China rules on AI and Vietnam draws chip designers

Hello from Yifan in California, your #techAsia host this week. It has been an usually busy summer in Silicon Valley, partly because of the ongoing AI race between Big Tech and startups, but the upcoming U.S. presidential election has also raised chaos among techies.

A group of tech heavyweights, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, have led the charge in tech circles to endorse Donald Trump for president. It would be a stretch to say Silicon Valley is turning Republican, as many in the traditionally liberal area are supporting the Democrat candidate and former California attorney general, Vice President Kamala Harris.

However, it is undeniable that Musk has an unmatched audience base compared to other tech leaders. This was evidenced by the millions of people he and Trump attracted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.

The two insisted calling the highly anticipated live broadcast on X a "conversation" or "chat," not an interview. That makes sense. Musk didn't ask the Republican candidate any real questions, instead the two spent the two hours bashing the Biden administration and rehashing some of the typical Trump talk points regarding illegal immigration, the Ukraine war, Middle East tensions and the former president's view on the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea.

Hardly anything in the two-hour exchange came as a surprise to me, except maybe the 40-minute delay due to X's technical issues at the beginning. While I, and many others, were trying to figure out how to listen to the two talk, scammers were attempting to make big bucks.

In searching for a recast of the X livestream on Youtube, I came across an imposter account called "Tesla US" which played a video using the "live" label that showed an AI-altered version