ChinaTalk
371 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 days ago - ★★★★★ - 56 ratingsConversations exploring China, technology, and US-China relations. Guests include a wide range of analysts, policymakers, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider.
Check out the newsletter at https://www.chinatalk.media/
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
EMERGENCY POD: Two Views from Israel on Hamas + China-Middle East Relations
October 10, 2023 18:00 - 49 minutesWe 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 repr...
Kurt Campbell on Grand Strategy and US-China
October 05, 2023 01:55 - 59 minutesKurt 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”...
Deep Tech VC On AI, Chips, and US-China Competition
September 30, 2023 03:06 - 1 hourJames 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 t...
Peak China with Noah Smith and Matt Klein
September 22, 2023 11:15 - 1 hourNoah 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 you...
EMERGENCY POD: Huawei's Breakthrough, the Technical, Industrial and Strategic Implications
September 13, 2023 21:06 - 1 hourHuawei’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 governm...
Why Congress Can Save Us All
September 06, 2023 00:28 - 1 hourThis 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 com...
How China Regulates AI
August 29, 2023 02:12 - 55 minutesHow 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 an...
Culture Month! Painting in Premodern China
August 16, 2023 04:00 - 1 hourCulture 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 ...
"Emergency" Pod: Outbound Investment Screening!
August 12, 2023 13:16 - 53 minutesEmily Benson (CSIS) and Martin Chorzempa (PIIE) come on to discuss the new executive order and Treasury's ANRPM (advanced notice of proposed rulemaking) on novel outbound investment screening rules on AI, quantum and semis. Treasury document: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/206/Treasury-ANPRM.pdf Outtro music: 水碾河南三街 LSGCsikoriot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wzz1Deafh8 Midjourney: used this 18th century Japanese woodprint and prompted it with "quantum semiconductor" https://www.me...
Beyond Decoupling: NATO for Trade
August 07, 2023 11:00 - 50 minutesShould democracies band together to protect themselves from Chinese economic coercion? What can deterrence theory teach us about geoeconomic strategy? To discuss these questions, I brought on Matt Goodman and Matt Reynolds of CSIS along with Matt Klein of The Overshoot and David Talbot of the Milken Institute. We discuss: –Why China uses economic coercion, especially against smaller states. –How democracies might join together to deter and respond to this aggression. –Why reslience beats reta...
Culture Month! Indie Chinese Music Hour with Concrete Avalanche
August 04, 2023 04:00 - 54 minutesThis August, ChinaTalk is going to take a bit of a break from our usual routine of tech and politics coverage to spend some time with Chinese culture! Starting us off is Jake Newby of the Concrete Avalanche substack who will be taking us through a radio hour of some of the most interesting independent music coming out of China. Here's the playlist: Intro music: Voision Xi - 'Too Late to Complain' from Five Loops in Her Way. More on that EP here; listen to Voision's jazz record Lost For Words ...
How Can the Pentagon Trust AI?
August 01, 2023 21:00 - 1 hourHow 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 to joining the JAIC, Dr. Pinelis served as the Director of Test and Evaluation for USDI’s Algorith...
EMERGENCY POD: Qin Gone!
July 26, 2023 21:59 - 34 minutesUntil 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 senior China analyst at BluePath Labs, writer for SpyTalk, fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, and longti...
Taiwan’s Presidential Elections: A Primer
July 25, 2023 13:43 - 1 hourChinaTalk 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 frontrunners’ profiles — Lai Ching-te 賴清德, Hou Yu-ih 侯友宜, and Ko Wen-je 柯文哲 — and what makes this thr...
Why Chinese EVs Will Take Over the World
July 22, 2023 03:52 - 1 hour• 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/4QQEzkxcONBthDLfzqIh9S?si=2af235017c8c4449 Photo: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
AI Beyond OpenAI
July 12, 2023 10:53 - 1 hourWhat 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-c7b568f27665 Outtro music: https://open.spotify.com/track/2opgXfgG4tdM2fuHiamoaG?si=e1eabaf13...
Moneyball for Foreign Aid
July 07, 2023 15:46 - 1 hourForeign 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: How much the US spends on foreign aid each year and who gets that money. How to make the distribu...
PLA Invasion: Is Taiwan's Military Ready?
July 03, 2023 13:47 - 49 minutesPaul 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, “Threats to Taiwan’s Security from China’s Military Modernization.” In this episode, we cover: The ...
EMERGENCY EDITION: Coup in Russia with Kamil Galeev
June 27, 2023 21:29 - 50 minutesWhat 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 to Beijing!
