“Panopticons and Chokepoints,” an interview with Richard Byrne

A new view of international relations puts global networks – and how they can be weaponized – at its center. What’s the future of regulation in this new landscape?

“The debate we see at the moment is never going to be about trade and open markets in the same kind of way anymore,” says Farrell. “Once the door has been opened to thinking about these things in terms of their consequences for security, different actors will enter into the scene and begin to gobble up this policy area that you think is defined in these terms, and start redefining in it in very different ways indeed…. We’re not going back to where we were – and once you’ve opened up the door to these kinds of concerns, they are going to metastasize through the entire system.

Access the full interview at the Wilson Quarterly

Other Writing:

Essay

Brexit and the Northern Irish Border

A new fight has been brewing over the consequences of Brexit for the border between Northern Ireland and the neighboring Republic of Ireland. Both British and EU negotiators have identified the border as one of the key political questions that have to be addressed early on in negotiations. It’s easy not to have a border ...
Read Article
Essay

This Is How Trump Will Smash the Machine of U.S. Economic Power

Economic security officials worked across administrations, gradually developing grand ambitions of a global order founded on financial sanctions, export controls and development of crucial technologies. Each new administration built up the economic weapons it inherited from the last and encouraged its successors to keep building the structures of American economic power. We are about to ...
Read Article