Societal Backlash and Future Employment Concerns

Where does President Trump's speech leave us with regard to where the war is headed? And it really was to me the story of the commander-in-chief who weeks into this war is deeply uncertain about how it ends. I'm John Finer, co- host of the Long Game Podcast. This week, Jake Sullivan and I break down the president's speech and discuss what it's like to negotiate with the Iranians. We will also debate whether Iran should accept a deal. The episode is out now. Search and follow the long game wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Hostinger. Ever had an idea for a business or side hustle, but never actually launched it? With Hostinger, you can turn that idea into something real in minutes instead of weeks. Hostinger is an all-in-one platform that brings everything into one place: your domain, website, email marketing, AI tools, and AI agents. He can create websites, online stores, and custom apps with simple prompts. Then use AI agents to automate tedious tasks and grow your business. Go to hostsinger.com/slash the prop G20 to bring your ideas online for under $3 a month. Use promo code What goes up must come down. Except when it comes to gas prices. The price tends to rocket up very quickly a at the pump as when crude oil prices go up, but gasoline prices tend to take a little bit longer to go down in many cases. This week on Explaining to me why gas and everything else is so expensive these days. Find new episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts . I don't think that either the US or Israel is gonna be keen to allow China to take a leading role in a peace process in this uh Iran war or or the war in the Gulf. It's just too important for the US and Israel. They don't want China to be playing a leading role in this regard. Yet I do think that this peace plan by China with Pakistan sort of taking the lead, but China pulling the strings behind it is important. And I think the reason for that is that it allows China yet again to claim the diplomatic high ground from the US Welcome to China Decode I'm Alice Hen and I'm James King in today's episode of China Decode we're discussing Trump threatening Iran as China and Pakistan propose a peace plan, China launching trade investigations into the US ahead of the Trump Xi Summit, and how the adoption of open claw AI in China is surging, reshaping the token economy and c loud adoption. Alright, let's get into it. Tensions in West Asia are escalating as US President Donald Trump threatens to hit Iran, quote, back to the Stone Ages, while China and Pakistan unveil a f ive-point peace plan aimed at halting the conflict, the initiative calls for an immediate ceasefire, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and launching diplomatic talks, posing a potential geopolitical pivot in a war that the US hoped would cripple Tehran. But there's another layer here. As Beijing publicly pushes for de-escalation, a new report reveals that Chinese firms are simultaneously marketing AI-powered intelligence to ols that can track and expose US military movements in the region. Using satellite imagery, flight data, and open source intelligence, these companies, some with ties to the Chinese military, are mapping American bas es, naval deployments, and strike activity in real time. Alright, James, we're in week five of this conflict in the Middle East. It seems that the Strait hasn't been opened as of yet, although some ships are coming through destined for China. China is getting hit in on terms of oil imports. But what's been interesting is that they have come in support of the Pakistanis to deliver this peace plan. Now Trump is not taking it seriously, but what was your thinking behind this peace plan and do you think it actually has legs? Well I think you know the first question is is it a credible peace plan? My short answer to that is that it's only as credible as the other key players, i.e., the US and Israel, allow it to be. And as you've just hinted, Alice, I don't think that either the US or Israel is going to be keen to allow China to take a leading role in a peace process in this uh Iran war or uh or the war in the Gulf. It's just too important uh for the US and Israel. Uh they don't want China to be playing a leading role in this regard. Yet I do think that this peace plan by China with Pakistan sort of taking the lead but China pulling the strings behind it is important. And I think the reason for that is that it allows China yet again to claim the diplomatic high ground from the US, presenting itself as a peacemaker while leaving people to draw their own conclusions that the US is a warmonger. And I also think it's important because at the margin, it could have an influence on how events uh in the war in the Gulf unfold. Just a couple of factual references on the plan itself. This does, I think, amount to an initiative that is more than just post uring. The reason I say that is because significant work has clearly been done behind the scenes. Uh there has been several hours of talks between Pakistan and Beijing, talks between the respective foreign ministers of Pakistan and Beijing and because there are five points in the peace plan that have been mentioned immediate cess ation of hostilities is number one. The start of peace talks as soon as possible is another. The end of attacks on civilian and non-military infrastructure is another. The fourth is restore safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and the last is a comprehensive peace framework. The other interesting aspect is that there are credible reports of a four-way meeting between Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. These are all Muslim countries that may be seen as more palatable by Iran as negotiating partners. So there has clearly been work behind the scenes between China and Pakistan and between the four countries that I've just mentioned. That means that this is more than mere posturing by China to paint the US in a bad light