Episodios

  • EMERGENCY POD: Liberation Day with Tanner Greer

    EMERGENCY POD: Liberation Day with Tanner Greer
    Apr 5 2025
    Tanner Greer of Scholar's Stage and I try to make sense of Liberation Day, the intellectual underpinnings of Trump's team, and what it all means for the world. Tanner's report: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/03/obscurity-by-design/ Outtro Music: Nobody but You Babe, Clarence Reid, 1969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCT7w2t8cyY 01:23 Geopolitical Implications of Trump's Management Style 35:02 Economic Vision and Industrial Renaissance 52:28 Economic Liberalism and Trump World 52:42 Industrial Policy Camps in Trump Administration 56:30 Laura Loomer and Trump World Geopolitics 01:04:04 Historical Parallels and Red Experts Problem 01:20:00 Taiwan Policy and Cultural Wars 01:29:40 China Policy and Trump's Tactical Approach Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 42 m
  • The Other Cold War: Inside the Sino-Soviet Rivalry

    The Other Cold War: Inside the Sino-Soviet Rivalry
    Apr 1 2025
    Welcome to part two of our series on Cold War history with Sergey Radchenko. Here’s part one. In today’s interview, we discuss… Khrushchev’s removal from power and the transition to the Brezhnev era, How the USSR and China managed their relationships with Vietnam, Sino-Soviet border conflicts, Brezhnev’s negative feelings toward China, and Nixon’s rapprochement, Watergate and the inability of China or the USSR to understand American politics Why the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan, Reagan’s approach to negotiations and his relationship with Gorbachev, How to manage the containment paradox and unknown adversary motives when competing with China and Russia today. Co-hosting today is Jon Sine of the Cogitations substack. Outro music: ДДТ- Родина (DDT - Motherland) (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 16 m
  • Superintelligence Strategy with Dan Hendrycks

    Superintelligence Strategy with Dan Hendrycks
    Mar 30 2025
    Is there a stable state the US and China can hope for on the road to AGI? To discuss we have on today Dan Hendrycks. A CS PhD, Dan runs the Center for AI Safety and is an advisor at xAI and Scale AI. Here's his superintelligence strategy: https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/ For some more direct lessons from the Cold War to today's US-China dynamics, check out the show I did with Hal Brands (https://www.chinatalk.media/p/cold-war-lessons-for-us-china-today) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 15 m
  • SemiAnalysis + Asianometry on Intel, Gemini 2.5, and Chinese Robots

    SemiAnalysis + Asianometry on Intel, Gemini 2.5, and Chinese Robots
    Mar 26 2025
    The Transistor Radio boys are back. Jon of Asianometry, Doug O'Laughlin and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis on the pod to talk about Google's AI push, Intel's new CEO, Chinese robots, and the rise of CoreWeave. Here's the article rating the clouds that SemiAnalysis wrote: https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/26/the-gpu-cloud-clustermax-rating-system-how-to-rent-gpus/ Outtro Music: Some Malaysian UK garage: GADISKU lucidrari, FITTO, Gard, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVewUwqu1dM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    28 m
  • The Soviets' Bid for Global Power

    The Soviets' Bid for Global Power
    Mar 24 2025
    Sergey Radchenko’s book, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Bid for Global Power, is a masterwork! In my mind, it’s in pole position for best book of 2025. Sergey takes you into the mind of Soviet and Chinese leaders as they wrestle for global power and recognition, leaving you amused, inspired, and horrified by the small-mindedness of the people who had the power to start World War III. We get amazing vignettes like Liu Shaoqi making fun of the Americans for eating ice cream in trenches, Khrushchev pinning red stars on Eisenhower’s grandkids, and Brezhnev and Andropov offering to dig up dirt on senators to help save Nixon from Watergate. Sergey earns your trust in this book, acknowledging what we can and can’t know. He leaves you with a new lens to understand the Cold War and the new US-China rivalry — namely, the overwhelming preoccupation with global prestige by Cold War leaders. In this interview, we discuss… Why legitimacy matters in international politics, Stalin’s colonial ambitions and Truman’s strategy of containment, Sino-Soviet relations during the Stalin era and beyond, The history of nuclear blackmail, starting with the 1956 Suez crisis, Why Khrushchev couldn’t save the Soviet economy. Co-hosting today is Jon Sine of the Cogitations substack. Outro music: Виталий Марков "Главное, ребята, сердцем не стареть" (YouTube Link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 51 m
  • Building Compute in America

    Building Compute in America
    Mar 17 2025
    Despite leading the world in AI innovation, there’s no guarantee that America will rise to meet the challenge of AI infrastructure. Specifically, the key technological barrier for data center construction within the next 5 years is new power capacity. To discuss policy solutions, ChinaTalk interviewed Ben Della Rocca, who helped write the AI infrastructure executive order and formerly served as director for technology and national security on Biden’s NSC, as well as Arnab Datta, director at IFP and managing director at Employ America, and Tim Fist, a director at IFP. Arnab and Tim just published a fantastic three-part series exploring the policy changes needed to ensure that AGI is invented in the USA and deployed through American data centers. In today’s interview, we discuss… The need for new power generation driven by ballooning demand for compute, The impact of the January 2025 executive order on AI infrastructure, Which energy technologies can (and can’t) power gigawatt-scale AI training facilities (and why Jordan is all-in on GEOTHERMAL), Challenges for financing moonshot green power ideas and the role of government action, The failure of the market to prioritize AI lab security, and what can be done to fend off threats from adversaries and non-state actors. Outtro music: Ghost Crew - 蝴蝶武士 (Butterfly Warriors) (Youtube link) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    1 h y 16 m
  • Manus: A DeepSeek Moment?

    Manus: A DeepSeek Moment?
    Mar 10 2025
    A Wuhan-developed AI agent went viral this weekend. Guests Rohit Krishnan of the substack Strange Loop Canon, Shawn Wang of Latent Space, and Dean Ball of Mercatus and Hyperdimensional join us to discuss. We get into What Manus is and isn't What Manus tells us about the broader AI ecosystem's ability to produce products we actually want to use The political economy and liability issues that AI agents will engender More ChinaTalk coverage: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/manus-chinas-latest-ai-sensation Outtro Music: La Marelu "Mala" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAB5rx8mqjM&ab_channel=LaMarelu-Topic Alaska y Dinarama "A Quién Le Importa" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uQhdDtdXg0&ab_channel=YouMoreTv-Espect%C3%A1culo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    53 m
  • EMERGENCY POD: Trump's Pivot to Putin, AGI + The Future of Warfare

    EMERGENCY POD: Trump's Pivot to Putin, AGI + The Future of Warfare
    Feb 28 2025
    Note: This episode was recorded Wednesday February 26th, two days before Zelenskyy's press conference with J.D. Vance and Trump in the White House. Shashank Joshi (Defence Editor at The Economist) and Michael Horowitz (Biden's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities, now back at Penn) come on the show to discuss: Ukraine's Chances on the Battlefield: We revisit J.D. Vance's tweet war with Shashank where he claims Ukraine is fated to lose, highlighting how war is nonlinear and dependent on political cohesion, economic strength, and defense industrial capacity beyond just manpower. Trump's Pivot to Putin: We try to think through what Trump is doing with Ukraine and Russia at the strategic level and what the long term and second order consequences are. AI and the Future of Warfare: We discuss of how AGI would transform warfare, with Horowitz suggesting progress will be incremental rather than revolutionary, emphasizing government adoption challenges over 0 to 1 technical breakthroughs. "Precise Mass" in Combat: Ukrainian forces have demonstrated how AI-guided drones achieving 80%+ hit rates have changed battlefield dynamics, introducing the concept of "precise mass" - lower-cost precision systems deployed at scale across domains including air, land, and sea. See Mike's Foreign Affairs piece on the topic here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/battles-precise-mass-technology-war-horowitz Defense Innovation Challenges: Western bureaucratic processes severely impede military innovation, with Horowitz noting that reprogramming just 0.05% of the defense budget required over 40 congressional briefings, contrasting with Ukraine's wartime innovation speed and calling for acquisition reform. Recommended Books: Under the Nuclear Shadow by Fiona Cunningham Army of None by Paul Scharre Billion Dollar Spy by David Hoffman Outtro Music: Santigold, You'll Find a Way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IodbPh7RkBw Vampire Weekend, Walcott: https://open.spotify.com/track/0BZY839qKXibapu4S0GYE2?si=7ecc773a95ee4d62 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    2 h