Episódios
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What can Mao Zedong teach us about Donald Trump?
To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed the legendary sinologist Orville Schell, who visited China during the Cultural Revolution and is currently at the Asia Society.
We discuss…
Mao Zedong’s psychology and political style,
Similarities and differences between Mao and Trump,
How Mao-era traumas reverberate in modern China, including how the Cultural Revolution has influenced the Xi family,
How Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping survived the Cultural Revolution, and which of their tactics could be useful in modern America,
What civil society can do to defend democracy over the next four years.
Co-hosting is Alexander Boyd, associate editor at China Books Review and former ChinaTalk intern.
Read Orville's article, "Trump's Cultural Revolution," here.
Read the Asia Society piece on religion and political power here.
Orville's crazy Asia Society event, From Pontius Pilate to Chairman Mao: Religion and Politics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opw9vqpPBqQ&ab_channel=AsiaSociety
Book recommendations:
Joseph Torigian - The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping
Perry Link - The Anaconda in the Chandelier - excerpt from ChinaFile
William Shirer - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Victor Klemperer - I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941
Outro music:
Bach's Partita No. 1 for Solo Violin in B Minor, BWV 1002: VIII. Double, Gidon Kremer
https://open.spotify.com/track/3x1Rdpgy6QGSlW9tItHYdm?si=20fa2051dc5d4f91
Aria from J.S. Bach Cantata 'Schwingt freudig euch empor'
https://open.spotify.com/track/5pIy4Gll1YywqKX25EbbOb?si=520327db35f54201
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Just how weird will the AI-powered future be?
To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Nathan Lambert, who writes the Interconnects newsletter and researches AI at the Allen Institute.
We get into…
Why OpenAI is trending toward engagement farming and sycophancy,
The state of Chinese AI innovation six months post-DeepSeek, and the factors influencing diffusion of Chinese vs American models,
Meta’s organizational culture and how it influences the quality of the Llama models,
Unconventional career advice for the AI age.
Nathan’s book recommendation: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
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What does the future of industrial policy in America look like, and what state capacity investments are needed to get there? How does China factor into the future of the U.S. semiconductor industry? And what do government affairs offices at large technology firms actually do? To explore these questions, we’re concluding our CSIS Chip Chat series with Bruce Andrews. Bruce has had a long career on Capitol Hill, led government affairs for Ford, served as Deputy Secretary of Commerce under President Obama, and most recently headed government affairs at Intel. He’s now a fellow at CSIS.
We discuss…
The decline of bipartisanship and how to bring expertise back to Capitol Hill,
The case for a new “Department of Competitiveness”
Industry’s role in policymaking and what it took to get semiconductor manufacturers on board with the CHIPS Act,
Why Silicon Valley suddenly became interested in politics,
How to optimize industrial policy in a stick-focused political environment.
Outro music: Moon River, Frank Ocean 2018 (YouTube Link)
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Does anybody really understand China? Could America pursue an abundance agenda without the threat of the PRC? Can podcasters change the world?
To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who need no introduction, as well as Dan Wang, who has written beautiful annual letters and is back in the US as a research fellow at Kotkin’s Hoover History Lab. He has an excellent book called Breakneck coming out this August, but we’re saving that show for a little later this year.
Today, our conversation covers…
The use of China as a rhetorical device in US domestic discourse,
Oversimplified aspects of Chinese development, and why the bipartisan consensus surrounding Beijing might fail to produce a coherent strategy,
The abundance agenda and technocratic vs prophetic strategies for policy change,
How to conceptualize political actors complexly, including unions, corporations, and environmental groups,
The value of podcasting and strategies for positively impacting the modern media environment.
Outtro Music: Recomposed by Max Richter, I went with a deep cut Autumn 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUEeqvp_BrQ
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Can China use military force to achieve its political goals, without triggering nuclear war? To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed Fiona Cunningham, a professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the new book, Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security.
Co-hosting today is Michael Horowitz, another Penn professor who served in Biden’s Department of Defense.
