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Sarah Paine – How Russia sabotaged China's rise
In this lecture, military historian Sarah Paine explains how Russia—and specifically Stalin—completely derailed China’s rise, slowing them down for over a century.
This lecture was particularly interesting to me because, in my opinion, the Chinese Civil War is 1 of the top 3 most important events of the 20th century. And to understand why it transpired as it did, you need to understand Stalin’s role in the whole thing.
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) – How Russia took advantage of China’s weakness
(00:22:58) – After Stalin, China’s rise
(00:33:52) – Russian imperialism
(00:45:23) – China’s and Russia’s existential problems
(01:04:55) – Q&A: Sino-Soviet Split
(01:22:44) – Stalin’s lessons from WW2
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Satya Nadella — How Microsoft is preparing for AGI
As part of this interview, Satya Nadella gave Dylan Patel (founder of SemiAnalysis) and me an exclusive first-look at their brand-new Fairwater 2 datacenter.
Microsoft is building multiple Fairwaters, each of which has hundreds of thousands of GB200s & GB300s. Between all these interconnected buildings, they’ll have over 2 GW of total capacity. Just to give a frame of reference, even a single one of these Fairwater buildings is more powerful than any other AI datacenter that currently exists.
Satya then answered a bunch of questions about how Microsoft is preparing for AGI across all layers of the stack.
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
Sponsors
* Labelbox produces high-quality data at massive scale, powering any capability you want your model to have. Whether you’re building a voice agent, a coding assistant, or a robotics model, Labelbox gets you the exact data you need, fast. Reach out at labelbox.com/dwarkesh
* CodeRabbit automatically reviews and summarizes PRs so you can understand changes and catch bugs in half the time. This is helpful whether you’re coding solo, collaborating with agents, or leading a full team. To learn how CodeRabbit integrates directly into your workflow, go to coderabbit.ai
To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Fairwater 2
(00:03:20) - Business models for AGI
(00:12:48) - Copilot
(00:20:02) - Whose margins will expand most?
(00:36:17) - MAI
(00:47:47) - The hyperscale business
(01:02:44) - In-house chip & OpenAI partnership
(01:09:35) - The CAPEX explosion
(01:15:07) - Will the world trust US companies to lead AI?
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Andrej Karpathy — AGI is still a decade away
The Andrej Karpathy episode.
During this interview, Andrej explains why reinforcement learning is terrible (but everything else is much worse), why AGI will just blend into the previous ~2.5 centuries of 2% GDP growth, why self driving took so long to crack, and what he sees as the future of education.
It was a pleasure chatting with him.
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
Sponsors
* Labelbox helps you get data that is more detailed, more accurate, and higher signal than you could get by default, no matter your domain or training paradigm. Reach out today at labelbox.com/dwarkesh
* Mercury helps you run your business better. It’s the banking platform we use for the podcast — we love that we can see our accounts, cash flows, AR, and AP all in one place. Apply online in minutes at mercury.com
* Google’s Veo 3.1 update is a notable improvement to an already great model. Veo 3.1’s generations are more coherent and the audio is even higher-quality. If you have a Google AI Pro or Ultra plan, you can try it in Gemini today by visiting https://gemini.google
Timestamps
(00:00:00) – AGI is still a decade away
(00:29:45) – LLM cognitive deficits
(00:40:05) – RL is terrible
(00:49:38) – How do humans learn?
(01:06:25) – AGI will blend into 2% GDP growth
(01:17:36) – ASI
(01:32:50) – Evolution of intelligence & culture
(01:42:55) - Why self driving took so long
(01:56:20) - Future of education
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An audio version of my blog post, Thoughts on AI progress (Dec 2025)
Read the essay here.
Timestamps
00:00:00 What are we scaling?
00:03:11 The value of human labor
00:05:04 Economic diffusion lag is cope00:06:34 Goal-post shifting is justified
00:08:23 RL scaling
00:09:18 Broadly deployed intelligence explosion
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Episode 651: Bob Lazar & Area 51
You're Seeing Trouble: Friday, February 6th, 2026
This VC Bought Bitcoin at $200, Saw TikTok's Rise, and Now Says THIS is the Next Big Trade
Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.com
Finding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanley
He bought Bitcoin at $200. He had the chance to invest in TikTok before it was a global phenomenon. Now, venture capitalist and Levex founder Harvey Liu is revealing what he believes is the single biggest trade of the next five years.
In this episode, we go deep on:
- The real reason China's tech scene is crushing the West (it's not what you think).
- Why Harvey believes Ethereum is a better bet than Bitcoin right now.
- The simple, 4-step playbook for new crypto investors to avoid getting wrecked.
- How AI is about to change trading forever.
If you want to understand the hidden forces driving the global economy and where the smart money is moving next, you can't afford to miss this.
Connect with Harvey Liu:
- Website: https://levex.com/en/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarveyLevex
This is the way.
This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.
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