ChinaTalk

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

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...

2026-07-26

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

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 ...

2026-07-25

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

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 thr...

2026-07-23

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WarTalk: Ancient Greece Edition!

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...

2026-07-21

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China's Mythos Moment

Claude Mythos scrambled American AI policy, leaving us with what Dean Ball calls a de facto involuntary licensing regime from the administration that promised us the opposite. Zhipu's cofounder says C...

2026-07-16

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WarTalk: Iran + Randy Schriver on Asian Defense

Beijing just announced a persistent Coast Guard patrol east of Taiwan, the administration is calling arms sales a "bargaining chip," and the NDS doesn't mention Taiwan at all. Is deterrence in the Str...

2026-07-11

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The Chemicals Powering the Chip Industry

We cover: How the Iran War has exposed vulnerabilities in the semiconductor industry’s chemical supply chains. The chemistry behind chip manufacturing — why advanced semiconductors depend on tox...

2026-07-07

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Unitree and the Humanoid Robot Revolution

Robots are here, and they’re going to change the world, with Unitree currently in pole position. Joining me to discuss are Niko Ciminelli, longtime SemiAnalysis advisor, robot kid and VC along with Re...

2026-07-04

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Taiwan's War on Renewables [Fully Produced Radio Show!]

Welcome to another installment of the ChinaTalk radio show! Today, we’re diving into Taiwan’s war on green energy. Shenanigans abound in this episode, including: The lights-out scenario — Taiwan ...

2026-07-01

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WarTalk: Jack Murphy of Team House on Donahue + SOF

Jack Murphy — former special forces and Ranger Regiment, co-founder of The Team House, and author of the new novel The Most Dangerous Man — joins WarTalk to talk about the strangest corners of special...

2026-06-27

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Economic Security Megapod!

Earlier this year, we ran an essay contest on economic security. We gave entrants two prompts: What are the most important high level KPIs that policy should aim for? What is the analogy of the Fed’...

2026-06-24

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Rare Earths: What is To Be Done?

To discuss, we have Farrell Gregory, a researcher at the Foundation for American Innovation and winner of ChinaTalk’s Economic Security essay competition, and Joris Teer, a policy analyst at the EU In...

2026-06-22

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WarTalk with Ely Ratner on Iran War Peace + the 'BS' US-China Stalemate

Ely Ratner, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs and now a principal at the Marathon Initiative, joins Jordan, Bryan Clark, and Justin to make sense of the Iran ceas...

2026-06-20

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AI for Science!

AI will make ideas cheap. What does that mean for sicence? Charles Yang is a fellow at Renaissance Philanthropies and writes about AI and science here: https://republicofscience.substack.com. We dis...

2026-06-17

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Emergency Pod: Claude Fable Fried + What's Going on at BIS?

Chris McGuire, former civil servant in State and the Biden White House now at CFR, talk about the export control craziness of these past two weeks. We discuss: The 5:21 PM letter that took the worl...

2026-06-16

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ModelTalk: Claude Fable (Nathan's pissed), is AI actually productive, advice for graduates

Nathan Lambert of https://www.interconnects.ai/, Jasmine Sun of https://jasmi.news/, and guest Ethan Ding of https://ethanding.substack.com/ check in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone....

2026-06-13

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Sen. Slotkin on NDAA, AI Nukes, Chinese Cars, and Taiwan

The NDAA is two thousand pages of strategy, pork, and the occasional genuinely big idea — this year including a new robotics combatant command and the first legislated guardrails on AI in the kill cha...

2026-06-12

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Paul Kennedy on Great Powers, Past and Present

What a profound honor to have Paul Kennedy on the ChinaTalk podcast. Kennedy is my favorite living historian and the writer who’s most shaped my intellectual development. His analysis underpins what y...

2026-06-08

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WarTalk: The View from AFRICOM with LTG Brennan

Africa is the literal center of the world’s map and increasingly the center of gravity for ISIS, the manpower source for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the contested geopolitical ground where China buil...

2026-06-05

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The Pope has AI Takes

Pope Leo has called AI the single greatest challenge facing humanity. Not war, not poverty, not climate change. So we got a panel together to sort out what this encyclical means. Joining Jordan are T...

2026-06-02

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