Law of unintended consequences comes for China chip export ban - Asian Tech Roundup

Plus: Australia weighs up how to enforce under-16s social media ban

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we examine whether on/off export bans of high-performance chips to China have worked in the way their architects intended. We also look at how Australia plans to enforce a social media ban for under-16's.

Earlier this week, Tao Jingwen, a senior executive at Huawei, which has been blacklisted by the US since 2019, boasted of building “an ecosystem entirely independent of the United States”. The Chinese cloud giant Alibaba has also developed a new chip, which is reportedly better suited than its predecessors to AI inference.

Jensen Huang must have called his champagne buyer when Donald Trump lifted the export ban on Nvidia H20 semiconductors in July, but it isn’t clear that the anticipated surge in demand from China has occurred.

The goal of US chip export bans was to slow China’s progress down in the AI race by limiting their access to the chips required. What seems to have happened instead is that the lack of access simply spurred on Chinese companies to innovate faster and more creatively than their US counterparts. We saw it with the launch of DeepSeek earlier in the year.

Whether this illustration of the law of unintended consequences causes the US to undergo sober assessment of the ongoing effectiveness of export bans and other forms of trade intervention remains to be seen.

The kids might be alright

Lots of UK policy makers took note of a report this week about how to enforce the rapidly incoming ban on social media for under-16s in Australia. The report found that no one method of age verification was perfect but that a blended approach should be reasonably effective in its aims.

Concerns remain about the rights to privacy of under-16s and the accuracy of age-verification technology. The ban is popular with parents in Australia, but the long-term wisdom of blocking all under-16s from accessing any social media, then presumably allowing a 16-year-old to access the full array of everything that is terrible about social media remains to be seen.

What is certain is that policy makers from around the world will be paying close attention as the ban comes into effect.

Australia

• A report from UK based Age Check certification Scheme commissioned by the federal government has found that there are a handful of different options for enforcing the social media ban for under-16s due to come into force this December. The report suggested a layered approach to avoid relying on a single method. Source
• Australia’s Western Sydney University has warned that data stolen last year has appeared on the dark web. Source
• Compliance company Safetrac is facing a media storm for monitoring the conversations of employees through their laptops without their prior knowledge or consent. Source
• Atlassian is to acquire The Browser Company, which makes AI-enhanced browsers, for $610. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes promises a “bold step forward in reimagining the browser for knowledge work in the AI era.” Source
• A lawyer has become the first in Australia to face professional sanctions for using (or rather misusing) AI in a court case. The AI tool generated false citations. Source

China

• China’s State Council has unveiled what it describes as its ‘AI Plus’ strategy. The strategy sets targets for the adoption of AI-powered devices across various industries – aiming for over 70% by 2027 and over 90% by 2030. The strategy cautions against a headlong rush into AI, but advocates a tailored, regional and industry specific approach. Source
• Tao Jingwen, a senior Huawei executive, has publicly lauded the US blacklisted company's building of "an ecosystem entirely independent of the United States”. Jingwen’s comments add further weight to the argument that US chip export restrictions, far from slowing China’s progression in AI, have facilitated the growth of leaner and more agile competitors. Source
• Alibaba has developed a new chip, much more suited than its predecessors to a range of inference tasks, according to The Wall Street Journal. Source
• In a boon to deepfakers everywhere, Alibaba Cloud announced an upgrade to its digital human generator. The tool can now generate high-quality animated videos from a single image and an audio clip. Source

India

• Global internet exchange operator DE-CIX India has become the first of its kind in the sub-continent to integrate Starlink into its infrastructure to bring high-speed internet access to areas where cabled digital infrastructure is difficult to deploy. Source
• OpenAI is searching for local partners to set up a datacentre in India with at least 1 gigawatt capacity. Open AI has said it plans to open its first India office in New Delhi later this year. Source
• Eight US and Indian venture capital and private equity firms have formed a coalition to back India’s deep tech startups, pledging more than $1 billion over the next decade to strengthen the US-India relationship when it comes to tech. The announcement comes at a time of increasingly chilly relations between the US and India, following the former’s imposition of 50% tariffs on Indian manufactured goods. Source
• Battery startup Offgrid Energy Labs has raised $15 million in Series A funding to scale up its production of ZincGel technologies, an alternative to lithium. Source

Japan

• Sony has revealed its “Green Managment 2030 plans which forms part of its wider 2035 net zero strategy. The 2030 goals are to slash absolute GHG emissions by focusing on renewable energy throughout the supply chain and carbon removal. Sony also plans a significant boost to circular economies and a reduction in single use plastic. Source
• Japanese cybersecurity vendor Hennge is seeking an expansion of its cybersecurity platform into North American SMBs via the US MSP channel, according to our sister publication CRN. Source
• Japan Post Bank will launch a digital yen by the end of fiscal year 2026, with the stated aim of making digital investing easier. Source

South Korea

• Shares in SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics dropped after the US revoked permissions to secure US semiconductor manufacturing equipment for their chip plants in China. Source
• A South Korean government agency has fined SK Telecom 134 billion won ($96.53 million) after the mobile carrier disclosed a cyberattack this year which compromised the data of approximately 27 million customers. Source
• Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S11 tablets this week. Source

Taiwan

• TSMC has blamed US tariffs and sanctions for planned price increases of up to 10% on advanced semiconductors in 2026, while it also faces new restrictions on its operations in China. Source
• TSMC told Reuters it wants to teach its suppliers and partners how to better manage their trade secrets to foster innovation. Source

Elsewhere in Asia

• Singapore: Singapore police have ordered Meta to crack down on advertisements, accounts, profiles and business pages impersonating key government office holders on Facebook to combat scams. It is the first order issued under Singapore's new Online Criminal Harms Act. Source
• Qatar: The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) has joined more than a dozen other investors in Anthropics’s latest $13 billion funding round, drawn by Anthropic’s perceived leadership in enterprise AI and code generation. Source