At long last, Jeff Alstott, the fairy godfather of DC AI policy, joins the show. He’s the founding director for RAND’s center for technology and security policy, TASP, worked at NSC, NSF and IARPA, and has a PhD in complex networks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

for better or worse, the first ep on chinatalk feed I had to put an explicit tag on... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthony Vinci, former CTO of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and author of the upcoming book The Fourth Intelligence Revolution, joins as Second Breakfast's first ever guest. Outtro Music: Otis Redding, Something is Worrying Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2ughAT80R8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jasmine Sun of https://jasmi.news/ and Nathan Lambert of https://www.interconnects.ai/ discuss a wide variety of topics of interest around AI and culture. Outtro Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujC4p7mf0XE&ab_channel=Release-Topic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

back at it again Outtro Music: Boys of the Old Brigade, Wolf Tones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoQBXgbVVT4&ab_channel=rebelsongs Book: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/child-soldiers-in-the-western-imagination/9780813563701/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nate Silver writes Silver Bulletin and is the author of On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, now in paperback with a new foreword. In today’s conversation, we discuss… Honesty, reputation, and paying the bills with writing, Impact scenarios for the AI future, including how AI could impact elections and political decision-making, The emerging synergy between prediction markets and journalism, and how Nate would build a team of professional Polymarket traders, How to build a legacy, and strategies for balancing long-form and short-form projects, Nate’s hypothetical plan to reform US institutions, and how that compares with real-world prospects for creating political change over the long term. Outro Music: 動物園釘子戶 (Zoo Gazer) - 大大大大大象 (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Uncle Sam is taking a bite out of companies left and right. Today, we’re going to focus on MP Materials — the Trump administration’s answer to China’s restrictions on rare earth material exports to America. To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Daleep Singh, former Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, now with PGIN; Arnab Datta, currently at Employ America and IFP; and Peter Harrell, former Biden official and host of the excellent new Security Economics podcast. Today, our conversation covers: Why critical mineral markets are broken, How China achieved rare earth dominance, The history of rare earth mining and refinement in the US, What the MP Materials deal does, and whether it can succeed, The key ingredients for successful industrial policy, with case studies including a Strategic Resilience Reserve, a US sovereign wealth fund, and support for Intel. Outro music: Ornaments Of Gold - Siouxsie And The Banshees (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're going weekly. Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk18bFIgOS4&ab_channel=ThereIRuinedIt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ryan Julian is a research scientist in embodied AI. He worked on large-scale robotics foundation models at DeepMind and got his PhD in machine learning at USC in 2021. Follow him on X: @ryancjulian In our conversation today, we discuss… What makes a robot a robot, and what makes robotics so difficult, The promise of robotic foundation models and strategies to overcome the data bottleneck, Why full labor replacement is far less likely than human-robot synergy, China’s top players in the robotic industry, and what sets them apart from American companies and research institutions, How robots will impact manufacturing, and how quickly we can expect to see robotics take off. O*NET’s ontology of labor: http://onetcenter.org/database.html ChinaTalk's Unitree coverage: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/unitree-ceo-on-chinas-robot-revolution Robotics reading recommendations: Chris Paxton, Ted Xiao, C Zhang, and The Humanoid Hub on X. You can also check out the General Robots and Learning and Control Substacks, Vincent Vanhoucke on Medium, and IEEE’s robotics coverage. Today’s podcast is brought to you by 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit that helps people find fulfilling careers that do good. 80,000 Hours — named for the average length of a career — has been doing in-depth research on AI issues for over a decade, producing reports on how the US and China can manage existential risk, scenarios for potential AI catastrophe, and examining the concrete steps you can take to help ensure AI development goes well. Their research suggests that working to reduce risks from advanced AI could be one of the most impactful ways to make a positive difference in the world. They provide free resources to help you contribute, including: Detailed career reviews for paths like AI safety technical research, AI governance, information security, and AI hardware, A job board with hundreds of high-impact opportunities, A podcast featuring deep conversations with experts like Carl Shulman, Ajeya Cotra, and Tom Davidson, Free, one-on-one career advising to help you find your best fit. To learn more and access their research-backed career guides, visit 80000hours.org/ChinaTalk. To read their report about AI coordination between the US and China, visit http://80000hours.org/chinatalkcoord. Outro music: Daft Punk - Motherboard (⁠YouTube Link⁠) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Manoj Kewalramani of the Takshashila Institution and the Tracking People's Daily substack https://trackingpeoplesdaily.substack.com/ alongside James Crabtree, author of Billionaire Raj, chat whatever the hell is happening in the trilateral relationship. Outtro music: Chalte Chalte Title Song | Abhijeet, Alka Yagnik | Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkOakcMqJ-8&ab_channel=T-SeriesBollywoodClassics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our third defense pod, I guess we're really doing it now. Like and subscribe if you're just here for our Civil War coverage. Guests include: Tony Stark, Army vet who writes https://www.breakingbeijing.com/ Justin McIntosh, former Green beret who writes https://justinmc.substack.com/ Eric Robinson, lawyer and Army vet who spent time in OSC, JSOC and the NCTC Outtro Music: After going through twenty different John Brown's Body recordings this one was my favorite, an acapela rendition by Deborah Anne Goss https://open.spotify.com/track/20id0r7ZlSIFxKifoEFlfC?si=0d2a59f7dfe142fa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory over Japan, ChinaTalk interviewed Ian Toll about his Pacific War trilogy, which masterfully brings America’s bloodiest war — and the world’s only nuclear war — to life. Ian’s detailed scholarship creates a multisensory historical experience, from the metallic tang of radiation after the bombs were dropped to the stench of Pacific battlefields. Ian’s forthcoming book, The Freshwater War, will explore the naval campaign the US fought against Britain on the Great Lakes between 1812 and 1815. Today our conversation covers…. How Ian innovates when writing historical narratives, Whether Allied victory was predetermined after the US entered the war, Why the Kamikaze were born out of resource scarcity, and whether Japanese military tactics were suicidal as well, How foreign wars temporarily stabilized Japan’s revolutionary domestic politics, How American military leadership played the media and politics to become national heroes, Lessons from 1945 for a potential Taiwan invasion. Cohosting is Chris Miller, author of Chip War. Thanks to the US-Japan Foundation for sponsoring this podcast. Outro music: The Mills Brothers - Till Then (YouTube link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Wang at long last makes his solo ChinaTalk debut! We’re here to discuss and celebrate his first book, Breakneck. We get into… Engineering states vs lawyerly societies, The competing legacies of the 1980s in China, the decade which saw brutal repression via the One Child Policy and Tiananmen alongside intellectual debate, cultural vibrancy, and rock and roll, Methods of knowing China, from the People’s Daily and Seeking Truth to on-the-ground research, How to compare the values of China’s convenient yet repressive society with the chaotic pluralism of the USA, What Li Qiang’s career post-Shanghai lockdowns can tell us about the value of loyalty vs competence in Xi’s China. Outro music: Mozart - The Marriage of Figaro (YouTube link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Israeli/Ukranian-style bolt from the blue drone attacks freak out Eric. I don't buy Silicon Shield. Lessons from Waymo on about the future of warfare. Intertextual analysis of the Mick Ryan interview. Fed Supernova, which is a terrible name for a conference, and counterintelligence. Has John Bolton taken enough Ls already? I guess not. Guests include: Tony Stark, Army vet who writes https://www.breakingbeijing.com/ Justin McIntosh, former Green beret who writes https://justinmc.substack.com/ Eric Robinson, lawyer and Army vet who spent time in OSC, JSOC and the NCTC Outtro Music: Bach, Chris Thile, Partita 1 in B Minor 1002: VI. Double https://open.spotify.com/track/780bh3MspPK19jVDD7EIKu?si=4809af67eda34c38 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are GPUs being smuggled into China? Nvidia says no. But Steve Burke, editor in chief of Gamer Nexus, has traced out the entire smuggling chain in an epic three-hour YouTube documentary. He filmed another three-hour documentary exploring the impact of tariffs on America’s supply chain ecosystem. In today’s conversation, we discuss… Steve’s investigative process, including how he found people in mainland China willing to speak on the record about black market GPUs, The magnitude of smuggling, weaknesses in enforcement, and crudeness of US restrictions, China’s role in manufacturing the GPUs they aren’t allowed to buy, How Gamers Nexus monetizes content, What it takes to stand up to Nvidia as an independent journalist. Check out ChinaTalk's previous work on the history of Nvidia here. As of August 21st, YouTube has removed the full documentary. Gamers Nexus is working on getting the video back on YouTube, but you can watch it here in the meantime. Outro music: Jim and Jesse - Ballad of Thunder Road (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian army and author of three books — War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict, White Sun War, which is a piece of fiction about a near-future Taiwan war, and The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire. He also writes the excellent Futura Doctrina Substack, which has taught me a tremendous amount over the past few years. The way Mick synthesizes history and contemporary conflict makes it one of my few true must-read Substacks. In today’s conversation, we discuss… Lessons from the history of warfare, and how to apply them to modern conflict, Why superweapons don’t win wars, and how the human dimension of war will shape military applications of AI, Why economic integration alone cannot prevent a US-China war, The role of deception and the limits of battlefield surveillance, with case studies in Ukraine and Afghanistan, Mick’s four filters for applying lessons from Ukraine to a Taiwan contingency, and the underappreciated role of Taiwanese public opinion in shaping CCP goals. Thanks to the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology for sponsoring this podcast. Outro music: Elvis Presley — Down by the Riverside (YouTube Link) Reading recommendations: Paul Kennedy — The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War Norman F. Dixon — On the Psychology of Military Incompetence  Aimée Fox — Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914–1918  Williamson Murray & Allan R. Millett — Military Innovation in the Interwar Period and Military Effectiveness trilogy  Trent Hone — Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945  Brent L. Sterling — Other People’s Wars: The U.S. Military and the Challenge of Learning from Foreign Conflicts (2021) Dima Adamsky — The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (2010) Meir Finkel — On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield and Military Agility: Ensuring Rapid and Effective Transition from Peace to War Andrew Krepinevich —  The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers R.V. Jones —  The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 Francis Hoffman — Mars Adapting: Military Change During War You can find more syllabi on Mick Ryan's Substack (here and here) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jon, Doug, Dylan and Wei join the chat to talk export controls and GPT5. Books Doug and I like: Jonathan Spence's Search for Modern China Gavan Daws' Shoal of Time Joseph Heinrich's The Secret of Our Success Outtro Music: Europhia II from kkluv's new album https://open.spotify.com/track/61kEkWr0gQrcDwd6uIbxQ1?si=190526b87e96487c Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So we're selling AI chips to China now. Chris Miller, author of Chip Wars, and Lennart Heim at RAND join to discuss: What are the tradeoffs involved in selling Why China is talking like they don't even want the H20s Why selling HBM and semiconductor manufacturing equipment might be an even bigger deal than Nvidia chips Check out the Horizon Fellowship to work in DC on emerging tech policy issues like AI chip export controls! https://horizonpublicservice.org/applications-open-for-2026-horizon-fellowship-cohort/ Outtro Music: It's a Shame, The Spinners, 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQQudHLi0A&ab_channel=TheSpinners-Topic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We talk AGI nihilism in the Taiwan fight, combined arms breach, and Palmer Luckey's Taiwan speech. Part 2 explores Detachment 201, the evolution of the Office of Strategic Capital, and the MP Materials rare earths deal. Guests include: Tony Stark, Army vet who writes https://www.breakingbeijing.com/ Justin McIntosh, former Green beret who writes https://justinmc.substack.com/ Eric Robinson, lawyer and Army vet who spent time in OSC, JSOC and the NCTC Outtro Music: Last Chance, Mary Cox https://open.spotify.com/track/3LAOSqy3DoiA1OiPxC9yMe?si=da00b16696f042f8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement — the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Professor Ben Nathans — is perhaps the sharpest, richest, and funniest account of the Soviet dissident movement ever written. Today, we’ll interview Nathans alongside the legendary Ian Johnson, whose recent book Sparks explores the Chinese dissident ecosystem. We discuss… The central enigma of the Soviet dissident movement — their boldness in the face of hopeless odds, How cybernetics, Wittgenstein, and one absent-minded professor shaped the intellectual backbone of post-Stalinist dissent, Why the Soviet Union was such fertile ground for dark humor, and why humor played a vital role for Soviet resistance movements, How the architect of Stalin's show trials laid the groundwork for, ironically, a more professional legal system known as “socialist legality,” Similarities and differences between post-Stalinist and post-Maoist systems in dealing with opposition, Plus: Why Brezhnev read The Baltimore Sun, how onion-skin paper became a tool of rebellion, and why China’s leaders study the Soviet collapse more seriously than anyone else. Today's episode is sponsored by Alaya Tea, cofounded by ChinaTalk listener Smita Satiani. Alaya Tea ships Indian teas straight from the source, and their products are 100% plastic-free. My favorite is their Assam black tea, which I've been using to make a fantastic milk tea. Go to ⁠alayatea.co⁠ and use the code CHINATALKTEA for free shipping. Outro music: Владимир Высоцкий - Охота на волков (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices