China & Russia AI ecosystems, read in the original

Parallel Frontier reads China's and Russia's AI worlds in the original: primary sources, translated and explained, new issues weekly. The name nods to 平行智能 ("parallel intelligence"), a real term in Chinese AI research.

Latest issue
Issue Nº 2 · 9 July 2026
From Scratch, For Whom?
GigaChat 3.1 Ultra and T-pro 2.0 are real domestic builds. The story this quarter isn't the capability gain, it's the distribution strategy: sovereignty repackaged as a Global South export pitch, with a new AI law to match.
Parallel Frontier is written by Caroline Swartz. Chinese language & politics (NYU), Russian politics MSc (KCL), Mandarin SIGINT spanning defensive and offensive cyber operations, security operations leadership, short- and long-form reporting in five languages, AI safety research, and an MA in computational linguistics in progress (UCL).