Anthropic's strict access controls against China, from geoblocking to selfie verification, are being systematically bypassed through a thriving network of so-called "transfer stations." Chinese developers can buy Claude tokens for as little as ten percent of the list price. Analyst Zilan Qian warns that the circumvention infrastructure weakens export controls and Anthropic's own safety systems.
Kimi K3 and GLM-5.3 are now within striking distance of the best US models. Western labs blame distillation, and there's real evidence for it. But guilty or not, the conclusion is the same: a model lead can't be defended. This issue looks at what can.
Unitree Robotics rose 460 percent in its Shanghai IPO, hitting a valuation of around $50 billion. But an FT report shows much of the demand for its robots comes from state-backed training centers that buy the machines and sell the resulting data back to the manufacturers, a circular business model that echoes the Nvidia criticism in the US.
GLM-5.3, the AI model from Chinese startup Z.ai, scores 60 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. That ties it with Kimi K3 for the top spot among open models, and it's seven points ahead of the previous GLM-5.2.
The rapidly expanding global robotics industry could require 363 TWh of electricity annually by 2035 – equivalent to the yearly consumption of around 35 million average US households – according to new research from Wood Mackenzie. The finding arrives as energy capacity planning is already under pressure from AI data centres, making robotics a second […]
China is the country most prepared for self-driving cars, according to a new report. The new study by the B2B car company eCarsTrade analyzed robotaxi deployment, road infrastructure, legal frameworks, and public sentiment across 15 countries to see which nations are actually putting driverless vehicles on the road. Driven by massive robotaxi deployment, nearuniversal 5G […]
Chinese robotics company Unitree has priced its initial public offering at a valuation of approximately $9 billion, becoming the country’s first mainland-listed humanoid robot manufacturer and highlighting growing investor interest in AI-powered robotics despite rising geopolitical tensions. The Hangzhou-based company said it has priced its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 150.8 yuan ($22.34) per share, […]
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Covered List,” originally published in 2021, identifies communications equipment and services that it says pose a threat to national security. On 28 July, the FCC added mobile, communicating robots weighing more than 2 kilograms and power inverters commonly used in solar panels to the list, meaning that new products from any foreign country in these categories are no longer eligible for import.
The move is a Department of Defense–driven expansion of scattered federal efforts to further limit U.S. exposure to potentially sensitive Chinese technology, but it may impose major changes on the robotics industry in allied countries, too.
All foreign-produced advanced robotic devices pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons…unless the [Department of Defense determines that] a given foreign-produced advanced robotic device, or a class of such devices, does not pose such risks.
There are two important definitions here. The first is what an “advanced robotic device” is, and the second is what “unacceptable risk” means. Drones already went through their own round of this sort of regulation, so they’re exempt from this particular restriction, as are connected vehicles and medical devices. As far as the FCC is concerned, “advanced robotic devices” are mobile systems that incorporate on-board sensing and communications and have some amount of autonomy. There are a couple of loopholes, including systems weighing under 2 kilograms and any system that communicates at less than 200 kilobits per second, which opens up some creative possibilities. It’s important to note that this applies to new devices; those already certified are not restricted for sale or use.
As to the risks, the U.S. government says that foreign advanced robotic devices represent “a cybersecurity risk that threatens the security of critical infrastructure and thus the safety and security of U.S. persons.” There seem to be two main points to the justification, found in Appendix C. The first is that mobile robots are important to both the economy and the military, so the United States needs its own supply chain and industrial base rather than relying on foreign manufacturers. And second, mobile robots monitor critical infrastructure in sensitive locations, making them a security risk.
The Country That Must Not Be Named
As part of its justification for why foreign robots are a security risk, the DOD cites IEEE Spectrum’s article on a critical vulnerability in robots from Unitree, based in Hangzhou, China, along with several other news articles and reports about Chinese robotics. And despite the FCC swearing up and down that this action is “country neutral” and “not targeted at any country or countries,” U.S. national security sources told Spectrum that the perceived threat is obviously China. That’s how China feels about it, too, per a Chinese Ministry of Commerce 29 July press conference (translation of the first quote here):
On the surface, the FCC’s measures fly the banner of “non-discrimination,” but in substance they discriminate against and suppress Chinese enterprises and products…
China firmly opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and going after Chinese companies. Protectionism does not make the U.S. more competitive and will only hurt the interests of U.S. companies and consumers. China will continue to do what is necessary to firmly defend the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies.
