ChinaTalk Jordan Schneider

One does not simply invade Taiwan — but George Marshall once thought long and hard about it. In 1944, in the middle of the island-hopping campaign, American war planners set their sights on Japanese-controlled Formosa.
What did the American invasion plan look like? Why did Marshall decide to go another route? What lessons do this and other amphibious invasions hold for Taiwan’s current force posture?
To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed US Army Field Artillery Lieutenant Colonel J. Kevin McKittrick, currently at the Air War College in Alabama and a veteran of multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Co-hosting today is our resident Taiwan consultant Nicholas Welch.
We discuss:

The US military’s aborted plan to invade Taiwan during WWII;

Why bigger is better when it comes to amphibious assaults;

What the US got right and the CCP gets wrong about civil-military relations;

Taiwan’s defense concept, and the opportunities presented by “operational pause”;

The awful, unending relevance of traditional artillery in modern war;

And why the US doesn’t need its own “rocket force” … yet.


Outtro music: 被動 (Passive) by 伍佰 Wu Bai&China Blue. Youtube Link.
Photo: White House, July 29, 1942. Left to right: Admiral Ernest King, Admiral William Leahy, and General George Marshall. | Wikimedia Commons
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Taiwan’s government agencies are battered by 5 million cyberattacks every day. China is holding invasion drills at a replica of Taiwan’s presidential palace in Inner Mongolia. Last week, the PLA openly rehearsed an encirclement of Taiwan in so-called “punishment drills.”
What happened to deterrence in the Taiwan Strait? Can the status quo be saved?
To discuss strategies for avoiding WWIII, ChinaTalk interviewed Jared McKinney of the Air War College and Peter Harris of Colorado State University, who recently co-authored a monograph entitled, “Deterrence Gap: Avoiding War in the Taiwan Strait.”
Co-hosting today is ChinaTalk’s resident Taiwan consultant, Nicholas Welch.
We discuss…

Evidence of deterrence decay in the status quo;

The difference between constraints and restraints, and how they fit together to form a lattice of successful deterrence;

Whether symbolic solidarity with Taiwan does more harm than good;

The values and costs of strategic ambiguity;

How Taiwan can optimize its deterrence posture;

Lessons from the dance of death between Iran and Israel;

Objective factors for measuring invasion risk, and whether the world should be scared about 2027;

How to analyze decision trees for fundamentally irrational decisions;

... and more!

Outtro music: MJ116, 辣台妹 (HOT CHICK) - Official music video: MJ116【辣台妹 HOT CHICK】- (youtube link)
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Good AI is good and bad AI is bad, but how do lawmakers tell the difference? Will AI bring the world together or balkanize the internet beyond repair? Why do governments even need cloud computing anyway?
To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Pablo Chavez, a fellow at CNAS and former Vice President of Google Cloud's Public Policy division, as well as the inestimable investing tycoon Kevin Xu. Xu, formerly of GitHub, is the founder of Interconnected, a bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations.
In this interview, we discuss:

The digital sovereignty movement and the lessons we can learn from China's Great Firewall;

The value and risks of open source architecture in the future of AI governance;

Meta’s long history of open source and how Llama fits into that strategy;

The geopolitical and cultural forces driving nations to pursue their own AI strategies;

The viability of sovereign AI initiatives in the face of global tech giants.


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Nathan Lambert of the Interconnects substack and Allen Institute joins for a roundup where we get into:

What DC should understand about the Bay Area AI engineer psyche

What GPT4o and Google's AI Dev Day mean for the future of AI

OpenAI's model spec, and exit, voice, and loyalty in the leading labs


Outtro music: Scarlett Johansson's The Moon Song
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We're taking one out of the archives!
Douglas Irwin is a Dartmouth professor and the author of Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. On this episode, Irwin provides an overview to the history of U.S. trade policy from the 18th century to the modern day, highlighting significant legislation as well as the formation of important intergovernmental organizations that have sprung up along the way.
Outro Music: Janis Joplin, Mercedes Benz
19:53: On the flawed logic behind the Tariff Act of 1930, and the parallels with similarly problematic thinking in the modern day: “There’s absolutely a parallel there because some Democrats in Congress said, ‘You know, we ought to really think about this carefully, and not just our domestic interest but also our export interests, and other countries might retaliate.’ And basically, the reaction of most members of Congress was, Republicans at the time, ‘No, we don’t have to worry about that. This is a domestic piece of legislation, it doesn’t really concern other countries. They’re not going to retaliate.’ And, of course, they did.”
39:40: Doug discusses the tips and tricks behind one example of “tariff engineering”: “The tariffs applied to motorcycles with piston displacements of 700cc and above. What Honda started doing is producing a 699cc version. Now the difference [between the two] is imperceptible, but just by changing that one cubic centimeter, it changed the whole tariff treatment and you avoided a 45 percent tariff and were assessed at a much, much lower rate.”

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Brad Setser of CFR talks Biden's new tariffs!
Earlier podcast deep dive on Chinese EV policy: ChinaTalk: Why Chinese EVs Will Take Over the World on Apple Podcasts
Earlier podcast on the deep history of US trade policy: ChinaTalk: Tarriffs, taxes, and trade: Doug Irwin on ChinaEconTalk on Apple Podcasts
Brad's paper: Power and Financial Interdependence (ifri.org)
Outtro Music: Golden Earring's Radar Love
Here's a fun playlist on the best car songs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6l0sSAdFwyCH1yzQX2IrKQ?si=fb3b8fdd29644631
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