The era of corporate activism is fading. On most issues, this shift toward political neutrality is welcome, but not when the issue is China. Virtually every major global firm now carries dependencies on both Washington and Beijing, and in a genuine crisis, both governments will move to leverage those dependencies to their own advantage. Companies that imagine neutrality will preserve their independence will find there is no sideline to stand on. Which sectors are most exposed to U.S.-China competition? Is foreign ownership of U.S. companies something we can live with, or is it a problem Washington should address? And can regulation ever move fast enough to keep pace with the competition it is meant to manage?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Isaac Stone Fish, the CEO and founder of Strategy Risks. Formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China. He is the author of a recent piece in The National Interest, "Companies May Become Neutral on US-China Competition Again. That's a Bad Thing."

Music by Sonican from Pixabay.

For years, American labs held an uncontested lead in artificial intelligence. That is no longer obviously true: Chinese open-weight models have closed much of the gap, and by some measures have pulled ahead. The stakes are not merely commercial. Whoever leads sets the terms for what the world runs on, who gets access to it, and what is built into the models themselves, including (in the Chinese case) political censorship and reported evidence that these systems may hand certain users deliberately weakened code. Yet American firms are adopting them anyway, sometimes for cost, sometimes because our own models are constrained from doing the work. So what would losing this race actually cost us? Why are American companies turning to Chinese models to defend their own infrastructure? And can Washington regulate a technology that outpaces the law faster than the ink can dry?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Jamil Jaffer, the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Jaffer also serves as a venture partner with Paladin Capital Group and is a contributing editor at The National Interest. He has previously served on multiple Congressional committees and as a White House counsel during the George W. Bush administration.

Editor's note: This episode was recorded before OpenAI's July 21 statement on the Hugging Face security incident discussed by our guest, which attributes the intrusion to OpenAI's own models running with cyber safeguards disabled for internal evaluation. Listeners can find that statement here.

Music by Sonican from Pixabay.

Since April, Ukraine has dramatically escalated its drone campaign against Russia's oil refineries, knocking out a substantial share of the country's refining capacity and triggering gasoline shortages from Crimea to central Russia. What was once a nuisance for Moscow has become something closer to a full-blown fuel crisis. Yet the strikes' effects are uneven: ordinary Russian motorists are feeling real pain at the pump, even as the diesel-fueled Russian military and the Kremlin's oil revenues remain largely insulated. Can Ukraine's campaign translate civilian inconvenience into genuine economic or political pressure on Moscow? How far can Russia stretch its coping mechanisms? And after a decade of underinvestment, sanctions, and now physical damage, what future awaits Russia's oil industry once the war ends?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. He has twenty-five years of experience in the oil and gas industry as an economist, manager, executive, and consultant, including Royal Dutch Shell and IHS CERA. Until February 2022, he served as head of strategy and innovations at Gazprom Neft.

Music by Sonican from Pixabay.