ChinaTalk

We're talking Chinese TV this week on ChinaTalk! Hollywood writer Trey Kollmer and ChinaTalk editor Irene Zhang discuss farming reality tv, a dongbei murder, and some super creative animated content out of Bilibili. Farmer show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fklN-OnYuGc Dongbei show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0OJVemJz4 Animated show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gnw1pNh6C1yA3EUU-aQrOjI3hvBC7oQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doug O'Laughlin of the Fabricated Knowledge substack and I discuss: NVIDIA's corporate history and how it arrived at such a dominant position today What makes it so irreplacable in the coming AI revolution The national competitiveness implications of NVIDIA in a US-China context Outtro music: 邓典果DDG/李尔新 -《帅到没朋友》 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CqvpDd1xK0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under Obama, CNAS founder, and co-founder of WestExec Advisors, returns to ChinaTalk to discuss: How the Biden Administration is trying to re-engage with China Reflections on innovation in defense, AI, and the war in Ukraine ChinaTalk meetup in NYC this Friday! https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1 Reuters reporting: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/why-us-delayed-china-sanctions-after-shooting-down-spy-balloon-2023-05-11/ New Yorker piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/29/two-weeks-at-the-front-in-ukraine Socila history of the machine gun: https://www.amazon.com/Social-History-Machine-Gun/dp/0801833582 Outtro music: the great Tina Turner with Marvin Gaye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTsy-uPvQoY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Pentagon has a new tech strategy! What does it say, what impact will it have, and what do its authors think about technological change and warfare? Dr. Nina Kollars, advisor to Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) Heidi Shyu, and R&E’s Chief Data Officer Cyrus Jabbari join us to discuss in a wide ranging and at times philosophical conversation about the challenges of peacetime innovation critical technology lists lessons from the origins of the machine gun and development of modern fighter jets What Cezanne and Picasso can teach us about military innovation (from this piece https://warontherocks.com/2017/03/when-clausewitz-meets-cezanne-mastery-and-the-art-of-future-war/) NYC ChinaTalk Meetup! https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1 Here's the strategy: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3389118/dod-releases-national-defense-science-and-technology-strategy/ R&E’s Chief Data Offcer yrHerus Jabbari Music: a guy banging on pots and pans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQEedhz9ERs Midjourney is a prompt of an F16 with this late 19th century Japanese calligraphy https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55820 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Faggella, who for ten years has interviewed business leaders about the challenges of implementing AI, joins ChinaTalk to discuss about just how hard it is to get AI to diffuse across an economy. We also get into: Why the past ten years of AI hasn't lived up to its promise The technological, bureaucratic, and cultural challenges of corporate AI diffusion Which sectors are most and least likely to adopt quickly NYC ChinaTalk meetup: https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1 Music: Uyghur drill, Ahh? Ohh! by Athree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdfgc2yr9Co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff Ding is the leading US scholar on China and AI and author of one of the earliest China-focused Substacks, ChinAI. He recently published a fire paper called, “The diffusion deficit in scientific and technological power: re-assessing China’s rise.” It makes the argument that diffusion capacity (not just innovation capacity) is critical to economic growth — and China actually fares much worse in diffusion capacity than mainstream narratives imply. In particular, “In cases when the emerging power has a strong innovation capacity but weak diffusion capacity (diffusion deficit), it is less likely to sustain its rise than innovation-centric assessments depict. Conversely, when the emerging power possesses a strong diffusion capacity but weak innovation capacity (diffusion surplus), it is more likely to sustain its rise than innovation-centric assessments portray.” Mainstream narratives, meanwhile, “only compare the U.S. and China’s ability to produce new innovations, neglecting their ability to effectively use and adopt emerging technologies. By revealing the gap between China’s innovation capacity and diffusion capacity, this paper argues that innovation-centric assessments mistakenly inflate China’s S&T power.” NYC ChinaTalk Meetup: https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1 Cohosting is Teddy Collins, formerly of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and DeepMind. Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Y7-gm8STI midjourney prompt: "frank quietly industrial revolution" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PJ Maykish, Abigail Kukura, and Will Moreland from the Future Technologies platform team of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) join the conversation to discuss critical technologies and the development of a national technology strategy. The guests provide insights into how the United States can create a comprehensive technology strategy that prioritizes the development of critical technologies to compete with China. They also discuss the importance of international collaboration in the development of emerging technologies and the challenges faced in building consensus among different stakeholders. This is the paper we primarily discuss: Platforms-Panel-IPR.pdf (scsp.ai) Vishnu Kannan of Carnegie cohosts. Midjourney art: the prompt is "A Bauhaus poster for a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Featuring a young man looking out from a turret on a castle out towards the sea" but I thought it has a bit of a tech forecasting vibe! Music by the great Cab Calloway: Hi De Ho Man - YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, May 1, I interviewed Virgina Senator Mark Warner. We get into the RESTRICT Act, state capacity to analyze emerging technologies, the future of industrial policy, the nature and limits to bipartisanship around China, as well as the government’s role in regulating artificial intelligence. Check out the ChinaTalk newsletter for a full transcript! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Art via midjourney prompt: corporate America’s naïveté vis-à-vis China Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

J. Edgar Hoover was a controversial figure who served as the director of the FBI for nearly five decades. In this episode, we explore his life and legacy with Beverly Gage, a professor of 20th-century U.S. history and author of the Bancroft Prize-winning biography "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century." We discuss The context in which Hoover developed his anti-communist worldview, and how this shaped his approach to law enforcement. The deportation of anarchists to Bolshevik Russia. Similarities between Hoover and Xi Jinping. The role of FBI informants, including one who met with Mao Zedong. Outro music: G-Man Hoover by Van Dyke Parks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E566LbON5QA Check out ChinaTalk.media for transcripts, analysis and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did Xi Jinping’s formative years influence how he views the world today? Veteran China scholar Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations, looks back at decades of writing and working on China, weathering the cycles of the country opening up and shutting down and gives his two cents on what’s going on in Xi’s head. We also discuss — Why Mao Zedong is a better read than Xi — China’s reciprocity problem on the international stage — How US officials reacted to Tiananmen in a secret meeting with Deng Xiaoping — A history of accessing China for academics, businesspeople and journalists — Xi and victim culture Outro Music: Glenn Gould performing Contrapunctus, I, IV from Bach’s amazing Art of the Fugue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqDCieiDWAE Check out the newsletter at ChinaTalk.media! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Roach is a Yale professor with extensive experience in China. He also taught the first China class I ever took, so it may be fair to say he's partially to blame for the entire ChinaTalk enterprise. In our conversation (taped on February 23), we discuss: The nexus between US-China relations and the DSM-5 (we need some relationship therapy!); How false narratives strangle effective diplomatic development; What Stephen thinks about the odds of a hot conflict over Taiwan; Practical proposals to improve the bilateral relationship, including what a “US-China Secretariat” (based in neutral Tahiti, obviously) would look like; Is it the US or China — or both — who fundamentally has no interest in engagement? Apologies for my audio quality in the second half of the show. Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRM70Jw7F4M You all should check out the ChinaTalk newsletter! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Scharre, Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS, joins ChinaTalk to discuss AI, military, strategy, and US-China geopolitics. Listen in for a discussion on: How AI will impact the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war How and why AI operates — whether in chess, Dota 2, or aerial dogfighting — in fundamentally different ways than humans; Why AI called for a “protective response from the bureaucracy” The significance of the US’s comparative advantage over China in talent and compute — two of Scharre’s “Four Battlegrounds”; The dictator’s dilemma, and how advances in AI will challenge the CCP in the coming years; When in China, how to interview like a pro! Outro music: a missy elliot + spice girls mix from Arthi, a UK-based DJ who's also an economics correspondent for the times of london! https://youtu.be/iHkfmwy1-OI?t=252 Paul’s latest bestseller: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Battlegrounds-Power-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0393866866 The cover image is Midjourney on “Dota 2–inspired F-35 dogfight” You should all subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What actually is foreign influence, and how might Canada handle China’s interference in its domestic affairs? Akshay Singh is a research associate at the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa. We