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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
Without further ado, we have Bill Bishop. He runs cynicism. Welcome to the show, Bill. Good to see you again. Welcome back.
Speaker 2:Hey. Thanks for having me back. It's Happy New Year.
Speaker 1:How's your New
Speaker 3:Year going?
Speaker 2:It's going pretty well. Although, it feels like we're in the near the North Pole here in DC. We've been iced in for two weeks. It's pretty nuts.
Speaker 1:Well, describe iced in. Are you actually you can't go outside?
Speaker 2:No. I Okay. Got everything dug out. But, literally, at one point, the the guys digging out my driveway were taking selfies with the blocks of ice they could pick up.
Speaker 1:It was so big.
Speaker 2:It was it was so big.
Speaker 3:It was frozen solid. Wow.
Speaker 2:And it still is.
Speaker 3:That's insane.
Speaker 1:Did you watch the Super Bowl?
Speaker 2:Of course. And congrats on your ad. That was awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yes. The earned media was I don't know what your ROI like, the the multiples on your 50 k or whatever you said, but that was what a brilliant hack. Congratulations to you guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else?
Speaker 2:The game kinda sucked, but, you know, other than that
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was, it was not, not the most exciting. Just a of field goals in
Speaker 3:the first half. Yeah. We we unfortunately left, like, three minutes into the fourth quarter because it just we knew it was gonna be the same chaos getting out. And then it just got really, it got it got
Speaker 2:A little
Speaker 3:a little more interesting. Yeah. So I
Speaker 2:have a question. But was that an interception or a fumble?
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know. You're asking the wrong people.
Speaker 3:You're asking the wrong people. When when did that happen in the game?
Speaker 2:Oh, that was their last touchdown. Right? Where they
Speaker 3:Oh, okay. So we had we had yeah. We had we had we had left.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:We had left. We had to we had to get to the airport. We're we're stuck It was it was tough to follow because we went with with a bunch of with with the ramp team and a bunch of our friends. And so there was just
Speaker 2:There
Speaker 1:were a lot of interesting conversations to have with folks. And so there's a lot of opportunity just to, like, get lost in conversation and then turn around and, no, they scored.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Anyway, any any of the ads stand out to you?
Speaker 2:The robot vodka ad that you guys talked about a little while ago, which was pretty awful. But, you you know, China's got the the the Lunar New Year's coming up next week and and Lunar New Year's Eve, the CCTV does this big spring festival gala with, you know, hundreds of millions of people watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be full of robots. So I'm very curious to see how they spin the robot performances.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I think they're
Speaker 2:gonna Drinking vodka through the neck.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That was very, very weird. Yeah. Associating your your your alcohol, which kind of, like, tastes like engine lubricant with with, like, heavy machinery, is an interesting decision. I expect the the the robots to perform incredibly well just based on some of the demos we've seen Yeah.
Speaker 3:Where these things are flipping around. They're moving like Yeah. You know, actual, like, fighters or dancers. It's it's incredibly impressive and
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, still worried that we're gonna let them sell, you know, 10,000,000 of those in before we kinda wake up.
Speaker 1:But Have you been following the DJI story?
Speaker 2:Which part of it?
Speaker 1:Just the band and, like, how fast it's rolled out, if there's any loopholes. Because you always hear the headlines like, you know, NVIDIA, the chips ban, like, zero NVIDIA chips are going to China. And then it's like, oh, well, there's diversion. There's the there's the cutouts. There's NERF chips that that that wound up.
Speaker 1:You could train deep sea. You could do a lot. And then the the the trade deal gets renegotiated. And so I'm just wondering, like, there were a couple founders who were sort of taking victory laps in the drone americandronecom community, and I'm rooting for them. I'd I'd love an American DJI.
Speaker 1:GoPro famously failed at this mostly because of the supply chain pricing, all of that. But it's always like I I see people take victory laps, and I'm wondering, it feels maybe a little bit like, will the new regulation stick? How how how how all encompassing is the regulation?
