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: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/taiwan-election-results-how-lai-won Subscribe to the newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JV9ayVWYr8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
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 Retort AI, hosted by AI Ethicist Tom Gilbert and Nathan Lambert who writes the fantastic https://www.interconnects.ai/ newsletter covering technological advancements in machine learning. Outtro Music: Bela Fleck et al, Bahar https://open.spotify.com/track/4D1ne3QFCBtUU2xFnoTir4?si=aeef1aefc6e047c6 Cover photo is a Midjourney a riff off of th...
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 crime and police dramas, and we cover the following new-ish releases: A Date With The Future 照亮你 (2023, mainland): Romance where a firefighter falls in love with a journalist! ** Ordinary Greatness** 警察荣誉 (2022, mainland): Sitcom about a local police station. The World Between Us 我們與惡的距離 (2019, Taiwan): Acclaimed miniseries set in the afte...
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 making her life difficult How CDAO sources and tests ideas for implementing AI into different corners of the kill chain Thanks to the Andrew Marshall Foundation and the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology for bringing you this episode. Outtro music: SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS Andre 3k, Killer Mike, Future, Erykah ...
Jake Newby of the substack Concrete Avalanche with an end of year ChinaTalk takeover! Here's his accompanying year in review post https://jakenewby.substack.com/p/2023-in-review?utm_source=activity_item Tracklist: Intro: 'Lost in China' (excerpt) – Tation 天声 (self-released) This 'postmodernist rock band from Tibet' produced some of their best work to date on the remarkable Illusions of the New Era EP. ‘Wen’s Woozy Wrap’ – Pu Poo Platter (fRUITYSHOP) Key cut from Brooklyn-formed Chinese funk grou...
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 reflect on the past year, get into my production function, what I think the point of all of this is, and how I expect to evolve ChinaTalk in 2024. Please get in touch! I'm at jordan@chinatalk.media Here's my cause exploration essay: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epi...
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 implications for national power Zambia debt negotiations and Argentina's dollarization When strategic trade policy can make sense Panda export controls Sign up here for international intrigue! https://www.internationalintrigue.io/?utm_source=chinatalk&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=1223 Kyla Scanlon of the https://kyla.substack.com/ ...
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 for AI model supremacy EV competition Venture investing in China PDD and Temu's rise TikTok's impressive resilience Here's ChinaTalk's attempt to benchmark Chinese models https://www.chinatalk.media/p/putting-chinas-top-llms-to-the-test Outtro music: two songs from my spotify wrapped which are kind of ancillary to crappy US-China relations?...
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 Lu Yeh-chung 盧業中 — a professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University 國立政治大學 — and Lin Fei-fan 林飛帆, previously the Deputy-Secretary of the DPP and well-known for leading the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014. Our conversation gets into: What a three-party race means in a first-past-the-post electoral system, and how the pan-blue and...
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 early Cold War is still relevant today What he took away from his time in Iraq and the Eisenhower Archives Why all you should really do to understand China is listen to ChinaTalk and read our substack (at https://www.chinatalk.media/ ) My book rec: https://www.amazon.com/Men-Machines-Modern-Times-Press/dp/0262529319 Outtro music, Ella Fitzg...
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 the discussions with the board. Some content we discussed: Jade Leung PhD thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ea3c7cb8-2464-45f1-a47c-c7b568f27665 Jeff Ding and Jenny Xiao's piece: https://www.governance.ai/research-paper/recent-trends-chinas-llm-landscape The Foreign Affairs piece: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/illusion-chinas-...
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 relations coming out of APEC. We get into: Realistic expectations for bilateral US-China diplomacy What are the necessary ingredients for coherent and effective policymaking What Matt expects and worries about from a second Trump administration Why foundations and corporations should sponsor ChinaTalk! Outtro music: Time/Breathe Reprise htt...
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 don't happen in the executive branch What reforms we might need to accelerate and amplify decision-making Lessons from the sanctions response to the war in Ukraine for China Check out our newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media . James Brown--Bewildered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iXlDeqSTRA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m...
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 classic ChinaTalk-style conversation, hitting on: How to design a world-class research organization The right and wrong lessons to learn from RAND's heyday in the 1950s Existential risks around AI and bio Government's capacity to grok and implement technology strategy What national security professionals can learn from art and architecture A...
