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2 days ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger
Lily is representing ChinaTalk at ICLR this week! Send us a message if you’re going and would like to meet up. Liberation Day was just the beginning — Trump declared that he will be, “Taking a look at semiconductors and the whole electronic supply chain.” What could happen next and what would be the smart way to go about this? Welcome back to another CSIS Chip Chat.
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2 weeks ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger |Kevin Xu
America, are we cooked? To discuss, we have Peter Harrell, former Biden official and host of the excellent new Security Economics podcast, Kevin Xu, who writes the Interconnected newsletter, and @overshootMatt Klein, author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars and substack.
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2 weeks ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger |Nicholas Welch
On April 2nd, we had Liberation Day, a tariff salvo that doubled as a bid to completely reshape the global economic order. Simultaneously, Laura Loomer walked into the White House and fired competent NSC staff who served under Trump 1.0 but apparently weren’t MAGA enough for Loomer and the president. What is going on in the Trump administration, and what does it mean for America's relationship with China and its future place in the world?
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
Charles Yang is the executive director for the Center for Industrial Strategy, a bipartisan think tank focused on industrial policy. Previously, he served as an AI and Supply Chain Policy Advisor at the Department of Energy and was an ML Engineer at an AI hardware startup in San Francisco. Today, he’s here to present some excerpts from his research into how Admiral Hyman Rickover built the nuclear navy.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
We’re doing alot more stuff than we used to! To make sure you don’t miss out on our best content, we’ve decided to start publishing monthly roundups. This article examines China’s paradoxical state of AI compute, where reports of both shortages and overcapacity exist simultaneously. China acquired and produced over a million AI chips in 2024, but faces inefficiencies in their deployment.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
Just as the buzz around DeepSeek was beginning to fade, Chinese AI has made waves again with the AI agent “Manus,” launched on March 6th, 2025.Today, we’re here to unpack the Manus launch, explore the business model of Manus’ parent company, and offer a glimpse into the mind of Xiao Hong 肖弘, the founder behind China’s latest viral AI product. Manus claims to be the world’s first general-purpose AI agent.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
It’s been a tough week for the international order. It feels like every TV in every restaurant across Taiwan is blasting nonstop coverage of the Trump-Zelenskyy fallout. How will Taiwan respond to Trump’s pivot to Putin? Would Taiwan be safer with nuclear weapons? What platforms do Taiwanese people use to debate about politics anyway? In today’s roundup, we’ll analyze perspectives from Taiwanese legacy newspapers, social media firestorms, and viral political influencers.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
A guest piece by Afra, freelance writer and podcaster [Jordan: I highly recommend this show!] with working experience in tech and crypto. Personal site here. DeepSeek’s winds have already been blowing for some time, but this particular gale seems to have real staying power.
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2 months ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger |Jordan Schneider
reports:Obsession is mutual, as they say. The Chinese internet has reacted to ChinaTalk’s recent interview with Dario Amodei, which means it’s our turn to react to the reactions. Surprisingly, some WeChat accounts published fulltranslations of the interview — including Dario’s views on export controls and strategic competition — contrary to Jordan’s expectation that the interview wouldn’t circulate in China:Dario Amodei: The concern here is authoritarian systems of government, wherever they exist.
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2 months ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
Caleb Harding and Lily Ottinger are back with another high-voltage deep dive into grid infrastructure. Their last piece analyzed China’s struggle to electrify AI data centers. Today, they’re sounding the alarm on the transformer shortage — and evaluating America’s options for rewiring industrial policy.
