ChinaTalk

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.

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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—

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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

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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

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Bryan Clark (former submariner at Hudson), Eric Robinson, and Justin McIntosh report for duty.

Davos disco: https://suno.com/s/2SpR62beigk2JeDr

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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:

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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