Author name: Rejus Almole

“it’s-shocking”:-massive-raw-milk-outbreak-from-2023-finally-reported

“It’s shocking”: Massive raw milk outbreak from 2023 finally reported

California, CDC, Features, health, infections, outbreak, raw milk / /

The outbreak occurred in 2023–2024, but little information had been shared about it.

On October 20, 2023, health officials in the County of San Diego, California, put out a press release warning of a Salmonella outbreak linked to raw (unpasteurized) milk. Such an outbreak is not particularly surprising; the reason the vast majority of milk is pasteurized (heated briefly to kill germs) is because milk can easily pick up nasty pathogens in the farmyard that can cause severe illnesses, particularly in children. It’s the reason public health officials have long and strongly warned against consuming raw milk.

At the time of the press release, officials in San Diego County had identified nine residents who had been sickened in the outbreak. Of those nine, three were children, and all three children had been hospitalized.

On October 25, the county put out a second press release, reporting that the local case count had risen to 12, and the suspected culprit—raw milk and raw cream from Raw Farm LLC—had been recalled. The same day, Orange County’s health department put out its own press release, reporting seven cases among its residents, including one in a 1-year-old infant.

Both counties noted that the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), which had posted the recall notice, was working on the outbreak, too. But it doesn’t appear that CDPH ever followed up with its own press release about the outbreak. The CDPH did write social media posts related to the outbreak: One on October 26, 2023, announced the recall; a second on November 30, 2023, noted “a recent outbreak” of Salmonella cases from raw milk but linked to general information about the risks of raw milk; and a third on December 7, 2023, linked to general information again with no mention of the outbreak.

But that seems to be the extent of the information at the time. For anyone paying attention, it might have seemed like the end of the story. But according to the final outbreak investigation report—produced by CDPH and local health officials—the outbreak actually ran from September 2023 to March 2024, spanned five states, and sickened at least 171 people. That report was released last week, on July 24, 2025.

Shocking outbreak

The report was published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report describes the outbreak as “one of the largest foodborne outbreaks linked to raw milk in recent US history.” It also said that the state and local health department had issued “extensive public messaging regarding this outbreak.”

According to the final data, of the 171 people, 120 (70 percent) were children and teens, including 67 (39 percent) who were under the age of 5. At least 22 people were hospitalized, nearly all of them (82 percent) were children and teens. Fortunately, there were no deaths.

“I was just candidly shocked that there was an outbreak of 170 plus people because it had not been reported—at all,” Bill Marler, a personal injury lawyer specializing in food poisoning outbreaks, told Ars Technica in an interview. With the large number of cases, the high percentage of kids, and cases in multiple states, “it’s shocking that they never publicized it,” he said. “I mean, what’s the point?”

Ars Technica reached out to CDPH seeking answers about why there wasn’t more messaging and information about the outbreak during and soon after the investigation. At the time this story was published, several business days had passed and the department had told Ars in a follow-up email that it was still working on a response. Shortly after publication, CDPH provided a written statement, but it did not answer any specific questions, including why CDPH did not release its own press release about the state-wide outbreak or make case counts public during the investigation.

“CDPH takes its charge to protect public health seriously and works closely with all partners when a foodborne illness outbreak is identified,” the statement reads. It then referenced only the social media posts and the press releases from San Diego County and Orange County mentioned previously in this story as examples of its public messaging.

“This is pissing me off”

Marler, who represents around two dozen of the 171 people sickened in the outbreak, was one of the first people to get the full picture of the outbreak from California officials. In July of 2024, he obtained an interim report of the investigation from state health officials. At that point, they had documented at least 165 of the cases. And in December 2024, he got access to a preliminary report of the full investigation dated October 15, 2024, which identified the final 171 cases and appears to contain much of the data published in the MMWR, which has had its publication rate slowed amid the second Trump administration.

Getting that information from California officials was not easy, Marler told Ars. “There was one point in time where they wouldn’t give it to me. And I sent them a copy of a subpoena and I said, ‘you know, I’ve been working with public health for 32 years. I’m a big supporter of public health. I believe in your mission, but,’ I said, ‘this is pissing me off.'”

At that point, Marler knew that it was a multi-county outbreak and the CDPH and the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture were involved. He knew there was data. But it took threatening a subpoena to get it. “I’m like ‘OK, you don’t give it to me. I’m going to freaking drop a subpoena on you, and the court’s going to force you to give it.’ And they’re like, ‘OK, we’ll give it to you.'”

The October 15 state report he finally got a hold of provides a breakdown of the California cases. It reports that San Diego had a total of 25 cases (not just the 12 initially reported in the press releases), and Orange County had 19 (not just the seven). Most of the other 171 cases were spread widely across California, spanning 35 local health departments. Only four of the 171 cases were outside of California—one each in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. It’s unclear how people in these states were exposed, given that it’s against federal law to sell raw milk for human consumption across state lines. But two of the four people sickened outside of California specifically reported that they consumed dairy from Raw Farm without going to California.

Of the 171 cases, 159 were confirmed cases, which were defined as being confirmed using whole genome sequencing that linked the Salmonella strain causing a person’s infection to the outbreak strain also found in raw milk samples and a raw milk cheese sample from Raw Farm. The remaining 12 probable cases were people who had laboratory-confirmed Salmonella infections and also reported consuming Raw Farm products within seven days prior to falling ill.

“We own it”

In an interview with Ars Technica, the owner and founder of Raw Farm, Mark McAfee, disputed much of the information in the MMWR study and the October 2024 state report. He claimed that there were not 171 cases—only 19 people got sick, he said, presumably referring to the 19 cases collectively reported in the San Diego and Orange County press releases in October 2023.

“We own it. It’s ours. We’ve got these 19 people,” he told Ars.

But he said he did not believe that the genomic data was accurate and that the other 140 cases confirmed with genetic sequencing were not truly connected to his farm’s products. He also doubted that the outbreak spanned many months and into early 2024. McAfee says that a single cow that had been purchased close to the start of the outbreak had been the source of the Salmonella. Once that animal had been removed from the herd by the end of October 23, subsequent testing was negative. He also outright did not accept that testing identified the Salmonella outbreak strain in the farm’s raw cheese, which was reported in the MMWR and the state report.

Overall, McAfee downplayed the outbreak and claimed that raw milk has significant health benefits, such as being a cure for asthma—a common myth among raw milk advocates that has been debunked. He rejects the substantial number of scientific studies that have refuted the variety of unproven health claims made by raw-milk advocates. (You can read a thorough run-down of raw milk myths and the data refuting them in this post by the Food and Drug Administration.) McAfee claims that he and his company are “pioneers” and that public health experts who warn of the demonstrable health risks are simply stuck in the past.

Outbreak record

McAfee is a relatively high-profile raw milk advocate in California. For example, health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly a customer. Amid an outbreak of H5N1 on his farm last year, McAfee sent Ars press material claiming that McAfee “has been asked by the RFK transition team to apply for the position of ‘FDA advisor on Raw Milk Policy and Standards Development.'” But McAfee’s opinion of Kennedy has soured since then. In an interview with Ars last week, he said Kennedy “doesn’t have the guts” to loosen federal regulations on raw milk.

On his blog, Marler has a running tally of at least 11 outbreaks linked to the farm’s products.

In this outbreak, illnesses were caused by Salmonella Typhimurium, which generally causes diarrhea, fever, vomiting, and abdominal pain. In some severe cases, the infection can spread outside the gastrointestinal tract and into the blood, brain, bones, and joints, according to the CDC.

