Technology

British monarch highlights AI’s potential darker capacities, urging safety and humanity-focused development.

The United Kingdom’s King Charles has warned Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry leaders of the “existential dangers” posed by the technology if it falls into the wrong hands.

The monarch’s comments on Thursday add to a global debate over whether, and how to regulate the industry.

Charles hosted AI giants, including the cofounders of Nvidia and Google DeepMind, along with leaders from OpenAI and Anthropic at a summit at his Dumfries House estate in Scotland, to address safety concerns before it was “too late” to rein it in.

“There seems urgency in adequately considering the existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands, and being used in potentially catastrophic ways,” Charles told guests at the opening of the conference.

“Those in our world who value our humanity and its vital moral component are anxiously seeking your reassurance that we will not lose control of our destiny,” he told the industry leaders.

“Those who have created these technologies are now increasingly warning that AI risks developing darker capacities, perhaps even to take life,” or be used in “potentially catastrophic ways”, the king also said.

In recent weeks, global figures have weighed in on whether the industry should regulate itself or allow governments to produce guidelines on how the rapidly evolving technology develops.

In May, Pope Leo XIV said ⁠”the world does not need an artificial intelligence that diminishes humanity” and must be “disarmed”.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has dismissed concerns about the technology as a “hoax”.

Slow the pace of AI development

Last week, two Anthropic researchers warned that the rapidly advancing technology could lead to human extinction in the not-too-distant future.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has also called for companies to slow the pace of AI development.

However, that has prompted an ⁠international debate about whether some executives were trying to get ahead of a possible government backlash and set the rules to keep the lead of particular companies.

“The development of AI – its substance and its pace – are both intriguing and deeply concerning in equal measure,” the British monarch said.

He urged industry leaders to harness it “with safety at its heart” and “to ensure that it remains firmly in the service of humanity, community and the natural world”.

The summit in Scotland is not expected to produce any binding agreements.

The ChatGPT creator says it is introducing a public reporting framework to share unexpected AI behaviour, admitting the industry has not solved safety challenges yet.

OpenAI says it has identified additional incidents of its AI models allegedly acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during internal training and testing.

Alongside these disclosures on Wednesday, the creator of ChatGPT stated it was introducing a public reporting framework intended to frequently share instances of what it termed as unexpected or misaligned AI behaviour.

In a post on its website, OpenAI claimed that under the newly outlined framework, it will publish updates on concerning model behaviour on an ongoing basis rather than delaying disclosures to group multiple incidents into larger, periodic reports.

The company said the initiative aims to increase industry transparency around troubling model activities in the absence of standardised safety disclosure norms.

The announcement comes amid broader calls from prominent technology leaders urging a slowdown in frontier AI development over concerns that rapid scaling could outpace human oversight and control.

Last week, Anthropic claimed to have thwarted multiple malicious operations using its Claude models, ranging from cyber-espionage and weapons design to mass surveillance campaigns.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay published on Saturday. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

However, United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed back against calls to limit the industry, arguing that maintaining the US’s technological edge over international rivals remains paramount.

Responding to slowdown proposals, Trump described critics as “very negative forces” raising exaggerated scenarios that “won’t happen”.

Escalating debate on alignment

Despite political resistance to statutory slowdowns, OpenAI signalled agreement with its industry rival regarding alignment pressures.

“As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research,” the company stated in the post.

OpenAI added that it does not believe the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer, emphasising that decisions about future AI development need to draw on evidence that external observers can examine independently.

According to the company, safety teams observed what they categorised as “misaligned behaviour” across six specific circumstances over the past six months during training and evaluation runs.

However, OpenAI maintained that these reports document individual, rare instances rather than frequent operational failures across deployed products.

The reported incidents allegedly included unreleased research models concealing mistakes in task summaries, unauthorised file uploads to the internet to generate citation links, and agents sharing files across public servers or internal repositories to bypass local boundaries.

OpenAI further stated that its future reports will detail observed behaviours, severity, setting, discovery dates, and the specific models involved, adding that it remains committed to disclosing complex cases requiring longer investigation or third-party coordination.

Tetiana Bubynets collapsed on the asphalt after a Russian drone exploded at a gas station in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.

