When Stanford students Elsa Johnson and Garret Molloy began investigating Chinese intelligence operations on their campus for the Stanford Review, they uncovered something far more extensive than expected: a systematic intelligence network that has transformed thousands of Chinese students into assets for Beijing's technology collection efforts. Their investigation revealed that between 20,000 and 50,000 Chinese students studying in America receive funding from Beijing's China Scholarship Council, with many maintaining contact with "handlers" who expect regular intelligence reports.

This discovery exposes a fundamental asymmetry in how China and America approach academic exchange. Beijing leverages our relatively open research environment through "nontraditional collection"—crowdsourced intelligence gathering through students and researchers—while maintaining strict control over their own institutions. China wants access to our openness while preserving their own secrecy.

But America's response threatens to undermine the very qualities that make our universities innovative. The trade-off seems impossible: remain vulnerable to systematic exploitation or adopt surveillance methods that mirror authoritarian systems. Can universities maintain their innovative edge while protecting sensitive research? Johnson and Molloy's investigation reveals how these questions will shape the future of American higher education in an age of great power competition.

Note: The Stanford Review was erroneously referred to as the "Stanford Economic Review" once in this episode.

The White House recently released “America’s AI Action Plan,” which aims to change this dynamic, calling for everything from "Manhattan Project-style" coordination to federal AI sandboxes. But with the Trump Administration now moving to implement these initiatives, the question becomes: can American democracy move fast enough to compete with authoritarian efficiency? And should it?

Quantum computing has been "five years away" for decades, but when NVIDIA's Jensen Huang says we've hit an inflection point, Congress listens and stocks soar. The reality? We're still building very expensive proof-of-concepts. Today's quantum computers run on 100 qubits—impressive to physicists, useless to you. Commercial viability needs a million qubits, a 10,000x leap that's not incremental progress but a complete reinvention.

Unlike the familiar tech story where room-sized computers became pocket devices, quantum is binary: it either works at massive scale or it's an elaborate academic exercise. There's no quantum equivalent of early PCs that could at least balance your checkbook—no useful middle ground between 100 qubits and a million.

China wants quantum for cryptography: the master key to any lock. America's lead exists mostly on paper—in research publications and VC rounds, not deployed systems. Dr. Peter Shadbolt from PsiQuantum, fresh from congressional testimony, argues America must commit now or risk losing a race that could redefine pharmaceutical research and financial security. The real question: can a democracy sustain long-term investment in technologies that offer zero immediate gratification?

Is free speech in global decline? A new survey suggests public support for free expression is dropping worldwide, with citizens in authoritarian countries like Venezuela and Hungary showing stronger commitment to free speech than many living in democracies.

From the unfulfilled digital promises of the Arab Spring to Europe's controversial Digital Services Act, the Internet hasn't necessarily delivered the free speech revolution many predicted. Americans under 30 are less committed to free speech principles than previous generations, while both of the U.S.’s major political parties face accusations of using government power to control information.

As AI reshapes how we communicate and governments worldwide rethink speech regulations, what does this mean for the future of human expression? Are we witnessing a fundamental shift in how societies value free speech, or simply recycling ancient debates in digital form?

Evan is joined by Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt, and author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, and Ashkhen Kazaryan, Senior Legal Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Previously, she was the lead for North and Latin America on the content regulation team at Meta.

Gail Slater is the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Department of Justice (DOJ). She was nominated in December of last year and confirmed by the Senate in March on a bipartisan 78-19 vote. 

She inherited some major antitrust cases brought by prior administrations—including against Google, Apple, Visa, and LiveNation. And in her short time, she has launched probes, brought and settled cases, and offered the DoJ’s opinion in private litigation. But beyond her role as a law enforcer, Slater is a manifestation of the realignment of not just politics generally, but antitrust policy specifically. Her first speech in her new role was titled “The Conservative Roots of America First Antitrust Enforcement.” And in recent interviews, she has shed light on how she sees her approach to antitrust contrasting with the laissez-faire approach of the Chicago school and the aggressive posture of her predecessors in the Biden Administration.

When it comes to technology, Slater has taken a strong view that antitrust and US competitiveness are not at odds, but rather that antitrust makes the US more competitive vis-a-vis China. And just recently, she announced action the DoJ has taken at the intersection of antitrust and free speech, another key area of focus. Evan and Slater discuss what “America First Antitrust” means, how the approach is similar and different from her predecessor in the Biden Administration, and the relationship between antitrust and national security.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is now President Trump's signature legislative achievement, including sweeping changes to taxes, immigration, and spending priorities. But buried in the budget reconciliation process, an AI regulation fight became one of the most contentious debates in the entire package.

Senator Ted Cruz championed a 10-year moratorium on most state and local AI regulation, arguing that a patchwork of conflicting laws would hamstring American companies in their competition with China. His solution was clever: tie the moratorium to rural broadband funding through budget reconciliation, allowing it to pass with simple Republican majorities.

The Senate parliamentarian approved the measure under the Byrd rule, giving Cruz's proposal the green light. But the coalition that formed against it was unexpected. Instead of typical partisan lines, opponents included not just Democrats and left-leaning groups, but also MAGA influencers like Steve Bannon, conservative senators like Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, child safety advocates, and Republican governors.

The drama peaked when Blackburn—after negotiating a compromise with Cruz to reduce the time frame to five years and add exemptions to allow state laws on child safety and rights of publicity—walked away from the deal at the last moment. When the dust settled, the Senate voted 99-1 to strip the AI moratorium entirely—a decisive defeat for the tech industry.

