William '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.
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Outtro Music: Sammy Davis Jr's Up Up and Away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYNMZtxJoU
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BalloonTalk: Alien Valentine Edition

Conversations exploring China, technology, and US-China relations. Guests include a wide range of analysts, policymakers, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider.
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Government

Good AI is good and bad AI is bad, but how do lawmakers tell the difference? Will AI bring the world together or balkanize the internet beyond repair? Why do governments even need cloud computing anyway?
To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Pablo Chavez, a fellow at CNAS and former Vice President of Google Cloud's Public Policy division, as well as the inestimable investing tycoon Kevin Xu. Xu, formerly of GitHub, is the founder of Interconnected, a bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations.
In this interview, we discuss:

The digital sovereignty movement and the lessons we can learn from China's Great Firewall;

The value and risks of open source architecture in the future of AI governance;

Meta’s long history of open source and how Llama fits into that strategy;

The geopolitical and cultural forces driving nations to pursue their own AI strategies;

The viability of sovereign AI initiatives in the face of global tech giants.


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Sovereign AI

Nathan Lambert of the Interconnects substack and Allen Institute joins for a roundup where we get into:

What DC should understand about the Bay Area AI engineer psyche

What GPT4o and Google's AI Dev Day mean for the future of AI

OpenAI's model spec, and exit, voice, and loyalty in the leading labs


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AI Roundup: GPT4o, SCSP AI Expo, Open vs Closed

We're taking one out of the archives!
Douglas Irwin is a Dartmouth professor and the author of Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. On this episode, Irwin provides an overview to the history of U.S. trade policy from the 18th century to the modern day, highlighting significant legislation as well as the formation of important intergovernmental organizations that have sprung up along the way.
Outro Music: Janis Joplin, Mercedes Benz
19:53: On the flawed logic behind the Tariff Act of 1930, and the parallels with similarly problematic thinking in the modern day: “There’s absolutely a parallel there because some Democrats in Congress said, ‘You know, we ought to really think about this carefully, and not just our domestic interest but also our export interests, and other countries might retaliate.’ And basically, the reaction of most members of Congress was, Republicans at the time, ‘No, we don’t have to worry about that. This is a domestic piece of legislation, it doesn’t really concern other countries. They’re not going to retaliate.’ And, of course, they did.”
39:40: Doug discusses the tips and tricks behind one example of “tariff engineering”: “The tariffs applied to motorcycles with piston displacements of 700cc and above. What Honda started doing is producing a 699cc version. Now the difference [between the two] is imperceptible, but just by changing that one cubic centimeter, it changed the whole tariff treatment and you avoided a 45 percent tariff and were assessed at a much, much lower rate.”

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250 Years of US Trade Policy

Brad Setser of CFR talks Biden's new tariffs!
Earlier podcast deep dive on Chinese EV policy: ChinaTalk: Why Chinese EVs Will Take Over the World on Apple Podcasts
Earlier podcast on the deep history of US trade policy: ChinaTalk: Tarriffs, taxes, and trade: Doug Irwin on ChinaEconTalk on Apple Podcasts
Brad's paper: Power and Financial Interdependence (ifri.org)
Outtro Music: Golden Earring's Radar Love
Here's a fun playlist on the best car songs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6l0sSAdFwyCH1yzQX2IrKQ?si=fb3b8fdd29644631
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EMERGENCY POD: Biden's Electric Curtain

Charles Clancy is the CTO of MITRE, an American not-for-profit organization managing federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) supporting various US government agencies in defense, healthcare, national security, and cybersecurity fields, among others.
In this interview, we discuss:

What is MITRE and how does it support national science & technology strategy

How China threatens America’s infrastructure and university R&D

The cyber workforce gap and how AI could fill it

Finding mission-driven work for highly skilled technologists

How the ecosystem of S&T and R&D funding evolved through the 20th century to today

Outtro music: Yung Bae, Magic Yung Bae - Magic (youtube.com)
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BalloonTalk: Alien Valentine Edition

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