🔮 Breakneck China: From superprojects to social engineering
A conversation with Dan Wang (Breakneck) + exclusive research notes
YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts
Every so often, a book rearranges how you think. Dan Wang’s Breakneck is one such book. Its core provocation is that China operates as an engineering state, optimised for building, while the United States has evolved into a lawyerly society, optimised for blocking.
Dan and I have been trying to meet in person for months. At various points we tried to line up meetings in San Francisco, Shenzhen and DC but our travel schedules kept crossing. So we settled for the next best thing: I read Breakneck and we recorded this conversation!
Jump to the best parts:
Exclusive for members: Our internal research notes
For every major EV conversation, we build a research pack to sharpen the discussion. For the first time, we’ve adapted our research notes for members.
Inside you’ll find:
✅ Dan Wang’s essential ideas, quotes, and strategic claims
✅ Key concepts from Breakneck distilled into usable mental models
✅ Context on AI, energy, process knowledge, export controls, demographics & more
Think of it as a reader’s guide to Dan’s thesis – a way to follow the conversation while also drawing on the deeper research that informs it.