Morning Scan

The US-China tech cold war is generating paperwork as fast as it generates headlines. Apple is petitioning the White House to buy blacklisted Chinese RAM, Anthropic's export-banned models may be back by Friday, and Asian AI labs are filling the vacuum with their own alternatives. Price hikes are becoming the defining consumer story of 2026 — from iPhones to Xbox to Plex lifetime plans.

$3.1B — What Chinese tech companies have raised from domestic IPOs year-to-date, up 5x from a year earlier, as US export controls push AI and chip firms to list at home. (Reuters/LSEG)

Connected World

Apple Wants Permission to Buy Memory From a Blacklisted Chinese Supplier

Apple is asking the Trump administration for a supply chain exemption — a sign that tariff-era pricing pressure is forcing it into politically awkward corners. (The Verge)

Apple Faced Bipartisan Opposition When It Last Lobbied to Buy Chinese RAM in 2022

The 2022 Warner-Rubio letter is useful context: this fight isn't new, and it didn't go Apple's way last time. (Daring Fireball)

Source: Trump Administration Close to Allowing Anthropic to Restore Access to Fable 5

The export ban on Anthropic's most capable models could lift as soon as this week — which would matter for the enterprise deals Anthropic has been unable to close. (Axios)

Asian AI Startups Launch Mythos-Like Models as Anthropic's Export Ban Drags On

Sakana AI and China's 360 launched competing models to fill the gap Anthropic left, the kind of unintended consequence export ban critics warned about. (TechCrunch)

OpenAI Has New AI Models — Here's Why You Can't Use Them

GPT-5.6 exists but requires administration sign-off before release — a sentence that would have seemed surreal eighteen months ago. (WIRED)

Connected World

The 33-Year-Old Ex-Snap Exec Nadella Is Trusting to Fix Copilot Now Oversees 11,000 People

Jacob Andreou's Copilot consolidation is one of the larger organizational bets in enterprise AI right now — 11,000 people is a real army to point at OpenAI and Anthropic. (The Next Web)

Salesforce Employees Are Confused About Why the Company Is Promoting a Competitor Inside Slack

Anthropic's Claude Tag living natively in Slack is awkward for Salesforce beyond internal messaging — a strategic foothold in enterprise AI. (The Next Web)

Cloudflare Cut 1,100 Jobs and Then Grew Its Engineering Team by 45 Percent

CEO Matthew Prince is essentially saying the playbook — cut, then rehire differently — is now repeatable everywhere, which is either reassuring or chilling depending on your job title. (The Next Web)

“The pattern will repeat everywhere.” — Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, via The Next Web

Connected World

Microsoft Raises Xbox Prices, Drops High-End Storage Model From Lineup

Effective August 1 — Microsoft joins Apple in using tariff pressure as cover for price increases that were probably coming anyway. (Daring Fireball)

AI Executives Are Wary of Pressing Trump Administration for Regulatory Clarity, Fearing Retaliation (paywall)

The chilling effect on lobbying is its own kind of regulatory environment — uncertainty by design. (Politico)

PSA: Lifetime Plex Plan Goes From $249.99 to a Painful $749.99 on July 1

A 3x overnight price jump on a media server subscription is jarring even in a week when Apple raised Mac prices — today's the last day to lock in the old rate. (AppleInsider)

Streaming Services Must Comply With California's Loud Ad Ban From July 1 — Implementation Is Unclear

A genuinely popular consumer protection law goes live Wednesday with almost no enforcement mechanism, which is the California special. (Ars Technica)

Apple Vision Pro Exec Is Reportedly Leaving for OpenAI

Paul Meade heading to OpenAI's hardware team is a small but pointed signal about where spatial computing talent thinks the next interesting hardware problem actually lives. (TechCrunch)