Shows / ChinaTalk
ChinaTalk
Conversations exploring China, technology, and US-China relations. Guests include a wide range of analysts, policymakers, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider. Check out the newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media/
Episodes
ChinaTalkShakespeare and Power
Are politicians and actors two sides of the same coin? Can you become a better public speaker by studying soliloquies? What can Shakespeare teach us about the…
ChinaTalkWhy America Didn't Invade Taiwan: WWII Lessons for Xi's Invasion
One does not simply invade Taiwan — but George Marshall once thought long and hard about it. In 1944, in the middle of the island-hopping campaign, American…
ChinaTalkPreventing an Invasion of Taiwan
Taiwan’s government agencies are battered by 5 million cyberattacks every day. China is holding invasion drills at a replica of Taiwan’s presidential palace in…
ChinaTalkSovereign AI
Good AI is good and bad AI is bad, but how do lawmakers tell the difference? Will AI bring the world together or balkanize the internet beyond repair? Why do…
ChinaTalkAI Roundup: GPT4o, SCSP AI Expo, Open vs Closed
Nathan Lambert of the Interconnects substack and Allen Institute joins for a roundup where we get into: What DC should understand about the Bay Area AI…
ChinaTalk250 Years of US Trade Policy
We're taking one out of the archives! Douglas Irwin is a Dartmouth professor and the author of Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. On this…
ChinaTalkEMERGENCY POD: Biden's Electric Curtain
Brad Setser of CFR talks Biden's new tariffs! Earlier podcast deep dive on Chinese EV policy: ChinaTalk: Why Chinese EVs Will Take Over the World on Apple…
ChinaTalkMITRE on S&T Strategy
Charles Clancy is the CTO of MITRE, an American not-for-profit organization managing federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) supporting…
ChinaTalkTSMC Takes Arizona
TSMC is taking on Arizona. How's it going? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Viola Zhou, journalist at Rest of World. She has published pieces on Foxconn's…
ChinaTalkHistory and Future of India-China Relations
India’s elections are underway! What does the future hold for the world’s largest democracy? Will the election results impact India-China relations? What about…
ChinaTalkJapan's Resurgent Tech Scene
Ryan Takeshita is the Chief Global Editor at PIVOT, a new media outlet in Japan focused on the emerging startup scene. We get into: A stroll through recent…
ChinaTalkJapan's Economic Security Renaissance
To learn about Japan’s new economic national security policy, export controls, chip policy, lessons from history, and even space policy, we interviewed Kazuto…
ChinaTalkA Gut Check on Intel and Nvidia with Asianometry, Fabricated Knowledge, and SemiAnalysis
Just minutes after the Taiwan earthquake yesterday, Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge, Jon of Asianometry and yours truly…
ChinaTalkAmb. Rahm Emanuel on China and Japan
Straight from Tokyo, Japan: an exclusive with Amb. Rahm Emanuel. Before his current posting as US ambassador to Japan, Rahm served as a senior advisor to Bill…
ChinaTalkBiotech 101
Biotech. What is it? Why should you care? Does biotech really matter for national security? What are China’s biotech ambitions? To find out, ChinaTalk…
ChinaTalkEMERGENCY POD: TikTok Ban!?
Is Congress for real this time? To discuss the US domestic politics of the dramatic rollout and broader social, national, and geopolitical implications of the…
ChinaTalkMatt Clifford on China, AI Safety, and Entrepreneurship
How do you stand up an effective national AI project? Is the world prepared for the Reformation-level societal change AI could bring? Matt Clifford, according…
ChinaTalkDoomscrolling Chinese Twitter
Chinese Doomscroll, which faithfully records happenings from the wild west that is Weibo (China’s Twitter/X equivalent), won the ChinaTalk award for best…
ChinaTalkAI + The State Department
How can AI change diplomacy? To discuss the State Department’s options for AI integration, we interviewed the State Department's Deputy Chief Data and AI…
ChinaTalkIndia's Chip War
Why can India design chips with the best of them but has completely failed to develop fabs, much less a broader electronics industry? To discuss, I have on…
ChinaTalkAI at the Frontier: What it Takes to Compete
What does it take to train a frontier model? What's the know-how, the secret sauce that makes firms lets OpenAI and Deepmind push the limits of what's…
ChinaTalkPottinger on Trump 2.0
Matt Pottinger reported for years out of China, served as a US Marine Corps intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, and held several senior roles on…
ChinaTalkIs the NSC Unwell?