Despite the violent shockwave and blast of drone shrapnel produced by the attack on July 6, the 18-year-old accounting student had no visible wounds except for a nosebleed.

She was rushed to hospital and pronounced dead shortly after, alongside two other civilians, aged 41 and 48.

One of her lecturers, Tetiana Melikhova of Zaporizhzhia National University, said Bubynets was an only child and that her mother “lost the meaning of life” after she died.

“She couldn’t speak. At the funeral, she just lay on the coffin; she couldn’t let her child go,” Melikhova told Al Jazeera.

The strike that killed Bubynets was the first recorded case of Russia’s use of a fully autonomous attack drone powered by artificial intelligence (AI), according to a New York Times analysis.

While drone strikes have hammered Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian officials who examined the wreckage found the unmanned vehicle to be unlike others.

In place of an antenna, it featured an AI-powered minicomputer sold commercially by US technology company Nvidia, which rendered it capable of directing itself to the type of target it was programmed to spot – likely propane tanks in this case – lock on to it and proceed to strike.

AI-powered drones are the tip of the iceberg as Russia and Ukraine race towards boosting tech infrastructure aimed at coordinating reconnaissance and attack, according to analysts.

“It’s not about a drone having AI in it, and then seeing something and striking,” Marina Miron, researcher at the defence studies department at King’s College London, said. “Rather, it’s the drone seeing something, communicating to a software complex which knows how to map the GPS coordinates on a live battlefield map, and notifying the closest artillery unit.”

Referred to as reconnaissance-strike architecture, these unified battlefield management systems act like a central command. They track the location of friendly forces and identify enemy positions.

AI acts as the accelerator, instantly processing massive amounts of data collected through sensors in drones or any other military products, including interceptor missiles or artillery units.

The tactical advantage on the battlefield is given by the system’s ability to compress the kill chain – meaning coordinating and distributing the intelligence to military assets on the ground to find, track and destroy targets in a matter of minutes.

In such an ecosystem, AI-powered automated drones are just pieces of a broader puzzle.

Ukraine is known to be developing its system, which it named DELTA. Following operational trials in late 2025, Russia has been rolling out its version, the Svod Tactical Situational Awareness Complex, to front-line units.

Both sides claim that once the battlefield data is processed, a decision support system (DSS) presents a military commander with options to choose from, keeping a human in the decision-making loop, said Miron.

“In how far that is true is, of course, impossible to find out,” she added.

Acknowledging full AI autonomy would provoke ethical and legal questions.

Even if humans were to retain final decision-making authority, research has shown AI systems subtly shape choices, predetermining outcomes.

“Under time and pressure, commanders often do as AI suggests,” said Miron, whose research focuses on military AI and remotely piloted and autonomous systems.

Towards full automation

Coordinated AI-powered military systems are the next frontier of modern warfare, said Serhiy Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian Ministry of Defence adviser on loitering munitions, known by his callsign Flash.

“That’s what it will all come to,” he posted on his Telegram channel on July 1. “Navigation, search for a target, and attacks will be fully autonomous.”

Drones with some autonomous capabilities are already being deployed at scale.

Heorhii Volkov, commander of Ukraine’s Yasni Ochi drone strike unit, said this is currently mostly used in the final phase of long-distance strikes, where first-person view (FPV) drones are likely to lose radio connection due to electronic warfare or the curvature of the Earth.

The use of AI in so-called last-mile operations solves this battlefield hitch. If the signal is lost, an integrated AI-enabled onboard module takes full control of the unmanned vehicle, autonomously locks on the target and carries the strike to completion.

Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder of Ukrainian technology company The Fourth Law, which develops AI-powered autonomy software for unmanned vehicles, said Russia and Ukraine were working to deploy a wider range of autonomous systems.

“This is not simply a race to demonstrate a fully autonomous drone. It is a race to make autonomy reliable, affordable and deployable at scale,” Azhnyuk told Al Jazeera. “Electronic warfare, increasingly long engagement distances and the growing number of drones are making human-controlled systems less sufficient. Autonomy solves exactly these constraints.”

Azhnyuk believes autonomy will become a game-changer over the next six to 12 months.

“The decisive advantage will belong to the side that can deploy reliable autonomy across tens or hundreds of thousands of systems, not just demonstrate it in prototypes,” he said.