Speaker 2:I think it's a bit premature, and I think you've seen already bits of it whittled away where now you can buy previous models and parts for it. And so part of the problem, I think, really is that DGI makes the best drones, both in terms of performance as well as cost. And so unless the American firms can actually make drones that like law enforcement wants or, you know, various Yeah. Companies want, you know, I mean, it it it is it's an unfortunate situation. I certainly hope the American drone makers can catch up, but it but it and maybe this regulation will will help.
Speaker 2:But, know, and have we have to be competitive. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it also just seemed like DJI I mean, yeah, there were a ton of, like, commercial applications, but it was just such a go to Christmas present for, you know, a lot of people, like, the casual outdoor person that goes on hikes. They want to take cinematic video. Like, realistically, it's going to be collecting dust in three months, but it's going to be an epic present on Christmas.
Speaker 1:And so I mean, that probably propelled a lot of sales and just helps get to scale, and that's important in these manufactured manufactured products. Right?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And and again, as we all you know, you've talked about ad nauseam with lots of people. Mean, China has a supply chain for this stuff, and we still don't. And so whether or not these regulations will pull that supply chain creation here, it it remains to be seen. The the challenge, of course, is you have to balance cutting off access to products that that customers actually not just want but need, like police departments, etcetera.
Speaker 2:And so but but then at the same time, just making it so that some companies can can to take advantage of loopholes, have some sales, but still kinda wash their components through third countries that actually still are probably Chinese components.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. No. The I mean, the supply chain I I I remember digging into the the small drone motor market. So the motors that go on those drones, the small motors, and Mhmm.
Speaker 1:There's there are truly no American companies. There's one Right. Company in, I think, Seattle that sold to private equity, and they immediately offshored all of the all of the manufacturing, and it's just like this holdco now. And I think that they're now they're starting to bring some stuff back, so there's, like, green shoots. But these things take years and years and years.
Speaker 1:Just look at, like, TSMC in Arizona. Mhmm. So, actually, years or maybe a decade to get actual to scale from, like, the initial plans. Anyway, let's let's dive into the PLA purges. We we we read through The Wall Street Journal's coverage, and I have a bunch of questions.
Speaker 1:But how are you framing it? How are you thinking about what's happening in China today?
Speaker 2:So the PLA purges have been ongoing for quite some time. They've accelerated over really the last eighteen months or so. I mean, they are part of a multiyear process of Xi Jinping, both starting out, you know, taking control of the PLA, but then also forcing through a whole series of reforms around structure force structure operations to try and get the PLA to to what they called world class fighting force with a specific goal for 2027, the centenary goals, which are the it's the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army Mhmm. Where they wanna be you know, some people say they wanna be able to invade Taiwan. Haven't explicitly said that, but it's to get to to get get a force to the point where it could actually undertake missions like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the latest round where the PLA has a top structure, it's called the central military military commission, and it's got a chairman who's Xi Jinping, and then two vice chairman and four members. So seven members. They're now two members, she and a vice chairman. Wow.
Speaker 2:Because he's purged the rest over the last year or so. And the just for couple weeks ago, they purged the remaining or the the one central military commission vice chairman and one member. And it was quite shocking both because there have been rumors popped up and then three or four days later, they were gone. Mhmm. But also, the vice chairman who was purged was someone who's considered to be close to Xi, who Xi had kept on past assumed retirement age because he was supposed to be sort of she's guy.
Speaker 2:And so it's pretty shocking on the one hand. On the other hand, it's kind of a continuation of what's been happening. We don't know why. There's lots of speculation. The Wall Street Journal article you you referred to, I think, talked about possibly a briefing internally that said that this vice chairman, John Yuan Shah, was leaking nuclear secrets to The US.
Speaker 2:Wish it were true. Haven't found anyone in DC who actually thinks it is.
Speaker 3:We got it.
