Hopefully a sign the bubble is bursting

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44890650

Does the old man think we can't tell this is AI-juiced? Whatever gets the Amazon book bux Powell 😭 Nonetheless, this is extremely cool. Cutting edge iridium semiconductors and other newfangled shit keeps falling off my radar because I mainly care about the energy+obligation web binding humanity together.

In the second week of February 2026, a quiet revolution landed in the pages of Science Advances. A team from Peking University’s School of Electronics, led by researcher Qiu Chenguang in collaboration with academician Peng Lianmao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, unveiled the world’s smallest ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET). Its physical gate length: just 1 nanometer. Its operating voltage: a mere 0.6 volts. Its memory performance: an on/off current ratio of up to 2 × 10⁶, programming speeds as fast as 1.6 nanoseconds, and switching energy around 0.45 fJ/μm - roughly one-tenth the best previously reported figures.

For the first time, ferroelectric memory has achieved voltage compatibility with state-of-the-art logic transistors (typically ~0.7 V). Data can now flow between memory and compute units at the same low voltage, without charge pumps, voltage converters, or the energy penalties that have plagued attempts to integrate non-volatile memory with logic at scale. The device uses metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes (m-SWCNTs) as the gate electrode, a 2D molybdenum disulphide (MoS₂) channel, a ferroelectric layer of CuInP₂S₆ (CIPS), multilayer graphene, and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) in a van der Waals heterostructure. The magic lies in the “nanogate” effect: the ultra-sharp 1 nm tip concentrates the electric field, creating localised intensities high enough to switch the ferroelectric polarisation well below its nominal coercive voltage, while dramatically improving capacitance coupling. Short-channel effects - the bane of conventional scaling - are rendered irrelevant.

This is not another headline-grabbing lab curiosity. It is a material foundation for the next era of computing: ultra-low-power, in-memory, edge-native intelligence that can operate at the scale of angstrom nodes without the voracious energy appetite of today’s hyperscale silicon. And when placed within the broader Chinese technology stack - 2D semiconductors, graphene-enhanced structures, triboelectric and piezoelectric nanogenerators, flexible energy storage - it becomes something far more consequential. It becomes the energetic substrate for what I have called Digital Westphalia: a global digital order grounded in nation-state sovereignty, energetic realism, and systemic abundance rather than rentier extraction and entropic financialisation. Understanding the Breakthrough in Plain Terms

Ferroelectric transistors have long promised non-volatile memory that retains data without power, switches at high speed, and consumes almost no standby energy. Their polarisation states act like tiny, permanent magnets for electrons. The problem has always been scaling and voltage. Traditional FeFETs required gate voltages above 1.5 V to flip the ferroelectric layer reliably, while logic transistors had dropped below 0.7 V. Integrating them meant wasteful voltage step-up circuits and heat. Shrinking the gate below 5 nm triggered short-channel leakage and loss of control.

The Peking team solved both with a radical redesign. By replacing a planar gate with a 1 nm-diameter carbon nanotube, they turned the gate into a nanotip lightning rod for electric fields. Simulations and measurements show field strengths inside the CIPS layer reaching 2.7 × 10⁶ V/cm at just 0.6 V applied - more than five times the material’s coercive field in a conventional geometry. Capacitance coupling efficiency soars because the tiny gate concentrates voltage drop across the ferroelectric rather than wasting it elsewhere. The result is a device that not only scales but thrives at the 1 nm limit, immune to the physics that doom conventional designs.

Reviewers noted the achievement’s elegance: voltage efficiency exceeding 125 % (operating voltage below coercive voltage), retention and endurance suitable for real-world use, and compatibility with existing CMOS processes via 3D heterogeneous integration. The implications for large-model inference, edge intelligence, wearables, and IoT are immediate. A single edge node can now perform sophisticated inference with energy budgets measured in femtojoules rather than picojoules or worse, opening the door to truly battery-free or energy-harvesting devices.

Situating the Advance in a Thermoeconomic Framework

To grasp why this matters beyond the semiconductor roadmap, we need a different lens: Systemic Exchange Value (SEV), or what I shorthand as thermoeconomics. Traditional economics treats value as subjective preference revealed in prices, with GDP as the aggregate scorecard. It abstracts away the energetic and entropic realities that actually sustain life and production. SEV starts from the opposite premise: economies are first and foremost systems of energy transformation. All use-value is ultimately embodied energy - direct and indirect - embedded in material configurations that deliver services over time. Exchange-value is the monetary claim on that embedded energy, modulated by the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of production and use.

Three interlocking circuits define the system:

The thermodynamic circuit: real transformation of energy into ordered structures (infrastructure, devices, knowledge), inevitably producing entropy (waste heat, disorder);

The exchange-value circuit: endogenous money and financial claims that allocate claims on future available energy in potential (AEP - available energy in potential); and

The information circuit: data, algorithms, and coordination mechanisms that reduce uncertainty and thereby improve EROEI by minimising wasteful friction.

Productive systems expand systemic abundance when they increase net AEP faster than entropy degrades it. Maladaptive systems - those that channel liquidity into low-EROEI activities (speculative finance, planned obsolescence and rent extraction, for instance) - accelerate entropy, erode adaptive capacity, and eventually face collapse or forced reorganisation.

In information technologies, the dominant metric has been “performance per watt,” but SEV demands a deeper accounting: the total energetic cost of the entire lifecycle, including the embodied energy of fabrication, the operational exergy destruction (waste heat), the systemic coordination overhead, and the long-term adaptive value created. Hyperscale cloud architectures score poorly here. They concentrate enormous computational capacity in a few geographic nodes, requiring massive cooling, redundant power generation, and transcontinental data transmission. Every query to a large language model can consume energy equivalent to a household’s daily use. The EROEIu (use-phase return) looks impressive in narrow benchmarks but collapses when externalities - grid strain, water consumption, geopolitical chokepoints on undersea cables - are internalised.

The nanogate FeFET flips this script. By slashing operating voltage and enabling seamless memory-logic integration, it dramatically reduces exergy destruction at the device level. When scaled into arrays for in-memory computing, it collapses the von Neumann bottleneck, cutting data movement energy by orders of magnitude. Paired with 2D materials that can be fabricated at lower thermal budgets and with graphene or MXene-enhanced nanogenerators that harvest ambient mechanical or thermal energy, entire nodes become energetically autonomous. The information circuit now operates with far higher informational EROEI: more useful computation per joule invested, less entropy exported as heat, and greater resilience because intelligence is distributed rather than centralised.

China’s systematic investment in the full stack - from wafer-scale 2D growth to open-source AI frameworks like DeepSeek, to self-powered IoT ecosystems - is building precisely the high-EROEI infrastructure that SEV identifies as adaptive. It is creating durable use-value that compounds over decades rather than depreciating in quarters. In thermoeconomic terms, it is expanding the envelope of available energy in potential for the entire digital sphere. Digital Westphalia as the Political Expression of Thermoeconomic Realism

Digital Westphalia names the possible emerging global digital order that aligns political-information sovereignty with these energetic realities. Just as the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War by enshrining territorial sovereignty and non-interference, today’s digital analogue reasserts nation-state primacy over data regimes, technical standards and infrastructure governance - while preserving interoperability through open protocols.

The old model was a de facto American imperium: hardware, software, standards and data flows routed through U.S.-controlled chokepoints (Northern Virginia data centers handling ~70 % of global traffic, SWIFT, undersea cables). This delivered rents to a handful of platforms and intelligence leverage to one state, but at the cost of universal vulnerability and entropic inefficiency. Sanctions, extraterritorial export controls, and deplatforming demonstrated the fragility. Check out Newman and Farrell’s Underground Empire for a detailed discussion of these realities.

Digital Westphalia offers an alternative: sovereign digital territories that can choose their own data localisation, governance, and ecosystem providers, yet interconnect via open-source standards (RISC-V, Linux contributions from Huawei, HarmonyOS adaptability). The nanogate breakthrough, embedded in a Chinese stack that emphasises modularity, open architectures, and energy autonomy, supplies the material base. Nations or regions can now deploy federated networks of edge intelligence without building hyperscale data centers or begging for foreign chips under export-control threat. A developing country can equip rural health posts with self-powered wearable monitors and localised diagnostic models that run inference on-device. A mid-sized power can maintain sovereign AI capabilities for agriculture, disaster response, or industrial optimisation without ceding data sovereignty or energy security.

The savings are thermoeconomic as much as fiscal. Less need for continent-spanning transmission infrastructure. Lower grid pressure. Reduced geopolitical risk premiums on energy imports for compute. Higher systemic EROEI because intelligence is co-located with the phenomena it observes and acts upon. In SEV terms, this is liquidity allocated to high-adaptive-capacity uses rather than siphoned into fictitious capital or low-EROEI consumption.

Strategic Implications in a Multipolar World

For much of the world, the choice is sharpening. The world can double down on a U.S.-centric stack that promises cutting-edge performance but delivers vendor lock-in, energy intensity, and exposure to export-control volatility. Or we can engage the emerging open, sovereign-capable ecosystem that lowers the barrier for genuine digital autonomy. The latter does not require “choosing sides”; it requires recognising that energetic and informational realism now favours distributed, interoperable sovereignty over centralised techno-feudalism.

The Peking University nanogate is one device. But it exemplifies a broader pattern: China’s willingness to invest in the thermodynamic foundations of the information age while others financialise their way toward entropy. The full stack - 2D materials scaling, nanogenerators, open-source models, distributed ledger coordination - is creating the possibility of Digital Westphalia at planetary scale. Nations that seize it will expand their adaptive capacity; those that cling to the old imperium risk locking themselves into maladaptive rigidity.

This is the real significance of the 1 nm breakthrough. It is not merely smaller and lower-power. It is a material refutation of the assumption that computational abundance must come at the price of energetic profligacy and political subordination. In thermoeconomic terms, it augments available energy in potential. In geopolitical terms, it makes Digital Westphalia not utopian but all but inevitable.

The question for policymakers, strategists and citizens is no longer whether a new digital order is coming. It is whether we will shape its emergence in alignment with energetic realism and sovereign dignity or allow entropic forces to dictate the terms.

Naturally I expect it to still be used as propaganda generation since it will likely be government-only tech now.

But also, lol, lmao even. Get fucked. Hope you like the

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8051309

China is fast becoming a global leader in producing cutting-edge medicine, with nearly half of the world’s new drugs in testing now emerging from its labs. But can it replicate in pharmaceuticals what it has achieved in electric vehicles and robotics with faster and cheaper innovation? CNA Senior Correspondent Tan Yew Guan joins Otelli Edwards in this week’s episode of the CNA Correspondent podcast to explore China’s biotech ambitions and its push to make breakthrough treatments both accessible and affordable.

https://x.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1993158707056984359

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/37318

This story is made possible through a partnership between Grist and The Flatwater Free Press, Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories.

Rick Wheatley owns a property with about 80 acres in Nebraska’s Otoe County — an area east of Lincoln known for its farmland, apple orchards, and Arbor Day celebrations. Wheatley’s land, a portion of which is used for growing corn and soybeans, has been in his family for generations. Sometime last fall, a representative from a private energy developer Tenaska approached Wheatley about possibly purchasing the land.

Wheatley said the representative mentioned the company was trying to assemble and secure the right to purchase 2,000 acres near a gas pipeline for a power plant that could serve an AI data center.

“At first he kind of slipped and said for AI, they need their own generating stations for AI,” Wheatley said. “But then they kind of backpedaled it.” According to Wheatley, the Tenaska representative then told him that the company planned to have a business park.

