Nicholas Burns spent 2021 to 2025 in Beijing as US Ambassador to China, witnessing up close the forces shaping the world's most dangerous rivalry.

Sitting across from Xi Jinping and living in China, he saw firsthand how dangerously close the world is to a crisis. Some of it genuinely terrified him.

Our conventional wisdom about China? Outdated. And dangerously wrong.

In this episode, he reveals the alarming "nightmare scenario" almost no one is talking about, why a single unanswered phone call could spark disaster, and what we're getting wrong about China and what China is getting wrong about us.

All from someone who lived it.