ChinaEconTalk

ChinaEconTalk

By SupChinaBusiness
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ChinaEconTalk episodes

  • NVIDIA GPU Black Market Smuggling

    Are GPUs being smuggled into China? Nvidia says no. But Steve Burke, editor in chief of Gamer Nexus, has traced out the entire smuggling chain in an epic three-hour YouTube documentary. He filmed another three-hour documentary exploring the impact of tariffs on America’s supply chain ecosystem.

    In today’s conversation, we discuss…

    • Steve’s investigative process, including how he found people in mainland China willing to speak on the record about black market GPUs,
    • The magnitude of smuggling, weaknesses in enforcement, and crudeness of US restrictions,
    • China’s role in manufacturing the GPUs they aren’t allowed to buy,
    • How Gamers Nexus monetizes content,
    • What it takes to stand up to Nvidia as an independent journalist.

      • Check out ChinaTalk's previous work on the history of Nvidia here.

      As of August 21st, YouTube has removed the full documentary. Gamers Nexus is working on getting the video back on YouTube, but you can watch it here in the meantime.

      Outro music: Jim and Jesse - Ballad of Thunder Road (YouTube Link)

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      57 min
    • Learning from Ukraine, Preparing for Taiwan

      Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian army and author of three books — War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict, White Sun War, which is a piece of fiction about a near-future Taiwan war, and The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire. He also writes the excellent Futura Doctrina Substack, which has taught me a tremendous amount over the past few years. The way Mick synthesizes history and contemporary conflict makes it one of my few true must-read Substacks.

      In today’s conversation, we discuss…

      • Lessons from the history of warfare, and how to apply them to modern conflict,
      • Why superweapons don’t win wars, and how the human dimension of war will shape military applications of AI,
      • Why economic integration alone cannot prevent a US-China war,
      • The role of deception and the limits of battlefield surveillance, with case studies in Ukraine and Afghanistan,
      • Mick’s four filters for applying lessons from Ukraine to a Taiwan contingency, and the underappreciated role of Taiwanese public opinion in shaping CCP goals.

        • Thanks to the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology for sponsoring this podcast.

        Outro music: Elvis Presley — Down by the Riverside (YouTube Link)

        Reading recommendations:

        Paul Kennedy — The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War

        Norman F. Dixon — On the Psychology of Military Incompetence 

        Aimée Fox — Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914–1918 

        Williamson Murray & Allan R. Millett — Military Innovation in the Interwar Period and Military Effectiveness trilogy 

        Trent Hone — Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945 

        Brent L. Sterling — Other People’s Wars: The U.S. Military and the Challenge of Learning from Foreign Conflicts (2021)

        Dima Adamsky — The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (2010)

        Meir Finkel — On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield and Military Agility: Ensuring Rapid and Effective Transition from Peace to War

        Andrew Krepinevich —  The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers

        R.V. Jones —  The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945

        Francis Hoffman — Mars Adapting: Military Change During War

        You can find more syllabi on Mick Ryan's Substack (here and here)

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        1 hr 8 min
      • Transistor Radio: H20, GPT5, DUI Lawyers, Ajinomoto

        Jon, Doug, Dylan and Wei join the chat to talk export controls and GPT5.

        Books Doug and I like:

        • Jonathan Spence's Search for Modern China
        • Gavan Daws' Shoal of Time
        • Joseph Heinrich's The Secret of Our Success

          • Outtro Music: Europhia II from kkluv's new album https://open.spotify.com/track/61kEkWr0gQrcDwd6uIbxQ1?si=190526b87e96487c

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          1 hr 4 min
        • EMERGENCY POD: H20s to China + 15% with Chris Miller and Lennart

          So we're selling AI chips to China now. Chris Miller, author of Chip Wars, and Lennart Heim at RAND join to discuss:

          • What are the tradeoffs involved in selling
          • Why China is talking like they don't even want the H20s
          • Why selling HBM and semiconductor manufacturing equipment might be an even bigger deal than Nvidia chips

            • Check out the Horizon Fellowship to work in DC on emerging tech policy issues like AI chip export controls! https://horizonpublicservice.org/applications-open-for-2026-horizon-fellowship-cohort/

            Outtro Music: It's a Shame, The Spinners, 1970

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQQudHLi0A&ab_channel=TheSpinners-Topic


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            1 hr 12 min
          • Second Breakfast: A New Defense Pod

            We talk AGI nihilism in the Taiwan fight, combined arms breach, and Palmer Luckey's Taiwan speech. Part 2 explores Detachment 201, the evolution of the Office of Strategic Capital, and the MP Materials rare earths deal.

            Guests include:

            • Tony Stark, Army vet who writes https://www.breakingbeijing.com/
            • Justin McIntosh, former Green beret who writes https://justinmc.substack.com/
            • Eric Robinson, lawyer and Army vet who spent time in OSC, JSOC and the NCTC

              • Outtro Music: Last Chance, Mary Cox https://open.spotify.com/track/3LAOSqy3DoiA1OiPxC9yMe?si=da00b16696f042f8

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              1 hr 12 min
            • Dissent from Moscow to Beijing

              To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement — the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Professor Ben Nathans — is perhaps the sharpest, richest, and funniest account of the Soviet dissident movement ever written. Today, we’ll interview Nathans alongside the legendary Ian Johnson, whose recent book Sparks explores the Chinese dissident ecosystem.

              We discuss…

              • The central enigma of the Soviet dissident movement — their boldness in the face of hopeless odds,
              • How cybernetics, Wittgenstein, and one absent-minded professor shaped the intellectual backbone of post-Stalinist dissent,
              • Why the Soviet Union was such fertile ground for dark humor, and why humor played a vital role for Soviet resistance movements,
              • How the architect of Stalin's show trials laid the groundwork for, ironically, a more professional legal system known as “socialist legality,”
              • Similarities and differences between post-Stalinist and post-Maoist systems in dealing with opposition,
              • Plus: Why Brezhnev read The Baltimore Sun, how onion-skin paper became a tool of rebellion, and why China’s leaders study the Soviet collapse more seriously than anyone else.

                Today's episode is sponsored by Alaya Tea, cofounded by ChinaTalk listener Smita Satiani. Alaya Tea ships Indian teas straight from the source, and their products are 100% plastic-free. My favorite is their Assam black tea, which I've been using to make a fantastic milk tea. Go to ⁠alayatea.co⁠ and use the code CHINATALKTEA for free shipping.

                Outro music: Владимир Высоцкий - Охота на волков (YouTube Link)

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                2 hr 11 min
              • Betting on Chaos: Professionals in Prediction Markets

                What does it take to make a living betting on politics? Can prediction markets offer insights about the future that other analyses cannot?

                To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed Domer, a professional prediction markets bettor. Domer is the number one trader by volume on Polymarket, and he’s been trading since 2007. He initially entered this world through poker, but now makes bets about who will win foreign elections, whether wars will start, and whether bills will become law.

                We discuss…

                • Why some issues — like Romanian elections, the NYC mayoral race, or Zelenskyy’s outfit choices — can attract hundreds of millions of dollars in trading volume,
                • Systematic biases in prediction markets, including why they overestimate the likelihood of a Taiwan contingency,
                • What happens to prediction markets in the absence of insider trading regulations,
                • Why prediction markets are still a solo endeavor, and what a profit-maximizing team of traders would look like,
                • Bonus: How betting markets backfired on Romanian nationalists, what AI can teach you about betting, and other insights on winning from one of Domer’s contemporaries.

                  • Outro music: Bob Dylan - Rambling, Gambling Willie (YouTube Link)

                  This episode is brought to you by ElevenLabs. I’ve been on the hunt for years for the perfect reader app that puts AI audio at the center of its design. Over the past few months, the ElevenReader app has earned a spot on my iPhone's home screen and now gets about 30 minutes of use every day. I plow through articles using Eleven Reader’s beautiful voices and love having Richard Feynman read me AI news stories — as well as, you know, Matilda every once in a while, too.

                  I’m also a power user of its bookmark feature, which the ElevenReader team added after I requested it on Twitter. ChinaTalk’s newsletter content even comes preloaded in the feed.

                  Check out the ElevenReader app if you’re looking for the best mobile reader on the market. Oh, and by the way — if you ever need to transcribe anything, ElevenLabs’  Scribe model has transformed our workflow for getting transcripts out to you on the newsletter. It’s crossed the threshold from “95% good” to “99.5% amazing,” saving our production team hours every week. Check it out the next time you need something transcribed.

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                  1 hr 14 min
                • Where Japan Goes Next

                  Tobias Harris of the Observing Japan substack https://observingjapan.substack.com/ joins to discuss the latest Japanese election, how we got here, and what happens next.

                  • How Abe's assassination led to the LDP's three years of struggles
                  • What the latest results in the upper house election tell us about domestic Japanese politics
                  • What's the deal with big winners like Kōmeitō and the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP)
                  • How domestic dynamics tie into US-Japan and China-Japan relations

                    • Outtro Music: The Communist Party's 2025 Gender song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V59qOPTe62g&ab_channel=%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E5%85%B1%E7%94%A3%E5%85%9A

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                    1 hr 30 min
                  • Xi Zhongxun's Second Act: 1949-1989

                    This is part two of our series with Joseph Torigian, author of the definitive biography of Xi Zhongxun. This episode traces the inner world of a man navigating power politics, exile, and reform, and the legacy he left his son, Xi Jinping.

                    Against the backdrop of the Great Leap Forward, the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution, and reform and opening up, we discuss…

                    • The moral dilemmas of a mid-level party cadre,

                    • What it’s like to be purged, and why the party prescribes self-criticism as therapy,

                    • “Frenemies” in the CCP, Deng Xiaoping’s autocratic side, and the unsung heros of the reform period,

                    • How Xi Zhongxun instilled party loyalty and other values in his son,

                    • Xi Zhongxun’s return from exile and his complicated relationship with reform,

                    • How Chinese leaders think about redemption, guilt, and survival,

                    • And a bonus: Why the PRC-produced biopic of Xi Zhongxun is so disappointing — and why his life deserves the Star Wars treatment.

                      Outro music: Teresa Teng - 小城故事 (YouTube Link)

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                      1 hr 41 min
                    • Trump and Japan

                      Why has Japan fallen out of Trump’s good graces? Will Japan close a deal with the US before tariffs take effect? And how will the upcoming Japanese election impact relations?

                      To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed Professor Tomohiko Taniguchi, a longtime observer of US-Japan relations and former advisor to the late Shinzo Abe.

                      We discuss…

                      • Why 1970s trade competition is still impacting US-Japan relations today, and how Japan could create “Wow factor” when dealing with Donald Trump,

                      • How Shinzo Abe used golf, dinner parties, and history lessons to cultivate a close personal friendship with Trump,

                      • The roots of Japanese resolve in dealing with PRC aggression,

                      • The emergence of Russian disinformation surrounding the Japanese election,

                      • The political economy of the Japanese Self-Defence Force, and how Abe managed the controversy surrounding his reinterpretation of Article 9.

                        Co-hosting today is Charles Litchfield of the Atlantic Council. Thanks to the US-Japan Foundation for sponsoring this episode.

                        Outro music: Shinji Tanimura - Left Alone (YouTube Link)

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                        1 hr 13 min

                      About ChinaEconTalk

                      From the publisher's feed

                      A weekly conversation exploring China's economy and tech scene. Guests include a wide range of policy analysts, business professionals, journalists, and academics. A SupChina production, hosted by…