From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff. I'm as Voloscian and I'm care Price. A handful of stories stood out to us this week, and they have one thing in common. China. First, why Chinese regulators are investigating a deal between Meta and an AI company based in Singapore, And why everyone on TikTok is drinking hot water, eating dim sum and coming out as Chinese.
Then a few other things that caught our eye this week, including a type of factory work where humans are folding laundry for hours while humanoid robots watch. Then TikTok wants more of your attention, this time in a new app hosting microdramas like love at First Bite. And finally, Silicon Valley's new favorite hire is a act engineer. Will explain what that means.
All of that on the Weekend Tech. It's Friday, January twenty third. Hello Cara, Hello Azzie. How much time do you spend thinking about animal intelligence?
I mean I spend enough time thinking about animals?
Yeah?
Yeah, not animal intelligence.
You're getting a dog?
Well, I had, I was fastering a dog. It got adopted, not by you, no, unfortunately, sad. Yeah, I'm sad.
Well, you can always got it.
I can always get it. I can always get a robo dog when they come. I'll talk to Barston Dynamics about it.
I got more interested than I had previously been in animal intelligence because I was actually in the Windy Impenetrable Forest, which is on the border of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, and I got to see the mountain gorillas and it was absolutely Did.
You feel a kinship?
You can't not. I saw gorillas and chimpanzees, and I mean it's absolutely stunning. I mean really, So I've been more interested in animal and intelligence in the last few weeks, which is probably why a story about a cow caught my eye this week. Have you have you? Have you? Are you familiar with Veronica the cow?
No, I've never heard of Okay.
So basically what people are fascinated with in terms of the great apes is their ability to use tools. Chimpanzees are more closely related to us than gorillas are, and they also use tools. In particular, they use multi purpose tools, so they can use they can use a stick to open a termite's nest, to get honey, and to beat each other.
So they're using a fork basically for everything.
Yes, the exact one that's extendable for Yeah. So this week it was revealed that a cow used the tool. Really what, Veronica, and in fact, what made it particularly interesting was that, just like a chimpanzee, was actually a dual use tools. So Veronica, the cow that doclemented picking up a broomstick with her tongue, and then she used the bristle end of the broom to scratch her back while holding it in her mouth, and she used the flat side with no bristles, the more gentle side to scratch her.
Udder, really because the others are more sensitive.
Exactly right.
That's incredible.
You know, we think we're so kind of far along in terms of our observations of the universe, but hiding in plain sight was the fact that cows can use tools. And the BBC said that the perceived lack of intelligence of cows may say more about a lack of observation than about the animals themselves.
Interesting, huh.
I wanted to bring you the story because we talk so much about artificial intelligence. I was at a panel at a conference last week called DLD in Munich, and this guy called Stuart Russell is like a very famous AI researcher and pioneer was being interviewed and he kept insisting, look, before we talk about artificial intelligence, I need to give you my definition of intelligence, which is the ability to
achieve goals in the world. And he was saying, it's very scary because AI has its own goals and is achieving them. But you know, a cow can do it too.
A cow can do it too. It's so interesting to me that is this the first time, the.
First time a cow has ever been seen using a tool and it raised really serious questions. I think about how smart cows are and I mean obviously using to do what we do to them.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So I promised this episode is going to be about China, and we were wondering how to pivot out of this story. I was going to say, our super producer Eliza found a transition.
Tell me so.
Whired released a special issue of the magazine about the twenty three ways You're already living in the Chinese century. Number three was You'll be drinking frank and milk.
So she found it the Franken milk connection.
So there's a there's a super cow in China which has been cloned and it produces forty pounds of milk per year, which is almost double what the output of American cows. I mean, I was pretty shocked.
This a type of cow.
It's a special type of cow that's been cloned, owned and has double the output. So we're kind of drinking potentially genetically modified cloned count China.
According to Wyatt, what are some of the other tells for sort of how we're living in the Chinese century.
Well, one of the big ones, of course, is the rise of the Chinese battery industry and the electric vehicle industry. I hadn't realized until I read the piece in Wired that China sells ten times more electric vehicles globally every year than US company. So it's just an order of magnitude bigger the car industry.
