White House AI Smackdown: Kratsios Drops the Mic on China's Cyber Antics

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

Listeners, let’s dive straight into the blazing heart of US-China CyberPulse for this wild week—it's Ting here at the intersection of Beijing intrigue and Pentagon firewalls, with more whiz-bang than a DEFCON afterparty.

First, the big flash was the White House’s new AI Action Plan, rolled out like a cyber-blanket against increasingly assertive Chinese cyber operations. President Donald Trump’s administration is calling it “Winning the AI Race”—the goal is a full-court press on US cybersecurity with AI edge. Michael Kratsios, that ever-quotable AI czar, put it bluntly: the plan is “to cement US dominance in artificial intelligence” and keep the world running on American tech. Key moves? Accelerate AI innovation, fortify AI infrastructure, and, crucially, crank up international AI diplomacy to prevent Chinese adversaries from accessing technologies they could weaponize against American interests. That means new export controls to close loopholes on advanced chips and even location verification for AI hardware being shipped out—imagine a Fitbit for semiconductors, making sure they never take a detour to Shenzhen.

There’s also a big government push to secure critical infrastructure—power grids, financial networks, highways in the sky—using AI to harden them against everything from ransomware to state-sponsored sabotage. The government is shipping out new standards for secure-by-design AI, and partnerships are blooming like cherry blossoms in D.C. between the feds and private AI innovators. As part of this effort, we’re seeing more AI data centers designed with military-grade security, intended to keep that spicy AI research safe from everything, up to and including Silk Typhoon—the Chinese state-linked group that’s been in the news all over again thanks to a gnarly new SentinelLabs report. That report dropped names: Xu Zewei, Zhang Yu, and their merry Shanghai Powerock Network crew, all caught red-handed leveraging zero-days and patented spyware for Beijing’s Ministry of State Security.

But not all is smooth in Uncle Sam’s camp. According to grumbling ex-officials and Michael Daniel from the Cyber Threat Alliance, the Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE for the meme fans—pushed layoffs in cybersecurity, leaving federal digital defenses a bit like Swiss cheese at a hackers’ fondue party. Lowered cyber headcounts have private companies sweating too, since many look to the feds for guidance against advanced persistent threats. Just as China is doubling down with $100 billion for its own AI juggernaut, frustration in Washington boils: talent retention is officially a five-alarm issue.

While Congress scrolls through resumes, across the Pacific, Premier Li Qiang is pitching a global AI governance framework at the Shanghai conference, proposing what he calls an “international AI watchdog”—basically, a blue helmet for the algorithm age. Eric Schmidt, ex-Google boss, keeps pleading for what he calls “stable guardrails”—suggesting if the US and China keep racing without international handshakes, trust on either side will crater and everyone loses.

In the end, as zero days fly and cyber alliances form and fracture, the tempo is fast, the stakes are global, and this CyberPulse beats on. Thanks for tuning in—stay patched, stay curious, and don’t forget to subscribe. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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