The fight exposed deeper tensions over federalism, corporate power, and whether conservatives are willing to override state authority to boost American tech competitiveness. The resounding rejection suggests many weren't. So where does the fight for a national AI standard go from here, and what does this defeat mean for the shaky alliance between “tech bros” and the Trump Administration? Evan is joined by James Wallner, Vice President for Policy at FAI, and Luke Hogg, Director of Technology Policy at FAI.

Last week on the Dynamist, we spoke with several of the architects behind the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook (TIPP). Part I covered key questions over regulation, trade policy, workforce development, investing in frontier science and technology, and how manufacturing can safeguard national security.

In Part II, we dive into one of the pillars of TIPP: Industrial Power. Austin Bishop and Julius Krein, co-founders of the New American Industrial Alliance, join Evan to tackle the tough questions underlying America's industrial revival. How should we balance factories that employ large numbers of workers versus highly automated, hyper-efficient plants? Should manufacturing focus more on military capabilities or products aimed at global markets? And given the gap between investor expectations and the reality of manufacturing returns, how can we realistically finance this industrial renewal?

COVID laid bare just how vulnerable we've become through dependence on foreign supply chains—particularly those controlled by geopolitical rivals. Krein and Bishop argue that it's time to rebuild the industrial foundations America traded away for cheap consumer goods and service-sector jobs. The proposed solution involves innovative financial structures inspired by sovereign wealth funds and a reshaped private equity model designed for the long haul. But can these strategies compete when tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Google are already constructing their own supply chains and new industrial policies languish in Washington conference rooms?

Evan explores with Bishop and Krein whether America still has time—and political will—to regain control over its industrial destiny, or if decades of decline have already pushed us too far behind.

The U.S. production base has slipped: China passed America in manufacturing output in 2011 and last year ran a surplus roughly equal to Britain’s entire GDP; at current capacity, it would take the United States about eight years to replace key munitions at wartime production rates.

The urgency has propelled an alliance of think tanks — the Foundation for American Innovation, American Compass, Institute for Progress, and  New American Industrial Alliance — to publish the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook. 

Their proposals span three critical pillars: Industrial Power, Frontier Science and Technology, and National Security. They range from ambitious initiatives like "Project Paperclip 2.0" to fast-track foreign-born STEM PhDs, to establishing twenty “X-Labs” at $50 million each for transformative science funding. They also advocate for "Special Compute Zones" that would waive certain environmental requirements to rapidly scale up AI computing infrastructure, treating computational capacity with the same urgency America once reserved for World War II shipyards.

As the United States finds itself at a techno-industrial crossroads, is America capable of marshaling the political will and institutional capacity needed to reverse decades of industrial decline? Can these ambitious proposals navigate the complex realities of American governance while delivering meaningful results? Or is this comprehensive vision destined to join countless other policy recommendations in Washington's archive of unfulfilled potential?

Evan is joined by the architects behind this effort: Kelvin Yu, lead author and a non-resident fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation; Chris Griswold, Policy Director at American Compass; Santi Ruiz, Senior Editor at the Institute for Progress; and Robert Bellafiore, Managing Director for Policy at FAI.

President Trump’s tariffs on China have highlighted how much American companies, and consumers, depend on products made in China. And arguably no company has been more exposed than Apple. 

The conventional wisdom in the West is that Apple and other corporations simply flocked to China for cheap, unskilled labor. While that is true, it masks the depth of Apple’s relationship with the Middle Kingdom. Yes, Apple products are made in China. But Apple also made China—at least the advanced technological China confronting the U.S. today. From training tens of millions of workers, to investing hundreds of billions in the country, our guest today argues that Apple has done more than anyone, or anything, to make China a manufacturing powerhouse. 

As one tech analyst observed, “It’s hard to reconcile the fact that the greatest American company, the most capitalist thing in the world, survives on the basis of a country that has Communist in its title.”

So how did America’s most iconic tech company become so invested in, and dependent on, the U.S.’s chief global adversary? What did Apple CEO Tim Cook know about what was happening, and when did he know it? How might the world look but for these investments? And as the U.S. government urges companies to de-risk and decouple from China, what position does that put Apple in?

Evan is joined by Patrick McGee. He was the Financial Times’s Apple reporter from 2019 to 2023 and is now the author of Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company.

Nuclear power is experiencing a notable revival in policy circles. The Trump administration has moved quickly on this front, drafting executive orders to accelerate plant construction, directing the Pentagon to explore reactor installations on military bases, and reshaping the regulatory landscape. A recent $900 million solicitation for small modular reactors (SMRs) has been modified to emphasize technical merit and streamline deployment.

But can America's nuclear renaissance actually deliver? Traditional nuclear plants remain staggeringly expensive—the recent Vogtle reactors in Georgia arrived seven years late and $35 billion over budget (the kind of numbers that make even venture capitalists nervous). A dozen startups are betting smaller, modular designs can slash costs and deployment times, but they face the triple threat of regulatory uncertainty, NIMBY resistance, and an energy market still obsessed with quarterly returns. Yet the alignment of energy security needs, climate goals, and now AI's voracious power requirements creates a potential inflection point for nuclear technology.

Joining us to explore these questions are Ed Petit de Mange, Director of Fuel Recycling at Oklo, whose next-generation microreactors can operate on recycled nuclear fuel; Patrick O'Brien, Director of Government Affairs at Holtec International, bringing decades of industry experience to the SMR revolution, Kathleen Nelson Romans, Head of Commercial Development at Aalo Atomics, whose compact reactors aim to serve rapidly deployable off-grid and microgrid applications, and Emmet Penney, energy writer and Senior Fellow at FAI, who provides critical context on nuclear's role in our energy transition.