Getting Started

What I've been writing recently—and how I'll be using Substack

Since leaving the White House in January, I’ve focused on three ideas that I think are absolutely crucial to understand how the world is changing today and prepare for the future.

First, I’ve argued that the Trump administration is undermining the United States’ competitive position in ways that are more profound and likely more enduring than many people realize. Amid all the ups-and-downs and back-and-forth, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. But I believe the risks to the United States’s sources of strength at home and abroad are deeper than many people realize. In an essay called “How China Wins” in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, I laid out my view:

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are ushering in an era of what can be called “mercenary multipolarity”… Trump and Xi are turning U.S.-Chinese competition into a story of two self-interested, domineering superpowers looking to squeeze countries around the world—and each other—for whatever they can get. This dramatic shift plays into China’s hands and undermines core U.S. strengths in the long-term competition over the future international order.

I elaborated on this further in an interview with The Wire China:

Beijing’s assessment right now is that the United States is dismantling, fairly systematically, the sources of its strength. The United States, in their view, is dismantling its alliance relationships and alienating much of the world. It is dismantling aspects of the U.S. science and technology ecosystem, cutting funding to some of our great universities, and making it very unappealing, if not outright impossible, for foreign talent to come do research in those universities. And it is eliminating arms of U.S. influence around the world, from USAID to Voice of America. China’s view is that the United States is, in a sense, unilaterally disarming.

Second, I’ve argued that common depictions of a U.S.-China “AI arms race” miss key aspects of China’s drive toward advanced AI and the implications for geopolitics. Last week, I wrote in an essay for the Financial Times:

Both countries are investing heavily in the technology. But, outwardly at least, they appear to be pursuing different goals. While US leaders prioritise developing the most intelligent models possible, Chinese policymakers are most focused on AI’s widespread application. To use Silicon Valley parlance, the Chinese Communist party seems far less “AGI-pilled” than their American counterparts…

What this means is that even if the US and China are running what look like different races in AI, direct competition remains intense. Whether Xi doubts AGI, feels constrained, or is concealing his intentions, there is a profound risk on both sides of “technological surprise” — when a rival gains an unexpected technological capability, it can escalate the risk of conflict…

These scenarios drive home a key strategic insight: in isolation, both the intensification of US-China rivalry and the explosion of AI breakthroughs are world-changing. Together, their simultaneity and interconnectedness creates unprecedented risk.

Third, I’ve argued that China’s global strategy is more confident, not less, in the Trump era — and Beijing has adapted not by ramping up a “charm offensive,” but rather by increasing pressure on U.S. allies that China sees as weakened due to Trump’s disdain for alliances. On the day of the EU-China Summit last month, I wrote for Foreign Policy:

China’s assessment of European power is the most important factor shaping its current diplomatic approach. The Trump administration’s recent concessions the U.S.-China trade standoff have confirmed China’s confidence in a hard-edged strategy of pressure and economic coercion—toward Europe as well as the United States and its other allies…

China remains especially diplomatically active in neighboring Southeast Asia and parts of the global south and will continue to take advantage of opportunities presented by the Trump administration. But rather than needing to launch a new systematic global bid for leadership, it feels that position is currently being handed to it. So the United States should take no comfort from the lack of a Chinese charm offensive, because what it reveals is something much deeper: Beijing’s profound confidence that it can exploit this era of “mercenary multipolarity” to its enduring advantage, at the cost of both European and American interests.

I’ll be using this Substack to discuss these ideas and many others on China, U.S.-China relations, U.S. strategy, tech, supply chains, and more.

Finally, on the theme of building new things—and thanks to Jordan Schneider’s urging to include some art/culture in every post—here’s an amazing photograph by Marc Riboud of the construction of the first bridge over the Yangtze River, taken near Wuhan in 1957: