Analyse Podcast

Fresh out of the studio, Benedict Evans, independent technology analyst and author of AI Eats the World, returns to explore whether the AI model layer is becoming commodity infrastructure. Benedict argues there is no winner-takes-all effect in models yet, drawing parallels to telecoms, cloud, chips and the fiber bubble to ask where durable value actually accrues when everyone runs similar infrastructure on similar tokens. He unpacks why the chatbot remains a poor interface, introduces the "blank screen" and "jagged frontier" problems that keep software companies alive, and explains why large language models inherently give you "the average." Closing the conversation, Benedict reflects on the indicators that would show AI has truly eaten the world — and why the answer is better products, not better models."When you automate away work, you can always see the jobs that are going away because they're right there. And you don't know what the new jobs are going to be. Human needs are infinite. How many people are earning a living from making podcasts now? Imagine predicting that 10 years ago. There's a stage in the evolution of the market where like if you're still arguing about that, you're an idiot. But there's a stage at the beginning where you might have opinions about some of these questions, you're probably not even asking the right questions. That, I think, is where we are with this stuff today." — Benedict EvansEpisode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Benedict Evans from AI Eats the World[01:16] The public market test: what are investors buying?[04:21] How far up the stack can models go?[05:30] Models can't build all the apps themselves[06:00] The thesis: models as commodity infrastructure[07:52] "All the value went up the stack"[08:24] Chips and Rock's Law: down to three players[11:23] The 1999 reseller story: one-time sales[13:28] The S-curve framing of technology[16:38] You're probably not asking the right questions on AI[18:02] "If this works, we're competing with a Mac"[20:25] Incumbents make it a feature[22:14] Big tech "killing startups" is overstated[24:39] Cowork as the new spreadsheet[26:01] The blank-screen and jagged-frontier problems[29:00] The hard part isn't writing the code[31:25] "What a good answer would probably look like"[33:38] The job displacement debate[37:38] Jevons paradox and the lump-of-labour fallacy[40:30] LLMs inherently give you the average[42:36] Why you really hire McKinsey[45:33] Punk versus prog rock: outside the training data[49:00] Automating ever-higher human functions[49:55] Why this is unanswerable: no theory of scaling[51:30] Indicators that AI has eaten the world[54:53] The solution isn't a better model[56:39] Where to find Benedict Evans
Profile: Benedict Evans, Independent Technology Analyst
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/Website: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter
Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.
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Analyse Podcast Main Site: https://analysepodcast.com
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Fresh out of the studio, Eyck Freymann, Hoover fellow at Stanford and author of Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, joins us to explore why the Taiwan question will be decided by economics and coercion, not by invasion. Eyck unpacks the Thucydides Trap as a warning, not a prophecy, traces how Xi Jinping's Belt and Road statecraft shapes his approach to Taiwan, and contrasts a kinetic invasion with the "quarantine" scenario he fears most. He reframes 2027 as a capability milestone, recasts TSMC as a "silicon magnet" binding America to Taiwan, and flags Taiwan's 2028 election as the real flashpoint. Last but not least, Eyck argues the real task is to deter the crisis, not the war.
"For Beijing, I hope they will say: the United States actually does have a strategy to use every element of its national power to preserve peace and stability without provoking us, and we should not assume the United States is incapable of an effective response. In Taiwan, I think the lesson is: the United States trusts the people of Taiwan to choose the best future for themselves, and ultimately Taiwan's fate is up to the people of Taiwan to choose. That is the heart of what the American One China policy is about and must be about. The people of Taiwan must choose, and the United States will respect their choices. That is a profound insight that doesn't get said often enough." - Eyck FreymannEpisode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Eyck Freymann from the Hoover Institution at Stanford
[01:18] Eyck's origin story
[04:02] When Taiwan deterrence pulled the threads together
[06:33] Why the CCP embraces the Thucydides Trap
[07:36] Belt and Road as decentralized statecraft
[10:18] How Belt and Road consolidated Xi's power
[11:39] Xi's legacy project: why Taiwan comes next
[12:17] What gets lost without untranslated Chinese sources
[14:12] China's unexplained nuclear breakout
[16:23] Applied history: lessons from three mentors
[19:50] Reframing the timeline: 2027 vs 2049
[22:49] Declassifying the Davidson window
[24:27] Is 2049 bound by Xi's resolution?
[27:34] Cross-strait history and the counterintuitive lesson
[29:28] Two scenarios: kinetic invasion vs customs quarantine
[34:00] The TSMC financial-shock trigger
[36:48] Strategic ambiguity vs structured ambiguity
[42:39] The one thing few understand: it's all economic
[44:39] The right and wrong asks of Southeast Asian neutrals
[47:17] The silicon shield paradox and chip onshoring
[50:19] Why the CHIPS Act won't replace Hsinchu
[53:49] The January 2028 Taiwan election as a flashpoint
[55:24] Meta-question: the neglected domestic politics of Taiwan
[58:07] What success looks like for the book
[60:14] Closing

Profile: Eyck Freymann, author of "Defending Taiwan" and Hoover Fellow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyck-freymann/Personal Site: https://www.eyckfreymann.com/
Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. /
Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.
Analyse Podcast Main Site: https://analysepodcast.com
Analyse Podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl
Analyse Podcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245
Analyse Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast/
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Fresh out of the studio, James Liang — Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Trip.com Group, economist, and author of Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI — joins us to explore what becomes of human meaning when AI does the work. James argues that innovation and heritage are "the same coin": innovation measured by how much heritage it leaves behind. He unpacks why the individual, not the nation or firm, is the binding constraint on innovation, why aging societies stop producing startups, and how his Nature 2024 hybrid-work study reframes family-friendly policy as economically rational. Closing the conversation, James explains why he is bullish on China mid-term but bearish long-term — and why population, not chips, is the real race.
"To innovate and to innovate successfully is measured by how much heritage you generate. But you know what's a good innovation? What's innovation can have a lasting impact? In my definition, the good news is it's going to last." - James LiangEpisode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by James Liang, Chairman of Trip.com Group
[01:06] Introduction: James Liang
[03:18] Stepping down twice — the mobile wave he didn't see
[05:57] Founder mode and returning to lead Trip.com
[07:31] Three life lessons: a rich life, experience, family
[09:44] Innovationism — why the book opens with his daughter
[11:24] Core tenets: innovation and heritage as one coin
[14:38] Innovation as writing a company's cultural values
[16:00] What heritage really means
[17:32] Distil to simplicity; learn more in the age of AI
[19:00] The Nature 2024 hybrid-work experiment
[19:44] Triple-win policies: employee, company, society
[22:52] Innovation capacity — neurons, scale, connection
[25:37] Three levels: nation, firm, individual
[29:00] Why innovation cannot be planned top-down
[30:21] Japan's missing startups; Korea and China compared
[32:14] Hierarchy, vested interests, and blocked young talent
[33:17] AI and moats — operators and the physical world
[35:36] Education reform — stop filtering children too early
[37:31] College as universal general education
[40:00] Understanding still matters in the age of AI
[41:46] What readers won't pick up from the page
[42:14] The AI end game — master, child, or pet
[43:27] Population as the safeguard against losing control
[45:14] Technology ethics at the frontier
[46:01] Longevity, fresh blood, and stagnation
[49:19] Interstellar trips as Trip.com's next frontier
[49:41] The biggest misconceptions about China's innovation
[50:36] The big-country advantage in digital technology
[52:23] Electric cars, life science, three times the talent
[54:16] The China–US race — researchers as the real bottleneck
[56:38] Why blocking China hurts the US more
[57:42] The question James wishes people would ask
[59:25] Success for innovationism — relax, travel, have children
[61:22] Closing
Profile: James Liang, Co-founder, Executive Chairman of the Board, Trip.com Group and Author of "Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI"
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-liang-tripgroup/
Trip.com Group: https://investors.trip.com/board-member/james-jianzhang-liang
Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