Marler noted that, for kids, infections can be severe. “Some of these kids who got sick were hospitalized for extended periods of time,” he said of the some of the cases he is representing in litigation. And those hospitalizations can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, he said. “It’s not just tummy aches.”

This post has been updated to include the response from CDPH.

Photo of Beth Mole

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

“It’s shocking”: Massive raw milk outbreak from 2023 finally reported Read More »

fermented-meat-with-a-side-of-maggots:-a-new-look-at-the-neanderthal-diet

Fermented meat with a side of maggots: A new look at the Neanderthal diet

anthropology, Neanderthals, Science, syndication / /

Traditionally, Indigenous peoples almost universally viewed thoroughly putrefied, maggot-infested animal foods as highly desirable fare, not starvation rations. In fact, many such peoples routinely and often intentionally allowed animal foods to decompose to the point where they were crawling with maggots, in some cases even beginning to liquefy.

This rotting food would inevitably emit a stench so overpowering that early European explorers, fur trappers, and missionaries were sickened by it. Yet Indigenous peoples viewed such foods as good to eat, even a delicacy. When asked how they could tolerate the nauseating stench, they simply responded, “We don’t eat the smell.”

Neanderthals’ cultural practices, similar to those of Indigenous peoples, might be the answer to the mystery of their high δ¹⁵N values. Ancient hominins were butchering, storing, preserving, cooking, and cultivating a variety of items. All these practices enriched their paleo menu with foods in forms that nonhominin carnivores do not consume. Research shows that δ¹⁵N values are higher for cooked foods, putrid muscle tissue from terrestrial and aquatic species, and, with our study, for fly larvae feeding on decaying tissue.

The high δ¹⁵N values of maggots associated with putrid animal foods help explain how Neanderthals could have included plenty of other nutritious foods beyond only meat while still registering δ¹⁵N values we’re used to seeing in hypercarnivores.

We suspect the high δ¹⁵N values seen in Neanderthals reflect routine consumption of fatty animal tissues and fermented stomach contents, much of it in a semi-putrid or putrid state, together with the inevitable bonus of both living and dead ¹⁵N-enriched maggots.

What still isn’t known

Fly larvae are a fat-rich, nutrient-dense, ubiquitous, and easily procured insect resource, and both Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, much like recent foragers, would have benefited from taking full advantage of them. But we cannot say that maggots alone explain why Neanderthals have such high δ¹⁵N values in their remains.

Several questions about this ancient diet remain unanswered. How many maggots would someone need to consume to account for an increase in δ¹⁵N values above the expected values due to meat eating alone? How do the nutritional benefits of consuming maggots change the longer a food item is stored? More experimental studies on changes in δ¹⁵N values of foods processed, stored, and cooked following Indigenous traditional practices can help us better understand the dietary practices of our ancient relatives.

Melanie Beasley is assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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inventor-claims-bleach-injections-will-destroy-cancer-tumors

Inventor claims bleach injections will destroy cancer tumors

bleach, health, quackery, syndication / /

A lack of medical training isn’t stopping a man from charging $20,000 for the treatment.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Xuewu Liu, a Chinese inventor who has no medical training or credentials of any kind, is charging cancer patients $20,000 for access to an AI-driven but entirely unproven treatment that includes injecting a highly concentrated dose of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleach solution, directly into cancerous tumors.

One patient tells WIRED her tumor has grown faster since the procedure and that she suspects it may have caused her cancer to spread—a claim Liu disputes—while experts allege his marketing of the treatment has likely put him on the wrong side of US regulations. Nonetheless, while Liu currently only offers the treatment informally in China and at a German clinic, he is now working with a Texas-based former pharmaceutical executive to bring his treatment to America. They believe that the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as US health secretary will help “open doors” to get the untested treatment—in which at least one clinic in California appears to have interest—approved in the US.

Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement is embracing alternative medicines and the idea of giving patients the freedom to try unproven treatments. While the health secretary did not respond to a request for comment about Liu’s treatment, he did mention chlorine dioxide when questioned about President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed during his Senate confirmation hearing in February, and the Food and Drug Administration recently removed a warning about the substance from its website. The agency says the removal was part of a routine process of archiving old pages on its site, but it has had the effect of emboldening the bleacher community.

“Without the FDA’s heavy-handed warnings, it’s likely my therapy would have been accepted for trials years earlier, with institutional partnerships and investor support,” Liu tells WIRED. He says he wrote to Kennedy earlier this year urging him to conduct more research on chlorine dioxide. “This quiet removal won’t immediately change everything, but it opens a door. If mainstream media reports on this shift, I believe it will unlock a new wave of serious [chlorine dioxide] research.”

For decades, pseudoscience grifters have peddled chlorine dioxide solutions—sold under a variety of names, such as Miracle Mineral Solution—and despite warnings and prosecutions have continued to claim the toxic substance is a “cure” for everything from HIV to COVID-19 to autism. There is no credible evidence to back up any of these claims, which critics have long labeled as nothing more than a grift.

The treatments typically involve drinking liquid chlorine dioxide on a regular basis, using solutions with concentrations of chlorine dioxide of around 3,000 parts per million (ppm), which is diluted further in water.

Liu’s treatment, however, involves a much higher concentration of chlorine dioxide—injections of several millilitres of 20,000 ppm—and, rather than drinking it, patients have it injected directly into their tumors.

I injected myself to test it

Liu claims he has injected himself with the solution more than 50 times and suffered no side effects. “This personal data point encouraged me to continue research,” he says.

Liu has been making the solution in his rented apartment in Beijing by mixing citric acid with sodium chlorite, according to an account he shared earlier this month on his Substack that revealed that a “violent explosion” occurred when he made a mistake.

“The blast blacked out my vision,” Liu wrote. “Dense clouds of chlorine dioxide burst into my face, filling my eyes, nose, and mouth. I stumbled back into the apartment, rushing to the bathroom to wash out the gas from my eyes and respiratory tract. My lungs were burning. Later, I would find 4–5 cuts on my upper thigh—shards of glass had pierced through my pants.” Liu also revealed that his 3-year-old daughter was nearby when the explosion happened.

Liu began a preclinical study on animals in 2016, before beginning to use the highly concentrated solution to treat human patients in more recent years. He claims that between China and Germany, he has treated 20 patients to date.

When asked for evidence to back up his claims of efficacy, Liu shared links to a number of preprints, which have not been peer-reviewed, with WIRED. He also shared a pitch deck for a $5 million seed round in a US-focused startup that would provide the chlorine dioxide injections.

The presentation contains a number of “case studies” of patients he has treated—including a dog—but rather than featuring detailed scientific data, the deck contains disturbing images of the patients’ tumors. The deck also contains, as evidence of the treatment’s efficacy, a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation with a patient who was apparently treating a liver tumor with chlorine dioxide.

“Screenshots of WhatsApp chats with patients or their doctors is not evidence of efficacy, yet that is the only evidence he provides,” says Alex Morozov, an oncologist who has overseen hundreds of drug trials at multiple companies including Pfizer. “Needless to say, until appropriate studies are done and published in peer-reviewed journals, or presented at a reputable conference, no patients should be treated except in the context of clinical trials.”

WIRED spoke to a patient of Liu’s, whose descriptions of the treatment appear to undermine his claims of efficacy and raise serious questions about its safety.

“I bought the needles online and made the chlorine dioxide by myself [then] I injected it into the tumor and lymph nodes by myself,” says the patient, a Chinese national living in the UK. WIRED granted her anonymity to protect her privacy.

The patient had previously been taking oral solutions of chlorine dioxide as an alternative treatment for cancer, but, unsatisfied with the results, she contacted Liu via WhatsApp. On a spring evening last year, she took her first injection of chlorine dioxide and, she says, almost immediately suffered negative side effects.

