china – Page 2

US intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch

china, launch, military space, Pentagon, reusable rockets, Space, spacex, US Space Force / DJ Henderson / September 23, 2025

“They have to have on-orbit refueling because they don’t access space as frequently as we do.”

File photo of a reusable Falcon 9 booster moments before landing on a recent flight at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX scored its 500th landing of a Falcon 9 first stage booster on an otherwise routine flight earlier this month, sending 28 Starlink communications satellites into orbit. Barring any unforeseen problems, SpaceX will mark the 500th re-flight of a Falcon first stage later this year.

A handful of other US companies, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, are on the way to replicating or building on SpaceX’s achievements in recycling rocket parts. These launch providers are racing a medley of Chinese rocket builders to become the second company to land and reuse a first stage booster.

But it will be many years—perhaps a decade or longer—until anyone else matches the kinds of numbers SpaceX is racking up in the realm of reusable rockets. SpaceX’s dominance in this field is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday.

“It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”

Taking advantage

China has used 14 different types of rockets on its 56 orbital-class missions this year, and none have flown more than 11 times. Eight US rocket types have cumulatively flown 142 times, with 120 of those using SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. Without a reusable rocket, China must maintain more rocket companies to sustain a launch rate of just one-third to one-half that of the United States.

This contrasts with the situation just four years ago, when China outpaced the United States in orbital rocket launches. The growth in US launches has been a direct result of SpaceX’s improvements to launch at a higher rate, an achievement primarily driven by the recovery and reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings. Last month, SpaceX flew one of its Falcon 9 boosters for the 30th time and set a record at nine days for the shortest turnaround between flights of the same booster in March.

“They’ve put more satellites on orbit,” Sidari said, referring to China. “They still do not compare to the US, but it is concerning once they figure out that reusable lift. The other one is the megaconstellations. They’ve seen how the megaconstellations provide capability to the US joint force and the West, and they’re mimicking it. So, that does concern me, how fast they’re going, but we’ll see. It’s easier said than done. They do have to figure it out, and they do have some challenges that we haven’t dealt with.”

One of those challenges is China’s continued reliance on expendable rockets. This has made it more important for China to make “game-changing” advancements in other areas, according to Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch, the Space Force’s senior enlisted advisor for intelligence.

Lerch pointed to the recent refueling of a Chinese satellite in geosynchronous orbit, more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. China’s Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites, known as SJ-21 and SJ-25 for short, came together on July 2 and have remained together ever since, according to open source orbital tracking data.

No one has refueled a spacecraft so far from Earth before. SJ-25 appears to be the refueler for SJ-21, a Chinese craft capable of latching onto other satellites and towing them to different orbits. Chinese officials say SJ-21 is testing “space debris mitigation” techniques, but US officials have raised concerns that China is testing a counter-space weapon that could sidle up to an American or allied satellite and take control of it.

Lerch said satellite refueling is more important to China than it is to the United States. With refueling, China can achieve a different kind of reuse in space while the government waits for reusable rockets to enter service.

“They have to have on-orbit refueling as a capability because they don’t access space as frequently as we do,” Lerch said Monday at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference. “When it comes to replenishing our toolkit, getting more capability (on orbit) and reconstitution, having reusable launch is what affords us that ability, and the Chinese don’t have that. So, pursuing things like refueling on orbit, it is game-changing for them.”

The Nebula 1 rocket from China’s Deep Blue Aerospace just before attempting to land on a vertical takeoff, vertical landing test flight last year. Credit: Deep Blue Aerospace

SpaceX’s rapid-fire cadence is pivotal for a number of US national security programs. The Pentagon uses SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which take up most of the Falcon 9 launch capacity, for commercial-grade global connectivity. SpaceX’s Starshield satellite platform, derived from the Starlink design, has launched in stacks of up to 22 spacecraft on a single Falcon 9 to deploy a constellation of hundreds of all-seeing spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. The most recent batch of these Starshield satellites launched Monday.

Cheaper, readily available launch services will also be critical to the Pentagon’s aspirations to construct a missile shield to defend against attacks on the US homeland. Sensors and interceptors for the military’s planned Golden Dome missile defense system will be scattered throughout low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX’s inventory of Falcon 9 rockets has enabled the Space Force to move closer to realizing on-demand launch services. On two occasions within the last year, the Space Force asked SpaceX to launch a GPS navigation satellite with just a few months of lead time to prepare for the mission. With a fleet of reusable rockets at the ready, SpaceX delivered.

Meanwhile, China recently started deploying its own satellite megaconstellations. Chinese officials claim these new satellite networks will be used for Internet connectivity. That may be so, but Pentagon officials worry China can use them for other purposes, just as the Space Force is doing with Starlink, Starshield, and other programs.

Copycats in space

Lerch mentioned two other recent Chinese actions in space that have his attention. One is the launch of five Tongxin Jishu Shiyan (TJS) satellites, or what China calls communication technology test satellites, into geosynchronous orbit since January, something Lerch called “highly unusual.” Chinese authorities released (rather interesting) patches for four of these TJS satellites, suggesting they are part of a family of spacecraft.

“More importantly, these spacecraft sitting at GEO (geosynchronous orbit) are not supposed to be sliding all around the GEO belt,” Lerch said. “But the history of these experimental spacecraft have shown that that’s exactly what they do, which is very uncharacteristic for a system that’s supposed to be providing satellite communications.”

US officials believe China uses at least some of the TJS satellites for missile warning or spy missions. TJS satellites filling the role of a reconnaissance mission might have enormous umbrella-like reflectors to try to pick up communication signals transmitted by foreign forces, such as those of the United States.

A modified Long March 7 rocket carrying the Yaogan 45 satellite lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on September 9, 2025, in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China. Credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

China also launched a spy satellite called Yaogan 45 into a peculiar orbit earlier this month. (Yaogan is a cover name for China’s military spy satellites.) Yaogan 45 is a remote sensing platform, Lerch said, but it’s flying much higher than a typical Earth-imaging satellite. Instead of orbiting a few hundred miles above the Earth, Yaogan 45 circles at an altitude of some 4,660 miles (7,500 kilometers).

“That, alone, is very interesting,” Lerch said.

But US intelligence officials believe there’s more to the story. China launched the country’s first two communications satellites into a so-called medium-Earth orbit, or MEO, last year. These satellites are the first in a network called Smart Skynet.

“It looks like a year ago they started to put the infrastructure at MEO to be able to move around data, and then a year later, the Chinese are now putting remote sensing capability at MEO as well,” Lerch said. “That’s interesting, and that starts to paint a picture that they value remote sensing to the point where they want resiliency in layers of it.”

China launched a satellite named Yaogan 41 into geosynchronous orbit in 2023 with a sharp-eyed telescope with enough sensitivity to track car-sized objects on the ground and at sea. From its perch in geosynchronous orbit, Yaogan 41 will provide China’s military with a continuous view of the Indo-Pacific region. A single satellite in low-Earth orbit offers only fleeting views.

Some of this may sound familiar if you follow what the US military and the National Reconnaissance Office are doing with their satellites.

“Our military power has served as a bit of an open book, and adversaries have watched and observed us for years,” said Lt. Gen. Max Pearson, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence.

China’s military has “observed how we fight, the techniques we use, the weapons systems we have,” Pearson said. “When you combine that with intellectual property theft that has fueled a lot of their modernization, they have deliberately developed and modernized to counter our American way of war.”

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

US intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch Read More »

China blocks sale of Nvidia AI chips

AI, china, NVIDIA, Policy, syndication, trump tariffs / Mike M. / September 17, 2025

“The message is now loud and clear,” said an executive at one of the tech companies. “Earlier, people had hopes of renewed Nvidia supply if the geopolitical situation improves. Now it’s all hands on deck to build the domestic system.”

Nvidia started producing chips tailored for the Chinese market after former US President Joe Biden banned the company from exporting its most powerful products to China, in an effort to rein in Beijing’s progress on AI.

Beijing’s regulators have recently summoned domestic chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon, as well as Alibaba and search engine giant Baidu, which also make their own semiconductors, to report how their products compare against Nvidia’s China chips, according to one of the people with knowledge of the matter.

They concluded that China’s AI processors had reached a level comparable to or exceeding that of the Nvidia products allowed under export controls, the person added.

The Financial Times reported last month that China’s chipmakers were seeking to triple the country’s total output of AI processors next year.

“The top-level consensus now is there’s going to be enough domestic supply to meet demand without having to buy Nvidia chips,” said an industry insider.

Nvidia introduced the RTX Pro 6000D in July during Huang’s visit to Beijing, when the US company also said Washington was easing its previous ban on the H20 chip.

China’s regulators, including the CAC, have warned tech companies against buying Nvidia’s H20, asking them to justify having purchased them over domestic products, the FT reported last month.

The RTX Pro 6000D, which the company has said could be used in automated manufacturing, was the last product Nvidia was allowed to sell in China in significant volumes.

Alibaba, ByteDance, the CAC, and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Eleanor Olcott in Zhengzhou.

China blocks sale of Nvidia AI chips Read More »

A new report finds China’s space program will soon equal that of the US

artemis, china, redshift, Space, space program / Beth Washington / September 16, 2025

As Jonathan Roll neared completion of a master’s degree in science and technology policy at Arizona State University three years ago, he did some research into recent developments by China’s ascendant space program. He came away impressed by the country’s growing ambitions.

Now a full-time research analyst at the university, Roll was recently asked to take a deeper dive into Chinese space plans.

“I thought I had a pretty good read on this when I was finishing grad school,” Roll told Ars. “That almost everything needed to be updated, or had changed three years later, was pretty scary. On all these fronts, they’ve made pretty significant progress. They are taking all of the cues from our Western system about what’s really galvanized innovation, and they are off to the races with it.”

Roll is the co-author of a new report, titled “Redshift,” on the acceleration of China’s commercial and civil space activities, and the threat these pose to similar efforts in the United States. Published on Tuesday, the report was sponsored by the US-based Commercial Space Federation, which advocates for the country’s commercial space industry. It is a sobering read, and comes as China not only projects to land humans on the lunar surface before the US can return, but is advancing across several spaceflight fronts to challenge America.

“The trend line is unmistakable,” the report states. “China is not only racing to catch up—it is setting pace, deregulating, and, at times, redefining what leadership looks like on and above Earth. This new space race will not be won with a single breakthrough or headline achievement, but with sustained commitment, clear-eyed vigilance, and a willingness to adapt over decades.”

A new report finds China’s space program will soon equal that of the US Read More »

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown.

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, trump administration, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / September 15, 2025

According to Bessent, China agreed to “commercial terms” and “technical details” of a deal “between two parties,” but Xi and Trump still needed to discuss the terms—as well as possibly China’s demands to ease export controls on chips and other high-tech goods—before the deal can be finalized, Reuters reported.

ByteDance, TikTok’s current owner, which in the past has opposed the sale, did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

While experts told Reuters that finalizing the TikTok deal this week could be challenging, Trump seems confident. On Truth Social, the US president boasted that talks with China have been going “very well” and claimed that TikTok users will soon be “very happy.”

“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save,” Trump said, confirming that he would speak to Xi on Friday and claiming that their relationship “remains a very strong one!!!”

China accuses US of “economic coercion”

However, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson on Monday continued to slam US export controls and tariffs that are frustrating China. The spokesperson suggested that those trade restrictions “constitute the containment and suppression of China’s development of high-tech industries,” like advanced computer chips and artificial intelligence, NBC News reported.

“This is a typical act of unilateral bullying and economic coercion,” the spokesperson said, indicating it may even be viewed as a retaliation violating the temporary truce.

Rather than committing to de-escalate tensions, both countries have recently taken fresh jabs in the trade war. On Monday, China announced two probes into US semiconductors, as well as an antitrust ruling against Nvidia and “an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector,” NBC News reported.

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown. Read More »

China rules that Nvidia violated its antitrust laws

antitrust, china, NVIDIA, Policy, syndication, tarrifs, trade wars / Mike M. / September 15, 2025

A Chinese regulator has found Nvidia violated the country’s antitrust law, in a preliminary finding against the world’s most valuable chipmaker.

Nvidia had failed to fully comply with provisions outlined when it acquired Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-US supplier of networking products, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said on Monday. Beijing conditionally approved the US chipmaker’s acquisition of Mellanox in 2020.

Monday’s statement came as US and Chinese officials prepared for more talks in Madrid over trade, with a tariff truce between the world’s two largest economies set to expire in November.

SAMR reached its conclusion weeks before Monday’s announcement, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, adding that the regulator had released the statement now to give China greater leverage in the trade talks.

The regulator started the anti-monopoly investigation in December, a week after the US unveiled tougher export controls on advanced high-bandwidth memory chips and chipmaking equipment to the country.

SAMR then spent months interviewing relevant parties and gathering legal opinions to build the case, the people said.

Nvidia bought Mellanox for $6.9 billion in 2020, and the acquisition helped the chipmaker to step up into the data center and high-performance computing market where it is now a dominant player.

The preliminary findings against the chipmaker could result in fines of between 1 percent and 10 percent of the company’s previous year’s sales. Regulators can also force the company to change business practices that are considered in violation of antitrust laws.

China rules that Nvidia violated its antitrust laws Read More »

NASA’s acting chief “angry” about talk that China will beat US back to the Moon

administrator, artemis, china, NASA, orion, Sean Duffy, sls, Space, startship / DJ Henderson / September 6, 2025

NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, said Thursday he has heard the recent talk about how some people are starting to believe that China will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program.

“We had testimony that said NASA will not beat China to the Moon,” Duffy remarked during an all-hands meeting with NASA employees. “That was shade thrown on all of NASA. I heard it, and I gotta tell you what, maybe I am competitive, I was angry about it. I can tell you what, I’ll be damned if that is the story that we write. We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.”

Duffy’s remarks followed a Congressional hearing on Wednesday during which former Congressman Jim Bridenstine, who served as NASA administrator during President Trump’s first term, said China had pulled ahead of NASA and the United States in the second space race.

“Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” said Bridenstine, who led the creation of the Artemis Program in 2019. China has said multiple times that it intends to land taikonuats on the Moon before the year 2030.

A lot of TV appearances

Duffy’s remarks were characteristic of his tenure since his appointment two months ago by Trump to serve as interim administrator of the space agency. He has made frequent appearances on Fox News and offered generally upbeat views of NASA’s position in its competition with China for supremacy in space. And on Friday, in a slickly produced video, he said, “I’m committed to getting us back to the Moon before President Trump leaves office.”

Sources have said Duffy, already a cabinet member as the secretary of transportation, is also angling to remove the “interim” from his NASA administrator title. Like Bridenstine, he has a capable political background and politics that align with the Trump administration. He is an excellent public speaker and knows the value of speaking to the president through Fox News. To date, however, he has shown limited recognition of the reality of the current competition with China.

NASA’s acting chief “angry” about talk that China will beat US back to the Moon Read More »

Putin: “Immortality” coming soon through continuous organ transplants

china, health, immortality, Putin, russia / DJ Henderson / September 4, 2025

In a later press conference, Putin confirmed the discussion and said that “life expectancy will increase significantly” in the near future and “we should also think about this” in terms of political and economic consequences. (In Russia, life expectancy has actually decreased significantly in recent years, and the overall population is declining.)

The brief snippets of conversation suggest that immortality is on the minds of the world’s strongmen, though it’s interesting to see how it takes a different form than in Silicon Valley, where robots and software are more often seen as the key to longevity instead of, say, recurring organ transplants into an aging bag of skin.

Shows like Upload and Alien: Earth present visions of a world in which consciousness can be scanned by machines and perhaps even loaded into other machines. Meanwhile, Putin and Xi are thinking more about repeated organ transplants and life extension rather than “the Singularity.”

So, which dystopic future are we more likely to get? (Yes, I am presuming, based on the current state of the world, that the near future will be pretty dystopic. I think it’s a good bet.) Clones being raised for organ transplants, as in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go? Or some kind of “download your consciousness into this machine” situation in which the mind of Elon Musk inhabits one of his beloved Tesla robots for all eternity? Given either alternative, I’m not entirely sure I’d want to live forever.

Putin: “Immortality” coming soon through continuous organ transplants Read More »

China’s Guowang megaconstellation is more than another version of Starlink

china, Features, guowang, launch, long march, megaconstellation, military space, satnet, Science, Space, starlink / Kelly Newman / August 20, 2025

“This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening… that’s what their space architecture is designed to do.”

Spectators take photos as a Long March 8A rocket carrying a group of Guowang satellites blasts off from the Hainan commercial launch site on July 30, 2025, in Wenchang, China. Credit: Liu Guoxing/VCG via Getty Images

US defense officials have long worried that China’s Guowang satellite network might give the Chinese military access to the kind of ubiquitous connectivity US forces now enjoy with SpaceX’s Starlink network.

It turns out the Guowang constellation could offer a lot more than a homemade Chinese alternative to Starlink’s high-speed consumer-grade broadband service. China has disclosed little information about the Guowang network, but there’s mounting evidence that the satellites may provide Chinese military forces a tactical edge in any future armed conflict in the Western Pacific.

The megaconstellation is managed by a secretive company called China SatNet, which was established by the Chinese government in 2021. SatNet has released little information since its formation, and the group doesn’t have a website. Chinese officials have not detailed any of the satellites’ capabilities or signaled any intention to market the services to consumers.

Another Chinese satellite megaconstellation in the works, called Qianfan, appears to be a closer analog to SpaceX’s commercial Starlink service. Qianfan satellites are flat in shape, making them easier to pack onto the tops of rockets before launch. This is a design approach pioneered by SpaceX with Starlink. The backers of the Qianfan network began launching the first of up to 1,300 broadband satellites last year.

Unlike Starlink, the Guowang network consists of satellites manufactured by multiple companies, and they launch on several types of rockets. On its face, the architecture taking shape in low-Earth orbit appears to be more akin to SpaceX’s military-grade Starshield satellites and the Space Development Agency’s future tranches of data relay and missile-tracking satellites.

Guowang, or “national network,” may also bear similarities to something the US military calls MILNET. Proposed in the Trump administration’s budget request for next year, MILNET will be a partnership between the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). One of the design alternatives under review at the Pentagon is to use SpaceX’s Starshield satellites to create a “hybrid mesh network” that the military can rely on for a wide range of applications.

Picking up the pace

In recent weeks, China’s pace of launching Guowang satellites has approached that of Starlink. China has launched five groups of Guowang satellites since July 27, while SpaceX has launched six Starlink missions using its Falcon 9 rockets over the same period.

A single Falcon 9 launch can haul up to 28 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, while China’s rockets have launched between five and 10 Guowang satellites per flight to altitudes three to four times higher. China has now placed 72 Guowang satellites into orbit since launches began last December, a small fraction of the 12,992-satellite fleet China has outlined in filings with the International Telecommunication Union.

The constellation described in China’s ITU filings will include one group of Guowang satellites between 500 and 600 kilometers (311 and 373 miles), around the same altitude of Starlink. Another shell of Guowang satellites will fly roughly 1,145 kilometers (711 miles) above the Earth. So far, all of the Guowang satellites China has launched since last year appear to be heading for the higher shell.

This higher altitude limits the number of Guowang satellites China’s stable of launch vehicles can carry. On the other hand, fewer satellites are required for global coverage from the higher orbit.

A prototype Guowang satellite is seen prepared for encapsulation inside the nose cone of a Long March 12 rocket last year. This is one of the only views of a Guowang spacecraft China has publicly released. Credit: Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Company Ltd.

SpaceX has already launched nearly 200 of its own Starshield satellites for the NRO to use for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. The next step, whether it’s the SDA constellation, MILNET, or something else, will seek to incorporate hundreds or thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites into real-time combat operations—things like tracking moving targets on the ground and in the air, targeting enemy vehicles, and relaying commands between allied forces. The Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense shield aims to extend real-time targeting to objects in the space domain.

In military jargon, the interconnected links to detect, track, target, and strike a target is called a kill chain or kill web. This is what US Space Force officials are pushing to develop with the Space Development Agency, MILNET, and other future space-based networks.

So where is the US military in building out this kill chain? The military has long had the ability to detect and track an adversary’s activities from space. Spy satellites have orbited the Earth since the dawn of the Space Age.

Much of the rest of the kill chain—like targeting and striking—remains forward work for the Defense Department. Many of the Pentagon’s existing capabilities are classified, but simply put, the multibillion-dollar satellite constellations the Space Force is building just for these purposes still haven’t made it to the launch pad. In some cases, they haven’t made it out of the lab.

Is space really the place?

The Space Development Agency is supposed to begin launching its first generation of more than 150 satellites later this year. These will put the Pentagon in a position to detect smaller, fainter ballistic and hypersonic missiles and provide targeting data for allied interceptors on the ground or at sea.

Space Force officials envision a network of satellites that can essentially control a terrestrial battlefield from orbit. The way future-minded commanders tell it, a fleet of thousands of satellites fitted with exquisite sensors and machine learning will first detect a moving target, whether it’s a land vehicle, aircraft, naval ship, or missile. Then, that spacecraft will transmit targeting data via a laser link to another satellite that can relay the information to a shooter on Earth.

US officials believe Guowang is a step toward integrating satellites into China’s own kill web. It might be easier for them to dismiss Guowang if it were simply a Chinese version of Starlink, but open-source information suggests it’s something more. Perhaps Guowang is more akin to megaconstellations being developed and deployed for the US Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.

If this is the case, China could have a head start on completing all the links for a celestial kill chain. The NRO’s Starshield satellites in space today are presumably focused on collecting intelligence. The Space Force’s megaconstellation of missile tracking, data relay, and command and control satellites is not yet in orbit.

Chinese media reports suggest the Guowang satellites could accommodate a range of instrumentation, including broadband communications payloads, laser communications terminals, synthetic aperture radars, and optical remote sensing payloads. This sounds a lot like a mix of SpaceX and the NRO’s Starshield fleet, the Space Development Agency’s future constellation, and the proposed MILNET program.

A Long March 5B rocket lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s Hainan Province on August 13, 2025, with a group of Guowang satellites. (Photo by Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images.) Credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

In testimony before a Senate committee in June, the top general in the US Space Force said it is “worrisome” that China is moving in this direction. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, used China’s emergence as an argument for developing space weapons, euphemistically called “counter-space capabilities.”

“The space-enabled targeting that they’ve been able to achieve from space has increased the range and accuracy of their weapon systems to the point where getting anywhere close enough [to China] in the Western Pacific to be able to achieve military objectives is in jeopardy if we can’t deny, disrupt, degrade that… capability,” Saltzman said. “That’s the most pressing challenge, and that means the Space Force needs the space control counter-space capabilities in order to deny that kill web.”

The US military’s push to migrate many wartime responsibilities to space is not without controversy. The Trump administration wants to cancel purchases of new E-7 jets designed to serve as nerve centers in the sky, where Air Force operators receive signals about what’s happening in the air, on the ground, and in the water for hundreds of miles around. Instead, much of this responsibility would be transferred to satellites.

Some retired military officials, along with some lawmakers, argue against canceling the E-7. They say there’s too little confidence in when satellites will be ready to take over. If the Air Force goes ahead with the plan to cancel the E-7, the service intends to bridge the gap by extending the life of a fleet of Cold War-era E-3 Sentry airplanes, commonly known as AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System).

But the high ground of space offers notable benefits. First, a proliferated network of satellites has global reach, and airplanes don’t. Second, satellites could do the job on their own, with some help from artificial intelligence and edge computing. This would remove humans from the line of fire. And finally, using a large number of satellites is inherently beneficial because it means an attack on one or several satellites won’t degrade US military capabilities.

In China, it takes a village

Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of US Space Forces in the Indo-Pacific region, told Ars last year that US officials are watching to see how China integrates satellite networks like Guowang into military exercises.

“What I find interesting is China continues to copy the US playbook,” Mastalir said. “So as as you look at the success that the United States has had with proliferated architectures, immediately now we see China building their own proliferated architecture, not just the transport layer and the comm layer, but the sensor layer as well. You look at their their pursuit of reusability in terms of increasing their launch capacity, which is currently probably one of their shortfalls. They have plans for a quicker launch tempo.”

A Long March 6A carries a group of Guowang satellites into orbit on July 27, 2025, from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province. China has used four different rocket configurations to place five groups of Guowang satellites into orbit in the last month. Credit: Wang Yapeng/Xinhua via Getty Images

China hasn’t recovered or reused an orbital-class booster yet, but several Chinese companies are working on it. SpaceX, meanwhile, continues to recycle its fleet of Falcon 9 boosters while simultaneously developing a massive super-heavy-lift rocket and churning out dozens of Starlink and Starshield satellites every week.

China doesn’t have its own version of SpaceX. In China, it’s taken numerous commercial and government-backed enterprises to reach a launch cadence that, so far this year, is a little less than half that of SpaceX. But the flurry of Guowang launches in the last few weeks shows that China’s satellite and rocket factories are picking up the pace.

Mastalir said China’s actions in the South China Sea, where it has taken claim of disputed islands near Taiwan and the Philippines, could extend farther from Chinese shores with the help of space-based military capabilities.

“Their specific goals are to be able to track and target US high-value assets at the time and place of their choosing,” he said. “That has started with an A2AD, an Anti-Access Area Denial strategy, which is extended to the first island chain and now the second island chain, and eventually all the way to the west coast of California.”

“The sensor capabilities that they’ll need are multi-orbital and diverse in terms of having sensors at GEO (geosynchronous orbit) and now increasingly massive megaconstellations at LEO (low-Earth orbit),” Mastalir said. “So we’re seeing all signs point to being able to target US aircraft carriers… high-value assets in the air like tankers, AWACs. This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening, and that’s what their space architecture is designed to do.”

China’s Guowang megaconstellation is more than another version of Starlink Read More »

After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon

artemis, china, NASA, Space, space race / 9u50fv / August 19, 2025

An expert explains why this will be enormously bad for the United States.

China’s Long March-10 rocket conducts its first static fire test at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on August 15, 2025. Credit: VCG via Getty Images

In recent weeks, the secretive Chinese space program has reported some significant milestones in developing its program to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the year 2030.

On August 6, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mockup of its 26-ton “Lanyue” lunar lander. The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there.

“The test,” said the agency in an official statement, “represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and also marks the first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft.”

As part of the statement, the space agency reconfirmed that it plans to land its astronauts on the Moon “before” 2030.

Then, last Friday, the space agency and its state-operated rocket developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, successfully conducted a 30-second test firing of the Long March 10 rocket’s center core with its seven YF-100K engines that burn kerosene and liquid oxygen. The primary variant of the rocket will combine three of these cores to lift about 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

These successful efforts followed a launch escape system test of the new Mengzhou spacecraft in June. A version of this spacecraft is planned for lunar missions.

On track for 2030

Thus, China’s space program is making demonstrable progress in all three of the major elements of its lunar program: the large rocket to launch a crew spacecraft, which will carry humans to lunar orbit, plus the lander that will take astronauts down to the surface and back. This work suggests that China is on course to land on the Moon before the end of this decade.

For the United States and its allies in space, there are reasons to be dismissive of this. For one, NASA landed humans on the Moon nearly six decades ago with the Apollo Program. Been there, done that.

Moreover, the initial phases of the Chinese program look derivative of Apollo, particularly a lander that strikingly resembles the Lunar Module. NASA can justifiably point to its Artemis Program and say it is attempting to learn the lessons of Apollo—that the program was canceled because it was not sustainable. With its lunar landers, NASA seeks to develop in-space propellant storage and refueling technology, allowing for lower cost, reusable lunar missions with the capability to bring much more mass to the Moon and back. This should eventually allow for the development of a lunar economy and enable a robust government-commercial enterprise.

China’s Lanyue lander undergoes tests in early August. Credit: CCTV

But recent setbacks with SpaceX’s Starship vehicle–one of two lunar landers under contract with NASA, alongside Blue Origin’s Mark 2 lander—indicate that it will still be several years until these newer technologies are ready to go. So it’s now probable that China will “beat” NASA back to the Moon this decade and win at least the initial heat of this new space race.

To put this into perspective, Ars connected with Dean Cheng, one of the most respected analysts on China, space policy, and the geopolitical implications of the new space competition. He was also a researcher at the Heritage Foundation for 13 years, where he focused on China. (He was not involved with Project 2025.) Now “sort of” retired, in his own words, Cheng is presently a non-resident fellow at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute.

The implications of this for the West

Ars: How significant was the Lanyue lander demonstration? Does this indicate the Chinese space program remains on track to land humans on the Moon by or before 2030?

Dean Cheng: The Lanyue lander is significant because it’s part of the usual Chinese “crawl-walk-run” approach to major space (and other scientific) projects. The [People’s Republic of China] can benefit from other people’s experiences (much of NASA’s information is open), but they still have to build and operate the spacecraft themselves. So the test of the Lanyue lander, successful or not, is an important part of that process.

Note that the Chinese also this week had a successful static test of the LM-10, which is their lunar SLV (satellite launch vehicle). This, along with the Lanyue, indicates that the Chinese lunar program is pushing ahead. The LM-10, even more than the Lanyue, is significant because it’s a new launch vehicle, in the wake of problems with the LM-5 and the cancellation of the LM-9 (which was probably their Saturn-V equivalent).

Ars: How likely is it that China lands humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program?

Cheng: At the rate things are going, sadly, it seems quite likely that the Chinese will land on the Moon before NASA can return to the Moon.

Ars: What would the geopolitical impact be if China beats the United States back to the Moon?

Cheng: The geopolitical impact of the Chinese beating the US to the Moon (where we are returning) would be enormous.

Ars: How so?

Cheng: It means the end of American exceptionalism. One of the hallmarks of the post-1969 era was that only the United States had been able to land someone on the Moon (or any other celestial body). This was bound to end, but the constant American refrain of “We’ve put a man on the Moon, we can do anything” will certainly no longer resonate.

It means China can do “big” things, and the United States cannot. The US cannot even replicate projects it undertook 50 (or more) years ago. The optics of “the passing of the American age” would be evident—and that in turn would absolutely affect other nations’ perceptions of who is winning/losing the broader technological and ideological competition between the US and the PRC.

A few years back, there was talk of “The Beijing Consensus” as an alternative to the “Washington Consensus.” The Washington Consensus posited that the path forward was democracy, pluralism, and capitalism. The Beijing consensus argued that one only needed economic modernization. That, in fact, political authoritarianism was more likely to lead to modernization and advancement. This ideological element would be reinforced if Beijing can do the “big” things but the US cannot.

And what will be the language of cis-lunar space? The Chinese are not aiming to simply go to the Moon. Their choice of landing sites (most likely the South Pole) suggests an intent to establish longer-term facilities and presence. If China regularly dispatches lunar missions (not just this first one), then it will rightfully be able to argue that Chinese should be a language, if not the language, of lunar/cis-lunar space traffic management. As important, China will have an enormous say over technical standards, data standards, etc., for cis-lunar activities. The PRC has already said it will be deploying a lunar PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing) network and likely a communications system, (given the BeiDou’s dual capabilities in this regard).

Ars: Taking the longer view, is the United States or China better positioned (i.e., US spending on defense, reusable in-space architecture vs Chinese plans) to dominate cislunar space between now and the middle of this century?

Cheng: On paper, the US has most of the advantages. We have a larger economy, more experience in space, extant space industrial capacity for reusable space launch, etc. But we have not had programmatic stability so that we are consistently pursuing the same goal over time. During Trump-1, the US said it would go to the Moon with people by 2024. Here we are, halfway through 2025. Trump-2 seems to once again be swinging wildly from going (back) to the Moon to going to Mars. Scientific and engineering advances don’t do well in the face of such wild swings and inconstancy.

By contrast, the Chinese are stable, systematic. They pursue a given goal (e.g., human spaceflight, a space station) over decades, with persistence and programmatic (both budgetarily and in terms of goals) stability. So I expect that the Chinese will put a Chinese person on the Moon by 2030 and follow that with additional crewed and unmanned facilities. This will be supported by a built-out infrastructure of lunar PNT/comms. The US will almost certainly put people on the Moon in a landing in the next several years, but then what? Is Lunar Gateway going to be real? How often will the US go to the Moon, as the Chinese go over and over?

Ars: Do you have any advice for the Trump administration in order to better compete with China in this effort to not only land on the Moon but have a dominant presence there?

Cheng: The Trump administration needs to make a programmatic commitment to some goal, whether the Moon or Mars. It needs to mobilize Congress and the public to support that goal. It needs to fund that goal, but as important, it also needs to have a high-level commitment and oversight, such as the VP and the National Space Council in the first Trump administration. There is little/no obvious direction at the moment for where space is going in this administration, and what its priorities are.

This lack of direction then affects the likelihood that industry, whether big business or entrepreneurs, can support whatever efforts do emerge. If POTUS wants to rely more on entrepreneurial business (a reasonable approach), he nonetheless needs to provide indications of this. It would help to also provide incentives, e.g., a follow-on to the Ansari and X-prizes, which did lead to a blossoming of innovation.

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon Read More »

Rocket Report: Ariane 6 beats Vulcan to third launch; China’s first drone ship

ariane 6, Arianespace, artemis II, china, human spaceflight, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, united launch alliance, vulcan / DJ Henderson / August 15, 2025

Why is China’s heavy-lift Long March 5B able to launch only 10 Guowang satellites at a time?

Wearing their orange launch and reentry spacesuits, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman (bottom) and pilot Victor Glover (top) walk out of an emergency egress basket during nighttime training at Launch Complex 39B.

Welcome to Edition 8.06 of the Rocket Report! Two of the world’s most storied rocket builders not named SpaceX achieved major successes this week. Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket launched from French Guiana on its third flight Tuesday night with a European weather satellite. Less than 20 minutes later, United Launch Alliance’s third Vulcan rocket lifted off from Florida on a US military mission. These are two of the three big rockets developed in the Western world that have made their orbital debuts in the last two years, alongside Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher. Ariane 6 narrowly won the “race” to reach its third orbital flight, but if you look at it another way, Ariane 6 reached its third flight milestone 13 months after its inaugural launch. It took Vulcan more than 19 months, and New Glenn has flown just once. SpaceX’s Super Heavy/Starship rocket has flown nine times but has yet to reach orbit.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Sixth success for sea-launched Chinese rocket. Private Chinese satellite operator Geespace added 11 spacecraft to its expanding Internet of Things constellation on August 8, aiming to boost low-power connectivity in key emerging markets, Space News reports. The 11 satellites rode into orbit aboard a solid-fueled Jielong 3 (Smart Dragon 3) rocket lifting off from an ocean platform in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Rizhao, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province. This was the sixth flight of the Jielong 3, a rocket developed by a commercially oriented spinoff of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology.

Mistaken for a meteor … The fourth stage of the Jielong 3 rocket, left in orbit after deploying its 11 satellite payloads, reentered the atmosphere late Sunday night. The fiery and destructive reentry created a fireball that streaked across the skies over Spain, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports. Many Spanish residents identified the streaking object as a meteor associated with the Perseid meteor shower. But it turned out to be a piece of China’s Jielong 3 rocket. Any debris that may have survived the scorching reentry likely fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

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Portugal green-lights Azores spaceport. The Portuguese government has granted the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium a license to build and operate a rocket launch facility on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, European Spaceflight reports. The Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC) was founded in 2019 with the goal of developing a commercial spaceport on Santa Maria, 1,500 kilometers off the Portuguese mainland. In September 2024, the company showcased the island’s suitability as a launch site by launching two small solid-fuel amateur-class rockets that it developed in-house.

What’s on deck? … The spaceport license granted by Portugal’s regulatory authorities does not cover individual launches themselves. Those must be approved in a separate licensing process. It’s likely that the launch site on Santa Maria Island will initially host suborbital launches, including flights by the Polish rocket company SpaceForest. The European Space Agency has also selected Santa Maria as the landing site for the first flight of the Space Rider lifting body vehicle after it launches into orbit, perhaps in 2027. (submitted by claudiodcsilva)

Why is Jeff Bezos buying launches from Elon Musk? Early Monday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from its original launch site in Florida. Remarkably, it was SpaceX’s 100th launch of the year. Perhaps even more notable was the rocket’s payload: two-dozen Project Kuiper satellites, which were dispensed into low-Earth orbit on target, Ars reports. This was SpaceX’s second launch of satellites for Amazon, which is developing a constellation to deliver low-latency broadband Internet around the world. SpaceX, then, just launched a direct competitor to its Starlink network into orbit. And it was for the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who owns a rocket company of his own in Blue Origin.

Several answers … So how did it come to this—Bezos and Elon Musk, competitors in so many ways, working together in space? There are several answers. Most obviously, launching payloads for customers is one of SpaceX’s two core business areas, alongside Starlink. SpaceX sells launch services to all comers and typically offers the lowest price per kilogram to orbit. There’s immediate revenue to be made if a company with deep pockets like Amazon is willing to pay SpaceX. Second, the other options to get Kuiper satellites into orbit just aren’t available at the volume Amazon needs. Amazon has reserved the lion’s share of its Kuiper launches with SpaceX’s competitors: United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Jeff Bezos’ own space company Blue Origin. Lastly, SpaceX could gain some leverage by providing launch services to Amazon. In return for a launch, SpaceX has asked other companies with telecom satellites, such as OneWeb and Kepler Communications, to share spectrum rights to enable Starlink to expand into new markets.

Trump orders cull of commercial launch regulations. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday directing government agencies to “eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for commercial launch and reentry licenses, Ars reports. The FAA, part of the Department of Transportation, is responsible for granting the licenses after ensuring launch and reentries don’t endanger the public, comply with environmental laws, and comport with US national interests. The drive toward deregulation will be welcome news for companies like SpaceX, led by onetime Trump ally Elon Musk; SpaceX conducts nearly all of the commercial launches and reentries licensed by the FAA.

Deflecting scrutiny? … The executive order does several things, and not all of them will be as controversial as the potential elimination of environmental reviews. The order includes a clause directing the government to reevaluate, amend, or rescind a slate of launch-safety regulations written during the first Trump administration. The FAA published the new regulations, known as Part 450, in 2020, and they went into effect in 2021, but space companies have complained that they are too cumbersome and have slowed down the license approval process. The Biden administration established a committee last year to look at reforming the regulations in response to industry’s outcry. Another part of the order that will likely lack bipartisan support is a call for making the head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division a political appointee. This job has historically been held by a career civil servant.

Ariane 6 launches European weather satellite. Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket successfully launched for a third time on Tuesday night, carrying a satellite into orbit for weather forecasting and climate monitoring, Euronews reports. “The success of this second commercial launch confirms the performance, reliability, and precision of Ariane 6,” said Martin Sion, CEO of ArianeGroup, operator of the rocket. “Once again, the new European heavy-lift launcher meets Europe’s needs, ensuring sovereign access to space,” Sion added. It marks the second commercial flight of the rocket, which has been in development for almost a decade with the European Space Agency (ESA). It is significant as it gives Europe independent access to space and reduces its reliance on Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Eumetsat returns to Europe … The polar-orbiting weather satellite launched by the Ariane 6 rocket this week is owned by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, or Eumetsat. Headquartered in Germany, Eumetsat is a multinational organization that owns and operates geostationary and polar-orbiting weather satellites, watching real-time storm development over Europe and Africa, while feeding key data into global weather and climate models. Just last month, Eumetsat’s newest geostationary weather satellite launched from Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket because of delays with the Ariane 6 program.

Rocket Lab isn’t giving up on 2025 yet. Rocket Lab continues to push for a first launch of its medium-lift Neutron rocket before the end of the year, but company executives acknowledge that schedule has no margin for error, Space News reports. It may seem unlikely, but Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, Peter Beck, said in a conference call with investment analysts last week that the company has a “green light” schedule to debut the Neutron rocket within the next four-and-a-half months. There’s still much work to do to prepare for the first launch, and the inaugural flight seems almost certain to slip into 2026.

Launch pad nearly complete … Rocket Lab plans to host a ribbon-cutting at the Neutron rocket’s new launch pad on Wallops Island, Virginia, on August 28. This launch pad is located just south of the spaceport’s largest existing launch facility, where Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket lifts off on resupply missions to the International Space Station. Rocket Lab has a small launch pad for its light-class Electron launcher co-located with the Antares pad at Wallops.

Chinese company reveals drone ship. The Chinese launch company iSpace has released the first photos of an ocean-going recovery ship to support the landings of reusable first-stage boosters. The company hosted a dedication ceremony in Yangzhou, China, earlier this month for the vessel, which looks similar to SpaceX’s rocket landing drone ships. In a press release, iSpace said the ship, named “Interstellar Return,” is China’s first marine rocket recovery ship, and the fifth such vessel in the world. SpaceX has three drone ships in its fleet for the Falcon 9 rocket, and Blue Origin has one for the New Glenn booster.

Rocket agnostic … The recovery ship will be compatible with various medium- and large-sized reusable rockets, iSpace said. But its main use will be as the landing site for the first stage booster for iSpace’s own Hyperbola 3 rocket, a medium-lift launcher with methane-fueled engines. The company has completed multiple vertical takeoff and landing tests of prototype boosters for the Hyperbola 3. The recovery ship measures about 100 meters long and 42 meters wide, with a displacement of 17,000 metric tons, and it has the ability to perform “intelligent unmanned operations” thanks to a dynamic positioning system, according to iSpace.

Vulcan’s first national security launch. United Launch Alliance delivered multiple US military satellites into a high-altitude orbit after a prime-time launch Tuesday night, marking an important transition from development to operations for the company’s new Vulcan rocket, Ars reports. This mission, officially designated USSF-106 by the US Space Force, was the first flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket to carry national security payloads. Two test flights of the Vulcan rocket last year gave military officials enough confidence to certify it for launching the Pentagon’s medium-to-large space missions.

Secrecy in the fairing … The Vulcan rocket’s Centaur upper stage released its payloads into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator roughly seven hours after liftoff. One of the satellites deployed by the Vulcan rocket is an experimental navigation testbed named NTS-3. It will demonstrate new technologies that could be used on future GPS navigation satellites. But the Space Force declined to disclose any information about the mission’s other payloads.

Artemis II crew trains for nighttime ops. The four astronauts training to fly around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission next year have been at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. One of the reasons they were at Kennedy was to run through a rehearsal for what it will be like to work at the launch pad if the Artemis II mission ends up lifting off at night. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen put on their spacesuits and rehearsed emergency procedures at Launch Complex 39B, replicating a daytime simulation they participated in last year.

Moving forward … The astronauts also went inside the Vehicle Assembly Building to practice using egress baskets they would use to quickly escape the launch pad in the event of a prelaunch emergency. The baskets are fastened to the mobile launch tower inside the VAB, where technicians are assembling and testing the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II mission. Later this year, the astronauts will return to Kennedy for a two-part countdown demonstration test. First, the crew members will board their Orion spacecraft once it’s stacked atop the SLS rocket inside the VAB. Then, in part two, the astronauts will again rehearse emergency evacuation procedures once the rocket rolls to the launch pad.

China’s Long March 5B flies again. China is ramping up construction of its national satellite-Internet megaconstellation with the successful deployment of another batch of Guowang satellites by a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket on Wednesday, Space.com reports. Guowang, whose name translates as “national network,” will be operated by China SatNet, a state-run company established in 2021. The constellation will eventually consist of about 13,000 satellites if all goes to plan.

Make this make sense … Guowang is a long way from that goal. Wednesday’s launch was the eighth overall for the network, but it was the fourth for the project in less than three weeks. Each mission lofts just five to 10 Guowang spacecraft, apparently because each satellite is quite large. For comparison, SpaceX launches 24 to 28 satellites on each mission to assemble its Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 8,100 operational spacecraft. The Long March 5B is China’s most powerful operational rocket, with a lift capacity somewhat higher than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 but below that of the Falcon Heavy. It begs the question of just how big the Guowang satellites really are, and do they have a purpose beyond broadband Internet service?

Next three launches

Aug. 16: Kinetica 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 07: 35 UTC

Aug. 17: Long March 4C | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China | 09: 05 UTC

Aug. 17: Long March 6A | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 14: 15 UTC

Rocket Report: Ariane 6 beats Vulcan to third launch; China’s first drone ship Read More »

Upcoming DeepSeek AI model failed to train using Huawei’s chips

AI, china, DeepSeek, NVIDIA, syndication / 9u50fv / August 14, 2025

DeepSeek is still working with Huawei to make the model compatible with Ascend for inference, the people said.

Founder Liang Wenfeng has said internally he is dissatisfied with R2’s progress and has been pushing to spend more time to build an advanced model that can sustain the company’s lead in the AI field, they said.

The R2 launch was also delayed because of longer-than-expected data labeling for its updated model, another person added. Chinese media reports have suggested that the model may be released as soon as in the coming weeks.

“Models are commodities that can be easily swapped out,” said Ritwik Gupta, an AI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “A lot of developers are using Alibaba’s Qwen3, which is powerful and flexible.”

Gupta noted that Qwen3 adopted DeepSeek’s core concepts, such as its training algorithm that makes the model capable of reasoning, but made them more efficient to use.

Gupta, who tracks Huawei’s AI ecosystem, said the company is facing “growing pains” in using Ascend for training, though he expects the Chinese national champion to adapt eventually.

“Just because we’re not seeing leading models trained on Huawei today doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. It’s a matter of time,” he said.

Nvidia, a chipmaker at the center of a geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington, recently agreed to give the US government a cut of its revenues in China in order to resume sales of its H20 chips to the country.

“Developers will play a crucial role in building the winning AI ecosystem,” said Nvidia about Chinese companies using its chips. “Surrendering entire markets and developers would only hurt American economic and national security.”

DeepSeek and Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.

Upcoming DeepSeek AI model failed to train using Huawei’s chips Read More »

China tells Alibaba, ByteDance to justify purchases of Nvidia AI chips

AI, china, NVIDIA, Policy, syndication / 9u50fv / August 12, 2025

Beijing is demanding tech companies including Alibaba and ByteDance justify their orders of Nvidia’s H20 artificial intelligence chips, complicating the US chipmaker’s business in China after striking an export arrangement with the Trump administration.

The tech companies have been asked by regulators such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to explain why they need to order Nvidia’s H20 chips instead of using domestic alternatives, said three people familiar with the situation.

Some tech companies, who were the main buyers of Nvidia’s H20 chips before their sale in China was restricted, were planning to downsize their orders as a result of the questions from regulators, said two of the people.

“It’s not banned but has kind of become a politically incorrect thing to do,” said one Chinese data center operator about purchasing Nvidia’s H20 chips.

Alibaba, ByteDance, and MIIT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chinese regulators have expressed growing disapproval of companies using Nvidia’s chips for any government or security related projects. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Chinese authorities had sent notices to a range of companies discouraging the use of the H20 chips, particularly for government-related work.

China tells Alibaba, ByteDance to justify purchases of Nvidia AI chips Read More »