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3 weeks ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
I did a podcast with Doug, Dylan and Jon updating our AI Mandate of Heaven tier list and talking about how America needs science research and immigrants (Apple Podcasts, Spotify). If you’re an AI researcher interested in signing onto a short letter in support of the NSF and global STEM talent coming to America, please respond to this email!Zilan Qian is a fellow at the Oxford China Policy Lab and an MSc student at the Oxford Internet Institute.
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3 weeks ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger
Just how weird will the AI-powered future be? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed , a CS PhD who writes the Interconnects newsletter and trains models at the Allen Institute.
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4 weeks ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
We’re having a meetup on Monday in DC. RSVP here!This edition is brought to you by Pelanor, the AI-powered FinOps startup letting companies make sense of their cloud spend. Founded by alumni of Israel’s elite cyber intelligence unit, Pelanor untangles the chaos behind nine-figure AWS and Azure bills. Most companies have no idea how their compute spend ties into business outcomes.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
We’re looking for part-time help with the podcast and newsletter! Spend ~10 hrs/week editing shows and putting together enhanced transcripts starting at $35/hr. All you need is enthusiasm for our content—no prior audio experience required (we use this software called Descript which is easy to learn and a pleasure to use). Respond to this email if you’re interested with a little background on yourself.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger
Can studying Mao Zedong help explain Donald Trump? To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed the legendary sinologist Orville Schell, who visited China during the Cultural Revolution and is currently at the Asia Society.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger
What does the future of industrial policy in America look like, and what state capacity investments are needed to get there? How does China factor into the future of the U.S. semiconductor industry? And what do government affairs offices actually do? To explore these questions, we’re concluding our CSIS Chip Chat series with Bruce Andrews.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger
Could America pursue an abundance agenda without the threat of the PRC? And can podcasters change the world? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who need no introduction, as well as Dan Wang, who has written all those beautiful annual letters and is back in the US as a research fellow at Kotkin’s Hoover History Lab. He has an excellent book called Breakneck coming out this August, but we’re saving that show for a little later this year.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Arrian Ebrahimi |Lily Ottinger
Arrian Ebrahimi is a J.D. candidate at Georgetown Law and a former Yenching Scholar at Peking University. Today, he’ll attempt to quantify China’s state equity investments in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. You can read more of Arrian’s writing on the excellent Chip Capitols Substack. Special thanks to Lily Ottinger for assisting with the charts.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Jordan Schneider |Lily Ottinger
Can China use military force to achieve its political goals, without triggering nuclear war? To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed Fiona Cunningham, a professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the new book, Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security. Co-hosting today is Michael Horowitz, Penn professor who served in Biden’s Department of Defense.
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1 month ago | 
chinatalk.media | Lily Ottinger
Mary Clare McMahon is an incoming Schwarzman Scholar (‘26) and former Winter Fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI, where she researched compute governance and U.S.-China AI competition. Previously, she worked in the National Security and Cybercrime Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Last month, emerged that DeepSeek was running a distilled version of its R1 reasoning model on Huawei’s Ascend chips.