“It was fine after the injection, but I was woken up by severe pain [like] I had never experienced in my life,” she says. “The pain lasted for three to four days.”

Despite the pain, she says, she injected herself again two months later, and a month after that she traveled to China, where Liu, despite having no medical training, injected her, using an anesthetic cream to numb the skin.

“While this act technically fell outside legal boundaries, in China, if the patient is competent and gives informed consent, such compassionate-use interventions rarely attract regulatory attention unless harm is done,” Liu tells WIRED.

Legal in China?

Experts on Chinese medical regulations tell WIRED that new treatments like Liu’s would have to meet strict conditions before they can be administered to patients. “It would have to go through the same steps in China as it does in the US, so that will involve clinical studies, getting ethics approval at the hospitals, and then the situation would have to be reviewed by the Chinese government,” Ames Gross, founder and president of Pacific Bridge Capital, tells WIRED. “I don’t think any of it sounds very legal.” The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which handles all international press inquiries, did not respond to a request for comment.

As well as the initial pain, the chlorine dioxide injections also appear, the patient says, to have made the cancer worse.

“The tumor shrinks first, then it grows faster than before,” she says, adding: “My tumor has spread to the skin after injection. I suspect it is because the chlorine dioxide has broken the vein and the cancer cells go to the skin area.”

Liu did not agree with this assessment, instead blaming the fact that the patient had not completed the full course of four injections within a month, as he typically prescribes.

The patient says that thanks to a WeChat group that Liu set up, she is also in contact with other people who have had chlorine dioxide injections. One of the women, who is based in Shenzhen, China, had at least one injection of chlorine dioxide to treat what was described as vaginal cancer, but she says she is also suffering complications, according to screenshots of conversations reviewed by WIRED.

“After the injection, there was swelling and difficulty urinating,” the Chinese woman wrote. “It was very uncomfortable.”

Despite having injected a patient in China last August, Liu tells WIRED, he is not a licensed physician—he calls himself “an independent inventor and medical researcher.” The treatment, which he says is “designed to be administered by licensed physicians in clinical settings,” is so painful that it needs to be given under general anesthetic.

While Liu’s website says the treatment is being offered at clinics in Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines, he tells WIRED that the treatment is currently only being offered at the CMC Rheinfelden clinic on the German-Swiss border. Liu features Dr. Wolfgang Renz from the clinic on his own website as one of his partners; the clinic itself does not advertise the treatment on its own website.

In conversations on WhatsApp shared with WIRED, a representative of the clinic named Lena told a prospective patient that it didn’t advertise the chlorine dioxide procedure because it was “not a legal treatment.” Lena later wrote that chlorine dioxide was not referenced on an invoice the clinic sent the same prospective patient because it is “not a legal treatment.” Lena also told the prospective patient that they had treated patients from France, Italy, and the US, according to a recording of a phone call shared with WIRED. One Italian woman is currently trying to raise money to fund her treatment in the German clinic on GoFundMe.

When asked about her comments, Lena told WIRED, “Either [the patient] misquoted me or my English was not very accurate. I repeatedly told [the patient] that it is not an approved therapy and therefore requires very detailed consent and special circumstances to be eligible for this treatment.” The prospective patient was told that she would need to bring documents detailing her prior treatment.

Renz did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Lena also says that patients who have exhausted every other possible treatment have “the right to be treated with non-approved interventions under strict ethical conditions, full medical supervision, and informed patient consent.” The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, which regulates medical products in Germany, did not respond to a request for comment, but Liu tells WIRED that German authorities are investigating a complaint about the clinic.

Expanding across the Pacific

Liu now appears laser-focused on making his treatment available in the US. Despite the lack of clinical data to back up his claims, Liu claims to have signed up over 100 US patients to take part in a proposed clinical research program. Liu shared a screenshot with WIRED including what appeared to be patients’ full names, zip codes, and the type of cancer they are suffering from. It’s unclear if any of the patients had agreed to have their information shared with a journalist.

Liu says he has recruited most of his potential patients via his own website. “Are You a U.S. Cancer Patient? Join the National Campaign to legalize a breakthrough therapy,” a popup that sometimes appears on Liu’s website reads, urging visitors to fill out a patient advocacy application to potentially become part of a clinical trial.

One of those who signed up is Sarah Jones, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 anal cancer that has metastasized to the lymph nodes. Jones, whose identity WIRED is protecting with a pseudonym, has already been treated with chemotherapy and drugs like cisplatin and paclitaxel. The chemotherapy originally caused the tumor to shrink, but it has since returned, and Jones is now seeking alternative treatments.

“I spend my days treating this disease like a job. Red light therapy, guided meditations, exercising, eating a keto-strong diet, and researching,” Jones tells WIRED. “This is how I stumbled upon Liu and his intratumoral injections.”

Despite signing up for a potential trial, Jones understands the risks but feels as if she is running out of choices. “I am extremely concerned that there are but a handful of patients and no data to speak of for this procedure,” Jones says. “I am debating all of my options and am constantly looking for anything that can help.”

This sentiment was echoed by Kevin, whose father has neck cancer and who also signed up as a potential patient for the trial. “If you’re in any cancer patient’s shoes, if you’re out of options, what else do you have to do? You either keep trying new therapies, or you die.”

Another US-based patient with untreated colon cancer who signed up on Liu’s website was informed that they should consider traveling to Germany for treatment, according to a screenshot of an email response from Liu, shared with WIRED. The email outlined that the cost would be €5,000 per injection, adding that “typically 4 injections [are] recommended.”

When the conversation moved to WhatsApp, Liu asked the patient what size the tumor was. The patient, who was granted anonymity to protect their privacy, told Liu the tumor was 3.8 centimeters, according to a screenshot of the WhatsApp conversation reviewed by WIRED.

Liu responded with inaccurate details and information that the patient did not share. Liu also referred to a rectal tumor rather than a colon tumor.

When the patient said they didn’t have the money to travel to Europe for the treatment and asked about getting it in the US, referencing the Williams Cancer Institute in Beverly Hills, California, Liu suggested contacting the clinic directly.

The clinic has indicated its interest in Liu’s unproven procedure by writing about Liu’s chlorine dioxide injection protocol on its own website and mentioned it on a post on its Facebook page. Liu tells WIRED that he has spoken to Jason Williams, director of the clinic. “He is very interested and is a pioneer in the field of intratumoral injections,” Liu says. “His clinic is fully capable of implementing my therapy.”

Neither Williams nor his colleague Nathan Goodyear, who Liu also says he spoke to, responded to repeated emails and phone calls seeking comment.

Liu also gave WIRED the names of a radiologist in California, an anesthesiologist in Seattle, and a physician in Missouri who he claims to have spoken to about providing his treatment in the US, but none of them responded to requests for comment.

The Chinese inventor did, however, appear on a livestream with two US-based doctors, Curtis Anderson, a Florida-based physician, and Mark Rosenberg, who works at the Institute for Healthy Aging. The discussion, hosted on Liu’s YouTube channel, saw the two doctors ask about which cancers to treat with the injections, how to buy chlorine dioxide, or even whether it’s possible to make it themselves.

Rosenberg and Anderson did not respond to requests for comment.

Maybe RFK Jr. will dig it?

Conducting a clinical trial of a new drug in the US requires approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Liu initially claimed to WIRED that “according to Article 37 of the Declaration of Helsinki and the US Right to Try laws, my therapy is already legally permissible in the United States.” Legal experts WIRED spoke to disagree strongly with Liu’s assertions.