We discuss…
How to use open source PLA documents to conduct deep research,
The evolution of Chinese defense strategy, including the impact of the third Taiwan Strait crisis,
Nuclear modernization and China’s “no first use” policy,
How the PLA makes decisions, including why they chose to develop cyber capabilities, anti-satellite weapons, and hypersonic missiles over proposed alternatives.
Outtro Music: Beauty by Gui Bian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTlfSOCwYJ8
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What has happened in the past 100 days to America’s science and technology ecosystem? What are China's ambitions and how is the government trying to take advantage of American uncertainty? And what can we learn from China's war mobilization exercises?
To explore these questions, we're joined by Divyansh Kaushik and Alex Rubin, who both work at Beacon Global Strategies. Divyansh holds an AI PhD from Carnegie Mellon, and Alex spent the past decade at the CIA focusing on China and emerging technologies.
We discuss…
The Historical origins of the US R&D model, and the division of labor between universities, government, and industry,
How budget cuts will impact the NSF, NIH, NIST, and DoD basic research,
Why and how China attempts to emulate US research institutions,
What a leaked wargame exercise from Guangdong province can tell us about China’s grand strategy,
How institutions like ChinaTalk can complement the IC with fresh, independent research.
Outro music: The Elements - Tom Lehrer (YouTube Link)
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What is Trump doing to extended deterrence?
I got Polymarket to create a market on whether a US ally will acquire nuclear weapons in 2025. It’s currently trading at 8%. Are we buyers or sellers?
To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Vipin Narang, professor at MIT, who served as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense responsible for nuclear deterrence policy during the Biden administration; Pranay Vaddi, a senior fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at MIT who worked on arms control and non-proliferation on Biden’s National Security Council; and Junichi Fukuda, senior research fellow at Tokyo’s Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
We get into…
The historical development of the American nuclear umbrella, including the “software” and “hardware” components of deterrence,
The probability that an American ally will proliferate by 2030, and which countries are the most likely candidates,
Why France proliferated despite US objections,
How the world might respond to nuclear ambitions from Poland, Japan, or Saudi Arabia,
China’s nuclear modernization and deterrence strategies for a multi-polar world.
Here's the RAND paper cited: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GUMnuxWoapmEYCw3g3NMUHxzZ6hVwWPi/view?usp=sharing
Outro music: Tom Lehrer - Who's Next? (YouTube Link)
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Rush Doshi (CFR, Biden NSC, author of the excellent The Long Game) and I run through the US-China tale of the tape. The future of America's relationship with its allies may be the key hinge variable for whether this century turns out to be China's to define. Do give this one a listen. Especially if you're JD Vance!
See Rush's Foreign Affairs article with Kurt Campbell here: https://archive.is/ZSTKP
Some Japanese outtro music to give the allies some love:
Karenai by Bonbero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJcIOMsOaU&ab_channel=Bonbero
What's Popping by JP THE WAVY and friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LOXU_hBNo&ab_channel=JPTHEWAVY
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Bill Reinsch of CSIS and the Trade Guys podcast with Jay Goldberg of Digits and Dollars and the Circuit podcast join to dicuss Trump's tariff impact on semis on another CSIS-ChinaTalk Chip Chat!
Bill lays out the four clashing instincts driving policy in MAGA 2.0: revenge for decades of perceived slights, a bargaining bluff to coerce concessions, a fast‑cash revenue grab, and a fantasy of instant on‑shore fab construction.
Jay walks through the on‑the‑ground fallout: chip designers worrying about losing China sales, GPU‑specific duties warping supply chains, and a loophole that lets boards assembled in Mexico skate by.
We explore how blanket tariffs could accelerate China’s ascent in analog and trailing‑edge chips, undermine Biden‑era “ally‑first” export‑control diplomacy, and leave Commerce’s BIS badly under‑resourced to enforce the rules.
We also get into whether allies will sign up for Washington’s crusade after being slapped themselves, and whether Nvidia, Intel, and Tesla are “too important to punish.”
Outtro Music: Well Get It, Tommy Dorsey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgiHzCiB5Aw
Bible‑Verse Sign‑off “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” — Proverbs 15:22
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Dylan Patel is a man on a mission. We get into how:
Huawei is giving NVIDIA a run for their money
What USG needs to do about it
What smart semiconductor tariff policy would look like
o3
Outtro Music, a little texas country for you all:
Ernest Tubb, Walking the Floor Over You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQIRRReZIls
Hank Thompson, Wild Side of Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvARPfquPc
And a completely wild post-WWII song I did not feel comfortable putting on the feed but worth a listen for the wtf factor: Ernest Tubb, Filipino Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXnoCyKGw8&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD
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Does America still have what it takes to stand up to China? Does short-term military readiness trade off with long-term strategy? What does the US need to do today to stay competitive for the rest of the century?
“Tony Stark” is the author of Breaking Beijing, a Substack examining the military dimensions of US-China competition. Tony’s Substack goes deep on subjects you didn’t know you needed to understand, like Arctic policy, and takes a refreshing step back to look at great power competition holistically. Tony is also the author of Ex Supra, a sci-fi thriller about a near-future US-China war.
Today, we discuss…
What it will take to win the 21st century, and what America needs to prioritize in the short, medium, and long term,
Why investing in education, basic science research, and foreign aid pay dividends in military readiness,
Why Washington is short on coherent China strategy,
Taiwan’s impact on global nonproliferation efforts,
How AI could change warfare, even if AGI can’t be considered a “wonder weapon.”
Outro music: Cmon - Fred Again (YouTube link)
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Doug gives his "we're heading for the end of the dollar-based world order" take.
Dylan has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to macro or politics.
We fail to arrive at the 2011 Obama-Boehner deal.
I had a fever during the recording so don't really talk.
1930s-energy outtro music:
Victoria Spivey, Detroit Moan, 1936 https://open.spotify.com/track/7L3GgSuguDJXi1msw6Pe7W?si=ab99d3eea65647eb
Judy Garland, Over the Rainbow, 1938 https://open.spotify.com/track/3wAIcORchxdSkWv6v5AkaU?si=b6bfe7a8249147bb
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Kevin Xu of https://interconnect.substack.com/, Matt Klein of https://theovershoot.co/, and Peter Harrell, Biden's U.S. White House as senior director for international economics in 2021-2022 and host of the new https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/security-economics/id1794022711 podcast join the show to discuss whether America's cooked.
Outtro Music: Madeleine Chartrand - Tout Doucement, 1975 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e856a_xZ1TI&ab_channel=Vinyle33-45RPM
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Tanner Greer of Scholar's Stage and I try to make sense of Liberation Day, the intellectual underpinnings of Trump's team, and what it all means for the world.
Tanner's report: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/03/obscurity-by-design/
Outtro Music: Nobody but You Babe, Clarence Reid, 1969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCT7w2t8cyY
01:23 Geopolitical Implications of Trump's Management Style
35:02 Economic Vision and Industrial Renaissance
52:28 Economic Liberalism and Trump World
52:42 Industrial Policy Camps in Trump Administration
56:30 Laura Loomer and Trump World Geopolitics
01:04:04 Historical Parallels and Red Experts Problem
01:20:00 Taiwan Policy and Cultural Wars
01:29:40 China Policy and Trump's Tactical Approach
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Welcome to part two of our series on Cold War history with Sergey Radchenko. Here’s part one.
In today’s interview, we discuss…
Khrushchev’s removal from power and the transition to the Brezhnev era,
How the USSR and China managed their relationships with Vietnam,
Sino-Soviet border conflicts, Brezhnev’s negative feelings toward China, and Nixon’s rapprochement,
Watergate and the inability of China or the USSR to understand American politics
Why the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan,
Reagan’s approach to negotiations and his relationship with Gorbachev,
How to manage the containment paradox and unknown adversary motives when competing with China and Russia today.
Co-hosting today is Jon Sine of the Cogitations substack.
Outro music: ДДТ- Родина (DDT - Motherland) (YouTube Link)
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Is there a stable state the US and China can hope for on the road to AGI?
To discuss we have on today Dan Hendrycks. A CS PhD, Dan runs the Center for AI Safety and is an advisor at xAI and Scale AI.
Here's his superintelligence strategy: https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/
For some more direct lessons from the Cold War to today's US-China dynamics, check out the show I did with Hal Brands (https://www.chinatalk.media/p/cold-war-lessons-for-us-china-today)
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The Transistor Radio boys are back. Jon of Asianometry, Doug O'Laughlin and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis on the pod to talk about Google's AI push, Intel's new CEO, Chinese robots, and the rise of CoreWeave.
Here's the article rating the clouds that SemiAnalysis wrote: https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/26/the-gpu-cloud-clustermax-rating-system-how-to-rent-gpus/
Outtro Music: Some Malaysian UK garage: GADISKU lucidrari, FITTO, Gard, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVewUwqu1dM
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Sergey Radchenko’s book, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Bid for Global Power, is a masterwork! In my mind, it’s in pole position for best book of 2025. Sergey takes you into the mind of Soviet and Chinese leaders as they wrestle for global power and recognition, leaving you amused, inspired, and horrified by the small-mindedness of the people who had the power to start World War III.
We get amazing vignettes like Liu Shaoqi making fun of the Americans for eating ice cream in trenches, Khrushchev pinning red stars on Eisenhower’s grandkids, and Brezhnev and Andropov offering to dig up dirt on senators to help save Nixon from Watergate.
Sergey earns your trust in this book, acknowledging what we can and can’t know. He leaves you with a new lens to understand the Cold War and the new US-China rivalry — namely, the overwhelming preoccupation with global prestige by Cold War leaders.
In this interview, we discuss…
Why legitimacy matters in international politics,
Stalin’s colonial ambitions and Truman’s strategy of containment,
Sino-Soviet relations during the Stalin era and beyond,
The history of nuclear blackmail, starting with the 1956 Suez crisis,
Why Khrushchev couldn’t save the Soviet economy.
Co-hosting today is Jon Sine of the Cogitations substack.
Outro music: Виталий Марков "Главное, ребята, сердцем не стареть" (YouTube Link)
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Despite leading the world in AI innovation, there’s no guarantee that America will rise to meet the challenge of AI infrastructure. Specifically, the key technological barrier for data center construction within the next 5 years is new power capacity.
To discuss policy solutions, ChinaTalk interviewed Ben Della Rocca, who helped write the AI infrastructure executive order and formerly served as director for technology and national security on Biden’s NSC, as well as Arnab Datta, director at IFP and managing director at Employ America, and Tim Fist, a director at IFP. Arnab and Tim just published a fantastic three-part series exploring the policy changes needed to ensure that AGI is invented in the USA and deployed through American data centers.
In today’s interview, we discuss…
The need for new power generation driven by ballooning demand for compute,
The impact of the January 2025 executive order on AI infrastructure,
Which energy technologies can (and can’t) power gigawatt-scale AI training facilities (and why Jordan is all-in on GEOTHERMAL),
Challenges for financing moonshot green power ideas and the role of government action,
The failure of the market to prioritize AI lab security, and what can be done to fend off threats from adversaries and non-state actors.
Outtro music: Ghost Crew - 蝴蝶武士 (Butterfly Warriors) (Youtube link)
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A Wuhan-developed AI agent went viral this weekend. Guests Rohit Krishnan of the substack Strange Loop Canon, Shawn Wang of Latent Space, and Dean Ball of Mercatus and Hyperdimensional join us to discuss.
We get into
What Manus is and isn't
What Manus tells us about the broader AI ecosystem's ability to produce products we actually want to use
The political economy and liability issues that AI agents will engender
More ChinaTalk coverage: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/manus-chinas-latest-ai-sensation
Outtro Music:
La Marelu "Mala" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAB5rx8mqjM&ab_channel=LaMarelu-Topic
Alaska y Dinarama "A Quién Le Importa" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uQhdDtdXg0&ab_channel=YouMoreTv-Espect%C3%A1culo
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