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  • Archive link: https://archive.ph/gDajY

    Full text (from January 21st, 2026):

    Spy Family

    The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been stepping up its efforts in the world of AI — including an eyebrow-raising use of chatbot tech.

    As the New York Times reports, the CIA has been quietly developing a platform that lets analysts “talk” to foreign leaders, in a bid to predict how they might react in certain situations. The human variety of this type of behavior-predicting analysis has been the bread and butter of the agency’s behind-the-scenes grunts for a very long time. Instead of painstakingly compiling “profiles” on world leaders based on public information and gathered intelligence, however, those analysts will engage in faux conversation with large language models (LLMs) trained on similar intelligence and information that’s presumably being fed into its training data.

    The NYT didn’t say how formally the chatbot has been deployed, or who helped develop it. However, an interview with the CIA’s first chief technology officer, ex-Pentagon AI czar Nand Mulchandani, reveals that its opacity is very much by design. Mulchadani, a Silicon Valley veteran, has a chart in his offices showing all the layers of approval it takes to get any private sector collaboration approved within the secretive agency. From handing issues with contracts to taking care of any project roadblocks, each step requires an incredible amount of bureaucracy and clandestine discussion — hurdles that the CIA acknowledges are hindering its quest to keep up with innovation and China, America’s main tech adversary.

    Training Day

    The agency’s now-CTO was, as the NYT notes, hired to help spearhead a forward-thinking sea change within the CIA. In the two-and-a-half years since he was brought on, Mulchadani has apparently made it easier for private companies to start working with the intelligence agency — and reading between the lines, it seems he’s held the hands of tech CEOs through the labyrinthine bureaucracy.

    “The more we share about how we employ technology, how we procure technology, what we’re going to do with it, will make companies want to work with us and want to team with us more,” explained Juliane Gallina, the deputy director of the CIA’s digital innovation arm, in an interview with the NYT.

    According to Gallina, the agency is looking to declassify and “expose a little bit” of its secret technological sauce to help procure private sector contracts.

    There was no mention, however, of whether the public will be given a look behind the curtain of what their tax dollars are helping to fund.

    More on spies: Hackers Apparently Stole the FBI’s Call Logs With Confidential Informants


  • Archive link: https://archive.ph/gDajY

    Full text (from January 21st, 2026):

    Spy Family

    The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been stepping up its efforts in the world of AI — including an eyebrow-raising use of chatbot tech.

    As the New York Times reports, the CIA has been quietly developing a platform that lets analysts “talk” to foreign leaders, in a bid to predict how they might react in certain situations. The human variety of this type of behavior-predicting analysis has been the bread and butter of the agency’s behind-the-scenes grunts for a very long time. Instead of painstakingly compiling “profiles” on world leaders based on public information and gathered intelligence, however, those analysts will engage in faux conversation with large language models (LLMs) trained on similar intelligence and information that’s presumably being fed into its training data.

    The NYT didn’t say how formally the chatbot has been deployed, or who helped develop it. However, an interview with the CIA’s first chief technology officer, ex-Pentagon AI czar Nand Mulchandani, reveals that its opacity is very much by design. Mulchadani, a Silicon Valley veteran, has a chart in his offices showing all the layers of approval it takes to get any private sector collaboration approved within the secretive agency. From handing issues with contracts to taking care of any project roadblocks, each step requires an incredible amount of bureaucracy and clandestine discussion — hurdles that the CIA acknowledges are hindering its quest to keep up with innovation and China, America’s main tech adversary.

    Training Day

    The agency’s now-CTO was, as the NYT notes, hired to help spearhead a forward-thinking sea change within the CIA. In the two-and-a-half years since he was brought on, Mulchadani has apparently made it easier for private companies to start working with the intelligence agency — and reading between the lines, it seems he’s held the hands of tech CEOs through the labyrinthine bureaucracy.

    “The more we share about how we employ technology, how we procure technology, what we’re going to do with it, will make companies want to work with us and want to team with us more,” explained Juliane Gallina, the deputy director of the CIA’s digital innovation arm, in an interview with the NYT.

