Henry Farrell

The Folly of Decoupling From China – with Abraham Newman

On May 14, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to break the United States’ economic relationship with China. “There are many things we could do,” he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “We could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion.” It was Trump’s most extreme anti-China rhetoric to date, but it wasn’t out of step with the mood in Washington. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that China has transformed from a competitor into an adversary, and perhaps even an enemy.

As tensions have mounted as a result of the

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Folly of Decoupling From China,” Foreign Affairs (online), June 3, 2020.

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Other Writing:

Interview

The Most Important Foreign Policy Speech in Years

February 6, 2026 pin Weaponized Interdependence
A Conversation with Ezra Klein. “Beneath Carney’s analysis of what is happening is an idea I’ve been following for some time: weaponized interdependence. This idea comes from the international-relations theorists and professors Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman in their book “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.” The basic concept is that over time, ...
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Essay

Information Attacks on Democracies – with Bruce Schneier

November 15, 2018 Lawfare with Bruce Schneier
Democracy is an information system. That’s the starting place of our new paper: “Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy.” In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves of Internet disinformation attacks. Specifically, we wanted to explain why the same disinformation campaigns that act as a stabilizing influence ...
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