As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was visiting China earlier this week, a sea-green Chinese smartphone was quietly launched online. It was no normal gadget. And its launch has sparked hushed concern in Washington that U.S. sanctions have failed to prevent China from making a key technological advance. Such a development would seem to fulfill warnings from U.S. chipmakers that sanctions wouldn’t stop China, but would spur it to redouble efforts to build alternatives to U.S. technology.

IT DIDN'T TAKE long. Just months after OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot upended the startup economy, cybercriminals and hackers are claiming to have created their own versions of the text-generating technology. The systems could, theoretically at least, supercharge criminals’ ability to write malware or phishing emails that trick people into handing over their login information.