• Two men have been charged in Alameda County with helping organize a sideshow in Oakland last September. The two men, Axel Cisnerosmentos and Aron Anaya, are accused of misdemeanor charges for promoting and facilitating the sideshow that occurred in connection with a visit by viral streamer IShowSpeed. [KTVU]
• A man was arrested Saturday night after allegedly stabbing someone during an altercation at a Safeway self-checkout area in Redwood City. [KRON4]
• Santa Clara County filed suit against Meta Monday alleging that the company profited off of scam ads on Facebook and Instagram that it knew were likely scams. [KPIX]

National:

• Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, in Los Angeles County, will plead guilty to being an agent of the Chinese government prior to becoming mayor. Wang is taking a plea deal, admitting she acted under the control of the People's Republic of China from 2020 to 2022, and she's being arraigned on Tuesday. [LA Times]
• Democrats in Virginia are asking the Supreme Court to intervene and allow them to use a voter-approved new congressional district map, which the state supreme court struck down last month based on a technicality. [CNN]
• Trump's asinine reflecting pool project outside the Lincoln Memorial is going to cost $13.1 million, not the $1.8 million he originally quoted. [New York Times]

Video:

• On Sunday, the most northerly city in the US, Utqiagvik, Alaska, saw its last sunrise for the next 84 days, and it will have perpetual daylight until then, which will hopefully melt some of the snow that's still visible on the ground in the timelapse video below.

Top image: Eileen Wang attends the Asian Hall of Fame 2023 induction ceremony at Biltmore Los Angeles on October 21, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

In an effort to embarrass and potentially discredit Congressman Eric Swalwell as he makes a bid for California governor, President Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel are rooting around a story that goes back over 14 years regarding a Chinese "honey pot" spy case.

The fact of the matter is, in Democrat-dominated California, any squabble with President Trump is probably great for Rep. Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign. But lest he have his name dragged through the mud and see Republican-funded TV spots depicting him with a Chinese spy, Swalwell is trying to nip things in the bud with an FBI effort to reexamine a now decade-old Chinese espionage case that briefly involved Swalwell and his original 2012 campaign for Congress.

You may recall the story of Fang Fang, aka Christine Fang, an apparent "honey trap" operative of the Chinese government who was engaged in efforts to befriend — and/or sleep with — multiple low-level American officials, as part of some broader influence campaign by Chinese intelligence. This involved her allegedly sleeping with two unnamed mayors of Midwestern cities, one of whom called her his "girlfriend," doing fundraising work for former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in Hawaii, and spending time in the Bay Area working with the campaigns of both Swalwell and then-candidate Ro Khanna, who first ran for Congress in 2014.

Swalwell was arguably Fang's most high-level target, and there is no evidence of anything romantic or sexual ever occurring between them. The FBI suspected Fang of conducting a "long game" spying operation in the US to sway the opinion of key decision-makers, and the agency reportedly questioned Swalwell and cleared him of any wrongdoing sometime in the last decade — he said he had not seen Fang since 2014, after she had briefly worked doing fundraising for his campaign in 2012, and placing an intern with the campaign. Nonetheless, the story came to light in an Axios exposé in late 2020.

Still, as Swalwell looks at becoming the potential frontrunner in the race for governor, FBI Director Kash Patel wants to make some hay of the story, to please Herr Trump. As the Washington Post reported over the weekend, Patel was looking to post documents from the case online in an effort to embarass Swalwell, and he reportedly sent agents to the FBI's San Francisco offices last week to redact the documents for this purpose.

Swalwell gave a press conference outside those offices, at the Burton Federal Building, on Monday, to call attention to the shenanigans — because he clearly sees that it's likely to benefit him in voters' eyes.

"We need a governor who can be a fighter and a protector,” Swalwell said, per Bay Area News Group. “That’s why they’re targeting me, I’m the only name in the race that they know. The only one that they’re threatened by because we promised to continue with what Governor Gavin Newsom has done."

The New York Times reported Monday that Swalwell, through his attorneys, had sent a cease-and-desist letter to the FBI seeking to block the release of the documents. The letter detailed three ways in which such a release would violate federal law, one of which was the attempted punishment of Swalwell for negative comments about the president, violating his free-speech rights. The letter also suggested that the release would violate the Privacy Act of 1974, and that it would violate Justice Department rules barring federal agents from attempting to influence an election.

This is the second major effort that we know about by the Trump administration to target Swalwell for punishment, the first being the mortgage fraud investigation launched into Swalwell in November, before he'd even announced his candidacy for governor.

