Two Japanese firms just shut down their production line, cutting 25% of the world’s tungsten hexafluoride (WF₆) capacity. This is what Chinese critical minerals dominance looks like in action — slowly choking allies’ high-tech economies Kanto Denka Kogyo (sometimes referenced with Showa Denko ties) and Central Glass have notified big chipmakers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and TSMC: inventories run out in June, lines shut for good from July 1. Boom — 2,200 tons of annual global WF₆ capacity gone. This specialized gas is essential for depositing ultra-thin tungsten layers in advanced semiconductors (3D NAND, DRAM, logic chips). Without it, fabs slow or stop Why? China controls ~80% of global tungsten supply and refining. Beijing tightened export controls and licensing on strategic minerals (tungsten included) — hitting Japan hard. Shipments to Japan have plunged, raw material costs spiked, and these specialty gas producers can’t keep operating profitably or at all. Japanese firms were high-quality, reliable suppliers that Korea and others depended on for ~80% of their WF₆ in some cases This isn’t random. Japanese PM Takaichi hostile posturing against China and plan to remilitarize Japan brought about Chinese sanction of dual use critical minerals (tungsten, rare earths, etc.) to Japanese companies. Higher costs, supply chaos, lost competitiveness, and eventual factory pain ripple through the semiconductor chain. Auto, electronics, defense… all feel it downstream. Japan’s been diversifying and stockpiling, but decades of over-reliance on Chinese inputs make this a slow bleed. Allies need to accelerate onshoring, friend-shoring, and alternative processing FAST. Relying on an adversary for the guts of your chip industry isn’t strategy — it’s vulnerability The “just-in-time” global supply chain was efficient until it wasn’t. Now it’s a national security risk. Wake-up call for anyone still sleeping on critical minerals news.chemnet.com/news-6286.h…

For more than 50 years nine year old girls did better than boys in reading on the NAEP, until 2025

NEW: White House to reportedly meet with defense firms on ramping up weapons production.

There has been news about Rubin Ultra using SiC interposers instead of Silicon interposers. Will CoPoS eliminate the need for SiC interposer? Could you please shed some light on this?

BOOM *OpenAI Considers Drastic Price Cuts, Anticipating Costly War For Users With Anthropic -- WSJ

CHINA IS CONSIDERING A $295 BILLION PLAN TO ESTABLISH AI DATA CENTERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

New Science Blog: Why has AI advanced faster in coding than in biology? To agents, bio databases are like cities built before cars—maddening to drive in because they're designed for different traffic. How do we build infrastructure agents can use? anthropic.com/research/agent…

Nearly all the medical miracles attributed to GLP-1s would likely be similar to simply just losing weight.

At Computex 2026, Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said that AI infrastructure is approaching a tipping point where connectivity, not computing or memory, becomes the main bottleneck, with optics and CPO becoming essential and the advanced packaging ecosystem central to the transition. Wiwynn a leading taiwanese firm in this field also highlighted its main partners, they are Ayar Labs, GUC, Browave, Corning, FOCI, Molex, SENKO(not listed in japan) and TE Connectivity.