Fresh out of the studio, Eric Ries — author of the new book Incorruptible, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founder of Answer.AI, and author of The Lean Startup — joins Bernard Leong to discuss his blueprint for building mission-controlled companies that resist financial gravity. Eric explains why trustworthiness is the most underrated asset in business and why success, far from being a shield, makes companies a target worth capturing. He walks through the governance fortresses that have kept Costco, Novo Nordisk, and Patagonia true to mission for decades, and argues that today's so-called best practices have destroyed billions in shareholder value. The conversation turns to AI: which parts of the Lean Startup it accelerates, which parts it cannot, and why validated learning still lives only between the ears. Eric closes with a radical redefinition of profit as the maximization of human flourishing, and a challenge to Asia-Pacific leaders to leapfrog the governance failures the West is about to live through.
"We're helping people create this asset and we're teaching them the wrong idea. We're teaching them that success will protect them. But that's backwards. Success makes you a target worth capturing. And so that explained to me all these companies I saw that failed—not because they went out of business, not because they failed to create value, they failed because of their success." - Eric RiesProfile: Eric Ries, Founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founder of Answer.AI, and author of The Lean Startup.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/
Personal Site: https://www.incorruptible.co/
Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Eric Ries from *Incorruptible*
[00:45] Introduction: Eric Ries, author of "Incorriptible" & "The Lean Startup"
[01:11] Pulling the thread from programming to accountability
[03:12] Lean Startup built companies; didn't teach protection
[05:15] The billionaire dancing alone at the party
[06:09] Trustworthiness: business's most underrated asset[07:18] Why success makes you a target
[08:19] Today's best practices destroy value
[09:19] Costco's governance fortress defends customer experience
[09:54] Novo Nordisk's 100-year foundation structure
[11:12] AI and the Lean Startup on steroids
[14:09] MVP advantage dies when everyone has AI
[15:39] The professor with the dangerous biotech breakthrough
[17:13] Investors revealed as amoral actors
[18:13] The builder's intuition: create then capture value
[20:52] Protecting research from capital's gravitational pull
[23:30] Organizations are literally alive
[25:26] More humans, worse collective problem-solving
[25:46] Moral character as an emergent property
[27:25] Current profit definition has fatal blind spots
[30:13] Hitman marketplace: humans as input factor
[32:29] Surrogation: the measurement becomes the target
[33:51] The pre-IPO team laughing after CEO leaves
[36:36] Vatican conference on AI governance
[38:00] Emperor-for-life founders carry impossible burden
[41:31] Best practices young; ancient wisdom forgotten[44:40] Closing

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.
Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.
Analyse Podcast Main Site: https://analysepodcast.com
Sign Up for Our This Week in Asia Newsletter: https://www.analysepodcast.com/#/portal/signup Subscribe Newsletter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288

Fresh out of the studio, Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile and Samsung Rising, returns to the Analyse Podcast to argue that the twelve years between Jobs's 1985 ouster and his 1997 return to Apple were not a footnote but the forge. Drawing on private archives at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, unbroadcast footage from inside NeXT, and interviews with the people who lived it, Cain reframes the wilderness decade as the cause, not the gap, in Jobs's transformation. We trace the NeXT collapse and the failed IBM licensing deal, the parallel crucible of Pixar where Catmull and Lasseter barred Jobs from creative meetings, and the deep Japanese and Zen influences — Akio Morita, Sony, the beginner's mind — that Isaacson and Schlender underplayed. We close on Apple at fifty, John Ternus's ascent, and what Jobs would have done with AI.

"The successes that we see in the world for every iPhone there is, for every SpaceX rocket there are perhaps dozens or maybe even hundreds of failures behind that we don't see. And so the wilderness, as they call it, this is the greatest moment in the lives of many founders. It's the wilderness that we all have to go through before we can achieve greatness, and if we don't go through that, then we don't learn those lessons." - Geoffrey Cain

Profile: Geoffrey Cain, author of "Steve Jobs in Exile"

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gcain/

Personal Site: https://geoffreycain.net/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile
[00:30] What Geoffrey has been up after his first book: Samsung Rising
[04:05] Working in the US House on technology policy & rebuilding America's industrial base
[04:50] De-industrialisation, and rebuilding America's industrial base
[05:24] The central thesis on Steve Job's exile [07:13] The Steve Jobs we don't know — before the turtleneck and the iPhone[09:07] The wilderness — where every great founder is forged[12:30] The failed coup against John Sculley[14:10] Was Jobs early or wrong about what universities needed?[16:31] Object-oriented programming — the real innovation Jobs couldn't see[18:36] Jobs of 1997 was not the Jobs of 1985[20:00] Technology does not change the world — it makes things easier[22:38] The butterfly effect — if NeXT had gone differently, no iPhone[25:13] A failure of ego — Jobs versus the company he hated[28:49] NeXTstep — twenty years into the future in 1990[32:24] Pixar as the parallel crucible — bought for $5 million[35:25] Toy Story and the IPO that made Jobs a billionaire[38:57] What the NeXT and Pixar years really reveal[40:38] Three biographies, three frames — Isaacson, Schlender, Cain[45:26] Why NeXT became the ugly duckling of Apple lore[48:12] The Japanese influence Isaacson never pulled on[51:30] Apple at fifty — Ternus and the era of execution over reinvention[54:11] How Jobs would integrate AI — quiet, in the background[55:10] The Apple-Google Gemini partnership and swallowed pride[56:38] Jobs as second mover — Macintosh, iPhone, the bicycle for the mind[57:30] Why ChatGPT and Claude would look ugly to Jobs[1:00:30] What NeXT veterans say about the Ternus appointment[01:02:33] What success means for the book[01:03:13] Closing

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.


Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.

Analyse Podcast Main Site: https://analysepodcast.com