Previously: Suspected ‘Honey Trap’ Chinese Spy Targeted Bay Area Congressmen Swalwell and Khanna

Photo via Getty Images

• Around 200 UCSF workers and 2,000 UC workers statewide voted this week to form a new union with United Auto Workers — the third group of UC employees to unionize in the past year. [Mission Local]
• With the average price of gas in California at $5.42 per gallon, San Jose Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan is asking state leaders to temporarily suspend the state gas tax. [NBC Bay Area]

• The latest trend for gig workers involves wearing cameras on one’s hands and head while doing daily tasks to help the AI learn human movements. [LA Times]
• San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties have the highest rates of tuberculosis in the state and three times the national average due to the high frequency of international travelers entering the country through the Bay Area. [Bay Area News Group]
• Memes have taken over social media in China mocking a March 6 video of President Donald Trump praying with faith leaders inside the White House, with one satirical caption reportedly saying, “A Chinese boss leads his team to pray for huge sales.”

• The current allergy season is going to be especially long this year — and agonizing, as this year’s bloom came early due to California having the second warmest winter on record, along with the intermittent rain and dry spells drawing out the pollen and then scattering it through the air. [Chronicle]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

During a hearing on self-driving vehicles in Washington DC Wednesday, a Waymo executive said that remote workers as far away as the Philippines are guiding the robotaxis when they encounter difficult situations, leading lawmakers to accuse the company of putting the American people at risk.

As CBS News reports, top executives from Waymo and Tesla were questioned on the safety of self-driving cars Wednesday by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, as lawmakers determine how to regulate the industry amid recent high-profile incidents.

As the blog Futurism reports, a Waymo robotaxi struck an elementary-school child in Santa Monica last week, and more than 20 Waymos in Austin and 6 in Atlanta have reportedly been documented flying past stopped school buses that had their extended stop signs out and flashing lights on, which prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to open an investigation.

As the Chronicle reports, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña told the committee Wednesday (as seen in the below video clip), the company hires remote workers, called "fleet response agents," including some who are located in the Philippines. According to Waymo's website, the agents strictly provide contextual input on the environment when vehicles are navigating unpredictable situations — such as San Francisco's mass power outage back in December, but the vehicles maintain control of their operations at all times.

“They provide guidance, they do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña said, per the Chronicle. “Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets input, but Waymo is always in charge of the dynamic driving task.”

“Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue,” said Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, per the Chronicle. “The information the operators receive could be out of date. It could introduce tremendous cyber security vulnerabilities. … And let’s not forget Waymo is trying to replace the jobs of hardworking taxi and ride share drivers.”

In a statement to Futurism, a Waymo spokesperson said its fleet response teams are “required to have a passenger car or van license, and are reviewed for records of traffic violations, infractions, and driving-related convictions.”

“Additionally, they are routinely, randomly screened for drug use, and are put through thorough criminal background checks in addition to evaluations of their driving records,” the spokesperson added, per Futurism.

Additionally, as the Business Insider reports, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio addressed Waymo’s partnership with Chinese automaker Zeekr on the manufacture of the company’s new minivan-style vehicle, which has been in the testing phase for several years. The lawmaker accused Waymo of bypassing a new federal “connected vehicle” rule that imposes import restrictions on vehicles with certain autonomous or connected software that's tied to China.

Peña said Waymo's vehicles are shipped from China with no connectivity, and the driving systems are installed once they arrive in the US, arguing that its partnership with a Chinese company helps the company scale and meet rapidly growing demands as the US races to keep up with China, per the Business Insider.

"Giving a natural market to a Chinese company to ship us cars is making us better and creating more jobs for Americans? That's completely ridiculous," Moreno said. “You said in your testimony that we're locked in a race with China, but it seems like you're getting in bed with China.”

Per Futurism, Senator Markey released a statement calling for more transparency around how autonomous vehicle companies such as Waymo are utilizing overseas workers.

“Overseas remote assistance operations may be more susceptible to physical takeover by hostile actors, potentially granting them driver-like control of thousands of vehicles transporting passengers on American roads,” he said, per Futurism. “Heavy and fast-moving vehicles could quickly become the weapons of foreign actors seeking to harm innocent Americans.”

Updates have been made to clarify that Waymo's remote workers assist by providing contextual input on the environment, but the vehicles maintain control of their operations at all times.

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - DECEMBER 08: A Waymo robotaxi drives along California Street on December 08, 2025 in San Francisco, California. Self-driving taxi company Waymo said it is voluntarily recalling software in its autonomous vehicles after Texas officials documented at least 19 incidents this school year in which the cars illegally passed stopped school buses, including while students were getting on or off. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Related: Supervisor Mahmood Calls For Hearings Into Waymo After Last Weekend’s Mass-Stalling Shambles

The DOJ arrested a San Leandro man and three others as part of an alleged conspiracy to evade US trade laws by smuggling powerful Nvidia GPUs and AI chips to China through Thailand and Malaysia. The man allegedly bragged that his dad did the same work for the CCP.

