ChinaTalk

Happy New Year! This is your reminder to fill out the ChinaTalk audience survey. The link is here. We’re here to give the people what they want, so please fill it out! ~Lily 🌸 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Clark joins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

but in a nice way happy new year! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We check in on the state of the republic and allied scale with Peter Harrell, former Biden official and host of the excellent new Security Economics podcast, Kevin Xu, who writes the Interconnected newsletter, and Matt Klein, author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars and The Overshoot substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gang (Justin Mc, Tony Stark and Eric Robinson) and I talk about what the hell just happened this past weekend and what it all means. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices