Tag: china

Anthropic Moves To Shut Loopholes Letting Chinese Tech Firms Access Claude

Days after the Commerce Department lifted three-week-old export controls on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos AI models over national security concerns, a new report says the company is moving to close loopholes that have allowed Chinese firms to access its most advanced models.

The Financial Times cites people familiar with the matter who say Chinese companies, such as Ant Financial, used overseas subsidiaries, cloud providers, and internal corporate networks to access AI chatbots such as Claude Code.  

To note, Alibaba owns about one-third of Ant Financial. Alibaba was recently blacklisted by the US Government over concerns that it was effectively an arm of the Chinese military.

Ant reportedly provided employees with corporate Claude accounts routed through its Singapore-linked intranet, while ByteDance employees have used VPNs and expense reimbursements for personal Claude subscriptions.

The workarounds do not appear to violate US or Chinese law, but they breach Anthropic’s terms of service, which ban Chinese companies and Beijing-controlled foreign entities from using its models.

Anthropic said it prohibits access from unsupported regions, including China, and continuously updates enforcement systems to detect evasion.

FT provided more details on its crackdown:

As part of its efforts to crack down on unauthorised access, Anthropic has targeted “transfer station” services, which relay requests from users in mainland China through Claude accounts registered overseas before returning the responses.

However, larger Chinese AI groups generally avoid transfer stations because the services’ operators are widely suspected of storing or reselling prompts. Executives worry rivals could analyse those requests to understand how they are using advanced models to improve their own systems.

What’s ironic is that a company behind one of the world’s most advanced coding models apparently failed to build the proper guardrails needed to keep Chinese firms from accessing it, even as it works to close those loopholes.

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Protester Sets Himself on Fire Outside UN Headquarters in New York City

A protester set himself ablaze outside the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan on Thursday evening.

The man planted a Tibetan flag on the sidewalk near East 42nd Street and First Avenue before igniting himself in full view of UN surveillance cameras.

Authorities recovered signs and papers at the scene reading “China Out of Tibet.”

An NYPD officer was photographed holding one of the signs as emergency crews rushed to the scene.

The protester was transported to Bellevue Hospital with severe burns and was later pronounced dead.

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Self-Exiled Chinese Billionaire Guo Wengui Sentenced To 30 Years In U.S. Prison For Massive Fraud – “Let’s Take Down The CCP!”

Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese billionaire and vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Monday for orchestrating a sprawling financial fraud that prosecutors say defrauded more than 1,000 victims worldwide of hundreds of millions of dollars.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the sentence in a Manhattan courtroom filled with Guo’s supporters. She described how Guo preyed on investors who hoped to support democracy in China, using their money to fund a lavish lifestyle while showing no remorse, wrote Politico.

“You took advantage of people’s dreams,” Torres said, adding that Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.”

Before sentencing, Guo, also known as Miles Guo or Ho Wan Kwok, complained about his treatment in custody. He told the court through an interpreter that he had been ill and needed medical attention earlier that day. He briefly defended himself, saying his only goal in coming to the United States was “to destroy the CCP.”

The judge ordered Guo to forfeit $889 million in restitution. Victims who wrote to the court described losing life savings, suffering severe anxiety, and facing family shame over the failed investments.

One victim who testified at trial, Wei Chen, told the judge that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and that of her family.

From tycoon to fugitive

Guo fled China about a decade ago and rebranded himself in the U.S. as a prominent critic of the Chinese government. He cultivated ties with American conservatives, most notably forming a close alliance with political strategist Steve Bannon. In 2020, the two announced plans to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.

Before his arrest in 2023, Guo lived extravagantly in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, owned yachts, race cars, and designer goods, and was a member of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Prosecutors said Guo raised more than $1 billion from investors between 2018 and 2023 through fraudulent schemes involving his media company GTV Media Group, the Himalaya Farm Alliance, and the Himalaya Exchange. Much of the money allegedly went to support his opulent lifestyle rather than the promised projects.