“And I thought, ‘What do you mean it’s a business park? Who’s going to build out there in the middle of nowhere?’” Wheatley said. In the end, he chose not to deal with the company. However, he wasn’t the only one to get a knock on his door.

Since December, Tenaska has entered into agreements with landowners for over 2,600 acres across southeast Nebraska under two different LLC names, according to county deed records. The agreements allow Tenaska the exclusive option to buy the land. Tenaska did not respond to requests for comment about the land deals.

According to documents obtained by the Flatwater Free Press and Grist, Tenaska appears poised to build a utility-scale natural gas plant to power one of the largest data centers in the country. The documents suggest that Google would operate the data center and that the project may also be one of the largest test cases for carbon capture and storage, a controversial way to deal with runaway emissions that has not yet proven effective as a solution for climate change.

Nebraska, like many other states, is approaching a tipping point as it relates to energy demand, who can afford to supply it, how practical its emissions goals are, and the desire for economic activity to steadily grow. A recent report by the energy research and development nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute found that Nebraska is one of seven states that is on track to have data centers use over 20 percent of their total electricity consumption by 2030.

At the same time, a bill intended to allow for the creation of privately owned and operated power plants that serve large industrial facilities and are hooked up to the grid is being considered by the state legislature. Tenaska has publicly supported the bill, which was proposed by Governor Jim Pillen. The proposal could hinge on this bill’s passage.

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According to the documents, which were shared at a private meeting of a Nebraska public power district in January, the proposed data center would use between 1,000 and 3,000 megawatts of power from a combined cycle natural gas plant. If the facility were to operate at the higher end of that range, it would generate more power than the largest power plant in the state.

As outlined in the documents, the proposed project names three companies: Google, Tenaska, and natural gas and carbon dioxide pipeline company Tallgrass Energy. Tenaska, an Omaha-based company, would be responsible for powering the new data center, while Tallgrass would potentially supply both the natural gas and transport the captured carbon.

The documents state that the proposed project could be online as soon as 2029, though it’s unclear how close this proposal is to becoming a reality. Neither Google nor Tenaska responded to multiple inquiries and requests for comment. Tallgrass, in a statement to Flatwater, denied being involved in the project.

Kenny Zoeller, director of policy research for Pillen’s office, acknowledged that the companies tied to the proposed project have been part of discussion that ultimately led to the legislation. But they are not the only ones, he said. The governor’s office also consulted with the state’s public power districts, he said.

If the bill passes, private power plants for large industrial facilities would then be able to hook up to their local power district’s grid and sell excess power back. The state’s public power districts have endorsed the measure, and the Omaha Public Power District, or OPPD, said it is aware of a potential project that could be impacted by the bill — though the power district reiterated it doesn’t comment on specific projects. OPPD, Nebraska Public Power District, and Lincoln Electric System said in statements they do not discuss potential customers until they’re announced publicly, noting those proposals can involve nondisclosure agreements.

According to Zoeller, the bill was not drafted for any single industry or project. The goal, he said, is to make Nebraska economically competitive while ensuring ratepayers don’t have to pay for a large user’s power needs.

“There have been multiple companies that have indicated to the Governor and his office that legislation like this would make Nebraska a competitive place for investment,” Zoeller said in a statement. “However, no investment has ever predicated on the passage of LB1261.”

Governor Jim Pillen. Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, plans to continue ramping up its overall data center investments in 2026, spending up to $185 billion on what it calls technical infrastructure, according to the company’s earnings call in February. Google already has three data center locations in Nebraska. From 2021 to 2023, the company claims that it has supported about 13,300 jobs, and since 2019 has invested over $3.5 billion in the state’s digital infrastructure.

The scope of the company’s proposal, as outlined in the documents, is massive. The data center itself would be among the largest in the country, according to Kenneth Gillingham, a professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale University.

The amount of power would be significantly more than the 800 megawatts needed across Lincoln Electric System’s service area in the summer when energy demand is at its highest. The gas plant would be the largest power plant in Nebraska. And if the project does incorporate carbon capture and storage, it would be the largest operation of its kind in the country, Gillingham said.

“In the U.S., there’s nothing that large with CCS,” he said, using the acronym for carbon capture and storage.

Nebraska is a public power state, and under current state law, private power generation from fossil fuels is allowable, but those facilities cannot connect to the grid. The governor’s bill would make it possible for private energy developers and operators, like Tenaska, that want to generate more than 1,000 megawatts of power specifically for a large industrial customer to connect to the grid and sell any excess electricity back to the local public power district.

While the developer can use any energy source, Joshua Fershée, dean of Creighton University’s law school, said this bill would make it easier to use fossil fuel generation.

The power plant would have to be on the same property or next to the industrial user, and would have to be approved by the power review board. The private generator would have to have an agreement in place with the local utility before Jan. 1, 2032, and the customer would have to pay all fees and costs tied to hooking up to the public power district’s grid.

Google has three data centers in Nebraska, including this one in Papillion. Naomi Delkamiller / Flatwater Free Press

Google announced its first carbon capture and storage project last October for a 400-megawatt gas plant in Illinois that will support its data centers in the region. The project in Nebraska would be significantly larger.

“Google has very ambitious net-zero targets, and they have the money and they could do it,” Gillingham said. “This would be a huge investment by Google, fundamentally, to see if it can be done at a larger scale and more cost effectively than it’s ever been done before.”

Much like the overall proposal, though, it’s unclear if the carbon capture piece will actually materialize. Although the documents obtained by Flatwater and Grist specifically mention Tallgrass as the potential natural gas supplier and transporter of the captured carbon, Steven Davidson, Tallgrass’ senior vice president of government and public affairs, said the company currently does not have partnerships for a new data center or a Tenaska gas plant in Nebraska.

“While we are not in a partnership with anyone to build a data center in Nebraska,” Davidson said in a statement, “Nebraska is an exceptional state for investing and growing in a manner that respects local communities, expands opportunities for families to succeed, and focuses on long-term collaboration to improve people’s lives.”

Davidson expressed support for the governor’s bill.

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Over the last several months, as Tenaska scoured southeast Nebraska for land to house the potential data center and power plant, the company found several landowners willing to sell — including one state lawmaker.

Senator Myron Dorn, whose district spans Gage County and parts of southeast Lancaster County, signed an agreement with Tenaska earlier this year, allowing the company the exclusive right and option to purchase about 80 acres he owns in Gage County. Dorn said during their conversations, representatives mentioned both data centers and a power plant and had talked about a pipeline, but they didn’t outright say the land would be used for a data center powered by a gas plant.

Dorn, who is in his eighth year in the legislature, had not publicly disclosed the potential land deal as a conflict when he was contacted by the Flatwater Free Press and Grist last week. He said he had not looked at the governor’s bill and was unsure if the agreement he reached with Tenaska posed a conflict of interest that would require disclosure.

“Hadn’t thought of it. Didn’t realize the bill was out of committee and up that quick,” Dorn said.

Scott Danigole, executive director of the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, said that if passing LB1261 would increase the likelihood of the sale, Dorn should file a conflict of interest form before any discussion or vote on the bill.

Last Tuesday, he filed a disclosure noting the agreement and potential conflict of interest it posed. That filing came the same day the legislature began debating the bill.

Filing the form does not preclude the senator from voting on the bill. On his disclosure form, Dorn explained his decision not to abstain from voting.

“My vote is only one of 49,” he wrote. “This bill will benefit the entire state and any landowner who may contract with a private entity. It is not exclusive to my property.”

The bill advanced through its first of three votes last week, after which it would head to the governor’s desk.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A look behind the scenes of what could be Google’s biggest test of carbon capture on Mar 24, 2026.

From Grist via This RSS Feed.

