Interview with economist Tyler Cowen on Weaponized Interdependence, Big Tech, and Playing with Ideas

Whether it’s China’s influence over the NBA, the US ban of Huawei, or the EU courts asserting that countries can force Facebook to take down content globally, Henry Farrell has played a key role articulating how global economic networks can enable state coercion.

Tyler and Henry discuss these issues and more, including what a big tech breakup would mean for security and privacy, why political economics suggests Facebook’s Oversight Board won’t work, what Italy might reveal about China’s feature, his family connection to Joyce, his undying affection for My Bloody Valentine, why Philip K. Dick would have reveled in QAnon, why Twitter seems left-wing, and being a first generation academic blogger.

Henry Farrell on Weaponized Interdependence, Big Tech, and Playing with Ideas (Ep. 78, Conversations with Tyler podcast)

Learn more on the Conversations with Tyler Podcast website.

Other Writing:

Academic Article

Reducing the Transactional Value of Identity & Race – with Margaret Levi

Grieve Chelwa, Darrick Hamilton, and Avi Green explain how existing accounts of capitalism systematically neglect racial identity group stratification. Their approach points to an important comparative dimension and two significant research agendas that could supplement their arguments. First would be to inquire into the role that equal respect plays in pushing back against stratification. Second ...
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Academic Article

Analytical Democracy: A Microfoundational Approach – with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg

Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg (2023), “Analytical Democracy: A Microfoundational Approach,” American Political Science Review. 117,2:767-772. A prominent and publicly influential literature challenges the quality of democratic decision making, drawing on political science findings with specific claims about the ubiquity of cognitive bias to lament citizens’ incompetence. A competing literature in democratic theory ...
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