Bari’s Picks of the Week: What Are You Afraid Of?

One meeting grabbed headlines this week—President Donald Trump’s sit-down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The two appear to have covered everything from rare-earth minerals to soybeans, with Trump nudging down his tariffs in return for Beijing’s flexibility.

There’s much more on their summit below, including illuminating pieces on how China really sees the U.S., and trade concessions Trump couldn’t afford to make.

And that’s not all. We’ve published so many fantastic pieces this week that I’m excited to highlight, such as an essay from our America at 250 series by the Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad, as well as a story you need to read in advance of New York City’s mayoral election on Tuesday.

Let’s get to it . . .

Trump’s China Summit

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Busan, South Korea, during a rare moment of direct diplomacy between the two world powers. (Bernd von Jutrczenka/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Writing just before the Trump-Xi summit, former national security adviser Matt Pottinger warned that the stakes of this deal have never been higher. That’s in large part because he was in Beijing during Trump’s 2017 visit there, in which a leading Chinese official spelled out his vision of an enervated U.S. becoming “an agrarian commune beholden to Beijing.” He also spelled out why America cannot sell China the thing it wants more than anything: our advanced semiconductors. It’s a tremendous insider’s account of the real stakes behind Trump’s attempts to lower the temperature with China.

Speaking of, the possibility of China seizing or destroying U.S. semiconductor factories in Taiwan looms large these days, and that threat isn’t going away anytime soon.

If Beijing looks to take the island by force, and the U.S. can no longer produce the chips powering everything from our leading AI models to cutting-edge weapons, that’s a huge problem. Luckily, one Silicon Valley whiz kid says he has a solution—what our Sean Fischer calls “a novel production method that will enable chips to be made rapidly at scale—for dramatically less than the current cost.” Read Sean’s fantastic report.

Meanwhile, David Feith, who helped run China policy out of the State Department in Trump’s first term, and Chris McGuire, who served on the National Security Council under President Joe Biden, warn that the U.S. must view certain Chinese investments in this country with suspicion. Politicians might like the idea of Chinese auto factories opening up stateside and giving Americans jobs. But they warn such companies will still be beholden to Beijing, and that the factories and products they build in the U.S. will likely be the 21st-century equivalent of a Trojan horse.

One Iranian’s Woman’s Journey to Freedom

Masih Alinejad was exiled from her homeland for challenging the Iranian regime. (Hossein Fatemi/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

The Iranian-born journalist Masih Alinejad is hard to kill. Just ask the Iranian government, which has been trying to do just that since she arrived in America more than a decade ago. And just this week, two of her would-be assassins were sentenced to 25 years in prison for a murder-for-hire plot in 2022.

So how did Alinejad become such a threat to Tehran’s theocrats? Read her riveting piece on how she went from chanting “death to America” as a child to becoming a proud American herself.

The Group That Gave Us Mamdani

With Zohran Mamdani poised to be New York City’s next mayor, the DSA is on the verge of its biggest victory yet. (Katie Godowski via Getty Images)

With Zohran Mamdani still leading in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s mayoral election, it’s worth taking a close look at the soil from which he sprung, namely the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). And this standout essay by Eli Lake does just that, exploring how a relatively moderate band of left-leaning folks became increasingly radical and authoritarian over time.

Now, with Mamdani, the DSA is on the verge of its biggest victory yet. But how did it become such a powerful force within the Democratic Party and American political life more broadly? Read Eli’s piece to find out. And while you’re at it, listen to his superb new episode of Breaking History on the subject.

That’s it from me. But to celebrate Halloween, we have plenty of spooky things in store for you this weekend, like Kat Rosenfield on the new Frankenstein movie, Liel Liebowitz on the enduring wisdom of Scooby Doo, and—perhaps most terrifyingly of all—Will Rahn’s attempt at Pilates.

See you next week.