TSMC is now treating China’s rare-earth controls as a threat to the world’s most advanced chip factories. The company has surveyed suppliers on rare-earth-free motors for its factory-automation equipment, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The aim is to reduce the risk that Beijing’s export licences could disrupt production. China put certain rare-earth materials, magnets, and processing technology under controls last year. Those magnets power the motors that move parts inside highly automated fabs. A shortage would hit smartphone, AI, data-center, and defense supply chains. The discussions are still early. No large-scale switch yet. TSMC has not commented. The company that makes the chips everyone else depends on is already looking for an exit from Chinese rare earths.

A Chinese-owned mine dumped 50 million liters of toxic sludge into the river that supplies drinking water to 5 million Zambians. Sino-Metals Leach's tailings dam breached in February 2025, flooding the Kafue River. Zambian communities are now suing the company. It's not an isolated accident. Allegations of abuse linked to Chinese mining in Africa doubled in a single year, from 45 to 100. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone recorded 52 cases. Ten Chinese companies account for nearly two-thirds of every allegation tracked. These are the mines feeding the batteries and solar panels sold as the clean energy future.

China just made it legal to trap its own tech workers inside the country. New exit rules took effect today. Any citizen China deems a threat to "national technology security" can now be barred from leaving. Anyone who's already left and comes back after doing something Beijing decides harmed its industrial security faces a travel ban up to three years, on their own passport, in their own country. This isn't hypothetical. In March, Beijing already blocked the two co-founders of AI startup Manus from leaving while it reviewed Meta's attempt to buy the company, then forced Meta to unwind the deal entirely. China's own framing calls this protecting "industrial and technological security." Translate that. If you know something Beijing doesn't want leaving with you, you don't get to leave either. Chinese citizens have technically had more travel freedom than during the Cold War for decades. This is Beijing quietly building the legal machinery to take that back, one engineer at a time, dressed up as an export control update.

The State Department just confirmed, in writing, that China is committing genocide. Xi visits the White House in three weeks. A spokesperson told The Daily Signal on September 1st: the U.S. has determined the CCP is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. This isn't new. Every annual State Department human rights report since 2021 has said exactly this. Forced sterilizations, forced abortions, over a million people held in internment camps. Documented, repeated, five years running. What's new is the timing. Trump has met Xi seven times. In May, he brought Apple, BlackRock, Boeing, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Tesla's CEOs to Beijing and posted that his first request to Xi would be to "open up" China for American business. Genocide wasn't on the agenda. Xi is scheduled at the White House September 24th, let's see what happens.