Advertise on podcast: ChinaTalk

outtro music: Pardon Pen! https://suno.com/s/2tXSJ7uJFA7k1pUC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What exactly is quantum computing? Why does it matter, and what would it actually mean to “win” the quantum race? Zach Yerushalmi, CEO of Elevate Quantum, a Mountain West–based public-private consortium advancing the U.S. quantum ecosystem, and Chris Miller join the podcast to discuss. Our conversation covers… What Quantum Computing Actually Is — A primer on qubits, superposition, and why quantum computers aren’t “faster classical machines” but fundamentally different systems designed to simulate nature and solve specific classes of problems. Why Quantum Matters Now — Breakthroughs in error correction and hardware have shifted quantum from theory to an engineering race, with major implications for drug discovery, materials science, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. The Economic and National Security Stakes — Quantum’s potential impact on cryptography, advanced manufacturing, biotech, and defense makes it a strategic technology with an extremely small margin for error in global competition. From Science Project to Industrial Policy Challenge — The bottleneck is no longer just physics but scaling. Talent pipelines, fabrication capacity, supply chains, and the kinds of public-private partnerships needed to move from lab prototypes to deployable systems. What Winning Looks Like — Leadership isn’t just building the first powerful machine. It’s shaping standards, securing supply chains, protecting encryption, diffusing capabilities across industry, and sustaining innovation in a tight U.S.–China technological race. Plus, the encryption stakes, the engineering bottlenecks, the race with China — and a reading list and job resources for those interested in the field. Thanks to the Hudson Institute for sponsoring this episode. Zach’s Quantum Technology Reading List: Quantum Computing Fundamentals: But What Is Quantum Computing? by 3Blue1Brown Quantum Computing Overview: The Map of Quantum Computing by Domain of Science Quantum Sensing: Atomic Advantage: Accelerating U.S. Quantum Sensing for Next-Generation PNT by CNAS The Quantum-Classical Divide: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve? by Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine (February 2026) Systems Engineering Bottlenecks: Computer Science Challenges in Quantum Computing: Early Fault-Tolerance and Beyond by Jens Palsberg et al., IEEE Quantum Week (2025) Further reading if curious: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut (2021) Introduction to Special Issue on the Early History of Nuclear Fusion by M. B. Chadwick and B. Cameron Reed, Fusion Science and Technology (2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We discuss… Why Mythos is a Dr. Strangelove moment — and whether the better analogy is a nuke or a pandemic Who gets the keys: Ukraine vs. South Korea vs. Japan vs. the Five Eyes, and why the Defense Production Act now looks likelier than the supply-chain-risk designation The death of the patch model — and the return of air-gapped networks, mesh comms, and couriers shuttling classified work in person Steve Feinberg's half-trillion-dollar portfolio, the rise of direct-reporting program managers, and why a Senate-confirmed deputy can now make American industry rise and fall Hey God It's Dario song: https://suno.com/s/2d0u5eLbSyzDeDY3 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caleb Watney (Institute for Progress) and Max Bodach (Foundation for American Innovation) on what the new breed of DC think tanks does differently and why the old model is broken. We discuss: Why "counterfactual policy impact" matters more than white papers and what's wrong with project-based funding Cross-partisanship vs. picking sides: IFP pulls the rope sideways, FAI builds a big tent on the right Vertical integration over specialization — the person who wrote the brief should be the one selling it on the Hill Whether AI eats the think tank or just the parts that weren't working anyway Timestamps 00:38 — Applied think tank vs. white paper mill 16:56 — Partisanship: FAI's conservative tent vs. IFP's cross-partisan design 37:09 — Why researchers should do their own comms and outreach 50:26 — Betting on young talent as policy entrepreneurs 57:56 — Will AI eat the think tank? song: https://suno.com/s/I244K1rIpPdB6lO9 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropic’s new model found decades-old vulnerabilities in foundational open-source code that millions of automated tests and countless human experts had missed, presaging a potentially revolutionary moment in cyber. Ben Buchanan, former senior advisor for AI at the White House and author of The Hacker and the State, and Michael Sulmeyer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, join the show to break it all down. Full disclosure: Ben advises Anthropic. We discuss… How Mythos found 27-year-old bugs in code everyone thought was secure The offense-defense balance: whether a Ukraine with Mythos and a Russia without it changes the war Project Glasswing and Anthropic’s attempt to build a private-sector vulnerabilities equities process Why critical infrastructure patching is about to become a nightmare What happens when ransomware gets vibe-coded Why bio won’t be far behind Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eric Robinson, Tony Stark , Justin Mc , and Secretary of Defense Rock join me to score the Iran conflict. We discuss… Whether Iran’s Strait of Hormuz toll booth is a Trump card or a wasting asset How the administration fumbled the messaging on the war’s most heroic moment — the JSOC pilot rescue deep inside Iran The Prussia 1806 parallel: are we a great military machine that’s forgotten how to fight? Colby’s bizarre knife fight with Pope Leo McMasterism, dereliction of duty, and why no one is pushing back song: https://suno.com/s/uGE7Es3ELd6r8ao5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ukrainian drone manufacturing. How has the country been able to build hundreds of thousands, even millions of drones over the past four years of conflict? What dependencies does its industrial base still have on China? And what lessons does its rapid scaling offer for the rest of the world? To discuss, we’re joined by Cat Buchatskiy, Director of Analytics at Snake Island, a military analytical group, along with Chris Miller Our conversation covers: How battlefield pressure forced Ukraine to build a drone war machine from scratch — from a handful of soldiers flying off-the-shelf drones to domestic assembly at a massive scale. Ukraine’s industrial legacy and whole-of-society mobilization repurposed its civilian tech sector into a wartime industrial base. Why modular design, frontline reassembly, and tight feedback loops allow Ukraine to iterate faster than traditional defense systems. The constraints of global supply chains, the impact of export controls, and how China is playing both sides of the war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An F-15E is down in southern Iran. Justin, Tony, Eric and I talk through what combat search and rescue actually looks like, how a captured pilot changes the politics of ending this war, and why a hostage makes the "pack up and go home" play functionally impossible. Then: the AWACS that "only" lost a third of itself on a Saudi tarmac, why CENTCOM is still parking high-value aircraft like it's 2003, and what Operation Spiderweb and three years of Ukrainian drone warfare should have taught us but didn't. Plus Pete Hegseth's ongoing purge of the officer corps, the Enron theory of Pentagon innovation, and why the War of 1812 is the best analogy for where this is all heading. Tony's article on CENTCOM sucking: https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/what-did-we-learn-centcom Justin on just war: https://justinmc.substack.com/p/just-war-theory song: https://suno.com/s/vroapDDimBnmCxdO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of the American federal civil service — what can we learn from its past glories and failures, and where should we take this next? We have ⁠Kevin Hawickhorst⁠ of the Foundation for American Innovation to discuss: The Pendleton Act myth — Why civil service reform didn’t begin or end with Pendleton, and why starting the story there misses what actually made the system work. The rise of the subject-matter state — How early 20th-century agencies staffed with real experts — entomologists, engineers, agronomists — made the U.S. bureaucracy arguably the most capable in the world. From expertise to org charts — How mid-century functional reorganization hollowed out mission-driven agencies and replaced subject knowledge with process management. What competence delivered — From agricultural breakthroughs to infrastructure build-out, what a serious, technically grounded civil service was able to accomplish. Whether we can rebuild — DOGE, the abundance movement, state capacity, and why this might be the best time in decades to make the government work again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jen Pahlka is an American Hero, in a past life the US Deputy Chief Technology Officer and member of the Defense Innovation Board. She wrote Recoding America and the wonderful Eating Policy substack (https://www.eatingpolicy.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full house with Bryan, Eric, Tony and Justin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nathan Lambert of https://www.interconnects.ai/ and Jasmine Sun of https://jasmi.news/ catch up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The administration is reportedly considering seizing Kharg Island, and the global economy is beginning to buckle under the pressure of disrupted energy flows. Eric Robinson is a lawyer now who worked in NCTC, a veteran of Joint Special Operations Command. He joins Second Breakfast regulars Bryan Clark, Tony Stark, and Justin McIntosh to break down the military and strategic realities of America's latest Middle Eastern war. We discuss… The Kharg Island fantasy and why a coup de main three weeks too late is a recipe for catastrophe "How are you going to take Kharg Island? You have no ships in the Persian Gulf." Why "lethality maxim" is not a theory of victory and the Iranians know it "A focus on a gunfight is why we're in this strategic mess to begin with. There's no amount of successful engagements that will become strategically meaningful if you don't have a vision of victory." The NCTC resignation, its anti-Semitic undertones, and the hollowing out of American counterterrorism infrastructure "An institution that was designed to fix the leaks that gave rise to 9/11, staffed with extraordinary analytic capacity, started chasing the Sinaloa cartel." Whether Iran can strike the US homeland — and why the dog hasn't barked "Did we build a titanium golem that was really a clay monster? Did we dramatically overestimate this operational capacity?" The naval escort nightmare: how keeping the Strait open would consume the entire destroyer fleet and gut Pacific deterrence "If you do this escort operation, it's going to take every available destroyer on the East Coast and in Europe for the duration." DHS corruption, Corey Lewandowski's hundreds of millions, and why American grift has graduated to a new level "Even in somewhere like China, you still have to kind of hide it. You can't just be tweeting out the deals that you're making to make yourself billions of dollars." Song: https://suno.com/s/FK4kifdAbVykiRax Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A century-old toy company has taken down Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs with a self-funded lawsuit. But how? Today’s guest is Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, creator of Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog, and a successful Supreme Court plaintiff in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. Co-hosting is Peter Harrell, who submitted an amicus brief on the tariff case that shook the world. Our conversation covers: David v. Goliath — Why a mid-sized toy company sued when industry giants stayed silent, and what that says about incentives and courage in corporate America. The Existential Math — How tariff costs were set to jump from $2 million to $100 million, putting 500 jobs and a century-old family business at risk. Why Manufacturing Stays in China — The hard economics of toy production, supply-chain concentration, and why moving to Vietnam, India, or Mexico isn’t a simple fix. Rule of Law and Refunds — What it means to win at the Supreme Court, what should happen with the overcollected tariffs, and the constitutional guardrails around taxation. Legacy and Responsibility — Why taking a stand was necessary to protect this company’s mission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WarTalk launches! We chat with Pranay Vaddi (MIT, Sandia, formerly Biden NSC) and Chris McGuire (State, NSC, now CFR) about AI, nuclear command and control, deterrence, and how new military technologies could reshape strategic stability. We cover why the U.S. insists on keeping humans in the loop for nuclear employment decisions, where AI may still play a role in warning and decision support, and how drone warfare, undersea detection, and strategic AI capabilities could change the future of war. 05:00 How “human in the loop” became U.S. nuclear policy12:25 Accident risk, NC3, and the new dangers AI could introduce20:25 Where AI could help: targeting, planning, and decision support57:25 The bigger issue: proliferation of AI-enabled strategic military capabilities1:07:30 Tactical nuclear use, escalation, and lessons from recent wars1:17:40 What an AI nonproliferation regime might actually look like1:32:15 Civilian harm, targeting mistakes, and whether AI makes war more or less humane suno song: https://suno.com/s/d1tG4bBVnCULgQqd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices