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The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China has launched a special action to cultivate artificial intelligence application service providers, encouraging various regions to increase the procurement of large models, intelligent agents, and Token services through first purchase and first use, risk compensation, and other methods, while using tools such as "computing power vouchers" to reduce computing power costs.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will also establish a national resource pool for AI application service providers, aiming to exceed 2,000 by the end of 2026 and no less than 3,000 by the end of 2027. These service providers mainly help enterprises implement AI projects, with services ranging from early consulting, program design, to system development, integration delivery, and then to subsequent operation and maintenance and security governance.This policy also specifically names FDE. The Ministry encourages service providers to form FDE teams to directly address project implementation issues on-site with users. Various regions are also required to open real business scenarios, organize supply and demand matching, and turn high-frequency, essential business needs into standardized AI products that can be delivered repeatedly.

The Ministry of Commerce and six other departments issued implementation opinions on promoting the expansion and upgrading of commodity consumption. The opinions point out the need to strengthen the research and development of key technologies and core components, and to expand the application of technologies such as brain-computer integration and artificial intelligence in fields like elder-friendly products and rehabilitation aids.Increase the promotion of high-quality products in the "Promotion Catalog of Elderly Products," and promote products such as exoskeleton robots, electric wheelchairs, smart mattresses, and equipment for health monitoring, incontinence care, transfer, and bathing into elderly households. Explore the establishment of a certification system for silver-haired products. Encourage commercial circulation enterprises to set up sales areas for elder-friendly products, and promote elder-friendly products into supermarkets, hotels, communities, hospitals, pharmacies, and elderly care institutions.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has effectively banned Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading nationwide, threatening to prosecute traders and related businesses. More than 20 crypto shops in Herat have closed, and at least 13 traders have reportedly been arrested. Monthly inflows of cryptocurrency in Afghanistan have dropped from a peak of over $150 million to less than $80,000.After Afghanistan was largely cut off from the global banking system, Bitcoin and stablecoins had become important tools for savings and remittances. Taliban officials claim that digital assets are fraudulent and believe that cryptocurrency speculation is akin to gambling under Islamic law. Although the related actions have compressed the visible cryptocurrency market in Afghanistan, Bitcoin can still be traded via the internet, private keys, and counterparties.

According to The Information, the Trump administration is studying a new regulatory rule for artificial intelligence chips aimed at limiting the remote acquisition of computing resources for advanced AI chips in the United States.The report states that after Trump begins his second term in 2025, the White House announced the withdrawal of the AI Diffusion Rule introduced during the Biden administration. Currently, a small team within the U.S. Department of Commerce is working on a smaller, more targeted alternative plan to restrict geopolitical competitors from accessing advanced AI chips through remote methods such as cloud computing.The rule is still in the drafting stage, and specific restrictions have not yet been clarified, but it indicates that the U.S. government may re-strengthen regulations on the cross-border acquisition of advanced AI computing power, focusing on the possibility of circumventing physical chip export restrictions through remote computing services.

U.S. Federal Judge Rita Lin issued a partial summary judgment in a 59-page ruling regarding Anthropic's lawsuit against the Trump administration, determining that the government's punishment of Anthropic for publicly refusing to allow the military to use its Claude large model for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and lethal autonomous operations constituted illegal retaliation, violating the First Amendment, due process clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The judge also revoked the related designations and Defense Secretary Hegseth's injunction, issuing a permanent injunction.The controversy arose from the Pentagon's demand that Anthropic remove all usage restrictions and accept terms allowing "all lawful uses," while Anthropic maintained its last two bottom lines. On February 27, 2025, Trump ordered all federal agencies to cease using the company's technology, and Hegseth subsequently prohibited any military contractors from doing business with it. During this process, the government abandoned its core claims, acknowledging that Anthropic had no backdoor access to the deployed models and that the risks of Claude were no greater than those of other "black box" systems. Lin pointed out that the government's punishment under the guise of "national security" was not a blank check, and that the government had been operating under the preliminary injunction since March without indicating any harm.Anthropic did not achieve a complete victory, as its claim that Trump's directive exceeded presidential authority was dismissed. Anthropic informed the court that if the relevant measures continued, its defense-related revenue would decrease by 50% to 100%, resulting in a loss of billions of dollars in overall revenue by 2026.

