ChinaTalk

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 Pinelis, Chief AI Engineer The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She was previously the Chief of the Test, Evaluation, and Assessment branch at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Prior t...

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 announced an emergency meeting for the next day, July 25, during which Qin was “removed” 免职 (albeit not “dismissed” 撤职) from his position as China’s #2 diplomat. To dissect the rumors and make sense of it all, we have on Matt Brazil — a se...

ChinaTalk welcomes Taiwan expert and Hoover research fellow Kharis Templeman. This episode is all things 2024 Taiwan elections — slated for January 13, 2024. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Kharis is the program manager of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific, and previously was the program manager of the Taiwan Democracy and Security Project. In this show, we discuss: The front...

• How did the Chinese EV industry become so dominant? • What institutional and cultural factors shape China’s auto market? • What can Western democracies learn from Chinese industrial policy? To discuss these questions, I brought on GWU professor John Helveston, an expert in tech and innovation policy and Chinese electric vehicles. Outro music:  https://open.spotify.com/track/4QQEzkxcONBthDLfzqIh9...

What companies beyond OpenAI matter to the future of AI? What is the relationship between closed and open source source? When will researchers lose the reins to government on AI's trajectory? To discuss, this week I brought on Matt Lynley of the fantastic Supervised News substack as well as Lux Capital's Danny Crichton. Jade Leung's thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ea3c7cb8-2464-45f1-a47c...

Foreign aid is dominated by just a few huge players that receive the bulk of grants from the US government. But is bigger better? And are local players with innovative solutions to global issues missing out? Unlock Aid wants to see smaller stakeholders get access to more funding and seats at the table. The group’s executive director, Walter Kerr and COO Amanda Arch explain why. We also discuss: Ho...

Paul Huang, Taiwan military expert and research fellow at the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation, returns to ChinaTalk! Today he gives us an update on Taiwan’s military readiness, the PLA’s expansion, and whether Xi Jinping would really send it. If you missed his episode back in 2020, give it a listen, too. And check out his recent thoughts posted on NBR, as well as his long-form special report, “Th...

What happened over the past few days in Russia? What does this mean for the future of Putin and the war in Ukraine? To discuss, I recorded today a show with Kamil Galeev, a PKU classmate of mine formerly of the Wilson Center. Outtro music: Repo Man, Coup d'etat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJjuVzZQj0U Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blinken went to China to meet with Qin Gang, Wang Yi, and Xi himself! What happened, why does it matter, and does this make it any less likely we'll be in WWIII anytime soon? Do discuss, I bought on Dali Yang, political science professor at UChicago, and Nathaniel Sher of Carnegie. Subscribe to ChinaTalk at https://chinatalk.substack.com/! Outtro music (a two-parter!): Selena Gomez: Lose You to Lo...

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=PL0gnw1pNh6C1yA3...

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 choi...

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...

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 challenge...

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...

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...

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 tech...

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 midjou...

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 wo...

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 bett...

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 diplomati...

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 resp...

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 Un...

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 t...

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=LQiOA7eua...

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/...