ChinaTalk

Minh Tran (https://www.couldabeenatthe.club/), Afra Wang (https://afra.work/) and Lauren Teixeira (https://lrntex.substack.com/) join me to talk about Chinamaxxing — the growing fascination among younger Americans with Chinese short-form content. We discuss why these videos feel so appealing in a moment of pessimism at home, how Trump’s America shapes that gaze, and where the “shiny,” abundance-driven vision of China starts to break down. We also get into what short-form can’t show and review Chinese films and hip-hop! Chapters 00:00 Cultural Exchange and Chinese Short Form Content 08:14 Influencers and the Appeal of the China Aesthetic 14:13 Contradictions in the Chinese Narrative 25:06 Recommendations for Exploring Chinese Culture 33:33 Jia Zhangke's Cinematic Vision 38:12 Chengdu hip hop 41:48 The Future of Chinese Cultural Products 42:56 Censorship and the Dynamics of Domestic Entertainment in China Outtro Music: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is the legendary strategist Edward Luttwak — the Machiavelli of Maryland. He’s consulted for presidents, prime ministers, and secretaries of defense, and authored magnificent books on Byzantine history, a guide to planning a successful coup, and an opus on the logic of strategy and the rise of China. He raises cows, too. We recorded this episode in Feb of 2024. Thanks to the Hudson Institute for sponsoring this episode. Our conversation today covers… Luttwak’s childhood and formative encounters with war, including an early fascination with the mafia in Sicily, Technological step-changes in warfare, Books that shaped Luttwak’s view of war, from Clausewitz to the Iliad, The costs of “removing war from Europe” post-1945, China’s strategic missteps, The psychology of deterrence, including what kind of Middle East policy would actually deter Iran, The strengths of democracies vs. autocracies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

whole gang is here. Also a little Minnesota and 30 seconds of NDS (which is all it deserves) suno: https://suno.com/s/SJ0FoEPMVZ3QS441 'He couldn’t capture Canada, but captured infamy— The only general in history who failed at treason and geography!' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jon Czin, former CIA analyst and NSC staffer, returns to talk purges. We have far too much fun. The disney take on PLA purges: https://suno.com/s/Wv1yQyxdUhWBzyA0 08:50 Deep read into the WSJ nuke traitor allegations 22:10 Xi getting paranoid? 26:13 Taiwan implications 32:38 Succession implications 45:55 It must really suck to work in Chinese politics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jasmine Sun of https://jasmi.news/ and Nathan Lambert of https://www.interconnects.ai/ report for duty. Athena makes a brief guest appearance before dipping for pilates. Jordan's flower app: https://cut-from-the-masters.vercel.app/ Jordan's acting app: https://acting-trainer.vercel.app/ Jordan's mahjong trainer app: https://mazel-jong.vercel.app Suno song: https://suno.com/s/BArMAm90qTxbupUz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Clark (former submariner at Hudson), Eric Robinson, and Justin McIntosh report for duty. Davos disco: https://suno.com/s/2SpR62beigk2JeDr Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there such a thing as MAD in economic warfare? How should we measure the effectiveness of our industrial policy tools, and what outcomes should we be aiming for anyway? Our guest today is Dan Kim, who served at USITC with stints at Qualcomm and SK hynix before returning to government as the Chief Economist for the CHIPS Program Office. He recently joined TechInsights as Chief Strategy Officer. Also joining us is Chris Miller of Chip War fame.  We discuss: What $39 billion can and can’t buy — why the CHIPS Act was never meant to de-risk the U.S. from China or Taiwan, and what “success” looks like when autarky is neither affordable nor desirable, Apple vs. Xiaomi + BYD — invention versus fast-following as competing models of national power, and which system performs better when the goal shifts from profit maximization to geopolitical resilience, What resilience actually means — capability vs. capacity, weakest links, and whether economic security should be measured as “time to recovery” rather than self-sufficiency, Managed dependence vs. overreliance, and whether dependence itself can be a form of power, Why the U.S. still lacks a clear theory, metrics, and institutional design for industrial strategy — and what you can do about it. Subscribe to the ChinaTalk Substack to stay updated about the essay contest! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jon Czin spent years as a top China analyst at the CIA, served as China Director on Biden’s National Security Council, and now works at the Brookings Institution. We talk through: Xi, Trump, and what drove the roller coaster of US-China relations in 2025 Why it feels too quiet right now and what could get this train off the rails in 2026 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Danzig, national treasure, joins the podcast to discuss the national security implications of AI in the cyber context. Do note we conducted this interview in July of 2025. We discuss Richard's excellent paper on AI and cyber you can find here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA4079-1.html Teddy Collins cohosts. Thanks to Hudson for sponsoring this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission late last year released its annual report to Congress. ChinaTalk welcomes two commissioners to the pod to discuss. Before joining the Hoover Institution, Mike Kuiken spent two decades on the Hill including as the senior national security advisor for Senator Schumer and as a PSM on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was appointed to the commission by Leader Schumer. Leland Miller, the co-founder and CEO of China Beige Book, was appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson. We get into… What the U.S.-China Commission does, and why “alligators closest to the boat” explains Congress’s blind spots, The case for an economic statecraft agency, and reorganization lessons from post-9/11 sanctions reform, The year supply chains became sexy — and the best-case scenario for responding to chokepoints like rare earths and pharmaceuticals, Xi’s unresponsiveness to consumer spending concerns, and the military-tech developments he’s targeting instead, The quantum software gap, synthetic biology in space, and Congress’s role in competing with China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy New Year! This is your reminder to fill out the ChinaTalk audience survey. The link is here. We’re here to give the people what they want, so please fill it out! ~Lily 🌸 Ben Buchanan, now a Professor at SAIS, served in the Biden White House in many guises, including as a special advisor on AI. He’s also the author of three books and an Oxford quarterback. He joins ChinaTalk to discuss how AI is reshaping U.S. national security. We discuss: How AI quietly became a national security revolution — scaling laws, compute, and the small team in Biden’s White House that moved early on export controls before the rest of the world grasped what was coming, Why America could win the AI frontier and still lose the war if the Pentagon can’t integrate frontier models into real-world operations as fast as adversaries — the “tank analogy” of inventing the tech but failing at operational adoption, The need for a “Rickover of AI” and whether Washington’s bureaucracy can absorb private-sector innovation into defense and intelligence workflows, How AI is transforming cyber operations — from automating zero-day discovery to accelerating intrusions, Why technical understanding — not passion or lobbying — still moves policy in areas like chips and AI, and how bureaucratic process protects and constrains national security decision-making, How compute leadership buys the U.S. time, not safety, and why that advantage evaporates without building energy capacity, enforcement capacity, and world-class adoption inside the government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Clark joins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

but in a nice way happy new year! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We check in on the state of the republic and allied scale with Peter Harrell, former Biden official and host of the excellent new Security Economics podcast, Kevin Xu, who writes the Interconnected newsletter, and Matt Klein, author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars and The Overshoot substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gang (Justin Mc, Tony Stark and Eric Robinson) and I talk about what the hell just happened this past weekend and what it all means. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nishikawa Kazumi, Principal Director for Economic Security Policy at the legendary Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), joins China Talk. Cohosting is Charles Lichfield of the Atlantic Council.  Today, our conversation covers:  METI’s reputation as a juggernaut of industrial policy, and how the organization has evolved since the 1970s, How Japan conceives of and pursues economic security, METI’s criteria for market intervention, and how it balances economic security considerations with business incentives, Japan’s experience dealing with China’s weaponization of rare earths, How Japan maintains strong relationships with the U.S and other allies. Thanks to the U.S.-Japan Foundation for sponsoring this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ChinaTalk Audience survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQ99GAL0m_8iBqZDiKoEjRZiyX6544QvaCNtd1cVkc826n7A/viewform?usp=dialogFeatured coverage on Substack: Industrial diamonds: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/diamonds-are-a-trade-wars-best-friend China’s influence in Central Asia: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/notes-on-kyrgyzstan Taiwanese WWII veterans: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/taiwan-confronts-wwii Chinese tourism in Taiwan’s outlying islands: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/mainland-tourists-at-kinmens-golden NeurIPS street interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOr0IlE6NPc&t=1s Outtro Music: Jameison Greer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrojJFYEL1E Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A festivus special! Joe Weisenthal, host of Odd Lots and my podcast host alter ego, come to celebrate his ten years of hosting, reflect on the medium and China. 01:21 following your podcasting bliss 21:19 handling guests 26:06 china 46:04 journalism integrity 49:24 parenting in nyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Gagnon joins the show! Book: Thousand Mile War https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Mile-War-Aleutians-Classic-Reprint/dp/0912006838 Outtro music: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rahm Emanuel returns to ChinaTalk with a characteristically blunt assessment of U.S.-China relations, delivering an unsparing verdict on the first year of Donald Trump’s second term. We discuss: The “Fear Factor” in Asia: Why Japan and South Korea are ramping up defense spending not because of Trump’s strength, but because his unpredictability and isolationism have forced them to buy “insurance policies” against a U.S. exit, Corruption and “Own Goals”: How “draining the swamp” has turned into institutional degradation — and why the Trump family’s entanglement of personal business interests with foreign policy damages U.S. credibility and strategic leverage, Adversary, Not Competitor: Why the U.S. needs to stop viewing China as a strategic competitor and start treating it as a strategic adversary — one whose win-lose economic model is designed to hollow out global industrial bases, Education as National Security: Why tariffs are a distraction and the only real way to beat China is a massive domestic push for workforce training, AI and Inequality: Rahm’s evolving thinking on artificial intelligence — why he’s still learning and why a technology that boosts productivity but widens inequality is a political and social risk. Plus: prescient observations on Iran, why Ari Emanuel’s robot UFC idea might actually be sound policy, Rahm’s case that he’s now the real free-market capitalist in the room, and rapid-fire takes on J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and the 2028 Republican field. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices