In this episode of Decouple, Chris sits down with Kyle Chan of the High Capacity Substack to unpack what “AI with Chinese characteristics” actually means. Rather than framing artificial intelligence as a simple US–China race to AGI, they explore how each country is building AI inside very different institutional systems. The conversation covers DeepSeek, compute constraints, quantization, and the surprising reality that many Chinese AI labs operate with far less capital than their American counterparts while still publishing at the frontier.

They dig into China’s AI enabling stack, from universities and state-backed labs to energy buildout and the Western Data, Eastern Compute strategy, and examine how AI is being embedded into manufacturing, logistics, grid management, and public services as a tool of state capacity. The discussion also tackles regulatory differences, CCP oversight, training data controls, and the disciplining of China’s tech sector, alongside contrasts with US AI development shaped by venture capital, platform economics, and liability management. This is a deep dive into how institutions shape technology, and why the real story may not be who wins the race, but how AI is absorbed into two very different political economies.

Listen to Decouple on:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4

• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple

• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44

• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rss

Website: https://www.decouple.media

In this special episode of Decouple, Chris Keefer speaks with Ken Petrunik, one of the few leaders in the Western nuclear industry who has taken large reactors from first concrete to operation under budget and ahead of schedule. Petrunik’s career spans Canada’s nuclear golden age and its export era, with senior roles in Romania, Argentina, and China, including leading the Qinshan Phase III CANDU reactors, delivered ahead of schedule and under budget under a fixed price engineering, procurement, and construction contract. The conversation traces how Canada once built nuclear plants at scale and how that environment shaped project managers capable of carrying real responsibility.

We deep dive how nuclear projects are actually delivered, including construction sequencing, labor productivity, schedule control, and on site authority. Petrunik recounts moments when projects nearly failed and explains how early decisions and transparent coordination allowed recovery before delays became irreversible. The episode also examines what was lost as Canada’s build capability faded and what today’s nuclear programs can still learn from the people who led projects when reactors were routinely built.

Listen to Decouple on:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4

• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple

• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44

• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rss

Website: https://www.decouple.media

In this episode of Decouple we deep dive the European Pressurised Reactor and what its troubled construction history reveals about the real constraints on nuclear build out in the modern West. The conversation traces how a design intended to satisfy every regulator through a design philosophy of extreme redundancy and conservative safety margins instead exposed the limits of Western construction capacity, supply chain readiness, and project management culture.

The episode also places the EPR in context alongside other large reactor designs, including AP1000 and APR 1400, highlighting how different philosophies around active redundancy, passive safety, modularity, and operational flexibility shape construction risk and cost. We explore why Germany and Korea were able to execute reactors with highly redundant active safety systems successfully when industrial capacity was warm, and why the EPR pushed that same philosophy beyond the point of diminishing returns.

Listen to Decouple on:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4

• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple

• Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44

• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rss

Website: https://www.decouple.media