ChinaTalk

Is there such a thing as MAD in economic warfare? How should we measure the effectiveness of our industrial policy tools, and what outcomes should we be aiming for anyway?

Our guest today is Dan Kim, who served at USITC with stints at Qualcomm and SK hynix before returning to government as the Chief Economist for the CHIPS Program Office. He recently joined TechInsights as Chief Strategy Officer. Also joining us is Chris Miller of Chip War fame. 

We discuss:


What $39 billion can and can’t buy — why the CHIPS Act was never meant to de-risk the U.S. from China or Taiwan, and what “success” looks like when autarky is neither affordable nor desirable,


Apple vs. Xiaomi + BYD — invention versus fast-following as competing models of national power, and which system performs better when the goal shifts from profit maximization to geopolitical resilience,


What resilience actually means — capability vs. capacity, weakest links, and whether economic security should be measured as “time to recovery” rather than self-sufficiency,


Managed dependence vs. overreliance, and whether dependence itself can be a form of power,

Why the U.S. still lacks a clear theory, metrics, and institutional design for industrial strategy — and what you can do about it.

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Jon Czin spent years as a top China analyst at the CIA, served as China Director on Biden’s National Security Council, and now works at the Brookings Institution. We talk through:

Xi, Trump, and what drove the roller coaster of US-China relations in 2025

Why it feels too quiet right now and what could get this train off the rails in 2026

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The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission late last year released ⁠its annual report to Congress⁠. ChinaTalk welcomes two commissioners to the pod to discuss.

Before joining the Hoover Institution, ⁠Mike Kuiken⁠ spent two decades on the Hill with Senators Schumer and Durbin. He was appointed to the commission by Leader Schumer. ⁠Leland Miller⁠, the co-founder and CEO of ⁠China Beige Book⁠, was appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson.

We get into…


What the U.S.-China Commission does, and why “alligators closest to the boat” explains Congress’s blind spots,


The case for an economic statecraft agency, and reorganization lessons from post-9/11 sanctions reform,


The year supply chains became sexy — and the best-case scenario for responding to chokepoints like rare earths and pharmaceuticals,


Xi’s unresponsiveness to consumer spending concerns, and the military-tech developments he’s targeting instead,


The quantum software gap, synthetic biology in space, and Congress’s role in competing with China.

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Richard Danzig, national treasure, joins the podcast to discuss the national security implications of AI in the cyber context.

Do note we conducted this interview in July of 2025.

We discuss Richard's excellent paper on AI and cyber you can find here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA4079-1.html

Teddy Collins cohosts. Thanks to Hudson for sponsoring this episode.
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Ben Buchanan, now a Professor at SAIS, served in the Biden White House in many guises, including as a special advisor on AI. He’s also the author of three books and an Oxford quarterback. He joins ChinaTalk to discuss how AI is reshaping U.S. national security.

We discuss:


How AI quietly became a national security revolution — scaling laws, compute, and the small team in Biden’s White House that moved early on export controls before the rest of the world grasped what was coming,


Why America could win the AI frontier and still lose the war if the Pentagon can’t integrate frontier models into real-world operations as fast as adversaries — the “tank analogy” of inventing the tech but failing at operational adoption,


The need for a “Rickover of AI” and whether Washington’s bureaucracy can absorb private-sector innovation into defense and intelligence workflows,


How AI is transforming cyber operations — from automating zero-day discovery to accelerating intrusions,


Why technical understanding — not passion or lobbying — still moves policy in areas like chips and AI, and how bureaucratic process protects and constrains national security decision-making,


How compute leadership buys the U.S. time, not safety, and why that advantage evaporates without building energy capacity, enforcement capacity, and world-class adoption inside the government.

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