ChinaTalk

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 China will have a Mythos-class model before the end of the year; IAPS says February 2027. Either way, Beijing is about to face down the same question, but unlike Washington, it already has a form to fill out.

Guests: Kevin Xu of Interconnected. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

We discuss…

Why China's answer to Mythos will look like Glasswing — but started by the state, not a lab, with government ministries and central SOEs first in line

Whether the CAC's content-testing regime can absorb cyber, and why a Chinese lab dropping a frontier model without a heads-up would be "very bold and self-destructive behavior"

The mixed signals on open source — a Reuters report on MOFCOM and NDRC weighing export controls on model weights, versus Minimax and Zhipu founders publicly doubling down, with Xi's WAIC speech as the tiebreaker

Whether open weights even matter when running a frontier model adversarially requires a datacenter, and the case that lighting the dark park makes it safer

What the US and China can actually agree on — non-state actors, eval methodology sharing, and why labor displacement lessons don't travel

Companion-app regulation flowing from Sacramento and Albany to Beijing, the AI policy brain drain into the labs, and whether Sam Altman's five percent is American state capitalism or just a Trump thing

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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 Strait quietly coming apart?

Randy Schriver is Chairman of the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security (the successor to Project 2049), current chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the first Trump administration.

We discuss…

China's new persistent Coast Guard patrol east of Taiwan, and how lawfare, fishermen rescues, and radio queries make sovereignty claims physically manifest,

Why treating arms sales as a "bargaining chip" puts the US out of compliance with the Taiwan Relations Act,

Whether Seoul and Tokyo go nuclear as hedging accelerates — and what the axis of autocracy means for a Korea contingency,

How many Chinese mothers will sacrifice their only legal child for a Xi Jinping vanity project — and why America stopped doing information warfare,

Blockade vs. invasion, Hellscape, and why the US should exercise a Keelung–Yonaguni corridor with Japan,

The own-goal management of US-India relations, plus Randy's reading list for new Indo-Pacific hands.

song link: https://suno.com/s/aRUtODqWdnqhKG3l
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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 toxic, explosive, and highly reactive chemicals and why some are purified to levels measured in parts per trillion.


How China went from virtually no semiconductor-gas industry to the ability to supply almost every critical chipmaking gas in just fifteen years.


America’s CHIPS Act versus China’s Big Fund — why building fabs domestically is easier than building the chemical ecosystem beneath them, and why many critical gases cannot simply be stockpiled.

Plus, why Taiwan may be the worst place in the world to host a semiconductor industry and the existential supply-chain risks that come with it and, the surprising appeal of a career in industrial gases.
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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 Reyk Knuhtsen, robotics lead at SemiAnalysis. Lily Ottinger cohosts.

Our conversation covers:


Why robots are the real general-purpose technology because, for the first time in history, we can decouple capital from human labor.


How everyone keeps underestimating Unitree: the DJI and BYD playbooks, the danger of dismissing “robot dogs,” and why iteration speed matters more than dancing demos.


China’s edge: vertical integration, actuator manufacturing, and supply chains that make Chinese humanoids much cheaper than American ones.


Why you can’t AI your way out of a hardware problem or from a supply chain that makes your robot far more expensive to build.


What America should do next: allied supply chains, special economic zones, and industrial policy.

suno song: https://suno.com/s/EBSxwT7ltOerJJGD
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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 only holds 11 days of LNG reserves, and 97% of the island's energy is imported, but the ruling party phased out nuclear and botched the renewable rollout anyway.


The offshore wind graveyard — how made-in-Taiwan components drove developers to abandon the world's best offshore wind sites,


The Taipower unbundling reversal — and the Kafkaesque system that keeps electricity prices dirt cheap despite the Iran war.


“Green energy cockroaches” — why corruption is Taiwan's dirtiest secret, and how the Taiwanese public came to associate renewables with scandal,


The nuclear U-turn — How President Lai Ching-te walked back forty years of "Non-Nuclear Homeland" orthodoxy to restart Taiwan’s nuclear reactors.

A transcript of this show with embedded source links is available on the ChinaTalk substack.

This episode was produced by Lily Ottinger and Aqib Zakaria. Special thanks to "Jason Feng," Angelica Oung, Ricky Huang, Tsaiying Lu (DSET), and Yu-Hsuan Yeh (formerly of CSIS and DSET) for their time and expertise. Everyone's views are their own and don't represent any organization.

If you want to learn more, check out Angelica's ongoing work on her two Substacks, Taipology and Elemental Energy. You can also check out Ricky's two podcasts, where he hosts cross-partisan debates about energy policy and more.

"Jason's" voice was anonymized with ElevenLabs' text-to-speech tools.

Finally, we know Angelica is a controversial figure, but we decided to interview her because, on energy policy specifically, her views are shared by a not-insubstantial portion of the Taiwanese public. [See: this poll which reported that 59% of the Taiwanese public didn't feel confident that Lai’s administration could protect Taiwan from power outages, and this poll from June 2025 that shows a near-even split in public opinion for and against the non-nuclear homeland policy.] 

Outro song lyrics:

「燈火 Taiwan」

(Lights of Taiwan)

[Verse 1]

The AC stopped humming on August day eight

Aunties in the market, no fan on their face

Eleven days of gas, forty-two of coal

Then the island goes dark, and the story gets old

O-lóng-mn̂g, o-lóng-mn̂g (黑黑暗暗, pitch black)

We knew this would come, but we looked away

[Pre-Chorus]

Forty years they said hūi-hi̍k (非核, non-nuclear)

Forty years of dreaming we could wish it all away

But the strait is a wind tunnel, and the sun still shines

While we burned the future for cheaper times

[Chorus]

Góa ê kò͘-hiong, lí kám ū thêng-thāu?

(我的故鄉, 你敢有聽著? — My homeland, can you hear?)

The Franken-reactor sleeps beneath the hill

Crystal Yang drank the water, but the people got ill

Góa ê kò͘-hiong, lí ài kiàⁿ-khí-lâi

(我的故鄉, 你愛起來 — My homeland, you must rise)

Not nuclear OR green — we need both to survive

[Verse 2]

Round 3.1, Round 3.2, localization chains

RWE went home, EnBW felt the pain

Yunlin's turbines turning, three times the cost

While the lūi-chhù (綠能蟑螂, green cockroaches) ate what we lost

Behind the meter, batteries wait

Zero price auction — we sealed our own fate

[Pre-Chorus]

Taipower's black box, CPI's lie

TSMC pays more so the auntie don't cry

But the data centers can't grow, AI waits at the door

While we argue if nuclear is sin or chó͘ (善或惡, good or evil)

[Chorus]

Góa ê kò͘-hiong, lí kám ū thêng-thāu?

The Franken-reactor sleeps beneath the hill

Crystal Yang drank the water, but the people got ill

Góa ê kò͘-hiong, lí ài kiàⁿ-khí-lâi

Not nuclear OR green — we need both to survive

[Bridge]

(Spoken, over soft piano)

March 22nd, 2026

Lai Ching-te said the words nobody wanted to hear

Kò͘-hiong needs power

Not slogans, not pride, not forty years of fear

[Final Chorus]

Góa ê kò͘-hiong, lí kám ū thêng-thāu?

The blockade is coming, the Hormuz is closed

Spot market gas at 140% — who knows?

Góa ê kò͘-hiong, lí ài kiàⁿ-khí-lâi

Distributed and hardened, let the sun and wind rise

With nuclear beside them — open both your eyes

[Outro]

O-lóng-mn̂g, mài koh o-lóng-mn̂g

(黑黑暗暗, 莫閣黑黑暗暗 — Darkness, don't be dark again)

Kiàⁿ-khí-lâi, Tâi-oân

(起來, 台灣 — Rise up, Taiwan)

Kiàⁿ-khí-lâi...

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