Episode 27: Talk with Paul Triolo

Episode 27: Talk with Paul Triolo

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking to Paul Triolo on a host of things. We actually have been talking to each other for a while offline, but I finally got a chance to speak to him in a person today and it was great. And as you will hear in this podcast, we are nowhere close to being finished. I will definitely have Paul back on the show to talk about semiconductor industry in the future. I think it was great to hear from him on just how this China/USA tech competition started and his experience through all of this as someone who first spent time in China in the late 80s! Ever since, he has always taken a very fair and thoughtful role in being vocal about the importance of China/US ties in the media. But I guess the focus of our talk today was on how the October surprise sanctions came about and the rationales behind these decisions. And I think it’s important for people to remember that while Biden started all these sanctions, the brunt of Chinese retaliations did not hit until 2025 after Trump started his tariff war. The reason is that export control regimes take time to develop. While America is the master of this art, China hasn’t been that involved in tech export controls (especially on supply chain side & extra-territorial) until the wake-up call from Biden sanctions. The vast majority of the DC crowd simply did not ever think there would be consequences to their actions, so there was apparently very little cost-benefit analysis when these decisions were made in the first place. We didn’t really get into the semi industry part of this which will be fun to talk about next time. We did talk a lot about critical minerals and Paul has actually worked with American customers of Chinese Rare Earth magnet customers as well as Indium. We talked about why Coherent visited China with Trump this time. We also talked about why the Chinese Rare Earth retaliations only came around when the trade war started. Simply put, China just had not developed the same type of export control back in 2022. It only ramped up building these export control policies after it suffered from them. So, I think Trump was just unlucky that he was the one that got hit hard by them. Those controls were actually in retaliations for 3 years of US export controls prior to Trump admin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com [https://tphuang.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 26: Z.ai interview

This week, I had the chance to interview Lou from Z.ai. It was really a great conversation to talk to her about the work that they are doing there and how they look at developing newer models and her view toward AGI. I get the feeling of just incredible hard work that Zhipu is going through as part of their effort to produce the best models and products out there. You can see that with GLM-5.1, which I can attest to as being very good for programming. It can do a lot of thinking of solve problems. I get the sense that GLM models are now able to do some form of RSI (Recursive Self Improvement) where the models help improve or create new more powerful models. One thing that stand out to me about GLM models is their size. They are in the 750B param range which can still fit as Quantized models and run locally on boxes with really large VRAM. However, they are also large enough that they are competitive with larger models. I think there are probably some sacrifices that you have to make in a 750B param model vs 1.6T or 3T param models. It will be very interesting to see where Z.ai goes from here since they have now received a lot of funding since IPO which gives them a larger war chest to do the work that they need to do. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com [https://tphuang.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

CrossOver Episode with Kyle Chan

This week, I had the pleasure of doing a crossover episode with Kyle Chan who X profile can be found here [https://x.com/kyleichan]. We discussed a wide range of topic related to all aspect of AI. We really had a fun time discussing the full scope of China’s supply chain vs other countries. If we look at things holistically, China is definitely building the same supply chain advantage in AI as it has in other industries. I would recommend everyone to read and listen to Kyle’s substack [https://www.highcapacity.org]. I’m sure I will be doing more stuff with Kyle in the future. There are a lot of interesting topics and trend that we are both seeing. AI is just the start and we can probably discuss EVs, renewables, batteries and other industries and supply chains in the future. You can see Kyle’s podcast of this episode here [https://www.highcapacity.org/p/podcast-china-and-ai-supply-chains]. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com [https://tphuang.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 25: Embodied AI ecosystem

This week, I welcomed back Qian Yu on the show to talk about China’s AI (especially embodied AI) ecosystem. If you would like to know how Chinese entrepreneurs can start new AI robotics/embodied AI product, this would be a good episode to listen to. We also talked about World Model vs VLA, educational institutions involved in AI industry and some of the projects that we have seen recently like the Honor and Xiaomi humanoid robots. I talked about the difference between reinforcement learning in world model vs LLMs. How can you have recursive self improvement in real world models? And finally, we also talked about the recent Sugon rack innovation. How Chinese players leveraged domestic supply chain to create a high voltage rack that allows superior cooling to existing solutions. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com [https://tphuang.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Episode 24: Iran conflict's affect on global supply chain

This week, I welcomed back Dan Collins to talk about something that has come to the forefront since the start of the Iran conflict. We are really in a historically unprecedented disruption when it comes to supply chain and energy. What does it mean when this many “molecule” or “atom” get taken off the global market. What will that do to global prices of everything and shortages of things like food? That will cause huge disruptions everywhere. Near the end, Dan and I spent sometime just talking about where the Iran conflict is going at the moment. Always great to discuss something in traditional engineering and hard sciences with someone that have experience in this area like Dan. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tphuang.substack.com [https://tphuang.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]