Here Comes China

A few interesting selections from Godfree Roberts’ Newsletter: Here Comes China

Flight test begins of world’s first megawatt-level ‘windmill’ airship, the S1500, with 1MW energy generation, equivalent to a traditional 328-foot (100-meter) wind turbine.

DeepSeek becomes China’s AI model of choice overnight. HarmonyOS update of its AI assistant, Xiaoyi, is bringing deep integration of Deepseek-R1 to all Huawei phones. Lenovo’s Xiaotian platform has gone full Deepseek.

US companies stay put in China, none plan to move manufacturing to US.

Power consumption soared to an all-time high of 1,023 TWh in July, 2x residential of July 2019, more power than Japan, the 5th-largest power user in the world, used in all of 2024. Japan is the 5th-largest power user in the world.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, will discuss the use of offshore RMB stablecoins for trade settlement, part of broader discussions about expanding the use of the renminbi internationally.

China Records First Decline in National Carbon Emissions: China’s renewable energy push is paying off with a 1% YoY drop in carbon emissions in H1 2025.

China Concord Resources Corp signs rare 20-year pact to develop two Venezuelan oilfields, investing $1B+ to pump 60,000 bpd by 2026.

The US Navy is Building a Drone Fleet to Take on China (it’s not going well).

This article is very funny:

-During a U.S. naval test off the California coast last month, which was designed to showcase the Pentagon’s top autonomous drone boats, one vessel stalled unexpectedly.

-As officials scrambled to fix a software glitch, another drone vessel smashed into the idling boat’s starboard side, vaulted over the deck, and crashed back into the water

-The previously unreported episode, which involved two vessels built by U.S. defense tech rivals Saronic and BlackSea Technologies, is one of a series of recent setbacks in the Pentagon’s push to build a fleet of autonomous vessels, according to a dozen people familiar with the program.

-Weeks earlier, during a separate Navy test, the captain of a support boat was thrown into the water after another autonomous BlackSea vessel it was towing suddenly accelerated, capsizing the support boat, according to four people familiar with the matter. The captain was rescued and declined medical attention. The incident was first reported by Defense Scoop.

-Both incidents stemmed from a combination of software failures and human error, including breakdowns in communication between onboard systems and external autonomous software, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity to share sensitive information.