“It sounds like Mr. Liu may not understand how the Right to Try Act or the Declaration of Helsinki work or how they fit within the broader context in which the FDA regulates investigational drugs,” Clint Hermes, an attorney with Bass, Berry & Sims, with extensive expertise in biomedical research, tells WIRED. “If he is under the impression that the ‘breast cancer trial’ referenced on his website is sufficient on its own to allow him to market or study his therapy in the US under right to try and/or the Declaration of Helsinki, he is mistaken.”

Even advertising the efficacy of an unproven treatment could land Liu in trouble, according to the American Health Law Association (AHLA).

“Companies cannot make claims regarding safety or efficacy until their products have been approved for marketing by the FDA,” Mary Kohler, a member of the AHLA’s Life Science leadership team, tells WIRED. “From a quick glance at the website, I see several claims that FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) would likely consider violative as pre-approval promotion even if this company were in trials that FDA was overseeing.”

The FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.

When asked about these issues, Liu clarified that he was planning to initially conduct a 100-person “clinical research program” that would not require FDA approval, but Liu’s treatment doesn’t appear to meet any of the most common exemptions that would allow such a trial to take place, according to the FDA’s own website.

Liu also says he is working with “patient advocates” and leveraging their local connections to lobby state lawmakers in “liberty-leaning states” to allow the experimental treatment to be administered. This would appear to circumvent federal rules. Liu says that he has yet to make contact with such a lawmaker directly.

While he has no approval from US government agencies or support of a state or national lawmaker, Liu does have the full backing of Scott Hagerman, an entrepreneur and former executive with 30 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including a decade working at Pfizer.

“It’s an unbelievable breakthrough,” Hagerman tells WIRED, adding that he and his wife have been using oral chlorine dioxide solution “for some time” as a preventative measure rather than to treat a specific ailment.

Hagerman’s time in the pharmaceutical industry included over a decade running a company called Chemi Nutra, which has in the past received a US patent for a soy-based supplement that addresses testosterone decline in men. He also says he oversaw teams of scientists who worked on drug applications to the FDA for oncology drugs.

Hagerman retired from Chemi Nutra in 2021, and in the intervening years his comments indicate that he appears to have become entirely disillusioned with the modern pharmaceutical industry, referring to it as a “drugs cartel” and “a corrupt entity that is only profit-driven.” One of the issues Hagerman references is the COVID-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology, which he describes as a “con job” while also boosting the debunked theory that childhood vaccines are linked to increasing levels of autism reported in the population.

As a result, he sees Liu’s lack of experience as a positive.

“I would welcome the fact that he’s not a doctor, that he’s not an MD, because he’s not clouded, jaded, and biased with all kinds of misguidance that would push them the wrong way,” Hagerman says, adding, “I’d like to help him establish some network here in the US, because obviously the US is where the action is.” Hagerman says he is “100 percent sure” that there would be investors willing to fund the development of this treatment.

When asked about a timeline to have this procedure legally available in the US, Hagerman said he hopes it could be achieved before the end of 2025. Liu, however, thinks it could take slightly longer, saying that he believes clinical trials will begin in 2026.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Photo of WIRED

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

Inventor claims bleach injections will destroy cancer tumors Read More »

this-aerogel-and-some-sun-could-make-saltwater-drinkable

This aerogel and some sun could make saltwater drinkable

aerogel, chemistry, desalina, desalination, materials science, Science, solar power / /

Earth is about 71 percent water. An overwhelming 97 percent of that water is found in the oceans, leaving us with only 3 percent in the form of freshwater—and much of that is frozen in the form of glaciers. That leaves just 0.3 percent of that freshwater on the surface in lakes, swamps, springs, and our main sources of drinking water, rivers and streams.

Despite our planet’s famously blue appearance from space, thirsty aliens would be disappointed. Drinkable water is actually pretty scarce.

As if that doesn’t already sound unsettling, what little water we have is also threatened by climate change, urbanization, pollution, and a global population that continues to expand. Over 2 billion people live in regions where their only source of drinking water is contaminated. Pathogenic microbes in the water can cause cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, polio, and typhoid, which could be fatal in areas without access to vaccines or medical treatment.

Desalination of seawater is a possible solution, and one approach involves porous materials absorbing water that evaporates when heated by solar energy. The problem with most existing solar-powered evaporators is that they are difficult to scale up for larger populations. Performance decreases with size, because less water vapor can escape from materials with tiny pores and thick boundaries—but there is a way to overcome this.

Feeling salty

Researcher Xi Shen of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University wanted to figure out a way to improve these types of systems. He and his team have now created an aerogel that is far more efficient at turning over fresh water than previous methods of desalination.

“The key factors determining the evaporation performance of porous evaporators include heat localization, water transport, and vapor transport,” Shen said in a study recently published in ACS Energy Letters. “Significant advancements have been made in the structural design of evaporators to realize highly efficient thermal localization and water transport.”

Solar radiation is the only energy used to evaporate the water, which is why many attempts have been made to develop what are called photothermal materials. When sunlight hits these types of materials, they absorb light and convert it into heat energy, which can be used to speed up evaporation. Photothermal materials can be made of substances including polymers, metals, alloys, ceramics, or cements. Hydrogels have been used to successfully decontaminate and desalinate water before, but they are polymers designed to retain water, which negatively affects efficiency and stability, as opposed to aerogels, which are made of polymers that hold air. This is why Shen and his team decided to create a photothermal aerogel.

This aerogel and some sun could make saltwater drinkable Read More »

openai’s-most-capable-ai-model,-gpt-5,-may-be-coming-in-august

OpenAI’s most capable AI model, GPT-5, may be coming in August

AI, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, GPT-4, GPT-5, large language models, machine learning, sam altman, simulated reasoning, SR models / /

References to “gpt-5-reasoning-alpha-2025-07-13” have already been spotted on X, with code showing “reasoning_effort: high” in the model configuration. These sightings suggest the model has entered final testing phases, with testers getting their hands on the code and security experts doing red teaming on the model to test vulnerabilities.

Unifying OpenAI’s model lineup

The new model represents OpenAI’s attempt to simplify its increasingly complex product lineup. As Altman explained in February, GPT-5 may integrate features from both the company’s conventional GPT models and its reasoning-focused o-series models into a single system.

“We’re truly excited to not just make a net new great frontier model, we’re also going to unify our two series,” OpenAI’s Head of Developer Experience Romain Huet said at a recent event. “The breakthrough of reasoning in the O-series and the breakthroughs in multi-modality in the GPT-series will be unified, and that will be GPT-5.”

According to The Information, GPT-5 is expected to be better at coding and more powerful overall, combining attributes of both traditional models and SR models such as o3.

Before GPT-5 arrives, OpenAI still plans to release its first open-weights model since GPT-2 in 2019, which means others with the proper hardware will be able to download and run the AI model on their own machines. The Verge describes this model as “similar to o3 mini” with reasoning capabilities. However, Altman announced on July 11 that the open model needs additional safety testing, saying, “We are not yet sure how long it will take us.”

OpenAI’s most capable AI model, GPT-5, may be coming in August Read More »

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Delta’s AI spying to “jack up” prices must be banned, lawmakers say

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“There is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized offers based on personal information or otherwise,” Delta said. “A variety of market forces drive the dynamic pricing model that’s been used in the global industry for decades, with new tech simply streamlining this process. Delta always complies with regulations around pricing and disclosures.”

Other companies “engaging in surveillance-based price setting” include giants like Amazon and Kroger, as well as a ride-sharing app that has been “charging a customer more when their phone battery is low.”

Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights group that endorsed the bill, condemned the practice in the press release, urging Congress to pass the law and draw “a clear line in the sand: companies can offer discounts and fair wages—but not by spying on people.”

