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:

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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Chapter in an Edited Volume

Public Governance and Global Politics after COVID-19, COVID-19 and World Order: The Future of Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation – with Hahrie Han – eds. Hal Brand and Francis J. Gavin

September 8, 2020 eds. Hal Brand and Francis J. Gavin Johns Hopkins University 2020 with Hahrie Han
The COVID-19 crisis is a major shock to the existing complex of global rules sometimes described as the “liberal international order.” This order heavily emphasized global openness in trade and information flows, and it favored the presumptive liberalization of non-democratic societies that would naturally emerge from it. Yet the liberal order fell short of its ...
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