#7 - Brian Chau: trump administration, open source and AI policy

Brian Chau is a mathematician and policy analyst who writes at fromthenew.world, where he explores rationality, epistemology, AI alignment, and civilizational trajectories. His work critiques institutional consensus and examines how elite narratives evolve — or collapse — under the weight of social pressure, follow Brian on Twitter

We talk about the danger of elite overreach, the misuse of AI policy, the failures of both left and right narratives, and how to build something more coherent. Topics are outlined in the timestamps below.

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Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

02:12 – Export controls, global alignment, and the US/China divide

04:24 – The politics behind AI regulation and compute limits

06:36 – Bipartisan handling of AI across Trump and Biden

08:48 – Bridging partisan divides on technological progress

11:00 – Antitrust, incumbents, and regulatory capture

13:12 – Global AI competition and the Chinese model

15:24 – Risk aversion, family obligations, and talent bottlenecks

17:36 – Leaving AI orgs and reevaluating the mission

19:48 – Perplexity AI vs DeepSeek: the Tiananmen test

22:00 – Open-source LLMs and political resilience

24:12 – Consent, compliance, and values in AI behavior

26:24 – Group disparities and admissions philosophy

28:36 – Ethical tradeoffs in policy modeling

30:48 – Surveillance as a control system

33:00 – Misunderstanding distant cultures and narrative bias

35:12 – Bottom-up development vs Western paternalism

37:24 – Economic diversity beyond Silicon Valley

39:36 – Final reflections and historical insight

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