“Surveillance-based price gouging and wage setting are exploitative practices that deepen inequality and strip consumers and workers of dignity,” Public Citizen said.

AI pricing will cause “full-blown crisis”

In January, the Federal Trade Commission requested information from eight companies—including MasterCard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co—joining a “shadowy market” that provides AI pricing services. Those companies confirmed they’ve provided services to at least 250 companies “that sell goods or services ranging from grocery stores to apparel retailers,” lawmakers noted.

That inquiry led the FTC to conclude that “widespread adoption of this practice may fundamentally upend how consumers buy products and how companies compete.”

In the press release, the anti-monopoly watchdog, the American Economic Liberties Project, was counted among advocacy groups endorsing the Democrats’ bill. Their senior legal counsel, Lee Hepner, pointed out that “grocery prices have risen 26 percent since the pandemic-era explosion of online shopping,” and that’s “dovetailing with new technology designed to squeeze every last penny from consumers.”

Delta’s AI spying to “jack up” prices must be banned, lawmakers say Read More »

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Rocket Report: Channeling the future at Wallops; SpaceX recovers rocket wreckage

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China’s Space Pioneer seems to be back on track a year after an accidental launch.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a payload of 24 Starlink Internet satellites soars into space after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, shortly after sunset on July 18, 2025. This image was taken in Santee, California, approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) away from the launch site. Credit: Kevin Carter/Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.04 of the Rocket Report! The Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense shield will be a lot of things. Along with new sensors, command and control systems, and satellites, Golden Dome will require a lot of rockets. The pieces of the Golden Dome architecture operating in orbit will ride to space on commercial launch vehicles. And Golden Dome’s space-based interceptors will essentially be designed as flying fuel tanks with rocket engines. This shouldn’t be overlooked, and that’s why we include a couple of entries discussing Golden Dome in this week’s Rocket Report.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Space-based interceptors are a real challenge. The newly installed head of the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense shield knows the clock is ticking to show President Donald Trump some results before the end of his term in the White House, Ars reports. Gen. Michael Guetlein identified command-and-control and the development of space-based interceptors as two of the most pressing technical challenges for Golden Dome. He believes the command-and-control problem can be “overcome in pretty short order.” The space-based interceptor piece of the architecture is a different story.

Proven physics, unproven economics … “I think the real technical challenge will be building the space-based interceptor,” Guetlein said. “That technology exists. I believe we have proven every element of the physics that we can make it work. What we have not proven is, first, can I do it economically, and then second, can I do it at scale? Can I build enough satellites to get after the threat? Can I expand the industrial base fast enough to build those satellites? Do I have enough raw materials, etc.?” Military officials haven’t said how many space-based interceptors will be required for Golden Dome, but outside estimates put the number in the thousands.

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One big defense prime is posturing for Golden Dome. Northrop Grumman is conducting ground-based testing related to space-based interceptors as part of a competition for that segment of the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile-defense initiative, The War Zone reports. Kathy Warden, Northrop Grumman’s CEO, highlighted the company’s work on space-based interceptors, as well as broader business opportunities stemming from Golden Dome, during a quarterly earnings call this week. Warden identified Northrop’s work in radars, drones, and command-and-control systems as potentially applicable to Golden Dome.

But here’s the real news … “It will also include new innovation, like space-based interceptors, which we’re testing now,” Warden continued. “These are ground-based tests today, and we are in competition, obviously, so not a lot of detail that I can provide here.” Warden declined to respond directly to a question about how the space-based interceptors Northrop Grumman is developing now will actually defeat their targets. (submitted by Biokleen)

Trump may slash environmental rules for rocket launches. The Trump administration is considering slashing rules meant to protect the environment and the public during commercial rocket launches, changes that companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX have long sought, ProPublica reports. A draft executive order being circulated among federal agencies, and viewed by ProPublica, directs Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to “use all available authorities to eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for launch licenses. It could also, in time, require states to allow more launches or even more launch sites along their coastlines.

Getting political at the FAA … The order is a step toward the rollback of federal oversight that Musk, who has fought bitterly with the Federal Aviation Administration over his space operations, and others have pushed for. Commercial rocket launches have grown exponentially more frequent in recent years. In addition to slashing environmental rules, the draft executive order would make the head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation a political appointee. This is currently a civil servant position, but the last head of the office took a voluntary separation offer earlier this year.

There’s a SPAC for that. An unproven small launch startup is partnering with a severely depleted SPAC trust to do the impossible: go public in a deal they say will be valued at $400 million, TechCrunch reports. Innovative Rocket Technologies Inc., or iRocket, is set to merge with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC, founded by former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. But the most recent regulatory filings by this SPAC showed it was in a tenuous financial position last year, with just $1.6 million held in trust. Likewise, iRocket isn’t flooded with cash. The company has raised only a few million in venture funding, a fraction of what would be needed to develop and test the company’s small orbital-class rocket, named Shockwave.

SpaceX traces a path to orbit for NASA. Two NASA satellites soared into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, commencing a $170 million mission to study a phenomenon of space physics that has eluded researchers since the dawn of the Space Age, Ars reports. The twin spacecraft are part of the NASA-funded TRACERS mission, which will spend at least a year measuring plasma conditions in narrow regions of Earth’s magnetic field known as polar cusps. As the name suggests, these regions are located over the poles. They play an important but poorly understood role in creating colorful auroras as plasma streaming out from the Sun interacts with the magnetic field surrounding Earth. The same process drives geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting GPS navigation, radio communications, electrical grids, and satellite operations.

Plenty of room for more … The TRACERS satellites are relatively small, each about the size of a washing machine, so they filled only a fraction of the capacity of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Three other small NASA tech demo payloads hitched a ride to orbit with TRACERS, kicking off missions to test an experimental communications terminal, demonstrate an innovative scalable satellite platform made of individual building blocks, and study the link between Earth’s atmosphere and the Van Allen radiation belts. In addition to those missions, the European Space Agency launched its own CubeSat to test 5G communications from orbit. Five smallsats from an Australian company rounded out the group. Still, the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload shroud was filled with less than a quarter of the payload mass it could have delivered to the TRACERS mission’s targeted Sun-synchronous orbit.

Tianlong launch pad ready for action. Chinese startup Space Pioneer has completed a launch pad at Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China for its Tianlong 3 liquid propellent rocket ahead of a first orbital launch, Space News reports. Space Pioneer said the launch pad passed an acceptance test, and ground crews raised a full-scale model of the Tianlong 3 rocket on the launch pad. “The rehearsal test was successfully completed,” said Space Pioneer, one of China’s leading private launch companies. The activation of the launch pad followed a couple of weeks after Space Pioneer announced the completion of static loads testing on Tianlong 3.

More to come … While this is an important step forward for Space Pioneer, construction of the launch pad is just one element the company needs to finish before Tianlong 3 can lift off for the first time. In June 2024, the company ignited Tianlong 3’s nine-engine first stage on a test stand in China. But the rocket broke free of its moorings on the test stand and unexpectedly climbed into the sky before crashing in a fireball nearby. Space Pioneer says the “weak design of the rocket’s tail structure was the direct cause of the failure” last year. The company hasn’t identified next steps for Tianlong 3, or when it might be ready to fly. Tianlong 3 is a kerosene-fueled rocket with nine main engines, similar in design architecture and payload capacity to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Also, like Falcon 9, Tianlong 3 is supposed to have a recoverable and reusable first stage booster.

