alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy," the team said in a tweet. The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and "cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense." It's unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm. One of the reports mentioned in the article estimates that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone. Jim Prosser, a former Twitter communications executive, pushed back on Silicon Valley claims that opposition to data centers is a "Chinese psyop," arguing that Big Tech is using the label to dismiss legitimate local concerns. "If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something, it's probably not a Chinese psyop," he told Axios. Prosser said the industry needs to spend more time listening to affected communities rather than dismissing them from afar: "If you're a [venture capitalist] in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you've never been to Ohio, that's a problem."

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Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet's Google, that would allow the U.S. cloud giants to host its blockbuster Kimi K3 model, three people familiar with the talks said. Any deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a major U.S. cloud company. The discussions highlight how China's leading AI models, often far cheaper than Western offerings, are gaining traction in the U.S., despite national security concerns in Washington that have led to bans on exports of AI chips to China. They are also taking place despite critical comments about Moonshot from senior U.S. officials. IPO-bound Moonshot is seeking up to a 30% share of revenue generated from K3-related services on Microsoft's Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, according to the sources who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. That would be in line with terms that sources have said the startup has outlined for major customers using the open-weight model. Moonshot has come under fire from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said last month that he might add it to a trade blacklist. U.S. officials have accused the Beijing-based company of stealing from Anthropic's most sophisticated model, Fable, to help create Kimi K3 and illegally acquiring Nvidia chips.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Taiwan has indicted nine people -- reportedly including an Nvidia senior manager and two Supermicro employees based in the country -- who allegedly helped forge documents to cover up illegal exports of high-end AI servers to China in violation of US export controls. On Monday, Reuters reported that prosecutors in Keelung did not release any names but confirmed that the suspects were "charged with breach of trust and document forgery." One suspect linked to a related case remains at large, accused of the "siphoning of funds from a distributor company involved" in helping China get access to restricted Nvidia chips. Since 2022, the US has required a license to export semiconductors to China, with the intent of protecting national security by staying ahead of China in the AI race. But after the US arrested Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw in March for allegedly funneling $2.5 billion in restricted AI servers to China since 2024, Taiwan launched a separate probe to learn more about the scheme. Taiwan's investigation found that co-conspirators attempted to falsify documents to make it appear that 130 B300 servers were installed and in use at a Taiwan facility. But 74 of those servers "were ultimately exported and delivered to Chinese customers," Reuters reported, while the rest, 56, were intended to go to China but were blocked once Taiwanese customs officials "detected irregularities." According to Taiwan officials, Nvidia's manager and Supermicro employees "colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers, increasing corporate compliance costs, and severely damaging our nation's international image." Supermicro said in a statement to PCMag: "Supermicro is committed to protecting our advanced technologies and intellectual property. We are working closely with Taiwanese authorities on recent events, which underscore the importance of continued collaboration across industry and government to strengthen safeguards, enhance supply chain visibility, and facilitate the enforcement of export control laws."

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China has delayed its ambitious Chang'e 7 lunar mission until at least 2027 after scrubbing an August 24 launch. Poor weather conditions were likely a factor, with China's Manned Space Agency (CMSA) saying the decision reflects the need for "absolute safety." Scientific American reports: China and the U.S. are in a race to send humans back to the moon, a feat that that U.S. accomplished in the 1960s and that has never been achieved by any other country. Chang'e 7 is to play to a crucial part in China's ambitions: the probe is designed to search for frozen water in the Shackleton Crater, a pit that spans some 21 kilometers (13 miles) and sits beside the lunar south pole. No spacecraft has ever landed in that region, which scientists consider to be among the likeliest places to find water on the moon. Locating water that can be used by humans is vital to establishing any long-term lunar presence. NASA and China are eyeing the region to establish a crewed base -- and because this real estate is so precious, it matters who gets their first. Ars Technica notes in its reporting that the delayed launch was "most likely" due to Typhoon Narra, "which has 45 mph winds (equivalent to a moderate Tropical Storm) and continues to meander around in the waterway separating Hainan Island, where the spaceport is located, and mainland China." As for why the next launch window won't open until next February or March? "It likely is a combination of factors, including sunlight conditions in polar landing zones as well as the mission plan that requires a 90-day lunar orbit reconnaissance before landing," reports Ars. There's also a possibility, albeit an unlikely one, that "some technical issue was discovered at the last minute with either the complex Chang'e 7 payload, or the rocket."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China's Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with their software and services. This approach is all about digital sovereignty. In addition, even before the recent trend of governments outside America moving away from Windows, Beijing has started a long-running push to replace foreign technology in sensitive systems with domestic, open-source alternatives. [...] The Chinese government did not specify which Linux versions would replace Windows 10. However, the stock prices of Chinese Linux suppliers, Kylin Software and Tongxin Software Technology (commonly known as UnionTech), immediately jumped. These companies' respective operating systems, Kylin OS (no relation to Ubuntu Kylin) and UnionTech OS (UOS), were already positioned as domestic desktop and server replacements for Windows in government, state-owned enterprise, and critical-infrastructure environments. [...] Huawei's HarmonyOS 2, which began as an Android variant but is now a proprietary mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) operating system, is also being developed into a PC platform. HarmonyOS 2 won't be deployed anytime soon. Kylin and UOS are the only mature desktops that are ready for institutional desktop deployments. [...] ... this transition won't be easy. For agencies now moving off the government Windows build, the issue will be more demanding than simply swapping one desktop interface for another. Migration requires application testing, peripheral and driver validation, identity system integration, document-format compatibility, staff retraining and, in many cases, replacement or adaptation of Windows-dependent line-of-business software. The report provides no details on exactly how this transformation will occur. But the speed of the shift suggests that these issues are already being addressed in China's centralized managed desktop stack.

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Bilibili, often described as China's answer to YouTube, is relaunching its international app and preparing an English-language site as part of a broader push into the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other markets. The company is courting Western creators like MrBest, hiring community and moderation staff globally, and building tools for brand partnerships. Semafor reports: The revamped international app no longer requires identity verification -- meaning users can sign up without having to provide a passport or ID document, which were long required of overseas users on its main Chinese platform, according to what appears to be a newly created account on X marketing the platform to global creators. "Yes bilibili is going global," the account wrote, adding that content-wise, the US and Chinese sites will be the same. In a document recently shared in a Discord chat for Bilibili creators, the company pitched itself as a place for influencers to make money and connect with "Gen Z Coded, affluent and well-educated" users. A marketplace for international users to connect with brands for sponsored content is "in development," according to the presentation. The deck also showed creators how to post videos on its Chinese website, adding that an English version is "coming soon. We are working hard."

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