Taiwan to Choke Mobile Internet Speed to Simulate War, Disasters

Taiwan will deliberately slow mobile Internet speeds for the first time during annual civil defence drills in August, testing how citizens would communicate if bandwidth became scarce in emergencies ranging from disasters to a Chinese invasion.

During the 30-minute slowdown, high-bandwidth services, such as Video calls, streaming, and social media images, will be unavailable across 14 cities and counties in northern and central Taiwan, home to about 70% of the population.

The exercise is part of Taiwan's push to beef up preparedness as China steps up military pressure around the Island, prompting officials to plan not only for air raids but also communications disruptions in case of a blockade, cyberattack, or invasion.

Reference Sources

1. usnews - Taiwan to Slow Mobile Internet in Civil Defence Drills as China Threat Grows
2. bloomberg - Taiwan to Choke Mobile Internet Speed to Simulate War, Disasters

OpenAI’s Agents Reach 10 Million Users After ChatGPT Work Debut

OpenAI has seen a surge in demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) agents since its recent release of ChatGPT Work, providing new momentum in its bid to keep pace with rival Anthropic PBC.

OpenAI is set to announce that it now has 10 million people using two of its agent products – Codex for coding and ChatGPT Work for a wider mix of tasks – nearly doubling usage from earlier this month. Like Anthropic, OpenAI is pushing to develop advanced AI agents that can streamline more complex tasks on a user’s behalf.

Anthropic previously released Cowork, a similar tool to OpenAI’s most recent product, in a bid to broaden its success beyond AI coding tools.

OpenAI helped kick off the AI boom with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022.

The Chatbot has more than 900 million weekly users.

OpenAI is set to announce on Tuesday that it now has 10 million people using two of its agent products – Codex for coding and ChatGPT Work for a wider mix of tasks – nearly doubling usage from earlier this month.

OpenAI is pushing to develop advanced AI agents that can streamline more complex tasks on a user’s behalf.

Reference Sources

1. bloomberg - OpenAI’s Agents Reach 10 Million Users After ChatGPT Work Debut

China’s ‘national team’ buys shares worth $9bn to prop up market

China's "national team" of funds has bought close to $9Bn in equities as Beijing seeks to support the stock market following a bruising sell-off on Friday. Funds associated with the central government announced they had purchased nearly Rmb60Bn ($8.9Bn) worth of stocks late on Sunday, helping boost Chinese indices on Monday even as other Asian markets dropped. Global equity markets suffered sharp declines last week, sparked by heavy selling of AI chipmaker stocks.

China's benchmark CSI 300 rose 0.7%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index jumped 1.8%, while Japan's Nikkei 225 and South Korea's Kospi both fell more than 4%.

China's quantitative hedge funds saw some of their steepest drawdowns last week as a local market rout deepened following the global selloff in chip stocks.

China Reform Holdings Corp. and China Chengtong Holdings Group, two investment firms that are associated with a group of entities known as the National team, both said Sunday that they have increased holdings of Chinese equities to help stabilise domestic capital markets.

They pledged to continue raising stakes in companies such as centrally owned enterprises.

Reference Sources

1. ft - China’s ‘national team’ buys shares worth $9bn to prop up market
2. bloomberg - DeepSeek Founder’s Fund Slumps 16% as AI Rout Hits China Quants
3. wsj - China’s ‘National Team’ Buys Nearly $9 Billion of Shares to Support Market
4. bloomberg - China Steps Up Efforts to Stabilize Its Sagging Stock Market
5. bloomberg - Chinese Traders Unwind Leveraged Bets at Fastest Pace Since 2016

The CommonWealth English daily news digest is a service curated by CommonWealth English team with the help of AI tools.  

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