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Good morning, happy Friday and welcome to FirstFT Asia. In today’s newsletter:
DeepSeek’s delay
Surprising research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors
Zelenskyy’s darkest hour
The Pacific nation making sporting history
We start with a setback at DeepSeek, as the Chinese artificial intelligence company delayed the release of its new model after failing to train it using Huawei’s chips.
What happened: DeepSeek was encouraged by authorities to adopt Huawei’s Ascend processor rather than use Nvidia’s systems after releasing its R1 model in January, according to three people familiar with the matter. But the Chinese start-up encountered persistent technical issues during its R2 training process using Ascend chips, which were the main reason the model’s launch was delayed from May.
Why it matters: DeepSeek’s difficulties show how Chinese chips still lag behind their US rivals for critical tasks, highlighting the challenges facing China’s drive to be technologically self-sufficient. This week, Beijing ordered its tech giants to justify their orders of Nvidia chips on national security concerns. But industry insiders have said the Chinese chips suffer from stability issues, slower inter-chip connectivity and inferior software compared with Nvidia’s products. Read more about DeepSeek’s stumble.
Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:
Economic data: Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong report second-quarter GDP figures. China publishes July industrial output, retail sales and the house price index.
Trump-Putin summit: The US and Russian leaders meet in Alaska for high-stakes talks on the war in Ukraine.
India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi gives a speech at the Red Fort in Delhi to mark Indian Independence Day.
Singapore: Prime Minister Lawrence Wong delivers the National Day Rally speech on Sunday.
How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.
Five more top stories
1. Cancers caused by radiation from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago have killed or will kill under 1 per cent of those who initially survived the explosions and radiation exposure, according to a new study. The research suggests high doses of radiation, while dangerous, pose a lower cancer risk than often assumed.
2. US wholesale prices jumped in July, rising 3.3 per cent from a year earlier, in the latest signal that Trump’s trade war is hitting the American economy. “Tariffs are causing businesses to raise the prices they charge each other, which will show up in higher consumer prices over time,” said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. Read the full story.
3. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway resumed selling shares of Apple in the second quarter, dumping a stake worth more than $4bn after pausing his dispositions of the iPhone maker for nearly a year. The conglomerate has reduced its exposure to publicly traded equities over the past three years.
4. US shale producers are idling drilling rigs and holding back spending as they shelter from an Opec-induced price slump that is likely to send American output sharply lower. While Trump has called for the US to pump more crude, one shale executive told the FT: “What the administration doesn’t quite understand is that we’ve gone from drill, baby, drill to wait, baby, wait.”
5. Four Boston Consulting Group staff quit the team advising on a new aid system for Gaza in the early stages of the work, raising concerns about the project months before it spiralled into a reputational crisis for the firm. Here’s what we know about the departures.
The Big Read
Diminished at home by a political crisis, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is trying to shape this week’s Alaska summit between Trump and Putin. Confined outside the room where his country’s fate will be decided while losses on the frontline pile up, he faces his darkest hour yet.
We’re also reading . . .
AI relationships: Companies such as OpenAI are running what amounts to a giant social experiment, writes Richard Waters.
Japan’s new realpolitik: At a Tokyo defence show, the shocking reality of preparing for possible future wars was unmissable, writes Leo Lewis.
What trade war? Gregory Meyer reports from Cincinnati, where experts’ dire warnings about the consequences of Trump’s tariffs have so far failed to materialise.
Map of the day
The Marshall Islands, a remote nation in the Pacific with fewer than 40,000 inhabitants, is the “only country on earth” to have never played an international football match. That changes today when the national team plays the US Virgin Islands on a high school pitch in Arkansas.
Take a break from the news . . .
As birth rates plummet, Italians are channelling more of their emotional energy — and cash — to pets. The FT’s Rome correspondent Amy Kazmin tells how dogs replaced children in Italy.
