US-China Cyber Rivalry Heats Up: AI Blocks, Urgent Patches, and the Race for Tech Dominance

This is your US-China CyberPulse: Defense Updates podcast.

Listeners, Ting here. If you've been thinking the US-China cyber rivalry couldn’t get any hotter, the past week just cranked the temperature to nuclear. Let’s dive straight into the whirlwind, starting with Capitol Hill—where John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi unleashed the bipartisan “No Adversarial AI Act.” Yes, that name is as bold as the bill itself. It aims to permanently block AI models like DeepSeek, developed in China, from every US executive agency unless you get a Congressional hall pass. The argument? Keep adversary AI from sniffing around sensitive US government data, no exceptions. Anyone recall DeepSeek’s big January splash? Now it's flagged as a national security concern, not just a ChatGPT competitor.

The debate’s not just in Congress. Over in the executive branch, President Trump’s administration rolled out the AI Action Plan, tasking agencies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Commerce Department to clamp down on AI and cyber risks. Evelyn Remaley, formerly with the Commerce Department, called this a convergence moment: AI, security, and trade are now tangled tighter than ethernet cables in an old server rack. Maybe you caught House Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford, who’s rallying for export controls and rapid response frameworks, arguing that “more chips for China means fewer chips for the U.S.”

Now, here’s where it gets cyber-geeky. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, didn’t let the week pass without a little drama: they blasted an emergency directive after a Microsoft Exchange hybrid config vulnerability turned up. Agencies were ordered to patch up by August 11—no extensions, no arguments. CISA’s move was textbook “assume breach,” a staple in zero trust strategy. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission rewrote submarine cable rules, a signal that data chokepoints on the ocean floor are just as geopolitically fraught as firewalls back home.

What about the private sector? Epic moves there too. The Def Con hackers' collective announced a new phase in their cyber resilience project for water utilities—free tools to shield critical infrastructure from state-backed actors. They're calling it “the Manhattan Project for digital water,” and if that doesn’t grab your attention, maybe you should check your pulse.

Internationally, US cyber diplomats are swarming—think more cyber exchanges with South Korea, coordination with Indo-Pacific partners, and toolkit-sharing summits after the Taiwan hybrid warfare scare. Everyone’s chasing resilience, redundancy, and, frankly, backup plans for their backup plans.

Finally, on the tech frontier, the “AI sovereignty” debate is dominating. Moody’s Ratings and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies both argue for keeping the latest NVIDIA AI chips out of Beijing’s hands. At the same time, the US is quietly pushing allies like South Korea to double down on next-gen components—because whoever builds tomorrow’s linchpin technologies sets tomorrow’s rules.

Listeners, thanks for tuning in to another charged week on US-China CyberPulse: Defense Updates. Subscribe to keep your cyber shields up. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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