While the United States sues to slow electric semi adoption, China is racing ahead with EV trucks now making up 25% of new heavy-duty sales. In this video, we break down how Chinese companies like BYD and CATL are dominating the electric truck market, why policy battles in the U.S. are shaping the future of freight electrification, and what this means for battery technology, logistics costs, and the global transition to zero-emission transport.

Posted this in a comment but it's a must read for all.

I thought the military used LLMs for war but I was wrong. This substack talks about a piece of tech called Maven, used since Iraq, and goes into the ethics and validity of "shortening the kill chain"

Can't wait for them to find out that they are all foreign made.

Reuters reported last month the Trump ⁠administration had put on hold a proposed ban on domestic sales of routers made by TP-Link.

War on TP-Link.

https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-sweetens-private-equity-pitch-amid-enterprise-turf-war-with-anthropic-2026-03-23/

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8041040

China’s industrial rise has triggered significant global shifts, creating both challenges and opportunities for Swedish companies. This seminar will provide deeper insight into why Chinese industry has become so dominant — and what this means for Swedish businesses.

The Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) provides an overview of China's technological development, policies and priorities. Industry experts and individuals with in-depth knowledge and experience of the Chinese market within the automotive and pharmaceutical sectors share their insights.

The seminar aims to provide a deeper understanding of today's challenges and opportunities, and to support effective and strategic action within Swedish industry.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11110223

Archive link: https://archive.ph/3uUVa

Israel’s Elbit Systems has revealed that it has been contracted to develop aircraft-mountable versions of its XCalibur high-power laser systems. Primarily intended for use on jets and helicopters, the idea is to provide low-cost per-shot solutions for threats such as drones and missiles.

This will overcome the main challenge of firing expensive missile interceptors to knock out these threats; the economics don’t add up. Add a few cents per shot, if a laser beam can be used instead of a $40,000 and $100,000 Tamir missile (those used in Israel’s Iron Dome), then interception becomes far less costly.

Especially when the incoming targets cost a fraction of this. If interception costs can be dramatically reduced (perhaps even cheaper than the target), then the economics of such an engagement could be flipped on its head, i.e., drones become the expensive element, not the interceptors.

This news came to light when Elbit’s President and CEO, Bezhalel Machlis, disclosed the deal during the company’s end-of-year results to shareholders. He announced that the deal was agreed in late 2025, which will aim to deliver a pod-type setup for jets and a helicopter variant called “Sting.”

"Israel"’s new “Sting” in the tail

“The advantage of the aerial laser is that it is less affected by humidity, rain, dust, and atmospheric conditions the higher you go,” Machlis told shareholders. This means that these systems will be able to operate above the clouds, for instance.

It should also mean that the system should be able to strike threats before they arrive because it can see them from the air. ” This would also be a game-changer as conventional air defense systems, like the Iron Dome, can suffer due to bad weather, line-of-sight blocking from terrain, and shorter engagement range due to ground location.

Having lasers on aircraft means you can operate above cloud level, identify and track targets earlier, and engage them sooner.

However, there are still many technical challenges to overcome before such a system can become viable for aircraft mounting; namely, cooling and size. “You need to miniaturize the elements,” Machlis added. “While moving, you need to lock yourself on a target and in a very precise way,” he explained. High-energy lasers also generate a lot of heat, which needs to be managed for obvious reasons. This typically requires a lot of cooling gear, and space is at a premium on aircraft.

Many challenges to overcome

To this end, any aircraft variant will need to have some form of compact generators and cooling systems. Having such a system on aircraft also introduces other issues, like tracking and stabilization, when the target is small and both the target and interceptor are moving.

Any solution will need ultra-precise tracking systems and adaptive optics to correct beam distortion.

But, Machlis is confident that Elbit can “overcome all these challenges,” and after “advancing with large investment, they will be operational with the air force, and I think there is a big market for this worldwide,” he added.

“I also want to add that [the] high-power laser is not just a defensive weapon. As you can understand, it has more applications,” Machlis said. As Breaking Defense points out, it is not entirely clear what he meant by this comment.