ChinaTalk

By Jordan SchneiderNews Technology Government Politics

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ChinaTalk episodes

April 26, 2025 Allied Scale: Rush Doshi on US-China Net Assessment
Rush Doshi (CFR, Biden NSC, author of the excellent The Long Game) and I run through the US-China tale of the tape. The future of America's relationship with its allies may be the key hinge variable for whether this century turns out to be China's to define. Do give this one a listen. Especially if you're JD Vance!

See Rush's Foreign Affairs article with Kurt Campbell here: https://archive.is/ZSTKP

Some Japanese outtro music to give the allies some love:
Karenai by Bonbero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJcIOMsOaU&ab_channel=Bonbero
What's Popping by JP THE WAVY and friends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LOXU_hBNo&ab_channel=JPTHEWAVY

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1 hr 14 min
April 20, 2025 Chips: Liberated? Trump’s Semis Tariff Gambit
Bill Reinsch of CSIS and the Trade Guys podcast with Jay Goldberg of Digits and Dollars and the Circuit podcast join to dicuss Trump's tariff impact on semis on another CSIS-ChinaTalk Chip Chat!

Bill lays out the four clashing instincts driving policy in MAGA 2.0: revenge for decades of perceived slights, a bargaining bluff to coerce concessions, a fast‑cash revenue grab, and a fantasy of instant on‑shore fab construction.

Jay walks through the on‑the‑ground fallout: chip designers worrying about losing China sales, GPU‑specific duties warping supply chains, and a loophole that lets boards assembled in Mexico skate by.

We explore how blanket tariffs could accelerate China’s ascent in analog and trailing‑edge chips, undermine Biden‑era “ally‑first” export‑control diplomacy, and leave Commerce’s BIS badly under‑resourced to enforce the rules.

We also get into whether allies will sign up for Washington’s crusade after being slapped themselves, and whether Nvidia, Intel, and Tesla are “too important to punish.”

Outtro Music: Well Get It, Tommy Dorsey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgiHzCiB5Aw

Bible‑Verse Sign‑off “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” — Proverbs 15:22

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51 min
April 19, 2025Breaking Huawei + Tariffs Done Right with SemiAnalysis and Asianometry
Dylan Patel is a man on a mission. We get into how:
Huawei is giving NVIDIA a run for their money
What USG needs to do about it
What smart semiconductor tariff policy would look like
o3

Outtro Music, a little texas country for you all:
Ernest Tubb, Walking the Floor Over You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQIRRReZIls
Hank Thompson, Wild Side of Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvARPfquPc
And a completely wild post-WWII song I did not feel comfortable putting on the feed but worth a listen for the wtf factor: Ernest Tubb, Filipino Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXnoCyKGw8&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD

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35 min
April 15, 2025Breaking Beijing: Military Competition with Tony Stark
Does America still have what it takes to stand up to China? Does short-term military readiness trade off with long-term strategy? What does the US need to do today to stay competitive for the rest of the century?
“Tony Stark” is the author of Breaking Beijing, a Substack examining the military dimensions of US-China competition. Tony’s Substack goes deep on subjects you didn’t know you needed to understand, like Arctic policy, and takes a refreshing step back to look at great power competition holistically. Tony is also the author of Ex Supra, a sci-fi thriller about a near-future US-China war.
Today, we discuss…
What it will take to win the 21st century, and what America needs to prioritize in the short, medium, and long term,
Why investing in education, basic science research, and foreign aid pay dividends in military readiness,
Why Washington is short on coherent China strategy,
Taiwan’s impact on global nonproliferation efforts,
How AI could change warfare, even if AGI can’t be considered a “wonder weapon.”

Outro music: Cmon - Fred Again (YouTube link)

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1 hr 3 min
April 08, 2025 GreatDepressionTalk with SemiAnalysis and Asianometry
Doug gives his "we're heading for the end of the dollar-based world order" take.
Dylan has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to macro or politics.
We fail to arrive at the 2011 Obama-Boehner deal.
I had a fever during the recording so don't really talk.

