Exclusive: OpenAI flags China's global ambitions
OpenAI says Chinese competitor Zhipu AI is aggressively courting governments in developing countries, aiming to entrench Chinese AI systems ahead of Western rivals.
Why it matters: OpenAI and others argue that it's a must-win race between U.S. and China over whose technology will control a bot-filled world.
Driving the news: OpenAI says a company called Zhipu AI is trying to pitch governments looking to invest in AI on their services as an alternative to the OpenAI for Countries push that launched last month.
Zhipu AI is a foundation model developer that rivals DeepSeek with global ambitions, OpenAI says.
"While promoting the development of domestic large-scale model technology, we also hope to contribute China's AI power to the world," Zhipu AI Chairman Liu Debing said last week.
The company has backing from the Chinese government and from a unit of Saudi oil giant Aramco, which participated in the company's recent $400 million funding round.
Zoom in: OpenAI says its analysts have found that Zhipu is trying to make inroads in various countries in Asia and Africa.
"The goal is to lock Chinese systems and standards into emerging markets before US or European rivals can, while showcasing a 'responsible, transparent and audit-ready' Chinese AI alternative," the company said in a blog post.
OpenAI, meanwhile, has been pitching companies in the Middle East, Asia and other regions to partner on AI infrastructure. The company announced its first deal last month: a partnership with the United Arab Emirates to build a massive Stargate UAE data center in Abu Dhabi.
The big picture: The Trump Administration, tech leaders and others have positioned the battle over AI as the biggest of several must-win technology races, along with battles for leadership in semiconductors, quantum computing and alternative energy.
Through a series of executive orders, Trump has rolled back policies and regulations from the prior administration in favor of an approach focused on fostering U.S. supremacy.
"We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off, and we'll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies," Vice President J.D. Vance said at the Paris AI Action Summit in February.
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Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
The Iran-China-Russia Axis Crumbles When It Matters
As Israel and then the United States battered Iran this month, the reaction from China and Russia was surprisingly muted. For years, shared antagonism toward the U.S. has been pushing China, Russia, and Iran together. All three benefit from embarrassing the West in Ukraine and the Middle East, and widening the gaps between Washington and Europe. So after Israel's first strike, on June 13, China—the strongest partner in the anti-America triad—could have been expected to rush short-range missiles and other air-defense equipment to Iran. Surely, Beijing would use its growing diplomatic muscle to isolate Israel and the U.S., demand an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, and introduce a resolution deploring the two governments that were attacking China's ally. Instead, recent events in Iran have revealed that anti-Americanism can bind an alliance together only so much. After ritually denouncing Israel's first strike as 'b razen ' and a ' violation of Iran's sovereignty, ' Beijing proceeded cautiously, emphasizing the need for diplomacy instead of further assigning blame. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi refrained from condemning Israel's actions, in a call with his Israeli counterpart on June 14, and President Xi Jinping waited four days before calling for 'd e-escalation ' and declaring that 'China stands ready to work with all parties to play a constructive role in restoring peace and stability in the Middle East.' After Iran's parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, Beijing's foreign-affairs spokesperson stressed—in what looked like a warning to Iran —that the Persian Gulf is a crucial global trade route for goods and energy, and called for partners to 'prevent the regional turmoil from having a greater impact on global economic growth.' In calmer times, China, like Russia, is happy to use Iran as a battering ram against the U.S. and its allies. But when tensions turn into military confrontation and global stability is at risk, backing Iran looks like a far less sensible investment to Beijing than preserving its own economic and diplomatic relations with the West. China's mild reaction isn't just a blow to Iran; it may also suggest that the much ballyhooed 'no limits' partnership between Xi and Russia's President Vladimir Putin might not be as sturdy as Moscow and Beijing advertise. Iran, Russia, and China have different ideologies, political regimes, and strategic aims. Iran's relations with its two larger partners are wildly asymmetric. China, for example, is Iran's lifeline. It buys about 90 percent of Iran's oil and supplies materials and technologies central to Iran's weapons development. Yet the trading relationship matters less to China, which gets only about 10 percent of its oil from Iran. Plus, China has an economy more than 40 times as large, and it does far more business with the U.S. and the European Union. Russia has interests that similarly diverge from Iran's, and it, too, has conspicuously refrained from coming