Kateryna Bondar, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), noted the dangers of AI’s reliance on algorithms.

“The system doesn’t understand what it’s doing; it’s just following the algorithm and the rules which people created,” said Bondar, who works at the CSIS’s Wadhwani AI Center. “AI has to be trained to recognise targets and engage these targets,” but writing code that distinguishes between a bus and a tank is easier than between a Russian and a Ukrainian soldier.

Additionally, cost-effective FPV drones have low-quality cameras and their resolution can be lowered further by adverse atmospheric conditions.

Military units using autonomous systems therefore “delegate the decision to a very imperfect technology that cannot distinguish between a civilian and a military person, combatant or non-combatant”, Bondar said.

“This is why there is a conversation around who makes a decision and who has responsibility for mistakes and errors.”

Spanish manager has been appointed South Korea’s interim head coach following a disastrous World Cup campaign.

South Korea’s new interim football coach Robert Moreno has denied allegations that he relied on artificial intelligence during his last coaching role but admitted to using technology in his work.

Addressing his first news conference as the Taegeuk Warriors’ temporary coach on Monday, Moreno promised to make South Korean football fans “happy”.

The Spaniard was appointed as the Asian giants’ temporary coach following a disastrous few months for the team and the country’s football federation, during which on-field results and off-field controversies left the fans bitterly disappointed.

Moreno, who was forced to deny earlier this year that he used ChatGPT to prepare for games, will be in charge for friendly matches in the coming months.

He addressed allegations that he used artificial intelligence during his time in charge of Russian club Sochi, saying “It was a piece of news that is completely false and went viral.”

Moreno left the top-flight side in September 2025 after a poor run of results, and reports said he had heavily relied on ChatGPT in his role, even using it to decide between potential signings.

“Obviously, I use technology,” he said.

“Anyone who spends 10 minutes looking into it can see that everything has been taken out of context and put together to cause harm.”

The Korea Football Association (KFA) said Moreno could stay on for the Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia in January-February, “subject to an evaluation”.

Moreno named captain Son Heung-min in his squad for four upcoming home friendlies and said he wanted to put a smile back on South Korean fans’ faces.

“We’re going to try to do our work honestly and with the aim of making all Korean football fans happy,” said the 48-year-old, who is the first Spaniard to coach South Korea.

“Good matches, and trying to help the players.”

Moreno will lead the team against Ecuador and Uruguay in September and Venezuela and Uzbekistan in October.

South Korea had been without a coach since Hong Myung-bo quit following their shock group-stage exit from the World Cup in North America in June.

Hong’s departure did little to quell public outrage over the disappointing campaign and added fuel to pre-existing questions about how he was hired.

Police raided KFA headquarters last month as part of an investigation into Hong’s 2024 appointment.

The KFA also apologised for allegations that it provided sexual entertainment for foreign referees.

Moreno named striker Son, now in the United States’ Major League Soccer with Los Angeles FC, in his first squad along with Atletico Madrid’s Lee Kang-in and Bayern Munich’s Kim Min-jae.

Hong’s decision to leave Son on the bench in the first half of the decisive match against South Africa at the World Cup baffled and angered many supporters.

“We’re all aware of Son’s versatility,” said Moreno.

“For me, he can play in three positions.”

California lawmakers are calling for emergency legislation and criminal penalties for creators of rogue AI systems after top AI executives publicly claimed that their technology poses existential threats to humanity.

After Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei wrote in a Sept. 12 essay that they “must slow the pace” of the technology, Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) blasted him for not going “nearly far enough” to make sure artificial intelligence was erected with guardrails.

The answer, Khanna argued, was simple: Make the companies liable for the harm executives say looks increasingly inevitable.

“If you’re creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you should either face liability or criminal sanction,” Khanna said in a video posted to X on Saturday. “That is what we need to protect humanity.”

In July, officials from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, disclosed that, unbeknownst to them, its AI models had hacked into rival startup Hugging Face.

Amodei said he believed that, within the next year, “given the accelerating rate of AI capability development,” a similar incident could lead to AI “taking over the entire internet.”

