Trump fired NSA's head in April — Army Lt. Gen. Richard Angle's name was put forward to lead the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

Bluesky: @ericjgeller.com and @mollymckew. Forums: r/politics

New York Times:

Microsoft suspending an ICC judge's email account raised alarms across EU about how dependent its governments, businesses, and citizens are on US tech companies — To comply with a Trump executive order, Microsoft recently suspended the email account of an International Criminal Court prosecutor …

More: Reuters and Cryptopolitan

Bluesky: @carnage4life, @ssk85760565, @johnquiggin, @glinden, @oracularhades.com, @quinnypig.com, @jake.sooscreek.productions, @wwahammy.com, @henrymance.ft.com, and @bencoates1

Mastodon: @bartgroothuis@mastodon.online and @quinn@social.circl.lu. X: @jonflan. LinkedIn: Marietje Schaake

Forums: Hacker News, r/BoycottUnitedStates, r/Economics, r/linux, and r/politics

Philip Stafford / Financial Times:

BitcoinTreasuries.net: about 130 publicly-listed companies currently hold a combined ~$87B in bitcoin, about 3.2% of all the bitcoins that will ever exist — Corporate treasuries now hold more than 3% of the world's biggest cryptocurrency, a stash worth $87bn

More: BitcoinTreasuries.net, Decrypt, and CoinDesk. Bluesky: @robertscotthorton

Jonathan Greig / The Record:

Insurance giant Aflac says a cybercrime group breached its systems and may have stolen data; source: the attack bears the hallmarks of Scattered Spider — Insurance company Aflac said a “sophisticated cybercrime group” breached its systems and may have stolen data.

Meaghan Tobin / New York Times:

A look at Temu, Shein, Meituan, and other Chinese companies' expansion plans in Brazil, as they face slowing domestic demand and hurdles in the US and Europe — Confronted with tariffs and scrutiny in the United States and Europe, Chinese consumer brands are betting that they can become household names …

More: [your]NEWS, Daily Caller News Foundation, The Detroit News, and The Business of Fashion

X: @producercities, @uklatinamerica, and @thalvox

Brian Flood / Fox News:

Docs: the FCC is probing USCTM, launched by the Biden administration as a voluntary safety label for IoT devices, over its administrators' alleged ties to China — Internal document reveals national security concerns over alleged Chinese ties to U.S. Cyber Trust Mark program administrators

More: PCMag, Reuters, and Bloomberg Law

Megha Rajagopalan / New York Times:

Experts say China-linked groups have repeatedly hacked Russian companies and government agencies in search of military secrets since the war in Ukraine began — Since the war in Ukraine began, analysts have monitored a series of intrusions aimed at stealing information about weaponry and warfighting.

More: Techdirt. Bluesky: @samspade1941 and @metacurity.com. Mastodon: @davidho@mastodon.world. LinkedIn: Isaac Stone Fish

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes:

A look at “Generative Engine Optimization” startups like Profound and Bluefish AI, which help businesses improve content to appear in AI search summaries — Businesses are scrambling to be cited in AI-generated answers on Google, Perplexity and ChatGPT.

More: TechRadar, Pocketables, and Social Signals

Bluesky: @glinden. LinkedIn: Rashi Shrivastava

Satviki Sanjay / Bloomberg:

Kantar: the share of Indians consuming media exclusively on mobile phones grew to 23% in Q1 2025, up from 15% in Q1 2023, as TVs stay unaffordable for many — The number of users who only use digital channels ballooned to 23% in the March quarter of 2025, according to market research firm …

X: @business

Francisco Rodrigues / CoinDesk:

Hackers briefly exploited a front-end vulnerability in CoinMarketCap's rotating doodles feature to inject fake “Verify Wallet” phishing pop-ups — Hackers exploited a vulnerability in CoinMarketCap's front-end system, using a seemingly harmless doodle image to inject malicious code …

More: Cryptopolitan and Crypto Briefing

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:

Huawei unveils a beta version of HarmonyOS 6, making it available to developers, and announces the HarmonyOS Agent Framework to help developers create AI agents — The tech giant did not give a public launch date for the latest version of the operating system, but said it will be more intelligent and open

More: Tom's Hardware

Alex Riehl / BetaKit:

Report: Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone buy out other investors in Assent for $400M, valuing the Ottawa-based supply chain software company at $1.3B — Company spokesperson denied that Assent had been acquired, but declined to break down post-deal ownership structure.

Source: Globe and Mail

South China Morning Post:

How Huawei has remained resilient in the face of US sanctions; Mizuho: about 700,000 units of Huawei's Ascend 910 series are expected to ship in 2025 — Huawei is expected to ship about 700,000 Ascend AI processors in 2025, according to Mizuho estimates — By Ann Caoin Shanghai and Wency Chenin Shanghai

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