| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the densest collection of talent that has ever existed in Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here. Last week, I wrote about trade sanctions. I wasn’t blathering about the massive tariffs that President Donald Trump insists will level the playing field (they won’t), boost the economy (nope) and bring back good manufacturing jobs to American workers (unlikely, especially if he keeps threatening the nation’s largest employer). Rather, I digressed about British sailors and Megarian warriors and Gungan annoyances to make a point about sanctions declared in the name of national security — the sort President Joe Biden inflicted on China in 2022 to stop the flow of the highest-end semiconductors to America’s superpower rival. The folly of those measures, we are told, could be seen in the so-called Deepseek Moment, in which a Chinese tech firm ginned up an AI tool on a par with ChatGPT for a fraction of the cost. These claims have been pretty persuasively challenged in terms of both cost and innovation, although much media coverage hasn’t let the facts confuse the narrative. Yet it’s interesting that Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia — whose chips powered DeepSeek’s supposed Moment — thinks Biden’s security measures backfired, and that Trump would be right to loosen them. “If we don’t compete in China and we allow the Chinese to build a rich ecosystem because we’re not there to compete for it, and new platforms are developed and they’re not American at a time when the world is diffusing AI technology, their leadership and their technology will diffuse all around the world,” he told Stratechery’s Ben Thompson after giving a keynote address in Taiwan. Obviously, Huang is a zillion times smarter than me. But, as my colleague Dave Lee — who often makes me sound just a tiny bit smarter — put it to me this week: What’s stopping China from continuing to “diffuse” that leadership and technology around the world even more effectively if we give them access to our best stuff? It could set up an endless cycle of AI appropriation: tech’s Ouroboros Moment. Thompson isn’t the only one struck by the Nvidia CEO’s trip to Taiwan. “The biggest global headlines ended up being Huang’s praise for Chinese tech,” Catherine Thorbecke writes. “While Washington is intent on doing everything it can to kneecap Chinese AI, Huang called the flagship models a ‘gift to the world.’ He criticized the ‘failure’ of US attempts to hold China back. He is right that the US efforts have had unintended consequences in spurring Beijing’s pursuit of tech self-sufficiency.” To me, the question isn’t only whether Beijing is truly matching US innovation in AI, but if it is doing the same across the wider tech spectrum. Consider the only thing I am kinda smart on: firepower. “The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US,” writes Karishma Vaswani. “This is possible because of the PLA’s centralized, whole-of-government approach,” Karishma notes. “Taken together, the manufacturing of major combat assets like ships and planes shows a military and industrial base increasingly prepared for conflict with the US.”  China’s success in courting Pakistan is not a surprise given their common rival: India. But should we be shocked by Beijing’s inroads in our own hemisphere? Maybe not, given Trump’s silly threat to take back the Panama Canal and his sillier renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. “While Donald Trump was busy making deals in the Middle East, his Chinese counterpart hosted Latin American leaders with investment and credit lines pledges, visa exemptions and proclamations of friendship and cooperation,” writes Juan Pablo Spinetto. “The contrast with the Trump White House’s bellicosity toward the region — tariffs, deportations and sanctions included — couldn’t be sharper.”  But with regards to AI, the biggest problem we face may not be gains made by China, but a loss of control. “You’d think that as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, governments would be more interested in making it safer. The opposite seems to be the case,” writes Parmy Olson, who says advanced AI models are getting scarily good at the art of deception. Meanwhile, US tech companies are busy deceiving themselves into thinking they have what it takes to fix the problem: “In Apple’s blundering work with artificial intelligence, a consistent theme is the lack of any clear idea within the company as to what good AI on an Apple device should actually do,” writes my tech tutor Dave Lee. “Apple has the luxury of time to get things right with AI. The iPhone is still the dominant smartphone, and its user lock-in has not yet shown any signs of being weakened by the appeal of AI features on competing devices. But that time isn’t limitless.” Apple also faces an old friend as a new competitor: Its former design guru, Jony Ive, is teaming up with OpenAI’s Sam Altman to “develop an era-defining product that changes the game” just as the iPhone did in 2007. “Building a breakthrough device on the magnitude Ive and Altman have promised is a tall order,” adds Dave. “Even if you have what Altman humbly described as the ‘densest collection of talent’ that has ‘ever existed in the world.’ ” When it comes to AI, whether in the US or China, hyperbole seems to be order of the day. More Probably Exaggerated Reading: What’s the World Got in Store ? - France GDP, PPI: Billionaire Drahi Knows the Art of the Deal — Chris Hughes
- Nvidia earnings, May 28: Pretty much every article on this newsletter
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So, OK, let’s take the Chinese at face value: Their AI is awesome and their planes are deadly. Their economy, however, is something of a shambles, particularly in real estate. Is what’s bad for Beijing good for the planet? “For all that has been written on the financial impact of China’s housing bubble bursting, that degree of slowdown suggests we may still be underplaying the scale of this reversal as a shift in economic activity — and, importantly, the carbon emissions that result from it,” writes David Fickling. “That’s because the first commodity market to feel the impact of a slowdown in new home building is cement, one of the most polluting substances on earth. It’s essential as the binder that holds concrete together, so it’s one of the first materials to be used when developers break ground at a new site. But it accounts for about 8% of the world’s emissions, and China’s consumption alone comes to nearly 4% of all carbon pollution.” If the Chinese are struggling with something as simple as cement, what does it say about their chokehold on some of the most complicated materials on the planet? “If you want to frighten a US Army general in 2025, there’s a simple trick: Just whisper the words ‘rare earths.’ Fears about the world’s dependency on China for the suite of 17 minerals strung along the bottom of the periodic table have become intense,” explains David. “Few want to call out that this threat is a paper tiger — least of all Beijing, which promises curbs on exports every time it feels its prerogatives have been threatened. But it is.” Why? Because the rare earth magnets used in everything from wind turbines to jet engines need a critical mineral that China is desperately short of: boron, which is exceedingly rare. About 30% is mined in Boron, an aptly-named little town in the Mojave Desert of California, and another 50% or so comes from mines south of Istanbul. “To the extent the rest of the world is dependent on China for the neodymium in rare earths magnets, China is equally dependent on other countries for the boron that holds them together,” explains David. “Minerals aren’t a story of dependence, but of interdependence. Our global economy doesn’t depend on an arms race waged across enemy lines over lists of a few dozen critical elements. Instead, it’s founded on a web of thousands of minerals, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, produced and consumed in myriad different places ... If we turn that commerce into collateral damage in a new cold war, we’ll all suffer the consequences.” Notes: Please send zirconium, beryllium, iodine, helium, boron and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. | 