Amodei warned in his essay that AI was rapidly improving itself, through a process known as recursive self-improvement, which threatened to outpace humans’ ability to control it. Khanna argued that banning this capability was the “most obvious” thing Anthropic could do.

“We need to stop, ban self-improving AI,” Khanna said. “You can not have recursive self-improving AI that basically is able to improve itself and exceed human capability.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) expressed similar outrage over the weekend, calling on House Speaker Mike Johnson to call lawmakers back to Washington to pass guardrails on the technology now that he said multiple AI companies had conceded “what they are creating is not safe.”

xAI Chief Executive Elon Musk and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman joined Amodei’s call for a slowdown of the breakneck development Saturday.

The statements come after Jacob Coxon, who worked as a researcher at both Anthropic and OpenAI, said in a widely circulated post that he resigned from the company in protest after becoming convinced the tech giants were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment.

“This is a direct result of the trump Administration letting the AI industry run wild,” Lieu wrote on X. “That mistake has harmed America, harmed the industry and harmed the American people. November is coming.”

Former President Barack Obama urged Democrats this week to make AI oversight the core of their agenda and said presidential candidates in 2028 should have a “clear plan” for responding to concerns about the technology, the New York Times reported. Americans appear increasingly alarmed by the technology with seven in 10 polled in March opposing local construction of data centers that power AI technology, according to a Gallup survey.

During a Sunday appearance on CNN, Johnson rebuffed the idea that lawmakers should rush into an emergency session to consider erecting industry guardrails. Instead, he said lawmakers needed to be careful to “not smother American innovation.”

“We will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We don’t need everyone to panic right now.”

Trump said earlier this week that he is not concerned with the pace of AI progress, telling one reporter, “It’s going to be fine.” American AI companies have long argued too much government regulation would shackle them in a race with China.

Calls for a federal fix were echoed this week by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has argued the Trump administration needs to move on national legislation to prepare for fallout from the technology.

Newsom signed bills this week aimed at creating a pathway for outside audits of the top AI companies, many of which are based in California, and a registry for AI auditors.

“The scale and potential consequences of this technology demand sustained action from every level of government,” Newsom said in a statement. “The federal government must step forward with robust, national regulations that match the urgency of this moment.”

Efforts to impose state-level regulations have been mixed, with critics echoing Johnson’s fears that they will stifle innovation.

Late last month, California lawmakers passed sweeping new safeguards around social media, artificial intelligence and data centers, including the ones Newsom signed last week.

Newsom will now decide the fate of the rest of the bills. He has previously vetoed some bills aimed at restricting big tech.

Newsom’s signal that he supports creating some regulation for AI comes two years after he vetoed SB 1047, an AI safety bill that would have required developers to submit safety protocols to the state attorney general, who could hold companies liable if the AI model they directly controlled were to threaten public safety. That legislation would also have required tech firms to be able to turn off the models they directly control if things went awry.

Newsom said at the time the bill would give the public a “false sense of security,” without making a sufficient distinction between the kinds of uses for which AI is deployed.

The bill was supported by a host of prominent AI researchers, but was opposed by Meta, OpenAI and industry groups.

DUBLIN — President Trump on Sunday again played down the need for his administration to check the development of artificial intelligence, saying he worried about ceding America’s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.

While acknowledging the need for some regulation, Trump provided no specifics about potential rules and attributed warnings about the technology moving too quickly and with little oversight to “negative forces” he did not identify, though industry pioneers have raised such concerns.

“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that … shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump told reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland. “But whoever wins with AI wins.”

The president has made similar comments in the last week. His remarks Sunday came a day after Dario Amodei, chief executive of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, said the industry should put the brakes on its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Other AI corporate leaders, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, chief of OpenAI, publicly agreed with Amodei.

Asked by a reporter if the industry should slow down or be regulated, Trump said, after watching a golfer tee off in the Irish Open at his resort in Doonbeg, that the United States is leading China in the development of AI, and, “frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the U.S. next week to meet with Trump, and AI seems certain to be among the items they discuss.

AI has become a major election-year issue in the U.S. as some of the country’s largest companies seed small towns with a national network of computing warehouses while Americans from across the political spectrum increasingly voice concerns about less farmland and water supplies and rising electricity bills. Trump has kept up his support for data centers even as both Republicans and Democrats run from them and many communities try to block them.

