U.S. President Trump Meets With China's President Xi And Attends State Banquet

Tesla CEO Elon Musk applauds during a state banquet hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14, 2026, in Beijing, China (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Tesla says FSD is “available” in China. What does that actually mean?

We’ll let you know when someone besides Tesla — like China — confirms.

Rani Molla

5/21/26 9:24AM

Wednesday evening, Tesla declared on X that its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) technology is “now available” in a number of countries, including its second-biggest market, China — news that prompted a fresh round of headlines.

The thing is, while a limited version of Tesla’s supervised FSD has been available in China since last year, it’s not clear regulators have approved the full suite of technology there. As Tesla commentator Sawyer Merritt pointed out, Tesla’s website has described FSD as “available” in China since last year, where it’s known as “Intelligent Assisted Driving.” Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the agency that oversees autonomous driving permissions, has not publicly issued a statement detailing any new approvals.

According to Chinese media Ningbo Evening News, a reporter posing as a customer contacted Tesla customer service in China asking about FSD and was told, “The company is actively advancing the approval process in accordance with relevant national regulatory requirements.”

Tesla itself has said it isn’t expecting approval until the third quarter.

“The broader approval is still not there, but we’re working with the regulators in the country, and we’re hoping that we can get approval by Q3,” CFO Vaibhav Taneja said on the company’s earnings call last month. “With these approvals coming through, we expect the broader adoption of the software in the existing fleet and incremental demand for our vehicles.”

FSD Supervised is now available in:
- United States
- Canada
- Mexico
- Puerto Rico
- China
- Australia
- New Zealand
- South Korea
- The Netherlands
- Lithuania
— Tesla (@Tesla) May 20, 2026

Tesla’s announcement came after CEO Elon Musk traveled to China last week amid ongoing trade discussions between the US and China. Tesla has been struggling to compete with EV rivals in China, some of which already have approval for autonomous driving operations, and Musk has said it’s essential for his company’s next stage of growth there. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5