Hello everyone! This is Lauly, sending my warm regards from Taipei, where the leaves have started turning red, and temperatures are becoming much more comfortable than in summer. Hope you are all doing well!

September wasn't too kind to me. After my colleague Annie Cheng Ting-Fang and I covered the annual SEMICON Taiwan early last month, both of us, along with our photojournalist Ken Kobayashi, were really sick for weeks. My son, who I suspected had caught some weird virus from me, had a high fever the day after the trade expo concluded and was even hospitalized the following week. Moreover, I lost a rose-gold Tiffany bracelet that my husband gave me as a birthday present. It happened while I was busy as a bee, running between the hospital and other places.

To improve my mood, I picked up an old habit of watching romance dramas at night. I chose "The Early Spring," a Chinese television series that is also streaming on Netflix, as there are so many Taiwanese people talking about the show. To my surprise, the drama is also very popular in Southeast Asian markets and even in the U.S., where many people are making short online videos recommending it. This is probably the second-hottest C-drama this year in Asian markets after "Pursuit of Jade," which aired in March. Even tech industry executives know about the shows.

This makes me wonder about the fascinating paradigm shift of pop culture and the entertainment industry in Asia. Japanese dramas strongly influenced Asian markets in the 1990s, and then, when Taiwan's "Meteor Garden" aired in 2001, the teen dramas and romance dramas produced here were like a hurricane sweeping across Asia. Then South Korean dramas took the baton and "idol" economics, influenced by K-pop music, accessed the global stage.

But in recent years, while Korean influence remains strong, there has been an undeniable rise in appreciation of Chinese pop culture beyond its domestic market. Chinese idols, similar to those in South Korea, also began hosting meet-and-greet events in overseas markets. Judging by the popularity of C-drama and those idols in the region, it is possible China's idol economics could also have a growing global presence, similar to its industries such as electric vehicles, displays and batteries.

Entertainment aside, I finally met a longtime electronics component source in Taipei recently, who I've been trying to meet since early July. The moment he sat down at a cafe, he complained for more than 20 minutes about how he had been busy since summer accompanying Taiwanese clients on trips to Japan. They wanted to meet his company's management team because of the huge demand from the AI infrastructure build-out. The goal of all the trips was the same: to secure more supplies from the Japanese component maker.

There are currently shortages of everything from basic DRAM memory to all other types of chips and components. Another executive with an Nvidia server provider texted me during the Mid-Autumn Festival two weeks ago, saying that while others were enjoying the long holiday and admiring the full moon, he and other high-level executives, along with many of the company's engineers and workers, were busy working in the factory to meet clients' orders. "So tired, but also very happy," he said.

I was going to ask both sources whether the supply chain is worried about the chiefs of Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX talking about a slowdown for AI frontier development, but the situations they brought up themselves answered my question.

I reported with Cheng Ting-Fang this week on how China's Huawei has made a significant breakthrough with its intellectual property portfolio, inking a cross-licensing agreement with Qualcomm covering 5G, AI, and networking technologies.

The deal also includes the American chipmaker purchasing some of Huawei's U.S. patents, and the total transaction value will trigger a regulatory review by Washington, with the threshold of $133.9 million crossed. It would mark the first time Qualcomm has been a net payer for IP in a relationship with Huawei dating back 25 years.

The patents cover Huawei's new semiconductor and system design principles, dubbed the Tau Scaling Law. The technology, unveiled in May, was developed to overcome strict U.S. export controls that had denied Huawei access to advanced chip technologies from abroad.

The two companies' announcement came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping concluded their formal summit in Washington, amid the ongoing tensions between the world's two most powerful countries.

China is building data centers at rapid speed across its energy-rich hinterland, as Beijing seeks to turn abundant electricity and cheap land to its advantage in the global race to develop AI.

The push is creating vast new computing hubs such as Ulanqab in Inner Mongolia, where 89 data centers are built or planned, write FT reporters Eleanor Olcott, who visited the region, and Zijing Wu.

About 15 GW of computing capacity has been committed in Ulanqab, a remote agricultural city famed for its potatoes and yoghurt snacks. By some estimates, that makes it the fastest-growing data center hub in Asia.

Engineers in Ulanqab are even turning an abandoned high school into a data center. Soon, rows of computing racks will occupy the playground where students once hung out between classes.

The city is benefiting from advantages that are increasingly scarce in other markets, including the U.S.: abundant power, cheap land, a cold climate, and speed.

Analysts say Inner Mongolia likely has the "largest electricity local oversupply" of any administrative region in the world. Data centers there pay less than half the average hourly rate charged in Beijing.

Thousands of workers have been brought in from around the region and housed in temporary accommodation. Prefabricated computing modules, dubbed "Lego data centers," enable faster construction.

The big question, however, is whether China's semiconductor fabs can produce enough advanced processors to fill all these facilities, given restrictions on Chinese purchases of Nvidia chips.

Read more in the first of a three-part series on China's data center dreams.

Hyperscale data center operator AirTrunk plans to triple its investment in Japan to $30 billion in the next five years, as the Sydney-headquartered company aims to catch the growing demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure in Asia, according to this exclusive interview with CEO Robin Khuda by Nikkei Asia's Tsubasa Suruga, Kosuke Shimizu, and Haruki Kitagawa.

AirTrunk remains bullish on the data center market and forecasts that demand in Japan will be "massive," according to Khuda. The company also plans to double its current 530 megawatts of committed capacity in the country to over 1 gigawatt.

Japan is one of Asia's largest data center markets and the CEO said AirTrunk, acquired by U.S. private equity group Blackstone in 2024, sees more demand from its customers for it to take on AI workloads in the country, despite higher construction and financing costs making it a relatively expensive market.

The demand for data centers in Asia-Pacific stood at 28 GW last year, or roughly one-third of the global total, with capacity estimated to triple by 2030, according to McKinsey & Co. forecasts. Besides Japan, Malaysia is another Asian market witnessing strong demand for AI data center build-out, transforming the local economy.

Businesses across Japan and South Korea were hit by a series of major cyberattacks in recent days, with millions of customer records exposed and concerns raised that artificial intelligence could enable hackers to amplify cyber threats, Nikkei Asia's Tsubasa Suruga and Steven Borowiec write.

Banks, retailers, restaurant chains and rental car services were among the targets. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said on Wednesday that it had identified Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the Chinese open-source tool ARTEX as being used to help breach South Korean banks' networks.

In Japan, at least 600 cases of unauthorized access and other cyber incidents were reported by companies and organizations through the end of September this year, according to cybersecurity firm Trend Micro.

Another cybersecurity company, ThreatBook, said Japan and South Korea were among the five most targeted markets for cyberattacks in the Asia-Pacific region between June 2025 and June 2026.

Suggested reads

1. OpenAI steps up safety, promises earlier disclosure after Australian hack (Nikkei Asia)

2. Chill out: Japan's top vending machine maker now cools data centres (FT)

3. Samsung Q3 profit jumps nearly 9 times to $80bn in AI chip boom (Nikkei Asia)

4. A Chinese billionaire reckons with the limits of building AI across borders (FT)

5. Toshiba to double hard-disk drive supply to fill AI chip memory gap (Nikkei Asia)

6. Masayoshi Son's AI ambitions outgrow SoftBank's balance sheet (FT)

7. Japan's Rapidus to help 17 companies design chips for clients (Nikkei Asia)

8. Japan plans $140bn AI data centre push with Dell and Jera (FT)

9. Samsung takes Vietnam up semiconductor value chain with $5bn expansion (Nikkei Asia)

10. Japanese and Korean shipbuilders deploy robots to take on China (FT)

Podcast: Tech Latest

Is it possible to slow down AI development?

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Every Tuesday, we deliver the hottest trends and news from the tech sector.

In this episode, host Shotaro Tani speaks with Silicon Valley correspondent Yifan Yu about the growing calls to slow AI development, why infrastructure providers remain bullish despite the talk of risks, and whether the industry's massive investments have created too much momentum to reverse.

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