Former President Obama said his party should make AI a campaign issue.

“I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this.’ … I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement. Where is that going to hit? How are we going to respond?” he said at an event last week with the top Democrat in the House, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, according to a transcript released by his office.

Next steps

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council at the White House, said he expects meetings will be held this week involving administration officials who oversee cyber and science and technology policy to discuss the next steps. Trump also could meet with members of Congress, some of whom have also been sounding alarms about the fast pace of AI development.

“I think the president wants to hear from them as well,” Hassett said.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the need for “some guardrails, some safety measures” so AI “doesn’t run away.” But he echoed Trump’s position that he wants to ensure the U.S. does not “lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat.”

Johnson (R-La.) said industry leaders need to be summoned for “one big meeting and work this out together in the same room.” He said he has discussed the issue with Trump and believes a meeting held quickly should be the “next step.”

“So we’re going to pull everybody together and make sure we do this in the right way,” Johnson said, adding that it is a “top priority for me and for the Congress.”

“But we don’t need everybody to panic right now,” Johnson said.

Jeffries criticized Republican leaders for allowing members to go back to their districts for the final part of September.

“We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, … the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that AI is proceeding safely,” Jeffries said. Action on AI will be a “high priority” when House Democrats meet Tuesday as a group.

Neither Johnson nor Jeffries provided concrete steps about what Congress might do. Lawmakers agree that more guardrails are needed, but even narrow attempts at imposing rules have fallen apart over the years, evidence of the congressional reluctance to regulate the technology industry.

Cooperation between U.S. and China urged

Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee who resigned over AI concerns and has gone public with his fears, argued for international rules along with self-regulation by the industry.

Coxon said he has grown concerned that AI models would soon gain capabilities that could exceed human control.

“You’re building a human-level or superhuman-level mind, without understanding what it wants, or thinks, or the way it thinks,” Coxon said.

At a time of a fierce global competition for AI dominance, Coxon also urged cooperation between the U.S. and China, the two countries who are leading the race, to slow down and address safety.

“I do hope that the people in China who are looking at the same problems as we are, so they’re trying to build the same technology, will come to the same conclusion that it has to be done in a measured manner, and it should be easy to cooperate on some sort of mutual — of mutual slowing,” Coxon said.

Otherwise, he said, “we risk running the same race with China, which could be equally dangerous,.”

White House challenges AI leaders

Tech founder and investor David Sacks responded to the AI leaders’ calls for regulation with a social media post challenging them. Sacks, co-chairman of a White House advisory council on science and technology, said Amodei and others are the ones setting the pace for development.

Sacks said they have the power to slow development on their own.

“The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it,” Sacks wrote.

Superville and Tang write for the Associated Press. Tang reported from Washington.

The People’s Republic of China achieved a historic and unprecedented participation in the second edition of the El Alamein International Aerospace Exhibition (EIAS 2026), which was held at El Alamein International Airport from September 8 to 10, 2026. The Chinese participation came just days after the conclusion of the joint Egyptian-Chinese air force exercises Eagles of Civilization 2026. The significance of this Chinese military presence lay in the display of a fully integrated and realistic combat air system, not merely models. In this context, the Egyptian researcher will attempt to divide the significance of China’s participation in the El Alamein Air Show into several key areas, including:

– First: China’s prominent participation in the El Alamein International Air and Space Show in Egypt as a strategic shift in the regional arms market

Here, China’s extensive participation in the El Alamein International Air and Space Show constitutes a significant strategic shift in the regional arms market. Beijing has moved beyond the traditional approach of selling individual military components to present itself as a supplier of comprehensive and integrated air combat systems, competing with Western and American powers in the Middle East and Africa. China’s participation in the El Alamein International Air and Space Exhibition focused on several strategic axes to promote and analyze the concept of a full-suite solution. This was achieved by emphasizing that China does not simply sell aircraft but rather offers a comprehensive defense solution, encompassing attack fighters, logistics support aircraft, aerial refueling, and command and control systems, known as C4ISR.

The People’s Liberation Army of China sought to highlight China’s military and defense role and promote the Chinese model as a ready-made competitive alternative. This was done by showcasing the competitive advantages of Chinese defense industries, such as the absence of complex political conditions, rapid delivery, and comprehensive technology transfer to Middle Eastern and African markets. Furthermore, the focus was on the geopolitical depth, linking the Chinese presence in El Alamein to Beijing’s broader vision of strengthening security and economic partnerships with countries in the region.

– Second: Showcasing the most prominent Chinese aircraft platforms participating for the first time outside of China at the El Alamein exhibition

As for the most prominent Chinese aircraft platforms participating for the first time outside of China, for the first time in its history, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) showcased four of its latest operational aircraft models at an air show outside of China. The most prominent of these were

– The Chinese J-16 multirole fighter (J-16)

This air superiority and heavy ground attack fighter garnered widespread international attention.

– The Chinese YY-20A aerial refueling tanker (YY-20A)

This Chinese heavy transport aircraft provides refueling to extend the operational range of fighter jets.

– The Chinese KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft (KJ-500)

This represents an airborne command and control system.

– The Chinese Z-20K military helicopter (Z-20K)

This is a multi-role helicopter designed for search and rescue and tactical operations.

Regarding the Chinese weapons and drones on display at the El Alamein International Air and Space Exhibition, the AVIC (Aerospace Industries of China) showcased its advanced defense capabilities in the outdoor exhibition area through:

– A demonstration of the Chinese Wing Loong-10B stealth drone (Wing Loong-10B):

This is a high-altitude, long-range unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed for reconnaissance and precision strikes.

– A demonstration of Chinese smart munitions and missiles:

The Chinese drone was displayed surrounded by advanced air-to-air missiles, such as the PL-108 & PL-12AE. In addition to a demonstration of the Chinese anti-radar and anti-radiation missile (YJ-9ER1).

– Third: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) showcased its capabilities through a technical display (capability integration), dividing its export-available air systems into functional groups for attack, others for support and refueling, and a third group for command and control, during China’s extensive participation in the El Alamein Air Show in Egypt.

In this context, the PLA sought to leverage China’s extensive participation in the El Alamein Air Show in Egypt as a new and strategic launchpad for China in North Africa. This included showcasing the size of the Chinese pavilion and the equipment on display, such as aerobatic aircraft and unmanned combat aerobatics. The Chinese Ministry of Defense emphasized the technical aspects of this capability integration display, highlighting the division of its export-available air systems into functional groups for attack, others for support and refueling, and a third group for command and control. As follows:

■ The offensive functional groups were represented by a display of China’s modern fighter jets and attack drones, such as the Wing Loong family.

■ As for the support and refueling functional groups, China’s strategic transport and aerial refueling aircraft, such as the Y-20, were showcased.

■ The third functional group focused on (command and control), with China displaying its early warning aircraft and airborne command centers.

– Fourth: Analyzing and understanding the strategic dimensions of China’s participation in the El Alamein International Air and Space Exhibition, aimed at attracting more interest in the Chinese aerospace sector and promoting widespread military sales of Chinese military, defense, and armament equipment

Thus, we can analyze and understand the strategic dimensions of China’s participation in the El Alamein International Air and Space Exhibition, which aimed to attract more interest in the Chinese aerospace sector and promote widespread military sales of Chinese military, defense, and armament equipment. Therefore, we find that the extensive Chinese presence at the El Alamein International Air and Space Exhibition constitutes a genuine breakthrough. Beijing did not aim to promote individual pieces but rather to demonstrate its ability to provide a comprehensive and integrated air combat system, encompassing attack, support, refueling, and command, as a competitive alternative in the Middle Eastern and African markets.

Analyzing the economic and strategic dimensions of China’s extensive participation in the El Alamein exhibition, we observe the extent to which the Chinese People’s Liberation Army focused on achieving broad military exposure for its participation during the exhibition. This included showcasing how these Chinese defense, military, and air systems can reduce operating costs for purchasing countries while ensuring their independence in defense decision-making, without imposing political conditions or prior operational restrictions, unlike many Western and American systems.

California, home to the world’s largest tech companies, is placing more guardrails around social media and artificial intelligence as child safety concerns escalate.

On Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed more than 10 bills aimed at keeping young people safe online.

