Treasury just published new proposed Outbound Investment regulations, which would represent a significant expansion of the existing program. This is just a proposed rule, and it deserves a thorough review, but some initial reactions: 1. The rule would prohibit most private investment in any Chinese firm that develops an “SI system,” including any product that operates using an SI system. It defines “SI system” extremely broadly, such that it likely captures the vast majority of Chinese software products. As a result, the proposed rule likely would prohibit most private investment in Chinese software firms, as well as Chinese firms that build products that incorporate AI (i.e., the entire Chinese robotics and drone industry, and undoubtedly many others). 2. The rule adds biotech as a covered sector and would prohibit most private investment in the vast majority of the sector. It would ban private investment in Chinese companies that use biological systems to modify, enhance, produce, or control any pharmaceutical compound, to include both small and large molecules. This likely captures most Chinese firms engaged in biologic drug manufacturing or drug discovery. Biotech and biomanufacturing are areas where U.S. investment has massively fueled China’s capabilities, which are rapidly approaching--and in some cases surpassing--those of the United States. The scope of this rule signals that the administration sees this as a massive national security concern. 3. The rule does not make major changes to the types of transactions covered. Crucially, this means it does NOT prohibit investment in publicly traded securities of these companies, the purchase of goods or licensing of products from these companies, or the export of goods to these companies. But it does ban most types of private investment (i.e., VC, PE, joint ventures, greenfield investments, etc) in companies engaging in these activities. 4. This rule will no doubt change before it is finalized, and I expect the definitions of prohibited activity related to SI and biological systems will be narrowed in the final rule. But it is also a strong signal that the administration does not want U.S. investment or know-how supporting China’s development of advanced technologies, and as a result may be willing to significantly expand outbound investment restrictions. 5. Finally, this highlights a major schism inside the administration on how to prevent China from catching up to the United States in the most advanced technologies. The Treasury Department is signaling that it is willing to significantly tighten restrictions on Americans’ ability to invest in critical technology sectors in China that would help develop these technologies, given their importance to national security. And meanwhile, the Department of Commerce is taking the exact opposite approach, loosening restrictions on American companies that seek to export goods to these companies. It doesn’t make sense for the administration to be tightening restrictions on investments, while loosening restrictions on exports. Something has to give.

Agree, one of the best episodes of any China podcast in quite some time. Raised as many questions as answers, and kudos to @jordanschneider for curating and navigating them.

NEWS: @RepRoKhanna writes the CEOs of Alibaba, DeepSeek and Moonshot asking them to cooperate in an intl effort to pace frontier AI. + Khanna will be hosting an emergency hearing on global AI pacing policy next Weds washingtonpost.com/wp-intell…

Glad to speak to @lilkuo in this nice @nytimes story to unpack the AI risks article by China's Minister of State Security. nytimes.com/2026/09/14/world…

The @globaltimesnews WeChat commentary on calls for a coordinated slowdown is quite something. Says the calls for slowing down AI development are reflective of a Cold War containment strategy, and that the “real purpose” is allegedly to use technological barriers and rule-setting monopolies to contain PRC’s AI development, preserve U.S.’s “monopolistic hegemony” in frontier tech, and exclude the PRC from global AI governance.

However in two crucial way when it comes to US-China AI safety dynamics the dynamics are utterly, spectacularly, different from the Cold War. First up: it’s important to establish how different the current US situation is. In the Cold War nuclear arms development and expertise was inside the state, influenced only by the government’s interests and agenda. This time AI expertise and development is taking place outside the state influenced overpoweringly by the prospect of trillion dollar IPOs. In the Cold War those influencing the President on nuclear weapons had no commercial motives to develop more of them.  Secondly, on the differences, the AI community speaks frequently about how “China means we have to keep going.” But there is no security instruction from men in grey suits in  the US intelligence community to keep going to these firms. Instead there was a political instruction from the White House to ignore AI safety because a group of commercially interested investors and oligarchs, many of whom have now changed their minds, convinced Trump this was nonsense that would damage the economy and benefit China. This is the fusion of Trump politics and Silicon Valley not the fusion of the Cold War state and the military-industrial complex.

We're publishing our most detailed threat intelligence report to date. It covers how people tried to misuse Claude—for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, biology, and building weapons—and how we found and stopped them. We disrupted every operation in the report, and used the lessons from them to strengthen our safeguards. Where appropriate, we also shared what we found with authorities and other AI companies. These cases are not typical: we’re highlighting some of the most sophisticated misuse we’ve seen. But they’re especially important to discuss, because they show us where AI misuse is headed, where our safeguards work, and where they need to improve. We’re publishing this report so others can spot the same activity on their own platforms, and so we can give the public a clearer view of how emerging threats develop. Read the report: anthropic.com/threat-intelli…

CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis, speaking at the Billington cybersecurity conference: "It's been almost two years since the Salt Typhoon series of exploits has been publicly disclosed, and it's still a very critical threat."

New: Washington repeatedly blacklisted this Chinese tech giant. But through a network of global subsidiaries, the company has reinvented itself and kept shipping America's best chips to feed Chinese AI nytimes.com/2026/09/06/techn… with @paulmozur @trippmickle @KeithBradsher