    According to Gallina, the agency is looking to declassify and “expose a little bit” of its secret technological sauce to help procure private sector contracts.

    There was no mention, however, of whether the public will be given a look behind the curtain of what their tax dollars are helping to fund.

    More on spies: Hackers Apparently Stole the FBI’s Call Logs With Confidential Informants

























  • Listen Closely, Gallant: Handala’s Eyes and Ears Are Everywhere

    Once again, the vigilant hand of resistance has struck at the rotten heart of the occupying regime. This time, it was Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defense of the Zionist entity, who tasted the bitter flavor of disgrace, helplessness, and humiliation. Through a successful cyber operation, Handala’s sons have infiltrated Gallant’s confidential and personal systems, gaining access to all his secret communications and correspondence.

    To prove the authenticity of this operation and to ensure transparency, some of these chats and documents have been published as PoC (Proof of Concept) for the public. However, due to the high intelligence value and ongoing exploitation, the majority of the chats will not be released for now, leaving the regime’s leaders in a state of sleepless anxiety.

    So far, over 70 pages of Yoav Gallant’s contacts have been fully exposed, sending a clear message to his friends and accomplices: there is nowhere left to hide.

    At this moment, we must thank Mr. Gallant with irony and ridicule, for while he was passionately narrating his crimes, he failed to notice that Handala was listening closely! Just as we previously extracted the coordinates of the secret “Site 81” base from Gabi Ashkenazi’s emails and turned it into a missile target during the 12-day war, this time we have uncovered the exact locations of 11 ultra-secret military bases from your files. These bases will be targeted by precise missile strikes in the coming hours.

    As promised, the children of resistance are working tirelessly, day and night, to execute combined cyber and missile operations—leaving no safe haven for the enemy.

    Hand in hand, until the complete liberation of Palestine

    Handala Hack – At the heart of the battle, on the frontlines of the cyber and intelligence war

    Download PoC

    Source: https://handala-hack.tw/listen-closely-gallant-handalas-eyes-and-ears-are-everywhere/


  • Tamir Pardo files: https://link.storjshare.io/raw/jxao3m7wqhkkpx5stnhhyou6tmoa/poc/Tamir Pardo.zip

    Password: handala


    https://handala-hack.tw/from-hunter-to-hunted-mossads-former-chief-falls-into-the-trap/

    Press release (from March 25th, 2026) from Handala Hack:

    From Hunter to Hunted: Mossad’s Former Chief Falls into the Trap

    2026-03-25

    In history, there is always a moment when the hunter becomes the hunted. Today, that moment has arrived for Tamir Pardo, a name intertwined with crime and assassination.

    Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, is the very figure who stained his hands with the blood of the purest by directly issuing orders for the assassination of resistance elites, including martyr Dariush Rezaei-Nejad and martyr Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan.

    He was directly responsible for the Stuxnet project, the world’s first cyber weapon, designed to cripple Iran’s scientific and nuclear progress. Pardo, the mastermind behind the project to eliminate Iranian and Islamic scientists worldwide, has now fallen into a trap himself, and this time, there is nowhere left to hide.

    Today, Handala Hack proudly announces that it has released 14 gigabytes of Tamir Pardo’s personal and highly confidential documents as Proof of Concept (PoC). These documents will not only reveal the secrets of Mossad, but also expose the details of assassination projects and covert operations.

    Mr. Pardo!

    When you shamelessly signed the orders for the assassination of resistance elites, when you sent the Stuxnet virus to the heart of Iran’s technology, you never imagined that one day you would become the target. Today, you are not a hero but a symbol of disgrace and fear, and everything you hid is now exposed to the light of truth.

    A message to Zionism:

    We heard the silenced voices of the martyrs and today, by exposing the conspiracy documents, we have begun our revenge. No pawn is safe anywhere in the world; any pawn can be the next target at any moment.

    Stay tuned for more documents. This is just the beginning of the collapse.

    Handala Hack, the vengeful blade that neither forgets, nor forgives.



