Cerca 2020, I was entering college and ChinaTalk became very important to me as a model for intellectual discourse, i.e. one that is nuanced, historically grounded, techno-optimistic, and curious. It lacks a lot of the pretension and credential-waving of most policy podcasts, like related shows from Lawfare. Jordan’s sensibility has always been an interesting mix of a Silicon Valley, liberal arts, and the D.C. policy world. I still think it’s a good podcast worth following. The coverage skewed U.S.-centric for a China podcast, but Jordan seemed self-conscious about that and was regularly putting out in-depth China specific episodes.
Unfortunately the value I get from the average episode has massively declined since 2023. I
expected ChinaTalk to lean more AI-optimistic, but it’s really been infected primarily by a certain attitude common among AI boosters, who pay a lot of lip service to“first principles” and “building intuition,” but seem to operate from a single faulty core assumption: None one of this is actually that hard if you’re cracked, in the know (have the right Twitter mutuals) and set aside 20 minutes to hash things out with Claude.
There is a simlar level of arrogance in interviews with Biden/Obama NatSec types, which is maybe more reasonable, but no less corrosive in its blasé asessment that deploying increasingly advanced killing machines abroad will always be necessary.
The influence of theses attitudes is strongest in the “fellas yucking it up on Zoom”-type series (WarTalk, Transistor Radio) but it’s hard to ignore how it’s bled into main episodes too. Jordan typing questions into ChatGPT mid-interview and credulously reading the answers out loud immediately gives any episode the feeling of a midnight dorm-room chat.
Of course I’m painting in broad strokes, but this has been my experience as a relatively long-time listener.
