Nick Denton: Our New Chinese Overlords

Nick is an entrepreneur and journalist. He was the founder of Gawker Media, the publisher of Gizmodo, and the editor of Valleywag. He began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times — as a derivatives and tech correspondent — and later founded a Silicon Valley news aggregator called Moreover Technologies. He’s now working on Maze.com, which hosts a network map of near-future timelines. He is also a huge China enthusiast — and he believes that if the Twentieth Century was America’s, this one is very much China’s. We are a bit player and will soon be a distant second to the next true global hegemon.

For two clips of our convo — on the growing dominance of China, and the Chinese outcompeting Elon Musk — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: raised in Hampstead in the lower-middle class; a Jewish mom who fled the Communists in Hungary; growing up on sci-fi; Asimov’s Foundation; attending Oxford like his father; game theory; being a young reporter in London, Hungary, Romania, and Singapore; pioneering the internet in the ‘90s; Foundation parallels with Singapore; Lee Kuan Yew; Chinese pragmatism; Taiwan; EVs in China; Musk’s companies; tech theft between the US and China; DOGE and Trump reigning in Musk; Peter Thiel; Andy Grove; Uber’s Travis Kalanick; Kara Swisher; Oculus’ Palmer Luckey; how Silicon Valley is PR obsessed; Zuckerberg; David Sacks and crypto; Andreessen; drones; Ukraine; Thatcher; housing crisis in the UK; Orbán; the German Greens; Russian expansionism; the Poles and nukes; Trump’s tariffs; Tucker’s interview with Putin; the growing US-Europe rift; Greenland; AI and DeepSeek; and Nick’s predictions as a futurist.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Douglas Murray on Israel and Gaza, Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Francis Collins on faith and science and Covid, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee on Covid’s fallout, and Paul Elie on his book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod with Mike White:

Brilliant interview. I can’t believe he writes and directs the whole thing himself (he’s the real star of The White Lotus), and his characters are so authentic and well-drawn. Fascinating to learn more about him.

Another fan:

Great podcast, great interview. There’s something disarming about Mike’s almost stream-of-consciousness manner of speaking. The White Lotus is brilliant, and I’m glad you also loved Enlightened — an absolute gem.

And another:

I don’t listen to the Dishcast every week — Lenten obligations! — but my husband and I have been displaced by the Eaton Fire and are now living in a new area (but close to the grandchildren, which is a blessing). I had been sick for a week and got out of the house for the first time in five days and listened to you and Mike White. It was the best medicine ever. I love The White Lotus, as do my adult children, and we have wonderful conversations about it.

I just fell in love with Mike. It was just such a joyful conversation. I loved his talking about how you inspired him. It rang true. Just thank you again. I was trying to “fast” from politics and news, but when I read the description of that episode, I thought even Jesus would say, “OK, you need to listen.”

The fan mail keeps coming:

The episode was indeed “a blast.” I’ve been a fan of White’s for a long time but hadn’t ever heard him interviewed before. What a topic list: his dad (a hero of mine), reality TV (he changed my mind a bit), White Lotus (without giving decent credit to Patrick Schwarzenegger’s damn wonderful performance!), Camille Paglia, growing weary with Judith Butler … what a delight.

And while I can imagine some people might have had a hard time following him and his peripatetic thinking process, but I was well prepared, having seen Lily Tomlin in one of her finest early characters:

This is an episode for the vaults! Thank you!

Here’s a guest rec:

Very good to see you tackling the subject of lab leak and doing it so well. A conversation that might enliven the Dishcast would be one with Richard Ebright of Rutgers, who’s been on the side of the angels in this debate from the get-go. At last he’s now being vindicated ,as even the NYT (!) now admits it was had. Given that there is some evidence to suggest that the same WIV and “Batwoman” are now conducting similar experiments with even more lethal viruses (MERSS, for one), the outbreak of the next pandemic may only be a matter of time.

By the way, I enjoyed the Spinoza episode so much I bought the book.

Thanks for the rec, but Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee will be on the podcast soon to discuss their book, In Covid’s Wake. Another writes:

Longtime reader and listener here. I wanted to thank you for mentioning our campaign to enact ranked choice voting here in DC during your most recent appearance on Bill Maher’s show:

As you likely know, over 73% of DC voters approved Initiative 83 this past November. This was a real District-wide win; the initiative won a supermajority in all eight wards and a majority of all 144 precincts in the city (unheard of for a District-wide initiative).

April marks a real ramp-up of budget negotiations with the DC Council and the mayor’s office to advocate for full funding and implementation of Initiative 83. The mayor and the chair of the Council were and are publicly against Initiative 83 — and we are working to lobby them and the rest of the Council to respect the will of the voters and support funding for education, voter registration, and Board of Election implementation.

Good luck. Let’s hope our colonial overlords in the Congress don’t intervene.

Next up, a bunch of readers continue to debate the lab leak theory. First is “some dude who worked in a biochemistry lab for over a decade and now does philosophy”:

I saw you on Real Time last night and I appreciated your passion when speaking of preserving the rule of law in this country and concerns you expressed for the people that have been left behind by this economy. I also agree that it is vitally important for the average American to be able to trusts experts, especially scientists. And though I would argue the general lack of trust is due more to the anti-intellectualism, lack of curiosity, and deficient understanding of many Americans, the scientific community should stand up for the best evidence even when it is inconvenient and avoid politically motivated communications. I also believe that should go for journalists.

As such, I did have a bit of an issue with the certainty you seemed to project regarding how the first strain of SarsCov2 found its way into the human population.