  • Part 2/2

    WoW64 is finally complete

    Even 16-bit applications work

    If NTSYNC is the headline feature, the completion of Wine’s WoW64 architecture is the change that will quietly improve everyone’s life going forward. On Windows, WoW64 (Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit) is the subsystem that lets 32-bit applications run on 64-bit systems. Wine has been working toward its own implementation of this for years, and Wine 11 marks the point where it’s officially done.

    What this means in practice is that you no longer need 32-bit system libraries installed on your 64-bit Linux system to run 32-bit Windows applications. Wine handles the translation internally, using a single unified binary that automatically detects whether it’s dealing with a 32-bit or 64-bit executable. The old days of installing multilib packages, configuring ia32-libs, or fighting with 32-bit dependencies on your 64-bit distro thankfully over.

    This might sound like a small quality-of-life improvement, but it’s a massive piece of engineering work. The WoW64 mode now handles OpenGL memory mappings, SCSI pass-through, and even 16-bit application support. Yes, 16-bit! If you’ve got ancient Windows software from the '90s that you need to run for whatever reason, Wine 11 has you covered.

    For gaming specifically, this matters because a surprising number of games, especially older ones, are 32-bit executables. Previously, getting these to work often meant wrestling with your distro’s multilib setup, which varied in quality and ease depending on whether you were on Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, or something else entirely. Now, Wine just handles it for you.

    The rest of Wine 11 isn’t just filler

    There are more fixes, too

    It’s easy to let NTSYNC and WoW64 steal the spotlight, but Wine 11 is packed to the gills with other stuff worth talking about.

    The Wayland driver has come a long way. Clipboard support now works bidirectionally between Wine and native Wayland applications, which is one of those things you don’t think about until it doesn’t work and it drives you mad. Drag-and-drop from Wayland apps into Wine windows is supported. Display mode changes are now emulated through compositor scaling, which means older games that try to switch to lower resolutions like 640x480 actually behave properly instead of leaving you with a broken desktop. If you’ve been holding off on switching from X11 to Wayland because of Wine compatibility concerns, Wine 11 removes a lot of those barriers.

    On the graphics front, EGL is now the default backend for OpenGL rendering on X11, replacing the older GLX path. Vulkan support has been bumped to API version 1.4, and there’s initial support for hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding through Direct3D 11 video APIs using Vulkan Video. That last one is particularly interesting for games and applications that use video playback for things like cutscenes or in-game streaming.

    Force feedback support has been improved for racing wheels and flight sticks, which is great news if you’re running a sim setup on Linux. As well, Bluetooth has received a new driver with BLE services and proper pairing support, MIDI soundfont handling has been improved for legacy game music, and there are a couple of minor extras like Zip64 compression support, Unicode 17.0.0 support, TWAIN 2.0 scanning for 64-bit apps, and IPv6 ping functionality.

    Thread priority management has been improved on both Linux and macOS, which helps with multi-threaded application performance beyond just the NTSYNC gains. ARM64 devices can now simulate 4K page sizes on systems with larger native pages, which keeps the door open for Wine on Arm hardware. And with more Arm-based Linux devices showing up every year, that matters more than it used to.

    Plus, there are a ton of bug fixes. Games like Nioh 2, StarCraft 2, The Witcher 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Final Fantasy XI, and Battle.net all received specific compatibility fixes, which is additional to the broader improvements made across the board that will improve performance and compatibility across significantly more titles.

    Wine 11 is a big release, and it’s not just NTSYNC that makes it the case. Sure, NTSYNC alone would have made it worth paying attention to, but combined with the WoW64 completion, the Wayland improvements, and the sheer volume of fixes, it’s the most important Wine release since Proton made Linux gaming viable. Everything built on top of Wine, from Proton to Lutris to Bottles, gets better because of it. If you play games on Linux at all, Wine 11 is worth your time trying out.


  • Full text:

    Part 1/2

    Archive link: https://archive.ph/Ze3or

    Linux gaming has come a long way. When Valve launched Proton back in 2018, it felt like a turning point, turning the Linux gaming experience from “technically possible if you’re okay with a lot of pain” to something that more or less worked. Since then, we’ve seen incremental Wine releases, each one chipping away at compatibility issues and improving performance bit by bit. Wine 10, Wine 9, and so on; each one a collection of bug fixes and small improvements that kept the ecosystem moving forward.

