I'm delighted to share my cover essay in the new issue of @ForeignAffairs, “How to Fight an Economic War.” It examines the rapidly evolving geoeconomic landscape and proposes a way forward for the United States. (1/6)

Everyone talks about the petrodollar but very few people can actually explain why it matters. Watch the full episode on YouTube for the complete conversation. @edwardfishman #whatnowpodcast

According to @edwardfishman, a handful of low-cost drone and missile strikes changed the way military strategists think about one of the world's most important waterways—the Strait of Hormuz. Watch the full episode on YouTube for the complete conversation. #WhatNowPodcast

🇫🇷 Very excited for Chokepoints to be published in French on June 17 🇫🇷

Agree with @edwardfishman. As @rishisunak says in his @thetimes essay, the UK's control over a precursor to vaccines deterred other countries from depriving it of vaccines during Covid. The art of geoeconomic rivalry is to control chokepoints. @edwardfishman wrote the book on that, literally: bit.ly/4gbQTKa

Insightful WSJ piece by @DanielYergin on how it could take years before global energy flow returns back to “normal”, and yet global energy diversification is well underway: “Overall, the Western Hemisphere now produces more oil than the Middle East did before the crisis. Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. Brazil produces four times as much oil as Venezuela; and in Guyana, where production began only seven years ago, output almost equals Venezuela’s. In Argentina’s Vaca Muerta region, shale oil production has grown sixfold since 2020. The current disruption will propel more oil and gas investment in the Western Hemisphere and Africa. Diversification goes beyond oil and gas. Responding to the “tanker war” during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, Saudi Arabia built variety in the form of a pipeline system that now moves 7 million barrels of oil a day west to the Red Sea. Abu Dhabi built a pipeline looping around the Strait of Hormuz and plans to double capacity by 2027. France, which once depended on oil for electric generation, now relies mainly on nuclear. Japan led the development of the LNG industry to push oil out of its electric generation. The growing scale of wind and solar adds further diversification for electric generation.” wsj.com/opinion/energy-marke…

NEW: BIS just issued guidance stating that licenses are required for advanced AI chip exports to China-headquartered firms located outside of China (e.g. a Tencent subsidy in Malaysia). The reason they had to issue this statement is BIS’ non-enforcement of certain export controls have (potentially inadvertently) have allowed Chinese companies to both buy Nvidia Blackwell chips and make AI chips at TSMC, all legally and without a license. This is a HUGE problem. Since May 2025, BIS has publicly stated that it is not enforcing certain license requirements related to AI chip shipments, and as a result, apparently Chinese companies’ overseas subsidiaries (e.g., Tencent Malaysia) have been able to legally buy Nvidia Blackwell chips without an export license - even though this had been restricted since 2023. Chinese companies have been buying these chips, very likely at scale. And because BIS has not updated export control regulations to clearly state what it IS enforcing, all of this was legal. It actually gets worse. BIS’ non-enforcement announcement in May 2025 extends to existing US restrictions that prevent TSMC from making AI chips for Chinese companies. US export control regulations require TSMC to do enhanced due diligence on any orders that could be an AI chip, to make sure it isn’t illegally being made for a Chinese company (directly or indirectly). But these regulations require a license requirement to be in effect to work. And those license requirements largely were not being enforced. This clarification does make clear that Blackwell shipments to China-headquartered companies outside of China are now illegal again—which is good, although obviously we have to see how many shipments have already gone to assess how much damage was done. BIS’ statement acknowledges these shipments have been happening when it says companies who bought chips under this loophole don’t have to stop using them. HOWEVER, this statement does NOT say that BIS will enforce the parts of US regulations requiring TSMC to do enhanced due diligence on AI chip orders. This is a massive loophole that still needs to be closed. If Chinese companies can make chips at TSMC (including by using third-country cutouts to receive the chips), there is no point to restricting China’s access to AI chips or advanced chip-making tools. Ultimately, BIS desperately needs to issue a regulation that clarifies what US export control policy for AI chips is. The reason this happened is because BIS said it is not enforcing existing regulations, but didn’t make clear what specific provisions its non-enforcement applied to, and didn’t update regulations to align with what it IS enforcing - which created massive loopholes, some of which still persist.

I’m so excited for the launch of my new show, Mary in America. We hope you love it. Thank you to our first three guests: Al Roth, Xochitl Gonzalez, and @LAmineddoleh. Please subscribe now, on YouTube & wherever you get your podcasts. And follow here for clips and episodes!

.@edwardfishman discusses the new economic order taking shape today—and argues that U.S. lawmakers should step in to “prevent capricious actions that erode the foundations of American economic power.” foreignaffairs.com/united-st…

Terrific video from Rebecca Lissner, who is leading our Future of American Strategy initiative. She spoke with more than 300 people representing 29 states about what they want from U.S. foreign policy and found that their answers were remarkably consistent: Americans of both parties want strong U.S. leadership abroad.

thanks to the the amazing @edwardfishman (MR. CHOKEPOINTS!!!) for facilitating a lively chat with @SoumayaKeynes and me about HOW TO WIN A TRADE WAR

China -- via its massive stockpile -- is the new central bank of oil, replacing Saudi Arabia ... Helped save the US and Europe from a much bigger oil shock

Bay Area friends - I'll be at @Stanford tomorrow (Weds, May 27) at 4pm to discuss my @ForeignAffairs essay "How to Fight an Economic War," my book Chokepoints, and how economic warfare is changing the world, in conversation w/@kath_stoner Register here: cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/event…

An excellent conversation with @AaronBMacLean for @schoolofwarpod, recorded at @NYHistory last week: youtube.com/watch?v=Snva0yxC…

Worthwhile take from @edwardfishman in @CFR_org outlining possible economic orders. cfr.org/articles/the-age-of-… I believe we will have to go to a variant of the bloc model he described. A revised #Globalism will be far too insecure & politically impossible while pure transactionalism will be too expensive & also won't offer enough scale to ensure security when competing with #China. In some ways this is the broad direction #Trump seems to be moving though it will need more strategic coherence over time to maximize effectiveness. #Geoeconomics

“President Trump did not start the age of economic warfare. Nor will it end when he leaves office. Every U.S. president in the 21st century has imposed sanctions at roughly twice the rate of his predecessor, and in recent years this trend has gone global,” writes expert @edwardfishman. “The world is drifting into an every-nation-for-itself tussle, uncomfortably reminiscent of the beggar-thy-neighbor breakdown of the 1930s.” Read more: cfr.org/articles/the-age-of-…