Mike Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. Trade Representative. He joins ChinaTalk for the first time to discuss:

• Why his 1992 dissertation on détente is suddenly relevant again – and why “positive linkage” fails to change adversary behavior,

• How mutual assured destruction has shifted from nuclear weapons to rare earths, supply chains, and technology, and why the U.S. and China are stuck in a costly, uncomfortable stalemate,

• Trump’s unorthodox use of economic leverage and America’s resilience problem,

• CFR’s new cross-fellow initiatives on China, economics, and open-source analysis,

• Plus: an inside look at how think tanks work — salaries, funding, and what to expect from Mike Froman’s tenure leading the CFR.

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We've got a full house with Tony, Justin and Eric today. We get into:

• The hottest NDAA takes on the airwaves (DFC, OSC, AUKUS, Taiwan, contested logistics, Xi's money)
• Tony has an amazing tv pitch for the deposed dictator White Lotus
• SOCOM creatine and super soldiers

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Nathan and Jasmine debrief from NeurIPS San Diego, where we of course threw the best party.

outtro music: we're on a boat https://suno.com/s/dkulmuRvScACxObX

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It's never over with Trump...Dmitri Alperovich of the Silverado Policy Accelerator comes on to discuss Trump's decision to allow the export of H200s to china.

outtro music, a fan song to Jameison Greer: https://suno.com/s/yTi5R7xDRcM7p2ho

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First half on the national security strategy you can read here https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

26:18 we get into the second strike

Tony's Taiwan baseball podcast rec: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6s26btM3CFq7FgUUmdECST?si=gMIOtaZxSPKYzk5qCNMePQ

Kimi said I should set the song to veggietales, so I did. https://suno.com/s/P4XaZR6f1mphSrkP

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It's think tank director week at ChinaTalk! Helen Toner of CSET kicks us off to talk through where she's planning on taking the storied organization.

her speech about jagged progress: https://helentoner.substack.com/p/taking-jaggedness-seriously

Outtro music: https://suno.com/s/HcdTS6W1OmHh8ZYz

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In the wake of Salt Typhoon, what does the future of secure telecom look like?

To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed John Doyle, a former Green Beret who spent a decade building Palantir’s national security practice before founding Cape, which calls itself “America’s privacy-first mobile carrier”. Also joining the conversation is Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman and co-founder of Silverado Policy Accelerator, founder of CrowdStrike, and an angel investor into Cape.

Thank you to Cape for sponsoring the episode.

We discuss…

• Why telecom data is so valuable to adversaries, and what China discovered in the Salt Typhoon campaign,

• Cape’s founding thesis, including what makes Cape’s cell network so much more secure than major providers like AT&T,

• How wars are run on commercial cell networks, and how Russia and Ukraine’s reliance on that has been exploited over the course of the war,

• Other instances of telecom data weaponization, including by Hezbollah, Israel, and Mexican drug cartels,

• Taiwan’s plan for dealing with undersea cable sabotage,

• What it takes to cultivate engineering talent in telecoms, and why Huawei has stayed innovative while US providers stagnated.

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Doug, Dylan, and Wei of SemiAnalysis join me (Jon was sleeping at 5AM taiwan time...) for a pre-holiday get together.

01:00 AI Mandate--OpenAI slipping

19:03 Dylan sells TSMC on AI better than sama

24:17 Doug teaches a lesson on railroad bubbles and ai

32:30 Sarah Friar fails up

35:17 Zohran-Trump

Suno slop: Moody's man came down from New York City https://suno.com/s/5DGCTgqam8dQMkZf

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Eric Robinson, Justin Mc, Tony Stark and I talk China's sushi ban, Witkoff's peace plan, Jake Sullivan, William Manchester's absurd memoir

Here's the full text of the peace plan: https://www.axios.com/2025/11/20/trump-ukraine-peace-plan-28-points-russia

Chapters

00:00 China bans pufferfish sperm

02:14 Peace Deal Drama

11:12 How the Trump Court explains everything

20:11 The Future of Russian Military Power

30:34 Lessons from Syria and chemical weapons

39:02 Where's Europe though

49:32 Lessons from Ukraine + William Manchester's absurd memoir

our broadway suno take on the plan: article 5: but different! https://suno.com/s/Dwx3udwSMVMRNxFV

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Zixuan Li is Director of Product and genAI Strategy at Z.ai (also known as Zhipu 智谱 AI). The release of their benchmark-topping flagship model, GLM 4.5, was akin to “another DeepSeek moment,” in the words of Nathan Lambert.

Our conversation today covers…

• What sets Z.ai apart from other Chinese models, including coding, role-playing capabilities, and translations of cryptic Chinese internet content,

• Why Chinese AI companies chase recognition from Silicon Valley thought leaders,

• The role of open source in the Chinese AI ecosystem,

• Fears of job loss and the prevalence of AI pessimism in China,

• How Z.ai trains its models, and what capabilities the company is targeting next.

Co-hosting today are Irene Zhang, long-time ChinaTalk analyst, as well as Nathan Lambert of the Interconnects Substack.

Follow Z.ai on X: https://x.com/Zai_org

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After five long years since ⁠his last ChinaTalk appearance⁠, Jake Sullivan returns to the show!

We discuss…

• Sullivan’s experience managing crises, implementing grand strategy, and cultivating leadership skills during the Biden administration,
• The art of crafting aggressive industrial policy, from chips to rare earths to infrastructure, 
• The risk of miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait, and whether Pelosi’s Taipei visit was a mistake,
• Russia’s nuclear brinkmanship and the development of Biden’s posture on Ukraine,
• Whether Trump can succeed at ratcheting down tensions with China.

Check out Sullivan's new podcast, The Long Game (⁠Apple⁠, ⁠Spotify⁠)

Reading recommendations:

1. ⁠Feeding Ghosts⁠
2. ⁠The Social History of the Machine Gun⁠
3. ⁠To Run the World

A reminder: this is the conversation I wanted to have with Jake, not the one you want to have. For other recent interviews that get more into the Biden administration around the withdrawal of Afghanistan, the pace of arming Ukraine, and America’s handling of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, see all these six other shows he’s done this year.⁠

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