ChinaTalk

42:41

Data is the Hard Part | Building AI Tools for the...

ChinaTalk ·

2026/10/06

Everyone wants AI that wins wars. Very few people want to collect, label, store, and test the data it runs on.Bharat Patel is currently Accenture’s AI and data lead for its defense portfolio, a former enlisted Navy sailor, and a veteran of the Army acquisition world, with experience at MITRE and across the Department of Defense. We’re here today to talk about why data is the hard part in making AI work to win wars for you — and what standards, integration processes, and governance you need to turn

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55:31

WarTalk: AutoWarCom + Project Meridian

ChinaTalk ·

2026/10/05

It's a new fiscal year with no new budget, and the Pentagon has a fresh batch of proposals. Two stand out: a four-star Autonomous Warfare Command, built to buy and field autonomous weapons fast, and Project Meridian, a future-of-warfare panel made up of Elon, Palmer, Newt, and Emil Michael.Is either the right way to transform the force? Arthur Tellis, Senior Technology Fellow at the Institute for Progress, joins WarTalk regulars Jordan Schneider, Justin McIntosh, Bryan Clark, and Tony Stark. We

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65:14

Section 301 and the Spice Man who Sued Trump Over Them

ChinaTalk ·

2026/10/02

In February, the Supreme Court ruled Trump's IEEPA tariffs illegal. So why is everyone still paying them? Because the administration rebuilt them: first under Section 122, then under Section 301, and now the 301 tariffs are in court too. So ChinaTalk's series on the people suing the U.S. government over tariffs continues. Ethan Frisch is the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, a single-origin spice company importing from about 28 countries, and a plaintiff in both the Section 122 suit (which he won)

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88:02

China's Economy is Broken | Logan Wright

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/29

After the global financial crisis, China added a third of global GDP to its bank assets in just eight years... the largest single-country credit expansion in at least a century. Today investment is contracting, growth is less than a percent, and the financial system that fueled China's growth is now the thing holding it back. Logan Wright, partner at Rhodium Group and my former boss, joins ChinaTalk to discuss his new book, Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What It Means for

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72:28

WarTalk: Potemkin Pacific, Midterm Budget Woes

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/25

WarTalk regulars Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, Justin McIntosh, and Tony Stark join Jordan.We discuss… The Potemkin Pacific — why Paparo has half the planet on his map and nothing to fight with, and how the Iran blockade became the status quo The midterm budget squeeze — what a Democratic Senate means for the defense topline, why Anduril won’t keep working at risk, and how a shipbuilding binge could hollow out the force Who replaces Hegseth — the two Mike Rogerses, and why the

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66:14

Julian Gewirtz on Trump-Xi Summit, AI, and Mao Dead...

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/22

Julian Gewirtz, author and former Biden NSC China director, joins ChinaTalk days before Xi Jinping’s first White House visit since 2015. With little substantive agenda on the table, what is the US getting in exchange for the symbolism and pageantry of a state visit?We discuss: Trump-Xi summit scenarios, Beijing’s management of uncertainty and protocol, and how the script of US-China diplomacy has flipped, with things once seen as American concessions to China now treated as concessions from

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49:33

Can AI Beat the Pentagon’s Bureaucracy?

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/22

Garrett Berntsen was last seen on ChinaTalk in his role as Deputy CDAO at the State Department. He then went to the Department of Defense for a little bit, and now makes a return in his new role as Chief AI Officer at Accenture Federal Services.We’re going to talk about what the national security community needs — beyond just API access to wonderful models — in order to really change how it does its mission. Our conversation covers: Why the U-2 spy plane offers a surprisingly useful lesson

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77:24

WarTalk: PLA, 2027, Nukes, and the Pivot to Asia...

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/19

In the deserts of western China sit 320 brand-new missile silos, and for a while, by the Pentagon's account, some of them simply didn't work. The gap between the PLA on paper and the PLA in practice is where Gerald C. Brown has spent his career.Gerald is two weeks out of government, where he covered Chinese nuclear strategy and the PLA Rocket Force at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Now a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he joins Jordan and WarTalk's

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68:16

ModelTalk: Pacing the Frontier

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/15

ModelTalk regulars Nathan Lambert, who writes Interconnects, and writer Jasmine Sun join to work through a week in which Dario asked the industry to slow down and Trump called the whole thing a conspiracy. Why the Hugging Face hack broke through where years of extinction talk didn’t, and how Bernie, Tucker, and Rogan ended up on the same side What “pacing” even means: Nathan’s case that nobody can measure the frontier, and why it still beats “pause” Who gets Slack access: METR’s

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71:03

WarTalk: 9.11, Death of the Army, So Long Dan Driscoll

ChinaTalk ·

2026/09/11

In the week of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Secretary of the Army walked into the White House, told the president the force is breaking, and quit. Days earlier his boss had fired the Chief of Staff, disbanded the Army's only drone battalion, and cashiered Chris Donahue — the last man out of Kabul.Bryan Clark, Justin McIntosh, and Tony Stark join Jordan for a hosts-only edition marking a quarter-century of the Global War on Terror. We discuss… Twenty-five years on the treadmill — how