Speaker 2:But would be would be impressive, right, if we had that level of of a spy. Yeah. But what it what I think it points to is and then the question is how you interpret what's going on. There are lots of people who are trying to sort of put out versions of what happened. You know, there was rumors that there was a gunfight.
Speaker 2:Total BS as far as I understand, but Mhmm. It's a black box, so you you can't say zero.
Speaker 1:So before we go into the implications and the interpretations, can you break down anatomy of a purge, history of purging? It feels like a uniquely Chinese just event. Like, you know, like, we when we elect a new president, a bunch of positions turn over, a new head of the FDA comes in or whatever, and we don't think of that transition as purging, although, of course, some people get fired midterm even if they've been appointed by the president. And so what's actually going on? Are these, like, forced resignations?
Speaker 1:Are these purges or are these firings?
Speaker 2:They are detained for investigation.
Speaker 1:Okay. So
Speaker 2:it's secret process or alleged criminality or alleged violation of of party or or military rules in this case. And then they are and all we got, you know, all we all we got was a very terse statement from a very nervous looking Ministry of Defense spokesperson announcing that these two individuals, Zhang Yoshia and Liu Zhengli, had been put under investigation. That was it. And then
Speaker 3:And so she has not come on the record she has not come on the record about any of this?
Speaker 2:Not publicly. There there have been authoritative statements in, like, the PLA Daily, which is the military's newspaper, but she has not yet said anything publicly. And then there may be at some point, there'll be he probably has talked about it internally. It'll at some point, maybe we'll get a publication of some of his speeches, But we have very, very little information that's public about what's actually going on other than that these two have been taken away for investigation. And so far, they have not been replaced on this body.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then one way you could potentially read into this is that you're consolidating power, which makes it easier to perform military operations. The other is that you lost all your top guys who were going to help you with military operations. What's your interpretation?
Speaker 2:So that's a good question, and I think it kind of is both. Mhmm. There's clearly the number of generals and senior officers who have been taken out over the last two plus years is quite shocking. It's in the dozens. And so it it's hard to imagine in the short term, it doesn't have some impact on the military's ability to fight.
Speaker 2:In but at the same time, there are a lot of officers and a lot of, you know, younger up and coming officers in the PLA. You know, the PLA has historically been an incredibly corrupt organization, and Xi Jinping has been you know, he started he really kicked off this anti corruption campaign in the PLA in 2014 Mhmm. In in sort of full force. And so what may be happening is that he has realized that he just has to effectively decapitate one or two generations of the PLA to get down to a group of younger officers who were promoted not by buying their positions as was very common through up until even I think into the Sheeran
Speaker 3:How did those get how did those get priced? Obviously, the table very
Speaker 2:So you guys your your audience may find this interesting. It's kinda like an angel investment, at least in some cases, where actually people would collectively buy a stake in a rising officer. Because I'm not joking. Right? Literally.
Speaker 3:No way. And then and then So they'd go basically, they'd go out and say like, the officer would be like, hey, I've got some potential within the organization. I think I can get this job. Let me pool together some capital. And then they pool together that capital.
Speaker 2:Then they
Speaker 3:They pay off the person or someone to get the role, and then there would be a revenue stream back to the original pool The
Speaker 2:idea is you're you're buying an option on a future revenue of corrupt goodies. Right? I mean, I'm not
Speaker 3:it's actually a real thing. If said person gets the job, they'll be able to generate a bunch of revenue not just with their salary, but through, like, corrupt activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They have a they can create a whole bunch of opportunities for people who are close to them. Wow. You solve
Speaker 3:So they he basically gets a certain job. He's got access and control over some amount of budget and creates basically a little economy around around within the stack. That is insane.
Speaker 2:And and and this was and there are there's been certainly, I don't think it's been in the media, but I certainly heard that among the funders of some of these officers in years past was our America CIA because it was a great way to push people in and and and, you know, eventually, they they owe you. Right? And so, I mean, it's actually
Speaker 3:it's actually Friends and family around from the CIA.
