Henry Farrell

How the U.S. Stumbled Into Using Chips as a Weapon Against China – with Abraham Newman

Last October, the Biden administration unleashed one of its biggest countermeasures to date against China’s military ambitions: export controls on, among other things, cutting-edge semiconductors used for AI systems. The new rule restricts not just U.S. companies but any manufacturer that uses specified U.S. software or technology to build their products. As Kevin Wolf, who ran the U.S. export-control regime from 2010 to 2017, put it, foreign dependence on U.S. equipment means that every such chip “on the planet” is now subject to U.S. controls.

The measure has alarmed China. President Xi Jinping blames the U.S. for orchestrating a campaign to encircle, suppress and contain his country, while commentators claim that the U.S. is drawing closed a “Silicon Curtain.”

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “How the U.S. Stumbled Into Using Chips as a Weapon Against China,” Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2023.

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Other Writing:

Academic Article

Brexit, Voice and Loyalty: Rethinking Electoral Politics in an Age of Interdependence – with Abraham Newman

February 1, 2017 Review of International Political Economy24 with Abraham Newman
In the wake of the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union, known as Brexit, scholars of international affairs have a chance to reflect on what this unanticipated event means for global politics. Many scholars have started applying standard political economy models based on the distributional consequences of trade or the sociotropic sources of ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Collective Goods in the Local Economy: The Packaging Machinery Cluster in Bologna,” Local Production Systems in Europe: Reconstruction and Innovation – with Ann-Louise Holten – ed. Colin Crouch, Patrick Le Galès, Carlo Trigilia and Helmut Voelzkow

February 26, 2004 ed. Colin Crouch Patrick Le Galès Carlo Trigilia and Helmut Voelzkow Oxford University Press 2004 with Ann-Louise Holten
The debate about the industrial districts of central and north-eastern Italy has evolved over the last 25 years. Initially, many saw them as evidence that small firms could prosper contrary to the arguments of the proponents of big industry. Debate focussed on whether small firm industrial districts had a genuine independent existence, or were the ...
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