A federal jury convicted him on nine of 12 counts after a seven-week trial, added Politico.

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Senate Farm Bill Defunds USDA Animal Labs in China, Russia, and Other Adversarial Nations in Response to White Coat Waste Investigations

The Senate’s newly released version of the 2026 Farm Bill includes White Coat Waste-backed language that prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from funding animal research laboratories in China, Russia, and other adversarial nations.

The provision, led by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, appears as Section 7130 on page 495 of the bill and marks a major step toward protecting American taxpayers from subsidizing cruel and wasteful experiments in foreign laboratories.

Section 7130, titled “Limitation on certain research in countries of concern,” bars the Secretary of Agriculture, acting through the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, from conducting or funding any research, education, or extension activities involving vertebrate animals in “the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, or any other foreign country of concern.”

The restriction applies to work done in those countries or in collaboration with them.

A narrow waiver will be available on a case-by-case basis only when necessary for national security, animal or crop health, or public health, safety, or welfare, but any waiver requires at least 30 days’ advance notification to congressional committees with detailed justification, including the location, collaborators, species of animals involved, costs, and duration.

This follows years of White Coat Waste investigations that uncovered shocking examples of USDA money flowing to dangerous animal experiments abroad.

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Montana Puts Behavioral Health Reform in China‑Linked Hands and a Boy Ends Up with Traumatic Brain Injury

Montana’s lawmakers promised a historic fix. With a $300 million behavioral health investment and a high‑priced consulting firm, the State’s lawmakers said they would “transform” and “mend” a system that had failed vulnerable people for years. Behind that language was a decision AbleChild flagged from the start: the state handed the redesign of its behavioral health system to Alvarez & Marsal, a private firm with business ties in China, instead of building transparent, accountable capacity in Montana. That choice was not a technical detail. It was the blueprint for what would count as “reform.”

A $300 Million “Mend” That Left a 13‑Year‑Old in a Hospital Bed

While consultants and state lawmakers talked about strategy and transformation, the state continued quietly sending children to Provo Canyon School in Utah, for-profit residential psychiatric and behavioral facility with a long history of complaints and abuse allegations. Montana has paid Provo Canyon roughly $26 million over the last decade, proving this was a pipeline, not a one‑off placement.

Then a 13‑year‑old Montana boy allegedly suffered a traumatic brain injury at Provo Canyon. Families, backed by Paris Hilton, have now taken the facility to court, alleging delays and failures in his care. Only after that catastrophic harm did Montana officials suspend new referrals to the facility.  This is what “mend” looks like in practice: a child badly injured in a facility the state has patronized for years, and reform arriving only after the fact.

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The China Question No One in Power Wants to Ask

The China connection is not about Provo Canyon being a Chinese institution. It is about who Montana chose to trust with redesigning its behavioral health system and how it impacts national security and vulnerable children.

Alvarez & Marsal is a global consulting firm that does business in and with China. Montana’s decision was to pay that firm, at hundreds of dollars an hour, help steer how a $300 million “Future Generations” behavioral health investment would be structured and spent. That included advising on the overall continuum of care, financing strategies, and the shape of state services.

At a minimum, the choice raises a basic question the public deserves answered: why would any American state outsource the redesign of its already failing behavioral health system to a consulting firm tied to China, instead of building transparent, accountable capacity at home? If the result of that choice is a polished reform narrative on paper and a child with a brain injury in real life, then the outsourcing model—not just its implementation—has to be on trial.

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Is Taiwan’s President Playing With Political Fire?

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te (William Lai) appears to be missing signs from multiple sources that he lacks both international and domestic support for pursuing a more assertive policy regarding the island’s de facto independence.  Taipei heavily depends on two protectors, Japan and the United States, for firm political support against Beijing’s periodic bullying tactics.  In the event of a military crisis, Taiwan would be even more reliant on those two powers for armed defense.

