Arm licence verdict shakes chips, China eyes AI export curbs

Samantha: Welcome to The State of Tech, The European Edition, Saturday October seventeen, 2026. I'm Samantha Lawrence.

Bob: And I'm Bob Russell. Today: a Delaware jury rattles the chip world with a verdict against Arm, China moves to lock down its homegrown AI, Google signs up CNN and hundreds more publishers for its AI news program, a global surge in Gmail account takeovers, and to close out, two things you can actually try this weekend: the free open-source sketching tool Drawpile, and the European flight-tracking app Flightradar24. Let's start with the chip story.

Delaware jury finds Arm breached its licence with Qualcomm, sending Arm and AMD stocks down five percent.

Samantha: A Delaware jury has ruled that British chip designer Arm breached its architecture licence agreement with Qualcomm. The verdict landed hard. Arm shares dropped around five percent, AMD slid by a similar margin, and Taiwan Semiconductor, the giant foundry that actually makes most of these chips, lost roughly two percent. For a company whose entire business is renting out blueprints, a ruling that says you broke your own licence terms is not a small headline. A second ruling, this one on Arm's newest chip architecture, is expected next week.

Bob: And that is why this matters beyond one courtroom. Arm sits at the base of almost every smartphone on the planet, a lot of laptops now, and a growing slice of data centre chips. Its revenue model is licence fees up front, then royalties on every chip shipped. If courts start redrawing where those licences end, the royalty maths behind the whole industry wobbles. Qualcomm argued it had the right to use Arm technology it picked up through its Nuvia acquisition. The jury agreed. Expect every other Arm licensee to re-read their contracts this weekend.

Samantha: There is a European layer here too. Arm is headquartered in Cambridge, and it is one of the few globally critical chip design firms Europe can point to, even if it is majority owned by Japan's SoftBank and listed in New York. A verdict that threatens its licensing model indirectly threatens a strategic European technology asset. European carmakers, telecom equipment makers, and industrial groups all design products around Arm cores. If licence terms get tighter or more expensive to settle legal risk, those costs eventually flow through to European buyers.

Bob: There is also the supply chain angle. The share price drop at Taiwan Semiconductor on the same news tells you investors see this as a system-wide issue, not just an Arm problem. If Arm becomes more cautious about who it licenses what to, chip designers in Europe pursuing custom silicon, from automotive to AI accelerators, could face longer negotiations and narrower terms. The second ruling next week is the one to watch, because it covers Arm's current generation architecture, the one powering products shipping right now.

Samantha: The broader signal is that the quiet legal plumbing of the chip industry is becoming very loud. For years the licensing model just worked. Now juries are being asked to decide what counts as a breach, and the answers are moving markets by billions in an afternoon. For European policymakers already nervous about chip sovereignty, this is another reminder that the industry's foundations are more fragile than the glossy fab announcements suggest.

China proposes sweeping export controls on advanced AI models, agents and chip designs.

Bob: China has published a draft proposal to add advanced artificial intelligence technologies to its export control list. We are talking large language models, autonomous AI agents, and chip designs for high-performance AI products. The restrictions would cover the core technical ingredients, model weights and source code included. Beijing frames it as a security measure, pointing to risks of misuse against critical infrastructure, defence systems, and government networks by hostile actors.

Samantha: The symmetry with Washington is striking. For three years the United States has been tightening export controls on advanced chips and chip-making equipment going into China. Now China is building its own export control regime pointing outward. The subtext is that Beijing believes its homegrown AI, companies like DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, and Moonshot AI, has become valuable enough to protect. That is a quiet confidence statement in itself. A couple of years ago the assumption was that Chinese AI was mostly catching up. This proposal says it is now worth guarding.

Bob: For European companies, this is awkward. A number of European firms have been quietly experimenting with open Chinese models because they are capable, cheap, and often openly licensed. If model weights and source code fall under export controls, that pipeline could narrow or get wrapped in paperwork overnight. The same goes for any European chip designer collaborating with Chinese partners on AI accelerator designs. The draft is open for consultation, so the final scope is not fixed yet.

Samantha: The bigger picture is a global AI supply chain splitting into blocs. US controls on one side, Chinese controls on the other, and Europe sitting in the middle trying to maintain access to both. Brussels has its own AI Act focused on safety and rights rather than export controls, which means Europe is regulating differently from both superpowers. The practical effect for European firms could be more compliance work, slower access to the newest Chinese open models, and renewed pressure on Europe to invest in genuinely sovereign AI capacity rather than borrowing from either side.

Samantha: Quick interruption. If you listen to The State of Tech regularly, hit that like button and subscribe, that way you'll never miss an episode. Okay, moving on.

Google signs CNN, the Financial Times, Axios and over four hundred publishers into its AI news licensing program.

Bob: Google has significantly expanded its AI news licensing program. CNN, the Financial Times, Axios, and more than four hundred global publishers in total have now signed on. The deal lets Google use their content inside its generative AI features, with the promise of proper attribution and direct links back to the original sources. Google says the point is better audience engagement for publishers and better answers for users. The timing is not accidental. News organisations around the world are suing AI companies over unlicensed scraping, so a formal programme with payments and attribution is Google's attempt to get ahead of the lawsuits.

Samantha: The Financial Times is the most interesting name on that list from a European perspective. It is a premium paywalled publication with a global reputation, and its decision to license content to a generative AI system is a signal to other European publishers. For years the industry's position was closer to resistance. Now the biggest names are experimenting with being inside the tent. Whether the revenue actually matches what publishers lose in direct traffic as AI answers replace clicks is the question nobody has answered yet.

