YouSaid · the spoken record

Edward Fishman

lines on the record: 37
first: 2025-02-23
most recent: 2025-02-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Could be different with respect to the Trump administration is that the current Trump administration is very clear that they want to boost domestic U.S. oil and gas production. And so there probably are elements within the current Trump administration who say that, look, if Russian barrels are coming off the market and raising prices, this will create more profitable opportunities for shale in the US to boost production. And it wouldn't be such a bad thing for American companies to take market share from Rossneft over the long term. I think that in some ways, because of the Trump administration's perspective on fossil fuels, they may not have the same qualms. I think that the Biden administration did about temporarily raising oil prices.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I think that's right. And I think one lesson of the Biden administration's sanctions campaign against Russia in 2022 is that economic warfare now has just as much sort of political downsides as military force does. And I think it's fascinating to see in the final months of the Biden administration. It seemed like the president, you know, President Biden had an easier time deciding to allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to strike targets inside Ukraine than he was about aggressively sanctioning Russia's oil sales. So it just goes to show that we sort of got into this age of economic warfare because we didn't think there was any political support for military force. And so we need to find something different. But then when you're thinking about sanctioning Russian oil or sanctioning big Chinese tech giants, you really have to think about the political ramifications at home and be honest about the limits of what we're willing to do. One final point, though, on oil that”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, Russia. Final week actually of the Biden administration, the Biden administration posted secondary sanctions on a Chinese port, an oil terminal that had done business with a sanctioned Russian vessel. And that same week, the Port Authority in Shandong province banned sanctioned vessels from entering its port. So I do think that Chinese companies are sensitive to the idea of being sanctioned by the United States, something that they really want to avoid to the extent that they can.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be successful again. I think the other point, though, beyond just pressure is, you know, what is the goal? Is the goal to get a deal or is the goal to try to cause regime change? My own interpretation of maximum pressure 1.0 is that there wasn't really that much of a serious vision of what a deal could look like. And it was really just to, you know, Trump didn't like the original Iran nuclear deal and he wanted to bludgeon Iran with sanctions as much as possible. I think that there is a real prospect right now that you could get a deal with Iran, given how vulnerable they are, given how weak they are. And so my hope is that the current Trump administration views maximum pressure 2.0 as a way to advance diplomacy. So that will mean working with China, working with the other members of the P5 plus 1 to try to bring Iran back to the negotiating table and staying close with allies as opposed to threatening them with tariffs and other punitive measures.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chinese refineries to stop buying Iranian oil. Chinese banks to stop paying Iran for that oil. And so I think the Trump administration is going to have to decide to what extent this Iran maximum pressure 2.0 strategy is a priority of its China relationship. I think one of the lessons that made the China sanctions of the Obama administration. So Obama successful at getting China, for instance, to cut its imports of Iranian oil was that it was the top diplomatic priority of Obama's China policy. Oftentimes in diplomatic meetings, you can tell what the biggest ask is because it's the first thing that's mentioned. When Obama would speak to Shi Jinping in 2012 or when Secretary Clinton or Secretary of State Kerry would speak to their Chinese counterparts in 2012, 2013, Iran was the first topic that was raised. And I think you're going to need to see that from the Trump administration to”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that Iran is going to be a very intensive focus of the Trump administration in its first year. The Iranians have been implicated in plots to assassinate President Trump. And I think that those types of things are often taken personally. I also think that there is quite a bit of consensus within the new Trump administration that Iran's nuclear program is an incredibly serious threat that because of the weakening of Iran's proxy forces in places like Lebanon and even their own air defenses through Israeli strikes that there may be an incentive for Iran to race for a nuclear weapon now. And so I think that, you know, in this first year of the Trump administration, Iran's going to be a very strong priority. I think the challenge today that the Trump administration faces is that Iran is effectively selling all of its oil to China. And so sanctions against Iran aren't really against Iran. They're against China. It's persuading”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Continue from the Biden administration. Biden has had some success, you know, for instance, bringing the Dutch and the Japanese in particular into at least some alignment with U.S. policy. I think that the risk that the current Trump administration runs is tariffs, other types of use of punitive economic statecraft against allies is going to cause hedging behavior. It's going to make these countries in Europe and Asia less willing to just go along with U.S. policies.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big giant multilateral formal fora. It has been really the US showing that it's willing to act unilaterally. I think this is an uncomfortable lesson for some people. But I think if you look at the Huawei export controls, they really, you know, the Trump administration expended tremendous diplomatic capital to try to get the UK, Germany, the closest US allies to sort of join their crusade against Huawei. And they failed. The diplomacy did not work. What worked was the threat of the foreign direct product rule. And basically threatening these countries with penalties that they would, they themselves would be cut off from semiconductor manufacturing equipment from the US, that they would be cut off from software from the United States if they were to continue selling kit to Huawei. So I think that it's incumbent on the U.S. to coordinate with allies. I think that that's one thing that the current Trump administration should, I think.