Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

Podbit · Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

Urgent Update- AI Sputnik Moment: Kimi K3 Released w/ Emad Mostaque | Ep. 272

Explore episode Jul 19, 2026
Education
The Yang Zhilin Story: We Trained Him and Sent Him Home

Urgent Update- AI Sputnik Moment: Kimi K3 Released w/ Emad … · Jul 19, 2026 Education

Yang Zhilin earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon — one of the world's top CS programs — then founded Recurrent AI in China while still a student and went back to build Moonshot AI. Salim Ismail points out that 70% of elite AI researchers are not US citizens; stapling a green card to every STEM PhD is the highest-ROI immigration policy change America could make. Instead, we keep sending them home.

3m 40s

Where this was said

NVIDIA Embargo Backfire and the US Immigration Failure

At 46:00 · chapter starts 45:10

Alex Wissner-Gross argues the NVIDIA chip embargo is a textbook example of a half-measure that produces the worst outcome: it incentivized Chinese labs to develop breakthrough quantization and efficiency research that now makes their models cheaper and better than if the embargo had never happened. Dave Blundin draws the Vietnam War analogy — you either go all-in and win quickly or you don't engage, but you never creep in with partial measures. The conversation shifts to Yang Zhilin: Diamandis presents the narrative that CMU trained him and America let him go. Alex Wissner-Gross adds nuance — Yang actually founded Recurrent AI in China while still a PhD student at CMU in 2016, suggesting he may have always planned to return. But the group agrees the broader principle stands: 70% of elite AI researchers are not US citizens, and the asymmetric advantage of building in America is eroding. Dave Blundin adds the data point that 80% of Chinese PhD graduates return to China — unlike Indian graduates who overwhelmingly stay.

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