Heart attacks, prostate cancer, Jake Sullivan awake for a home invasion attempt at 4 AM because he was just up working on a random Tuesday night? Is the…
ChinaTalkTaiwan Election Results and Implications for Beijing
Kharis Templeman, research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, returns to ChinaTalk to break down the recent Taiwan elections, held on January 13. We…
ChinaTalkHow the Navy Learned to Fight
How did the US Navy evolve over the first half of the 20th century from a bunch of unschooled violent sailors who couldn't shoot straight to the world's…
ChinaTalkTaiwan Election Results Rapid Reaction
How did Lai win, what does China think, and what’s at stake for the DPP? ChinaTalk editor Nicholas Welch reads his latest recap of the 2024 Taiwan elections…
ChinaTalkAI: Open vs Closed + NeurIPS Reflections
Should AI be more open or closed? What does it mean to be open, anyway? And can France overtake China in AI?? Today I'm running a crossover episode with the…
ChinaTalkPilotTalk: Cops and Journalists in PRC and Taiwan TV
New year, new PilotTalk! Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Semafor, joins Jordan and editor Irene to watch Chinese and Taiwanese TV shows. Ben’s favorite genre is…
ChinaTalkThe Pentagon's AI Implementers
Margaret Palmieri is the Deputy Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Officer. I had her on to dicusss: Innovation vs diffusion in the DoD context Data issues…
ChinaTalkBest Chinese Music of 2023
Jake Newby of the substack Concrete Avalanche with an end of year ChinaTalk takeover! Here's his accompanying year in review post…
ChinaTalkChinaTalk 2023 in Perspective
80 episodes and 145 newsletters later, we've made it through my first year working on ChinaTalk full time. Editor Ryan Hauser hosts a review episode where we…
ChinaTalkSetser on US-China Trade, Lessons from USTR, Economics of Great Powers, and Panda Diplomacy
Brad Setser, fellow at CFR who spent a year during the Biden Administration in USTR, joins ChinaTalk to discuss: China's long term growth trajectory and…
ChinaTalkUS-China Tech in 2023: Top 5 Stories of the Year
Kevin Xu of https://interconnect.substack.com/ and I run down our top five stories of the year in US-China tech. We get into: The eternal chip war The battle…
ChinaTalkTaiwan Election Showdown! A Blue Prof and Green Pol Explain
The Taiwanese populace will head to the polls to choose their next president on January 13, 2024 — and the three-party slate is set! To discuss, we brought on…
ChinaTalkHow Rep. Gallagher Would Fix Congress and Beat China
This was a good episode. Mike Gallagher, Chair of the Select Committee on China, has some thoughtful thoughts! We get into: How he would fix Congress Why the…
ChinaTalkEmergency Pod: We Are So Back! OpenAI Drama and US-China
Rohit Krishnan of Strange Loop Canon and I kibbitz about this weekend's OpenAI drama as well as the safety and US-China regulatory dynamics likely raised in…
ChinaTalkXi-Biden at APEC + What It Takes To Compete
Matt Turpin, China NSC Director in the Trump administration currently at Hoover and Palantir, comes on to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of US-China…
ChinaTalkPeter Harrell on Bureaucratic Barriers to Competition
Peter Harrell, who served as Biden's Senior Director for International Economics and Competitiveness on the NSC and NEC, comes on to discuss: Why things do or…
ChinaTalkRAND CEO Jason Matheny Gives a Masterclass on Risk and Organizational Design
This interview was so good. Jason Matheny, Biden's former top tech + national security advisor, has recently reached one year as CEO of RAND. We had a truly…
ChinaTalkLondon AI Summit + OpenAI Dev Day!
Zvi Mowshowitz of Don't Worry about The Vase and Nathan Labenz of the Cognitive Revolution podcast come on for a quick recap of the past week's AI news! We get…
ChinaTalkEmergency Pod: AI Executive Order!
Biden just dropped a 50 page executive order that's going to make the world safe for AI, hopefully? To discuss the sprawling EO we've brought on three CNAS…
ChinaTalkCan AI Be Governed?
In this episode, Jordan Schneider interviews Markus Anderling and Anton Korinek, two of the coauthors of the paper 'Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging…
ChinaTalkPLA Purges + Taiwan War Risk
Defense Minister Li Shangfu just got officially purged. To discuss, we brought on Joel Wuthnow, a fellow at NDU. His research areas include Chinese foreign and…
ChinaTalkJason Furman on Inflation and Policymaking
Jason Furman was Obama's CEA chair and a Harvard econ professor, while Kyla is the my favorite economics influencer. We get into: What the deal is with…
ChinaTalkHow to Process Violence
Two rabbis on ChinaTalk? What am I even doing? Zohar Atkins of the wonderful Meditations with Zohar podcast alongside Ari Lamm of Bnai Zion come to discuss and…
ChinaTalkEMERGENCY POD: Export Controls Dropped!
BIS just released its revision to the Oct 7 2022 restrictions. Jon of Asianometry, Dylan of Semianalysis, and Doug of Fabricated Knowledge join the pod to…
ChinaTalkCities of Slaughter
Israel is a country dear to my heart and I wanted to provide the ChinaTalk audience with one more perspective on the events of this past weekend before…
ChinaTalkEMERGENCY POD: Two Views from Israel on Hamas + China-Middle East Relations
We discuss their experience of the past few days, China's response, its broader policy and aspirations in the Middle East, and what comes next. Our first guest…
ChinaTalkKurt Campbell on Grand Strategy and US-China
Kurt Campbell is the Deputy Assistant to the President and the White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs. ChinaTalk recently joined Campbell in…
ChinaTalkDeep Tech VC On AI, Chips, and US-China Competition
James Wang, partner at Creative Ventures, joins to discuss: Huawei breakthrough implications and why NVIDIA's CUDA will make it particularly difficult to…
ChinaTalkPeak China with Noah Smith and Matt Klein
Noah Smith of https://www.noahpinion.blog/ and Matt Klein of https://theovershoot.co/ join ChinaTalk to discuss: We get into: What's really happening with…
ChinaTalkEMERGENCY POD: Huawei's Breakthrough, the Technical, Industrial and Strategic Implications
Huawei’s breakthrough Kirin 9000s: what is it, why is it a big deal, and what if anything should the US do about it? Joining me, I have on two fantastic…
ChinaTalkWhy Congress Can Save Us All
This episode of China Talk explores the past, present, and future of Congress with AEI's Philip Wallach. We get into: Origins of representative government…
ChinaTalkHow China Regulates AI
How does the public, corporations, academia and civil society end up directly influencing some of China's most important regulations? What's the trajectory of…
ChinaTalkCulture Month! Painting in Premodern China
Culture month continues with some traditional Chinese painting coverage! What was it like to paint in premodern China? How did a husband-wife and master-mentee…
ChinaTalk"Emergency" Pod: Outbound Investment Screening!
Emily Benson (CSIS) and Martin Chorzempa (PIIE) come on to discuss the new executive order and Treasury's ANRPM (advanced notice of proposed rulemaking) on…
ChinaTalkBeyond Decoupling: NATO for Trade
Should democracies band together to protect themselves from Chinese economic coercion? What can deterrence theory teach us about geoeconomic strategy? To…
ChinaTalkCulture Month! Indie Chinese Music Hour with Concrete Avalanche
This August, ChinaTalk is going to take a bit of a break from our usual routine of tech and politics coverage to spend some time with Chinese culture! Starting…
ChinaTalkHow Can the Pentagon Trust AI?
How is the DoD thinking about deploying AI? What are the challenges and opportunities involved in building out AI assurance? To discuss, I brought on Dr. Jane…
ChinaTalkEMERGENCY POD: Qin Gone!
Until yesterday, Qin Gang 秦刚 was serving as China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. But on Monday, July 24, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee…