Quick notes: Chinese EVs | Preemptive surrender...

• China desperately wanted India's EV market: And it gets it. China's BYD to build first EV plant in India amid rising global trade barriers... 'Hindu nationalist' sarkar falls for China's fake moves to restore peace on border. Global EV domination is key to China's "peaceful rise".



• India's pre-emptive surrender on multiple trade fronts: "In comparison to other major economies, India's pre-emptive surrender on multiple trade fronts - without the US imposing a single country-specific tariff - makes it appear exceptionally vulnerable to pressure tactics."



• Trying to please Trump: Govt to abolish ‘Google tax’ amid Trump’s tariff threat



• Is Elon Musk helping China? Rubio sponsored the UFLPA, and he is a well-known China hawk. But Musk has business ties to China through his auto company Tesla. It sources batteries from battery maker CATL. Tesla recently wrote the administration warning the tariff war could make its cars more expensive.



• Trump's Auto Tariffs: Why Tesla is the biggest winner. . . Dated: Musk opposes US tariffs on Chinese EVs



• Why is X suing the Indian govt as Musk woos Modi? Because Modi is bending to everybody and his brother-in-law. The lawsuit comes as Musk edges closer to launching both Starlink and Tesla in India.



• Trump and China: "He doesn't have strong issues with China's authoritarian system. He doesn't really have issues with China's regional aggression as long as those regional aggressions do not immediately threaten American interests."



• Proof of China's power: Trump floats reducing tariffs on China to secure TikTok deal



• Raag Yaman: Pt.kaivalyakumar Gurav




• Cable cutter: China’s cable cutter could sever 95% of world communications, work at extreme depths



• Huawei-linked firm makes an impressive debut: China’s SiCarrier surprises chip industry by unveiling extensive range of chip equipment at SEMICON 2025, potentially breaking ASML’s dominance



• Tesla killers: China is racing to unleash its super-smart cars

Quick notes: Tariff tantrums | Sweatshop advocates...

• US push for grand trade agreement with India The US is pushing India to negotiate a "large" and "grand" bilateral trade agreement while seeking opening the agriculture sector for American businesses, saying "it just can not stay closed".



• Hurting everyone else but sparing China: Donald Trump makes Chinese stocks (somewhat) great again.



• ‘Closest target’: Why is Trump targeting allies while sparing China?



• Sweatshop advocates: Mr. Amitabh Kant, Advocating an 80-90 Hour Week is Abetting Multiple Offences



• Dr Chetan Nayak: The man behind Microsoft’s decadeslong quest to build a quantum computer



• WIN-WIN!: Solar panels above waterways and farms... Gujarat innovation spreads world over!




• Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and now Intel: Major US tech firms now have Chinese-descent individuals as their CEOs, shows how valuable China’s talent is for the tech industry.
  
  
• Astonishing, if true: China’s in-House EUV machines reportedly entering trial production in Q3 2025, utilizing an approach that offers a simpler, efficient design; SMIC & Huawei to benefit greatly
  
  
• Han juggernaut: Why a Chinese Gadget Company Can Make an Electric Car and Apple Can’t
  
  
• China Piles the Pressure on India in Its Own Backyard: China has also poured billions into 46 commercial ports across the region, 36 of which are capable of hosting naval assets



• 'India Has Missed Every Bus': "India has missed every bus; not just one. We don't know which bus is coming next. I know for sure it will miss that too. To imagine that by 2047, we will be better than the US or China is just living in a dream world".



• Shiv Kailash: Rishab Rikhiram Sharma

Quick Notes: Tariff pressure | Rich farmers...

1. Don't buckle under pressure: 'Not in India’s best interest to negotiate trade deal with US amid Trump’s tariff threats'. As global trade tensions rise, India must remain proactive in safeguarding its economic interests against shifting US policies.



2. Trump insulting India publicly: "India has agreed to cut tariffs… finally exposing them".



3. "He's coming after his closest friends and allies": How Canadians are facing Trump threats head on - Bourbon is out, patriotism is in



4. Story From a Rajasthan Village: These Farmers Are Earning ₹250+ Crore Every Year




5. Steely resolve: China doubles US research output on next-gen chips amid export bans — trade war fuels a research wave



6. Tech boom amid sanctions: Russia sees tech boom amid sanctions — microelectronics industry sees massive hiring surge and increased salaries



7. Open-source future: China shifts focus from x86 and Arm CPUs, gov't promoting RISC-V chips heavily



8. Tesla Enters India, Hits Speed Bumps Elsewhere: While Musk's political influence continues to grow, his business empire is witnessing headwinds.

Quick notes: What Musk wants | WTO is toast...

• What Musk Really Wants: India’s appeasement of Trump comes to nought.. All this touchy-feely diplomatic propaganda masked what Musk really wants from India — that his Starlink be allowed to enter the Indian market via an administrative allocation of spectrum (as opposed to the hefty sums paid by the existing Indian players through competitive bidding), a reduction in import duties on electric vehicles, especially Tesla, whose low-cost models he hopes to sell in India, and a possible collaboration between Space X and ISRO.



• Forever indebted to our colonial masters: UK and India relaunch trade talks in Delhi... "Oxford seat for my daughter and you get to loot India again, deal?"



• Darshan devo Shankar: Raag Yaman Kalyan bandish. Rahul Ranade, Navin and Chirag Solanki.