As Bay Area News Group reports, Cham “Tony” Li, 38, a Chinese national who lives in San Leandro, was arrested last week, along with three others who live in Florida and Alabama, for attempting to allegedly export millions of dollars worth of restricted top-of-the-line Nvidia technology to China.

Per a press release from the US Department Of Justice, the United States has strict regulations in place as China strives to fulfill its goal of becoming an AI world leader by 2030 by utilizing AI advancements to modernize its military, develop weapons of mass destruction, and deploy sophisticated surveillance tools. Nvidia, a Santa Clara-based company, is not involved with the case. Court Watch was the first to break the story.

Li, along with Hon Ning “Matthew” Ho, 34, a US citizen who was born in Hong Kong and lives in Tampa, Florida, are suspected of using a shell company called Janford Realtor to funnel almost $4 million from two unnamed Hong Kong-registered Chinese companies, per Bay Area News Group, to purchase and then export the restricted computer GPUs and chips, per CNBC. Ho is considered the “ringleader” of the operation, per Wired.

Jing “Harry” Chen, 45, a Chinese national on an F-1 nonimmigrant student visa who also lives in Tampa, Florida, is listed as helping Li and Ho with the operation. Additionally, Brian Curtis Raymond, 46, a US citizen in Huntsville, Alabama, allegedly used his company Bitworks Technology, a legal reseller of Nvidia chips, to help with the export, per Forbes.

The group successfully carried out two exports between October 2024 and January 2025 when they shipped 400 Nvidia A100 processors through Malaysia to China, per the press release. The third and fourth exports were thwarted earlier this year when law enforcement caught them allegedly trying to ship 50 Nvidia H200 processors and 10 Hewlett Packard supercomputers containing Nvidia H100 chips to China through Thailand, per CNBC.

“The indictment unsealed yesterday alleges a deliberate and deceptive effort to transship controlled NVIDIA GPUs to China by falsifying paperwork, creating fake contracts, and misleading U.S. authorities,” said John A. Eisenberg, Assistant Attorney General for National Security in DOJ’s press release. “The National Security Division is committed to disrupting these kinds of black markets of sensitive U.S. technologies and holding accountable those who participate in this illicit trade.”

Per Wired, during their investigation, authorities obtained text messages in which Li talked about how his father “had engaged in similar business on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party” and knew how to get around export restrictions. He also allegedly admitted to “various facts” during questioning.

Li, Ho, and Chen are all in custody, and Li is scheduled to be arraigned December 4 in Tampa. Raymond was released on bond and won’t be detained, per Wired.

Per CNBC, Raymond was the chief technology officer of a tech company in Virginia that was about to become publicly traded, but he’s no longer employed there.

Related: Alleged SoCal Tech Burglar Crew Charged With Stealing $22 Million Worth of Gear From Bay Area Companies

Top image: A closeup of a silicon wafer on display at Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institution on September 16, 2022 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities are crucial to global supply chains, with megacap companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm heavily dependent on the island's exports. (Photo by Annabelle Chih/Getty Images)

A lawsuit is alleging that a Fremont battery company with ties to China called non-Chinese staff “foreigners,” using unauthorized Chinese workers on B-1 visas, and flying in a Chinese lawyer who's unlicensed in the US to advise on bringing in more illegal hires.

As Bay Area News Group reports, the lawsuit was filed on June 13 in Alameda County Superior Court, accusing Gotion Inc., a subsidiary of China-based Gotion High-Tech, of keeping a “revolving door” of Chinese citizens working at its lithium-ion battery plant using B-1 business visas, which do not allow employment. The lawsuit also claims that a Gotion High-Tech lawyer from China was brought to the US despite not being authorized to work or practice law here — allegedly to advise Gotion on “how to impermissibly violate US immigration laws.”

Three plaintiffs — Anirban Das, a US citizen of Indian descent, Atul Deshpande, an Indian citizen with a US work authorization, and Betuel Olivares, a Mexican citizen with a work permit — claim they were stripped of job duties and harassed after raising concerns about the violations. One plaintiff alleges a Gotion manager made racist comments toward non-Chinese workers, referring to them as “foreigners.”

According to the lawsuit, when the three plaintiffs met with Gotion management in June 2024 to discuss steps for making the Fremont facility lawful and safe, Gotion supervisor Chen Li told them two of his Chinese deputies would be taking over their work.

Li reportedly said, “It seems that it is unrealistic to expect these old Americans to solve the problem,” along with, “Don’t expect the foreigners to solve the problem because the foreigner doesn’t understand how.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the Fremont facility lacked proper permits and safety features, and that Gotion continued operations after the city posted a “do not enter” notice on the building. A photo included in the complaint, which was also included in the Bay Area News Group article, shows company brochures allegedly taped over the red closure notice.

This is not Gotion’s first US controversy. In Michigan, its $2.3 billion EV battery factory plan near Big Rapids promised over 2,000 jobs but sparked protests over environmental impact and Chinese ownership. Critics dubbed the company a “Communist Trojan horse,” and GOP figures including Donald Trump used the controversy to criticize the Biden administration’s clean energy policies. Despite efforts by Gotion’s US VP Chuck Thelen — who notably ate battery chemicals to prove safety — local opposition stalled the project. Gotion subsequently redirected efforts to a $2 billion Illinois plant with less resistance.

Gotion has not yet responded publicly to the lawsuit in Fremont.

Image via Google Maps

The San Francisco Zoo is moving forward, undeterred, with their plan for panda diplomacy, and they say things are on track to bring a pair of giant pandas to SF in the next year.

The update came at Thursday's meeting of the Recreation and Park Commission, and as the Chronicle reports, zoo CEO and Executive Director Tanya Peterson told the commission that the zoo is now hopeful that the pandas could arrive by next April. Peterson said that she had recently hosted a Chinese Friendship Delegation of scientists and government officials to discuss the panda plan, which was put in motion last year by Mayor London Breed.

Regarding whether Trump's ongoing and escalating trade war with China would affect this process, Peterson reportedly said, "It’s safe to say, at this point, there are no tariffs on the endangered species."

But who knows where we will be on that front in six months?

According to previously announced discussions, China would seek a $1 million per year rental fee for the pandas.

Setting aside the Oval Office clown show, we had thought the panda plan might evaporate after it failed to get Breed reelected, and after we'd heard in January that a major donor to the zoo, real estate magnate John McNellis, was badmouthing the idea following a scathing report from the SF Animal Control and Welfare Commission about deteriorating conditions at the zoo, generally.

"Pursuing pandas while the zoo is in its worst shape ever is a serious mistake," McNellis said three months ago. "The money that it would cost to grandly house and rent pandas from China could be far better spent on at last renovating the zoo, repaving its cracked and failing roads, replacing its spent landscaping [and] rehabilitating its existing exhibits."

Also, Peterson seemed somewhat doubtful in January that Mayor Daniel Lurie would have the same enthusiasm for the panda project that Breed had prior to the November election.

Nevertheless, the zoo said in late October that it was nearing a $20 million fundraising goal to underwrite a panda exhibit — which would include the renovation of a former lion enclosure for them, and the high cost of their daily bamboo diet.

Still, that might only cover the panda's arrival and perhaps a year of food and care. If the pandas were to stick around for ten years, which is a typical length of a panda loan, one animal welfare group suggested that it could cost the city $70 million in total — but another report forecast, maybe optimistically, that the zoo could take in $320 million in added ticket revenue over that period as well, thanks to the pandas.

Pandas at the SF Zoo remain a pipe dream, and we probably shouldn't get too excited until they're actually landing at SFO.

David Towne, the retried former director of the Giant Panda Conservation Foundation, tells the Chronicle this week that "until you get the pandas in your facility anything is possible." And, he added, regarding any panda negotiations so far, "You never are really dealing with the people that are going to make the final decision. It’s a centralized government over there, and they operate based on the whim of the moment. And at the moment things are not really bright between the countries."

Previously: SF Zoo Claims It’s Nearing Its $20 Million Fundraising Goal to Bring Pandas to Town

Photo by yongzheng xu

A new AI model released by Chinese startup DeepSeek has caused a great flurry of buzz and consternation in the American tech world, and that was reflected in a bunch of Silicon Valley companies' stock prices Monday morning.

DeepSeek R1, which will probably get banned by Congress but it will take them 'til 2028 to do it, was released late last week for download in the Apple and Google app stores, and it's already drawing comparisons to models created by OpenAI and Google. The cause for the greatest worry among tech leaders, though, is that it cost Chinese startup DeepSeek only $5.6 million to train, as the Wall Street Journal reported — compared to the billions being spent by OpenAI, Google, Meta and others to build their AIs.

Tech stocks took a beating Monday after this revelation about DeepSeek R1, and the fact that Deepseek built it using limited-capability NVIDIA chips — which are the only ones NVIDIA has been allowed to sell to China. As CNN reports, the S&P 500 fell by 1.4% so far today, and the Nasdaq fell by 2.3%. NVIDIA's stock price was particularly hammered, falling by almost 25 points or 17% so far today.

Investor Marc Andreessen fed the fire with a Friday tweet saying, "Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen," and, he added, "as open source, a profound gift to the world."

As The Hill and others are noting, US AI infrastructure is still far superior to China's, so investors should not be so skittish.

"While the [R1] model is impressive and it will have a ripple impact, the reality is that Mag 7 and US tech is focused on the AGI endgame with all the infrastructure and ecosystem that China and especially DeepSeek cannot come close to in our view," analysts with Wedbush wrote Monday.

"The bottom line is the US outperformance has been driven by tech and the lead that US companies have in AI,” says Keith Lerner, an analyst with Truist, per CNN. "The DeepSeek model rollout is leading investors to question the lead that US companies have and how much is being spent and whether that spending will lead to profits (or overspending)."

The stock panic also impacted the energy sector, as CNN notes, because of its link to the future growth of AI.

But all of this may just a momentary panic — albeit one that is likely to help undervalued Chinese AI companies.

And the backlash has been swift, with DeepSeek saying Monday that it was hit with a "large-scale malicious cyber attack," causing them to limit new registrations.

"Time will tell if the DeepSeek threat is real — the race is on as to what technology works and how the big Western players will respond and evolve,” says Michael Block, market strategist at Third Seven Capital, per CNN. "Markets had gotten too complacent on the beginning of the Trump 2.0 era and may have been looking for an excuse to pull back — and they got a great one here."

Related: Elon Musk Fumes as $500 Billion AI Data Center Investment Comes From Sam Altman and Not Him

A giant panda, or a pair of pandas, will be coming to the San Francisco Zoo sometime in the future, as Mayor London Breed has succeeded in her mission to coax some Panda Diplomacy out of China.

"We have some cute, cuddly, black and white beauties coming to our city," Breed announced in a video posted late Thursday to X.

"These Giant Pandas will honor our deep cultural connections and our Chinese and API heritage," Breed writes. "They will bring residents and visitors from all over who come to visit them at the SF Zoo."

Breed is still overseas in China, with Supervisor Joel Engardio acting as interim mayor in her absence. And in addition to drumming up more nonstop flight traffic from China to SFO, and luring a Chinese university university to establish a satellite campus here, getting Chinese officials to send us pandas was one of her main stated goals for the trip.

As Mission Local notes, this may or may not do anything for Breed's poll numbers with the local Chinese community, which have been dismal as of late. But she clearly hopes it will move the needle.

The next steps on the panda project include a visit next month from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association, who will arrive in SF to meet with zoo officials.

SF Zoo CEO and Executive Director Tanya Peterson told ABC News in February that bringing the pandas here, in addition to a $1 million lease payment to the Chinese government, will cost the zoo around $25 million to construct a new enclosure and habitat for them.

In a video posted on Chinese media, Breed said, "My plan is to do everything I can to make it clear that … we stand ready and willing and able to host pandas at our zoo."

The timeline for the pandas' arrival remains unclear, as the Chronicle reports, since we don't know how long the improvements at the zoo will take.

The last time the SF Zoo hosted pandas on loan from China was in 1984 and 1985. The pandas, which are typically sent in pairs, made a couple of brief stops here and in Los Angeles in conjunction with LA hosting the Olympics in 1984.

The mayor's office said that during that panda visit, zoo attendance was four times what it normally was, and helped draw more than 260,000 visitors to the zoo.

The last time giant pandas were in California was in 2019, at the San Diego Zoo, before the Chinese government recalled them home.

Previously: SF Mayor Heads to China Next Week to Promote Tourism — and Lobby For a Panda

Top image: Male giant panda Xiao Qi Ji eats an ice cake for his third birthday at the Smithsonian National Zoo on August 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. This is the last year that the National Zoo is celebrating the birthdays for the three giant pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and Xiao Qi Ji as they are scheduled to return to China later in 2023, with no replacements expected to be exchanged. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Another of Mayor London Breed's goals in her upcoming trip to China, besides getting a panda for the San Francisco Zoo, is apparently to chat up a university there about opening a satellite campus in SF's struggling downtown.

Breed already announced with some fanfare in February that she is trying to lure multiple historically Black colleges to take up some real estate downtown, dubbing the initiative Black 2 San Francisco. The schools the city is talking to in this effort are Charles R. Drew University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, Morris Brown College, Tuskegee University, and the University of the District of Columbia.

And in January, the University of California confirmed that it was entertaining invitations from Breed to open a satellite campus downtown as well.

Now, Breed tells the Chronicle that she is also seeking out a Chinese university for the same reason, and that this will be one of her goals while in China on a kind of marketing trip for the city starting Saturday.

Breed will reportedly meet with leaders from Fudan University, a research university in Shanghai, as one of the stops on her trip, which runs from April 13 to 21. Fudan University, Breed tells the paper, is "potentially looking at a site in San Francisco for a campus."

The trip is being paid for by the privately funded San Francisco Special Events Committee, a nonprofit which falls under SF Chief of Protocol Maryam Muduroglu. And Breed is being joined on the journey by a delegation of some 30 business people, entrepreneurs, and local Asian community leaders.

In Beijing, Breed is set to meet with US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. And other stops will include meetings with local government leaders in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. Breed is also reportedly traveling to Hong Kong.

In addition to the panda pleading and the university-luring, Breed says she is also on a Mission to drum up more tourism to San Francisco from Chinese tourists, and to encourage airlines to fly more routes out of China to SF.

"The economic benefits of tourists that come here from China [have] been significant," Breed tells the Chron. "Tourists spend money. They shop downtown. They go to our neighborhoods. They eat in our restaurants. And we want to push for an economic boom."

Breed was personally invited to visit the country, her office says, by President Xi Jinping during his APEC visit, but no meeting with Xi appears to be on the books.

The trip also marks the 45th anniversary of San Francisco's sister city relationship with Shanghai, something that will also be celebrated next month with the mayor of Shanghai coming here.

Previously: SF Mayor Heads to China Next Week to Promote Tourism — and Lobby For a Panda

A 38-year-old software engineer for Microsoft was apparently curious, eagle-eyed, and lucky enough to have discovered a pernicious bit of code in the widely used Linux operating system, that someone, somewhere, had gone to some lengths to hide.

His name is Andres Freund. He's originally from Germany, lives in San Francisco, and for his job at Microsoft he works on a piece of open-source database software known as PostgreSQL. The New York Times has the story of how, over the last several months, he rooted out the cause of some odd errors he was seeing while running certain tests, which led to a discovery with massive implications.

Per the Times:

The saga began earlier this year, when Mr. Freund was flying back from a visit to his parents in Germany. While reviewing a log of automated tests, he noticed a few error messages he didn’t recognize. He was jet-lagged, and the messages didn’t seem urgent, so he filed them away in his memory.

It was a few weeks later that Freund found an application used for remotely accessing computers was using more processing power than normal, and then he discovered some odd code buried in a set of data compression tools called xz Utils. All you need to understand, as the Times explains, is that this is a part of the Linux operating system, "which is probably the most important piece of open-source software in the world."

The operating system is updated and policed by a group of volunteers worldwide, and someone, possibly a high-level Chinese hacker, had over years gained the trust of these Linux caretakers and infiltrated their ranks. This person had then, fairly recently, inserted code that would have given them a backdoor into servers worldwide, including the backbone systems of major banks, hospitals, corporations, you name it.

Freund found enough evidence that he compiled it and sent to to a group of Linux developers last week, and his memo reportedly "set the tech world on fire," per the Times. A fix was developed within hours and rolled out — and while the backdoor code had been recently added in an update to Linux, the update had not been widely adopted.

The culprit, according to researchers, was a hacker who went by the name Jia Tan or JiaT75, and began suggesting updates to xz Utils two years ago. This person, who could have come from China, Russia, or elsewhere, slowly worked their way into the ranks of Linux overseers known as "maintainers," and inserted the pernicious backdoor code sometime earlier this year.

Ars Technica first covered the hack in great detail last week, reporting that the malicious code had not yet gone out to "production" version of the Linux software, but it would have eventually. It didn't, says Will Dormann of security firm Analygence, "only because it was discovered early due to bad actor sloppiness. Had it not been discovered, it would have been catastrophic to the world.”

And, as Ars Technica reports, JiaT75 had in recent weeks gone on the developer site for Ubuntu to lobby for their updated code to be incorporated into the production versions of the software.

Alex Stamos, a former security officer at Facebook and Yahoo and now the chief trust officer at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, spoke to the Times, saying, "This could have been the most widespread and effective backdoor ever planted in any software product," and calling the code like "a master key to any of the hundreds of millions of computers around the world" that run this widely used remote-access software.

The code also would have enabled the person, and by extension whatever entity they're working for, to do widespread damage without getting caught.

Freund's employer, Microsoft, should probably be giving him a raise. And the CEO of the company, Satya Nadella, has publicly praised his "curiosity and craftsmanship."

It is certainly scary to think that other efforts like this could be happening at any time. And the story goes to show how the modern internet is, in fact, "held together with the digital equivalent of Scotch tape and bubble gum," as the Times puts it, and often by ragtag volunteer coders.

Photo: Hackers, United Artists, 1995

Chinese diplomats crowing about the success of the APEC summit say they’re ready to send some more pandas to U.S. zoos, and San Francisco is reportedly on the short list for getting one.

Who says that nothing good came from APEC? Yes, the November conference was terrible for local businesses, but very successful on the international diplomatic front. So much so that Chinese president Xi Jinping told an APEC dinner audience that "We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples."

And then last week, NPR reports that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told an audience in China that “preparations are ready for a giant panda return to California within the year."  