Dredging up an issue at Wallops. Rocket Lab has asked regulators for permission to transport oversized Neutron rocket structures through shallow waters to a spaceport off the coast of Virginia as it races to meet a September delivery deadline, TechCrunch reports. The request, which was made in July, is a temporary stopgap while the company awaits federal clearance to dredge a permanent channel to the Wallops Island site. Rocket Lab plans to launch its Neutron medium-lift rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Virginia, a lower-traffic spaceport that’s surrounded by shallow channels and waterways. Rocket Lab has a sizable checklist to tick off before Neutron can make its orbital debut, like mating the rocket stages, performing a “wet dress” rehearsal, and getting its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration. Before any of that can happen, the rocket hardware needs to make it onto the island from Rocket Lab’s factory on the nearby mainland.

Kedging bets … Access to the channel leading to Wallops Island is currently available only at low tides. So, Rocket Lab submitted an application earlier this year to dredge the channel. The dredging project was approved by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission in May, but the company has yet to start digging because it’s still awaiting federal sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers. As the company waits for federal approval, Rocket Lab is seeking permission to use a temporary method called “kedging” to ensure the first five hardware deliveries can arrive on schedule starting in September. We don’t cover maritime issues in the Rocket Report, but if you’re interested in learning a little about kedging, here’s a link.

Any better ideas for an Exploration Upper Stage? Not surprisingly, Congress is pushing back against the Trump administration’s proposal to cancel the Space Launch System, the behemoth rocket NASA has developed to propel astronauts back to the Moon. But legislation making its way through the House of Representatives includes an interesting provision that would direct NASA to evaluate alternatives for the Boeing-built Exploration Upper Stage, an upgrade for the SLS rocket set to debut on its fourth flight, Ars reports. Essentially, the House Appropriations Committee is telling NASA to look for cheaper, faster options for a new SLS upper stage.

CYA EUS?  … The four-engine Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS, is an expensive undertaking. Last year, NASA’s inspector general reported that the new upper stage’s development costs had ballooned from $962 million to $2.8 billion, and the project had been delayed more than six years. That’s almost a year-for-year delay since NASA and Boeing started development of the EUS. So, what are the options if NASA went with a new upper stage for the SLS rocket? One possibility is a modified version of United Launch Alliance’s dual-engine Centaur V upper stage that flies on the Vulcan rocket. It’s no longer possible to keep flying the SLS rocket’s existing single-engine upper stage because ULA has shut down the production line for it.

Raising Super Heavy from the deep. For the second time, SpaceX has retrieved an engine section from one of its Super Heavy boosters from the Gulf of Mexico, NASASpaceflight.com reports. Images posted on social media showed the tail end of a Super Heavy booster being raised from the sea off the coast of northern Mexico. Most of the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines appear to still be attached to the lower section of the stainless steel booster. Online sleuths who closely track SpaceX’s activities at Starbase, Texas, have concluded the rocket recovered from the Gulf is Booster 13, which flew on the sixth test flight of the Starship mega-rocket last November. The booster ditched in the ocean after aborting an attempted catch back at the launch pad in South Texas.

But why? … SpaceX recovered the engine section of a different Super Heavy booster from the Gulf last year. The company’s motivation for salvaging the wreckage is unclear. “Speculated reasons include engineering research, environmental mitigation, or even historical preservation,” NASASpaceflight reports.

Next three launches

July 26: Vega C | CO3D & MicroCarb | Guiana Space Center, French Guiana | 02: 03 UTC

July 26: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-26 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 08: 34 UTC

July 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 55 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Nvidia AI chips worth $1B smuggled to China after Trump export controls

AI, AI chips, Biz & IT, NVIDIA, syndication / /

Black market for US semiconductors operates despite efforts to curb Beijing’s high-tech ambitions.

Credit: VGG | Getty Images

At least $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence processors were shipped to China in the three months after Donald Trump tightened chip export controls, exposing the limits of Washington’s efforts to restrain Beijing’s high-tech ambitions.

A Financial Times analysis of dozens of sales contracts, company filings, and multiple people with direct knowledge of the deals reveals that Nvidia’s B200 has become the most sought-after—and widely available—chip in a rampant Chinese black market for American semiconductors.

The processor is widely used by US powerhouses such as OpenAI, Google, and Meta to train their latest AI systems, but banned for sale to China.

In May, multiple Chinese distributors started selling B200s to suppliers of data centers that serve Chinese AI groups, according to documents reviewed by the FT. This was shortly after the Trump administration moved to prevent sales of the H20—a less-powerful Nvidia chip tailored to comply with Joe Biden-era curbs.

It is legal to receive and sell restricted Nvidia chips in China, as long as relevant border tariffs are paid, according to lawyers familiar with the rules. Entities selling and sending them to China would be violating US regulations, however.

Last week, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang announced that the Trump administration would begin to allow the selling of its China-specific H20 chip once more.

In the three months beforehand, Chinese distributors from Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces sold Nvidia’s B200s, as well as other restricted processors such as the H100 and H200.

According to contracts reviewed by the FT and people with knowledge of the transactions, the total sales during this period are estimated to be more than $1 billion.

Nvidia has long insisted there is “no evidence of any AI chip diversion”. There is no evidence that the company is involved in, or has knowledge of, its restricted products being sold to China.

“Trying to cobble together data centers from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically,” Nvidia told the FT. “Data centers require service and support, which we provide only to authorized Nvidia products.”

“The new century of a smart China”

One Anhui-based company, whose name translates to “Gate of the Era,” is one of the largest sellers of B200s, according to documents seen by the FT.

It was founded in February, as speculation mounted that Trump would stop H20 chip sales to China. The company is fully owned by a group with the same name based in Shanghai, registered on the same day, according to company filings.

The chips were sold in ready-built racks, each containing eight B200s as well as other components and software needed to plug straight into a data centre. Such a rack is about the size of a large suitcase and weighs close to 150 kg including packaging.

The current market price ranges between RMB 3 million to RMB 3.5 million ($489,000) per rack, down from more than RMB 4 million in mid-May when they first became available in China in large quantities. The current prices represent about a 50 percent premium from the average selling price of similar products in the US.

Since mid-May, Gate of the Era obtained at least two shipments of a few hundred B200 racks each, according to people with knowledge of the deals. They sold them directly—or indirectly via secondary distributors—to various data centre suppliers and other companies. Gate of the Era and its affiliates are estimated to have sold close to $400mn of such products.

Gate of the Era lists an AI solution provider China Century—or Huajiyuan in Chinese—as its largest shareholder, according to company registration files.

Also headquartered in Shanghai, China Century states on its website it has a lab in Silicon Valley as well as a supply chain centre in Singapore, with the company saying it uses data tools to build “the new century of a smart China.”

China Century claims to have more than 100 business partners and highlights AliCloud, ByteDance’s Huoshan Cloud, as well as Baidu Cloud as “trusted partners” on its website.

AliCloud and Baidu did not respond to requests for comment. Huoshan Cloud’s name was taken off China Century’s website after the FT approached them for comment. Huoshan Cloud said: “It is standard practice for any company to manage the unauthorized use of its logo.

“We have not procured Nvidia’s chips. We do not have any related [Nvidia chip] business,” said China Century, adding that it did “smart city work,”

The FT visited the registered headquarters of Gate of the Era at an office in a government-run industrial park dedicated to cryptography companies. No representative was available. The company had not yet moved into the office since changing its registration to the address in June.

The FT also visited its previous registered address, which was occupied by a real estate investment group that had been there for more than two years and claimed no connection. When reached on the phone, Gate of the Era declined to comment.

According to industry insiders, product specifications and pictures of packaging seen by the FT, many of the B200 racks sold by Gate of the Era, as well as other Chinese distributors, over the past months were originally from Supermicro, a US-based assembler that provides chip solutions to data centers.

