Essays
Every essay, published in full.
Two series, 41,116 words. Each piece is readable here in its entirety, and links back to its original instalment on Substack.
Technology as Strategic Power
4 essays · 19,956 wordsCompute, capital, resources and institutions as the new grammar of national advantage.
01 AI Isn't a New Weapon. It's a New Way of Counting Power. The old scorecard listed 40-plus military powers. The new one, chips, models, talent, comes down to a handful. Here's why that changes everything. 02 From Oil to Algorithms Everyone says compute is the new oil. Chips can be built and data copied, but the electricity still has to be dug out of the ground and carried down a wire. 03 The State Buys In: Strategic Capitalism, How Capital Allocation Became Statecraft For a generation the rich world's governments set the rules of the market and left the owning to others. That settlement is over. 04 Pixels, Power, and Strategic Investment: Media, AI, Energy, and Private Capital The models that generate content, the energy that powers them, and the private capital that finances both are now contested ground, and states and investors are moving in parallel.The Puerto Rico Series
3 essays · 21,160 wordsThe framework applied: ownership, security and hemispheric infrastructure.
01 The Arsenal Colony: Puerto Rico, America's Pharma, Minerals and Defense Security, and the Case for a Sovereign Defense Fund As China corners critical-mineral processing, Venezuela's collapse spills across the hemisphere, and Cuba anchors the anti-American narrative, the most secure ground under the U.S. flag is decaying. The same island that today validates the story America’s rivals tell about it could, with the right institution, become the story America wants told. 02 Building on the Israeli Model: Puerto Rico as an American Ecosystem of Security and Innovation Israel turned a small country with no resources into the densest defence-technology economy on earth, America can do the same in Puerto Rico. 03 LatAm’s Sea Lanes and Silicon, is a San Juan–Abu Dhabi Partnership America’s Answer? China is buying the chokepoints of the Western Hemisphere while Washington argues about tariffs. Puerto Rico owns a harbour, an air base, and a pharmaceutical cluster that could be America's answer.