But now the fur may really fly, as KGO reports that San Francisco is on the shortlist to get that giant panda. KGO reports that Mayor London Breed has been lobbying hard for the SF Zoo as the panda’s destination, and they obtained a December 1, 2023 letter from Breed to Xi saying that she hoped to "grow our friendship to greatly benefit our youth and to continue our joint efforts on panda conservation."

Per the KGO video report above, the panda-lending arrangement would be “a partnership with the San Francisco Zoo.” That outlet also reports Breed personally requested the panda from Xi on the tarmac when he left SFO. The San Diego Zoo is also reportedly being considered as a panda destination.

Breed’s office denies none of this. “Seizing every opportunity to make San Francisco shine has always been one of Mayor Breed's top priorities,” her office said in a statement to KGO.  “The Mayor began speaking to the Chinese government to advocate for this valuable opportunity for months prior to APEC. She also utilized every interaction with representatives from the Chinese government during APEC to discuss the matter further, leading to her direct ask to President Xi Jinping as she was bidding him farewell on the SFO tarmac."

Of course, it was right before APEC when China pulled its pandas back from the Washington National Zoo. Relations have not been good between the U.S. and China in recent years — between Trump and that spy balloon situation — leading to China similarly reclaiming its pandas from the San Diego Zoo (2019) the Memphis Zoo (2023). The only current remaining pandas in the U.S are at the Atlanta Zoo, and those pandas are contractually bound to be returned to China later this year.

The San Francisco Zoo last saw a brief visit by a pair of pandas, Yun Yun and Ying Xin, for three months in 1984 — the bears made a stop here after being brought for a visit to Los Angeles to coincide with the Olympics that year. As the SF Standard notes, the previous time SF had seen a live panda was in 1936, when socialite Ruth Harkness and her husband apparently kidnapped a three-month-old cub on the Tibet-Sichuan border and brought it back here.

Related: Local Panda Porn Receives Mixed Reviews [SFist]

Image: Sid Balachandran via Unsplash

California Governor Gavin Newsom had a surprise meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday, and was reportedly greeted warmly after meeting with several other senior Chinese officials.

Newsom is playing diplomat in China this week, ostensibly to talk about climate change and subnational cooperation between California and China on climate issues. And as the Associated Press reports, Newsom was unexpectedly given an audience with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom he discussed climate issues as well as China's exports of fentanyl to the U.S.

The 45-minute meeting took place in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, and as the Chronicle reports, American reporters were barred from covering the meeting — though Newsom addressed reporters afterward. He called the fentanyl discussion "remarkably positive."

"We talked about precursor chemicals, we talked about the importance of the issue and how it’s become a leading cause of death in the United States," Newsom said.

"The president was rather explicit about the desire to be even more specific in terms of what is needed, in terms of calling out and identifying where these chemicals are going," Newsom added, according to Politico.

Newsom said he had specifically brought up the impact fentanyl has had in his hometown of San Francisco, and reportedly Xi spoke fondly of visiting San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Chinese officials have not confirmed whether Xi himself will attend the APEC summit here in three weeks, but Newsom reportedly encouraged him to attend. The Biden administration is hopeful that Xi and President Biden will have a chance to meet in San Francisco as well.

Xi said in a statement to Newsom, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV, "I hope your visit will enhance mutual understanding between the two sides and play a positive role in expanding cooperation between China and California and promoting the healthy and stable development of Sino-U.S. relations.”

The AP has a number of these similar statements from Chinese officials regarding Newsom's visit.

Vice President Han Zheng reportedly greeted Newsom with a "wide smile," calling him "old friend."

"The China-U.S. relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world, and the sub-national cooperation is an indispensable part to facilitate the sound and steady growth of China-U.S. relations," Han reportedly told Newsom. “I’m sure your weeklong trip will inject positive energy to the development of the China-U.S. relationship.”

Politico notes that Newsom's welcome by Chinese officials is "the latest sign of thawing U.S-China relations amid rising geopolitical conflicts."

Per the Chronicle, Newsom said that his "biggest fear" is that the US and China become "isolated from each other."

When asked whether he discussed human rights issues with Xi, Newsom said he did not, however he did discuss human rights with Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a separate meeting. And Newsom said he brought up the wrongful imprisonment of California resident David Lin, who the United States government says is wrongfully imprisoned in China.

Lin, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, has been jailed in China since 2006 following an arrest over illegal religious propaganda. China has said that Lin's sentence has been reduced, and that he will be freed in 2030.

Newsom, who is the third governor of California to visit China in recent decades, began his trip Monday in Hong Kong. He is also scheduled to visit Shenzhen, Shanghai, and the provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu.

Previously: Gavin Newsom Kicks Off Weeklong Trip In China, Where He's Discussing Climate Change

Photo via the Governor's Office

Continuing to act presidential without actually running for the job, Governor Gavin Newsom is in China this week, discussing the state's partnership with the country on climate initiatives.

Newsom's schedule includes visits to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, and the provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu. And as the Associated Press reports, "He’ll visit the first Chinese city to deploy an all-electric bus fleet, tour an offshore wind facility and see a wetlands preserve," and, "He’ll sign agreements with leaders of Chinese provinces to set mutual commitments on a host of climate goals."

On his first stop in Hong Kong Monday, Newsom and Professor Peng Gong of the University of Hong Kong announced the launch of a new climate conference hosted by the university, set to kick off next year. As Peng said, per the South China Morning Post, the China-California Bay-to-Bay climate forum will "facilitate policy and research exchange between California’s San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Bay Area of China."

Newsom isn't the first California governor to forge relations with China regarding climate issues. Both his predecessors, Governor Jerry Brown and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, made similar trips to the country. However, as the AP notes, Newsom's trip comes at a much more fraught moment, "with rising tensions between the United States and China over trade, human rights, the future of Taiwan and international conflicts."

Newsom's trip is also happening just two weeks before Chinese leaders will head to San Francisco for the big APEC summit.

As Forbes notes, China has had natural connections with California, being directly across the Pacific Ocean, and 32% of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. reside in California.

Newsom is also expected to visit a Tesla factory in China, and will be discussing how to combat xenophobia in the U.S.

David Victor, a professor and co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, tells the AP that state-level negotiations and discussions like this are a great avenue for climate progress with China. "The states really are where anything substantive is going to happen,” Victor tells the AP. He adds that "there’s no political constituency for opening the door and having a deeper relationship" with China at the national level.

Newsom just returned from a brief trip to Israel, where he met with victims of the attacks by Hamas — including a California woman who was shot multiple times. As the Chronicle reports, Newsom said he was shown a video in which a person was beheaded by militants with a backhoe.

And he said he was hoping his administration could "help backchannel" an arrangement for the release of a hostage with Bay Area ties, Berkeley-born Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Goldberg-Polin, 23, was among the young people who attended a music festival in southern Israel that was raided by Hamas, and he was kidnapped. His parents later learned that his arm had been blown by a grenade from the elbow down.

"They don’t know if their son is alive," Newsom said of the young man's parents.

Related: Berkeley Native Believed to Be Among Hostages of Hamas Invasion, His Arm Reportedly Blown Off

Top image: California Gov. Gavin Newsom talks to reporters in the spin room following the FOX Business Republican Primary Debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on September 27, 2023 in Simi Valley, California. Seven presidential hopefuls squared off in the second Republican primary debate as former U.S. President Donald Trump, currently facing indictments in four locations, declined again to participate. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

There’s a problem with The Problem With Jon Stewart, which won’t be returning for a third season because of its handling of controversial topics, and there's industry speculation that Apple doesn’t want Stewart angering the Chinese market.

Some big shakeup news in the streaming TV industry, as the New York Times broke the news that Jon Stewart’s AppleTV+ show The Problem With Jon Stewart is ending, just as production was to start on its third season. That report notes that “Mr. Stewart and Apple executives decided to part ways,” which makes it sound mutual, and uses the old tried-and-true explanation of “creative differences.”

The news has not been confirmed by Apple or Stewart’s camp, but the Times cites “several people with knowledge of the decision.” And those sources said that Apple executives were not pleased with Stewart’s approach to covering AI and China in the upcoming season, leading to friction between the TV star and the corporate suits.

Several other publications have also picked up the news, none really with any official confirmation or additional detailed information. But CNN’s report makes an excellent point — that China is a major market for Apple, and Apple may be determined to not run a segment critical of China on one of its platforms.

Per CNN’s numbers, the Chinese market now accounts for  “nearly a fifth of Apple’s sales” globally. But the Chinese economy is lagging right now, and CNN also cites its own report that iPhone 15 sales in China are sluggish compared to iPhone 14 sales at the same point last year. The smartphone competition is fiercer in China with more brands, and Apple is keen to not lose market share.

But if you don’t want acerbic takedowns of the rich and powerful, why did you hire Jon Stewart?

People may forget that Jon Stewart did not start his old powerhouse Comedy Central series, The Daily Show. Some guy named Craig Kilborn hosted the show from 1996 to 1998. But Stewart took over in 1999, and made the show the trailblazer that it was until 2015, when Trevor Noah took the anchor’s seat. So there was a pretty large body of work to know how Stewart would approach a show he hosted.

It’s unclear what will happen with the companion The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast, which is also hosted on an Apple platform.

Related: London Breed Talks Homelessness, Conservatorship and SF's 'Complicated Soup of Problems' on Jon Stewart's Podcast [SFist]

Image: AppleTV+