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92:10

Lessons from the American Civil War

ChinaTalk ·

2026/08/21

Note: This episode was recorded in late 2024. Luckily, there haven't been any US Civil War updates since then, so the episode's content still holds up. Enjoy!During paternity leave, the new influx of dad energy compelled me to read close to 15 titles on the American Civil War. The Civil War is a case study in traditional ChinaTalk themes like technological change and organizational design. It is also a uniquely well-documented war, just on the cusp of modernity, with gripping characters and human

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119:12

North Korea's Messiah

ChinaTalk ·

2026/08/19

Why is North Korea so weird? Is it Stalinism? Maoism? Japan-style emperor worship? Ancient Korean hermit kingdom energy? No, argues Jonathan Cheng, Beijing bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and author of The Korean Messiah: The Failed Dynasty That Shaped the Hermit Kingdom. You’ve all been sleeping on the influence of 19th-century American revival Protestantism.To discuss why Kim Il-sung kind of thought he was Jesus — or at least wanted to convince everyone else he was — we have the honor

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54:12

China's Best Music in 2026 (So Far)

ChinaTalk ·

2026/08/14

Jake Newby is the author of the Concrete Avalanche Substack, which covers the best music coming out of China. If you enjoy this playlist, check out Jake’s sets from 2025, 2024, and 2023, as well as his Chinese shoegaze feature. Tracklist: 1. ‘Undercurrent’ — Pu Poo Platter — from Undercurrent 2. ‘忧郁干杯乐园’ — the three mice — from where is my mice? 3. ‘错过的提醒’ — Lygort Quartet — from Through Voodoo Light to Shore of Tomorrow 4. ‘B1’ — gogoj aka Sheng Jie + Deng Boyu — from HEH 5. ‘心的傾訴 Jürêk

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48:32

$75k Contest Launch! ChinaTalk Hiring + Evals for the...

ChinaTalk ·

2026/08/10

Contest links: General $50k https://www.chinatalk.media/p/50k-chinatalk-submission-hiring-contest we're looking at submissions on a rolling basis!AI evals: Due Over the past few years, we’ve seen hints of policymakers and national leaders using AI models in their actual policy decision-making. The Prime Minister of Sweden said he uses it for second opinions on policy; the German Chancellor is testing it to draft legislation; even Trump said he had it re-write a speech at some point. It’s fair to

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77:54

WarTalk: Out of Ammo for Real + Are CCAs Dumb?

ChinaTalk ·

2026/08/07

Six months into the war with Iran, the United States has fired 850 Tomahawks, emptied its LRASM and JASSM-ER inventories, expended essentially every ATACMS and PrSM in the arsenal, and burned through the SM-6 and PAC-3 interceptors it had been stockpiling for a fight with China. The administration's position is that the munitions are fine and the people saying otherwise are committing treason.Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and a former submarine officer who runs war games for

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80:03

Jordan talks AI with Sebastian Mallaby on his show...

ChinaTalk ·

2026/08/01

Don't sorry I put two ChinaTalk Records songs at the end!their show notes: On this episode ofThe Spillover, Sebastian Mallaby sits down withJordan Schneider ofChinaTalkto unpack a frantic month in artificial intelligence. The conversation turns on whether the U.S. can actually “win” the AI race, with Schneider arguing thatthe most durable competitive edge will come from compute rather than model quality. The two debate China’s open-weight model strategy as a commercial weapon and question

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66:00

The Iran War Oil Shock That Wasn’t...(Yet?)

ChinaTalk ·

2026/07/26

The biggest oil shock in modern history came and went without the catastrophe everyone expected. When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, analysts warned that oil could hit $200 a barrel, but the global economy avoided that fate.The Trump administration has argued that the crisis was contained thanks to their aggressive action, but they may be taking the wrong lessons from the avoidance of that apocalyptic scenario. What happened was the largest unexpected swing in global oil balances: China

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63:59

WarTalk: Iran War Back On, Rogue AI, Ukraine Civ-Mil

ChinaTalk ·

2026/07/24

Five months into the Iran campaign, the US has two carrier strike groups parked in the Arabian Sea, a blockade that may take months to bite, and a daisy chain of tankers stretching thousands of miles because there is no longer any fuel or food to buy inside the Gulf. Now the Houthis have entered the chat and declared their own blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb. Just the OG crew with Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former submarine officer, Justin Mc a former special operations

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59:40

Kimi K3, Xi's Speech, and China's Mythos Moment

ChinaTalk ·

2026/07/22

The whole ChinaTalk gang gets together to discuss a big week in China AI with the release of Kimi K3 and Xi talking open source and safety at WAIC. We also discuss our latest article exploring the three potential scenarios for Chinese governance when they really get their Mythos moment (you can read here: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/chinas-mythos-moment-366). song: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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120:28

WarTalk: Ancient Greece Edition!

ChinaTalk ·

2026/07/21

What do actual historians think about the Thucydides Trap? Does our 'low T' discourse all just come back to the movie 300? How the did ancient Greeks fight and why does Homer still keep us coming back 2700 years later? To discuss we have on the excellent Roel Konijnendijk, professor at Oxford and author of Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Tony Stark and Justin McIntosh join. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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