Speaker 1:Yep. I mean
Speaker 2:And this is something without going into detail, the party has talked about you know, getting rid of this process of buying and selling promotions. And you saw from some of the previous cases of generals who were who were detained early on in the sea era. I mean, the stories of, like, you know, the the cars full of gold and the, you know, these suitcases of of millions of dollars and euros worth of cash hidden in one of their villas. I mean, it's it the level of corruption was insane because there's so much money
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Being thrown into military, you know, the military buildup.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Interesting. Crazy. What's state of
Speaker 3:And so and so part of that, if you have decades of corruption that have been, like, that has been intimately intertwined with the military buildup, maybe doesn't give you that much confidence in a lot of the actual fighting force and the equipment. Right? Because it maybe it wasn't going necessarily to the to the best vendor. It was going to the vendor that was pushing enough money out the back door.
Speaker 2:I mean, that is certainly the the risk and potentially the concern. I mean, you look at in addition to all these generals, they've they've basically taken out a significant chunk of the leadership of the military industrial complex. All sorts of defense contractor, defense, you know, weapons makers, heads of research institutes that were involved in weapons development. At the same time, the weapons look like they work. I mean, think about China and corruption is, you you know, China has this great high speed rail system.
Speaker 2:Right? Well, the guy who really oversaw it is in jail because he was corrupt. So but but the thing is is the corruption is just sort of like it's another tax. It still works. It still works.
Speaker 2:Right? Unlike maybe other countries, you still get it done. It still works pretty well. But some folks, you know, but then you make a little money on the side.
Speaker 3:Wow. That's funny. He's like, actually gotta make the trains run so I can keep the gravy train going.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. The gravy train is important. A lot of lots of lessons there. What's the state of, communications or relationships between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping?
Speaker 1:Are they talking regularly? Are they meeting in person? What are are are we at, a local top or local bottom? Are things the worst they've ever been somewhere in between?
Speaker 2:No. No. We we seem like we're in a steady state. They had a a a call last week Mhmm. Which, you know, again, I think is an indication that so far, at least, things are on track for Mhmm.
Speaker 2:For president Trump's visit to China in early April. There was one sort of wrinkle though in the readout from the Chinese side of the of the call he had with with Donald Trump last week. He was had some pretty stark language around Taiwan and specifically around US arms sales to Taiwan because The US sold 11 you know, announced an $11,000,000,000 arms sales package to Taiwan back in December, which was at the time, it's a very large number. The US has sort of been doing billion or so kind of packages and rolling them out. The Chinese get pissed off, but, you know, they move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. 11,000,000,000 was pretty significant. I had heard that the reason the Xi Jinping had mentioned sort of being prudent around arms sales to Taiwan last week was specifically because The US was working on a big arms package. The Chinese had found out about it, the Chinese ambassador here in DC had basically gone to the White House and thrown a fit. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Over the weekend, you know, we we we saw I think on Friday, the the Financial Times reported, yes, there's a $20,000,000,000 package in the works. And it's something the Chinese don't want to have happen, they have threatened to postpone or cancel Trump's visit. And I think I think they might actually meet it. And so I would imagine that the the Trump administration won't push forward that sale until after the the meeting. What's interesting, though, again, is it's not clear Trump knew about it.
Speaker 2:This is people in the administration who maybe are more interest who are sort of more pro Taiwan, not happy with this kind of whether you I don't wanna call it detaints. It's a little too early for that, but this sort of steady state in the relationship over the last couple months. Mhmm. And they wanna make sure that Taiwan is still getting attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. How does China frame the Taiwan question internally? In the West, we sort of all accept the premise that if we're doing an aid package, it's for defense and that the only possible scenario is that China would invade at some future date.
Speaker 1:But does China use rhetoric that's like, well, we don't want Taiwan to have weapons because we're worried about them invading us. Is that even something that they toy with? Or are they saying like, we don't want them to have weapons because we're planning to do this at some point?
Speaker 2:Well, no. I I don't think they're worried about Taiwan invading. I think it's more, you know, they Taiwan is the first of their of their red lines, especially in The US China relationship. And so they but ultimately, you know, they they don't want I mean, The US Yeah. Saying we're gonna sell you a bunch of weapons.
Speaker 2:Even if right now, for example, Taiwan, because of the political what's going on in the Taiwan politics, you know, the the Taiwan legislature won't approve the the budget to buy the last package of weapons because it's the opposition party controls with the with the coalition party controls the legislature. So this $20,000,000 package
Speaker 3:Should we assume that CCP operatives have effectively infiltrated the opposition party? Or is that too much of a tinfoil hat? Because I imagine that if if you were Mhmm. It would it would be worth the time to try to get your team
Speaker 1:Get out
Speaker 3:of elected.
Speaker 1:Good good seed investment.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Good seed. So Yes. Put an adventure there.
Speaker 2:Are no questions. A lot of influence efforts. The the Taiwan Government under the current president, Lai Chengde, has definitely stepped up and talked more about this kind of these kinds of infiltrations and influence. Mhmm. I don't think there should be any surprise that that that is going on.
Speaker 2:But all but what I but but ultimately for these arms packages, it's also a signal of I think The US is trying to make it a signal of we still support Taiwan. So that because what what Beijing wants ultimately is for the Taiwanese people to think that there's nothing, you know, no one there's no help coming. They have no other choice, but, you know, effectively resistance is futile. Is futile. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Roll over. And the faster you roll over, the better you'll be treated. Is I think the kind of the constant messaging they're trying to put out there. And so support from The US in terms of either rhetorical or big arms packages messes up that messaging.
Speaker 2:The comments from the Japanese prime minister and back in November mess up that messaging. And then they also complicate the PRC's planning in the in the event that there is some sort of scenario where they have to use some sort of force, it's going to be a lot harder if the Taiwanese have better weapons, better training, and have support from The U. S. And potentially Japan has to get involved?
Speaker 3:What economic indicators are you tracking in China broadly, things like unemployment rate, foreclosures, general you know, development, infrastructure development, housing development, all that stuff?
Speaker 2:So, I mean, all those are worth tracking. You know, all you have to sort of filter through the the the data. I think the the the consensus of a lot of the folks that really tracked us closely is that generally, like, the economy is not doing great, but it's also not falling off a cliff. Right? It's it's, you know, it's not the binary like boom boom or bust.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The things to really watch over the next, I mean, we'll we'll learn a lot more by the March because the March starts what's called the two sessions, and the one that matters is this national national people's congress, their legislature. Mhmm. And so we'll get a work report from the premier that will then lay out targets for this coming year in terms of things like GDP growth and etcetera. But then also, this is the year where they roll out the fifteenth five year plan.
Speaker 2:And that also includes not only high level goals, but also some targets in certain sectors. And so, those ultimately, I think, are more useful to look for over the next next few months than some of the sort of high frequency data just because the high frequency data is noisy. And ultimately, the Chinese you know, again, the the stock market's up 50% or so from the lows. It's at a new high, I think, today. The tech sector is booming.
Speaker 2:There's I don't want to say bubble, but there's a big AI boom in terms of the AI related shares
Speaker 3:on the Yes. Shares AI companies are going public much sooner than ours, right? Yes.
Speaker 2:With much lower revenue, raising much less money, much lower valuations. And a lot of it is because they, you know, they they actually need the capital. I mean, it's I think they but the amount of capital they need in raising is a it's like it's like, you know, a rounding error for what, like, OpenAI is raising. Not quite, but sort of.
Speaker 1:Right? No. Yeah. I mean, you see some
Speaker 3:raising What is the general pop how does the general populace feel about AI? I think most of America is especially after the Super Bowl, nobody was seeing the Super Bowl AI ads being like, you know, this is amazing.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of bad ads. Because it kinda sucks. Well, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3:So the ads the ads yeah. The ads weren't that great.