Bob: And that is the uncomfortable arithmetic. When Google's AI summarises an FT story with a link, the reader may feel they already have the answer and never click through. Publishers get a licence fee, but potentially fewer subscribers. For smaller European outlets without the FT's brand power, the balance could be worse. Regulators in Brussels and Paris, who have spent years forcing Google to pay for news snippets under the Copyright Directive, will be watching this programme closely to see whether it undercuts the frameworks they fought for.

Samantha: The attribution point is worth taking seriously though. One of the loudest complaints about generative AI has been that it strip-mines publishers without credit. A formal programme with named sources and direct links is at least a structural improvement. The real test will be whether four hundred publishers today becomes four thousand next year, and whether the terms stay publisher-friendly once Google no longer needs the public relations win.

Global surge in Gmail account takeovers prompts coordinated response from Google and law enforcement.

Bob: Security teams and law enforcement around the world are tracking a sharp rise in attempts to hack Gmail accounts. We are talking phishing campaigns, credential stuffing where attackers try leaked passwords in bulk, SIM swapping to intercept text message codes, and targeted social engineering. All of it aimed at taking over accounts. Google says it is rolling out additional product protections and new user guidance, while investigators pursue the groups behind the campaigns.

Samantha: Gmail is not just email. For most people it is the recovery address for banking, shopping, social media, government portals, and work accounts. Lose the Gmail, and an attacker can walk into almost everything else. That is why account takeover is so lucrative, and why these campaigns keep scaling. The specific techniques are not new, but the volume and coordination are. SIM swapping in particular has become industrialised, with criminal groups bribing or tricking mobile operator staff to transfer a victim's number to a new SIM.

Bob: For European users the practical takeaway is unglamorous but real. Move away from text message codes for two-factor authentication where possible, and switch to an authenticator app or a physical security key. Both are supported by Gmail and cost nothing or very little. Passkeys, which use your device's biometric lock instead of a password, are also widely available now across major services and are significantly harder for these attacks to defeat.

Samantha: European mobile operators also carry some of the responsibility here. SIM swapping works because the handover process is often too easy. Several European regulators have already pushed operators to tighten identity checks before porting a number, but enforcement varies by country. The current surge is likely to add pressure for a more uniform standard across the EU, especially as digital identity wallets roll out and more services get tied to a single mobile number.

Drawpile is the free open-source app that turns any laptop into a shared drawing canvas for friends, students, or remote teams.

Bob: To close out, two things you can actually try today. The first is Drawpile. It is a free, open-source drawing programme that does something most paid tools still make awkward: it lets multiple people draw on the same canvas at the same time, over the internet, in real time. Think of it as a shared sketchbook. Anyone with the app, which runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, can join a session with a simple link or server address. There is also a web version for anyone who does not want to install anything.

Samantha: Drawpile is popular with illustration teachers, remote art clubs, and anyone running a creative session with friends or kids. It handles pressure-sensitive drawing tablets properly, supports layers like any serious art app, and includes a built-in chat so you can talk while you draw. Because it is open source, you can either join one of the free public servers or host your own, which is useful for schools or small studios that want to keep sessions private.

Bob: The European angle on this one is practical rather than regulatory. Drawpile is maintained by a Finnish developer and the community is heavily European. It costs nothing, works offline for solo use, and when you do connect to others, the self-hosting option means your sessions do not have to touch any big cloud. For teachers running remote classes, parents entertaining children on a rainy weekend, or distributed design teams brainstorming visually, it slots in where video calls fall short. Download takes a couple of minutes.

Samantha: The small catch worth mentioning is that the public server experience depends on who else is on it, so for anything sensitive or professional, the self-hosted route is the one to go for. Setup is straightforward, with instructions on the project's website. If you have never tried collaborative drawing, start by opening a public session with a friend and sketching something silly for ten minutes. The gap between that and a paid tool with similar features is remarkable.

Flightradar24 turns your phone into a live map of every plane in the sky, perfect for weekend travellers and plane-spotters.

Bob: The second thing to try is Flightradar24. It is a Swedish service that shows you, in real time, where almost every commercial aircraft in the world is at this moment. Open the app or website, and you see a world map covered in little plane icons. Tap any one, and you get the airline, flight number, origin, destination, altitude, speed, and often the exact aircraft type. The basic version is free on iPhone, Android, and in any browser.

Samantha: It sounds like a toy, and it partly is, but it is also genuinely useful. If you are picking someone up from the airport, you can see whether their flight is actually on time rather than trusting the airline board. If a flight you are on is delayed, you can often see why, because the inbound aircraft is still somewhere over the Atlantic. During weather disruption or airspace closures, Flightradar24 is often faster and clearer than official sources, which is why newsrooms across Europe quietly rely on it.

Bob: The data comes from a global network of volunteer receivers, many of them in Europe, that pick up signals aircraft broadcast about their own position. That means coverage is strongest over Europe, North America, and busy air corridors, and thinner over oceans and remote regions. The free tier gives you most of what a casual user needs. There is a paid tier for people who want historical playback, filters by aircraft type, and longer tracking histories, but you really do not need it unless you are deep into aviation.

Samantha: For European users there is a small privacy point worth noting. The service is based in Sweden and operates under European data protection rules. For a casual look-up or airport pickup, no account is needed at all. If you have ever wondered what that plane overhead actually is, point your phone at the sky in the app and it will tell you. It is one of those tools that quietly makes the world a little more legible.

Samantha: Today we covered: the Delaware verdict against Arm shaking the chip industry, China's draft export controls on advanced AI, Google signing CNN and the FT into its AI news program, the global surge in Gmail account takeovers, and two things to try yourself: the free collaborative drawing app Drawpile, and the live flight-tracking service Flightradar24.

Bob: Want to know more or react? Visit stateoftech.eu or email us at info@doorzetters.net.

Bob: State of Tech, the tech world in 15 minutes.