and claim some claim some of the moral high ground for China. But does this really have legs in terms of something that is going to bring peace uh to the region and is going to start unrestricted shipping through the Strait of Hor mos. I think we're far away from that so far, Alice. But what's your take on it? How are you seeing this? I completely agree with you, James. This is a diplomatic move for the Chinese and the Pakistanis to show that they uh have skin and in the game they're st stakeholders in the peace process. I think Trump's speech the other day makes it abundantly clear that he reserves the option to escalate militarily. They've got deployed, you know, thousands of troops to the region. And he is willing, I think, to commit boots in the ground, starting in Kag Island and other aspects of the Strait, to really take over control of the Strait of Hormuz. That obviously will have major military and political ramifications for h the administration. But certainly his speech made it clear that within two to three weeks this could escalate with a US military response in the region with boots on the ground in Iran. And I'm not sure how the Chinese would respond in that scenario. I was gonna throw that question back at you, but I think as this conflict draws out, we're now in week five, we reach a point at which the Chinese uh country as a whole is going to suffer the energy implications. We've talked at length about how China is in some respect insulated, buffered for three to four months because of s its strategic reserves, uh and it's the way in it which it's diversified uh oil flows from other parts of the world like Russia. But the fact of the matter is if you look at some of the strain that's being put on the system, you look at teapot refineries, uh capacities, for instance, there's gonna come a point in in the next two months where you know something needs to change or else this is going to have massive energy and then you know cost push inflation implications for China. So I would assume that the Chinese will try to make some kind of a deal whereby they get uh uh you know early access so gold to the the Strait of Hormuz. Now we've seen you know some Chinese flagships have passed the region along with Pakistani and Indian, more recently uh South Korean as well. So I could see more pressure being put on by the Chinese uh vis Iran to get more access to oil in the region because you know, as we've noted in the past more than fifty percent of oil bound to China uh comes from the Strait of Hormuz, comes from that region. Um, although not as high as Trump is saying in the Financial Times, which is ninety percent, about six percent of its total energy consumption and close to fifty percent of seaborne oil comes from that region through the Strait of Hormuz. So I could see uh you know China coming in at least bilaterally to try to get access to more oil from this region. But the fact of the matter is everyone is sitting on their seats, including the Iranians, to see if Trump is actually going to deliver on that um threat to actually escalate militarily. But do you think, you know, if you were to put your thinking cap on from the Washington's perspective, do you think that's plausible? Yeah, I mean I think it's plausible, but where I think China's credibility as a real peacemaker in this situation falls down is that China is highly unlikely, I think, to act as a security guarantor uh of a peace plan in this region . Um I think, you know, China has said that it supports mediation by Pakistan and other countries to end this war and to move to a a a peace process. But if mediation doesn't work, um, or if mediation starts to work and then falls apart because people start fighting again, then there has to be a question of who steps in to secure the security of the region. And I don't see that being China. I don't think that China would in any sense be willing to use its military to try to keep peace on behalf of Iran. It certainly wouldn't want to get into some kind of a conflict with the US and Isra el. So the idea of China as a genuine security guarantor, I think, uh is a non-starter. And that to me puts a big hole in this idea of China's five point peace plan for the region. It's just far too complicated. Mediation can only go so far. At the end of the day, you have to have somebody who will stand in to guarantee the security and I don't think that that is China. Yeah, and just very quickly this sort of segues nicely with future discussions about AI, but it's interesting if you've seen this, James, that the Shanghai company called Mizavision has posted a real-time satellite imagery of American military movements in the run-up actually to Operation Epic Fury that started in February 28. So they posted some of this in X . And it it wouldn't be at all a stretch of the imagination to say that the Iranians could have gotten access to this data. Now, you know, we have to ask to what extent are the Chinese sharing this surveillance imagery with the Americ And now we have to ask to what extent uh the Chinese are sharing this surveillance imagery to the Iranian military. But the fact of the matter is that this data uh they're publicly uh accessible and so it brings into question um how safe the US military is in the region if a lot of the data are being leaked by these Chinese AI companies that I thought was quite interesting. And may you know expose ch um the US China relationship to some friction, I think. Absolutely agree with you there. I mean we've seen um one F fifteen uh US aircraft uh get shot down. That's another fast moving situation. It could create tens ions that we can't yet judge between the US and China. But I think you're absolutely right. To to point to this surveillance ability that China seems to have, this is a big setback for uh the US's war ambitions uh in Iran. Okay, we'll be back with more after a quick break. Stay with us Support for the show comes from Vanguard. To all the financial advisors out there, the ones whose job is to help their clients keep more of what they earn. Vanguard is here to help you out. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds. That's on top of big fe e cuts they already gave last year to investors and 87 of their funds. In an increasingly high-priced world, Vanguard is staying true to excellence without expense. Not only do your clients keep more of what they invest, they get sophisticated active and index funds And a fixed income team obsessed with consistent outperformance. Low fees give Vanguard skilled bond managers more freedom to maneuver as they pursue that goal. And low fees help you deliver greater value as an advisor. Top performance shouldn't come at a higher cost. Go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com slash impact. That's vanguard.com slash impact. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor . Support for the show comes from Upwork. Scaling your business isn't about executing some growth hack, it's about knowing when to delegate, even when that means hiring someone new. Upwork can help. They make it easy to bring in the right freelancer when you need them, so you can stay focused on what you do best. With Ubwork, you can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. Seriously, you could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours. Especially when you sign up with Business Plus, their AI-powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also cuts down operational hassle by handling things like contracts and payments in one place, so you can spend more time running your business. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire flexible, high-quality freelance talent for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWORK.com. Upwork.com Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. It's a shame when the best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong audience. Like, imagine running an ad for cataract surgery on Saturday morning cartoons, or running a promo for this show on a video about Roblox or something. No offense to our gen alpha listeners, but that would be a waste of anyone's ad budget. So when you want to reach the right professionals, you can use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers according to their data. That's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, also you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. That's why LinkedIn Ads boast one of the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash Scott. That's LinkedIn.com slash Scott Terms and Conditions Apply . Welcome back. China has launched two trade investigations into U.S practices retaliating against similar probes by the Trump administration just weeks before a planned summit between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping. The investigations target US policies that Beijing says disrupt global supply chains and block Chinese green tech exports, signaling political tensions as the world's two largest economies prepare for high-stakes talks. Adding another layer of complexity, the US FBI recently declared a suspected China linked hack of a US surveillance system, a quote unquote major cyber incident, suggesting sensitive data on agency networks may have been compromised. James just, really quickly looking into this, it the timing couldn't be worse for Trump and Xi in a way, right? Because they haven't met in Beijing. They may meet uh you know mid-May, although that hasn't been confirmed from the Chinese side. The Chinese, it appears, are retaliating against the Section 301 probes that US put on after AIPA was struck down by SCOTUS . Uh does this at all put a spanner in the works for a Trump Xi summit? Should we read uh deeply into this as as being you know a portender for doom? I think it's uh it's bigger than just the Trump C summit that we now uh think is supposed to take place in May. I think it shows just how deep the tensions and the problems between the US and China really are. You've just been referencing in the previous segment that China is able to hack uh um into US operations uh in Iran. Um and now we're talking about a different form of uh security breach that China has has been able to affect inside uh the US. I think this shows just how little the security state or the deep state as we sometimes call it in both countries trust each other. And I think that goes much deeper than a summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping of China, because that summit is really, um, even if it takes place on time in May, is really all about mood music. It's about trying to sort of put a bottom uh under the relationship which has been deeply damaged in recent years. Um, but I think this just shows that behind the attempts to put a brave face on relations and to sort of contain this slide in US China uh ties particularly over trade, uh you have the security states kind of grinding away. Um and uh there is no trust or very little trust between the security states of both countries. And so every time uh you know you try to get uh some kind of diplomatic progress between the US and China, you get it uh removed or taken away, eroded by something that happens behind the cloak of secrecy as it were, in the real deep state relationship between the US and China. Well, it it reminds me of, you know, the Obama years when we had that um previous hack into, you know, federal data, federal agency data, I th I believe it's the OPM hack . And you know, it's interesting how these things end up being quite political or they used to score political points. Uh the fact of the matter is I'm pretty sure that you know l some level of cyber theft, cybersecurity violations happen throughout the relationship, but uh oftentimes they get de ployed politically to to drive home a message. And so my my deeper underlying concern is that the timing of this, uh, at a time where, you know, you've also got some trade investigations on both sides, where you haven't really seen real meat on the bones in the lead up by the