ChinaTalk

@JordanSchneider thanks Jordan.

Those all sound like potentially cool activities. One big question I have is: what are the ChinaTalk theories of change, and should I expect some of these to be significantly more impactful than others? (I am asking for information, not asking you to change. I don't want to ruin the ChinaTalk magic by suggesting a change in focus!)

Here are some goals you might have in mind:

• Influence policymakers to take specific actions (perhaps by influencing their staffers, people influencing their staffers, etc.).
• Promote a better information environment (with more cooperative US-China vibes, or with safety-promoting mutual understanding, or something else).
• Develop your own expertise so that you can [do something in future].
• Mentor a new generation of China/China+tech specialists.

(I'll note that three of your five suggestions above sound to me like "mentor a new generation", not "enrich public discourse." I feel a little confused about this -- the impression I get from listening to the show is that you're especially concerned about the former, but your application is focused on the latter.)

With the possible goals in mind, here are some more focused questions that it would be great to get your take on:

• Can you say more about your "150 calls with students and early career professionals"? How do you think about the impact of these calls?
• What other mentorship activities have you done to date? What is the track record of these activities?
• How do you think that your past or future impact via mentorship activities compares with discourse-enriching activities?
• What would it look like for ChinaTalk to optimize more strongly for one of the goals above? (Or other goals as you see them.)
• Can you tell me about (near-miss, actual, or future) concrete policy wins, career changes, and other-good-things that ChinaTalk might be counterfactually responsible for? (Extra-low pressure for this question. I understand that you are doing something broad and shouldn't waste time tracking downstream outcomes in detail.)

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Support for Deep Coverage of China and AI, Aug 2023

I've made ChinaTalk an offer of $10k. This is not necessarily the last offer I will make to ChinaTalk.

In fact, I am currently very excited about ChinaTalk absorbing at least $50k from Manifund (plausibly more). I will advocate for this outcome to other regrantors. At the same time, I am very excited to hear any good reasons against funding ChinaTalk further.

I am agnostic about how this funding should be structured (see Austin's previous comment) -- I will leave Austin and Jordan to figure out what makes most sense.

Below, I explain my thinking around this grant -- my early confusions, the call that gave me some clarity on these confusions, and my current perspective.

Early confusions

When I began considering this grant, I was cautiously excited but very confused. Reasons for excitement included:

- I am a long-time ChinaTalk listener. I thought it was fantastic -- detailed conversations with a wide range of experts, on important topics, that are difficult to find elsewhere, with a charismatic host. - China-US relations, China-tech issues, and Chinese views on and actions in AI are all very important. - I can expand, but for now will treat it as obvious. - One point that I haven't seen elsewhere: some paths to AI disaster run through military competition incentivizing state actors to hand over critical or obviously-potentially-dangerous systems to AIs. Having more transparency about what China might do here seems great. - At least according to Jordan, "in the entire United States today, there are no more than 700 China researchers." This level of neglectedness seems almost unbelievable. - In the area I can somewhat independently evaluate, AI, Jordan's understanding and views have always seemed reasonable to me.

Reasons for confusion include:

- Uncertainty about ChinaTalk's paths to impact. (See my earlier comment.) - What are they? - What is Jordan optimizing for? Policy influence, better information environment, developing expertise, mentoring China experts...? - What should Jordan optimize for? In other words, how should I think about the relative impact of these paths? - How might Jordan optimize more strongly for particular paths to impact? - Jordan's proposal is not written in a way that I find helpful. - In particular, he seems to be trying to find out which discrete project will most easily get funded. Among other things, this makes it difficult for me to understand his beliefs about what is most important/impactful. - Also, it's too unfocused. - Why aren't others jumping to support ChinaTalk? How is it possible that the best English-language media I can find about China has been run on $35k/year? - Perhaps philanthropy doesn't support ChinaTalk for reasons that would not affect my own excitement. - Grantmakers lack China expertise, leading to a vicious cycle whereby they do not fund work on China that would help them gain expertise. - Grantmakers are unexcited about small media companies in general. - Grantmakers will not consider grants this small. - Grantmakers are too nervous to make grants in this area for political reasons. - Jordan doesn't have a PhD. - Despite the podcast suggesting that Jordan has a wide network, Jordan has very limited networks in philanthropy. (His proposal not being well-optimized for Manifund regrantors is some evidence for this.) - Perhaps philanthropy doesn't want to support ChinaTalk for reasons that from my perspective would be persuasive if true. - I am wrong that Jordan is a smart expert working on important topics with reasonable views. (I am a novice; more serious people recognize that his expertise aren't there, or his views aren't reasonable, or something else.) - I am wrong to infer that others get value from the podcast from the fact that I enjoy the podcast. - Perhaps ChinaTalk takes very little work. - If ChinaTalk has garnered little philanthropic support, and Jordan is an expert in an important, neglected area who "meets regularly with senior US officials to discuss and advise on US-China relations and technology policy," then why isn't Jordan in an important government job?

Notice that I am largely ignoring Jordan's particular proposals regarding what he might do with the money. It doesn't feel like these would be pivotal for my decision to fund.

Call with Jordan

I spoke with Jordan about his proposal. Our chat made me feel significantly more confident in my optimism. I found out, for instance, that:

- I shouldn't worry so much about distinctions between ChinaTalk's paths to impact. - Jordan is credibly dedicated to helping prevent really bad outcomes like World War III. Within that, he optimizes for activities that give him energy. This seems extremely reasonable to me. - The paths are synergistic with one another: meeting with senior officials helps with connections, which helps with the information environment, which helps with encouraging a new generation of experts, etcetc. - The reason why Jordan's proposal is not written in a way that I would find easier to read is that he's not very engaged with the EA memesphere. On balance a good thing with respect to this grant, from my perspective! - Whilst poking him on this, I discovered an especially shocking fact. Luke Muehlhauser was quoted as being very enthusiastic about ChinaTalk and Jordan personally, but too busy to consider grants of this size. If I were looking for Manifund funding for ChinaTalk, such a quote would be in the first few lines of my proposal. I took the absence of this quote in his application as credible evidence in favor of "despite other talents, Jordan is bad at writing proposals for the Manifund audience" and against "Jordan is mildly manipulating me with his powers of persuasion." - There are good answers to all of my concerns about ChinaTalk having received so little funding support. - Philanthropists are scared to touch China, in part because of lack of expertise and in part for political reasons. - Advertisers can be nervous for similar reasons. - EAs in particular are scared to touch anything vaguely shaped like an AI race. But there is reason to think this might be silly in the China case. More importantly, Jordan is a force pushing for a more transparent information environment, not for racing. - Jordan only recently started his funding push. Previously he was employed or looking for jobs. And it wasn't clear whether a small media business like ChinaTalk should be a philanthropy-backed entity; Jordan was hoping to support this work through subscriptions only. - The private list of senior US officials is indeed impressive. - Fancy and influential people in the China and tech policy space are big fans.

I left the call feeling like the grant was too good to be true. So I asked two people I really trust for their views:

• A China expert with traditional/legible credentials, who had (years ago) expressed mild skepticism to me about Jordan's technical expertise. They were excited about this grant.
• A senior researcher who was the most helpful advisor for a previous competitive selection process I ran, and whose grantmaking perspective I rate highly. They were extremely excited about this grant.

Current perspective

All in all, here's my current understanding of the situation:

• Jordan is working in a very important and very neglected area. ChinaTalk is directly helpful for this area in straightforward ways. Less confidently, ChinaTalk might be the best bet of any media organization in this area.
• Jordan is increasingly interested in AI issues. His early coverage of this has been good.
• Jordan is a serious China-US-tech expert; reasons to be suspicious about this have largely fallen away.
• The reason that Jordan needs funding (buying out his time, paying for high-value operations) is straightforward.
• Other grantmakers are not funding Jordan for reasons that make internal sense but that don't matter with respect to my decision. (If anything, these reasons make me more excited.)

If all of the above is true, then ChinaTalk is to my eye perhaps the best grant opportunity on Manifund to date.

Finally, note that many of my confusions and reasons for excitement might also apply to other China X AI projects. I plan to seriously explore this further, and have some early leads from Jeffrey Ding as well as from Jordan. By default, I will take low excitement about other projects in this space as a reason to be even more excited about ChinaTalk (although I am cautiously optimistic that I will be able to find exciting projects).

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Support for Deep Coverage of China and AI, Dec 2023

I've offered ChinaTalk an extra $5k. I have become more bearish since writing the below, but I still directionally stand by it.

Jordan's recent conversations with Jason Matheny and Dylan Patel are marvelous. He continues to dive deeper into AI, and he continues to have difficulty funding his important niche for understandable but frustrating ~political reasons. I am really, really excited to continue to support ChinaTalk.

(Written hastily; happy to expand.)