Beijing Vetoes Meta’s $2 B Manus AI Purchase

Beijing’s intervention recalls the US Committee on Foreign Investment’s 2017 veto of Canyon Bridge’s bid for Lattice Semiconductor—mirror images of great-power tech protectionism separated by a decade. It signals an acceleration of the long post-1949 pattern in which states treat cutting-edge general-purpose technologies (nuclear in the 1950s, satellites in the 1970s, telecoms in the 2000s) as strategic assets subject to sovereign control, regardless of where nominal headquarters sit. By striking at a transaction already closed and involving a firm legally domiciled in Singapore, China is asserting an extraterritorial claim over “core-origin” IP, hinting at a future where national jurisdiction follows talent and algorithms, not incorporation papers. Over a 100-year horizon this moment may mark the point when AI—like oil in the early 20th-century or chips in the late 20th—became explicitly fenced by geopolitical borders, potentially fragmenting global innovation networks and hardening a techno-bloc order reminiscent of Cold War supply chains.