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...

ChinaTalk is an audience-supported publication. If you'd like to help us produce more content like this, please consider a paid subscription on Substack.

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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 operations history and what the war on terror generation does next. Jordan is joined by hosts Tony Stark, Justin, and Bryan Clark.

We discuss…

• Why the military selects its generals like a company that promotes its best plant manager to CFO — and why the people you'd actually want as leaders are quietly opting out
• The Green Light teams: the suicidal one-way logic of hand-delivered nuclear demolition, from the Fulda Gap to mountain passes in Iran
• The difference between a Ranger tab and the Ranger Regiment — and why "is he a real Ranger" is a perennial fight every time a candidate runs for Congress
• Battlefield medicine as live experimentation — walking blood banks, French plasma you had to sign a waiver for, and why a stateside paramedic needs a doctor's permission to do what a SOF medic does on instinct
• The tech-CEO-as-villain premise behind The Most Dangerous Man, Nick Land's archaeofuturism, and the disturbing real Sarajevo "safari" case winding through the Italian courts
• The SOF celebrity-industrial complex — Lone Survivor, Joe Rogan, Tim Kennedy, January 6th, and the cultural fallout of two failed wars we haven't begun to reckon with

suno song: https://suno.com/s/Nw18Ns8p0CK9Blrd

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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’s ’2% inflation and full employment’ target for economic security?
• Where today would you put $10-50bn to get the most for your investment in economic security? Feel free to propose both defensive and offensive ideas, and either a portfolio of ideas or the one large idea you think will deliver the most value.

We ended up with a literal four-way tie for first place, with each judge giving a different essay top marks. We heard from Farrell Gregory earlier about how to spend rare earths money, and here, we’ll be spotlighting the three others who went into the framework question.

Joining us today — ⁠Jahara Matisek⁠, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and fellow at the U.S. Naval War College; ⁠Naveen Krishnan⁠ at the Belfer Center and an intel officer in the Navy Reserve; and ⁠Guy Ward Jackson⁠, senior policy analyst at the Tony Blair Institute in London. No one is speaking for the Air Force, the Navy, Harvard, the Naval War College, the Tony Blair Institute, or the Department of War. I’m speaking for ChinaTalk.

Our conversation covers:

• Why economic security is really an insurance problem — you’re paying people to keep factories warm, workers trained, and capacity idle for a war that may never come — and why no democracy likes paying that bill.
• Why the U.S. can’t China-proof its economy alone — the case for a distributed allied industrial base and using allied leverage and counter-coercion as an offensive tool.
• What $6 billion and four years bought in artillery production, why it still wasn’t enough, and how Patriot missile economics expose the danger of having exquisite weapons without industrial depth.
• Why you can’t science your way out of a volume problem — AI, robotics, and frontier R&D are caffeine, but the U.S. is still short on food and water.

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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 Institute for Security Studies who authored Beijing’s critical raw material weapon – and how to dismantle it. Co-hosting is ChinaTalk’s Aqib Zakaria.

Our conversation covers...

• China’s critical mineral weapon — How Beijing turned its dominance over rare earths into a tool of economic coercion and why the West is struggling to respond.

• 25 minerals that actually matter — Why policymakers should focus on the specific materials China can weaponize rather than spreading resources across broad critical mineral lists.

• Why subsidies alone won’t fix the problem — How China’s industrial policy, overcapacity, and ability to flood markets make it nearly impossible for Western supply chains to compete without coordinated action.

• Reshoring the industrial base — The tradeoffs behind rebuilding domestic capacity: higher end-product costs, environmental NIMBYism, skilled labor shortages, and the need for deeper US-European cooperation.

• The next resource race — How defense, AI, robotics, and energy demand are intensifying competition for critical materials and what the future of allied industrial power might look like.

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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 ceasefire and where US-China competition goes next.

We discuss:

• Why the MOU reads as a loss: the blockade comes down first, Iran keeps its missiles and its "nuclear dust," and a younger, harder regime learns it can take American firepower and wield an oil weapon

• The "bullshit détente" with Beijing and whether reindustrialization can carry a China-competition message without sounding hawkish

• Output metrics over input metrics, the seven-year force-posture problem, and what Ratner wishes he'd moved into the "break glass" category at the Pentagon

• RoboCom: the pros and cons of standing up a new combatant command

• Plus Crassus at Parthia, and why chasing parades is a bad idea unless you're the ny knicks

suno song: https://suno.com/s/scu8twGj01AIOYSL

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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 discuss…

• Why AI will crack math but not science, and what Mendel's peas sitting ignored for 60 years says about a model that's smarter than everyone

• Why China never caught the West's lone-genius bug, and why that's about to pay off

• Tools over ideas, from Warren Weaver's six instruments to the thousands at CERN who proved a Higgs boson three guys took home the Nobel for

• How do spend a billion dollars to save higher education

• AI, souls, and whether your Claude gets into heaven

Suno song: https://suno.com/s/3Q11kw74vQmH7eLN

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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 world's most powerful model offline
• Why the "let it rip" administration pivoted to mandatory AI regulation overnight
• The incoherent export-control regime: regs that still say one thing while policy says another
• The overseas-subsidiary loophole, the Sunday emergency fix, and the foundry gap still left open

outtro music: https://suno.com/s/UVeDiboPyj0jvIgO

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Nathan Lambert of https://www.interconnects.ai/, Jasmine Sun of https://jasmi.news/, and guest Ethan Ding of https://ethanding.substack.com/ check in

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