seconds and thirds of Trump and she before a meeting. Again, you know, even if everything points towards positive mood music, I still think that the underlying currents are quite difficult. Uh and you add to that some of the recent stories that we just mentioned, you know, Chinese satellite imagery being um potentially being used to help the Iranians, although maybe not deliberately so. That could really easily turn into Trump potentially going sour on China. Although another read of that is that maybe if he escalates or if he doesn't escalate and Iran becomes a real quagmire nightmare, he'll need to use a positive China relationship to spin his foreign policy. Uh both I think uh equally uh feasible. But what's interesting to me to frame it more generally is that the US hasn't really shifted um the trade relationship that much you know as much as Jamison Greer talks about the Board of Trade and trying to reduce the deficit with the Chinese. The fact of the matter is that even although the bilateral deficit has been reduced quite significantly, uh, because a lot of Chinese exports aren't going directly to the US, they're being rerouted. So the bilateral number doesn't reflect the final destination of goods going to the US, maybe through third party countries like Southeast Asia, like Mexico, and Jamist and Greece at USTR and Besson at at state, even though they threatened last year, haven't really gone through with the rules of origin to really line by line figure out where all these goods are coming from, um, and in that way control the trade relationship. So so right now it feels very hollow, all this discussion about you know trade investigations reducing the deficit. You add to that the fact that actually um US exports to China, which is something that the administration would like to see grow, have actually fallen. They fell in nominal terms twenty six percent in twenty twenty five. Uh and by some estimates, uh trade in terms of US exports to China should have been ninety billion dollars higher last year, but due to the trade wars that did not happen. So when I add it all together, it seems like all of these are politically motivated and maybe they're motivated these stories, the FBI story, the trade probes, to try to get the Chinese to make concessions ahead of a Trump summit, but right now it looks like the US is in a weaker position, mainly because of what's happening in Iran. So let's take one last quick break and stay with us. It's today explained. President Trump has not made a coherent case for his war in Iran, and last night he said he's not ending it yet. We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong. Because it doesn't serve American interests uh in any conceivable way. And and l me just say that if it does in some way serve the interests of the United States, I'd I'd love to hear it. I haven't heard of the U.S. On Tuesday, we ask Caredl son about his break with Trump and about how the Trump coalition is splintering as some young conservatives abandon the president and embrace something darker. It becomes like all of a sudden like, hey you kids, why you listen to the Elvis Presley and that rock music is bad? Like all of a sudden, Fuentes controls the conversation and becomes the cool kid. And the net effect is to make the Holocaust a joke. Today explained every weekday wherever you get your podcasts . Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering , thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. Welcome back. China's large language models are outpacing the US for a fourth consecutive week, fueled by the rise of AI agents like OpenClaw that dramatically increased token usage. Now, this surge is reshaping cloud pricing in China, enterprise adoption, and the global AI token economy, signaling a shift from simple channels James, I believe you just came back from China and apparently this was all the range. I mean I've been seeing it, the so-called lobster farming, that's what they call it using open claw and and and and rejigging it and um uh for different purposes but this expression yang yang lungsia which means lobster farming has taken over China you see a lot of these lobster plushies going around, but I really want to hear your perspective having been there on the ground. Yeah, I spent uh um just over a couple of weeks in China and I was researching uh a lot of things such as robots and AI and and other tech topics mainly. But just uh just to kick off, um uh for listeners who who who may not know exactly what OpenClaw is, it's a it's a free and open source AI agent. So it's designed to act as a virtual assistant that can actually execute tasks rather than just chat with you. So for instance, it connects to uh large language models like Claude or Deepseek or OpenAIs, Chat GPT. And then it integrates them into messaging apps. So that basically when you're using OpenClaw, you only have to ask it to perform tasks like booking flights or managing calendars or writing code and it'll do that for you. So in that sense, it's different from a kind of a chatbot that will only sort of respond to your your questions . As you said, everybody is talking about open claw in China. I mean, I I really think of course I was moving in tech circles, but it was the biggest topic of conversation. People would want to ask me about it. I would want to ask them about it. And the adoption in China of this is really quite amazing. So far, about sixty seven percent of Chinese industrial firms have deployed AI agents uh in production in China. That's compared to about 34% in the US. So that's all agents, that's not just open claw, but you can see that OpenClaw is now uh really becoming popular. The other aspect of open claw is that it sort of came out of left field. It was developed by Peter Steinberger, who's an Austrian programmer. Um, and it was released in twent in November 2025, and it quickly became one of the fastest growing open source projects in GitHub history. But the Chinese have now taken this to heart and uh