discuss: How to roll out a foreign agent registry; The role of the US-Canada relationship; Whether foreign influence is a diaspora problem; And performance reviews for the United Front’s Canada desk. Akshay on how democracies should respond to foreign influence: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/faced-with-foreign-interference-how-should-democracies-respond/ Outtro music: 公公偏頭痛 by Jay Chou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4Y Please consider supporting ChinaTalk on Patreon at www.patreon.com/chinatalk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Chips Avengers assemble once again! Reva Goujon of the Rhodium Group, JP Kleinhans of the European think tank SNV, Jay Goldberg of Digits and Dollars, and Dylan Patel, who writes SemiAnalysis. In this episode of ChinaTalk, we all: Deep dive into the CHIPS Act's recent Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO); Discuss the potentially existential impact of AI on global power dynamics; Consider the true intentions of the October 2022 export controls — from military constraining China to crippling manufacturing in the broader economy; Muse about the potential for a "splinternet" to emerge as countries around the world — in particular, the US, China, EU members states — adopt different standards and regulations for their tech industries; And more! Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_Amc4Ysv0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kevin Xu, Obama-era White House official and creator of https://interconnect.substack.com/ comes on ChinaTalk to discuss: Our impressions of the House's TikTok hearing Continued cross-border reliances around batteries and cloud computing The missed opportunity of Zhang Yiming's generation of founders GPT4's remarkable translation capabilities Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How will GPT4 change the world? What implications does it have for policy, economics, and society? How will US-China 'racing dynamics' play out and what are the implications for AI safety? To discuss, I've brought together the AI Justice League: Zvi of 'Don't Worry About the Vase', Nathan Labenz of Waymark, and Matthew Mittelsteadt of Mercatus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dennis Wilder returns to ChinaTalk — this time with some broader thoughts on how the US intelligence community can rise to the occasion vis-à-vis China. In particular, we discuss: The importance of government hiring those with experience living in China; Contributions that the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) has made to China intelligence, and why it should be reinstated; A serious request to make an ChatGPT as good as Alice Miller is at analyzing CCP documents; https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/clm57-am-final.pdf Why the State Department has established China House and the CIA has established the China Mission Center; What we can learn from Richard Danzig’s Driving in the Dark; https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/driving-in-the-dark-ten-propositions-about-prediction-and-national-security%C2%A0 How to maintain robust intelligence capabilities in the long-run; Raymond P. Ludden and the “Dixie Mission” — and why the US needs more Luddens today. https://uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu/essays/we-need-more-luddens Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at https://www.chinatalk.media/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the second part of my conversation with Nick Mulder and Lars Schönander. Picking the narrative up in 1935, get real in this episode: Why the Great Depression, counterintuitively, made importing commodities cheaper, and how that affected Germany’s and Japan’s protectionism; The difference between autarky and autarchy; Whether Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could survive a full-on fuel embargo today by using Nazi-era technology; Nick’s definition of “temporal claustrophobia,” and what it has to do with Japan ultimately siding with the Axis; Parallels between the “ABCD circle” (America, Britain, China, Dutch East Indies) and the semiconductor export controls today; Why having an empire was a liability for Britain; What sanctions had to do with the Czechoslovaks — even with a larger army — falling to the Nazis; How the blockades of WWI differed from WWII; And what lessons pro-decouplers should learn from this history of sanctions. Nick’s book recommendations: https://www.amazon.com/Athene-Palace-Rosie-G-Waldeck/dp/1592110088 https://www.amazon.com/World-Late-Antiquity-150-750-Civilization/dp/0393958035 https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590171462 https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maisky-Diaries-Volumes-Communism/dp/0300117825 Nick’s excellent book: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Weapon-Rise-Sanctions-Modern/dp/0300259360 Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5mdvyIqrs4 Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at https://www.chinatalk.media/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re releasing part one of our a two-part conversation with Nick Mulder, a history professor at Cornell and author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War — a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022. With cohost Lars, Schönander, we discuss: The recent advent of the use of sanctions (for example, in the Crimean War, Britain continued to fulfill payments to Russia, the nation it was fighting right then!) Why Europeans were reluctant to employ blockades and sanctions in the early twentieth century, and how their thinking evolved through two world wars How Wilson’s notion of “moral sanctions” and decision to keep blockades in place after the war were important to the development of sanctions, especially during the interwar period The League of Nations’ efforts to establish a “positive sanctions” fund, and why the concept never took off Nick’s take on why Hoover is underrated When and why Italy almost fought a war against Germany over Austria Stay tuned for part two, when we connect this sanctions history to implications to US-China relations today! Nick’s excellent book: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Weapon-Rise-Sanctions-Modern/dp/0300259360 Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzd4VtkNjmc Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at chinatalk.media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Data scientist Bryan Cheong breaks down how AI actually works, creating video using AI and how the technology is being used beyond image and language models. Also, I've got a meetup March 7th in Palo Alto! https://partiful.com/e/dVY7k51xQX4WhNr6AUcH Joined by Zheng, we also discuss: The farmers in India using AI for marketing Denoising and weights, the tech behind AI image generation tools What's next for developments in AI Singapore's tech scene Outro music: 我說所有的酒都不如你 by 房東的貓 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zj74iK1MI Check out the newsletter and other ChinaTalk content at chinatalk.media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to do a show about the scariest US-China news story I’ve seen in years, that “The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine.” Would China really arm Russia, and if so what will that mean for the world if the US and China end up on opposite sides of a proxy war? To discuss this I have on today Georgetown’s, Dennis Wilder, a longtime CIA veteran who served as an NSC director on the China desk under the bush administration and spent six years under Obama editing the presidential daily brief before concluding his career in government as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific. Outtro Music: Ukranian rap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDXAAh-cXw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With AI on the verge of transforming the world, how are regulators across the globe approaching the challenges the technology might pose? Also, what does US-China AI collaboration look like today, and will it get caught up in broader tensions in the relationship? Matt Sheehan and Hadrien Pouget, who are both at Carnegie, come on to discuss. Matt's paper on US-China collaboration: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-democracies-cooperate-with-china-on-ai-research/ Matt's work on Chinese algorithmic regulation: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/12/09/what-china-s-algorithm-registry-reveals-about-ai-governance-pub-88606 Hadrien's article about the EU: https://www.lawfareblog.com/eus-ai-act-barreling-toward-ai-standards-do-not-exist Outtro Music: Monkey Bee: A Short Film by Jamie Hewlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y90ONojCc6Q Subscribe to the newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

William 'Balloon Guy' Kim returns for a roundup of the past few days of news around the Chinese spy balloon and unidentified object shooting. We share our favorite theories of what on earth is going on and what this all means for US-China relations. Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Outtro Music: Sammy Davis Jr's Up Up and Away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYNMZtxJoU Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey ChinaTalk listeners, this year we’re going to do something new—occasional episodes in Mandarin! While getting mainland guests to talk about more conventional topics like US-China relations and export controls has been nearly impossible, I think doing more slice of life/business stories about odd corners of China in the pale imitation of Gushi FM is both fun and enriching to our coverage. In this episode, you’ll hear from the founder of mechanical keyboard manufacturer Meletrix, Simba Hua, about why people like to make their own keyboards, the challenges and wonders of working with the Chinese keyboard supply chain, and customer preferences between East Asian and western keyboard fans. Cohosting with me is Irene Zhang, one of ChinaTalk’s editors. You can find more of her writing, and more ChinaTalk in general, on our newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media/. And if you can’t understand Chinese, not to worry, we’ll be running a translated transcript later this month on the newsletter! Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlp8XD0R5qo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does one organization turn expert knowledge into real policy change? Dan Correa, CEO of the Federation of American Scientists and Founder of the Day One Project, discusses the power of policy entrepreneurship and shares examples of the ideas his nonprofit helped turn into legislation. We'll delve into the nitty-gritty of policymaking and explore topics such as: How to make meetings with government officials more productive. The importance of pre-work in preparing good ideas and the role experts can play in shaping policy. Why it's sometimes better to focus on practical solutions rather than comprehensive strategies. Why think tanks always feel the need to create comprehensive, hundred-page strategies. Article about the creation of the development finance corporation: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/how-might-think-tanks-make-real-things-happen-lessons-creation-dfc Check out the Substack at ChinaTalk.media. Cover art is midjourney taking a rothko that I then prompted with "innovation" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do we talk about when we talk about tech policy? What are the weird corners of the chips and science bill? How is talent policy broken and what can anyone do about it? And broadly, if you want to change the world through better regulatory and executive action, how do you go about this? To discuss all that we have Divyansh Kaushik, a newly minted PhD from Carnegie Mellon currently at the Federation for American Scientists focusing on emerging tech policy. He was also closely involved with the chips and science bill negotiations. We talk about - How to talk to lawmakers and share your thoughts on legislation - The complex visa system for foreign workers in the US - The thousands of green cards that never get used. Outro music: When the Levee Breaks By Led Zepplin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwiTs60VoTM Midjourney art prompted with 'innovation' from this painting https://www.moma.org/collection/works/180114?sov_referrer=art_term&art_term_slug=painting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chinese balloons over Wyoming!! To discuss, we have on today William 'Balloon Guy' Kim of the Marathon Initiative, Eric Lofgren of AcquisitionTalk, and Gerard Dipippo of CSIS. Intro Music: Up Up and Away, The 5th Fifth Dimension https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akEgsZSfhg Outro Music: NENA | 99 Luftballons [1983] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Love it or hate it, AI capabilities continue to advance. As futurists imagine how this technology may one day be used, how it develops and who will be able to access AI tools will also depend on who funds AI projects and what hardware will be needed to get it to work. Lennart Heim is a researcher at the Center for the Governance of AI and the author of a fantastic AI compute syllabus primer, which I have just spent the past few weeks obsessed with. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DF31DIkwS9GONzmy1W3nuI9HRAwSKy8JcIbzKYXg-ic/edit?usp=sharing Joining as co-host is Chris Miller, author of the FT business book of the year Chip War - The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. We discuss: How much does it cost to develop an AI system? The competition for access to specialized AI chips. Whether investing heavily in large AI models is financially viable. Chip smuggling versus cocaine smuggling. Outro music: 年度专辑 by AR刘夫阳 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifkVhOQYnO0 Check out the Substack at chinatalk.media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China v Taiwan: who would win? Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research at Brookings. He specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy. We discuss The limits of scenarios that predict the outcome of a China-Taiwan conflict. What are intercontinental rail guns? How sports teams that play each other in the same year can have different outcomes - and what this says about predictability. Given all this, what’s the point of modelling exercises? Mike's paper: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-china-take-taiwan-why-no-one-really-knows/ My paper: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epistemic Outro music: Battle Cry of Freedom by George Root https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4ZwyYJYbQ Check out the Substack at ChinaTalk.media! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is sponsored by Policyware. Check out Samm's class at https://www.policyware.org/chinatalk How do Chinese cyber laws and regulations affect multinational companies, and US-China relations? Samm Sacks of Yale Law School walks us through the latest developments in this arena — we discuss: Why Chinese data policy has been on front-page news in the past few years; What China is hoping to gain from its new laws and regulations; The status of TikTok negotiations, and the prospects of a deal given today’s political climate; How the US and China can — yet sometimes don’t — leverage their data policy infrastructure against one another. Outtro music: 回答 - YOUNG 建坤 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Obr1iXFCs Midjourney is me prompting a Duchamp painting "data privacy" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Say China wins a war for Taiwan. What happens next? To discuss the political and economic consequences of a PRC takeover of Taiwan, I have on today Jude Blanchette and Gerard Dipippo, both fellows at CSIS. Our conversation builds off their paper https://www.chinatalk.media/p/war-for-taiwan-what-happens-after. We recorded this episode in mid-December. Outtro Music: 水哥 ft. 