Patrick O'Shaughnessy

What is China doing most differently from Russia that you think will not lead to an eventual collapse of the Chinese system?

I think it was our friend Eugene that first gave me the Seeing Like a State book by James C. Scott.

What do you think of just the very abstract idea that top-down systems just don't work as well over the very long term as bottom-up ones do?

That in the near term, they actually can work faster and better, but the roots aren't as deep and as natural, and therefore, they're just more fragile top-down systems than bottom-up ones.

Do you think that holds credence in this argument between the U.S.

and arguably a more bottom-up society and organization than China?

That's an incredible answer that James is so glad to ask.

One of the things that jumps out is the sensitivity of the Chinese model to the person in charge and the people aligned with him.

If you had had this conversation when Deng Xiaoping was running China or so important in China, maybe the trajectory we would have projected to be very different than it's ended up being.

I'm curious what you think the three, four, five people that have been the most important, maybe since Mao or something, and how they've changed the trajectory of China and how likely it is that the next person is more like Deng Xiaoping or more liberal or more pluralist leanings or not.

It's such an interesting aspect of this whole trajectory.

Yeah.

I've been a little surprised since the original DeepSeek moment, which for at least a week really shook the U.S.

in terms of the progress that had been made in AI in China, that I haven't heard more about it since.

So I'm curious your impression of AI in China, the country and the party's orientation towards it, the state of the technology relative to the leading U.S.

research labs, etc.

What does AI in China feel like to you today?

What is the most interesting thing to you about Huawei?

So if we were to step back and you frame this whole thing as, okay, the engineering state has its strengths and weaknesses, the lawyerly state has its strengths and weaknesses, and these are the two superpowers.

If you were to boil the whole story down to the simplest narrative that you could imagine, how would you do that to like a 15-year-old or a 10-year-old