There.
The other one which I liked was Your Next co Worker is a two legged Chinese robot, which we'll be discussing later this episode.
Very frightening.
Two other of my favorites were your precious Woo Woo crystals, the product of a small town Chinese venture. You're a crystal queen.
Huge crystal queen.
So the detail from this piece is that when Mao Zedong died he had a crystal coffin to see through crystal coffin.
Good for him, and that's cool.
The area of China where that crystal comes from is now the area that produces all of the kind of crystals for the wellness and healing industry.
We should go. That would be such a that would be a great fun. People, well, they'll flies to China. China.
And then the final one, which I liked, was the toy you want most in the world is still a La buobu.
My friend and business partners texted me, I loved my flight attend this morning. She was so cute. She had a La boobo in her bag.
Yeah, it's interesting why I pointed out that Labubu is the first basically China generated ip craze to sweep the world.
It's true. I think that that's true.
Is there a Luba movie it's happening.
Yeah, it's it's in development. As they say. There's one that I can add to the list, actually, which is that everyone on TikTok is in their Chinese era.
Wow. I love an era.
Everything's in era.
Everything's an error. But before we get there, I have a China business story that really got me thinking about this kind of dizzying shadow conflict between the US and China in the world tech. I want to take you back to January twenty twenty five, the Deep Seak Freakout. Okay, you remember that, the oh.
Yeah, of course, of course, yes, this was last year when we started the show exactly.
So there was this Chinese AI model called deep Seak, and all.
Of a sudden, everyone's like, open ais Square.
It's done. The US yeah crashed, etcetera, etcetera, before it recovered spectacularly. Shortly after, though, another tech product was released in China called manus Aim and manus Ai. Manus Ai was a little bit more of a storm in a teacup, people like, oh my god, it's happening again Deep Seat
freak Out V. Two. It didn't spook the US markets in the same way, but it was a very impressive AI agent, capable of independently building websites and doing basic coding, kind of ahead of the Aargentic era of AI which emerged later in the year in the US. So today's story is about.
Manus Okay, tell me about manus.
Meta actually agreed to acquire it last month. Reportedly in the two to three billion dollars. When the deal was first announced, there were rumors that US regulators might block the deal, but as it happens, Chinese regulators may have stolen a march.
So is this surprising? Like the US government has meddled with Chinese companies before.
That's right, but it's now it's the boots on the other foot, and China are trying to block the sale of this company to the US.
The US, Okay, And you're.
Right obviously, I mean, you know, whether it's export bans on the most advanced in video chips or this kind of forced quasi sale of tiktoks us operations, tariffs. The US has been very on the front foot in terms of finding ways to you know, constrain or punish Chinese tech industry. But what's kind of interesting now is that China is investigating where this acquisition violates its laws on technology exports.
Is Manus a Chinese company?
Well, that's why I wants to share this story. Okay, this is where it gets really fascinating. Manus, according to Manus, is not a Chinese company.
According to Manus.
It's based in Singapore. According to China, it is a Chinese company interesting, so hence they can block a sale. This is sort of like the Greenland of the much so very much so possession.
Is it's going to win.
Nine tenths of the law. Well, I'm pretty sure China will win, honestly, but it remains.
Because China has more power.
Well, I mean, there's this phenomenon known as Singapore washing, where like, Singapore is an independent country and an independent jurisdiction and like a useful place for Western companies to do business with Chinese companies, but ultimately Singapore is is closer to China than Venezuela is to Washington, and so that their likelihood is that the Singaporean regulators will probably
not resist the Chinese regulators. But I thought it was pretty interesting because Manus last year actually relocated Singapore, and China basically said no, like, you were founded in China by Chinese citizens. Yeah, you can go to another jurisdiction. That's that's totally fine, But when the rubber meets the road, we're going to contin you to treat you as Chinese.
And the reason I was fascinated by this story is that somebody at the conference said to me, this could be kind of a watershed moment because previously Chinese entrepreneurs believe they could found a company in China, relok at it Singapore, sell it to Facebook right off into the sun, and China are basically saying no, no, no, you can't. So what this person said to me was maybe one outcome.
One possibility here is that Chinese entrepreneurs will leave China before they even found their businesses, because if they ever want to be able to leave, they've got to start the business basically as far away as China from possible.
So this is not so much interesting to you because of what manness is. This is interesting to you because it's kind of a harbinger for how Chinese companies might be founded in the future.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's an interesting sort of story about a potential, you know, brain drain moment. And you know, and here's China saying Singapore maybe an independent sovereign country and independent jurisdiction, but if one of our folks or companies goes there, we're not going to respect that. It's a different jurisdiction. So it is interesting combination of tech and geopolitics. And also I was, you know, I was attracted to this story because of this idea of like
China fights back. And another story that really caught my eye last week was the Chinese customs officials recently blocked an inbound shipment of Nvidia H two hundred.
Me into China.
They've blocked a shipment into China in video chips. Why, Well, we don't know. I was quite shocked as well. And obviously the background to this is Jensenfwangan Nvidia were at great pains last year to persuade the Trump administration to allow them to export these chips to China, and they won the battle and were allowed to export them. And then all of a sudden, China are apparently turning around and saying no, no, no, you can't bring this into the country.
We don't know why, but we do know is this could be hugely significant because suppliers who make the parts required to go into in video chips have already started throttling production because they're so worried that the demand may go down so much without China.
But I sort of understand, if you're China, why are you blocking these chips.
Well, we don't know if it's China or if it's like customs officials at a certain point. So like the ft who broke this story asked for comment. The Chinese government didn't respond. Is unclear whether this was a one off, you know, customs thing, or if in fact this is a new Chinese policy. But there's a few kind of explanations that have been floated. One is that this will encourage domestic chip companies in China's develop their own chips faster.
Another is that it's some kind of bargaining tactic, because of course it could be a huge financial hit to in Video, which represents something like more than five percent of the total market cap of the US stock market. Essentially, now if they can't export their chips to China. We also know there's a lot of smuggling of the highest quality chips into China, which is also lucrative business. So it's a sort of you know, international cat and mouse game.
And it's possible that yeah, that China are in any case have that chips and getting to eat them too.
I can't no. Also, for you, what chips are very different.
That's true. Chips are fries and for you they're crisps. Crisps.
So today we've been talking a lot about China. And it's very funny because as online as I am, my friends are actually more online. So a lot of things that come to me come to me because people are like, you should post about this on your dumpster fire Instagram. And a trend that I got asked a lot about this week and that a friend of mine was like, very hot on was the following. But I'm gonna let my girl take it away.
If you are someone that likes hot hot dim sum Sechhue cuisine beyond bell noodles, do you know that there's actually a really interesting reason why. The reason is because you are Chinese. You didn't know it, but you are Chinese, and so for that reason, every single time you have a crazing for like dumplings or something, it's because you are Chinese. Your body just longs for that Wanton You know.
I think I am Chinese.
You know what the best line is? And I don't think she knew this, like you know like wanton lust, Yes, longing for Wanton great little play.
Well, you obviously you are Chinese. I must be hungry than you because I wasn't. I has missed the play on words. I was just thinking about how much I would like to be eating one of those things right now.
So this video, just for a little context, is by a Chinese American creator named Sherry. Her handle is spelled s h E r R y x I I R U I I. If you want to follow her guides, I'm not going to say it again. You had to be listening. And she has millions of views, and now Americans on TikTok are posting videos saying things like you met me at a very Chinese time in my life.
But this is very funny and very very weird.
It's very strange. It does toe the cultural appropriation line. You know, there is something mildly unsettling about seeing comments on TikTok like first day of being a Chinese baddie.
I'm all for it. I'm looking forward to living in a very Chinese time in my life. Yeah, what exactly what does this mean? Chinese body obviously likes Chinese food.
They drink hot water, they're eating bao, you know, they're wearing slippers, indoors.
La boo boo, they have la boo boo.
Yeah, it's I mean, it's basically anything that is prioritizing Chinese culture as their predominant culture. It's I think one of the things again that's important, is that Chinese influencers are bestowing this onto American TikTok users to say, you are doing these things, you are Chinese.