to the Islamic Republic's aid. But China following a similar approach toward Iran likely does not please Moscow. Although Moscow's relations with Beijing are less lopsided than Tehran's are, Russia's economy is still less than one-eighth the size of China's. One-third of Russia's state budget comes from oil sales, and China is the largest customer by far. Russia also depends on Chinese supplies for its war machine. This past March, the G7 foreign ministers called China a ' decisive enabler ' of Russia's war in Ukraine. But should the Kremlin begin to run out of money or soldiers, China's willingness to bail out its ally is very much in doubt. Even among authoritarian regimes, differences in values can limit cooperation. In 2023, Xi called Russia's 1917 October Revolution a 'cannon blast' that 'brought Marxism-Leninism to China, demonstrating the way forward and offering a new choice for the Chinese people who were seeking a way to save China from subjugation.' Putin, despite his formative years in the Soviet-era KGB, now laments the fall of the Russian empire and describes Vladimir Lenin's coup as the deed of 'political adventurists and foreign forces' who 'divided the country and tore it apart for selfish benefit.' The head of China's Communist Party may resent Putin's reduction of its Russian counterpart—the country's second-largest party—to the status of another bit player in Russia's rubber-stamping parliament. Since World War II, leaders of Western democracies have successfully collaborated in part because they have shared a common worldview. Whether Iran's Islamic theocrats can say the same about Xi, the leader of an avowedly atheist state, or Putin, who now positions himself as the champion of Orthodox Christianity, is another question entirely. Beijing's response to Iran's predicament ought to make the West feel cautiously optimistic. If Donald Trump finally learns to distinguish the aggressor from the victim—or at least realizes that Putin has been playing him—the U.S. president could support Ukraine in earnest without worrying much about China expanding its assistance to Russia. As long as both Iran and Russia keep providing cheap oil and antagonizing the West and its allies, they are serving China's purposes. But at least for now, Beijing looks unlikely to back either of its supposed partners if they jeopardize China's interest in stability or its extensive and profitable relations with the West.
WIRED
an hour ago
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I Let AI Agents Plan My Vacation—and It Wasn't Terrible
The latest wave of AI tools claim to take the pain out of booking your next trip. From transport and accommodation to restaurants and attractions, we let AI take the reins to put this to the test. Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Victoria Turk The worst part of travel is the planning: the faff of finding and booking transport, accommodation, restaurant reservations—the list can feel endless. To help, the latest wave of AI agents, such as OpenAI's Operator and Anthropic's Computer Use claim they can take these dreary, cumbersome tasks from befuddled travelers and do it all for you. But exactly how good are they are digging out the good stuff? What better way to find out than deciding on a last-minute weekend away. I tasked Operator, which is available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, with booking me something budget-friendly, with good food and art, and told it that I'd prefer to travel by train. 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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Warning signs emerge for Trump with independent voters
President Trump is seeing warning signs emerge from independent voters as his approval rating weakens with the key voting bloc. Trump's net approval among unaffiliated voters reached its lowest level of his second term on Tuesday, according to an aggregate from Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), with his disapproval rating surpassing 60 percent for the first time since he took office. This has accompanied a wider decline in his overall approval rating throughout June. The shifts among independents could be linked in particular to disapproval of Trump's handling of the economy, observers say. And they present an opportunity for Democrats as they struggle to rebuild their coalition heading into 2026 and beyond. 'Right now, the independents are the moving factor,' said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ. 'He's holding his base, and he's staying steady not liked by Democrats, and so that's kind of why you see it.' A significant improvement among independents compared to the 2020 race was one key part of Trump's victory in last year's election. While he and former Vice President Kamala Harris tied in this group, according to a report released Thursday from Pew Research Center, that was a net 9-point shift toward him compared to four years earlier. Trump's approval rating has been relatively steady among Democrats and Republicans, with his numbers mostly staying in the mid-to-low teens for the former and the 80s for the latter. But the percentage of independents approving of his performance has fluctuated notably more. Tranter noted the movement is still relatively small compared to what shifts occurred historically, and independents only account for a small percentage of voters. 'A 3-to-4 point movement among his base is worth roughly the movement we saw in the independents in terms of vote share,' he said. 'Basically, we got to see massive movements like that in independents to really move the vote share.' 'He won independents, or had an edge on them in the battleground states in 2024,' he said. 'I don't know that it really matters a whole lot to him. It matters a whole lot more to the party, these congressionals going into 2026.' Some of the latest numbers across pollsters don't paint the brightest picture for Trump with voters who aren't as married to one party. Polls from YouGov/The Economist and Quinnipiac University show him more than 30 points underwater, while Emerson College shows him under by 12 points. One survey from a pollster associated with the Independent Center, which conducts research and works to engage independent voters, found only 37 percent of registered voters approve of his job performance. It also found declining support for him on the issues they considered most important ahead of his inauguration — lowering the debt, reducing inflation, cutting spending and easing political divisions. Lura Forcum, the center's president, said independents who supported Trump largely did because of economic concerns, but they aren't satisfied with the current progress. Economic indicators have been mixed throughout Trump's second term, with stocks rising and the S&P 500 hitting a record high Friday — but at the same time that a key inflation measure rose. The most recent update on gross domestic product from the first quarter of the year showed the economy shrank faster than initially thought. Forcum cited the result of the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral race, in which democratic socialist Assembly member Zohran Mamdani won, as evidence that voters want a candidate who will do what's necessary to improve their financial situation, regardless of ideology. 'Voters want something to be done about the economy, and at this point, they are not really particular about the details,' she said. 'They are financially uncomfortable, and they're expecting candidates or elected officials to do something about it. And if you can't do that, you really, probably can't win them over at the end of the day.' She noted that the 2026 midterms are still more than a year away and time remains to win independents back, but Trump must 'deliver' on the issues that they have indicated are important. Republicans acknowledged the influence of independents in determining a candidate's success or failure and that Trump has time to improve, but they differed on how much the numbers are a warning sign. Veteran GOP political consultant Christopher Nicholas said any time that a president has lower approval ratings, it can weigh down other candidates seeking to rise, even if it's only a difference of a few points. He said a Republican challenging Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) next year would have a much easier time if Trump's approval rating is 48 percent rather than 42 percent. As of Thursday, Trump's overall approval rating stands at 45.8 percent in the DDHQ average. Nicholas, who publishes the PA Political Digest newsletter, argued that economic information has improved as the stock market's past losses have been reversed. But he said the more time that passes in which independents don't approve of Trump's performance, the harder convincing them will be. 'So the longer you're around, even though it's only been barely, five, six months, the harder it becomes, because now you have to change people's minds, get them back to neutral and then move them to favorable,' he said. Republican strategist Constantin Querard said the state of the generic congressional ballot, in which voters are broadly asked if they would want to vote for a Democrat or a Republican for Congress, gives him more optimism. Despite Trump's struggles, the parties are tied in the average as of Wednesday, with 45.1 percent each. The population breakdown of congressional districts generally gives Republicans a slight advantage, requiring Democrats to lead in the generic ballot by a few points to have a strong chance at winning control of the House, which will be the party's main goal in 2026. 'It's almost the more important number going in 2026 because Trump's not on the ballot,' Querard said. 'In 2024, Trump put together a coalition that was larger than the usual and made up somewhat different than the usual,' he added. 'So we did better with minority voters, independent voters, Black men, Hispanic men. There were a lot of gains into a lot of communities that the question is, does that sustain itself? And gosh, we're a long way from knowing that.' And analysts agreed a frustration with the person in charge has been a commonality across multiple administrations in the current political era. Querard said if the numbers hold for Trump's approval and the generic ballot, it may mean voters choose to stay home rather than vote. 'If they voted for Trump in November and then they disappear, that's not good, but it's still a lot different than if they switched from Republicans to Democrats,' he said. Tranter said Trump's current numbers are what Democrats would want to see in 2026, but it would need to stay — and fluctuations are common. 'This number is what they want to see 12 months from now,' he said. 'It's just not 12 months from now. Maybe it holds, but we'll see.'
