Special Edition: Steve Hsu on China, Tech, and Trumpism 2.0

Trumpism 2.0 offers both danger and opportunity.

Trumpism 1.0 was built around being tough with China.

And while that is no longer a rhetorical priority for the big man, much of what was started in 2016 has since become the accepted wisdom in DC.

Today, Trumpism 2.0 is as much about American competitiveness – in an international market that has slipped further away from its hegemon across the last eight years.

It’s about deregulation, DOGE, and developing strategic dominance in the emerging fields of AI, weapons tech, and genetics.

We’re in for four years of great power competition with China - against a background of a new focus on US competitiveness.

Almost no one spans these subjects as elegantly as Steve Hsu.

A professor of theoretical physics, startup founder and one of the most prominent members of the new counter-elite that has recently emerged from the high tech world of America's west coast to challenge the status quo in Washington DC

Steve's research has included black holes and quantum information, dark energy, quantum gravity, and quark matter. He has also contributed to the field of genetics, especially on the construction of genomic predictors of complex human traits.

Steve has founded several startups, including Othram, a company that uses DNA sequencing to help solve hot and cold criminal and missing persons cases, Genomic Prediction, which pioneered polygenic screening for embryos in IVF, and most recently Superfocus, an enterprise GPT that uses Large Language Models for language capability.

Somehow, he finds time to host Manifold, one of the world's most interesting podcasts and a must-listen for all those who wish to keep abreast of the ideas and knowledge of the Silicon Valley and VC world.

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