Hello, my Chinese besties, If you're watching this, you're Chinese. It has occurred to me that a lot of you guys has not come to terms with your newfound Chinese identity. And let me just ask you this. Aren't you scrolling on this Chinese app probably a Chinese made phone, wearing clothes that are made in China, collecting dolls that are from China, most importantly, living in a very Chinese time
of your life. So yes, you're Chinese. So you better go get that kettle and start drinking hot water, get your rice coocaretti, get your hot ho machine ready, and we will have some baijo next time we have launch and dinner.
We actually talked about this in my interview with the New Yorker writer Kyle Chaika.
The most brain rotted thing to me, the most like where are we? What the fuck is happening? Is like the whole merger of Chinese Internet and US Internet.
And he told me his favorite piece of brain rot was actually the meme that preceded this trend.
It's Donald Trump given an Ai Mandarin voice and he's singing these dramatic, like maoist Chinese songs. Ah and that and many other memes have built up to this joke of like you have met me at a very Chinese time in my life.
It is interesting. Obviously, Asian culture kind of trending in American pop culture is not a new phenomenon, but historically it's been focused around kind of Japanese and Korean trends like animes and K dramas and K pop and Korean
makeup and all that kind of stuff. And now, at the same time as the story I brought about, this kind of deep geopolitical tension and competition and shadow conflict kind of the other side of the coin is this very sort of odd and fascinating cultural merger on TikTok.
It's true, and you know, there's a few theories as to why this might be happening. One is that last year, when TikTok was going to be banned in the US, many users flocked to a Chinese app called Red Note.
I remember that in protest.
Yeah, we actually reported on it, which led to this interesting bridging of cultures, and many users actually started learning Mandarin,
which is crazy. Others have said that it could be because gen Z is acutely feeling the loss of the American dream and that the economy is unstable and there are fears of global climate change, so they're like looking outside of their home country for hope and romanticizing life in China, which is a country that is, you know, a communist country, you know, maybe not one that we would necessarily feel so free and if we were actually there, but that seems to have a very sort of robust
infrastructure and a thriving clean energy industry. There's actually a Bloomberg article which cited one creator who put it, I think very very well, and in the article, this creator said, they're engaging with a hyper real China, a symbolic version that absorbs everything. Americans fear that they're losing community structure, competence, limits, cultural continuity, and care for elders.
Really really interesting. I mean, it's interesting we look back now on the collapse of the Soviet Union as though it was kind of inevitable and the Soviet Union was always the loser, But I think there were certainly, you know, in the sixties a lot of Americans and Brits who were quite admiring of Soviet culture and the way Soviet society was organized and stuff. So when you live in this kind of bipolar world, which we do again now, the thrill and the appeal of the other is very
real as well as the fear. But I thought there was a guy we had on the podcast last year called Dan Wong who wrote a book called Breakneck, and he had lived in China and moved back to the US, and he basically said, look, you know, if you live in China and you look out of your window once a year, in a space of three years, you might see a whole new city emerge. If you live in New York or San Francisco, the best you can hope for in that time period is a new coffee shop
to open. So I do think there's something as much as people fear the authoritarian aspects of Chinese culture, those things that you mentioned in the quote, like community structure, competence, cultural continuity, I mean, these are things which are understandably attractive. Yeah, would you say that you're in a very Chinese time of your life? Now not at all.
I'm not trying, but it's I think what's really interesting is the minute I heard about this trend, I was like, should I be boiling apples?
Have you tried any of these things?
I haven't, but.
Ask you next week please after the break more TikTok TikTok micro dramas. Humans take on boring jobs training robots so that eventually we won't have to work. And there's a new dream employee in Silicon Valley. Stay with us and we're back. Caro. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I made my prediction for the year.
Yeah, you said it was the year of the robot.
The year of the robot. So I sketched in that episode a couple of weeks ago a hypothetical nightmare scenario in which troves of real humans do activities so that robots can learn from them. It turns out that it wasn't a hypothetical, it's real. And Rest of World, which is a tech publication, talked to a worker at one of these robot training centers called Kim, which is pseudonym,
and he talked about what he does. He puts on a virtual reality headset and exoskeleton on his arms, and then he pretends to open the door of a microwave hundreds and hundreds of times per day.
Oh my god, to train a robot to do that, that's so monotonous.
Other days he mimics folding clothes and sometimes he even stacks wooden blocks.
What so humans have to do household task to train robots to then replace them doing household tasks.
That's right, and the humanoid robot next to him watches and basically develops their fine motor skills by doing so.
So how many coworkers does Kim have? Like, is this like a major facility?
It's a big facility. And local governments in China are working with the central government to open two dozen robot training centers. In fact that the goal is to have more than forty of these in operation, which are servicing more than one hundred and fifty humanoid robot companies currently active in China.
And so what is the end goal? Like why do these robots need to learn how to open a microwave?
I mean, I think it's two things, right. One is, humanoid robotics is a new space race. So if China wins, I mean, how many hype videos. Have you seen of like humanoid robotic.
Olympics doing crazy things?
If China gets their first on mass produced effective human robotics, it's a very clear narrative that they have essentially won the future, or won this chapter of the future. So I think it's partly that, but also it's more practical, right, These robots ultimately are designed to be used in assembly line jobs, or to care for elders, or essentially industries where there are not enough workers as population ages and birth rates decline.
Interesting. I just had this visual of being in a hotel in the future and just passing by robots pushing the maintenance.
Cards lost in translation.
So bizarre, but it's so right on our doorstep, don't you think?
I think so. I mean, I think it does remain to be seen, like how practical these robots will actually be because they you know, they fall over, and they have power shortages, and they're extremely expensive. But China essentially birthed the electronic industry by investing it way ahead of it actually being functional and created demand central demand even though
the market didn't have demand. And now you know, Bide is bigger than Tesla, and China produces ten times more evs than the US, So you know, it is possible for governments with enough engineering, talent, money, determination to bring technologies into the world not for nothing. I think Elon is very focused on the Optimus robot. Like sometimes this sounds like nonsense, but also like, do bet against Elon and the Chinese government in terms of what the next
phase of the future will look like? No on China, Well, I mean they're making the same bets.
Yes, yes, I just think China is going to pull it off.
Yeah, it looks. It looks they're definitely in the lead.
So we're talking a lot about the AI arms race, the robotics race, another the in my industry, I think the thing that we talk about a lot is the attention economy, right and who and now I actually just read this article today about passive TV viewing and how TV now has to become something that's interesting even when you're not watching it because people are now watching TV on the background.
Interesting we like. But hasn't that always been the case that daytime TV is kind of like a thing that's on while you're doing your.
Prestige TV is predicated on people really being hyper focused and now because of streaming, and because of auto play and because of reruns being on streaming platforms, people are just passively watching audio.
So there's no distinction between like, this is TV that requires a full attention, this is background. All TV is background.
TV increasingly, Yes, because of second screening, which is like, even if you're watching Succession, are you watching Succession? So there's a new US China race for attention, Yes, which comes in the form of microdramas.
And this is making very short, like one to two minute, very addictive, serialized content.
Yes.
And I've read so much about this trend.
Yeah, but you've never seen a newspaper. Yeah.
Is it? Like? Is it? Is it a real thing?
Huge? Huge?
Do you watch them?
I looked into it for the I mean you talk about other things that I've looked into specifically for the show. Yes, this, like is it? Am I the market for it?
No, it's for younger, younger folks, it's not even.
For younger folks. It's just I'm not personally the market for it. I think micro dramas are essentially like they're soap operas, their soap operas, and I'm not a soap opera viewer, Like I don't care, I don't want, I don't need programs.
And what's the China angle?
Okay, So a few years ago, China actually developed short form serialized content called verticals or microdramas. The ones that I've been very focused on are created by an American company called Real Short and I actually went into detail on these with me not to Sew at the end of last year. If you want to listen to our episode. The way that I mean not To actually had stumbled
on some of these was through TikTok. Right now, TikTok has created a whole app devoted to these verticals, and it's called Pine Drama and it's free to download, and for now the videos run ad free. But I'm one hundred percent well, I'm not one hundred percent year, but I'm pretty sure that these this will change in the future.
So this is like a subsidiary app of TikTok.
Yes, just it's a separate app.
Yes, just for the dramas. Yes. Are they being produced by like, by regular TikTok creators or all being produced by like studios?
Of a fashion, I believe that these are studio created. These are not creator driven. That would not be considered a vertical. These videos are only about a minute long. They draw on themes of like things that we see in romance romance novels. There are you know, things like age gap.
Romances, May December lust May.
December, Step Step Sibling. You know what I roll my eyes at step Simbling Romance. Clueless was a step simbling romance.
Sure, it was one of my favorite movies.
It's one of the best movies ever work Romances, Billionaires, and Werewolves. The success of these apps I think come from their addictive nature and the fact that they are pay to play, so you if you want to see more, you have to kind of buy more tokens to watch more stories.
This is I mean, you know what the history of the novel was exactly. This is serial right. This is published week by the next installment. Keep it, keep enough suspense for long enough to keep people buying the next installment until you're out of gas. I mean, it's nothing's new, correct. So final story I have for you today isn't based in China, but it has some training connections. Okay, So we've talked about nine, nine and six a lot we have.
It's so much better than six seven.
Working nine am to nine pm, six days a week, and we've talked about how that lifestyle has infiltrated silicon value. Yeah, it's now been upgraded according to the information tech startups and now looking relentlessly for quote cracked engineers.
Like cracked, like gone gone nuts, gone crazy on crack.
I mean basically, it's somebody who is just so obsessed with their work that a nine ninety six looks like a slob, or later.
Someone who's really using peptides, Yeah, exactly.
One startup CEO described cracked engineers as quote so competent in what they do, they don't need to care about anything else. They don't care about politics or wearing smart clothes or washing regularly.
At first, I thought you were saying smart clothes, like technologically smart clothes. I was like, well, that's interesting that an engineer would wear smart clothes. Okay, So they're basically very unwell people well or extremely well people there.
So they're so plugged into the mainframe they don't need to think about any of the creature comforts. One person actually quoted in the piece was trying to learn to swim as a hobby, but they talked about how they deleted that because it was distracting them too much from work. Deed, it deleted it. So these correcked engineers are typically in their twenties, but they may have been working for up
to a decade by that point. They're fast, they're independent, they don't want to manage others, and they have no sense of work life balance.
And why is this, I mean, how is this different than say, you're Zuckerberg when he's twenty one.
I think that zuckerbo when I mean, if you remember the movie Social Network, he was jamming his keyboard in his bedroom while the Winkle VII were like rowing and.
Living their lives.
Yeah, yeah, So he was an outline where this is now mainstream culture in Silicon Valley, I say, and I thought that the information put it really well, which is basically, there's a new AI gold rush happening right now. Like a generation of people think they can become billionaires by the time they're thirty, and so in this kind of gold riish opportunity, people will do whatever it takes to get an age. So you're seeing this kind of this
fomo driven engineering culture emerge in Silicon Valley. And from the company point of view, you know, hiring these cracked engineers is seen as a way to speed up productivity and kind of create value without building a long term sustainable work environment. There was actually a tech recruiter quoted in the piece saying, people like to put band aids on their business, and I think a correct engineer is a band aid for a lot of founders who have no idea what they're building.
What they're building. Yeah, really saying this.
Is a cussle culture thing. But you know, this dynamic of Fomo and the new gold Russian stuff, like it's obviously what is driving like this discourse, this US China discourse that like one side will win this moment and that will be until the end of time, like the victor in this bipolar conflict. I think that's the kind of macro story we talked about, you know, the top of this episode. But in the microcosm it plays out with like people aspiring to be cracked.
I mean, it also seems like a youth culture thing. It doesn't seem like something that you can do well into your forty You can be cracked in your forties.
And you also apparently it's quite looked down upon to describe yourself as cracked, like it's a bit.
It's only you can be described.
You want, you want people to talk about you as cracked, but you can't give yourself yourself beautiful.
That's it for this week for tech Stuff, I'm Cara Price.
Ali mos Vlosan. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me Caarra Price, Julian Nutter, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Bihid Fraser and Jack Insley mix this episode. Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Please rate, review and reach out to us at textuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear from you