1/ Has Smart Brevity Come to China? 2/ China is poised to tackle bureaucratic jargon with the same formula that the founders of Axios used to transform the news industry: Smart Brevity—saying more with less. axios.com/smart-brevity

1/ Bets from my hazy crystal ball: Fast Track to a Trump-Xi Summit that announces a “new partnership” 2/ Three points from my appearance on last Friday’s CNBC show The China Connection.
cnbc.com/video/2025/08/…

1/ Wisdom from the Sage of Omaha. 2/ As the picture suggests, I had the good fortune on Tuesday afternoon to spend several hours with Warren Buffett and his colleague, Ted Weschler. More than a decade ago, he reached out to me to begin a conversation about nuclear danger. And it has been my great good fortune that we have continued talking on a regular basis since then.

1/ What do Top AI Researchers Have in Common? 2/ As one watches $100 million bonuses being paid by Mark Zuckerberg at Meta and other leading AI companies for super talents, it may seem politically incorrect to ask. But I am sure I am not the first one to notice what these individuals have in common?

1/ Who has insights into the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) Rivalry? 2/ Answer: @elonmusk.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1938552586803753388

1/ More wisdom from the Sage of Omaha: Warren Buffett. 2/ When Buffett (94) speaks, the world listens. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting last week attended by nearly 20,000 eager fans, the legendary American investor delivered his last press conference as head of the investment house he built.

For a spirited discussion with Jake Sullivan about his view of the most pressing challenges the US faces today, what the Biden Administration accomplished, and what could have been done better, see the video of yesterday’s IOP Forum. iop.harvard.edu/events/america… Jake has joined HKS as the Inaugural Henry Kissinger Professor of Statecraft and World Order. For Harvard students, he offered thoughtful clues about how to grow up to play a role in national security policymaking in a democracy—and the centrality of politics in policymaking.

1/ Could the Tariff War Become a Real Hot War? 2/ Could President Trump’s unprecedented tariff war against China stumble into a hot war with bombs exploding on American and Chinese soil? The good news is that most tariff or economic wars have not become hot wars. The bad news is that some have.

1/ Are the tariffs President Trump announced last week on China more like a solid wall or a slice of Swiss cheese? 2/ Last Wednesday, President Trump surprised the world by announcing “I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately.”

1/ Has @elonmusk purchase of Twitter been the “unmitigated disaster” that the @nytimes declared it would be after Elon paid $44 billion for the leading social media platform? 2/ As the New York Times analysis explained two months later, it was “obvious” that “to most people outside Silicon Valley, Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has been an unmitigated disaster.” nytimes.com/2022/12/16/tec…

1/ In what category is the US still number one compared to China? 2/ Answer: billionaires.

Who is winning the drone war between Ukraine and Russia? Readers of the American press could be forgiven for thinking that the answer is Ukraine. Over the past year, major American newspapers have carried an average of five stories a week—each touting Ukraine’s success in building and using drones in new and imaginative ways to defeat Russia.

1/ Who lost DeepSeek? 2/ This week’s launch of China’s David to America’s Goliaths has upended much of what we thought we knew about American AI dominance—and taken a trillion dollars off the market value of US AI companies. It is also a vivid reminder of how seriously the US must take attracting and retaining talent—including from China.

1/ Musk has it exactly right. How does Team USA compete and win in a world in which China has 4 times as many people as we do, 4 times as many STEM graduates every year, and invests more than 4 times as much as we do in R&D?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1872374103983759835

2/ In one line: by recruiting the most talented individuals from all the 8 billion fellow inhabitants of planet Earth—and riding the waves they make as they realize their dreams.

Who’s wasting money on high-speed rail?

A reader of the Wall Street Journal could be excused for thinking the answer is China. See their recent article subtitled: “China’s train system is one of the biggest public works in history, and it’s becoming a giant money pit.” It spotlights China’s $500 billion spend on new rail in the past 5 years. wsj.com/world/china/xi… But as the piece admits, California’s high-speed rail project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles has “grappled with costs spiraling to more than $100 billion and a still-uncertain completion date.”

As he was struggling to absorb what happened on Tuesday, David Ignatius (@IgnatiusPost) , the nation’s leading foreign policy editorialist, called me up looking for silver linings. His piece that appeared in the @washingtonpost today captures several big ideas. Could Trump bring an end to the war in Ukraine? I am betting that he will. And if he engaged Xi Jinping in his peace process, David quotes me as saying “the two should share a Nobel Peace Prize.” I agree.

As we see news reports on the current G7 meetings in Italy, for perspective, it is worth rereading Martin Wolf’s article on last year’s G7 meeting in Hiroshima titled "The G7 must accept that it cannot run the world." Consider three of his main points:

ft.com/content/c8cf02… 1. The influence of the “Great” or “Global” or “Governing” 7 nations—US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and UK—on the global economy has been shrinking since this club began in the mid 1970’s.

1/ In the Auto Race, who is Number 1? 2/ In 2023, which nation made the most automobiles? Which nation’s citizens bought the most number of cars?

1/ Why is TSMC’s attempt to build a semiconductor factory in Arizona falling further and further behind? “TSMC’s debacle in the American desert” from Rest of the World offers clues:

restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-ariz… 2/ Since its announcement in 2022, the landmark Arizona plant has been delayed twice and is currently set to open in 2025, more than a year behind schedule.

Inconvenient Facts about the Chinese Economy. The Peterson Institute’s Nick Lardy’s recent in Foreign Affairs, “China Is Still Rising,” offers a number of inconvenient facts that remind us to follow the numbers instead of the narratives.

foreignaffairs.com/united-states/…

Having returned from a whirlwind tour of 9 intense days of meetings in Beijing, reflecting on my discussion with Xi Jinping: While Xi’s primary objective in meeting with US business leaders (I was included as a ‘representative of the academic and strategic community’) was to emphasize that China is “open for business,” he was also interested in engaging about the broader geopolitical relationship.