It’s unclear what China is going to do about this—but how about the rest of the world? How can foreign companies that make advanced robotic devices get them cleared for FCC authorization? Among many, many other things, you’ll need to provide “a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States for the advanced robotic device.”
Because China also produces a large fraction of robot components, even for robots assembled in the United States, it will have strong leverage in any related negotiations until U.S. robotics companies further diversify their supply chains.
Applicants must also submit their applications to the DOD and FCC by 1 January 2028, which is unfortunate for anyone who wants to develop an advanced robotic device after that point.
Robotics Industry Reactions
This is all very new, and reactions from the robotics community have been mixed.
Some American robotics companies may benefit in the local market from the newfound lack of competition in the commercial market. Brendan Schulman,Boston Dynamics’ vice president of policy, wrote an enthusiastic endorsement of the ban on LinkedIn: “I sense that this is just the first round in a series of policies that will define the success and growth of the industry for decades to come.” On the other hand, third-country buyers may just stick to Chinese products, as they generally have for drones and electric cars.
But not all companies expect major changes from the new regulation. American customers “need to know they can audit the technology, get support quickly, and keep the system operating without depending on a fragile overseas supply chain,” Nic Radford, the CEO of the U.S. humanoid robotics company Persona, tells IEEE Spectrum. In other words, he figures some customers wouldn’t have wanted Chinese humanoids anyway.
Philipp Frey, vice president of strategy for the Swiss quadruped company ANYbotics, agrees. He says their enterprise customers in the United States “increasingly evaluate robots on long-term reliability, cybersecurity, software capability, safety certification, serviceability, and ecosystem integration, not on hardware cost alone.”
ANYbotics also plans to apply for conditional approval of future products, Frey says. That will involve a national-security review by the DOD or the Department of Homeland Security, disclosing company beneficial ownership, supply-chain risks, and declaring a plan for establishing a significant manufacturing presence in the United States.
Gavin Kenneally, CEO of the U.S. quadruped company Ghost Robotics, is more explicit about the risks that Chinese robot strategy poses to the United States. “Active and purposeful spyware is deployed inside the U.S. on Chinese robots. Examples of predatory pricing abound. And this isn’t just a competition between U.S. and Chinese robotics companies; it’s between private U.S. companies and China’s coordinated national strategy,” Kenneally tells Spectrum. “If today’s announcement encourages stronger cybersecurity and a more level competitive environment, that’s good for customers and good for the robotics industry.”
So is an industry-wide ban the best way to guard against threats? American approaches to Chinese technology security risks have been “ad hoc and fragmented,” wrote the Brookings Institution sociologist Kyle Chan in a report published 9 July. Chan called for the Bureau of Industry and Security, part of the Department of Commerce, to centralize federal information gathering and decision-making on how to handle risky foreign devices. He also called for better public input mechanisms for these issues, and a continuous, proportionate process that tightened or relaxed targeted import restrictions in response to well-defined risks.
That would allow American industry to continue benefiting from partnerships with Chinese manufacturers in less sensitive links of the supply chain, Chan argues. Those links will evolve over time, requiring continued assessment, but without those partnerships, crude bans “could make it more difficult for American startups and researchers to develop new software and end up slowing innovation across the U.S. robotics ecosystem,” he writes.
Chinese robotics company Unitree Technology expects strong revenue growth in the first half of 2026 as demand for humanoid robots and embodied AI continues to increase, according to reports by DigiTimes and AFP. The company expects first-half revenue of about CNY1.1 billion ($156 million), representing year-on-year growth of between 35.6 percent and 45.4 percent, the […]
China has threatened to retaliate against new US restrictions on foreign-produced humanoid robots, warning that the measures will damage economic and trade relations between the world’s two largest economies. The response comes after the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added foreign-produced advanced robotic devices, including humanoids and quadrupeds, to its Covered List, preventing new models […]
AGIBOT says its WITA-Omni Preview multimodal foundation model has achieved the highest score on the Daily-Omni audio-visual reasoning benchmark, outperforming models from Alibaba, Google and ByteDance. According to the company, WITA-Omni Preview recorded an average accuracy of 85.21 percent on the third-party benchmark, ahead of Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview and Doubao Seed 2.0 Lite. […]
As OpenAI and Anthropic employees grow quieter online, researchers at Chinese AI labs are flocking to X to explain their work, recruit talent, and shape the global conversation on AI.
Certain U.S. firms, such as Ghost Robotics, may benefit, because they are among the few companies that can handle demand for ground robots from U.S. government buyers. Ground robots are finished products at the top of the chain of added value, unlike semiconductors, which are “lower” down the value chain since they are always components of other products. If the proposed ground robot ban were to move lower down the value chain, preventing American robot makers from buying Chinese-made components, those companies might have a harder time fulfilling U.S. demand. The U.S. robotics industry is in a pickle: Companies would benefit from eliminating Chinese competitors at their level of the value chain, so long as they can retain their Chinese suppliers.
The U.S. does not have a serious, overarching strategy to guiding its approach to the U.S.-China techno-economic competition.” —Stephen Ezell, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
It’s still early for the ground robotics industry in the U.S. Adoption is not yet that high, nor are the supply chains mature yet. South Korea and Japan make many crucial robot components, for example, so if they or other countries the U.S. considers friendly can replace Chinese components the U.S. government declares unsafe, the U.S. robotics industry may be able to adapt and build its competitiveness.
For other technologies, it’s Chinese tech all the way down the chain. The UAS market, for example, is dominated by Chinese producers. The U.S. Department of Commerce has sought to ban them for more than a year, and in December, the FCC added UAS’s to its import ban list, called the Covered List.
“That was a problem with the drone ban,” Chan says. “Rather than thinking about how you would ramp up domestic production and then have this tapering off of dependence on Chinese drones, it was a sharp and fast switch, which left industry in the lurch.”
Many Supply Chains Already Extend Beyond China
The FCC’s March ban on new foreign-made routers was a surprise to that industry. In 2025, the U.S. imported nearly US $ 31 billion of routers, according to the Global Electronics Association. Yet China produced only 1.1 percent of that, by value, down from around 20.5 percent of the U.S. market share in 2019. In 2025, the top three sources of routers in the U.S. by value were Vietnam, Mexico, and Thailand, together accounting for 68.4 percent of the market.
“A lot of this is more nuanced than the regulatory approaches suggest. The real vulnerabilities are outdated software, patches that haven’t been installed, unchanged default passwords,” says Global Electronics Association economist Shawn DuBravac, one of the authors of the association’s report.
On 14 April, the FCC issued conditional approvals for U.S. distribution of certain Netgear and Adtran routers, along with Sees.ai UAS’s. U.S.-headquartered Netgear manufactures routers in Vietnam and Taiwan, according to Consumer Reports. DuBravac says the fact that the FCC took only about three weeks to exempt those imports is positive, but that since the exemptions last only 18 months, manufacturers must still contend with a lot of uncertainty.
“If you’re a company you’re going to have to have clear visibility into your suppliers and into your suppliers’ suppliers,” DuBravac says. “There’s much, much more scrutiny.”
The last several U.S. administrations have restricted a growing list of Chinese tech, across both political parties. “I see this as bipartisan,” Chan says, “and I would expect continued scrutiny.”
Companies building technology subject to security controls should also prepare for speed. A White House interagency task force determined that foreign routers were a security risk, leading to the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau announcing first the UAS ban and later the router ban. Because UAS’s use radio to communicate, they are subject to FCC oversight. Both security-related determinations, unlike conventional FCC rule making, did not require public notice or a commenting period.
“There hasn’t been much of a back and forth process into [the UAS] rule,” Chan says.
The electronics industry is also accustomed to more dialogue with trade-related changes, DuBravac says. “When you see a problem, you open an investigation and stakeholders can submit input into that investigation so it feels a little more like a two-way conversation, so you’re actually hearing from industry on this.” So far, that has not happened.
Instead, even analysts that welcome U.S. security scrutiny of Chinese technology are finding the fits and starts of the associated policymaking jarring, says Stephen Ezell of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.: “The U.S. does not have a serious, overarching strategy guiding its approach to the U.S.-China techno-economic competition.”
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