ChinaTalk

By Jordan SchneiderNews Technology Government Politics

Favorites
126
Followers
Typical duration
71 min
per episode

Based on Podcast App listening data

ChinaTalk episodes

March 02 Emergency Pod: Iran + Anthropic
An all-star cast today with:
Emmy Probasco, a fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and former Navy officer with deep expertise in autonomous weapons and military AI adoption;
Michael Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor who previously ran the Pentagon office that rewrote U.S. policy on autonomy in weapons systems;
Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute and retired Navy officer specializing in naval warfare and military technology; and
Henry Farrell, a political scientist and writer focused on the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and economic coercion.
[00:00] America's First Precise Mass Campaign Against Iran
The U.S. debuts the Lucas drone — a sub-$100K system reverse-engineered from Iran's own Shahed 136 — alongside legacy Tomahawk strikes in a campaign of unprecedented scale and velocity.
[10:00] Regime Change Without a Plan
The panel debates the theory of victory when you decapitate leadership but have nobody to pick up the pieces, with implications for nuclear proliferation, Gulf stability, and the Strait of Hormuz.
[18:00] Weapons Stockpiles, Air Defense, and What China Is Learning
Burning through expensive interceptors against cheap drones risks drawing down Pacific stockpiles, while China gets a front-row seat to how American air defenses operate at scale.
[25:00] Claude Enters the Chat: AI in Military Operations
Claude's integration into CENTCOM's Maven Smart System prompts a discussion on what military AI actually does — mostly boring bureaucratic tasks — and why the Terminator narrative misses the point.
[46:00] The Anthropic–Pentagon Fight
Mike argues the dispute is about personality and politics, not policy — Anthropic never refused a government request, and the real clash is over who gets to decide future use cases.
[56:00] Treating a U.S. Company Like Huawei
Threatening Anthropic with supply chain risk designations — tools built for foreign adversaries — could chill the entire tech sector's willingness to work with the Pentagon and poison allied trust in American tech.
If we're doing emergency pods once a week now should I stop calling them emergency pods?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 20 min
February 27 Second Breakfast: Anthropic, SecDefs being weird
what a mess!
Wario Amodei's slow jam vibe: https://suno.com/s/cf3KDdVQ5F0KCjow

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 24 min
February 25Lawrence Freedman on Strategy and Nuclear War
Lawrence Freedman is the dean of strategic studies. He’s written books about the Falklands War, nuclear strategy, political-military relations, Kennedy’s foreign policy, the revolution of military affairs, and (my personal favorite) the history of strategy.
Freedman is now part of the father-son writing duo samf.substack.com.
Note: we recorded this in the summer of 2023. Thanks to the Hudson Institute for sponsoring this conversation.
In this far-reaching conversation, we discuss:
How the Falklands saved Thatcher’s premiership, making her the Iron Lady,

Why the great strategic decisions of history rarely have clear, pivotal moments,

Parallels between Putin, Xi, and the Argentine junta — what the Falklands campaign tells us about Ukraine, Taiwan, and the future of war,

How nuclear war went from being a “winnable” geopolitical contest to the apocalyptic dog that didn’t bark,

What Cold War arms control treaties can and can’t tell us about AI,

The best strategists not covered by last week's interview with Hal Brands,

Lawrence Freedman's recipe for wide reading and prolific writing.
Outro music: Oh! It's a Lovely War (1918) · Courtland & Jeffries (Youtube Link)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 35 min
February 20 Emergency Pod: SCOTUS Scraps Tariffs!
Peter Harrell drops in, attorney who served in the Obama and Biden admins and submitted a brief in this case

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
35 min
February 20 Second Breakfast: Iran, Munich + European Defense Tech, Anthropic
Bryan Clark opens the show talking Iran. Recurring cohosts include Justin Mc, Tony Stark and Eric Robinson.
Eric Slesinger of 201 Ventures drops in https://ericslesinger.com/
outtro music: rubio's speech https://suno.com/s/KnIpTyZIU7iJSeIf

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 4 min
February 17How the US Won Back Chip Manufacturing
We’re here for a CHIPS Act megapod, in person with Mike Schmidt and Todd Fisher, the director and founding CIO of the CHIPS Program Office, respectively.
We discuss…
The mechanisms behind the success of the CHIPS Act,

What CHIPS can teach us about other industrial policy challenges, like APIs and rare earths,

What it takes to build a successful industrial policy implementation team,

How the fear of “another Solyndra” is holding back US industrial policy,

Chris Miller’s recent interest in revitalizing America’s chemical industry.
This post is a collaboration with the Factory Settings Substack: https://www.factorysettings.org/. Subscribe for more insights from former CHIPS Program Office leaders!

Suno song link: https://suno.com/s/wwVYK10LfrAD5zK2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 40 min
February 13 Chinese Peptides (Reported Podcast Special Edition!)
We're trying out a different format to explore "Chinese peptides." We talk to biohackers using compounds like BPC-157 to heal extreme injuries, go undercover as peptide buyers, and discuss the challenges of reporting on the Chinese pharmaceutical ecosystem with the legendary Hamilton Morris.
Special thanks to guests Jasmine Sun, Hamilton Morris, Aaron Kesselheim, Marcus, and David. This episode was produced by Lily Ottinger with additional reporting from Irene Zhang and Nick Corvino.
Check out Jasmine's NYT article here.
ChinaTalk merch available now at https://chinatalk.printful.me/. Your purchase helps us make more content like this!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
41 min
February 13Rickover’s Playbook: Building Hard Things Inside the State
Admiral Rickover — America’s most famous, perhaps most influential admiral of the second half of the 20th century. To discuss his unbelievable life story, dramatic impact on the Cold War, and implications for the future of what the U.S. government should do when it tries to build hard things, we have two guests — Charles Yang, founder of the Center for Industrial Strategy, who also does AI science work at Renaissance Philanthropy, and Emmett Penney of FAI.
We discuss:
Rickover’s immigrant origin story from Polish village to almost being deported at Ellis Island and his improbable path into the Naval Academy.

Drive, discipline, expertise, and how Rickover bent Washington to his will.

Rickover as tyrant, teacher, technocrat — what his contradictions reveal about leadership, power, and effectiveness.

Why Rickover matters now — nuclear revival, defense procurement reform, engineers vs. lawyers, and a major archival digitization effort.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 20 min
February 11China's Gaming Landscape
Today, we’re discussing all things gaming in China! Our illustrious guest is Daniel Camilo, a Portuguese national who has spent over a decade in the Chinese video game industry. We cover the most important titles, publishing and development trends, and where the industry is headed.
We discuss:
How China’s game industry climbed the value chain from low-cost mobile and PC titles to globally competitive AAA releases,

Why Genshin Impact reset global expectations, becoming the template for live-service “cash cows,”

China’s domestic market’s newfound self-sufficiency, as hundreds of millions of middle-class gamers mean Chinese developers no longer need international success,

Steam’s magical liminal status in China as a de facto gateway for uncensored and imported games,

Why gaming is a global language in ways movies and music aren’t, and how mechanics and genres travel even when stories don’t,

The Wuchang: Fallen Feathers controversy, where nationalist backlash led to patched-out boss deaths and preemptive self-censorship.
We also cover Daniel’s pick for the biggest Chinese game of 2026, the looming Genshin-style live-service bubble, and how a game set in 1984 East Germany channels distinctly Chinese workplace anxiety.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
48 min
February 05 Chinamaxxing
Minh Tran (https://www.couldabeenatthe.club/), Afra Wang (https://afra.work/) and Lauren Teixeira (https://lrntex.substack.com/) join me to talk about Chinamaxxing — the growing fascination among younger Americans with Chinese short-form content. We discuss why these videos feel so appealing in a moment of pessimism at home, how Trump’s America shapes that gaze, and where the “shiny,” abundance-driven vision of China starts to break down. We also get into what short-form can’t show and review Chinese films and hip-hop!

Chapters
00:00 Cultural Exchange and Chinese Short Form Content
08:14 Influencers and the Appeal of the China Aesthetic
14:13 Contradictions in the Chinese Narrative
25:06 Recommendations for Exploring Chinese Culture
33:33 Jia Zhangke's Cinematic Vision
38:12 Chengdu hip hop
41:48 The Future of Chinese Cultural Products
42:56 Censorship and the Dynamics of Domestic Entertainment in China

Outtro Music:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
57 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.