    Wine 11 is different. This isn’t just another yearly release with a few hundred bug fixes and some compatibility tweaks. It represents a huge number of changes and bug fixes. However, it also ships with NTSYNC support, which is a feature that has been years in the making and rewrites how Wine handles one of the most performance-sensitive operations in modern gaming. On top of that, the WoW64 architecture overhaul is finally complete, the Wayland driver has grown up a lot, and there’s a big list of smaller improvements that collectively make this feel like an all-new project.

    I should be clear: not every game is going to see a night-and-day difference. Some titles will run identically to before. But for the games that do benefit from these changes, the improvements range from noticeable to absurd. And because Proton, SteamOS, and every downstream project builds on top of Wine, those gains trickle down to everyone.

    Everything up until now was a workaround

    Esync and fsync worked, but they weren’t ideal

    If you’ve spent any time tweaking Wine or Proton settings, you’ve probably encountered the terms “esync” and “fsync” before. Maybe you toggled them on in Lutris, or noticed them in Proton launch options, without fully understanding what they do. To understand why NTSYNC matters, you need to understand the problem these solutions were all trying to solve.

    Windows games, especially modern ones, are heavily multi-threaded. Your CPU isn’t just running one thing at a time, and instead, it’s juggling rendering, physics calculations, asset streaming, audio processing, AI routines, and more, all in parallel across multiple threads. These threads need to coordinate with each other constantly. One thread might need to wait for another to finish loading a texture before it can render a frame. Another might need exclusive access to a shared resource so two threads don’t try to modify it simultaneously.

    Windows handles this coordination through what are called NT synchronization primitives… mutexes, semaphores, events, and the like. They’re baked deep into the Windows kernel, and games rely on them heavily. The problem is that Linux doesn’t have native equivalents that behave exactly the same way. Wine has historically had to emulate these synchronization mechanisms, and the way it did so was, to put it simply, not ideal.

    The original approach involved making a round-trip RPC call to a dedicated “kernel” process called wineserver every single time a game needed to synchronize between threads. For a game making thousands of these calls per second, that overhead added up fast and served to be a bottleneck. And it was a bottleneck that manifested as subtle frame stutters, inconsistent frame pacing, and games that just felt a little bit off even when the raw FPS numbers looked fine.

    Esync was the first attempt at a workaround. Developed by Elizabeth Figura at CodeWeavers, it used Linux’s eventfd system call to handle synchronization without bouncing through the wineserver. It worked, and it helped, but it had quirks. Some distros ran into issues with file descriptor limits, since every synchronization object needed its own file descriptor, and games that opened a lot of them could hit the system’s ceiling quite quickly.

    Fsync came next, using Linux futexes for even better performance. It was faster than esync in most cases, but it required out-of-tree kernel patches that never made it into the mainline Linux kernel or to upstream Wine out of the box. That meant you needed a custom or patched kernel to use it, which is fine for enthusiasts running CachyOS or Proton-GE, but not exactly accessible for the average user on Ubuntu or Fedora. Futex2, often referred to interchangeably with fsync, did make it to Linux kernel 5.16 as futex_waitv, but the original implementation of fsync isn’t that. Fsync used futex_wait_multiple, and Futex2 used futex_waitv. Applications such as Lutris still refer to it as Fsync, though. It’s still kind of fsync, but it’s not the original fsync.

    Here’s the thing about both esync and fsync: they were workarounds. Clever ones, but workarounds nonetheless. They approximated NT synchronization behavior using Linux primitives that weren’t designed for the job, and certain edge cases simply couldn’t be handled correctly. Operations like NtPulseEvent() and the “wait-for-all” mode in NtWaitForMultipleObjects() require direct control over the underlying wait queues in ways that user-space implementations just can’t reliably provide.

