What this domain covers
Technology has become the working currency of statecraft. Access to semiconductors, influence over technical standards, ownership of subsea cable routes and control of platform distribution now determine alignment as firmly as trade or defence agreements once did.
This domain reads the emerging order through that lens. It examines how digital capability converts into genuine influence, why some coalitions form around compute while others fracture over it, and how open societies compete on these terms without surrendering the institutional openness that makes them worth defending.
A recurring argument runs through the writing: credibility is the scarcest strategic asset a state possesses. It takes decades to accumulate, can be spent quickly, and cannot be manufactured through communications strategy.
Topics inside this page
- 01US–China RelationsTechnology competition and its second-order effects on everyone who is not the United States or China.
- 02Digital Soft PowerStandards, platforms and narrative influence — the quiet instruments that shape more outcomes than declarations.
- 03Global AlliancesThe coalitions now forming around compute, data and industrial policy rather than geography.
- 04Democratic ResilienceDefending open systems under sustained information pressure without becoming closed in the process.
- 05Institutional CredibilityWhy trust compounds, why it is the scarcest strategic asset, and how states spend it carelessly.
All topics above are covered within this domain page — they are not separate pages.
Chips, standards and cables now shape alliances as decisively as treaties once did. The difference is that most of this statecraft happens in technical committees rather than at summits. Anubhav Sachar
Areas of focus
Each area anchors a distinct stream of writing within Geopolitics.
US–China Relations
Technology competition and its second-order effects on everyone who is not the United States or China.
Digital Soft Power
Standards, platforms and narrative influence — the quiet instruments that shape more outcomes than declarations.
Global Alliances
The coalitions now forming around compute, data and industrial policy rather than geography.
Democratic Resilience
Defending open systems under sustained information pressure without becoming closed in the process.
Institutional Credibility
Why trust compounds, why it is the scarcest strategic asset, and how states spend it carelessly.
Writing in Geopolitics
The Compute Bloc: How Semiconductors Redrew the Map of Alliances
Access to advanced compute has displaced access to energy as the organising principle of twenty-first century coalitions — with consequences for states that produce neither.
Digital Soft Power Is Won in Standards Committees
The unglamorous institutional work of setting technical standards determines more geopolitical outcomes than most summits. A case for treating standards bodies as strategic terrain.
Institutional Credibility as Strategic Infrastructure
Nations that preserve trustworthy institutions attract capital, talent and partnership on materially better terms. Credibility is infrastructure, and it depreciates without maintenance.
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