From suicides to sextortion, parents and their children are wrestling with how social media and AI chatbots could be harming people’s mental and physical health. The anxiety comes as technology becomes more powerful, playing a bigger role in classrooms, offices and homes.

California lawmakers have tried to tackle online safety concerns for years and they’ve faced intense lobbying from tech companies with deep pockets. The state’s laws have a disproportionate impact on the global tech industry because so many of the field’s titans are based here.

“We cannot hand children technology engineered by some of the most sophisticated companies in the world, and then place the burden on kids to defend themselves against it,” said California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom in a news conference Thursday in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The California governor, who has tried to strike a balance between safety concerns and supporting innovation, has rejected online safety bills in the past that he thought were too restrictive or premature.

The batch of new legislation includes Senate Bill 1119, which would require companion chatbot operators to assess risks, notify parents in certain cases if their child threatened to harm themselves, and take other safety steps.

Lawmakers named the bill Adam’s Law, after Adam Raine, a California teen who died by suicide in 2025 after conversing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The teen’s parents sued OpenAI, alleging in the lawsuit that ChatGPT provided information about suicide methods that the teen used. OpenAI and Pinterest publicly expressed support for the bill on Thursday.

Adam Raine’s mom, Maria, said in the news conference that the new law will help save lives and hopes that other states will enact similar legislation.

“Powerful AI companionship chatbots were unleashed on our kids with vastly inadequate protections. Adam was an early adopter of AI, and so many of us parents did not understand the dangers back then,” said Maria Raine, who came to the event with a photo of her son.

At the event, Democratic and Republican politicians shared their experiences as parents who have seen firsthand how technology affects children.

Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) said parents are seeing anxiety and depression among children who grew up in front of screens.

“That anxiety is because the pace of technology is moving faster than government can put guardrails in, and that’s left families across the state struggling to figure out how to keep their kids safe,” Lowenthal said.

Lowenthal introduced Assembly Bill 1709, which Newsom also signed. It would bar certain online platforms from providing an “addictive feature” such as autoplay and feeds that display recommended content to users under 16 years old.

Tech industry groups opposed the bill, raising concerns that it could cut off access to social media’s benefits, such as people’s ability to connect with family and friends. Tech industry groups such as TechNet say that lawmakers should enforce current laws to strengthen parental controls rather than pass new ones.

NetChoice, which has sued California and other states to block the enforcement of new online safety laws, said in a statement that the group has First Amendment concerns about the new bills Newsom signed.

“The state cannot simply describe speech as addictive and then claim a right to regulate access to it,” said Zach Lilly, Director of Government Affairs at NetChoice. “Whether the governor and legislature choose to respect it, Californians have a right to express themselves, and NetChoice will continue to fight for that right.”

The new safety restrictions come as tech companies, including Meta, Google and others, face more scrutiny over how they design products. The companies have suffered several legal blows in courtrooms in California this year.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed in August to pay up to $17 billion and make child-safety changes to resolve a multistate lawsuit. The lawsuit accused the tech company of designing and deploying harmful features while misleading the public about them.

As part of the settlement, Meta said it would impose time limits and mute notifications during certain hours for teens. Young people would also have the option to choose to view a non-algorithmic social media feed that isn’t personalized and disable autoplay.

Earlier this year, Meta and YouTube also lost a social media addiction lawsuit in Los Angeles.

While new legislation goes further than the settlements, some countries have passed stricter restrictions on social media. Last year, Australia started banning social media for children under 16, though enforcement has posed a challenge because teens are finding ways to get around the restriction.

Newsom, who pushed for federal regulation, said that he thinks California’s approach to social media is “better” than Australia’s because children are “all figuring out a way to game that system.”

“This is about the features themselves. This is about actually addressing the problem, the scrolling, the algorithms,” he said.

Safety concerns around technology have also heightened as companies double down on advancing artificial intelligence.

This week, a researcher for AI company Anthropic said he left the company over concerns that AI companies, including OpenAI, are “gambling with our lives” as they race ahead to improve AI that could surpass human intelligence.

The researcher, Jacob Coxon, shared a viral social media post that said: “People building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Newsom signaled the work to protect children isn’t over.

“We need to move, but one thing we’re not doing is we’re not sitting back and we’re not letting it rip,” he said.