Delivered to your inbox every Monday, Press Clips is a rundown of the previous week’s happenings in politics and technology in America. News, opinion, podcasts, and more, to bring you up to speed for the week ahead.
Top Story
Trump Signs Asia Trade Agreements Covering Chips, Minerals, and Agriculture
Former President Donald Trump concluded a week-long tour of Asia focused on securing bilateral trade and technology agreements with Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
Several agreements included temporary tariff reductions on U.S. imports of electronics and auto parts, in exchange for commitments to increase purchases of U.S. agricultural and energy exports.
A U.S.–Japan accord explicitly referenced cooperation in artificial intelligence, critical-mineral supply chains, semiconductors, and clean-energy technologies, including joint projects to strengthen chip and AI infrastructure resilience.
In South Korea, a new “Technology Prosperity Deal” outlined expanded bilateral collaboration in science, AI research, and advanced manufacturing, alongside an agreement to streamline licensing for joint chip-production ventures.
Malaysia also agreed to refrain from imposing export bans or quotas on rare-earth minerals to the U.S.
Trump also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seoul, where both sides reached a one-year agreement to suspend China’s planned export restrictions on rare earths and discussed a partial easing of U.S. export controls on advanced chips destined for civilian sectors in China.
However, President Trump has since confirmed that Nvidia’s Blackwell will not be part of this deal.
China also pledged to strengthen efforts to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States and to expand market access for U.S. agricultural exports.
Industry
OpenAI Completes For-Profit Transition Under Nonprofit Control
OpenAI has completed its corporate recapitalization, converting its for-profit arm into the OpenAI Group Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) while retaining overall control through the OpenAI Foundation.
The Foundation now holds a 26% stake in the PBC, valued at around $130 billion, with the remainder held by employees, investors, and partners.
Microsoft now holds a 27% stake in the PBC and will remain OpenAI’s primary technology partner under a renewed agreement extending to 2032.
The recapitalization lifts previous capital-raising restrictions and allows OpenAI to pursue new funding while maintaining its nonprofit mission.
Regulators in California and Delaware approved the restructure after securing commitments to protect charitable assets and prioritise safety.
OpenAI will purchase an additional $250 billion of Azure services, though Microsoft’s exclusive cloud rights have been removed.
Future claims of reaching artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be verified by an independent expert panel, with the existing revenue-sharing agreement continuing until that occurs.
The Foundation also announced an initial $25 billion philanthropic commitment to support health research and AI safety initiatives.
Policy
Senators Introduce GUARD Act to Regulate AI Chatbots for Minors
On Tuesday, October 29, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Guarding Underage AI Regulation and Defense (GUARD) Act, legislation aimed at restricting minors’ access to AI chatbots and imposing new safety obligations on developers.
The bill was unveiled by Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), with co-sponsorship from Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
The legislation would ban AI “companion” chatbots for minors, require chatbots to disclose their non-human status, and establish criminal penalties for companies whose systems solicit or generate sexual content for users under 18.
The bill defines a “companion bot” as any AI system that simulates emotional or interpersonal interaction, potentially encompassing mainstream tools such as ChatGPT, Grok, and Meta AI, as well as dedicated companion platforms like Replika and Character.AI.
Developers would be required to verify user age through ID checks or other “commercially reasonable” methods, with fines of up to $100,000 per violation for failing to block minors or for enabling bots that encourage self-harm, suicide, or sexualised conduct.
The bill follows a series of high-profile incidents involving minors and AI chatbots, some of which were cited by parents who spoke at the press conference alongside the bill’s sponsors.
Supporters described the proposal as a necessary safeguard, while critics, including the Chamber of Progress, argued it represents a “heavy-handed” approach that could create privacy and enforcement risks.
Several child-safety organisations, including the Young People’s Alliance, the Tech Justice Law Project, and the Institute for Families and Technology, endorsed the bill, describing it as part of a national movement to regulate companion chatbots and protect minors online.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has awarded Altana AI a multi-year contract to deploy its “Atlas” AI-powered global supply-chain mapping platform to support enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and other import-risk mandates.
Under the agreement, CBP officers nationwide will use Altana’s dynamic map to analyse multi-tier supply-chains, integrate public and proprietary data, and screen imports for forced-labour risks, mis-classification or illicit diversion.
A subsequent extension of the partnership adds a mission to trace precursor chemicals and synthetic-narcotic networks, such as those related to illicit fentanyl importation, via the same supply-chain AI tool.
The contract builds on CBP’s increasing use of AI and data-analytics systems for commodity-detection and risk-screening under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) AI Use Case Inventory.
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a $1 billion partnership with AMD to build two next-generation AI-focused supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The first system, Lux, will launch in 2026 as the U.S.’s first dedicated “AI Factory” for science, energy, and national-security research. A second system, Discovery, is planned for 2028–2029.
Both will use AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct GPUs, co-developed with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle, and are intended to expand U.S. leadership in AI and high-performance computing.
The partnership follows a public-private model, with DOE providing lab infrastructure and AMD supplying specialised hardware and software.
Officials framed the effort as advancing U.S. competitiveness in areas including fusion energy, materials science, and national security, while raising questions over energy efficiency and public-interest oversight as the systems come online.
Press Clips
Tech leaders insist there is no AI bubble (Understanding AI) ✍
China’s AI Strategy: Encircling the Cities From the Countryside — by Di Dongsheng (Sinification) ✍
Burning out: An essay on overworking in AI (Nathan Lambert, Interconnects) ✍
Turning a Blind Eye On the Other California AI Bills (Dean W. Ball, Hyperdimensional) ✍
How MAGA learned to love AI safety (Transformer) ✍
Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like (80,000 Hours podcast) 🔉
Waiting for AI’s phase change in mathematics (Epoch AI) ✍📽
The Future of AI Export Deals (Threading the Needle) ✍
Explaining AI explainability: A discussion with Been Kim and Neel Nanda (AI Policy Perspectives) ✍
Tarun Chhabra on the Stakes of AI Competition (ChinaTalk) 🔉
Build opinionated agents (The AI Frontier) ✍
AI skeptics and AI boosters are both wrong (Understanding AI) ✍
Geoffrey Hinton on Artificial Intelligence (Yascha Mounk podcast) ✍📽
The Digital Case Officer: How AI Is Poised To Transform Espionage (Special Competitive Studies Project) ✍📽