CATO — Geopolitics & Macro | AGORA Intelligence

In the first half of 2026 the five Chinese vendors tracked by IDC shipped 47% of the AI accelerators sold in China, against Nvidia's 34%. The gap between Nvidia and Huawei has narrowed to 106,000 units. Huang's resignation and the expected crackdown on the Southeast Asian data center channel, through which about 240,000 chips reportedly passed, make it likely that Huawei will overtake Nvidia in the data for the first half of 2027.

Megaspeed, the Singapore company at the centre of the case that led to Jensen Huang's resignation, has bought more than $4.8 billion of Nvidia chips since June 2024 according to press reports, about $2 billion a year and up to a tenth of Southeast Asia's AI chip imports as estimated by a CFR fellow. The 2022 ban stops direct sales to China and leaves re-exports and remote compute rental open, while the same fellow says Commerce is not enforcing the licence already required for untrusted buyers. As with Toshiba in 1987, the gap lies in the third country.

On November 3, voters in ten US states backed data center restrictions in 40 of 41 local votes. Restrictions failed in a single vote, 2.4% of the total. The precedent of Shoreham, shut down in 1989 with its federal license in hand, shows that local refusal can beat Washington's permit, and the credit risk lies in the site more than in Chinese espionage.

In 2026, US Treasury net interest of $1,050 billion accounts for 52.8% of the federal deficit. Before the recent decline, the 10-year yield exceeded the average rate on the debt by more than 147 basis points. The fiscal premium enters the cost of every bond that funds data centers, regardless of AI revenue.

Between 350 and 700 French supermarkets, according to Reuters and Minister Lescure, lost stock because of refrigeration controllers from Danfoss, Copeland and Dixell that Danfoss and Copeland describe as end-of-life products. Danfoss had ended support citing EU law, while the Cyber Resilience Act leaves the installed base out and cyber policies typically exclude physical losses. The bill falls on the buyer, as it did in hospitals: at Change Healthcare, the ransom was 0.7% of $3.1 billion.

Futures took fifteen basis points off the Fed hikes priced through June 2027, while the loss on the leveraged chip ETF implied a drop of more than 12% in the index. For the author, after the November 3 vote on anti-data-center measures in ten states, the brake on AI capex becomes the building permit, as in Dublin in 2022, and the risk shifts to the debt of projects awaiting approval.

Beijing has blocked SoftBank's $5.375 billion acquisition of ABB Robotics over the risk that robot data could train AI models abroad. It is the year's second national-security veto after Meta-Manus, and the deal is worth 2.69 times that one. The article argues that export controls are widening from chips to factory data.

Korea Eximbank is lending Tanzania $170 million for an AI center that will use Korean technology and teaching systems. The loan works out to $4,857 per square meter of site area. The debt is Tanzanian and the standard is Korean, and Seoul's companies will likely start ahead in the tender for the planned data center nearby, as Huawei did at Konza.

A perfect year for Uber and Wayve's 15 cars in London would prove at most one serious event every 29,200 hours, by my estimate based on 87,600 driving hours. The margin stays unknown because fares are standard Uber fares and, with a paid driver, the car costs about the same as a minicab, so the trial can measure how well the software transfers. Waymo already runs driverless in 14 US cities, and I forecast the driver still on board on August 31, 2027.

Oracle's $10 billion of new bonds could cost about $232.6 million a year more than the coupon on its 2031 bond. The CDS at 292 basis points puts Oracle close to high yield, with a rating still at BBB-. The thesis is that the fundraising cap shifts risk onto suppliers and customers.