Speaker 1:Yeah. A lot
Speaker 3:of them weren't that great. But there's just also a general fear around job displacement, lack of you know, people are not excited to even to put a data center in their state. Right? We have all this legislation going down the pipeline. But how do people in China actually feel?
Speaker 3:Unemployment rate for youth is already so high. It's hard to imagine it going much higher. So maybe there maybe people already feel like it's over. But
Speaker 2:I mean, data centers, energy, obviously, you have another guest who talked about it. Not an issue for China. Right? It's somewhere they could build as many data centers as they want as long as they can get the chips. The bigger issue.
Speaker 2:Think when you look at what the government is doing, they have like this AI plus plan they rolled out a couple months ago, where it's really to embed AI throughout the economy and throughout society. And so they're not really focused on as much as sort of getting to AGI and and these these massive models. They're really more focused on diffusing, you know, how do you use AI and all sorts of tasks in your apps, in WeChat, in for for for medical, for, like, seeing doctors for medical advice. I mean, there's a big boom right now in in companies chasing sort of medical AI, including Alibaba. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And so, it it it seems like even though it may not be, you know, the models may not be like the chat GPT or Gemini levels, at the same time, they're being taking a much more pragmatic and practical approach to just diffusing it through society. And then in terms of what it does to employment, there's been lots of discussions about the impact. I think, you know, it's it's a country where they can incentivize positively or more negatively companies to not necessarily lay off as many people as they would if they were operating just purely on an economic basis Mhmm. When it comes to sort of AI disruption. Doesn't mean unemployment is not a significant problem for the youth, and I don't know that they have a good solution for that, but it isn't holding back what they're trying to do around AI at this point.
Speaker 3:That makes sense. Last week, Jensen was on CNBC, I think it was Thursday or Friday, talking about, you know, how the overwhelming demand. Obviously, we had earnings last week. Everyone's raising their CapEx guides. You have legacy AI chips that are sitting at very high utilization, surprisingly high utilization in pricing compared to what a lot of the AI bears have been thinking about over the last six months saying, like, hey, all these chips are gonna be worthless and turns out
Speaker 2:Like Michael Curry and others?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Those those And so I think there was some conversation around, okay, and and if if Jensen wants to go, like, hey, all these people are super chip constrained.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:I think the question comes up why okay. So then why are we why are we selling why are we selling chips To China. To China then. Right? If if if our if our leading labs are are Sleeping.
Speaker 3:Not able to get the
Speaker 1:Call Amazon. They'll buy them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Call my It's a great it's a great question, and it's something that is, you know, certainly you've seen some movement on Capitol Hill Mhmm. Asking that question, asking the impact on, like like, HBM prices, right, memory And ultimately, the answer is, well, Jensen Huang can go direct to Donald Trump and convince him to approve these sales. What's interesting, right, I think it was the Financial Times reported last week that even though, like the Department of Commerce has signed off on the the licenses to sell to China, the h two hundreds, that the Department of State or the State Department, which has this bureau of I think it's arms control and nonproliferation, they have yet to sign off on it. So the sales actually haven't happened.
Speaker 3:Interesting. And what is the general sentiment now from the CCP and various groups? Because when the first time we maybe agreed generally to a chip sale, and then Howard Lutnick came out and said, like, we're gonna get them addicted to the American AI stack. Then they were like, actually, we don't want them. Actually, they were like, no.
Speaker 3:We don't want them. But clearly, the companies want them. Their compute they're more way more compute constrained than we are.
Speaker 1:They're really rock.
Speaker 3:And so where is that actually? Do you think that if it actually gets fully approved that they will all flow without any type of red tape on the China side?
Speaker 2:Or No. There's been reporting I mean, various reports. The Chinese are being careful about who how who they allow to actually order, and they're about the h two hundreds. They didn't want the h twenties. They need the h two hundreds because China has enough like, they can actually make looks like decent inference chips.
