ChinaTalk

Ken Liu graces ChinaTalk with his presence. He is the author of the Dandelion Dynasty silkpunk fantasy series and a brilliant short fiction writer — one of his stories was recently adapted into Sam Altman’s favorite show, Pantheon. We all know his translation work on the first and third volumes of the Three-Body Problem trilogy, but even better was his absolutely brilliant translation and commentary of the Dao De Jing. As much as I hoped that project would get him fully on the classical Chinese translation train, he followed it up with a very different direction — a techno-AI thriller, All That We See or Seem, released late last year. Irene Zhang of ChinaTalk joins us to co-host.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Ken Liu argues that:


Technology is the most human thing we do — humans have always externalized our minds into the world and then allowed those creations to reshape who we are.


AI “slop” won’t stop humans from making art that matters, and the real distinction isn’t quality versus slop, but between desire-fulfilling machines and artists who draw from the collective unconscious.


The deeper danger of AI isn’t machines replacing humans, but systems that train humans to behave like machines.


Science fiction isn’t prophecy, but mythology — and ideologies are just mythology’s cheaper, hack cousins. Orwell, Shelley, Tolkien, and Le Guin endure not because they predicted the future, but because they gave us metaphors powerful enough to think with across generations.


Large language models are intelligent, but can’t be wise. Drawing on Laozi and Zhuangzi, Ken explains why everything that truly matters lies beyond language.

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Two weeks into the US-Iran ceasefire, CENTCOM is requesting Dark Eagle hypersonics, the 82nd Airborne is flowing into theater, and the wargames keep telling us the same thing — there’s no military solution to the Strait of Hormuz.

Becca Wasser, America’s wargaming queen, currently with Bloomberg, joins WarTalk regulars Bryan Clark, Eric Robinson, and Justin Mc.

We discuss…


Why CENTCOM is using JASSMs to hit targets a glide bomb could handle


What cosplay costs the Indo-Pacific


The myth of US air superiority over Iran, and the SEAD legwork no one wants to do


Who actually benefits from the ceasefire and why Iran has the lower bar for reconstitution

Song: https://suno.com/s/wUhL26xyvUiklraY

We now have the songs on spotify! https://open.spotify.com/artist/3wltBV7tzUjci0vyTSv6h7?si=aVdBxNM7QVOknAXRakJZCg
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Constanza Vidal Bustamante joins Chris Miller and Zachary Yerushalmi to break down her new report with John Burke, Quantum's Industrial Moment: Strengthening US Quantum Supply Chains for Scalable Advantage — a deep dive into the components, chokepoints, and policy levers that will decide who wins the race to a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

We discuss…


(00:00) Why quantum is "pre-transistor" — and why the US still has time to lock in supply chain dominance before the next-gen architecture is even invented


(09:53) Dilution refrigerators, helium-3 from the nuclear stockpile, and whether mining the moon is actually a viable Plan B


(17:43) Did the 2024 export controls backfire? Inside the case study of China going from zero to dominating dilution-refrigerator publications in two years


(48:44) Lasers, photonics, and the Chinese supplier that reverse-engineered a Danish flagship — and is still selling into US labs under R&D tariff exemptions


(1:03:45) Why quantum looks more like biotech than semiconductors: 90 companies, ~7 modalities, and the anthropology of an industry where everyone thinks their qubit is the right one

Constanza's report: https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/quantums-industrial-moment

The Quantum Throne song: https://suno.com/s/9kBx74ZqUHsgYiQ2
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The Pentagon is leaking to the press that America doesn't have the missiles to win a war over Taiwan — and the Iran war is the reason why. Meanwhile, a Special Forces master sergeant is looking at federal charges for a $400,000 Polymarket bet on the Maduro regime, and SecNav John Phelan spent an hour sitting in the West Wing lobby waiting to get fired.

To discuss, WarTalk is joined by Bryan Clark (former submariner, Hudson Institute), Justin Mc (former Green Beret, now in defense tech), Eric Robinson (former OSC NCT and 101st Airborne, now a lawyer), and Tony Stark of breaking beijing.

We discuss…


Why the Pentagon is leaking that the U.S. can't win a war over Taiwan — and what it means when the primes, INDOPACOM, and the deputy all scatter-shot the same message through the Washington Post


The case for scrapping the legacy munitions portfolio — burning LRASMs on the Iranian Navy, the GPS-jamming Excalibur problem, and why locking in seven-year buys of Cold War weapons sets us up for the next round of failures


A Special Forces master sergeant, $400,000, and the Polymarket Maduro bet — plus the hairdryer-next-to-a-thermometer scam at Charles de Gaulle, and why financial libertinism is "smoking in daycares"


The firing of SecNav John Phelan — the waffle-bar bundler, the Golden Fleet fantasy, and how Stephen Feinberg captured the submarine program office and knifed his own Navy secretary


A preview of the last two years of Trump II — DeSantis, Cotton, Chairman Rogers, and whether Congress flipping means more foreign adventurism or just acting secretaries all the way down

Song, "Phelan on the couch when it happened" https://suno.com/s/C0LmG53KdrT3evfe
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outtro music: Pardon Pen! https://suno.com/s/2tXSJ7uJFA7k1pUC
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