Doing Big Things in Policy: It's All White Space

Wanna do big things? This week, a how-to guide for technically minded people who want to stop posting and start changing things — covering everything from why every globally important problem is "white space." Joining Jordan are Kumar Garg, founder of Renaissance Philanthropy and a veteran of the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Remco Zwetsloot, co-founder of the Horizon Institute for Public Service, which builds pipelines into government for emerging-tech talent. We discuss… Why $10 million globally on lead remediation tells you everything about how undertalented the world's most important problems are Ambition + humility as the Horizon Fellowship's selection criteria — and why most candidates need to hear the opposite of what they expect "We care meetings" vs. "we decide meetings," the Geithner heuristic for surviving senior government roles The tribal KPIs of the White House — what the Office of Public Engagement, speech writing, and comms actually want from a policy nerd The conscious-incompetence quadrant and why "your job is not to be the expert, your job is to mobilize expertise" The posting-to-policy pipeline, the rise of the individual writer, and the introspective work that public writing forces My Bulgarian tanks fantasy vs. the value-over-replacement case for picking your own hobby horse Horizon recently launched Launchpad, a Substack on working in emerging tech policy with advice, explainers, and conversations like this one — if you enjoyed this conversation, you’ll probably like their other stuff as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(558)

North Korea's Messiah

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...

19 Aug 1h 59min

The Rise of China’s Electric Vehicle Industry

How did China grow its EV industry? Hint: it wasn’t really central planning from Beijing. It was a magical concoction of entrepreneurs and local officials using their guanxi to dance around giant SOEs...

17 Aug 1h 54min

China's Best Music in 2026 (So Far)

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 hi...

14 Aug 54min

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

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 ...

10 Aug 48min

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

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 ...

7 Aug 1h 17min

The FCC's New Robot Rules

The FCC has spent the past year quietly rewiring the American import market, first routers, then drones, next undersea cables, and as of last week, robots. Adam Chan is national security counsel and ...

6 Aug 51min

Jordan talks AI with Sebastian Mallaby on his show 'The Spillover'

Don't sorry I put two ChinaTalk Records songs at the end! their show notes: On this episode of The Spillover, Sebastian Mallaby sits down with Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk to unpack a frantic mont...

1 Aug 1h 20min

WarTalk: Odyssey Edition

Roel Konijnendijk of Oxford returns to talk Nolan's Odyssey, ancient PTSD, siege warfare, and the choices we'd all make in adapting. Justin McIntosh cohosts. YoungBoy Never Broke Again as well as ...

30 Juli 1h 28min