There is no suggestion that Supermicro is involved in or has knowledge of its products being smuggled into China. Supermicro said it “complies with all US export control requirements on the sale and export of GPU systems.”

“Export controls will not prevent the most advanced Nvidia products from entering China,” said one Chinese data centre operator. “What it creates is just inefficiency and huge profits for the risk-taking middlemen.”

“It’s like a seafood market”

Some Chinese distributors openly market products such as Supermicro’s B200 racks on social media that show photos of packages with the company’s logo—although it has not been verified if the sales have been completed.

To showcase the “plug-and-use” nature of such racks, some vendors provide testing for buyers, according to those with knowledge of the practice and clips posted online. Transactions tend to happen on the spot, with buyers picking up the products after checking their legitimacy.

On social media, groups are created to match supply and demand from hundreds of traders and data centre suppliers.

Apart from B200, various other restricted Nvidia chips such as H200, H100, and 5090 are being advertised openly on Chinese social media platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

Packaging and installation pictures and videos seen by the FT show product logos of companies such as Supermicro, Dell, and Asus—infrastructure providers that assemble Nvidia’s chips into servers.

There is no suggestion that these companies are aware of the social media advertising or their products being sold in China.

Like Supermicro, Dell, and Asus said they maintained rigorous and strict compliance to all laws and regulations, including US export controls, and took action against partners who failed to comply.

“It’s like a seafood market,” said one distributor, “There’s no shortage.”

Racks for sale—with more smuggled stock to come

The B200 is in high demand given its performance, value, and relatively easy maintenance compared with the more complex Grace Blackwell series, according to industry insiders.

The GB200 AI rack, containing Nvidia’s most high-end products, also appear to be available in China despite US export controls.

One distributor claimed it had sold 10 racks of GB200 at close to RMB 40 million ($5.6 million) each. The FT could not independently verify this claim, while marketing information about GB200 from various distributors’ accounts on social media shows consistent pricing and stock status as “available for pick up onshore.”

Some Chinese distributors have even started advertising for their future stock of B300s, Nvidia’s upgrade from the B200 expected to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of this year.

US export controls have had some effect on the black market.

Given the nature of such products, leading Chinese AI players with global operations are not able to order them in a legally compliant way, install them in their own data centers, or receive Nvidia’s customer support.

This has led to third-party data centre operators becoming key buyers who then provide computing services. Other clients include smaller companies in tech, finance, and health care that do not have strong compliance requirements, as well as Chinese companies on the so-called US entity list that are not allowed to buy any Nvidia chips legally.

However, the scale of these projects is much smaller compared with mega clusters of data centers being built by tech giants around the world.

With H20 export controls having been lifted, many Chinese tech companies are expected to resume purchasing the compliant chips in large sums even though its performance is generations behind the still restricted products such as B200, according to people familiar with their plans.

Black market sales for B200s and other restricted Nvidia chips dropped noticeably after the relaxation of the H20 ban, according to multiple distributors.

“People are weighing their options now H20 is available again,” said one distributor. “But there will always be demand for the most cutting-edge stuff.”

The Southeast Asia stop off

Industry experts said that Southeast Asian countries have become markets where Chinese groups obtained restricted chips.

The US Department of Commerce is discussing adding more export controls on advanced AI products to countries such as Thailand as soon as September, according to two people familiar with the matter. This rule is mainly targeting Chinese intermediaries used to obtain advanced AI chips via these countries.

The US commerce department declined to comment. The Thai government did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, Malaysia introduced stricter export controls targeting advanced AI chip shipments from the country to other destinations, especially China.

The potential tightening of export controls on Southeast Asian countries has also contributed to buyers rushing to place orders before such rules take effect, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Even if these avenues to obtain AI chips are closed, Chinese industry insiders said new shipping routes would be established. Supplies have already started arriving via European countries not on the restricted list.

“History has proven many times before that given the huge profit, arbitrators will always find a way,” said one Chinese distributor.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton, Demetri Sevastopulo, and Anantha Lakshmi.

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not copy and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.

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SpaceX launches a pair of NASA satellites to probe the origins of space weather

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“This is going to really help us understand how to predict space weather in the magnetosphere.”

This artist’s illustration of the Earth’s magnetosphere shows the solar wind (left) streaming from the Sun, and then most of it being blocked by Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field lines seen here fold in toward Earth’s surface at the poles, creating polar cusps. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Two NASA satellites rocketed into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, commencing a $170 million mission to study a phenomenon of space physics that has eluded researchers since the dawn of the Space Age.

The twin spacecraft are part of the NASA-funded TRACERS mission, which will spend at least a year measuring plasma conditions in narrow regions of Earth’s magnetic field known as polar cusps. As the name suggests, these regions are located over the poles. They play an important but poorly understood role in creating colorful auroras as plasma streaming out from the Sun interacts with the magnetic field surrounding Earth.

The same process drives geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting GPS navigation, radio communications, electrical grids, and satellite operations. These outbursts are usually triggered by solar flares or coronal mass ejections that send blobs of plasma out into the Solar System. If one of these flows happens to be aimed at Earth, we are treated with auroras but vulnerable to the storm’s harmful effects.

For example, an extreme geomagnetic storm last year degraded GPS navigation signals, resulting in more than $500 million in economic losses in the agriculture sector as farms temporarily suspended spring planting. In 2022, a period of elevated solar activity contributed to the loss of 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites.

“Understanding our Sun and the space weather it produces is more important to us here on Earth, I think, than most realize,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division.

NASA’s two TRACERS satellites launched Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: SpaceX

The launch of TRACERS was delayed 24 hours after a regional power outage disrupted air traffic control over the Pacific Ocean near the Falcon 9 launch site on California’s Central Coast, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. SpaceX called off the countdown Tuesday less than a minute before liftoff, then rescheduled the flight for Wednesday.

TRACERS, short for Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, will study a process known as magnetic reconnection. As particles in the solar wind head out into the Solar System at up to 1 million mph, they bring along pieces of the Sun’s magnetic field. When the solar wind reaches our neighborhood, it begins interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.

The high-energy collision breaks and reconnects magnetic field lines, flinging solar wind particles across Earth’s magnetosphere at speeds that can approach the speed of light. Earth’s field draws some of these particles into the polar cusps, down toward the upper atmosphere. This is what creates dazzling auroral light shows and potentially damaging geomagnetic storms.

Over our heads

But scientists still aren’t sure how it all works, despite the fact that it’s happening right over our heads, within the reach of countless satellites in low-Earth orbit. But a single spacecraft won’t do the job. Scientists need at least two spacecraft, each positioned in bespoke polar orbits and specially instrumented to measure magnetic fields, electric fields, electrons, and ions.

That’s because magnetic reconnection is a dynamic process, and a single satellite would provide just a snapshot of conditions over the polar cusps every 90 minutes. By the time the satellite comes back around on another orbit, conditions will have changed, but scientists wouldn’t know how or why, according to David Miles, principal investigator for the TRACERS mission at the University of Iowa.

“You can’t tell, is that because the system itself is changing?” Miles said. “Is that because this magnetic reconnection, the coupling process, is moving around? Is it turning on and off, and if it’s turning on and off, how quickly can it do it? Those are fundamental things that we need to understand… how the solar wind arriving at the Earth does or doesn’t transfer energy to the Earth system, which has this downstream effect of space weather.”

This is why the tandem part of the TRACERS name is important. The novel part of this mission is it features two identical spacecraft, each about the size of a washing machine flying at an altitude of 367 miles (590 kilometers). Over the course of the next few weeks, the TRACERS satellites will drift into a formation with one trailing the other by about two minutes as they zip around the world at nearly five miles per second. This positioning will allow the satellites to sample the polar cusps one right after the other, instead of forcing scientists to wait another 90 minutes for a data refresh.

With TRACERS, scientists hope to pick apart smaller, fast-moving changes with each satellite pass. Within a year, TRACERS should collect 3,000 measurements of magnetic reconnections, a sample size large enough to start identifying why some space weather events evolve differently than others.

“Not only will it get a global picture of reconnection in the magnetosphere, but it’s also going to be able to statistically study how reconnection depends on the state of the solar wind,” said John Dorelli, TRACERS mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This is going to really help us understand how to predict space weather in the magnetosphere.”

One of the two TRACERS satellites undergoes launch preparations at Millennium Space Systems, the spacecraft’s manufacturer. Credit: Millennium Space Systems

“If we can understand these various different situations, whether it happens suddenly if you have one particular kind of event, or it happens in lots of different places, then we have a better way to model that and say, ‘Ah, here’s the likelihood of seeing a certain kind of effect that would affect humans,'” said Craig Kletzing, the principal investigator who led the TRACERS science team until his death in 2023.

There is broader knowledge to be gained with a mission like TRACERS. Magnetic reconnection is ubiquitous throughout the Universe, and the same physical processes produce solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the Sun.

Hitchhiking to orbit

Several other satellites shared the ride to space with TRACERS on Wednesday.

These secondary payloads included a NASA-sponsored mission named PExT, a small technology demonstration satellite carrying an experimental communications package capable of connecting with three different networks: NASA’s government-owned Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) and commercial satellite networks owned by SES and Viasat.

What’s unique about the Polylingual Experimental Terminal, or PExT, is its ability to roam across multiple satellite relay networks. The International Space Station and other satellites in low-Earth orbit currently connect to controllers on the ground through NASA’s TDRS satellites. But NASA will retire its TDRS satellites in the 2030s and begin purchasing data relay services using commercial satellite networks.

The space agency expects to have multiple data relay providers, so radios on future NASA satellites must be flexible enough to switch between networks mid-mission. PExT is a pathfinder for these future missions.

Another NASA-funded tech demo named Athena EPIC was also aboard the Falcon 9 rocket. Led by NASA’s Langley Research Center, this mission uses a scalable satellite platform developed by a company named NovaWurks, using building blocks to piece together everything a spacecraft needs to operate in space.

Athena EPIC hosts a single science instrument to measure how much energy Earth radiates into space, an important data point for climate research. But the mission’s real goal is to showcase how an adaptable satellite design, such as this one using NovaWurks’ building block approach, might be useful for future NASA missions.

A handful of other payloads rounded out the payload list for Wednesday’s launch. They included REAL, a NASA-funded CubeSat project to investigate the Van Allen radiation belts and space weather, and LIDE, an experimental 5G communications satellite backed by the European Space Agency. Five commercial spacecraft from the Australian company Skykraft also launched to join a constellation of small satellites to provide tracking and voice communications between air traffic controllers and aircraft over remote parts of the world.

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Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

SpaceX launches a pair of NASA satellites to probe the origins of space weather Read More »

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AI video is invading YouTube Shorts and Google Photos starting today

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Google is following through on recent promises to add more generative AI features to its photo and video products. Over on YouTube, Google is rolling out the first wave of generative AI video for YouTube Shorts, but even if you’re not a YouTuber, you’ll be exposed to more AI videos soon. Google Photos, which is integrated with virtually every Android phone on the market, is also getting AI video-generation capabilities. In both cases, the features are currently based on the older Veo 2 model, not the more capable Veo 3 that has been meming across the Internet since it was announced at I/O in May.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan confirmed earlier this summer that the company planned to add generative AI to the creator tools for YouTube Shorts. There were already tools to generate backgrounds for videos, but the next phase will involve creating new video elements from a text prompt.

Starting today, creators will be able to use a photo as the basis for a new generative AI video. YouTube also promises a collection of easily applied generative effects, which will be accessible from the Shorts camera. There’s also a new AI playground hub that the company says will be home to all its AI tools, along with examples and suggested prompts to help people pump out AI content.

The Veo 2-based videos aren’t as realistic as Veo 3 clips, but an upgrade is planned.

So far, all the YouTube AI video features are running on the Veo 2 model. The plan is still to move to Veo 3 later this summer. The AI features in YouTube Shorts are currently limited to the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but they will expand to more countries later.

AI video is invading YouTube Shorts and Google Photos starting today Read More »

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Whistleblower scientists outline Trump’s plan to politicize and dismantle NSF

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Nearly 150 employees of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sent an urgent letter of dissent to Congress on Tuesday, warning that the Trump administration’s recent “politically motivated and legally questionable” actions threaten to dismantle the independent “world-renowned scientific agency.”

Most NSF employees signed the letter anonymously, with only Jesus Soriano, the president of their local union (AFGE Local 3403), publicly disclosing his name. Addressed to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the letter insisted that Congress intervene to stop steep budget cuts, mass firings and grant terminations, withholding of billions in appropriated funds, allegedly coerced resignations, and the sudden eviction of NSF from its headquarters planned for next year.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the letter revealed “a covert and ideologically driven secondary review process by unqualified political appointees” that is now allegedly “interfering with the scientific merit-based review system” that historically has made NSF a leading, trusted science agency. Soriano further warned that “scientists, program officers, and staff” have all “been targeted for doing their jobs with integrity” in what the letter warned was “a broader agenda to dismantle institutional safeguards, impose demagoguery in research funding decisions, and undermine science.”

At a press conference with Lofgren on Wednesday, AFGE National President Everett Kelley backed NSF workers and reminded Congress that their oversight of the executive branch “is not optional.”

Taking up the fight, Lofgren promised to do “all” that she “can” to protect the agency and the entire US scientific enterprise.

She also promised to protect Soriano from any retaliation, as some federal workers, including NSF workers, alleged they’ve already faced retaliation, necessitating their anonymity to speak publicly. Lofgren criticized the “deep shame” of the Trump administration creating a culture of fear permeating NSF, noting that the “horrifying” statements in the letter are “all true,” yet filed as a whistleblower complaint as if they’re sharing secrets.

Whistleblower scientists outline Trump’s plan to politicize and dismantle NSF Read More »

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New “AppleCare One” plan bundles three extended warranties for $20 a month

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AppleCare One can also be extended to other Apple products you own “that are up to four years old” (or one year old for headphones) and “in good condition,” even if they’re outside of the typical 60-day grace period for subscribing to AppleCare+. Apple says that the condition of these devices may need to be verified “using a customer’s iPhone or iPad, or at an Apple Store” before they can be added to the plan, presumably to reduce the number of people who opt in after the fact to avoid pricey repairs to already damaged devices.

While the potential savings are the best argument in favor of the new plan, it also adds a handful of new benefits for some devices. For example, AppleCare One covers theft for both iPads and Apple Watches, something that isn’t covered for these devices under a standard AppleCare+ subscription. The subscription can also simplify the trade-in process, removing a traded-in device from your AppleCare One plan and replacing it with an upgraded device automatically.

If you haven’t subscribed to AppleCare+ before, it functions both as an extended warranty and an insurance program. If your device breaks suddenly for reasons outside of your control, repairs and replacements are generally free of additional charge; for accidental damage, theft and loss, or battery replacements, users are charged additional flat service fees for repairs and replacements, rather than Apple’s hefty parts and labor costs. Battery replacements are also free when your battery drops below 80 percent of its original capacity.

AppleCare One plans will go on sale starting tomorrow, July 24.

New “AppleCare One” plan bundles three extended warranties for $20 a month Read More »