Azeem Azhar

speaker

7,268 appearances 34 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard 25 Mar

Azeem Azhar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 4.

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Azeem Azhar's Exponential View · Why China builds while America debates, with Dan Wang · 1 Oct 2025 podcast

Do you think the lockdown is a function of an engineering mindset, or could it have been a function of a authoritarian regime that doesn't have to worry about

popular consent for a little while, a bit longer than a democratic regime, but the engineering mindset allows you to execute on that intent far better than a different class of mindset.

Would they have been better off as a loyally state?

You know, you describe the US as a loyally state and it has very different dynamics that emerge from it.

What are the characteristics of that that make it a loyally state?

watching the numbers around China between 1995 going from very small economy, maybe one of the top 10 in the world, to 2014, the size of the US on a purchasing parity basis, and seeing what they are, that nation and its industries is capable of doing in scaling out advanced technologies.

And hearing you say, well, you know, China could be an even more powerful state with a little bit more loyalness really tells us

something about what the capacity of that nation is.

Now, you know, this moment in history, it's sort of inescapable that a lot of the language that comes out of the US is couched in the similar terms to the great power competition that we had seen

with the Soviet Union, certainly since 1947 and until the turn of the 90s.

What are the things that Americans don't understand about China?

You know, you've come back here, you're talking to people, you're hearing what people say on the East Coast, add on the West Coast, the rhetoric from the politicians, but also the way in which technology firms talk about this must land on your ears and you're thinking, I'm not sure they've interpreted this quite right.

So what are the biggest misunderstandings?

There's a deep sense of rivalry between when I talk to American entrepreneurs or certainly when I listen to the statements that are public, a sense that they are in a race against China, particularly around AI.

And that's a lot of the language that has infused what the big AI companies have said.

It's behind a lot of the language around AI.

export controls on chips.

But when I talk to Chinese entrepreneurs, I've not talked to many, probably 20 to 30 in AI and advanced materials and batteries and so on.

I don't get a sense from their language that they see themselves in a race against the US.

And that could be a language barrier.

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