In the wake of Salt Typhoon, what does the future of secure telecom look like?
To find out, ChinaTalk interviewed John Doyle, a former Green Beret who spent a decade building Palantir’s national security practice before founding Cape, which calls itself “America’s privacy-first mobile carrier”. Also joining the conversation is Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman and co-founder of Silverado Policy Accelerator, founder of CrowdStrike, and an angel investor into Cape.
Thank you to Cape for sponsoring the episode.
We discuss…
Why telecom data is so valuable to adversaries, and what China discovered in the Salt Typhoon campaign,
Cape’s founding thesis, including what makes Cape’s cell network so much more secure than major providers like AT&T,
How wars are run on commercial cell networks, and how Russia and Ukraine’s reliance on that has been exploited over the course of the war,
Other instances of telecom data weaponization, including by Hezbollah, Israel, and Mexican drug cartels,
Taiwan’s plan for dealing with undersea cable sabotage,
What it takes to cultivate engineering talent in telecoms, and why Huawei has stayed innovative while US providers stagnated.
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59:15
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59:15
Transistor Radio: OpenAI Loses the Mandate, Railroad Bubble = AI Bubble
Doug, Dylan, and Wei of SemiAnalysis join me (Jon was sleeping at 5AM taiwan time...) for a pre-holiday get together.
01:00 AI Mandate--OpenAI slipping
19:03 Dylan sells TSMC on AI better than sama
24:17 Doug teaches a lesson on railroad bubbles and ai
32:30 Sarah Friar fails up
35:17 Zohran-Trump
Suno slop: Moody's man came down from New York City https://suno.com/s/5DGCTgqam8dQMkZf
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50:48
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50:48
Second Breakfast: Witkoff and Putin's Peace Deal
Eric Robinson, Justin Mc, Tony Stark and I talk China's sushi ban, Witkoff's peace plan, Jake Sullivan, William Manchester's absurd memoir
Here's the full text of the peace plan: https://www.axios.com/2025/11/20/trump-ukraine-peace-plan-28-points-russia
Chapters
00:00 China bans pufferfish sperm
02:14 Peace Deal Drama
11:12 How the Trump Court explains everything
20:11 The Future of Russian Military Power
30:34 Lessons from Syria and chemical weapons
39:02 Where's Europe though
49:32 Lessons from Ukraine + William Manchester's absurd memoir
our broadway suno take on the plan: article 5: but different! https://suno.com/s/Dwx3udwSMVMRNxFV
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59:08
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59:08
The Z.ai Playbook
Zixuan Li is Director of Product and genAI Strategy at Z.ai (also known as Zhipu 智谱 AI). The release of their benchmark-topping flagship model, GLM 4.5, was akin to “another DeepSeek moment,” in the words of Nathan Lambert.
Our conversation today covers…
What sets Z.ai apart from other Chinese models, including coding, role-playing capabilities, and translations of cryptic Chinese internet content,
Why Chinese AI companies chase recognition from Silicon Valley thought leaders,
The role of open source in the Chinese AI ecosystem,
Fears of job loss and the prevalence of AI pessimism in China,
How Z.ai trains its models, and what capabilities the company is targeting next.
Co-hosting today are Irene Zhang, long-time ChinaTalk analyst, as well as Nathan Lambert of the Interconnects Substack.
Follow Z.ai on X: https://x.com/Zai_org
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1:16:09
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1:16:09
Jake Sullivan on Playing the Long Game
After five long years since his last ChinaTalk appearance, Jake Sullivan returns to the show!
We discuss…
Sullivan’s experience managing crises, implementing grand strategy, and cultivating leadership skills during the Biden administration,
The art of crafting aggressive industrial policy, from chips to rare earths to infrastructure,
The risk of miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait, and whether Pelosi’s Taipei visit was a mistake,
Russia’s nuclear brinkmanship and the development of Biden’s posture on Ukraine,
Whether Trump can succeed at ratcheting down tensions with China.
Check out Sullivan's new podcast, The Long Game (Apple, Spotify)
Reading recommendations:
Feeding Ghosts
The Social History of the Machine Gun
To Run the World
A reminder: this is the conversation I wanted to have with Jake, not the one you want to have. For other recent interviews that get more into the Biden administration around the withdrawal of Afghanistan, the pace of arming Ukraine, and America’s handling of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, see all these six other shows he’s done this year.
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Conversations exploring China, technology, and US-China relations. Guests include a wide range of analysts, policymakers, and academics. Hosted by Jordan Schneider.
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