Bilal Bin Saqib, the Minister of State for Pakistan and Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), revealed at the Bitcoin Asia conference that the country completed the establishment of its virtual asset regulatory system in less than six months, using only about 8% of the approved budget, which is approximately $200,000, with about 92% of the budget remaining unused. Saqib stated that the government should not measure success by how much money is spent, but rather by the actual delivery of results. The regulatory framework covers activities such as exchanges, custody, brokerage, asset management, lending, and settlement, and introduces requirements regarding governance, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, customer asset protection, cybersecurity, and market conduct. Saqib emphasized that Pakistan's regulatory ambitions extend beyond the current digital asset market, with future focus on the tokenization market, programmable payments, stablecoins, machine-to-machine transactions, and the AI agent economy, noting the need to establish corresponding regulatory rules for agent payments and the agent economy. Saqib stated that emerging markets do not need to spend a decade catching up; they can build on the frontier. With a population of over 240 million, Pakistan is a potentially significant market for emerging financial technologies. The rapid transition from legislation to licensing in the country is being used as a demonstration case for the government's response to next-generation financial infrastructure.

According to eight people familiar with the discussions, despite warnings from tech companies that this move could affect the United States' dominance in the field of artificial intelligence, the Trump administration is still considering imposing a new round of comprehensive tariffs on semiconductors.

The Ministry of Commerce responds to the U.S. considering an additional 7.5% tariff on China.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated on August 26 at the "Starting Point of the 14th Five-Year Plan" series of themed press conferences held by the State Council Information Office that, in terms of application, artificial intelligence in our country has basically penetrated the entire chain of research and development design, production manufacturing, quality inspection, and operation and maintenance.Xin Guobin mentioned that nearly 200 artificial intelligence-related standards have been successfully developed, and multiple cities are being organized to carry out ethical reviews and service practices related to artificial intelligence.

On August 26, according to the Korea Herald, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange operator Dunamu has been designated by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety as a "Joint Utilization Agency for Administrative Information," becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange operator in South Korea to obtain this qualification. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety completed on-site inspections and qualification reviews in May of this year and made the designation decision this month.Dunamu plans to use this system for user identity verification (KYC), reducing the process of users repeatedly submitting proof materials by accessing relevant administrative information, thereby improving the efficiency of account opening and account verification.

Canada imposes tariffs of 15% to 50% on approximately $20 billion worth of U.S. goods; Canada will raise tariffs on U.S. steel products from 25% to 50%.The Canadian government stated that starting from September 8, it will impose counter-tariffs of 15%, 25%, or 50% on approximately 700 products.

According to CNBC, the cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, stated that the rapid growth of its stablecoin USD1 and actual market demand refute external doubts about the project primarily relying on political connections for development. Currently, the circulation scale of USD1 has exceeded 4 billion dollars.World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff stated that the growth of USD1 comes from the product itself and market adoption, rather than special treatment from the Trump administration. USD1 was previously used in the 2 billion dollar investment transaction by the Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX in Binance, which is also one of the most significant institutional applications of USD1 to date.Recently, World Liberty Financial also received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter, planning to directly issue and redeem USD1 through World Liberty Trust Company in the future, and manage its reserve assets. Regarding the project's relationship with the Trump family, some Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. continue to raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

Canadian Prime Minister Carney stated that Canada's measures (tariffs) against the United States will take effect on September 8.

The State Council Information Office held a series of themed press conferences titled "Starting Off the 14th Five-Year Plan." Officials from the Ministry of Finance introduced the role of this year's proactive fiscal policy and outlined the key focus areas for policy efforts in the second half of the year.Vice Minister of Finance Liao Min stated that since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Finance has firmly implemented a more proactive fiscal policy:This year's fiscal expenditure budget arrangement has exceeded 30 trillion yuan for the first time.The scale of new government bonds has reached 11.89 trillion yuan, the largest in history.Central government transfers to local governments have exceeded 10 trillion yuan for the fourth consecutive year, reaching 10.42 trillion yuan.In the second half of the year, fiscal policy will continue to focus on three areas for effective results: accelerating the use of funds, increasing efforts to expand domestic demand, and strengthening fiscal reform management.Regarding incremental policies, in the second half of the year, based on the macroeconomic operation situation, the Ministry of Finance will timely plan and introduce practical and effective incremental policies to provide strong support for achieving a qualitative improvement and reasonable growth in the economy.

According to informed sources, the Trump administration plans to reduce the tariff on Canadian imported cars from 25% to 15% as part of a broader agreement. This agreement requires Canada to eliminate its retaliatory trade measures against the United States. The new 15% tariff will continue to apply to non-American components in the vehicles.Currently, the details of the agreement have not been finalized, and the final outcome remains uncertain.

Vietnam is accelerating the promotion of a regulated cryptocurrency trading market pilot to alleviate the scrutiny pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on its anti-money laundering mechanisms. Vietnam has been on the FATF "grey list" since June 2023, and the long-ignored regulatory cryptocurrency industry is seen as one of the major risk points.According to a five-year pilot program led by the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance, the exchange license requires a minimum paid-in registered capital of 100 trillion Vietnamese dong, approximately 380 million USD, with a foreign ownership limit of 49%, and trading can only be priced in Vietnamese dong. Currently, five applicants, including Techcombank, VPBank, LPBank affiliates, VIX Securities, and Sun Group, have passed the preliminary review, and the first official trading activities in the Vietnamese cryptocurrency market are expected to emerge as early as the third quarter. The Vietnamese Ministry of Finance is also drafting relevant rules to prohibit Vietnamese citizens from trading on overseas cryptocurrency platforms.

According to Xinhua News Agency, the U.S. has sent a letter to the signatories of the "Joint Statement on the Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence Partnership," requesting that all parties refrain from simultaneously joining U.S.-related initiatives and other mechanisms that conflict with U.S. initiatives. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian stated at a regular press conference on the 19th that countries have the right to choose their partners based on their own national conditions and development needs. China firmly opposes taking sides and creating confrontations on artificial intelligence issues, and hopes that all parties will abandon zero-sum thinking, adhere to mutual cooperation, respect the digital sovereignty of all countries, and work together to build a fair and reasonable global governance system for artificial intelligence, making artificial intelligence an important driving force for promoting common prosperity and maintaining common security.

At the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Robot Conference, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that in 2025, the operating income of enterprises above designated size in the robotics industry exceeded 300 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of over 20% in the past five years. In the first half of this year, it reached 165.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.5%. Robot technology and products have been widely applied in various aspects of the national economy and social development, becoming an important force in promoting high-quality development.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will focus on key industries with broad application spaces and strong demonstration effects, such as agriculture, healthcare, elderly care, and emergency response. It will organize targeted efforts for production and application pairing, on-site application verification, and promotion of mature scenarios, accelerating the iteration and upgrading of new technologies and new products through large-scale applications in new scenarios.

According to three informed sources, in mid-May, when U.S. negotiators attempted to reach an agreement to end the war with Iran, they encountered a problem: they could not determine whether the Iranian representatives across the negotiating table truly represented the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which holds significant influence in the country. The report stated that, as a result, officials from the Trump administration took an unusual approach—bypassing the Iranian negotiating representatives and directly contacting senior leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.The U.S. chose Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, to handle this secret communication channel. He possesses a rare advantage: he has gained the trust of both the U.S. and the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This incident highlights that one of the significant reasons for the difficulties in U.S.-Iran negotiations is Washington's inability to determine who truly holds decision-making power in Iran. The U.S. and Iran did eventually reach a memorandum of understanding, but it quickly fell apart.