蛋堡 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHU9kEYiAQw&list=PLegPxPQebljkJOhscK3tLUXfZ9n1lgkwC&index=31 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2023, ChinaTalk is going to Congress! First up in our series is Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat who represents Silicon Valley. We get into: What he hopes the China Committee can accomplish Why ChatGPT let him down What an effective industrial policy looks like Also, I'm hosting a ChinaTalk meetup in DC next week! RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/Zni1rBY3PFhy6WYFm2VK? Outtro music: Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gKSp8WoRg Cover Art: I gave midjourney a Miro and told it "US capitol supply chain" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can $52bn for semiconductors actually accomplish? To discuss the tensions and tradeoffs underlying the decisions that the US government is about to make on how to spend this money, I have on today Jacob Feldgoise, an analyst at CSET and Vishnu Kannan, who works at the Carnegie Endowment. We'll be discussing their fantastic paper entitled: "The Limits of Reshoring and Next Steps for U.S. Semiconductor Policy." Jacob and Vishnu's paper: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/11/22/after-chips-act-limits-of-reshoring-and-next-steps-for-u.s.-semiconductor-policy-pub-88439 Subscribe to the ChinaTalk Newsletter!!!!: https://www.chinatalk.media/ Outtro Music: federal funding by Cake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phHe6aNcocQ Cover art: I fed midjourney a picasso portrait and told it 'semiconductor supply chain' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, we consider the question of whether there are limits to what computers can know and how this compares to human understanding. Joining me on this episode is Sam Hammond, the director of social policy at the Niskanen Center, and Zohar Atkins, a rabbi and host of the podcast "Meditations with Zohar." We discuss The impact of AI on creativity and human thought. Fears around AI and the centralization of power. The potential for AI to have an egalitarian effect on closing innate and environmental differences such as education and access to information. Whether the creative class will be automated out of their jobs. Outro music: Genesis by Daniela Adrade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SJ6KNhA9QY Check out the substack at chinatalk.media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution makes his ChinaTalk debut! We get into: How AI is going to change art, education, politics and human relationships Why Tyler tried to write a book to explain America to the PRC How babies born in 2023 will see their educations changed by AI; Playing chess against the computer and creativity in the AI era; Religion, American antisemitism, and the movie Her; Writing a book about America for Chinese people; Why China is one of the hardest countries to predict. Outtro Music: Beethoven X, an AI-assisted version of Beethoven's unfinished 10th symphony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvj3Oblscqw For more context: smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-artificial-intelligence-completed-beethovens-unfinished-10th-symphony-180978753/ Image by midjourney seeded with a photo of Tyler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before we get back to the interviews, I read from the newsletter I run which you should subscribe to at https://www.chinatalk.media/ If you're interested in advertising on ChinaTalk, reach out at [email protected]! Here's my year in review: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/chinatalks-year-in-review Favorite books: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/a-year-in-books Favorite everything else: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/2022-media-diet-tv-movies-chess-elden Outtro music 忏悔录 by KKECHO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePC-FQwLnts The song apparently is her riffing off seeing the 50 Cent biopic Image: I asked chatgpt to summarize my year in review post visually and it gave me the following prompt that I then fed into midjourney: "An abstract representation of the author's journey as a China analyst, such as a journey through a landscape. This painting could be done in a more impressionistic style, using loose brushstrokes and a muted palette of colors to convey a sense of movement and change.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Outtro music: Fred Again's Frank Ocean remix https://soundcloud.com/joseph-ibrahim/chanel-vs-a-new-error-frank-ocean-moderat-fred-again-mix Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to my newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis go through our most important semis stories of 2022. We get into: Samsung and Intel's stumbles Arm taking on Qualcomm Risc-V's rise The politicization of semiconductors Outtro music: ChatGPT + PG One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDvFGLSIU2c Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today US Department of Energy Secretary Granholm announced a nuclear fusion breakthrough at Livermore Labs. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be getting commercially viable fusion reactors anytime soon. Economist Eli Dourado wrote in a piece today: “Nuclear fusion has long been hailed as the next great energy source, capable of providing nearly limitless power without the harmful emissions and waste associated with other forms of energy generation. This week, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that it had achieved “ignition,” which occurs when the energy output from plasma in a fusion reactor exceeds the energy put into the plasma. With continued investment from government and the private sector, we are likely to see many such scientific milestones reached in the next few years. it is important to be wary. Many of these milestones have little bearing on the commercial viability of nuclear fusion. Despite the press releases, the National Ignition Facility conducts weapons tests, not clean-energy research. There is no realistic path from the kind of fusion being celebrated this week to any sort of commercial project. To a lesser extent, that may also be true of progress that we’re seeing in other fusion projects, even commercial ones.” In the 1970s, many thought we were only a few years away from fusion, but here we are today still burning oil, gas and coal. To explore why, I wanted to repost a fantastic episode of a podcast from a friend of the show. Ben Reinhardt is the host of the Idea Machines podcast, a show that explores innovation systems from history and today. In this episode, Ben interviews Stephen Dean, who was present at the creation of America’s investment in fusion in the mid-70s and has been working in the space ever since. It’s a fascinating exploration of how government-funded science can fail us. Ben Reinhardt is also the creator of PARPA, a private sector DARPA aiming to “unlock robust technology to open new frontiers” which you can check out at parpa.org. This show was recorded in 2021. Here's the link to the plan discussed in the podcast: https://fire.pppl.gov/us_fusion_plan_1976.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you get into chips? Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge and Jon Y of Asianometry run us through how to they came to We also discuss Why starting with something's history can help you understand how it works. Who they talk to and what they read to understand their niches. Following your passion and making a whole video on Taiwanese 7-Elevens. Keeping the YouTube algorithm happy. SIA job posting: https://www.semiconductors.org/sia-jobs/ Outro music: Still Alive by Johnathan Coulton, performed by Ellen McLain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI Check out the substack: https://www.chinatalk.media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ling Li, lecturer at the University of Vienna, comes on the pod to discuss: The origins and evolution of Covid Zero Different paths the CCP could take to cracking down What the protests tell us about modern China Intro sounds: https://twitter.com/renminwansui5/status/1597064778543157250 Outtro sounds: https://twitter.com/whyyoutouzhele/status/1597225385728827392 Subscribe to ChinaTalk for an ad-free feed: https://chinatalk.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I talk about where I think these protests are heading and what they mean for Covid Zero and the international situation. First voice memo is from @wstv_lizzi and the second is from @lichtspektrum. The outtro singing is protesters in Shanghai singing the Internationale. Here's my essay on the topic in written form: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/chinas-protests-harbinger-or-passing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can the US and China play nicely enough with each other to not ruin the planet in the coming century? In particular, what prospects are there for cooperation around global challenges and biotech? For this episode, I'm joined by Scott Moore, Penn's director of China programs and strategic initiatives and perhaps the nicest person on China Twitter. We discuss Medical cooperation between China and the US during the Ebola outbreak. Whether shared global challenges can be combatted without China. Leapfrogging as a means of developing technologically versus innovation. The scariest things that could happen as a result of biotech research. I have ChinaTalk newsletter which you should all sign up to read! Outro music: 杨和苏KeyNG - “王位” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2FsnXOKTZ8 Episode cover art made using Midjourney with the prompt "US China reluctant cooperation in the style of john singer sargent" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do export controls work? And will they work for AI? Meet Emily Weinstein and Tim Hwang. They're research fellows at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and have written a paper on the goals of export controls and whether what the US government is trying to achieve with them is clear. We discuss Did the US inadvertently help China make better missiles? How export controls have hurt some US industries' international competitiveness. What export controls can - and can't - do to prevent technology from being developed abroad. Important questions about the management of bowling alleys and churches. Here's the paper we discussed: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoupling-in-strategic-technologies/ Annotated bibliography: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/from-cold-war-sanctions-to-weaponized-interdependence/ Trade Journal Collective: https://www.tradejournalcooperative.com/ I have a newsletter which you should all sign up to read! Outro music: Noodles and Butter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlP-J5rssa0 Episode cover art made using Midjourney. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What will the Biden administration's new export controls mean for the US and Chinese semiconductor industries as well as the future of the US-China relationship? To discuss, I assembled the Chips Avengers, consisting of Reva Goujon (Rhodium Group), Jay Goldberg (Digits to Dollars), Doug O'Laughlin (Fabricated Knowledge), and Martin Chorzempa (PIIE). We got into The second-order implications of the Biden Administration's moves for industry What it would take for China to circumvent these controls How Beijing might strike back How the regulations could impact the risk of war Outtro music by Chinese rapper and pop star 婁峻碩 called Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGl-s-FzsFI Image courtesy of midjourney from the prompt: "US China chip war EUV" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The AI revolution in art is coming, not in decades but months and years. What does this mean for creativity and how will it change the way artists work? Meet Campfire creative director Steve Coulson. He recently produced an entire comic book using images created by the midjourney AI art generator. Together with my brother Phil Schneider cohosting, we discuss: Whether using tech to generate art is taking money from already struggling artists How AI will end the stock photography industry Why Xi Jinping is banned on midjourney How young artists can get a leg up by learning to use AI The challenge of using AI generator tools when you don't speak English Check out Steve's comic Summer Island here: https://campfirenyc.com/summer-island/ Outro music: Antonio Vivaldi "Vedro con mio diletto" from Il Giustino by Jakub Józef Orliński (counter-tenor) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4YXv6ZIuE I HAVE CHINATALK NEWSLETTER WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP TO READ! I even bought a new URL for you: chinatalk.media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was life actually like for people in rural China over the last seventy years? Brew up a nice cup of tea and find a comfy armchair, it's time for another special edition of ChinaTalk. In this episode, Stanford University graduate student Vivian Zhong tells the story of her grandfather's life, from his childhood in the early days of the People's Republic to today pieced together from conversations they've shared over the years. She talks about: What it was like being a student in provincial China Days long trips down the Yangtze Why you shouldn't date in college How her grandfather came to hate sweet potatoes Outro music: Pengyou 朋友 by Emil Chau 周华健 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxaA94HGo9A I HAVE CHINATALK NEWSLETTER WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP TO READ! I even bought a new url for you: chinatalk.media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kamil Galeev comes on the show to talk about the current situation in the war in Ukraine and what it means for: prospects of nuclear war Elite Russian politics and Putin's future viability State stability Moscow's grip on the regions This show was recorded on October 6th. Outtro music is a tatar folk song with the google-translated title "Look at your eyelashes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY-axn5sk70 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US Commerce Department just dropped 100+ pages of new export control regulations that have the potential to reshape the future of the global semiconductor industry. But will these regs stop China from getting below 14nm? Is that a goal even worth pursuing? Are they really enforceable? And what are the tradeoffs baked into taking a unilateral vs multilateral approach? To discuss, I have on today Kevin Wolf, partner at the law firm Akin Gump and former BIS official with thirty years' experience in the field, to explain what it all means. We recorded this show Sunday October 9th. Cover art was created by midjourney with the prompt: "cyberpunk bureaucrat managing an export control regime" I could not find any good supercomputer music so this week's outtro music is a puerto rican banger by Mora and Jhay Cortez, perhaps reflecting the emotions MIIT employees are feeling at the moment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgyn7_e9ReQ The views I express in this show do not reflect those of my employer the Rhodium Group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How advanced is China's AI ecosystem and how much of it has military applicability? For a Department of Defense perspective, former DOD staffer and current CSIS fellow Greg Allen talks us through AI technology in China. Co-hosting is Eric Lofgren of the podcast AcquisitionTalk. We discuss AI usage in the war in Ukraine China's strategy for AI up to 2030 The military applications of AI technology How China's mixing of commercial and military tech makes international cooperation difficult Outro music: 谢帝 by 阿达娃 Adawa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcoIny3TD80 I HAVE CHINATALK NEWSLETTER WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL SIGN UP TO READ! I even bought a new url for you: chinatalk.media Click here to listen to ChinaTalk in your favorite podcast app. ChinaTalk substack: https://chinatalk.substack.com ChinaTalk Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jugurtha656 Support ChinaTalk on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ChinaTalk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices