ChinaTalk Podcast and Newsletter

New coverage on ChinaTalk on the China-Myanmar badlands As the Burmese junta launches new campaigns against the ethnic militias of the Shan State, the flames of war in Myanmar have begun licking at China’s southern border, but tamping down chaos in the borderlands has occupied the Chinese state for most of its modern history. It was to the wilds of Burma that the Nationalists fled in the 1950s — the same destination for restless Red Guards in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as black-market entrepreneurs in the 1990s and 2000s. Given the history of the region — replete with gun fights, CIA intrigue, and mule trains loaded down with heroin — the latest threat might seem a bit quaint: the de facto independent states that China shares its border with have become a center for telecommunications fraud. The latest rumors on Chinese social media point to this week’s PLA live fire exercises on the border as cover for kinetic action to dismantle these fraud bases. With this new trade have come lurid headlines about the gǎyāozi 嘎腰子 gangs — human traffickers whose alleged doings recall urban legends about gangsters that would cut out the kidneys of unlucky souls lured into their trap. Otherwise decent young people, persuaded by the promise of high salaries at white-collar jobs, migrate south of the border, only to be forced into indentured servitude to criminal scammers. Some of those luring Chinese citizens to work in Myanmar have become online celebrities through slick videos on Douyin 抖音. (The Myanmar scam business is even the subject of a 2023 crime flick called No More Bets 孤注一掷.) https://lnkd.in/gX86ndCs

Rohit Krishnan and I put out an emergency podcast on the feed reflecting on the OpenAI drama in the context of US-China AI. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Jason Matheny recently passed his first anniversary as CEO of the RAND Corporation, the legendary federally funded research organization founded after World War II that now has nearly 2,000 employees and over $350 million in annual revenue. Previously, Matheny led the Biden White House’s policymaking on technology and national security at the National Security Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy. He also founded the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University and directed the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, which develops advanced technologies for the US Intelligence Community. He is also great on the mic. We spent two hours together putting together one of my favorite conversations this year. In the excerpt below, discuss:  --How RAND balances researcher freedom, long-term problem-solving, perennial budgetary constraints, and political imperatives. --Why Matheny looks for, of all things, kindness in hiring and promoting top-notch talent. --How RAND’s structure allows researchers to self-organize. --RAND’s sense of “optimistic urgency” and counterbalancing the weight of existential risk with existential hope for the future. https://lnkd.in/e6prs9bz

This podcast episode with RAND's Jason Matheny was really, really good https://lnkd.in/ezzup3A9

BIS just released revisions to the restrictions of October 7, 2022. Jon of Asianometry, Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, and Doug O'Laughlin, CFA of Fabricated Knowledge join the me to discuss what these regulations mean for the future of China’s semiconductor and AI ambitions. https://lnkd.in/e98eeX-i