Taiwan's opposition party is negotiating a deal with Xi Jinping to abandon independence claims and stop military preparations, betting that accommodation with China is safer than relying on an unpredictable Trump administration that's stretched thin by the Iran war and skeptical of defending distant allies.

• Taiwan's Nationalist Party, which controls Parliament, is blocking defense spending and has signaled willingness to accept Chinese sovereignty in exchange for preserved elections and autonomy, modeled loosely on Hong Kong's arrangement before Beijing dismantled its democracy.
• Trump has publicly questioned the value of defending Taiwan, called weapons sales a "negotiating chip" rather than a strategic commitment, and praised Xi as a friend—signaling the U.S. may not intervene if China moves militarily.
• A Chinese invasion would likely succeed within weeks without sustained U.S. resupply; early losses would exceed 20 years of Iraq-Afghanistan casualties, and the blockade would wipe trillions from global markets, yet Taiwan's population increasingly sees resistance as futile.

Rest of World's publisher visits China and finds the U.S.-China AI rivalry isn't as binary as it seems—both countries are pursuing different but equally serious paths, with China betting heavily on embedding AI into physical products and manufacturing rather than chasing raw computational power.

• China is pivoting toward deploying AI in robotics, EVs, and factories instead of competing for frontier model capability, partly due to U.S. chip export controls but also as a deliberate strategic choice.
• American export restrictions may be obsolete; China's real constraint is now high-quality data and interaction with the physical world, not compute power—meaning Washington's leverage is weaker than assumed.
• Both countries face genuine risks and trade-offs: the U.S. debates innovation versus regulation while China treats advanced AI as a national security asset, embedding it across the economy with minimal constraints on state surveillance or individual liberty.

Andreessen Horowitz is launching initiatives to deepen partnerships with allied nations, support its portfolio companies’ international growth, and attract new strategic investors. They’ve appointed Anne Neuberger to lead global technology and policy efforts, Raghu Raghuram to help growth companies scale abroad, and Jen Kha to build overseas partnerships, while continuing to fund top startups worldwide.

• A16z appointed Anne Neuberger (ex-defense/intel official) as GP to lead a new push into AI, robotics, defense, cybersecurity and supply-chain partnerships tied to national security.
• Managing partner Raghu Raghuram will personally help growth-stage portfolio companies expand abroad by opening doors to presidents, top buyers and influencers.
• Jen Kha has rebranded Investor Relations into a "Global Partnerships" team targeting sovereign wealth funds and strategic institutions, not just traditional LPs.
• The firm has already made over 100 investments outside the U.S. and just opened a Tokyo office as part of a three-year international expansion effort.

AI capabilities are advancing exponentially while policy and legislation lag years behind, creating a dangerous gap. This article argues for binding, FAA-style regulation of frontier models, plus updates to tax, innovation, social power balance, and geopolitical strategies to keep pace.

• AI capabilities went from barely coherent code to handling most software work at top AI firms in four years, tracking scaling laws that predict continued exponential gains
• Frontier models already pose real threats to cybersecurity, finance, critical infrastructure and national security (e.g. the Claude Mythos Preview breach), with bio and autonomy risks likely next
• Voluntary disclosure and optionality-preserving measures (transparency rules, export controls) are no longer sufficient given these demonstrated risks
• Anthropic will back binding federal pre-deployment testing requirements for frontier AI plus job-displacement policy, modeled on an FAA-style certification and audit system, building on early state laws like California's SB 53, New York's RAISE act and Illinois's SB 315

This post lists nine key quotes from a San Francisco talk by Demis Hassabis and Sebastian Mallaby covering everything from OpenAI’s 50% bankruptcy risk to the need for new “AlphaFold” moments in drug discovery. They debate AGI probabilities, frontier cyber defense access, global AI optimism, and the economic and philosophical challenges of a post-scarcity future.

• Mallaby puts a 50% chance OpenAI goes bankrupt within 18 months
• Hassabis says six more AlphaFold-level breakthroughs are needed to cut drug-delivery timelines from 10 years to months
• Hassabis calls the idea that p(doom) is zero "crazy," acknowledging real existential risk from AI
• Hassabis argues economists, social scientists, and philosophers must join scientists in shaping decisions about how AI's value gets shared

Global supply chains have become fragile—any blockage, tariff or conflict can halt production and spike costs. Proxima offers a searchable database of nearby industrial suppliers to help companies switch from distant, fragile routes to resilient regional partnerships.

• Proxima is a $150/user/month SaaS that indexes North American suppliers to help companies replace fragile long-distance supply chains with regional ones.
• Its edge is data scale—scraping government contracts, import/export records, and reviews to build a database legacy players like Thomasnet can't easily replicate.
• It uses free tools (a "Supply Chain Fragility Calculator," niche SEO landing pages, an open-sourced Python scraper) to attract engineering teams and build credibility.
• Built on FastAPI/Next.js with BeautifulSoup/Scrapy scraping, Pandas processing, and PostgreSQL full-text search.