Pushing back from Big Tech: Africa’s hard road to AI sovereignty

21 May 2026 at 05:00

Africa’s four biggest tech economies have each drafted artificial intelligence strategies admitting they depend too heavily on Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta for infrastructure and want more control over the...

The UAE’s OPEC exit frees up oil wealth as it bets big on AI

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

20 May 2026 at 05:00

The United Arab Emirates quit the world’s most powerful oil cartel on May 1, freeing billions in oil revenue while placing its biggest bet yet on artificial intelligence. The Organization...

Silicon Valley keeps misreading China’s role in tech

Rest of World

By: Lex Zhao

19 May 2026 at 05:00

When Donald Trump arrived in Beijing last week for his first state visit to China since 2017, he was joined by the CEOs of Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, Micron, Qualcomm, and...

The Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn’s “thought leadership” content mill

Rest of World

By: Michael Beltran

18 May 2026 at 05:00

In the spring of 2025, the CEO of a European childcare startup posted a brief write-up about the qualities of a good leader on their LinkedIn page. Dozens of executives...

India’s VCs are beating American investors at home

Rest of World

By: Itika Sharma Punit

15 May 2026 at 08:00

As a tech journalist in Bengaluru, I spent much of the early 2010s writing about Indian startups raising money from Silicon Valley investors. Every other month, I would find myself...

Can we really keep kids safe online?

Rest of World

By: Itika Sharma Punit

14 May 2026 at 05:00

Governments around the world are rushing to regulate children’s access to social media. From Australia’s social media ban for minors to growing concerns around artificial intelligence, predators, privacy, and screen...

What’s at stake for tech at the Trump-Xi meeting

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou and Kinling Lo

13 May 2026 at 05:00

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Beijing this week amid the urgent geopolitical tensions surrounding the war in Iran and the status...

Taiwan’s chips power the global economy. China holds the leverage

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran

12 May 2026 at 05:00

In recent years, there have been several reminders of how interconnected the global economy is, and how fragile supply chains are. The shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic led to big...

The Chinese whiz kids of Silicon Valley

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By: Viola Zhou

11 May 2026 at 05:00

Last fall, I moved into Mark Zuckerberg’s old house. A pale blue ranch home dubbed the Facebook House, it was perched in the hills of Los Altos, an affluent enclave...

Some Taiwanese drone math ahead of the Xi-Trump visit

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

8 May 2026 at 08:00

For at least the past two U.S. administrations, cutting China out of the tech supply chain has been a strategic goal in multiple industries. But the drone industry is one...

Five times AI hallucinations embarrassed governments

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

7 May 2026 at 05:00

Last month, South Africa withdrew its Draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy 17 days after it was published because the document cited fake research, created by AI. The incident tarnished a...

The Chinese EV standard winning globally is banned in the U.S.

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

6 May 2026 at 05:00

Much of the world is adopting the electric-vehicle technology the U.S. just banned. On March 17, the U.S.banned any vehicle with Chinese software from its roads. Beginning with cars arriving...

A person demonstrates a video game on the touch screen in an Xpeng P7 electric vehicle outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. Chinese electric-car startup Xpeng Inc. is set to raise $1.28 billion after guiding its U.S. initial public offering above a marketed range, people familiar with the matter said, showing strong investor interest in the sector is not abating. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The global cybersecurity gap deepens as AI-powered attacks surge

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran

5 May 2026 at 05:00

Last month, Anthropic said its new artificial intelligence model, Mythos Preview, had discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in “every major operating system and web browser.” About 40 tech firms and institutions...

Motorola’s India lawsuit could make platforms police speech faster

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

4 May 2026 at 05:00

Motorola wants social media platforms to take down “defamatory” reviews of its devices in India. But the way it’s doing this has digital rights activists alarmed. In March, Motorola’s India...

How the vinyl revival fills the gaps streaming left behind

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

1 May 2026 at 08:00

When I took my son to Mirza Ghalib Street in Kolkata to find Bollywood soundtracks for his new turntable, I was struck by the economics of our mission. Why trade...

Big Tech is moving data out of the Gulf through Iraqi oil pipelines

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

1 May 2026 at 05:00

Major U.S. hyperscalers running data centers in the Gulf to power apps and online services for millions of users are channeling data out of the war zone through fiber-optic cables...

An old railroad is key to U.S.-China race for critical metals in Africa

Rest of World

By: Nicolas Niarchos

30 April 2026 at 05:00

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of Africa’s wealthiest countries even as its people are some of the world’s poorest. It is rich in cobalt, lithium and copper,...

A train on the Benguela railway between Lobito and Luau, Angola, circa 1910.

South Korean probe tests U.S. willingness to protect its tech giants abroad

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

30 April 2026 at 03:00

South Korea wants to punish its biggest online retailer for a massive data leak. The U.S. is stepping in to shield Coupang, because even though it operates almost entirely in...

A general view shows the logo of South Korean online delivery service Coupang, at a building housing the headquarters of Coupang in Seoul on December 9, 2025. South Korean police raided the Seoul headquarters of e-commerce giant Coupang on December 9, over a recent data leak believed to have affected almost two-thirds of the country's population. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images)

I got stood up by an AI agent, and tracked down its human owner in China

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

29 April 2026 at 05:00

I kept hearing about entrepreneurs in China running “one-person companies” with the help of artificial intelligence agents, which handle everything from coding to managing emails. How well do agents work?...

The quiet layoffs sweeping China’s tech giants

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

29 April 2026 at 05:00

Chinese tech giants are quietly shrinking their workforce — echoing a pattern playing out in Silicon Valley. In 2025, e-commerce major Alibaba reduced its head count by 34% as it...

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