Global power, rivalry, and A.I.; a preview of the U.S./China summit

What you'll learn

• 1 (00:17) **Summit Preview & the Rare Earths Coercion** - Doshi explains why President Xi believes he has the upper hand over Trump heading into the summit, and describes the pivotal moment when China used its rare earths monopoly as a "break glass" tool to force Trump to back down on tariffs.
• 2 (06:01) **Why the Summit Won’t Produce Breakthroughs** - Doshi explains why he is skeptical the summit will yield substantive agreements, despite Trump’s desire for pageantry and stability.
• 3 (07:29) **China’s Pre-Positioned Cyber Attack Infrastructure** - Doshi reads an alarming passage from his CFR report revealing that China has built a sophisticated hacking apparatus to penetrate U.S. critical infrastructure, not just for espionage but to gain leverage and wreak havoc during conflict.
• 4 (09:53) **The AI Race: Divergent Fears** - Doshi contrasts what the U.S. and China each worry about regarding AI, explaining that their regulatory priorities are fundamentally mismatched.
• 5 (11:48) **The Stakes of Winning the AI Race** - Doshi explains why AI is not just a tool or revenue stream for China, but the central input in the rise and fall of great powers, and why the U.S. also sees it as a competitive story.
• 6 (16:29) **The Chip Export Control Stalemate** - Doshi describes the current state of U.S. export controls on high-powered AI chips to China, and how China has used model distillation to stay close despite the compute gap.
• 7 (18:10) **Strategic Stalemate: Rare Earths vs. AI Chips** - Doshi explains the current "strategic stalemate" between the U.S. and China, where each holds a gun to the other’s head, but the vulnerabilities are not perfectly symmetrical.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app