What starts as a travel recap turns into a wide-ranging conversation about manufacturing, geopolitics, surveillance, and the quiet signals of national confidence.
Sean is back stateside after several weeks in China and Japan, where he was auditing suppliers and rethinking what tariffs, supply chains, and "reshoring" actually look like on the ground. From panda diplomacy and traffic that "flows like water," to EV adoption, special economic zones, and cashless surveillance states, the conversation moves quickly from observation to implication.
Along the way, Dan and Sean explore why China's manufacturing base keeps getting stronger even as the U.S. talks about bringing jobs home, how switching costs quietly drive de-industrialization, and why blocking progress at every turn may be the most expensive policy choice of all.
The discussion expands outward—touching on AI, misinformation, drone warfare, Taiwan, chips, and why history often feels utopian only in retrospect. If Rome, Athens, or Florence were messy while they were happening, maybe that's the real lesson: we're living in history right now.
Pandas, it turns out, make excellent diplomats. They're calm, patient, and impossible to rush. Maybe there's something in that.
What supply chain audits in China actually look like
Tariffs, switching costs, and why April changed everything
EV adoption, license plate incentives, and urban policy
Special economic zones as policy experiments
Cashless convenience vs centralized surveillance
AI translation, misinformation, and "the only way out is through"
Drone warfare, Taiwan, and fragile chip supply chains
Civic pride, cleanliness, and the tragedy of the commons
Why America struggles to build—and what that costs
Rome wasn't utopian either
