Techmeme
September 21, 2026, 8:10 AM

Top News

Li Yuan / New York Times:
As Xi Jinping visits DC, Chinese economists warn that Beijing is pouring too many resources into AI, which creates few jobs, and is doing little for the economy  —  “The U.S. Lead Over China in AI Is All But Gone.”  “China Is AI-Maxxing.”  “China Just Erased America's AI Lead.”
Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:
Scott Bessent says the US proposed an AI incident notification mechanism to China, and both sides agreed to set up an AI dialogue ahead of the Trump-Xi summit  —  Treasury secretary says sides working towards ‘shared vision’ after talks with Chinese counterpart
Ezra Klein / New York Times:
After hacking incidents and the industry's existential risk warnings, we need a regulatory ban on RSI, as competition drives unchecked autonomous acceleration  —  There's a chasm right now between how artificial intelligence feels to most of us who use it and how A.I. feels out at the experimental frontier of the technology.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Pacing the frontier may be sincere, but it would also be strategically useful for frontier AI labs to have time to reduce overhangs caused by model advancement  —  There has been, over the last week, what I think is a healthy debate about the philosophy and psychology that undergirds the views …
Elizabeth Chamberlain / iFixit News:
iPhone 18 Pro teardown: its SoC now sits outside the logic board for better cooling, the variable aperture is thoughtfully designed but hard to repair, and more  —  The iPhone 18 Pro's little mechanical pupil is irresistible.  A bunch of moving parts make for a good excuse to put our brand new camera under the microscope.
Politico:
A detailed recap of the White House's 19-day standoff with Anthropic, where a jailbreak dispute led officials to bluntly order Dario Amodei to take Fable down  —  On the evening of April 6, an unusual request began making its way from Washington to some of Wall Street's most powerful executives.
Olivia Fletcher / Bloomberg:
Ireland's DPC fines Google €403M over how it processed location data after complaints from European consumer rights groups, and gives it six months to comply  —  Ireland's media watchdog has fined Alphabet Inc.'s Google over how the tech company processed location data after complaints …
Financial Times:
Big Tech is increasingly using residual value guarantees for off-balance sheet AI spend, giving Nvidia and Broadcom a way to support their customers' purchases  —  Wall Street finds new way to turn tech giants' credit strength into cheaper funding for AI build-out
prinz:
A researcher used GPT-6 Astra to decipher a WWI German radio transmission from 1918, one of the 50 famous unsolved ciphers listed on a German science blog  —  Scienceblogs.de, a German science blogging portal, includes a relatively famous list of 50 unsolved ciphers, which range …
Steve LeVine / The Information:
Eric Schmidt-founded Perennial and eight other drone startups plan to split US DoD orders for 60,000 drones in a competition that requires no China-made parts  —  Last month, the Pentagon threw up its arms in frustration (metaphorically speaking) when most of the drone startups in competition …
Subrat Patnaik / Bloomberg:
Filing: Oura is seeking to raise up to $2.2B in its US IPO, marketing 50M shares at $40 to $44 each, giving it a $14.1B valuation at the top of its range  —  Health and fitness ring-maker Oura Inc. and some of its backers are seeking to raise as much as $2.2 billion in an initial public offering.
Newley Purnell / Bloomberg:
Data Center Watch: 45 US data center projects valued at $68B were blocked or delayed by local opposition between April and June, or 50%+ of large developments  —  Opposition to data centers continues to mount in the US.  —  That's according to research group Data Center Watch …

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Featured Podcasts

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Earlier Picks

Qwen:
Truman Dickerson / Business Insider:
Josipa Majic Predin / Forbes:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: