ChinaTalk

(Audio Fixed!!) Ken Liu on AI, Daoism, and Freedom

Ken Liu graces ChinaTalk with his presence. He is the author of the Dandelion Dynasty silkpunk fantasy series and a brilliant short fiction writer — one of his stories was recently adapted into Sam Al...

2026-05-07

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WarTalk: Still Very Much Out of Ammo!

Two weeks into the US-Iran ceasefire, CENTCOM is requesting Dark Eagle hypersonics, the 82nd Airborne is flowing into theater, and the wargames keep telling us the same thing — there’s no military sol...

2026-05-01

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Quantum 201: US v China Quantum Industrial Base

Constanza Vidal Bustamante joins Chris Miller and Zachary Yerushalmi to break down her new report with John Burke, Quantum's Industrial Moment: Strengthening US Quantum Supply Chains for Scalable Adva...

2026-04-27

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WarTalk: No Ammo for Taiwan, Polymarket, Bye Phelan, Will Driscoll Go The Distance?

The Pentagon is leaking to the press that America doesn't have the missiles to win a war over Taiwan — and the Iran war is the reason why. Meanwhile, a Special Forces master sergeant is looking at fed...

2026-04-24

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Sen. Chris Murphy on Corruption, China and AI

outtro music: Pardon Pen! https://suno.com/s/2tXSJ7uJFA7k1pUC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2026-04-23

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Quantum 101

What exactly is quantum computing? Why does it matter, and what would it actually mean to “win” the quantum race? Zach Yerushalmi, CEO of Elevate Quantum, a Mountain West–based public-private consorti...

2026-04-20

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WarTalk: Is Mythos a Cyber Nuke? + The Blockade That Wasn't

We discuss… Why Mythos is a Dr. Strangelove moment — and whether the better analogy is a nuke or a pandemic Who gets the keys: Ukraine vs. South Korea vs. Japan vs. the Five Eyes, and why the De...

2026-04-18

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The Think Tank New Breed (IFP + FAI)

Caleb Watney (Institute for Progress) and Max Bodach (Foundation for American Innovation) on what the new breed of DC think tanks does differently and why the old model is broken. We discuss: Why "...

2026-04-16

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Claude Mythos and National Power

Anthropic’s new model found decades-old vulnerabilities in foundational open-source code that millions of automated tests and countless human experts had missed, presaging a potentially revolutionary ...

2026-04-12

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WarTalk: Who Won the Iran War? (Second Breakfast Rebranded...)

Eric Robinson, Tony Stark , Justin Mc , and Secretary of Defense Rock join me to score the Iran conflict. We discuss… Whether Iran’s Strait of Hormuz toll booth is a Trump card or a wasting asset ...

2026-04-10

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How Ukraine Makes Drones

Ukrainian drone manufacturing. How has the country been able to build hundreds of thousands, even millions of drones over the past four years of conflict? What dependencies does its industrial base st...

2026-04-07

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Second Breakfast: F-15, Pete's Purges, CENTCOM Hubris, War of 1812

An F-15E is down in southern Iran. Justin, Tony, Eric and I talk through what combat search and rescue actually looks like, how a captured pilot changes the politics of ending this war, and why a host...

2026-04-04

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The American Federal Civil Service: A History

The history of the American federal civil service — what can we learn from its past glories and failures, and where should we take this next? We have ⁠Kevin Hawickhorst⁠ of the Foundation for American...

2026-04-01

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Jen Pahlka on an Optimistic Vision for Government Renewal!

Jen Pahlka is an American Hero, in a past life the US Deputy Chief Technology Officer and member of the Defense Innovation Board. She wrote Recoding America and the wonderful Eating Policy substack (h...

2026-03-27

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Second Breakfast: We Negotiate with Bombs, War by Brainrot

Full house with Bryan, Eric, Tony and Justin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2026-03-26

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Overfit is now ModelTalk! GPU Smuggling, OpenAI Cooked? + Open Models, AI Writing

Nathan Lambert of https://www.interconnects.ai/ and Jasmine Sun of https://jasmi.news/ catch up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2026-03-24

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Second Breakfast: Taking Kharg Island, Terrorism, Grift

The administration is reportedly considering seizing Kharg Island, and the global economy is beginning to buckle under the pressure of disrupted energy flows. Eric Robinson is a lawyer now who worked...

2026-03-21

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The Toymaker vs. the Tariffs

A century-old toy company has taken down Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs with a self-funded lawsuit. But how? Today’s guest is Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, creator of Spike the Fine Mot...

2026-03-19

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WarTalk: AI, Nukes, Iran and Autonomous War

WarTalk launches! We chat with Pranay Vaddi (MIT, Sandia, formerly Biden NSC) and Chris McGuire (State, NSC, now CFR) about AI, nuclear command and control, deterrence, and how new military technologi...

2026-03-16

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Iran: No Save Point

Two weeks into the US-Iran war, CENTCOM has struck 6,000 targets, but Hormuz is closed, oil is at $100 a barrel, the regime hasn’t fallen, and 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium sit somewhere un...

2026-03-14

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