{"id":922115,"date":"2026-07-24T05:12:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/the-download-energy-transmission-and-us-threats-against-chinese-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T05:12:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:12:56","slug":"the-download-energy-transmission-and-us-threats-against-chinese-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/the-download-energy-transmission-and-us-threats-against-chinese-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The Download: energy transmission and US threats against Chinese AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plus: Why the OpenAI hack is the scariest AI mishap yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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This is today’s edition of <\/em>The Download<\/em><\/a>, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

The power line that could reshape New York\u2019s grid is hitting snags\u00a0<\/h3>\n

During a heat wave on July 3, New York State\u2019s grid imported enough electricity from Canada to meet about 9% of its total demand that day.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Some of that power shuttled in on a 339-mile power line stretching from Quebec to Queens. It opened in May and is officially the longest underground transmission line in North America. It could provide up to 20% of New York City\u2019s electricity demand, largely with abundant hydropower from Quebec.<\/p>\n

One wrinkle: The line has been down for most of this month, and some experts are concerned about how drought will affect the power supply feeding it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, the line could help shape the future of our grid, if it can overcome these sorts of snags.\u00a0Read our story to understand how<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Casey Crownhart<\/em><\/p>\n

This\u00a0story<\/a>\u00a0is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter.\u00a0Sign up<\/a> to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The must-reads<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve combed the internet to find you today\u2019s most fun\/important\/scary\/fascinating stories about technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

1 The US Treasury is threatening to sanction Chinese AI companies<\/strong>
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has accused Moonshot of improperly distilling Anthropic\u2019s Fable model. (TechCrunch<\/a>)
+\u00a0Nvidia\u2019s Jensen Huang is arguing that America has nothing to fear from Chinese AI.<\/em>\u00a0(Axios<\/a>)
+\u00a0Like it or not, Chinese models are now part of the global AI infrastructure.\u00a0<\/em>(Rest of World<\/a>)
+ China\u2019s AI models have Trump\u2019s AI world at war with itself.<\/em>\u00a0(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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2 Why the OpenAI hack is the scariest AI mishap yet<\/strong>
AI\u2019s capabilities seem to be starting to outpace our current ability to control them. (The Economist<\/a>\u00a0$)
+ Hugging Face had to turn to a Chinese AI model to rescue it from the hack.<\/em>\u00a0(BI<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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3 Visually impaired Europeans can now get an implant that restores sight<\/strong>
And Americans may not have to wait long to receive it, too. (STAT<\/a>)
+ This retina implant lets people with vision loss do a crossword puzzle.<\/em>\u00a0(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

4 A bellwether lawsuit suing Meta for social media addiction has been dropped<\/strong>
There are, however, many more waiting in the wings. (NYT<\/a>\u00a0$)<\/p>\n

5 Here\u2019s how ICE gets its hands on Americans\u2019 data<\/strong>
As soon as you open a credit card or phone account, its agents can see where you live. (404 Media<\/a>)
+\u00a0States are warring with the Trump administration over the right to see ICE agents\u2019 faces.\u00a0<\/em>(Wired<\/a>\u00a0$)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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6 We urgently need to grapple with AI\u2019s environmental impact<\/strong>
As the world warms, is the price we\u2019re paying worth it? (The Verge<\/a>)
+\u00a0We did the math on AI\u2019s energy footprint.\u00a0<\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

7 Privacy issues with smart glasses need an industrywide fix<\/strong>
That\u2019s according to Samsung, which is unveiling glasses it developed with Google this fall. (Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0$)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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8 The US Army is begging soldiers to limit their AI use<\/strong>
The token crisis comes for us all eventually, it seems. (Ars Technica)<\/a><\/p>\n

9 Why does lettuce keep making Americans sick?\u00a0<\/strong>\ud83e\udd6c\ud83d\ude37
It\u2019s pretty simple: a lot of people eat it, and it doesn\u2019t get cooked. (Wired<\/a>\u00a0$)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

10 Pokemon Go is the perfect game to play this summer<\/strong>
It\u2019s fun, collaborative, and it gets you outdoors. (Guardian<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Quote of the day<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It went off and did this hack all by itself, as far as we can tell. This is the highest level of autonomy that we’ve seen in the use of a large language model for cyber operations.”<\/h2>\n

\u2014Colin Shea-Blymyer, a cybersecurity research fellow at Georgetown University, tells\u00a0NPR<\/a>\u00a0why the OpenAI hack on Hugging Face is so alarming.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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One More Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

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KAGAN MACLEOD<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Welcome to the dark side of crypto\u2019s permissionless dream\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap one cryptocurrency for another and earn fees from making those swaps.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But is he responsible for what it\u2019s used for? It\u2019s a question that matters because in January last year, its users lost more than $200 million in cryptocurrency after THORChain transactions and accounts were frozen by an admin override, which users believed was not supposed to be possible given the decentralized structure. It\u2019s also been used by North Korean hackers to move $1.2 billion of stolen ethereum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thorbjornsen explains this all away as a function of THORChain\u2019s decentralized and permissionless nature.\u00a0Read our story exploring whether we should believe him or not.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014Jessica Klein<\/em><\/p>\n

We can still have nice things<\/strong><\/p>\n

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? <\/em>Drop me a line<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

+ A musician developed an ingenious way to strum a guitar with\u00a0an electric fan<\/a>.
+\u00a0Ukraine’s tunnel of love<\/a>\u00a0is a leafy green corridor of romance that\u2019s straight out of a fairy tale.
+ The driver of\u00a0a giant banana<\/a>\u00a0has been pulled over 100s of times, but still won\u2019t ditch his treasured ride.
+ Ever wonder which albums and songs truly stand the test of time?\u00a0The Greatest Music<\/a>\u00a0tries to answer that via an algorithm that analyses hundreds of “best of” lists. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Charlotte Jee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plus: Why the OpenAI hack is the scariest AI mishap yet. This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The power line that could reshape New York\u2019s grid is hitting snags\u00a0 During a heat wave on July 3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":922116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24097,22983,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-922115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-download","category-energy","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}