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DJI has lost its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense, failing to remove its designation as a Chinese Military Company. US District Court Judge Paul Friedman ruled the Pentagon has broad discretion to make such designations, finding sufficient evidence that DJI qualifies as a "military-civil fusion contributor" based on its recognition by China's National Development and Reform Commission as a National Enterprise Technology Center. The designation provides DJI substantial government benefits including cash subsidies, special financial support and tax benefits. The judge rejected several of the DoD's other claims for insufficient evidence and noted the department confused two different Chinese industrial zones when attempting to prove DJI's factories were in state-sponsored areas. DJI faces a total import ban on new products this December and US customs has already stopped many consumer drone shipments. The company says it is evaluating legal options.

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Not to be confused with all the other reports of Chinese intruders on US networks that came to light this week

RedNovember, a Chinese state-sponsored cyberspy group, targeted government and critical private-sector networks around the globe between June 2024 and July 2025, exploiting buggy internet-facing appliances to deploy a Go-based backdoor called Pantegana and other offensive security tools, including Cobalt Strike and SparkRAT.…

Meta is making humanoid robots its next massive "AR-sized bet," investing billions into a project led by top roboticists. The focus will be less on hardware and more on software dexterity, aiming to license its robotics platform to manufacturers much like Google licenses Android. The Verge reports: During a recent conversation at Meta's headquarters, CTO Andrew Bosworth said he stood up a robotics "research effort" earlier this year at the direction of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The team's existence has been reported on before, but Bosworth hadn't discussed its strategy in-depth until our interview. "I don't think the hardware is the hard part," he told me ahead of Meta's recent Connect conference. "I'm not saying the hardware isn't also hard, but it's not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the software." To demonstrate, Bosworth picked up my glass of water from a table between us. "If you know robotics, one of the biggest problems that you have is dexterous manipulation," he said. "These robots, they can stand, they can run, they can do a flip, because the ground is a super stable thing." By contrast, a robot trying to pick up the glass of water would likely "immediately crush it or spill all the water." While Meta is currently building its own humanoid, or "Metabot" as it's called internally, Bosworth envisions the company licensing its software platform to other robot manufacturers. "I don't care about us being the hardware manufacturers," he explained.

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Chinese giant maps out datacenters across Europe and beyond, yet US chip curbs cast a long shadow

Analysis Alibaba this week opened an AI war chest containing tens of billions of dollars, a revamped LLM lineup, and plans for AI datacenters in Europe. But it also prompted a flurry of questions over how it will achieve all this in an increasingly fragmented IT landscape, when critical resources are in short supply.…

United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket launched 27 more Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon from Cape Canaveral, bringing the constellation's total to 129 in orbit. By the end of the year, Amazon expects over 200 satellites will be deployed, with commercial service starting in several countries by early 2026. Spaceflight Now reports: This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low Earth orbit constellation. [...] The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. Control will shift over to the Project Kuiper team at their 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. The separation sequence began about 20 minutes after liftoff, concluding about 15 minutes later. From there, they will confirm satellite health, and eventually raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Renewable energy sources could power datacenters at a lower cost than relying on nuclear generation from small modular reactors (SMRs), claims a recently revealed study. ... [A]nalysis from the Centre for Net Zero (CNZ) says it would cost 43 percent less to power a 120 MW data facility with renewables and a small amount of gas-generated energy, when compared with an SMR. It claims that a microgrid comprising offshore wind, solar, battery storage, and backed up by gas generation, would be significantly cheaper to run annually than procuring power sourced from a nuclear SMR. [...] CNZ describes itself as an open research institute, founded by Octopus Energy Group in the UK, and claims to advise the State of California and Europe's International Energy Agency as well as the British government. While CNZ's study applies to the UK sector, where energy costs are among the highest in the industrialized world, it is likely that the overall conclusion would still be valid in other countries as well. Its analysis shows that renewables can meet 80 percent of the constant demand from a large datacenter over the course of a year. Offshore wind can provide the majority of load requirements, with gas generation backed by battery storage as a stopgap source of power representing the most cost-optimal mix. Greater capacity in the on-site battery storage system would reduce the reliance on gas power, and this would likely happen over time as the cost of such systems is expected to come down, the report claims. But perhaps the real kicker is that CNZ estimates that microgrids powered largely by renewables could be built in approximately five years, while operational SMRs are not expected to be widely available until sometime in the next decade. CNZ says that it calculated the typical yearly resource cost (capex and opex) of powering a datacenter with a nuclear SMR, and modeled this using Python for Power System Analysis (PyPSA), an open source energy modeling tool, against two renewable energy scenarios. One was the wind, solar, battery, and gas mix, while the other omitted solar.

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U.S. tech workers must sacrifice work-life balance to compete with China's workforce, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has warned. Speaking on the All-In podcast, Schmidt said China's tech sector operates on "996" schedules -- 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week -- despite the practice being outlawed in 2021. He criticized remote work as particularly harmful for young employees who miss learning opportunities from in-person office interactions. âoeIf you're going to be in tech and you're going to win, you're going to have to make some tradeoffs," Schmidt said. "Remember, we're up against the Chinese; the Chinese work-life balance consists of 996, which is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week," he said. Silicon Valley AI startups are already adopting similar expectations, demanding 72-hour workweeks according to Wired. Google's Sergey Brin recently told Gemini team employees to work in-office weekdays, calling 60 hours weekly "the sweet spot of productivity."

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MacStadium's inaugural CIO survey shows Apple devices gaining major ground in U.S. enterprises, with 96% of CIOs expecting Mac fleets to expand in the next two years and Macs already representing an average of 65% of enterprise endpoints. "The results show rapid Mac deployment across US business in the last two years, with 93% of CIOs claiming increased use, and 59% claiming a significant increase in use of all Apple devices," adds Computerworld. From the report: "As the adoption of Apple hardware continues to rise with both consumers and business users, and Apple Silicon is emerging as a secure and energy-efficient option for AI workloads, Apple is turning its sights to the enterprise," [MacStadium CEO Ken Tacelli] said in an interview. Among the specifics: - 93% of CIOs report increased Apple device usage over the past two years. - 45% of CIOs describe their leadership's view of Macs as a strategic investment, reflecting growing executive-level buy-in. - The top drivers for Apple adoption are security and privacy (59%), employee preference (59%), and hardware performance (54%). - Perhaps most importantly, 65% of CIOs say Macs are easier to manage than Windows or Linux devices. In addition to those factors, the unique technical capabilities of Apple's kit (53%) play a role. Businesses are buying Macs because they're cheaper to run, last longer, allow employees to be more productive, and are both more private and more secure. The survey also shows that AI has become a leading reason to choose Macs. Apple Silicon is highly performant and energy efficient, enabling Macs to run on-device, secure AI, and to access cloud-based AI services.

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