ChinaTalk

Iran, Cuba, and the Elections | WarTalk

938 views · 3d ago · 1:08:25

The blockade is squeezing Iran. So why does it keep being easier to press the war button? WarTalk regulars Jordan Schneider, Justin McIntosh, Bryan Clark, and Tony Stark. Why the strikes continue when the blockade is doing the real work, and what running the war off two carriers costs the Navy. Combatant commanders pitching the president their own wars, and whether Cuba is next. The myth that a more lethal military would have won in Afghanistan.

Topics: Iran and the midterms · Is Cuba next? · Jensen, spies, and the J-5 firing · The Afghanistan myth

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What's Broken About China's Economy | Meg Rithmire

13K views · 5d ago · 1:32:52

Guest: Meg Rithmire

ChinaTalk spends a lot of time on the leading lights of the Chinese economy... the MiniMaxes, ByteDances, Unitrees, and BYDs of the world. But what about the rest of the system, the part growing at zero to two percent? To talk about what's broken, not just what works, we talk with Meg Rithmire.

📖 Mentioned book: The Cost of Keeping China Out

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New Tech is Coming Online | Barnett Koven

545 views · 1w ago · 39:06

Guest: Barnett Koven

In the new era of global competition, being at the forefront of Super Intelligence innovation equals geopolitical power. To maintain leadership and establish the next world order, the U.S. is moving to cement its lead. Barnett Koven is a Managing Director of AI and Data at Accenture Federal Services.

Topics: Barnett's Story · Is the Government Ready for AI? · Putting Data to Work · Accelerating Science

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Russia is Doing Really Badly | Michael Kofman

34K views · 1w ago · 1:24:57

Guest: Michael Kofman

Ukraine and Russia have rebuilt their armies around drones, deception, and long-range strike. What should the U.S. military take from it? Michael Kofman joins WarTalk regulars Jordan Schneider, Justin McIntosh, and Tony Stark.

Topics: U.S. leverage in Ukraine · Who will fight with the drones? · You don't own the night · Wet gap crossings · What to tell Congress

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The US Can Stop China's Import Loophole | Nick Brown

4.4K views · 2w ago · 1:17:14

Guest: Nick Brown

Nick Brown is a co-founder of the Center for Technology and Statecraft (CTS), a new think tank spun out of IFP, that looks at long-term technology challenges and opportunities facing the US. Nick was a physics major, spent a while as a software engineer in and around government, and had an arc as an aspiring concert violinist.

Topics: EUV vs. DUV · What the MATCH Act does · Would Beijing retaliate? · Japan, the Netherlands, and the light-source option

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America Will Have Drone Dominance | Travis Metz - DIU

3.5K views · 2w ago · 1:22:25

Co-hosting are Brian Clark, senior fellow at Hudson Institute and a retired submariner, and Justin McIntosh, a twenty-year retired Green Beret who served in the 1st and 5th Groups, who now works in defense tech and writes a Substack called Mind of Things.

Topics: How Drone Dominance works · Ukraine, jamming, and the Gauntlets · Component supply chain · Doctrine and forcing functions · Bombers, pilots, and autonomy

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China's Open Source AI Leaders | Richard Bian

1.2K views · 2w ago · 1:13:24

Guest: Richard Bian

Richard Bian is the head of product operations for Ant Ling, the foundational LLM at Ant. If you don’t know Ant, they most famously make Alipay, which makes your money and your world run when you’re in China and sometimes beyond. Richard is a former software engineer at Microsoft and Square, and he previously served as head of open source at Ant, where he scaled the open source initiative into a dedicated team.

Topics: The Inevitability of AGI · Analyzing the Hugging Face Incident · Defining the AI Ecosystem · Cautious Pessimism and Human Nature · The Hype Cycle of Technology · The Longest Year in the Lab

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Big Companies Won't Fight Tariffs — BUT This CEO Will | Ethan Frisch

648 views · 3w ago · 1:04:45

Guest: Ethan Frisch

In February, the Supreme Court ruled Trump's IEEPA tariffs illegal. So why is everyone still paying them? Because the administration rebuilt them: first under Section 122, then under Section 301, and now the 301 tariffs are in court too.

Topics: Why the tariffs didn't go away · From Afghanistan to Burlap & Barrel · Why spice tariffs protect no one · What Americans actually buy · Liberation Day · Suing the president

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AGI Believers: Oppenheimer with Equity | Kevin Roose

8.4K views · 3w ago · 1:10:23

Guests: Kevin Roose, AGI Believers

Kevin Roose, formerly of the New York Times and Hard Fork, joins ChinaTalk to discuss AGI Chronicles, his new history of OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and the people who believed in artificial general intelligence long before anyone else did. Kevin is launching his own show, Machine Gods, later this October.

Topics: The AGI true believers · The Manhattan Project analogy · China and Dario · Washington wakes up to AI · What comes next

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Building AI Tools for the Military | Bharat Patel

1K views · 1mo ago · 42:12

Guest: Bharat Patel

Bharat Patel is currently Accenture’s AI and data lead for its defense portfolio, a former enlisted Navy sailor, and a veteran of the Army acquisition world, with experience at MITRE and across the Department of Defense.

Topics: Why data will never be AI-ready · Why tanks still need humans · Ukraine's data story · Getting Good Data · Wartime vs. peacetime buying · Synthetic data

📺 Mentioned TV series: : the people who can make or break a program, plus why industry will

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WarTalk: Potemkin Pacific, Midterm Budget Woes

897 views · 1mo ago · 1:11:59

WarTalk regulars Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, Justin McIntosh, and Tony Stark join Jordan. We discuss... The Potemkin Pacific — why Paparo has half the planet on his map and nothing to fight with, and how the Iran blockade became the status quo

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So Long, Dan (Driscoll Appreciation Song)

482 views · 1mo ago · 3:16

China's Economy is Broken | Logan Wright

91K views · 1mo ago · 1:27:33

Guest: Logan Wright

After the global financial crisis, China added a third of global GDP to its bank assets in just eight years... the largest single-country credit expansion in at least a century. Today investment is contracting, growth is less than a percent, and the financial system that fueled China's growth is now the thing holding it back.

Topics: Is China's economy broken? · How it broke: the credit boom and the property bust · Jordan plays Xi: manufacturing power vs. growth · Charts, Jobs, graduates, and AI · Can the financial system be fixed? · Xi, succession, and reform

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WarTalk: PLA, 2027, Nukes, and the Pivot to Asia Pirouette

1.1K views · 1mo ago · 1:16:55

In the deserts of western China sit 320 brand-new missile silos, and for a while, by the Pentagon's account, some of them simply didn't work. The gap between the PLA on paper and the PLA in practice is where Gerald C. Brown has spent his career.

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Julian Gewirtz on Trump-Xi Summit, AI, and Mao Dead Fifty Years Ago!

4K views · 1mo ago · 1:05:45

⁠Julian Gewirtz⁠, author and former Biden NSC China director, joins ChinaTalk days before Xi Jinping’s first White House visit since 2015. With little substantive agenda on the table, what is the US getting in exchange for the symbolism and pageantry of a state visit?

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