    NTSYNC reworks everything

    Synchronization at the kernel-level, rather than in user-space

    NTSYNC takes a completely different approach. Instead of trying to shoehorn Windows synchronization behavior into existing Linux primitives, it adds a new kernel driver that directly models the Windows NT synchronization object API. It exposes a /dev/ntsync device that Wine can talk to, and the kernel itself handles the coordination. No more round trips to wineserver, no more approximations, and the synchronization happens in the kernel, which is where it should be. And it has proper queue management, proper event semantics, and proper atomic operations.

    What makes this even better is that NTSYNC was developed by the same person who created esync and fsync in the first place. Elizabeth Figura has been working on this problem for years, iterating through multiple kernel patch revisions, presenting the work at the Linux Plumbers Conference in 2023, and pushing through multiple versions of the patch set before it was finally merged into the mainline Linux kernel with version 6.14.

    The numbers are wild. In developer benchmarks, Dirt 3 went from 110.6 FPS to 860.7 FPS, which is an impressive 678% improvement. Resident Evil 2 jumped from 26 FPS to 77 FPS. Call of Juarez went from 99.8 FPS to 224.1 FPS. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands saw gains from 130 FPS to 360 FPS. As well, Call of Duty: Black Ops I is now actually playable on Linux, too. Those benchmarks compare Wine NTSYNC against upstream vanilla Wine, which means there’s no fsync or esync either. Gamers who use fsync are not going to see such a leap in performance in most games.

    The games that benefit most from NTSYNC are the ones that were struggling before, such as titles with heavy multi-threaded workloads where the synchronization overhead was a genuine bottleneck. For those games, the difference is night and day. And unlike fsync, NTSYNC is in the mainline kernel, meaning you don’t need any custom patches or out-of-tree modules for it work. Any distro shipping kernel 6.14 or later, which at this point includes Fedora 42, Ubuntu 25.04, and more recent releases, will support it. Valve has already added the NTSYNC kernel driver to SteamOS 3.7.20 beta, loading the module by default, and an unofficial Proton fork, Proton GE, already has it enabled. When Valve’s official Proton rebases on Wine 11, every Steam Deck owner gets this for free.

    All of this is what makes NTSYNC such a big deal, as it’s not simply a run-of-the-mill performance patch. Instead, it’s something much bigger: this is the first time Wine’s synchronization has been correct at the kernel level, implemented in the mainline Linux kernel, and available to everyone without jumping through hoops.




  • Part 2/2

    Extract helium from natural gas. The premise of using this method to extract natural gas is that the helium content of natural gas must be above 0.5%. Secondly, various processes are required to repeat liquefaction and splitting to “filter” the helium from the natural gas little by little. Of pure helium.

    In 2020, a Chinese company used an innovative “flash steam extraction method” to extract helium from natural gas waste, and it was a great success. More importantly, the helium extraction device is also independently developed and produced in China.

    The “BOG (Flash Gas) Helium Extraction Device Demonstration” launched by China in Ningxia earlier can produce 40 liters of liquid helium per hour. Although the annual output is only 20 tons, which is far less than China’s demand, its emergence proves that we can Do not rely absolutely on imports to avoid being constrained by others.

    At present, there are about 30 factories in China that have the basic conditions for helium extraction. If this technology is promoted and implemented, China’s annual production of helium can reach 3 million cubic meters, and the degree of dependence on helium imports will be reduced. China is stuck. The problem will also be effectively solved.

    There is a story circulating on the Internet: If a hundred years later, if scientists knew that helium gas was used by us to inflate the ball, they would not know what it would be like to feel distressed. As one of the increasingly scarce resources, saving the use of helium is also an issue that we need to pay attention to.

    Such as reducing unnecessary waste, or replacing helium with other elements. In terms of industry, increase the recovery and utilization of helium to ensure the maximum use value of helium resources.

    In terms of medical treatment, Philips has recently developed a nuclear magnetic resonance instrument without liquid helium to optimize the use of liquid helium and effectively reduce the waste caused by escape during use. In addition to imported helium gas, China still has problems with choking in many fields. How to solve these problems?

    How does China tackle the “stuck neck problem”?