However, Tokyo and Washington seem to be moving in opposite directions with respect to their longstanding, albeit informal, security commitment to Taipei.  With the Liberal Democratic Party’s landslide election victory in February 2026, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi received a popular mandate for a more hardline policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) regarding Taiwan and other issues.  The election outcome reinforced her already strong personal preference.

The trend in the United States appears to be quite different.  Throughout his first term, President Donald Trump was one of Taiwan’s strongest backers, both diplomatically and militarily.  Indeed, by the end of his term, U.S. security ties with Taiwan were the strongest they had been since Washington switched formal diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

But Trump has embraced a noticeably more cautious stance on the Taiwan issue since the start of his second term.  The administration’s discontent with Taipei’s trade and investment policies were especially evident.  Even as president-elect, Trump had accused the Taiwanese government of illegally discriminating against American firms, especially in the arena of advanced computer chips and other cutting-edge electronics.  He also continued to hector Taipei to assume a greater share of the financial burden of Taiwan’s own defense instead of continuing to free ride on U.S. military exertions.  The incoming president appeared to be more than a little annoyed at Washington’s longstanding client.

Indeed, Trump seems to regard stable and cooperative bilateral relations with the PRC as a significantly higher priority than Washington’s relations with Taipei.  That became quite evident during and immediately after the May 2026 summit between Trump and PRC President Xi Jinping.  Xi cautioned his counterpart not to let the United States become too supportive of Taiwan and allow Lai’s government to pursue reckless initiatives.  The adverse consequences of such excessive tolerance, the PRC leader emphasized, could be most unfortunate.  Noticeably, Trump did not push back with defiant rhetoric stressing Washington’s longstanding firm support for Taipei.  Instead, shortly after the summit, he explicitly warned Lai not to push the envelope regarding formal independence.

Hawkish analysts in the United States, led by former national security adviser John Bolton and the editors of the Wall Street Journal, openly accused Trump of insufficient support for Taiwan.  They pressured the administration to accelerate U.S. arms sales to Taipei and increase the quantity and quality of the weapons in future aid packages.

Not only does Lai’s government need to be uneasy about firmness of the Trump administration’s security commitment to Taiwan, but also domestic support for a more conciliatory policy toward Beijing appears to be rising.  The Kuomintang Party (KMT), the principal opposition to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is increasingly vocal in calling for a less risky approach to cross-strait relations.  Not surprisingly, Beijing is enthusiastically encouraging that trend.  PRC officials repeatedly remind the Taiwanese people that tensions were far milder during the administration of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s last KMT president, who governed the island from 2008 to 2014.  During his administration, cross-strait trade and tourism soared and the two capitals signed numerous agreements.

Beijing’s attempt to revive that cooperative atmosphere was evident when Xi and other prominent PRC figures accorded KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wun an extremely cordial reception during her April 2026 visit to the mainland.  Cheng reciprocated with a highly conciliatory tone during her interview with the South China Morning Post the following month.  She explicitly contrasted the calm years experienced during Ma’s presidency with the acute tensions characterizing Lai’s administration.  During the former period, Cheng stated, “cross-strait relations were characterized by very friendly exchanges and were entirely free of major issues. At that time, we enjoyed significant space for international participation.” In contrast, “the nearly 10 years that followed have seen cross-strait relations rapidly deteriorate to the point of a perilous and dreadful prospect of war. This has created a sense of extreme danger, with the situation appearing to be on the verge of a breakout.”

Her strong implication was that a new KMT presidency would resume the cooperative policies that Ma had pursued.  Indeed, the KMT has already seized multiple opportunities to thwart Lai’s policy agenda.  As part of a broader opposition coalition that controls the national legislature, the party has scored some significant successes.

Taiwan is deeply divided politically.  Lai and his pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have a strong, vocal cadre of supporters.  But other Taiwanese people have become very uneasy about the surge of military tensions in the Taiwan Strait that has typified the last 6 years of DPP rule.  Restless Taiwanese voters may seek a return to the less confrontational style of the KMT.