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 into: What AI diplomacy is looking like post-Bletchley Park What new applications OpenAI's latest announcements mean for future AI applications Outtro: Bizarrap with Milo J https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGWa-GO8mKg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
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 analysts, Vivek Chilukuri, Bill Drexel and Tim Fist. We touch on: Immigration and federal hiring If AI + bio can ever be a safe thing What's going to happen to cloud access What are the hoops you'll need to jump through to train GPT5 and whether they're enough What to do about open source Why Jordan just wants to be an AI czar RSVP to the Los...
In this episode, Jordan Schneider interviews Markus Anderling and Anton Korinek, two of the coauthors of the paper 'Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety'. They discuss the need for regulation and oversight of advanced AI models, known as frontier models, that have the potential to pose significant risks to public safety and national security. Jordan came in as a skeptic. Will he be convinced? Here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03718 Here's Markus' song choic...
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 security policy, Chinese military affairs, US-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. He joined ChinaTalk to discuss Xi Jinping’s recent purges of high-ranking members of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi’s larger vision for the PLA, and what all this internal turmoil might mean for China’s longer-term designs on Taiwan...
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 inflation How policymaking is broken and what we need to fix it How Homer would tackle SBF Why goodreads is such a trash website Outtro music: Chocolate Snow, Inflation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9E6F8xMjoA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
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 process the aftermath of the Oct 7th attack. Outtro music: Ishay Ribo - Seder Ha'Avoda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECy3CMxShIQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
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 discuss why NVIDIA got screwed, why ASML may not have, and what these regs mean for the future of China and AI. Outtro music: Warren G Regulate remix https://soundcloud.com/dj-eric-rhodes/warren-wallen-mashup-final-edit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
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 returning to our regularly scheduled program. To that end, I'm running a guest episode from the Promised Podcast, a show from TLV1 which is "an inside view of how Israel can warm your heart and make your blood boil. It’s a show by a journalist, a professor and an NGO professional who live in and love Israel even though it drives them crazy, and w...
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 is Carice Witte who is the founder and director of the SIGNAL Group . Second in the episode is Ofir Dayan, a researcher at the Israel-China Policy Center at INSS . Outtro music: World Champion, sung by family members and victims of terrorism https://youtu.be/yofkk5Vaif8?si=JskMFXK3-srR5z8L Lyrics translation: I'm a world champion in repre...
Kurt Campbell is the Deputy Assistant to the President and the White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs. ChinaTalk recently joined Campbell in Washington to discuss US-China relations and mark the podcast’s 300th episode. We discuss: The nature of national power today; If China is peaking; How ideology impacts Beijing’s foreign policy; Campbell’s hopes and fears for the Biden administration’s Asia policy; Whether the US is still aiming to “maintain as large of a lead as possible” on chip...
James Wang, partner at Creative Ventures , joins to discuss: Huawei breakthrough implications and why NVIDIA's CUDA will make it particularly difficult to create a useful domestic AI chip Why China's AI companies have been underperforming my expectations How semiconductor industry dynamics parallel the challenges facing AI startups How pizza machines explain AI's future impact on the labor market Challenges and opportunities in investing in deep tech, including the eager but raw founder talent p...
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 China's economy and why it matters strategically How China's potential peak parallels Japan's Why the world should and shouldn't be scared of China's progress in semis and EVs What another Trump Administration could do for US-China relations How Noah actually does his substack This was a fun one, I hope you enjoy! Learn more about your ad choi...
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 semiconductor analysis, Doug O'Laughlin of Fabricated Knowledge and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis . We get into: How this chip illustrates Chinese engineering excellence and the porous nature of the current export control regime Why we can expect AI chips on par with the A100 coming out of China in the next two years What steps the US government c...
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 trace back to medieval England, when the king consulted regional advisors – leading to development of Parliament Founders inspired by this model when establishing Congress, wanting representation for diverse parts of young U.S. But competing visions emerged for how Congress should work: Madison's view: embrace factional conflict and compromise...
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 China's approach to AI? Matt Sheehan of CIEP returns to discuss the AI regulatory policy process in China! Matt's paper: https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/07/10/china-s-ai-regulations-and-how-they-get-made-pub-90117 Outtro music: 曾涵江Cup ：天选 CHOSEN ONE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB607_3sDYQ Image: I took an image from Dunhuang and pro...
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 team up to produce some remarkable art? Why is it okay to say Chinese art is "good" or "bad" while those who critique western art have so much heartburn over saying their opinion? Cohosting is Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, Chinese paintings curator at the MET. This episode is better experienced on YouTube. Check out the video on ChinaTalk's You...
