Good morning. If you were an American hacker targeting the Chinese government, what would you try to gain access to? Nuclear launch codes? Financial statements? Party communications?
According to China, the Americans opted to attack the country’s main agency responsible for timekeeping. Yes, really.
Think about it and it starts to make sense. According to Chinese officials, disruptions to the National Time Service Center could cause “network communication failures, financial system disruptions, power outages, transportation disruptions, and space launch failures.”
Serious stuff. Though in the satirical version of this ongoing global face-off, I’d like to think it’s all just to install that uniquely American concept of time. What could cause more chaos than that?
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Did OpenAI’s latest AI model solve famously difficult math problems? Well…
As it so often does, it started on social media.
First: A triumphant post by OpenAI for Science VP Kevin Weil claiming that the company’s GPT-5 large language model had "found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdős problems" and made progress on a bunch more that had been “open for decades.”
(What’s an "Erdős problem”? In short, a set of notoriously challenging mathematical problems first posed by the mathematician Paul Erdős. Three decades after his death, many remain unsolved.)
Then: A reply from mathematician Thomas Bloom, who operates erdosproblems.com. “This is a dramatic misrepresentation,” he wrote. “GPT-5 found references, which solved these problems, that I personally was unaware of. The 'open' status only means I personally am unaware of a paper which solves it.”
And then: A response to the OpenAI post from rival Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind. “This is embarrassing.”
And finally: The deletion of the original post and apologies from OpenAI staff who amplified it.
So what really happened? The consensus seems to be that OpenAI’s GPT-5 did a fantastic job discovering likely solutions to the difficult Erdős problems…solutions that someone else had calculated.
A better search engine? Definitely. The next Carl Friedrich Gauss? Not so much.
Or as Bloom wrote: “Its literature searching ability is already useful and impressive enough, no need to describe it as something it's not!” —AN
Chinese tech giants pause stablecoin plans
Alibaba-backed Ant Group and JD.com were expecting to participate in a pilot stablecoin program in Hong Kong that aimed to boost the yuan’s international use.
Now those plans are on hold.
Chinese regulators have reportedly told the companies “not to move ahead,” according to the Financial Times, over concerns that privately-run stablecoins would challenge a digital currency project by the People’s Bank of China and more broadly allow “tech groups and brokerages to issue any type of currency.”
If you’re unfamiliar, stablecoins are digital coins pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar. They’re a big part of the broader cryptocurrency market. They’re also growing quickly with the support of a White House that’s interested in promoting the dollar globally.
All of this has forced regulators to grapple with the implications of stablecoins.
Beijing is hardly alone in its concerns. The European Central Bank has publicly expressed worries that USD-pegged stablecoin adoption could erode its ability to control monetary policy.
Despite the noise from the Trump administration, American regulators aren’t completely sold on them, either. Just last week, Federal Reserve governor Michael Barr warned of stablecoins’ risks to financial stability: “Caution is warranted because of the long and painful history of private money created with insufficient safeguards.” —AN
Apple iPhone 17 sales launch out of the gates
Apple’s got a hit iPhone on its hands once again, though it may not be the model you think.
The iPhone 17 series is outselling its predecessor series by 14% in its first 10 days on sale in the U.S. and China, according to Counterpoint Research.
The model driving that surge? Not the slim $999 iPhone Air nor the $1099 iPhone 17 Pro, but the standard $799 iPhone 17.
“The base model iPhone 17 is very compelling to consumers, offering great value for money,” Counterpoint analyst Mengmeng Zhang said in a statement. “A better chip, improved display, higher base storage, selfie camera upgrade—all for the same price as last year’s iPhone 16.”
That proposition is resonating especially well in China, the analyst added.
Apple certainly hopes that will continue heading into the holiday season. Apple still relies on the iPhone for about half its revenue, and sales of its iPhone 16 series were soft, in part due to the slow rollout of promised AI features. Meanwhile China represents about a fifth of the company’s total sales. —AN
More tech
—Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on criticism from fact-challenged conservatives: “They’re going to have to get over it.”
—X changes how it opens links in posts.
—The Sora effect. Hollywood bigwigs are angry at OpenAI about needing to “opt out” of IP infringement.
—Alibaba’s Aegaeon system promises AI-ready cloud computing with “an 82% cut” to the number of Nvidia AI chips needed.
—The hottest new U.S. military advisor: AI chatbots.
—North Korean hackers are hiding malware on the blockchain, Google says.
—Marc Benioff apologizes. “I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” the Salesforce CEO writes.