The overall situation is murky.  One point is clear, however.  Lai lacks a strong domestic mandate to continue his confrontational posture toward Beijing.  Nor does he seem to have a united front between Japan and the United States in favor of his policies.  Tokyo may back him, given Takaichi’s attitude, but the Trump administration’s waffling raises major questions about Washington’s stance.  Lai would be wise to beat a tactical political retreat and seek to make the Taiwan issue as quiescent as possible during the remainder of his term.

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Hollywood Libs Pour Love on Beijing, Tout China as ‘First Petro-Zero Economy,’ But Facts Show Different Story

It’s hardly a new phenomenon, sadly, when Hollywood stars kiss up to China. Usually, they don’t even try to bother letting facts get in the way.

Ah, but that’s where Edward Norton and Ted Danson went wrong. The “Fight Club” and “Cheers” star decided to simp for Beijing’s energy policy on the latter’s podcast this week, with the two libs declaring that China was on its way to being the “first petro-zero economy.”

The problem there: Not only is China not there yet, it’s the world’s biggest carbon-emitter and its largest user of coal, and it’s only getting worse.

But, you know, other than that…

Norton, apparently not terribly bright without imaginary friend Brad Pitt along with him, was the one who made the “first petro-zero economy” quote in a condemnation of “American exceptionalism,” because apparently exceptionalism equals renewables, or something.

“They are going to be the first electro-superpower,” he said of China.

“Which we could have been,” Danson interjected. “And now we’re going to have to buy it from them when this [Donald Trump] goes away and we come to our senses. We won’t have that industry like China does.”

Norton agreed.

“And by the way, it’s both sides of the aisle,” Norton said. “In the state of California, we have now the most regressive policy toward residential solar, distributed solar collection, and storage… but even under Gavin Newsom.”

Of course, this is because you can’t build a millimeter of air in California without 62 different permits, and you basically can’t change a lightbulb without changing a law, but one digresses. When the People’s Republic of Sacramento is being brought forth as an argument as to why centrally planned Chinese energy policy is kicking our butts, it’s hard to take you seriously.

As Norton went on to point out, “This is a state that should be energy independent… This is a state that should have gigawatts of residential distributed solar.”

To be fair, he gives both Florida and Texas — under Republican governors — credit for getting stuff done. But then he says that “if you get to travel” to other places — assumedly like China — you get to see that stuff can get done on green energy.

“We have this enduring narrative of American exceptionalism, like of, America’s ‘alpha,’ of America’s cultural superiority,” a rambling Norton said.

“And the question is, and I don’t think people fully grasp the degree to which we’re going to ghettoize ourselves as an energy state, in terms of education, in terms of health. We’re not anywhere near the top of what other people are experiencing. And if we embrace this idea of pride in regression, where is that going to take us? It’s not going to take us into a place that we’re happy about for our kids.”

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China’s Expanding Biological Warfare Capabilities: Fueled by Military-Civil Fusion and AI

U.S. intelligence assessments warn that China is combining artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and military-civil fusion in ways that could significantly expand its biological warfare capabilities.

The United States government has long assessed that China operated an offensive biological weapons program from the early 1950s through at least the late 1980s. Two facilities in Beijing and Lingbao City, according to the State Department, weaponized ricin, botulinum toxin, anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia during that period. China acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention on November 15, 1984, which prohibits the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

Beijing has consistently maintained it has never possessed such weapons and is in full compliance. The State Department’s position, however, is that China likely continued operating an offensive program after signing the convention and that the earlier program was never verified as dismantled, a requirement the treaty imposes on all signatories. Beijing canceled a bilateral BWC-related meeting with Washington in early 2022 and has declined to provide the treaty’s required disclosures.

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Sen. Rand Paul: ‘Without Question’ Fauci Directed U.S. Funds to Wuhan for Gain-of-Function Research

“Without question” former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci directed U.S. tax dollars to the Wuhan lab in China, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.

