US Strikes Iran for Eighth Day, Targets Hormuz Supply Lines

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an "AI-based customized news recommendation and summary service" developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items by reader type.

1. US Fighter Jets Mass, Iran Strikes Gulf Power Plants...Return to Early War

- Key Summary: As the United States carried out nighttime airstrikes on Iran for eight consecutive days without a single break starting on the 11th of this month, expanding the scope of attacks to civilian facilities such as railways, bridges and airports, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the purpose of the strikes was to cut off supply lines leading to port cities and naval bases that Iran uses for ship attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran also struck a power plant and seawater desalination facility in Kuwait and a US military drone base in Bahrain, while in the Strait of Hormuz three oil tankers were hit and exploded one after another within three days. Meanwhile, according to the US online outlet Axios, the US military notified an Israeli air force base of plans to reinforce aerial refueling tankers, rebuilding a level of force equivalent to that at the outbreak of the war on February 28 this year. Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, warned that "if the US military's attacks continue for two to three days, we will enter a phase of full-scale offensive and destructive operations."

2. Fearing China Overtaking, Trump Speeds Up Self-Regulation After Haphazard AI Controls

- Key Summary: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reviewing a plan to establish an independent regulatory body to review the safety of AI models, and this body is likely to take a form supervised by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), similar to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a private self-regulatory body overseeing securities firms. This is interpreted as a measure to resolve growing regulatory uncertainty in the AI industry, as Anthropic temporarily suspended some model services due to export control measures and friction arose with the government over the release of OpenAI's flagship model. Amid this, according to the AI model marketplace OpenRouter, Chinese models occupied all of the top five spots in weekly token usage as of the 13th of this month, including Tencent's Hy3, Xiaomi's "MiMo-V2.5," DeepSeek's "V4 Flash," MiniMax's "M3," and Zhipu AI's "GLM 5.2." As Chinese AI startup Moonshot unveiled "Kimi K3," the world's largest open-weight model with 2.8 trillion parameters, forecasts are emerging that the spread of Chinese AI armed with cost-performance value will accelerate even further.

3. Supercomputer Built by Bundling 8,000 Chinese Chips...Breaking US Rules with Gum Strategy

- Key Summary: Huawei unveiled its supernode-based supercomputing system "Atlas 950 SuperPoD," which connects 8,192 of its own "Ascend 950" chips through an ultra-high-speed communication network, at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), and the company said it reaches 6.7 times the level of Nvidia's next-generation products on key computing power indicators. This is assessed as a case demonstrating the effectiveness of the "chip bundling" strategy, which achieves performance by efficiently connecting multiple chips in a situation where securing high-performance chips is blocked by US advanced semiconductor export controls. DeepSeek's "V4," unveiled in the first half of this year, is also known to have been trained based on this system. In addition, Chinese big tech firms such as Alibaba and MiniMax showcased a wide range of smart devices such as AI-equipped glasses, earphones and companion robots, accelerating AI commercialization based on their complete manufacturing supply chains. According to market research firm IDC, the share held by Chinese companies in global AI glasses shipments this year is projected to reach 45 percent.

4. Chey Tae-won: "Countries' Memory Demand at Utter-Chaos Level...Fast Expansion Is Korea's Chip Lifeline"

- Key Summary: Chey Tae-won, Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Chairman of SK Group, said at a press meeting at the 49th Jeju Forum of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry that even limited to the AI field, demand will increase by at least 60 to 100 percent next year, and even looking at semiconductors overall, demand will increase by at least 50 to 60 percent or more, while supply increases will be almost nonexistent, widening the supply-demand gap to a level of "utter chaos." He defined the current high semiconductor prices as "abnormal" and expressed the view that Korea's semiconductor industry can develop only if it protects the market by increasing supply even at lower margins. Meanwhile, SK Group has decided to invest 400 trillion won in the southwestern region to build a new semiconductor production base in response to the surge in AI-driven memory demand, and it will also move up its plan for the Yongin cluster, originally scheduled for completion in 2045, by 12 years. Regarding US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's pressure on Korean semiconductor companies to invest in the United States, Chey said, "We should build not only in the Honam region but also in the United States if possible," indicating he is searching worldwide for the optimal expansion site.

5. "AI Made in China Too"...Countering US with Open Models

- Key Summary: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in his keynote speech at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) that the scale of China's core AI industry had surpassed 1 trillion yuan (about 190 trillion won) by actively pushing the "AI Plus (+, a strategy to generate profit by combining AI with manufacturing and consumer goods) Action Plan." He said, "AI development must be a symphony through international cooperation, not a solo run by one country," revealing his intention to lead open AI international norms in a move aimed at US AI export controls. In addition, China officially launched an international AI cooperation body involving 29 countries, including Russia and Brazil, one day before the opening of WAIC, countering the US-led AI supply chain community "Pax Silica." Xi also presented a plan to provide 5,000 AI-related training opportunities to developing countries over the next five years, appearing to court the "Global South" (developing countries mainly located in the Southern Hemisphere).

6. Two US Troops Killed in Action, Iran Scraps MOU...Guns Grow Louder in the Middle East

- Key Summary: In the course of Iran attacking Gulf regions such as Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, a US military base in Jordan was struck, leaving two US troops killed in action and one missing, and AP News reported that since the outbreak of the war in February this year