1930s-energy outtro music:
Victoria Spivey, Detroit Moan, 1936 https://open.spotify.com/track/7L3GgSuguDJXi1msw6Pe7W?si=ab99d3eea65647eb

Judy Garland, Over the Rainbow, 1938 https://open.spotify.com/track/3wAIcORchxdSkWv6v5AkaU?si=b6bfe7a8249147bb

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50 min
April 07, 2025 EMERGENCY POD: Are We Cooked?
Kevin Xu of https://interconnect.substack.com/, Matt Klein of https://theovershoot.co/, and Peter Harrell, Biden's U.S. White House as senior director for international economics in 2021-2022 and host of the new https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/security-economics/id1794022711 podcast join the show to discuss whether America's cooked.

Outtro Music: Madeleine Chartrand - Tout Doucement, 1975 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e856a_xZ1TI&ab_channel=Vinyle33-45RPM

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47 min
April 05, 2025 EMERGENCY POD: Liberation Day with Tanner Greer of Scholarstage
Tanner Greer of Scholar's Stage and I try to make sense of Liberation Day, the intellectual underpinnings of Trump's team, and what it all means for the world.

Tanner's report: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/03/obscurity-by-design/

Outtro Music: Nobody but You Babe, Clarence Reid, 1969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCT7w2t8cyY

01:23 Geopolitical Implications of Trump's Management Style
35:02 Economic Vision and Industrial Renaissance
52:28 Economic Liberalism and Trump World
52:42 Industrial Policy Camps in Trump Administration
56:30 Laura Loomer and Trump World Geopolitics
01:04:04 Historical Parallels and Red Experts Problem
01:20:00 Taiwan Policy and Cultural Wars
01:29:40 China Policy and Trump's Tactical Approach

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1 hr 42 min
April 01, 2025The Soviet Cold War Machine: Inside the Sino-Soviet Rivalry
Welcome to part two of our series on Cold War history with Sergey Radchenko. Here’s part one.

In today’s interview, we discuss…
Khrushchev’s removal from power and the transition to the Brezhnev era,
How the USSR and China managed their relationships with Vietnam,
Sino-Soviet border conflicts, Brezhnev’s negative feelings toward China, and Nixon’s rapprochement,
Watergate and the inability of China or the USSR to understand American politics
Why the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan,
Reagan’s approach to negotiations and his relationship with Gorbachev,
How to manage the containment paradox and unknown adversary motives when competing with China and Russia today.
Co-hosting today is Jon Sine of the Cogitations substack.

Outro music: ДДТ- Родина (DDT - Motherland) (YouTube Link)

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1 hr 16 min
March 30, 2025 Superintelligence Strategy with Dan Hendrycks
Is there a stable state the US and China can hope for on the road to AGI?

To discuss we have on today Dan Hendrycks. A CS PhD, Dan runs the Center for AI Safety and is an advisor at xAI and Scale AI.

Here's his superintelligence strategy: https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/

For some more direct lessons from the Cold War to today's US-China dynamics, check out the show I did with Hal Brands (https://www.chinatalk.media/p/cold-war-lessons-for-us-china-today)

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1 hr 15 min
March 26, 2025 SemiAnalysis + Asianometry on Intel, Gemini 2.5, and Chinese Robots
The Transistor Radio boys are back. Jon of Asianometry, Doug O'Laughlin and Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis on the pod to talk about Google's AI push, Intel's new CEO, Chinese robots, and the rise of CoreWeave.

Here's the article rating the clouds that SemiAnalysis wrote: https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/26/the-gpu-cloud-clustermax-rating-system-how-to-rent-gpus/

Outtro Music: Some Malaysian UK garage: GADISKU lucidrari, FITTO, Gard, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVewUwqu1dM

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29 min

About ChinaTalk

From the publisher's feed

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