Paul discussed the recent announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of evidence that Fauci lied to Congress and directed U.S. funding for gain-of-function research linked to Big Pharma’s pursuit of “universal vaccines.”

Referring to the 120 biolabs in 30 countries (including Ukraine) for which Gabbard revealed “new evidence of longstanding United States government funding,” Paul said, “What I specifically want to know is what exactly the experiments are, because the establishment, the defenders of Anthony Fauci, said this is just a vaccination program for brucellosis for cows.”

“I don’t know. It seems like there might be more there. Why are we doing this in 30 different countries? Why are we doing this in countries that have wars going on? You know, it’s spread throughout a lot of places that you would think on a normal day would be at risk for some kind of military overthrow or having these pathogens released. So I think the real answer is going to be in the details of what the experiments are,” the senator said.

Paul said Fauci and his allies, however, argue that it is not gain-of-function research.

“People need to realize that this experimentation is so dangerous, and often farmed out to third world countries in obscure places — because here we have more scrutiny, and here people would be going, you know, not only are they torturing beagles, or whatever they do in Tunisia — they may also be doing research with viruses, creating viruses that don’t exist in nature, and then running them through animal models that have human lungs, and training the virus to be more adaptable to humans, which is what we think happened with COVID,” he said, describing these as “incredibly dangerous experiments” that “don’t have any value.”

“We’ve never really produced any kind of vaccine or any treatment from them. And making an animal virus into a human virus is not that hard to do, but we certainly shouldn’t be funding it,” he said.

When asked about the claim that Fauci “directed U.S. taxpayer dollars to gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China,” Paul replied, “Without question, he did.”

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Is This Beijing’s 9/11 Moment?

The Chinese Communist Party has always insisted its leaders are humble servants of the people. Selfless. Frugal. Living only to serve the masses. Xi Jinping’s father tended pigs in one of Mao’s campaigns. Xi himself spent years in a cave. (We’re all the heroes of our own origin story.)

But soon, the world may get the truth.

A U.S. intelligence law now requires the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense to produce a report and post it publicly online before December 2026. It will detail the personal wealth, financial holdings, and business interests of Xi Jinping and the rest of the Politburo Standing Committee. And not just the top seven. The full Politburo. The 25 most powerful communists on Earth. Their fortunes will laid out for everyone to see.

Here’s why that matters. A 2024 Congressional Research Service report already estimated Xi’s family had amassed at least $376 million in investments, including an indirect 18% stake in a rare-earth company worth more than $311 million, plus roughly $707 million in hidden wealth tucked among relatives. Most of it was parked with his sister, her husband, and their daughter. Funny how that works.

And that’s the lowball estimate. Back in 2012, the New York Times documented $2.7 billion in hidden riches held by the family of then-Premier Wen Jiabao. China’s response? It blocked the Times’ website for years, an action that I think proved that the report was definitely totally baseless.

But I mean, so what if Xi Jinping’s family is worth over a billion dollars, right? Doesn’t America have its own billionaire leader? One who’s absolutely not ashamed to brag about how “really rich” he is?

Yes, but it’s not the same. Not when Xi Jinping claims to be a humble servant of the people. At least Trump never claimed that.

A China commentator called this wealth the Communist Party’s “Achilles’ heel.” And he’s right. The CCP’s entire claim to legitimacy rests on the fiction that its leaders are humble men of the people. The whole con collapses the second ordinary Chinese citizens see how staggeringly rich their “servants” really are.

Which brings us to the catch. The intelligence community has dragged its feet on this same thing before: This report was supposed to be published a year ago, and it was. And IT SUCKED. It was released in March 2025 (shortly after Trump took office), and it was only four pages long. It barely mentioned Xi Jinping, and didn’t try to dig very hard into the investments he’d supposedly divested from. Very disappointing.

So will the real report actually land in December? Will it have teeth? Or will it be four more pages of stuff people already knew?

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