WarTalk: USN Readiness Reckoning, Steampunk Navy, and AI Cyberwar with Shashank of the Economist
The USS Abraham Lincoln is coming home after a deployment that stretched past 240 days, and the bill is about to come due: mechanical failures, rations down to the emergency stores, 20,000 unfilled bi...
29 Aug 1h 4min
How AI Becomes a Political Crisis
The political economy of AI — things are getting weird, it seems. We have models on the loose, open weights being dropped from the heavenly temple, and data center protests fanning out across the land...
24 Aug 1h 8min
Lessons from the American Civil War
Note: This episode was recorded in late 2024. Luckily, there haven't been any US Civil War updates since then, so the episode's content still holds up. Enjoy! During paternity leave, the new influx o...
21 Aug 1h 32min
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