    We selected the remaining 3146 intermediate goods and capital goods that are highly related to the manufacturing industry for category research in the trade product categories with the international 6-digit code. Based on the estimation of China’s dependence on each imported product (estimated by the value of each product’s trade imports and the product’s market share in the major exporting countries), a total of 88 imported products that China is highly dependent on (median dependent Degree level is 78.9%). These 88 products are distributed in the mid-to-high-end value chain.

    In order to break the deadlock, China has solved the problem in a variety of ways. On the one hand, increase financial support to provide financial guarantee for the card neck technology. Efforts are made from financial allocations, financial institutions and social organizations to ensure long-term stability of project research.

    On the other hand, optimize the layout of scientific research, “listen” the card neck technology, and make the card neck problem the top priority of research and development to ensure that there are no dead ends in scientific research. The other is to cultivate a good scientific research ecological environment, establish a good incentive mechanism, and encourage scientific researchers to do their research work.

    China itself has the world’s largest data circle, huge human capital, and market advantages. Although it still fails to break the monopoly barriers in some high-end and sophisticated industries, it is believed that in the near future, we will continue to overcome various stuck neck problems.

    In conclusion

    The importance of helium resources is self-evident, and the shortage of helium resources is still a major problem for China. How not to be “stuck” by the United States to find ways to adjust the import ratio structure, how to save helium and other methods are only superficial methods.

    At its root, we must have a way to completely eliminate helium resources in order not to be controlled by others. As early as a few years ago, the country put forward the problem of tackling the neck, which shows that we have paid attention to the problem of the neck.

    After several years of rapid development, the problem has been gradually solved. I believe that in the near future, we will show the true Chinese technology with firm determination and tenacious will, and use the “Chinese intelligent manufacturing” to deliver the best to the world. Beautiful answer sheet.


  • Article: 95% of China’s helium is imported, which is “stuck” by the United States? How to avoid this situation?

    From: https://inf.news/en/science/0596d1cecea1df930f5f7f2fd2da1a48.html Archive broken: https://archive.ph/wip/rDQM4

    Part 1/2

    China is a resource-rich country. The vast land contains many rare resources that many countries in the world desire. However, China is a helium-poor country. More than 95% of helium depends on imports, which is too large.

    Moreover, most of the helium comes from the United States, which has been in constant friction with China. In the face of increasing demand for helium, this has become another “stuck neck” problem in China.

    But why is the mere helium gas stuck by the United States? How does China solve the problem of scarcity of helium resources? How to solve the stuck neck problem in other fields?

    What is helium?

    Helium is a colorless and odorless inert gas. It ranks first among the rare gases in the periodic table. Most of it was formed during the Big Bang period. In the entire universe, helium accounts for 23% of its mass, ranking it in the entire universe. The second element.

    Under normal conditions, helium does not react with other substances, and even if it is put together with water, it is difficult to dissolve in it. At 20°C, only 8.61 milliliters of helium can be dissolved per liter of water.

    It is precisely because of its inactive chemical properties that helium is often used as an anti-corrosion material. Among all the elements, helium has the lowest boiling point, only 4.22K, so it often exists as a gas.

    To make helium liquid or solid, not only need to change its temperature, but also pressurize it. The most amazing thing is that when the temperature of liquid helium is lower than -271°C, its properties will change and become a superfluid.

    The thermal conductivity of helium in superfluid is extremely high, 800 times that of copper, and it can penetrate many common materials, such as glass and rubber.

    Moreover, the density of helium is very small, the mass is far lighter than air, and it is not flammable. Therefore, helium has become one of the necessities of many high-tech industries.

    Uses of helium

    Helium is present in many common items, such as hydrogen balloons, thermometers, light bulbs, neon lights and other items. Someone asked if the hydrogen balloon was not lifted off by hydrogen? What is helium?

    In fact, because hydrogen is flammable and explosive, there is a great safety hazard. Therefore, China has banned hydrogen filling balloons from a long time ago and replaced it with non-flammable helium.

    But because everyone is accustomed to calling it a hydrogen balloon, it is not changed to a helium balloon. Helium is also well known by many diving enthusiasts. Because helium will be mixed with oxygen and then injected into the cylinder for divers to use when breathing underwater.

    This can reduce the diver’s breathing resistance, eliminate nitrogen anesthesia, extend the diver’s time under water, and prevent the diver from suffering from decompression sickness.

    Helium in gas form is also widely used in the medical industry, often used to treat asthma and wheezing, and argon helium knife can also be used to treat cancer. Helium in its liquid form has more industrial uses and can be used as a coolant and refrigerant.

    Helium in superfluid form can be used to make superconducting materials. In addition, nuclear reactors, space accelerators, metal smelting and other industries have its presence everywhere.

    Why was the neck stuck by the United States?

    Helium is also called “golden gas” and is an indispensable role in the aerospace industry, semiconductor manufacturing, low-temperature superconducting industry and other fields. As the application range of helium becomes wider and wider, the demand is also very large.

    Although the content of helium in the universe ranks second, the amount of helium stored on land is not that much. In addition, helium has a very wide range of uses, but its natural generation rate is very slow, and it is easy to escape. Scattered in the air, so helium resources are increasingly scarce.

    At present, there are about 51.9 billion cubic meters of helium resources on the earth. The United States’ helium reserves account for 40% of the global helium reserves, ranking first in the world. Russia’s helium reserves account for 8% of the global helium reserves, but China’s helium reserves only account for 2%.

    China consumes more than 22 million cubic meters of helium per year, so the vast majority of helium is imported. Although the United States has a lot of helium reserves, they began to formulate laws related to helium resources as early as 1917, and set up a federal helium project.

    At the same time, the relevant systems are constantly revised and improved to ensure the effective control of helium resources. Although the United States has become the world’s largest exporter of helium, their control of helium is still very strict, and even included helium in one of the crisis mines in 2018.

    In 2020, the import price of helium is US$82,200 per ton, an annual increase of 44%. China is a major helium-consuming country and a major helium-poor country, with an annual demand of 22 million cubic meters.

    However, because the helium reserves are too low, 95% of the helium comes from imports. What is even more worrying is that with the continuous increase in demand, the amount of helium imports is also increasing year by year.

    Some people say that although the United States has the largest helium reserves in the world, other countries also have helium, and we can import it from other countries. The United States has a large amount of helium gas is entirely a geographical advantage. They are in a more stable regional plate, so a large amount of helium gas is sealed.

    Coupled with their development and storage capabilities, they have become the largest exporter of helium. At present, only the United States, Qatar, Russia and other countries are exporting helium.

    Qatar, a country originally located in the Middle East region, has been high hopes by many people, but although Qatar has a certain amount of helium reserves, the key gas production technology is still controlled by the United States.

    Moreover, the price is affected by factors such as war and technical conditions. The price of helium in Qatar is also higher than that of the United States. As a result, China’s helium imports are still mainly dependent on the United States.

    As a scarce resource, once the import of helium is completely stopped, it will have a shocking impact on all walks of life in China. Therefore, it is urgent to solve the problem of shortage of helium resources. How can China solve this problem?

    How to deal with the problem of excessive dependence on helium?

    13% are from Australia, 26% are from the United States, and 61% are from Qatar. However, Qatar’s import price is higher than that of the United States, and Qatar’s technology relies on the United States, so the situation of China’s helium imports remains severe.

    Helium is also present in China, most of which are in China’s central and western basins, the eastern part of the basin, and some hot springs. However, the helium content in China’s helium gas fields is very low, so the annual helium output is far from enough for use.

    In order to achieve “helium freedom”, China is also trying to produce helium from multiple sources. Some people say that helium will escape into the air? It’s better to “pull” it out of the air. But extracting helium is not that simple.

    The content of helium in the air is pitiful. It may capture half of the city’s air and not extract the amount of a brick, so this idea is obviously unrealistic. But helium is also present in natural gas, so China uses a variety of methods to extract helium.

    For example, methods such as “air separation method”, “helium liquid method”, and “low temperature liquefaction split”, although the purity of helium extracted by the first two extraction methods is as high as 99.99%, the process is cumbersome and the cost is extremely high, so the most commonly used method is “Low-temperature liquefaction split flow method”.

    [Continued in part 2/2]