• ‘The WTO is toast.’: What happens to global trade now. The free trade promise of consumers buying from the lowest-cost producers could be imperiled.



• Trouble for China: Any deep understanding between the US and Russia will erode China’s influence at the high table.



• What If China, America Make Up?: Possibility of America and China reaching some level of tactical accommodation. . . Trump Says New China Trade Deal ‘Possible’. I have with President Xi is, I would say, a great one”.



• The world's deadliest dam failures have occurred in China:

My column: The world's deadliest dam failures have occurred in China. And if a powerful earthquake caused China's super-dam to collapse, millions downstream could die, largely in India's populous Brahmaputra Valley. Yet India has said little on the threat. https://t.co/5AKxJZPRsG

— Brahma Chellaney (@Chellaney) January 29, 2025




• Raja Koduri on Intel's "cancel" culture: Intel’s ex-exec Raja Koduri says “You don’t learn without shipping”; gives a rundown into what’s wrong with Team Blue and how Intel is held back by bureaucratic snakes



• Hand in the cookie jar: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding



• China's bicycle revival: "Automobiles, as a transportation method, have their limits".

Quick notes: H-1B Visas | Distillation...

• The less Modi talks of the H1B visa the better: Everybody and his proverbial uncle in the leadership circles in the US and the West has about had it with the Indian PM’s pleadings to let in more Indian engineers and science grads as a way of pleasing his middle class voter base. The US’ intake of Indian STEMers will be whatever the American economy and system requires.
  
  Countries like Vietnam, that are following the Trumpian route to making the govt more receptive to the private sector, have already stolen a march over India, and will be beyond India’s ability to catch up with in the manufacturing sector. Time, therefore, for Modi to stop pushing the H1B stuff and regain a bit of self-respect for the nation. Or, there will be more humiliations in tow, like the C-17 returning the illegals in chains to Amritsar.
  
  
• The Problems with H-1B Visas and India’s Brain Drain:




• False prestige: India to go all out to win bid for 2036 Olympic Games



• Modi sarkar saving China from Trump: Reliance brings Shein to India five years after ban. . . No more a national security threat?



• ‘Distillation’ Is AI’s New Buzzword—and a Scary One for AI Companies. It is like asking any question you want of Einstein and becoming almost as knowledgeable as he is in physics. It's an easy way for smaller developers, in particular, to recreate some of the capabilities of much larger models in a much more cost-efficient manner, and doing it in a way that also produces AI models that themselves are a lot smaller and more cost-efficient.



• Mark’s unlawful activity: Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations



• English-medium champs: Why Can't India Build its Own DeepSeek or ChatGPT?



• Electric Scooter-Cum-Rickshaw: Hero MotoCorp Unveils Convertible Surge S32 Electric Scooter.



• Immigration Crackdown: UK Targets Indian Restaurants In Trump-Style Immigration Crackdown

DeepSeek - China’s new AI model

• Silicon Valley Is Raving About a Made-in-China AI Model: “Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” said Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has been advising President Trump.
  
  DeepSeek said training one of its latest models cost $5.6 million, compared with the $100 million to $1 billion range cited last year by Anthropic.
  
  DeepSeek said R1 and V3 both performed better than or close to leading Western models. As of Saturday, the two models were ranked in the top 10 on Chatbot Arena, a platform hosted by University of California, Berkeley, researchers that rates chatbot performance. A Google Gemini model was in the top spot, while DeepSeek bested Anthropic’s Claude and Grok from Elon Musk’s xAI.



• How China’s new AI model DeepSeek is threatening U.S. dominance: “To see the DeepSeek new model, it’s super impressive in terms of both how they have really effectively done an open-source model that does this inference-time compute, and is super-compute efficient,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously.”
  
  DeepSeek also had to navigate the strict semiconductor restrictions that the U.S. government has imposed on China, cutting the country off from access to the most powerful chips, like Nvidia’s H100s. The latest advancements suggest DeepSeek either found a way to work around the rules, or that the export controls were not the chokehold Washington intended.
  
  “They can take a really good, big model and use a process called distillation,” said Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta. “Basically you use a very large model to help your small model get smart at the thing you want it to get smart at. That’s actually very cost-efficient.”



• DeepSeek R1 Explained to your grandma:




• How small Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley: DeepSeek’s R1 release sparked a frenzied debate in Silicon Valley about whether better resourced US AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, can defend their technical edge.
  
  Industry insiders say DeepSeek’s singular focus on research makes it a dangerous competitor because it is willing to share its breakthroughs rather than protect them for commercial gains. DeepSeek has not raised money from outside funds or made significant moves to monetise its models.
  
  DeepSeek claimed it used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and $5.6mn to train a model with 671bn parameters, a fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train comparably sized models.
  
  Ritwik Gupta, AI policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said DeepSeek’s recent model releases demonstrate that “there is no moat when it comes to AI capabilities”. “The first person to train models has to expend lots of resources to get there,” he said. “But the second mover can get there cheaper and more quickly.”
  
  Gupta added that China had a much larger talent pool of systems engineers than the US who understand how to get the best use of computing resources to train and run models more cheaply.



• The Empire Strikes Back: China Prepares One Trillion Yuan AI Plan to Rival $500 Billion US Stargate Project.