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Look, you know, China is the world's leading exporter by far, the number one trading partner of 120 different countries. And so I think one of the big differences between COCOM and the China challenge today is a lot of these other US allies, be it in Europe or Asia, have a lot to lose. And they really fear the ramifications of joining export controls on China. They also have big companies that make a lot of money selling stuff to China, right? I mean, just think about how much money ASML could make if they were selling their EUV machines to China. Think about, you know, the revenue that is foregone by Japanese companies if they're not selling different components to China, right? So I think it's much harder to build that kind of a coalition today. And I think what you've seen is what has been most impactful isn't necessarily some”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of Chinese 5G technology, particularly through Huawei, as something that could eventually give China a choke point that I could weaponize that was on par with the dollar, something that would give China tremendous infrastructural economic power over other countries. And so there was a real desire to check Huawei's expansion, particularly its 5G equipment. They initially tried to do this through an entity listing in 2019 that has some impact but doesn't work quite as well as they want. And then the real kind of innovation.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It almost goes out of business. They stop, I think there's a statement which says that the primary activities of the company have ceased, which is pretty remarkable. And I think that for people in the Trump administration, the more hawkish wing of the first Trump administration, they wind up seeing this as an aha moment that we can use these sort of export controls as a way to really punish specific Chinese companies. Huawei, the interesting thing there is, you know, now we think of the Chinese semiconductor export controls primarily driven by the desire to stay ahead of China and artificial intelligence and win the race toward AGI. The Huawei export controls of 2019 and then when they become broader in 2020 through the foreign direct product role are really motivated primarily by a desire to check Huawei's 5G dominance. I think that the Trump administration, the first Trump administration rightly saw the diffusion”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know we oftentimes say, Oh, well, is it because China is uniquely vulnerable to semiconductor export controls? I think to a certain extent it is an important choke point over China, but I also think financial sanctions on Huawei would have been even more impactful probably in 2019 to advance the goals of the Trump administration. You know, the semiconductor part of the story, and I think, Chris, this is something you tell in your book extremely well as well, is something that the Trump administration also kind of comes across almost by accident through initially the ZTE putting ZTE on the denial order on them in April of 2018. And this ironically also comes out of the fact that ZTE had violated Iran's sanctions and then had kind of grossly violated a settlement that Wilbur Ross had signed, I think in his first week as Commerce Secretary in 2017. And within a few weeks of that denial order being placed on ZTE, this Chinese telecom company in April of 2018,”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think one thing just to state out of the front, you know, there's a question people ask, you know, why have technology export controls been kind of the forefront of U.S. policy toward China? Why is the Commerce Department playing such a big role and the Treasury Department not playing as big of a role? We can intellectualize it. We can come up with really neat answers to it. I think there's also contingent factors, historically contingent factors, one being that during the first Trump administration, Stephen Minuchin and the Treasury Department were not game for an aggressive China policy. They were pushed back against things like export controls on Huawei, for instance. And so in some ways it was personality driven that I think if you had had a more hawkish treasury secretary, maybe you would have seen financial sanctions on Huawei, for instance, in 2019 instead of adding them to the entity list, which is what wound up happening. So just want to sort of put that on the table at the beginning.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think it's remarkable, Chris, that Nord Stream 2 is signed in 2015, right? I mean, that just goes to show the level that I think in some ways Putin was right. You know, the Europeans didn't have the stomach for continued economic pressure on Russia. They're going ahead and signing deals that are making them even more dependent on Russian gas right after this. And I think Nord Stream 2 is only the most well-known example of your point of kind of Russian infrastructural plays that they made. I mean, you also have the power of Siberia pipeline with China that they put in place. I think this is both to, I think, mitigate the harm that the West could impose on Russia, but also potentially to try to gain some leverage over China. And that's why you see today China nervous and wary of potentially signing another power of Siberia pipeline deal.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not in the immediate response so much as it's the lack of follow through. And then, of course, I think this is a really dangerous lesson Putin winds up taking into the 2022 invasion.