“BREAKING: China made it illegal for AI to take your job” is going viral. It’s wrong three ways. But the real ruling — you can’t be fired just because an AI can do your work — is quietly more significant, and no Western country has matched it.
“Now or never.” The US and China are preparing their first-ever AI safety talks — with a proposal that both nations’ labs police themselves on AI cyberattacks. The first real substance before the summit, and what it reveals.
Beijing’s tech minister flew to a G20 meeting on US soil to call for AI “cooperation, not rivalry” — three weeks before the summit. The message is aimed at the watching world. And the gap between the words and China’s own hardening is the real story.
China just made its civilian AI industry a legal military reserve. The first defence-mobilisation law revision in 16 years turns AI, drones, and data into wartime assets on demand — weeks before the Trump-Xi summit.
Western media spent a decade describing a dystopia that never fully arrived. The reality of China’s social credit system in 2026 is more complex — and far more consequential for global business.