maybe because it's open source maybe that's the attraction here, but it is so convenient, you just have to ask it to do certain tasks and it'll get on and do them for you. But what are you seeing as the implications of this Alice? It reminds me of a previous discussion you and I had, James, where I said that China would be a fast adopter of um these superagents. I called it, you know, China 10 years ago was living through super apps, mainly 10 cents, WeChat, and um Alibaba's Alipay. And now those super apps will give rise to an ecosystem of super agents where these agents have access to every aspect of your life, your calendar, your flight bookings, your children's, um, you know, school records, uh um uh food deliveries, et cetera, et cetera. And it seems like this is already happening, which is why I'm gonna call this lobster mania, you know, in a nod to Beetle Mania from your country. I I just think that this is a perfectly natural that a country where digital adoption has been so fast, where people are willing to try new things and are less scared about privacy from a data perspective. It was perfectly natural that this would sweep take a sweep over China. I I r I've read uh and I'd be interested to know your opinion on this, but I've read that the rise of agentic tools in China apparently is being reflected in the Chinese consumption of tokens. The national data administration revealed just this week that uh at the end of 2025, so in December, there were 100 trillion tokens being consumed. That's a metric for for AI consumption. And this month, so the month of March rather, uh 140 trillion tokens were consumed. That's just to show you how in the space of three months we've grown uh in in AI usage. And it seems that a lot of companies and people are retooling and re-jigging OpenClaw to create new uh applications. So for instance, this one guy apparently retooled it um as a tool for Tencent, so he called it QCla . And basically it allows him to deploy OpenClaw and send orders via WeChat. He can interface with it via his WeChat app. But then he had these huge data issues where some of his data were erased entirely . And that brings me to my next question, uh, which is how worried will we be that there isn't going to be a government backlash? Because if you recall, uh, in 2021, we saw a massive tech crackdown. Now if you had been living in China the year before that, or even 2019, 2018, you would have been hard pressed to think that that was gonna be the future because it was all about internet economy, uh digital applications. Now we're all about AI. Certainly the five-year plan was all about it. And adoption is really high, for instance. 93% of respondents, according to a KPMG survey last year, said in China that they already use AI for work. I'm sure that's higher than the UK or the US. And apparently 69% of the Chinese believe that they see benefits outweighing the risks, versus in the US, it's only 35% who believe that benefits outweigh the risks in terms of using AI? I'm talking really fast because this is a really exciting topic for me personally. But my big question to you, James, is when do we hear the music stop? Because this can't be good for the everyday consumer's security and privacy. That's right. But you also mentioned a backlash. Um and uh I must say I left China with a very strong sense that some kind of correction or backlash indeed has to come. And this is simply because literally everyone I spoke to who doesn't work in the AI area seemed to be concerned about employment, uh about the rising level of unemployment among young people in particular. Just to give you a sense of this, um I I I I think a lot of people are now concerned in China that AI is just taking their job. A lot of people are looking at their peers and the struggles that their peers are having to find jobs and drawing the conclusion that AI has already taken those jobs. And this only will be accelerated by the adoption of of uh agents such as open claw, which as we've just described, moves uh the locus from a chat GPT type uh dynamic where you can ask a chat bot uh to do research for you to a new locus of action where you ask the agents to perform a task for you. That's a very different thing. That is going to strip quite a lot of people of their jobs. So I left China uh both amazed by the speed of China's tech advance and deeply concerned that the backlash may well be coming. You're not the only one, James, because I just saw this posted a couple of months ago in December by the cyberspace administration of China, uh in which they regulate the quote unquote humanized, or another way to translate as anthropomorphic, AI interactive services. And some of the articles reflect on the moral difficulties or the moral problems with AI services given to elderly users that quote unquote simulate their relatives or specific relationships. There's another article, Article 12, that talks about putting the need to put on a minor mode, meaning to protect minors, underage peoples, um, you know, either through time blocks uh or time restrictions uh or really blocking them from certain accounts. So I I think we're starting to see the wheels moving. Uh but I think right now, I think the government's still in the mode of let it rip because we want to compete against the US in AI and we want AI to boost productivity. I think they still have drugs to Kool-Aid on that. I agree. I think the government is still in the mode of let it rip. But I think that if you're on the ground in China talking to normal people, let it rip is not a policy that has legs. People are very, very concerned about losing their jobs to AI. All right, James, you know what time it is? It is prediction time. What's your view for the future this week? My prediction is related to what I was just talking about, this sense that the march of AI, which is truly breathtaking in China, quite on a different scale from anything I've seen, I think we can see in the West, uh, is going to have adverse effects. And I I think