Latest in ChinaTalk
How do Roombas illustrate the promise and peril of translational research? Which valley of death is really the worst valley of death? And how can woolly mammoths save the planet from climate change?
To discuss, I have on:
Chris Miller of Tufts and I discuss our report Labs over Fabs, our case for the US to be spending money more broadly than currently conceived by the CHIPS act. (https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/labs-over-fabs-risc-vs-promise)
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Why does Xi govern like he's running out of time? Rhodium's Dan Rosen and CSIS' Jude Blanchette discuss their recent Foreign Affairs pieces recapping the past years of Xi's rule from an economic and political perspective. We get into failed financial liberalization, anti-corruption, the prospects for war over Taiwan, lessons from Sputnik and vertical farming.
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How did Chinese firms come to dominate the global solar industry? Now that the Biden administration has banned imports for some key components of solar panels made in Xinjiang, how will global solar buyers adapt? Andy Klump, CEO of Clean Energy Associates, a firm tasked with monitoring Chinese solar supply chains, joins the podcast to discuss.
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Is China different? Does secular stagnation apply? How have Chinese economic policymakers changed over time? Should industrial policy be a thing? What should American academia navigate its relationship with China?
To discuss, ChinaTalk welcomes its first former cabinet secretary to the show! Larry Summers is a professor at Harvard, who previously served as Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury and Obama’s NEC Director.
Dave Aitel, who started his career at NSA and spent the past twenty years in offensive cybersecurity, comes on ChinaTalk to discuss what he's learned in his quest to read every cyber policy paper; what blindspots remain in the field; how China ranks in offensive and defensive cyber capabilities relative to the US and what we can all learn from the Tianfu Cup (http://www.tianfucup.com/); and why Cyberpunk 2077 is a masterpiece.
Ben Reinhardt, an independent researcher and robotics PhD, discusses why DARPA has so many hits to its name; why NASA wasted the past two decades; what needs to be subtracted from the U.S. research ecosystem; and sci-fi book recommendations.
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Dr. Yan Zheng, senior technical staff specializing in microelectronics at In-Q-Tel, discusses what it's like to invest in startups for the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community; what's broken in the early stage chip ecosystem and how to fix it; hy the US government should consider expanding its direct investments in hard tech companies; how the U.S. needs to counterbalance CFIUS with carrots; how anti-Asian violence has influenced the research community.
Bell Labs is dead, long live Bell Labs! This week's guest, Ilan Gur, the CEO of Activate.org, has a plan to improve America's R&D apparatus: fund start-ups that allow entrepreneurial researchers to pursue the practical applications of their world-class basic research. We discuss why we're lucky to have Moderna and BioNTech (beyond the obvious reasons), the impact of research moving from corporations to universities, the Endless Frontier Act, why patents don't equal innovation and more.
The Endless Frontier Act, the most important piece of legislation no one's heard of, got blown to bits in committee this week. Sam Hammond of the Niskanen Center joins to discuss.
My recent coverage in the ChinaTalk newsletter https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/endless-frontier-the-most-important
Sam's coverage: https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-congress-ruined-the-endless-frontier-act/