China AI Digest (Jul 19, 2026)

Three podcasts, one gap between the model and the world. Hardhacker asks why Palantir's once-mocked Forward Deployed Engineer is now AI's hottest job — OpenAI and Anthropic building deployment armies, senior packages clearing $700K — because 95% of enterprise pilots die in the last kilometre. Zhang Xiaoyun spends four hours with Physical Intelligence's Kay Ke, mapping the robotics jianghu and Pi's π0→π0.7 path to a generalist robot brain. And ChinaTalk's Kevin Xu and Matt Sheehan game out Beijing's Mythos moment: a state-led frontier model, weight export controls on the table, and a form already waiting.