Helen Toner Takes the CSET Reins
It's think tank director week at ChinaTalk! Helen Toner of CSET kicks us off to talk through where she's planning on taking the storied organization. her speech about jagged progress: https://helent...
2 Dec 20251h 4min
The Future of Secure Telecom
In the wake of Salt Typhoon, what does the future of secure telecom look like? To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed John Doyle, a former Green Beret who spent a decade building Palantir’s national secu...
25 Nov 202559min
Transistor Radio: OpenAI Loses the Mandate, Railroad Bubble = AI Bubble
Doug, Dylan, and Wei of SemiAnalysis join me (Jon was sleeping at 5AM taiwan time...) for a pre-holiday get together. 01:00 AI Mandate--OpenAI slipping 19:03 Dylan sells TSMC on AI better than sama ...
25 Nov 202550min
Second Breakfast: Witkoff and Putin's Peace Deal
Eric Robinson, Justin Mc, Tony Stark and I talk China's sushi ban, Witkoff's peace plan, Jake Sullivan, William Manchester's absurd memoir Here's the full text of the peace plan: https://www.axios.co...
21 Nov 202559min
The Z.ai Playbook
Zixuan Li is Director of Product and genAI Strategy at Z.ai (also known as Zhipu 智谱 AI). The release of their benchmark-topping flagship model, GLM 4.5, was akin to “another DeepSeek moment,” in the w...
21 Nov 20251h 16min
Jake Sullivan on Playing the Long Game
After five long years since his last ChinaTalk appearance, Jake Sullivan returns to the show! We discuss… Sullivan’s experience managing crises, implementing grand strategy, and cultivating lea...
18 Nov 20251h 10min
Second Breakfast: Acquisition Reform? Are We Really Doing It?
Justin and Eric cohost with Pete Modigliani and Matt McGregor, coauthors of the Defense Tech and Acquisition substack (https://defenseacquisition.substack.com/). Chapters 16:24 The Future of Defense...
15 Nov 20251h 4min
Overfit: AI Lovers, Chinese Model Takeover, Vice Signalling, Hefei Model
Jasmine Sun (https://jasmi.news/), Nathan Lambert (https://www.interconnects.ai/), and special guest Afra Wang (https://afraw.substack.com/). Our article on 'China makes AI girlfriends and America m...
11 Nov 202559min
