ChinaTalk

Matt Pottinger reported for years out of China, served as a US Marine Corps intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, and held several senior roles on Trump's NSC , concluding his time in the White House as the Deputy National Security Advisor.

Today, Matt chairs the China Program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

In this interview, we discuss:

• How Matt expects a second Trump administration’s China policy might develop.
• Why Trump is leaning more into strategic ambiguity than Biden, what that means for deterrence, and how that impacts the likelihood of him standing by were the PRC to invade Taiwan.
• Why bipartisan support for the US-China trade war will continue to shape the contours of great-power conflict.
• Matt’s look at the origins and political fallout of COVID-19.
• Plus, reflections on Mike Flynn and how Trump ran his NSC.

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Outtro music: Miles Davis, So What https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXk1LBvIqU

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Heart attacks, prostate cancer, Jake Sullivan awake for a home invasion attempt at 4 AM because he was just up working on a random Tuesday night?

Is the national security bureaucracy in America unwell?

To discuss, I have on today John Gans, a former Pentagon speechwriter, who’s had many, many other jobs in Washington. He is also the author of the fantastic “White House Warriors,” a history of the National Security Council.

We get into:

• Why the organizational design of the NSC leads to such crushing burdens for midlevel and senior staffers
• The kinds of high-flyers that are drawn to the national security complex and what keeps them there
• How POTUS’s time constraints impact decision-making
• Why NSC’s historically are excellent at spotting problems but often overeager when crafting solutions
• The NSC’s role in America’s “forever wars.”
• Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, and Trump’s “maverick model” of running the NSC compared to the Eisenhower vision of “regular order”
• How seemingly prosaic technological innovations like track changes and video conferencing have dramatically changed national security policymaking
• How reading Shakespeare can improve the quality of our policy-making
• What a better model could look like

Illustration from the New Yorker's recent feature on Sullivan. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/16/trial-by-combat

Outtro audio from

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We discuss their experience of the past few days, China's response, its broader policy and aspirations in the Middle East, and what comes next.

Our first guest is Carice Witte who is the founder and director of the SIGNAL Group.

Second in the episode is Ofir Dayan, a researcher at the Israel-China Policy Center at INSS.

Outtro music: World Champion, sung by family members and victims of terrorism https://youtu.be/yofkk5Vaif8?si=JskMFXK3-srR5z8L

Lyrics translation:

I'm a world champion in repressing

Anything that scares me, anything stressful, I put on mute

I'm a world champion in loving

Firstly myself, then at the stage and the street

The hardest is to give it to someone close

I'm a world champion in not being

In not solving your problems

Even the pictures on the walls

I wasn't the one who hanged them

I'm only in charge of the melodies

I'm a world champion in falling

And getting back up like a champ

You'll see, like a phoenix

I'm burning, but choosing every day to live on

I'm a world champion in wanting

At least trying

You'll see, how in the end

After the losses, the victory is so much sweeter

I'm a world champion

I'm a world champion in justifying

Weaknesses and desires

The urge is an old acquaintance

I know every old trick it keeps in its bag

But look, someday I'll be righteous

Deep down what I have is not enough, at all

I'm a little rat and life is a pipe1

Falling down the hole because I can't distinguish

Between good and evil, and where does it all lead to

You're being all usual

But soon we'll run out of fuse

I'm a world champion in falling

And getting back up like a champ

You'll see, like a phoenix

I'm burning, but choosing every day to live on

I'm a world champion in wanting

At least trying

You'll see, how in the end

After the losses, the victory is so much sweeter

I'm a world champion

I'm a world champion in compensating

Apologizing and pleasing

Sinning, cleansing myself

Exposing, covering up

Say, how can one write songs with a thousand expectations

Millions of views

I'm a world champion in falling

And getting back up like a champ

You'll see, like a phoenix

I'm burning, but choosing every day to live on

I'm a world champion

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Kharis Templeman, research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, returns to ChinaTalk to break down the recent Taiwan elections, held on January 13.

We discuss:

• The lack of surprises in the election results, the subdued vibes during the campaign, and contrasts between local perspectives and foreign media narratives.
• Why the KMT failed to win the presidency, notwithstanding voter dissatisfaction with the DPP.
• China’s surprisingly muted response to the election, and how it may reassess its cross-Strait policies given a third DPP president.
• The new composition of the Legislative Yuan, and the strategic position of the Taiwan People’s Party as gatekeeper.
• Observations from Kharis’s time in Taiwan during the election season, and the gift of Taiwan’s democratic process.

Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwlWDCCevY

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80 episodes and 145 newsletters later, we've made it through my first year working on ChinaTalk full time. Editor Ryan Hauser hosts a review episode where we reflect on the past year, get into my production function, what I think the point of all of this is, and how I expect to evolve ChinaTalk in 2024.

Please get in touch! I'm at [email protected]

Here's my cause exploration essay: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E2BghQq9pwPgtHgiH/war-between-the-us-and-china-a-case-study-for-epistemic

Outtro music: Gurrumul, Bayini https://open.spotify.com/track/1XZ9HxC4MiMUUNQ7WKFucM?si=a40c4dfdd71c428e

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