After my last lecture series with Sarah Paine ended, I still had so many questions. I knew we’d only scratched the surface of Sarah’s scholarship, so I immediately invited her back for another series: she graciously agreed, and we’ll be releasing the results online over the coming weeks and months!

This first lecture is focused on the balance of power in East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Specifically, how did Japan (population 47M) defeat China (400M) and Russia (130M) to become Asia's dominant power?

For me, the most interesting thing was that Japan's surprise attack on Port Arthur at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War (1904) helps us understand why Japan might have thought Pearl Harbor would work.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) – Japan’s Meiji reforms

(00:14:44) – Trans-Siberian railway & Japan’s 3-year window for empire

(00:29:58) – The most important battle in the Russo-Japanese war

(00:48:38) – China’s implosion: imperialism, civil wars, and opium

(00:59:31) – Was Russia on track to dominate Asia?

(01:14:20) – Pearl Harbor (1941) vs surprise attack of Port Arthur (1904)

(01:34:03) – Why big countries still lose wars

(01:46:56) – Grand strategy for small countries

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The Stephen Kotkin episode. Kotkin is arguably the world’s foremost expert on Joseph Stalin and has written a massive 2-volume biography on him (with a 3rd volume in the works).

No other individual had more of a profound impact on the 20th century than Stalin. He held the power of life and death over every single person across 11 time zones, and he killed tens of millions of people, utterly consumed by an ideology aimed at building paradise on Earth.

And, he was one half of the biggest and most consequential military confrontation in history (even if Hitler didn’t prove to be his match).

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Sponsors

* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. All they need is your resume or LinkedIn profile to tell you which visas you’re most eligible for, and they’ll send you this eligibility document for free, no commitment required. Get started today at https://www.lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) – Was the tsarist regime the lesser of 2 evils?

(00:23:45) – The peasants brought Lenin to power, then he enslaved them

(00:37:38) – Why did so many go along with enforced famine and the Great Terror?

(01:02:26) – Today’s leftist civil war

(01:13:01) – Doesn’t CCP deserve credit for China's growth?

(01:35:13) – Why didn't somebody just kill Stalin?

(01:52:45) – Overcoming the pathologies of communism with tech: USSR vs China

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I’ve had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests think it’s 20 years away - others 2 years.

Here’s an audio version of where my thoughts stand as of June 2025. If you want to read the original post, you can check it out here.

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George Church is the godfather of modern synthetic biology and has been involved with basically every major biotech breakthrough in the last few decades.

Professor Church thinks that these improvements (e.g., orders of magnitude decrease in sequencing & synthesis costs, precise gene editing tools like CRISPR, AlphaFold-type AIs, & the ability to conduct massively parallel multiplex experiments) have put us on the verge of some massive payoffs: de-aging, de-extinction, biobots that combine the best of human and natural engineering, and (unfortunately) weaponized mirror life.

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Sponsors

* WorkOS Radar ensures your product is ready for AI agents. Radar is an anti-fraud solution that categorizes different types of automated traffic, blocking harmful bots while allowing helpful agents. Future-proof your roadmap today at workos.com/radar.

* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.

* Gemini 2.5 Pro was invaluable during our prep for this episode: it perfectly explained complex biology and helped us understand the most important papers. Gemini’s recently improved structure and style also made using it surprisingly enjoyable. Start building with it today at https://aistudio.google.com

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

Timestamps

(0:00:00) – Aging solved by 2050

(0:07:37) – Finding the master switch for any trait

(0:19:50) – Weaponized mirror life

(0:30:40) – Why hasn’t sequencing/synthesis led to biotech revolution?

(0:50:26) – Impact of AGI on biology research progress

(1:00:35) – Biobots that use the best of biological and human engineering

(1:05:09) – Odds of life in universe

(1:09:57) – Is DNA the ultimate data storage?

(1:13:55) – Curing rare diseases with genetic counseling

(1:22:23) – NIH & NSF budget cuts

(1:25:26) – How one lab spawned 100 biotech companies

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Arthur Kroeber is a leading researcher on Chinese tech and macro, a founding partner at Gavekal Dragonomics, and author of "China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know." It's the most useful, detailed resource I've found of how China actually works.

On this episode, we discuss how China achieved high-tech manufacturing dominance, and where they'll go from here. By Arthur’s account, the Chinese government is like a giant VC fund: they decide on key priorities and then spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing ruthless competition at the local level. They are willing to lose huge amounts of money for a few of their bets to pay off: at China’s scale, effectiveness matters more than efficiency.

There's also a growing bipartisan consensus that we need to combat China's rise. This doesn’t make much sense to me. China is a big, powerful country at the frontier in many fields, and its economy is intricately tied in with our own. Being instinctively adversarial is both unsustainable and risky. Arthur and I discuss how we can create a productive, mutually beneficial version of this relationship.

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Sponsors

* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.

* WorkOS Radar ensures your product’s free trials go to actual users. Radar uses 80+ signals to distinguish malicious bots from real people, eliminating costly free-tier abuse. See why companies like Cursor, Perplexity, and OpenAI use Radar by visiting workos.com/radar.

* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. They help you understand your options and navigate applications for expert visas like the O-1A and EB-1A. Explore which visa is right for you at https://www.lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) – We should reconcile with China

(00:21:21) – BYD, Tesla, & Chinese EV industry

(00:36:05) – Will China have a Japan-style financial crisis?

(00:44:39) – Local debt situation is manageable

(00:57:28) – If CCP is so competent, why isn’t China richer?

(01:05:08) – How China keeps tech under control

(01:33:45) – Does China win AI?

(01:43:34) – Communication with China key for AI safety

(02:10:08) – What foreigners get wrong about China

(02:17:32) – China-US relationship future

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Ken Rogoff is the former chief economist of the IMF, a professor of Economics at Harvard, and author of the newly released Our Dollar, Your Problem and This Time is Different.

On this episode, Ken predicts that, within the next decade, the US will have a debt-induced inflation crisis, but not a Japan-type financial crisis (the latter is much worse, and can make a country poorer for generations).

Ken also explains how China is trapped: in order to solve their current problems, they’ll keep leaning on financial repression and state-directed investment, which only makes their situation worse.

We also discuss the erosion of dollar dominance, why there will be a rebalancing toward foreign equities, how AGI will impact the deficit and interest rate, and much more!

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Sponsors

* WorkOS gives your product all the features that enterprise customers need, without derailing your roadmap. Skip months of engineering effort and start selling to enterprises today at workos.com.

* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.

* Gemini Live API lets you have natural, real-time, interactions with Gemini. You can talk to it like you were talking to another person, stream video to show it your surroundings, and share screen to give it context. Try it now by clicking the “Stream” tab on ai.dev.

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) – China is stagnating

(00:25:46) – How the US broke Japan's economy

(00:37:06) – America's inflation crisis is coming

(01:02:20) – Will AGI solve the US deficit?

(01:07:11) – Why interest rates will go up

(01:10:55) – US equities will underperform

(01:22:24) – The erosion of dollar dominance

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

I’ve had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests think it’s 20 years away - others 2 years. Here’s where my thoughts stand as of June 2025.

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China’s massive local debt crisis, the CCP’s views on AI, what happens after Xi, and more.

Victor Shih is an expert on the Chinese political system, as well as their banking and fiscal policies, and he has amassed more biographical data on the Chinese elite than anyone else in the world. He teaches at UC San Diego, where he also directs the 21st Century China Center.

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Sponsors

* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they just released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.

* WorkOS is how top AI companies ship critical enterprise features without burning months of engineering time. If you need features like SSO, audit logs, or user provisioning, head to workos.com.

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

Timestamps

(00:00:00) – Is China more decentralized than the US?

(00:03:16) – How the Politburo Standing Committee makes decisions

(00:21:07) – Xi’s right hand man in charge of AGI

(00:35:37) – DeepSeek was trained to track CCP policy

(00:45:35) – Local government debt crisis

(00:50:00) – BYD, CATL, & financial repression

(00:58:12) – How corruption leads to overbuilding

(01:10:46) – Probability of Taiwan invasion

(01:18:56) – Succession after Xi

(01:25:10) – Future growth forecasts

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

New episode with my good friends Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken. Sholto focuses on scaling RL and Trenton researches mechanistic interpretability, both at Anthropic.

We talk through what’s changed in the last year of AI research; the new RL regime and how far it can scale; how to trace a model’s thoughts; and how countries, workers, and students should prepare for AGI.

See you next year for v3. Here’s last year’s episode, btw. Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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SPONSORS

* WorkOS ensures that AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic don't have to spend engineering time building enterprise features like access controls or SSO. It’s not that they don't need these features; it's just that WorkOS gives them battle-tested APIs that they can use for auth, provisioning, and more. Start building today at workos.com.

* Scale is building the infrastructure for safer, smarter AI. Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, while their public leaderboards help assess model capabilities. They also just released Scale Evaluation, a new tool that diagnoses model limitations. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.

* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. They specialize in expert visas like the O-1A and EB-1A, and they’ve already helped companies like Cursor, Notion, and Replit navigate U.S. immigration. Explore which visa is right for you at lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

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TIMESTAMPS

(00:00:00) – How far can RL scale?

(00:16:27) – Is continual learning a key bottleneck?

(00:31:59) – Model self-awareness

(00:50:32) – Taste and slop

(01:00:51) – How soon to fully autonomous agents?

(01:15:17) – Neuralese

(01:18:55) – Inference compute will bottleneck AGI

(01:23:01) – DeepSeek algorithmic improvements

(01:37:42) – Why are LLMs ‘baby AGI’ but not AlphaZero?

(01:45:38) – Mech interp

(01:56:15) – How countries should prepare for AGI

(02:10:26) – Automating white collar work

(02:15:35) – Advice for students

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Based on my essay about AI firms.

Huge thanks to Petr and his team for bringing this to life!

Watch on YouTube.

Thanks to Google for sponsoring. We used their Veo 2 model to make this entire video—it generated everything from the photorealistic humans to the claymation octopuses. If you’re a Gemini Advanced user, you can try Veo 2 now in the Gemini app. Just select Veo 2 in the dropdown, and type your video idea in the prompt bar. Get started today by going to gemini.google.com.

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe