The Case for Economic Espionage America Should Spy On Foreign Companies to Help Its Own The author was Deputy Director of the CIA from 2015 to 2017 and from 2021 to 2025 and was Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence from 2011 to 2015.

The Structural Limits of Europe’s Economic Statecraft SNIP: Europe’s geoeconomic predicament cannot be resolved within the existing architecture of defensive legalism or entrenched infrastructural dependence. So long as the continent’s financial lifelines run through American clearing rails, its foreign‑policy autonomy will remain structurally contingent on the risk calculations of private corporations and the enforcement priorities of the U.S. Treasury. The limits of Europe’s current posture are not conceptual but infrastructural: sovereignty cannot be asserted through legal instruments when the operational foundations of economic statecraft lie outside European jurisdiction. If Europe continues its present trajectory, reaffirming political autonomy while outsourcing financial viability, it will enter a decade in which its strategic choices are not simply constrained but effectively predetermined. In a world where Washington’s chokepoint power intensifies, and non-Western financial architectures expand, Europe risks becoming the only major actor unable to convert economic scale into geopolitical agency. The continent will find itself navigating a global order shaped by enforcement logics it cannot control and network infrastructures it cannot replace. The path to genuine autonomie stratégique is clear but politically formidable. A fully integrated Capital Markets Union, a jointly backed Eurozone safe asset capable of rivalling U.S. Treasuries, and regulatory mechanisms that insulate corporate risk appetite from extraterritorial coercion are not optional reforms; they are the minimum structural conditions for sovereignty. Europe knows what autonomy requires; the unresolved question is whether it is willing to bear the fiscal, ideological, and political costs of constructing it. The greater danger is not dependency itself but the persistent misdiagnosis of its origins. Europe continues to treat autonomy as a diplomatic project, even though its constraints are fundamentally infrastructural. Until the continent confronts the architecture of its dependence, it will keep mistaking legal sovereignty for operational control and political declarations for power. In the emerging geoeconomic order, power belongs to those who control the rails. Europe must decide whether it intends to build its own rails or reconcile itself to a world in which it exercises sovereignty elsewhere.

Whocouldanooed👇? @TheMichaelEvery A New Organizational Paradigm for Economic Statecraft at the U.S. State Department The escalating reality of international economic rivalry—characterized by the race for critical minerals, technological supremacy, and assertive energy and industrial policy—necessitates a comprehensive modernization of the U.S. statecraft tool kit. The inherited institutional framework, currently defined by fragmentation and siloed resources, is ill-equipped for this moment. To restore the nation’s competitive advantage, the United States should pivot from initiative-centered approaches toward a more unified strategic architecture. For the State Department, this requires elevating E’s institutional role in economic statecraft vis-à-vis other bureaus and embassies, restructuring economic programming and delivery mechanisms by doubling down on private sector-focused tools, and cultivating a specialized workforce capable of meeting the transactional and technical rigors of this contested landscape. These integrated reforms, which may accompany other agency-specific reforms and improved interagency coordinating structures, provide a blueprint for a more strategic and impactful U.S. presence at a moment where imagination and determination is required to secure future prosperity. 

Whocouldanooed👇? @TheMichaelEvery Governments, therefore, may ever more view their central banks not only as economic institutions, but also as geostrategic resources. …the central banks of major regional powers can resemble modern “battleships” in the sea of international finance. The central claim is that access to swap lines has become a strategic resource in a globalized financial system. Therefore, central bank cooperation is not simply a technical crisis management tool, but part of the “structural infrastructure” of the financial order through which influence and dependence are also organized. Consequently, in the design and operation of swap lines, financial stability considerations interact with economic interdependence (trade, banking exposures, financial linkages) and geopolitical relationships (alliances, strategic partnerships, security considerations).