ChinaTalk

By Jordan SchneiderNews Technology Government Politics

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Typical duration
71 min
per episode

Based on Podcast App listening data

ChinaTalk episodes

January 09 Second Breakfast: Iran, $500B for Defense...and should we pity RTX?
Bryan Clark joins.

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56 min
January 08 Transistor Radio: WFE and Doug's Claude Code Psychosis
but in a nice way
happy new year!

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57 min
January 07 Are We Cooked? Q1 2026
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.

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1 hr 9 min
January 06 Emergency Second Breakfast: Venezuela
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.

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1 hr 13 min
January 02Japanese Economic Security Policy with A REAL LIFE METI OFFICIAL
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.

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50 min
December 30, 2025ChinaTalk 2025 Year in Review
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

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40 min
December 23, 2025 Joe Weisenthal and I do a Show About Nothing
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

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1 hr 4 min
December 22, 2025 Second Breakfast: Arctic Warfare Christmas Special!
Steve Gagnon joins the show!
Book: Thousand Mile War https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Mile-War-Aleutians-Classic-Reprint/dp/0912006838
Outtro music:

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56 min
December 18, 2025Rahm Returns to Chat Trump and China: “He is the worst negotiator.”
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.

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1 hr 1 min
December 15, 2025Détente 2.0 with Mike Froman of CFR
Mike Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. Trade Representative. He joins ChinaTalk for the first time to discuss:
Why his 1992 dissertation on détente is suddenly relevant again – and why “positive linkage” fails to change adversary behavior,

How mutual assured destruction has shifted from nuclear weapons to rare earths, supply chains, and technology, and why the U.S. and China are stuck in a costly, uncomfortable stalemate,

Trump’s unorthodox use of economic leverage and America’s resilience problem,

CFR’s new cross-fellow initiatives on China, economics, and open-source analysis,

Plus: an inside look at how think tanks work — salaries, funding, and what to expect from Mike Froman’s tenure leading the CFR.

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1 hr 1 min

About ChinaTalk

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