I went to the Maldives. Everyone wanted to talk about Temu

The Chinese shopping app has become so popular that even a government surcharge couldn't slow demand. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

What happened to China’s overseas EV factory boom?

Three charts show China’s promised overseas production hasn’t materialized — yet. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

China and the West are taking opposite paths on EV battery recycling

China has 85% of the world’s recycling capacity and a mandate to shred old packs. The U.S. has another plan: use them to save the power grid first. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

The AI-powered World Cup runs on thousands of data workers

Human annotators in Brazil, Cambodia, and the Philippines are tracking every movement in the football tournament for teams, broadcasters, and the betting industry. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI

Universities are dropping programs in translation and foreign languages while adding degrees in embodied intelligence, AI, and robotics. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

GoPro and Roomba were U.S. pioneers. Chinese rivals now dominate

China's consumer-tech brands keep gaining ground. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Chile turned to China for an undersea cable. The U.S. said no

A proposed undersea cable from Chile to Hong Kong promised to connect South America directly to Asia. Instead, it became a test of how far the U.S. will go to curb Chinese telecom ambitions. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

When Americans choose Chinese AI

Developers say DeepSeek is good enough for a fraction of the cost. “You don’t need God to write your email.” | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Spotify’s post-English AI future

More than half of Spotify listening is now in non-English languages as the company expands across Africa, Asia, and Latin America with local artists, pricing, and payment systems. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Can open-source beat OpenAI?

Former Hugging Face executive Tiezhen Wang explains how China's open-source strategy is reshaping the AI race. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

What the SpaceX IPO reveals about Gulf money in AI

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are funding America's AI boom — and getting data centers in return. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

China builds a rival satellite constellation as SpaceX goes public

A Chinese state-backed satellite company is signing the partners and governments Starlink has pushed aside, days before SpaceX’s record listing. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Big Tech, big cons: Scammers are hiding in the apps that make your life easy

In her new book “Bharat Bluff: Inside the Cons of India’s Internet Revolution,” writer Soumya Gupta explores how fraudsters are exploiting the trust people place in big tech platforms like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

The Great AI Divide: Navigating U.S. and Chinese dominance

At a Rest of World event during New York Tech Week, we explored the challenges and possible solutions to the dominance of American and Chinese AI companies. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

As the world embraces EVs, the U.S. hits the brakes

Canada and the EU opened their doors to Chinese electric cars this year while the U.S. watched from behind a tariff wall. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Silicon Valley’s lure is fading for India’s tech talent

India’s elite tech talent is starting to see big tech jobs in a new light. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

What to read: A summer book list

Rest of World recommends eight books that cover the history of resistance to tech, our relationship with AI companions, the danger of our dependence on Taiwan chips, and more. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Scarcity is driving AI innovation outside Silicon Valley

New AI infrastructure is emerging in India, Brazil, the UAE and Africa, where local stacks are designed to get around compute scarcity. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

China is training a robot future — one folded shirt at a time

Localized, low-cost data harvested in homes and factories gives China a scaling edge over the research-heavy and outsourced U.S. approach. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

EVs are getting more affordable worldwide — except in the U.S.

The U.S. is impaired by a lack of supportive policy and subsidies, the unavailability of affordable Chinese models, and a preference for big cars. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

India’s AI deal with the UAE challenges U.S. cloud dominance

G42 will deploy U.S.-designed supercomputers in India, offering a new model for governments that want to own their AI hardware. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Pope’s encyclical raises questions on who gets to shape AI

The encyclical provides an ethical and moral framework for AI, but one that is steeped in Catholicism and ignores the faiths and practices of a majority of the world’s population. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

China’s tech rise is creating a new kind of tourism

Foreign visitors are flocking to China’s factories and AI startups in search of the next technological breakthrough. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

U.S. companies have an AI problem. Indian IT wants to be the solution

As firms find ROI elusive, India’s tech giants are betting they can fill the AI “deployment gap” for U.S. clients, before automation eats their own back-office business. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

The agentic divide: Why “good enough” AI isn’t enough to survive the new economy

A widening gap in agent quality is creating a two-tier system where well-resourced firms scale infinitely while small players are trapped by high-friction, "low-trust" tools. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

U.S. versus China: Can open-source beat OpenAI?

Join Jules Polonetsky, Chief Executive Officer, Future of Privacy Forum, in conversation with Itika Sharma Punit, Deputy Editor, Rest of World on April 17, 2026 | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

AI is minting new billionaires, and workers want their share

The Samsung labor showdown in South Korea reflects global concerns about who benefits from the AI industry, and how the wealth being created should be shared. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

What AI race? China and U.S. AI worlds are tightly connected

Despite geopolitical tensions, Chinese and American AI industries remain intertwined through research networks, collaboration, and a shared cultural identity. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Pushing back from Big Tech: Africa’s hard road to AI sovereignty

The continent's biggest tech economies want to own their AI future. The infrastructure they need still belongs to Big Tech. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

The UAE’s OPEC exit frees up oil wealth as it bets big on AI

More oil revenue means deeper pockets for the UAE’s AI investment funds, and more gas means more electricity for its data centers. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Silicon Valley keeps misreading China’s role in tech

The heads of Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia regard Chinese companies as peers, not enemies, unlike most other Silicon Valley founders. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

The Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn’s “thought leadership” content mill

For $7 an hour, virtual assistants use AI tools to write LinkedIn posts and comments on behalf of Western executives. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

India’s VCs are beating Silicon Valley at home

A decade after U.S. venture capital firms fueled India’s startup boom, local investors are now dominating deals. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Can we really keep kids safe online?

Future of Privacy Forum CEO Jules Polonetsky says protecting minors online requires more than just restrictions and parental controls. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

What’s at stake for tech at the Trump-Xi meeting

U.S.-China summit to likely cover AI rivalry, chip exports, supply chain security, and the EV trade as leaders navigate intensifying geopolitical tensions. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Taiwan’s chips power the global economy. China holds the leverage

Big Tech’s reliance on TSMC makes the China-Taiwan dispute the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoint, says writer Eyck Freymann ahead of this week’s Xi-Trump meeting in Beijing. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

The Chinese whiz kids of Silicon Valley

Chinese-born tech workers have fueled Silicon Valley for decades. In the AI era, they're superstars. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 months ago

Some Taiwanese drone math ahead of the Xi-Trump visit

Recalling my visit to Thunder Tiger, a Taiwanese company building “non-China” drones for the U.S. military. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

Five times AI hallucinations embarrassed governments

From the Trump administration’s “formatting errors” to South Africa’s historic policy withdrawal, AI confabulation is infiltrating official documents. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

The Chinese EV standard winning globally is banned in the U.S.

By banning Chinese software, the U.S. risks isolating its automakers from the integrated systems, standards, and partnerships shaping the global electric vehicle market. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

The global cybersecurity gap deepens as AI-powered attacks surge

Restricted access to powerful defensive AI tools like Anthropic’s Mythos leaves some companies, central banks, and nations more vulnerable than others. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

Motorola’s India lawsuit could make platforms police speech faster

The American phonemaker's Indian arm has named X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Google, and Meta in a lawsuit asking to take down existing and future “defamatory” content. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

How the vinyl revival fills the gaps streaming left behind

As global sales climb, the reasons people buy records diverge sharply across cultures. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

Big Tech is moving data out of the Gulf through Iraqi oil pipelines

U.S. hyperscalers secure "dark fiber" capacity along Iraqi land route to reduce latency and provide a backup to vulnerable subsea cables. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

An old railroad is key to U.S.-China race for critical metals in Africa

Washington is trying to use the Lobito Railway in Congo to break China’s hold on critical metals in Africa, writes Nicholas Niarchos in his new book, The Elements of Power. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

Coupang probe tests the U.S.’s willingness to protect its tech giants abroad

A massive data breach at South Korea’s biggest online retailer, which is registered and listed in the U.S., has both countries claiming the right to act. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

The quiet layoffs sweeping China’s tech giants

Alibaba reduced its head count by a third in 2025, while Baidu’s workforce declined nearly 7%. “There’s constant churn,” a Chinese tech worker said. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago

I got stood up by an AI agent, and tracked down its human owner in China

A solo entrepreneur is paying a quarter of his salary to let AI agents run his side-hustle app. He recently realized his "employees" have been keeping secrets. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 months ago