June 20, 2023 00:06 - 55 minutesBlinken 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 Love Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlJDTxahav0 Beyonce: Start Over https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Chinese TV PilotTalk: Farmers, Murders, and Anime
June 09, 2023 15:57 - 44 minutesWe'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=PL0gnw1pNh6C1yA3EUU-aQrOjI3hvBC7oQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
NVIDIA and the Future of AI
June 03, 2023 21:01 - 50 minutesDoug 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 choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Flournoy on US-China and DoD Innovation
May 31, 2023 02:09 - 1 hourMichele 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.com/world/us/why-us-delayed-china-sanctions-after-shooting-down-spy-balloon-2023-05-11/ New Y...
DoD Tech Strategy: How the Pentagon Hopes to Innovate
May 23, 2023 13:00 - 1 hourThe 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 challenges of peacetime innovation critical technology lists lessons from the origins of the machine gu...
AI Implementation: The View From the Trenches
May 18, 2023 18:51 - 44 minutesDan 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 to adopt quickly NYC ChinaTalk meetup: https://partiful.com/e/taNb35oaCKjglbHHdEA1 Music: Uy...
Jeff Ding on US vs China AI and Lessons from Past Industrial Revolutions
May 11, 2023 01:20 - 1 hourJeff 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 diffusion capacity than mainstream narratives imply. In particular, “In cases when the emerging ...
Crafting A National Tech Strategy and Reviving Net Tech Assessment
May 06, 2023 02:12 - 1 hourPJ 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 technologies to compete with China. They also discuss the importance of international collaboration i...
Sen. Warner on the RESTRICT Act, AI, Bipartisanship on China and a New Era of Intelligence
May 02, 2023 10:54 - 44 minutesOn 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 midjourney prompt: corporate America’s naïveté vis-à-vis China Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
Hoover, Communism, and the FBI
April 25, 2023 03:31 - 1 hourJ. 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 worldview, and how this shaped his approach to law enforcement. The deportation of anarchists to ...
Schell on The Long Arc of US-China and Long Reach of Leninism
April 14, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourHow 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 better read than Xi — China’s reciprocity problem on the international stage — How US officials react...
Roach on US-China Couples Therapy
April 09, 2023 19:11 - 54 minutesStephen 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 diplomatic development; What Stephen thinks about the odds of a hot conflict over Taiwan; Practical pr...
AI Military Competition: Tactical, Operational, and Strategic Implications
April 02, 2023 17:57 - 1 hourPaul 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 response from the bureaucracy” The significance of the US’s comparative advantage over China in t...
What to Do About Foreign Interference
April 02, 2023 01:30 - 41 minutesWhat 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 United Front’s Canada desk. Akshay on how democracies should respond to foreign influence: htt...
Chips Avengers 2023: Chips Act + AI Revolution
March 28, 2023 18:06 - 56 minutesThe 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 true intentions of the October 2022 export controls — from military constraining China to cripp...
TikTok Hearing: The End of an Era
March 24, 2023 02:50 - 59 minutesKevin 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=LQiOA7euaYA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kotkin on China
March 20, 2023 21:00 - 1 hourStephen Kotkin is a legendary historian, currently at Hoover, previously at Princeton. Best known for his Stalin biographies, his other works include Uncivil Society, Magnetic Mountain, and Armageddon Averted. Our discussion on China is far-ranging yet in-depth — we manage to pack in: The two dominant subjects taught at the CCP’s Central Party School; Kotkin’s assessment of the main threat to Communism — what “Communism with a human face” means, and why Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately destro...
GPT4—AI Unleashed?
March 16, 2023 18:16 - 1 hourHow 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/adchoices
The CIA’s China Capabilities
March 13, 2023 14:29 - 40 minutesDennis Wilder returns to ChinaTalk — this time with some broader thoughts on how the US intelligence community can rise to the occasion vis-à-vis China. In particular, we discuss: The importance of government hiring those with experience living in China; Contributions that the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) has made to China intelligence, and why it should be reinstated; A serious request to make an ChatGPT as good as Alice Miller is at analyzing CCP documents; https://www.h...
Economic Warfare: Implications for Sanctions Today
March 08, 2023 19:39 - 1 hourWelcome back to the second part of my conversation with Nick Mulder and Lars Schönander. Picking the narrative up in 1935, get real in this episode: Why the Great Depression, counterintuitively, made importing commodities cheaper, and how that affected Germany’s and Japan’s protectionism; The difference between autarky and autarchy; Whether Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could survive a full-on fuel embargo today by using Nazi-era technology; Nick’s definition of “temporal claustrophobia,” and...
Economic Warfare: A History
March 03, 2023 20:46 - 1 hourToday we’re releasing part one of our a two-part conversation with Nick Mulder, a history professor at Cornell and author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War — a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022. With cohost Lars, Schönander, we discuss: The recent advent of the use of sanctions (for example, in the Crimean War, Britain continued to fulfill payments to Russia, the nation it was fighting right then!) Why Europeans were reluctant to employ blockades and sanc...
How does AI actually work, anyways?
March 02, 2023 14:44 - 50 minutesData scientist Bryan Cheong breaks down how AI actually works, creating video using AI and how the technology is being used beyond image and language models. Also, I've got a meetup March 7th in Palo Alto! https://partiful.com/e/dVY7k51xQX4WhNr6AUcH Joined by Zheng, we also discuss: The farmers in India using AI for marketing Denoising and weights, the tech behind AI image generation tools What's next for developments in AI Singapore's tech scene Outro music: 我說所有的酒都不如你 by 房東的貓 https://...
Will Xi Give Putin Arms? Has A Cold War Already Begun?
February 28, 2023 03:00 - 47 minutesToday we’re going to do a show about the scariest US-China news story I’ve seen in years, that “The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine.” Would China really arm Russia, and if so what will that mean for the world if the US and China end up on opposite sides of a proxy war? To discuss this I have on today Georgetown’s, Dennis Wilder, a longtime CIA veteran who served as an NSC director on the C...
AI's Regulatory Future in the US, China, and EU
February 20, 2023 05:50 - 56 minutesWith AI on the verge of transforming the world, how are regulators across the globe approaching the challenges the technology might pose? Also, what does US-China AI collaboration look like today, and will it get caught up in broader tensions in the relationship? Matt Sheehan and Hadrien Pouget, who are both at Carnegie, come on to discuss. Matt's paper on US-China collaboration: https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-democracies-cooperate-with-china-on-ai-research/ Matt's work on Chinese alg...
BalloonTalk: Alien Valentine Edition
February 15, 2023 03:25 - 38 minutesWilliam 'Balloon Guy' Kim returns for a roundup of the past few days of news around the Chinese spy balloon and unidentified object shooting. We share our favorite theories of what on earth is going on and what this all means for US-China relations. Subscribe to the ChinaTalk newsletter! https://www.chinatalk.media/ Outtro Music: Sammy Davis Jr's Up Up and Away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYNMZtxJoU Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mechanical Keyboards in China （中文版）
February 12, 2023 05:00 - 49 minutesHey ChinaTalk listeners, this year we’re going to do something new—occasional episodes in Mandarin! While getting mainland guests to talk about more conventional topics like US-China relations and export controls has been nearly impossible, I think doing more slice of life/business stories about odd corners of China in the pale imitation of Gushi FM is both fun and enriching to our coverage. In this episode, you’ll hear from the founder of mechanical keyboard manufacturer Meletrix, Simba Hua,...
How YOU Can Change S&T Policy
February 10, 2023 17:00 - 42 minutesHow does one organization turn expert knowledge into real policy change? Dan Correa, CEO of the Federation of American Scientists and Founder of the Day One Project, discusses the power of policy entrepreneurship and shares examples of the ideas his nonprofit helped turn into legislation. We'll delve into the nitty-gritty of policymaking and explore topics such as: How to make meetings with government officials more productive. The importance of pre-work in preparing good ideas and the ro...
Tech Policy Entrepreneurship + Chips Act + Talent Policy
February 08, 2023 02:25 - 49 minutesWhat do we talk about when we talk about tech policy? What are the weird corners of the chips and science bill? How is talent policy broken and what can anyone do about it? And broadly, if you want to change the world through better regulatory and executive action, how do you go about this? To discuss all that we have Divyansh Kaushik, a newly minted PhD from Carnegie Mellon currently at the Federation for American Scientists focusing on emerging tech policy. He was also closely involved with...
BALLOONTALK: EMERGENCY EDITION
February 03, 2023 23:57 - 40 minutesChinese balloons over Wyoming!! To discuss, we have on today William 'Balloon Guy' Kim of the Marathon Initiative, Eric Lofgren of AcquisitionTalk, and Gerard Dipippo of CSIS. Intro Music: Up Up and Away, The 5th Fifth Dimension https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akEgsZSfhg Outro Music: NENA | 99 Luftballons [1983] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AI Compute 101: The Geopolitics of Giant Models
February 03, 2023 03:55 - 1 hourLove it or hate it, AI capabilities continue to advance. As futurists imagine how this technology may one day be used, how it develops and who will be able to access AI tools will also depend on who funds AI projects and what hardware will be needed to get it to work. Lennart Heim is a researcher at the Center for the Governance of AI and the author of a fantastic AI compute syllabus primer, which I have just spent the past few weeks obsessed with. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DF31DIkw...
War in Taiwan: Who Would Win?
January 29, 2023 15:27 - 1 hourChina v Taiwan: who would win? Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research at Brookings. He specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy. We discuss The limits of scenarios that predict the outcome of a China-Taiwan conflict. What are intercontinental rail guns? How sports teams that play each other in the same year can have different outcomes - and what this says about predictability. Given all this, what’s the poin...