Speaker 2:They just can't make the chips they need for training. Right? And so that's the h 200 fills that gap. And so I think that Any's perspective is, look, we're not there yet. We can fill this gap we have to sort of keep competitive in the AI game.
Speaker 2:NVIDIA, the US government has approved these sales. NVIDIA will sell this to us. We're just going to make sure that if you buy these, you also have to also make sure you're buying Chinese chips to keep supporting our own indigenous ecosystem. Right? And so and then, of course, there are some, I think, potentially some security concerns because of the whatever the security review The U.
Speaker 2:S. Is requiring, which is basically, I think, just to make sure that the chips get shipped to The U. S, charge the 25 percent licensing fee as a tariff, which makes it legal, and then ship them back to China. But from the Chinese perspective, what's the security view? What do have to do these?
Speaker 2:You know, who knows what they might do these chips? So there's certain places I think that like state owned enterprises, certain labs where they probably won't want these chips. But the issue also is, right, there's also still a lot of NVIDIA chips in China. Right? So we should see in the next week or so.
Speaker 2:If you remember, guys, it's been a year since the quote unquote deep sea moment. Right? Yeah. And so now everyone's waiting for deep sea next model, which is supposed to launch on or around Lunar New Year, is next Wednesday the seventeenth. So we should have some sort of a DeepSeek model in the next eight or nine days.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I think it was the information reported it's being trained on Blackwells Mhmm. Which they're not supposed to have. Right? But somehow they have the Blackwells.
Speaker 2:And they
Speaker 3:It fell off the back
Speaker 1:of a truck.
Speaker 2:And they can they can get as many NVIDIA top end chips as they want hosted overseas in these cloud facilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2:So it is it is not a clean set of controls by any means.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. What what what do you think China's reaction is to the the the latest election in Japan? Mhmm. Obviously, Japanese equities responded positively to to the result.
Speaker 3:But how are you tracking that whole situation?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that the the Chinese helped Takeichi because their their reaction to her comments in in early November, which, again, she said she reiterated the Japanese position on sort of a Taiwan contingency Mhmm. So to speak. She said it in a in a in a setting where it hadn't been said before by sitting prime minister. Mhmm. And, you know, but their reaction really, I think, helped make her case and other sort of more defense hawks in the Japanese government make their case that we need to do more because China's a threat.
Speaker 2:And so now she really has a mandate. The question will be, will the Chinese continue to really push on her or do they sort of find ways to over the next it won't be immediate, but over some period of time, find ways to at least calm things down and then start reengaging with dialogues. I think, you know, the fact that they clearly started playing the rare earths cards cardigan with Japan, you know, also again, in some ways, there's no going back for Japan. Even if the Chinese were to find they were to find an off ramp and find a way to sort of get back to kind of The US China sort of detente ish like relationship around I think the the damages have done in terms of Japan needs to a stronger military, and Japan needs to move faster to protect itself from the weaponizing of certain parts of the supply chain that China can do, which we all know from mirrors.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Anything else, Rudy?
Speaker 3:This was super fun. This is always been amazing. We love having you on. The audience audience loves you too. And I'm gonna I'm gonna follow-up and ask what headset you use because because we're making not every not every guest of ours comes in with a sound video setup like this.
Speaker 2:It's Shure headset and Ben Thompson got it for me, you know, because he because I do the Sharp China podcast with with his team and with Andrew Sharp, so Ben sent me all the gear.
Speaker 3:Very thoughtful. So I
Speaker 2:have this solid state logic little box and then I plug in this this headset. Actually, is it? Sorry. It's a sen Sensenhauer thing. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Sennheiser? Sennheiser.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We
Speaker 1:go. Sennheiser.
Speaker 3:Alpha. Well,
Speaker 1:thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 3:Have a great rest of your we good luck
Speaker 1:with the weather. We will talk
Speaker 2:to soon. You. Thank you.