Humanoid Robots: Cool Demos, Zero Buyers

Humanoid robots can dance, backflip, and run marathons. What they cannot do, it turns out, is find enough paying customers. A growing number of analysts are asking an uncomfortable question about the humanoid robot boom: who is actually buying these machines? The answer, according to a detailed analysis published on Chinese tech media Sohu IT, … Read more

Japanese Media Admits Defeat After G1 Teardown: “China’s Humanoid Robots Are Uncatchable”

When Japanese technicians cracked open a Unitree G1 humanoid robot, they found a reason to give up. Nikkei xTECH, a Japanese technology media outlet, published a teardown video of Unitree’s G1 on July 23. The verdict, as reported by CCTV News, was blunt: China’s humanoid robot technology has clearly moved beyond the “show-and-tell” stage, and … Read more

The Wuhan-Paris Axis: 2030, The Kill Switch for American Autos

Part II of How Stellantis Rewrites the Transatlantic EV Playbook In Part I, we mapped the Wuhan-Paris axis — a dual arbitrage allowing Stellantis to shore up its European defences using Chinese engineering. That was the dress rehearsal. The ultimate prize lies across the Atlantic, where Detroit continues to slumber inside its tariff-protected greenhouse. Stellantis … Read more

China’s Bid to Flood the World with Cheap AI, Said Bloomberg. Half Right.

China’s Bid to Flood the World with Cheap AI, Said Bloomberg. Half Right. On Friday at 8:36am, Bloomberg published a sweeping story on China’s plan to flood the world with cheap AI. I am quoted in it, mapping DeepSeek’s investors to the layers of the industry. Sixteen hours before that story ran, 29 countries signed … Read more

VW will be bought by BYD, said Schularick. He’s wrong about the verb.

Editorial conceptual cartoon illustrating BYD as a digital Pac-Man displacing the legacy Volkswagen mechanical gear emblem.

VW will be bought by BYD, said Schularick. He’s wrong about the verb. Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, said Volkswagen would “likely be bought by a Chinese car maker like BYD.” The press amplified it. Headlines ran with “buys” and “takes over.” A few editorial cartoonists went further, drawing … Read more

The Oversupply of AI Talent: How China turned mathematical conditioning into a grassroots industrial workforce

The Oversupply of AI Talent: How China turned mathematical conditioning into a grassroots industrial workforce Those poor Chinese kids are building the most advanced AI in the world. If you look at the CVs of the researchers and entrepreneurs catching up to Anthropic and ChatGPT at a fraction of the token cost, the old playbook … Read more