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, the formal abandonment of the Novorossia project. I think we'll never know really the extent to which they were deterred by sanctions. I think it's possible there was an effect. I think the thing that looks worse in retrospect isn't so much what the Obama administration did in 2014-2015. It's the lack of follow-up. It's the fact that after this Minsk agreement, Minsk II was signed in February of 2015, the sanctions were kind of allowed to atrophy, both under the Obama administration in the last year and a half of its time in office, as well as during the four years, the entire four years of the Trump administration. And so I think the lesson that Russia winds up taking from the 2014 sanctions is that sanctions really can be really bad for us. And we really need to prepare in the event that we get hit again. But the West just doesn't have the will to keep ratcheting up the pressure against us over time. So I think that is really where the failure of the 2014 sanction.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the Russia sanctions of 2014, I think, in retrospect look a lot worse, I think, than the Iran sanctions leading up to 2015. Part of this was the fact that the crisis took the U.S. government by surprise. So there wasn't sanctions ready to go. It wasn't like Iran where there were years and years to kind of fine-tune the approach. This was something that the Obama administration and its European allies had to sort of put together on the fly. I do think it's possible that the sanctions had some level of a deterrent effect on Putin. You know, Putin's had this plan to basically reconstitute what he called Novarissia, which are a handful of territories in Ukraine's eastern and southern regions, that a number of his propagandists put forward in 2014 and 2015. And it really wasn't until these sectoral sanctions were put in place in that summer that you got the first Minsk agreement, the second Minsk agreement, which freezes the line.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A vulnerability for Russia, right? It's in some ways, I think one of the interesting lessons here is that the more interconnected an economy is, the more vulnerable they are to”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Process payments, but they can't get loans, medium and long term debt, they can't raise equity on European capital markets. And so I think it's a bit jargony, but the idea there is not to create some sort of immediate crisis in Russia, but really to prevent big Russian companies and banks from growing over time. It's more of kind of constraining the economic horizons of Russia as opposed to creating an immediate crisis. I think one of the ironies, though, is in the second half of 2014 you have the oil price collapse. You see oil prices go from over $100 a barrel to nearly $50 a barrel in a matter of six months. And as a result, even though these sanctions were relatively mild, they wind up becoming part of this flywheel that pushes the Russian economy into a really dramatic crisis in the winter of 2014-2015. And so to your point, Chris, the fact that Russia is so interconnected winds up becoming”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, yeah. So with Iran, the main sanction that the US used, the most powerful sanction we used was blocking sanctions. That's really when a target is fully cut off from the U.S. financial system. They can't transact with U.S. banks. And they also, if to the extent they have assets in the U.S., they're frozen. With the U.S. sanctions against Russia, blocking sanctions were considered too much of a risk. And particularly a financial risk. Another piece of context here is that we're still in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in the Eurozone crisis is very much still going on. And so there's real concern about financial contagion in Europe. And so coupled with sort of the European Union, the Obama administration comes up with this idea of scalpel-like sanctions or capital market sanctions more specifically, where big Russian banks and energy companies are cut off from financing from US and European banks. So they can still transact. They can still”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obama administration so long to develop sectoral sanctions against Russia. Again, just to go back to the timeline, the Ukraine annexation or the Crimean annexation happens in March of 2014, and the first sectoral sanctions that happened until July. I think a lot of that is officials just trying to get comfortable with the idea of what it means to impose sanctions on Russia. And I think you also see that there's real concern about blowback. And I think this is a big theme that we now see in economic statecraft against China, which is, you know, it's not just that you worry about can we sanction Russia? Will it hurt the Russian economy? Will it change Putin's calculus? It's, you know, how is this going to affect the American economy? How's this going to affect the global financial system? And will we have political support? Are we going to lose the next election because of these sanctions on Russia? And those were real concerns for the Obama administration in 2014.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of confidence in the use of sanctions as a tool of statecraft. U.S. officials were, in some ways, like it was, and I was there at the time at the State Department. It was even for those of us who were true believers in sanctions, it was almost inspiring to see that, wait, we just froze Iran's nuclear program without firing a shot. This was just through the use of signing documents at the Treasury Department and the State Department. And so I think it was natural that policymakers were attracted to the use of sanctions against Russia. But I think that there was a big difference, which of course is that Russia was a very large economy. It was the eighth largest economy in the world at the time. I think at the time its GDP was larger than all the other economies under US sanctions combined. It was also the world's largest producer of hydrocarbons, so oil plus natural gas. So it was a much harder sanctions target than Iran. I think that helps explain why it took the”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, yeah. I mean, I think this is an important area where it's important to think about the history and the chronology because I think folks often think of Iran sanctions in isolation from Russia sanctions and isolation from China export controls. But oftentimes it's the same officials in the situation room making decisions on all of them. And so the context is very important. And I think one of the more interesting historical dates that we have in the book is November 24th of 2013, which is the day that the US signed the Joint Plan of Action with Iran. So the original nuclear deal that froze Iran's nuclear program. And it was also the same day that you first had 100,000 protesters pour onto the Maidan in Kiev, which of course starts the crisis that leads to the annexation of Crimea just a couple months later. And so I think this parallel is so important because the Ukraine crisis of 2014 really starts at the high point.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's because At the scale that Iran would need to have a fully thriving oil sector with significant export revenues that then they then could use freely around the world, it's really hard to do that through one small Chinese bank that's under U.S. sanctions.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, sure. So the way that, for instance, the Iran oil sanctions work, which were the most, I think, important ones, was they really worked through the threat of financial sanctions on foreign banks. So if you think about it, when Iran is selling an oil shipment to a Chinese refinery, it's getting paid through the banking system. And ideally, it's getting paid in a hard currency like dollars. There's going to be a Chinese bank on the other side of that transaction. And so what the US realized was it could go to those Chinese banks and say, look, if you pay Iran and you don't comply with the protocols we put in place, we will sanction you. And that means that you will be fully cut off from the dollar. Even banks in China, even banks in places like India and the UAE, being cut off from the dollar was something they weren't willing to risk. And it's certainly not willing to risk just because they wanted to facilitate transactions for Iran's oil sale.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so banks really can no longer view sanctions violations as a cost of doing business. I think the other factor here, too, is during the Obama administration, you have a bipartisan supermajority in Congress led by people like Bob Menendez, the former New Jersey senator, and Mark Kirk, who at the time was a Republican senator from Illinois, who basically come up with really draconian sanctions laws that pass with veto-proof majorities. And so what that does is it kind of forces the Obama administration to be much more aggressive than it would otherwise be. And as a result, you know, you wind up actually getting the authorities that are needed to, for instance, persuade China to reduce its imports of Iranian oil, which was something that I think was unthinkable before you had the threat of secondary sanctions.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of banks in Europe and Asia. And so he basically goes on this roadshow 2006, 2007, declassifying intelligence, telling banks exactly what Iran is doing to manipulate the formal financial system to support its nuclear program. And many banks just decide it's not, you know, they don't want this reputational risk. So there are certain numbers of bank CEOs that even just setting aside the financial potential financial downside of sanctions violations, you know, they decide to get out of Iran. There are a few stragglers, right? You have HSBC, which continues doing business with Iran, standard chartered BNP Paribas. What happens in the years that follow that is those banks are fined billions of dollars for violating sanctions. And they're not just fined. They're also really intrusive compliance regimes that are imposed on them by the Department of Justice. Corporate monitors put in place that effectively monitoring their compliance protocols.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it really does come in this period kind of in the mid oughts when it's very clear that Iran is developing a very serious nuclear program. This is happening in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq, which was ostensibly justified to get rid of a nuclear program in Iraq that didn't exist. And so all of a sudden you had this very ironic situation where the U.S. had invaded Iraq to prevent an illusory nuclear program. And then you had a real nuclear program developing in the country next door. And there was no ability to use military force. And so what winds up happening is Stuart Levy becomes the first head of this new department of the Treasury called the Division of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. It oversees OFAC. And he basically understands that his background as a lawyer, that it's not just about getting other countries on board with sanctions. In fact, countries can sometimes be secondary. The key thing was getting banks on board. And he could go talk directly to the CEO.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Order for sanctions to work. And of course, in this day and age, that's really hard when you have great power competition between the US and China and Russia. The UN is no longer viable as a coordinating mechanism for sanctions. What these choke points did and coupled with the expansion of the American legal apparatus and regulatory state is they gave the US unilateral power over the global economy and it sort of made it kind of irrelevant to deal with things like the UN Security Council. And all of a sudden you could have an official who probably nobody knows about the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department sign a document and impose sanctions that were much more aggressive than even the UN-backed trade embargoes of the 1990s.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, the classic British embargoes, and even in the 1990s, the Iraq embargo that was put in place by the UN Security Council after the Gulf War was backed by a multinational naval force. And so I think what that meant was there was a higher threshold to the use of economic sanctions because to make them impactful, you needed to deploy military force. But also they were kind of seen as almost a step toward the use of military force. There wasn't as clear of a dividing line between economic statecraft and military statecraft. I think the other thing that's so different today is that historically speaking, unless you're dealing with empires like the Athenian Empire or the British Empire, you really needed a very broad multilateral coalition to make sanctions work. And that's why I think, at least in the latter half of the 20th century, the UN sanctions were kind of seen as the gold standard that you needed the backing from the UN Security Council.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. I think you're exactly right. Economic warfare is as old as history. And I think you go back to Thucydides, you see the Megarian Decree is a classic example of a trade embargo. You see Napoleon in the continental system was sort of a form of a trade embargo in the early 19th century. Even, of course, the US sanctions on Japanese oil shipments leading up to Pearl Harbor. I think the thing that is so different today is there are really two things. One is that the use of sanctions today to be powerful does not require the backing of naval force. So historically speaking, Athens was able to have this embargo on Megra because they had a maritime empire that was backed by the largest navy in the world that would blockade ports. Even, you know, you go back to U.S. embargoes of the 20th century that were backed by naval forces.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, the government and the US government primarily, but then as you state, other governments too, like the Chinese, understanding that these choke points could be weaponized. And so sort of as this understanding is built in the US primarily in the early part of this century, it's not just enough to realize it. You also need the legal apparatus to weaponize these choke points. So you need an American regulatory state to build that actually can do things like sanctions that are impactful. And I think one of the really interesting stories of the book is how”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost certainly they were, I'll say certainly, largely they were accidental. And I think this is something that is one of the almost ironic macro narratives of the book, which is that it is actually the neoliberalism, kind of the deregulatory drive of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s that does lead to this really thorough globalization of the dollar, first of all, and the American financial system, followed by supply chains, the global oil market, and then, of course, finally with more technological supply chains that really start taking off in the 90s through the present. And so in many ways, it's a story of the private sector creating these choke points, being enabled by governments that are reducing trade barriers, reducing barriers on things like capital flows, which had been integral to the Bretton Woods system, but were alleviated in the 1970s.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Isn't any equivalent to the dollar as a medium of exchange or a store of value in the international financial system? But part of the story of the book and a story that you also tell well in your own writing is the development of other choke points, including in the semiconductor supply chain and for AI that we're seeing now and even in energy supply chains, whether it's oil tankers and maritime insurance. Some of these choke points are more potent than others. There are fewer redundancies, whereas others can be evaded more easily. And I think the other key point from the book and one that's very important when you're studying and looking at economic statecraft today is that these choke points change over time. As industries evolve as new technologies emerge, there will be new choke points tomorrow that are just as potent as the ones that the US and China and other countries weaponize today.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Choke point is a part of the global economy where there's very little redundancy. I think these were created largely in the wake of globalization and particularly the hyper globalization of the 1990s in which we got things like really deeply integrated financial markets and supply chains. And so sometimes there's a state that will have dominance in something. You know, for instance, textile manufacturing is concentrated in certain countries in East and Southeast Asia. But those aren't choke points because there is redundancy. If they were cut off, if all of a sudden we could no longer import t-shirts from Bangladesh, we'd find somewhere else to get t-shirts from. But what distinguishes a choke point is that there's really only one state that controls or maybe one state or a small coalition of states that controls sort of the critical components of a process. So I think that the most important choke point that we discussed in the book, and I think that's most relevant for sanctions, is the use of the dollar, where they're really”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of a better alternative, right? Thinking that military force had lost its efficacy, had lost its political support, and that we needed some solution to Iran's nuclear program, but another war was not viable. And so it was right sort of at that period that the Treasury Department started pioneering new uses of sanctions that really took advantage of these choke points in the global economy, like correspondent bank accounts, the dollar clearing system. And a week after graduating from college, I started at the Treasury Department and was, as you said, lucky enough to get to play a role in the sanctions that led to the Iran nuclear deal, as well as creating sanctions against Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chris, so I was a student of history and international relations in the years immediately following 9 11. And I just remember thinking that there was this paradox that I picked up on in my classes, which is that we were learning that America was the world's sole superpower and potentially the most powerful state that we'd seen since ancient Rome. And yet at the same time, we were struggling to achieve what we wanted in the world. You know, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq very quickly became quagmires, you know, that were seen as failures. And right when I was sort of, you know, in college my formative years is when Iran's nuclear program became kind of the top priority for the US national security state. And there was a real debate what to do about it. There were some who were arguing for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, but it was quite clear that there was no political appetite for another war in the Middle East. And many people didn't think that would work. And so I was really inspired to get into the study of economic statecraft for lack of...”
2025-02-23 · Intelligence Squared · Chokepoints: Economic Warfare in the Modern World, with Edward Fishman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT