Engineering vs Lawyerly Societies: The US-China Competition with Dan Wang

Founders in Arms

Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute and author of "Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future." After spending six years living in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai (2017-2023), Dan witnessed China's technology growth, the US-China trade and tech war, Xi Jinping's increasing authoritarianism, and three years of zero-COVID pandemic controls firsthand.

What you'll learn:

1. Dan's framework of "engineering societies vs lawyerly societies" for understanding the US-China competition
2. How China deliberately promoted engineers to power—by 2002, all nine Politburo Standing Committee members had engineering degrees
3. Why the one-child policy and zero-COVID demonstrate the dangers of literal-minded engineering applied to society
4. How America transformed from building the transcontinental railroad and Apollo missions to being unable to fix its subway systems
5. Why lawyers took over American governance in the 1960s and created a self-reinforcing system
6. The stark reality: China builds 500 gigawatts of solar capacity annually vs America's 50, and has 30 nuclear plants under construction vs zero
7. Why China's electricity advantage could determine who wins the AI race—not just better models
8. How American AI leadership is threatened by power constraints and Chinese researchers potentially returning home
9. Why robotics applications of AI matter more than reasoning models for geopolitical competition
10. The dual reality of America: trillion-dollar tech companies exist alongside broken infrastructure that only works for the wealthy
11. Dan's writing process: traveling, eating (twice), reading novels and history, and being deliberately provocative
12. The future of US-China competition in semiconductors, aviation, manufacturing, and whether America's technological lead is sustainable

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction and Dan's AI/electricity thesis

(01:15) Dan's journey from San Francisco tech to China analyst

(03:40) Engineering society vs lawyerly society framework

(04:21) Why engineers running governments can be dangerous

(05:46) The one-child policy: designed by a missile scientist

(06:56) China's path from Mao to engineering-focused leadership

(09:51) America's transformation from builder to regulator (1960s shift)

(11:08) Can the pendulum swing back? Housing, transit, and infrastructure failures

(13:12) The self-reinforcing nature of lawyerly societies

(14:12) Yale Law ambition vs Stanford engineering ambition

(16:13) Is there bipartisan consensus on building?

(17:41) Why left and right can't agree on solutions

(19:32) China's engineering design flaws and authoritarian feedback loops

(22:19) US technological advantages: semiconductors, AI, aviation

(23:07) The electricity bottleneck: China's massive power advantage

(24:31) If AI is everything, what should America do?

(26:29) Why Dan doesn't buy the "AI is everything" premise

(27:27) Robotics as the real AI battleground

(29:35) Silicon Valley codes, China builds power plants

(30:37) Anti-AI populism emerging on left and right

(33:41) Dan's meta process: philosophy, eating, traveling, reading, being provocative

(37:20) China's rural infrastructure and redistribution through building

(40:39) Peter Thiel question: acknowledging China's dual reality

(44:54) America's core tension: works great for the rich, broken for everyone else

(46:35) Will China get stuck in the 2010s like Japan in the 1980s?