Book Projects

ENTRENCHED: CHINA, SUPPLY CHAINS, AND THE BATTLE FOR THE GLOBAL ORDER

Entrenched extends the BULL DRAGON analysis to examine the most critical vulnerability facing democratic economies: supply chain entanglement with authoritarian competitors. Through unprecedented mapping of global supply networks, Entrenched unveils dual analytical frameworks that follow supply chains from origin to endpoint—exposing the hidden architecture of state–firm linkages and the deep currents of economic power that bind together the world’s interconnected markets. These supply chain linkages create dependencies so profound that attempted decoupling risks economic collapse—a reality that conventional policy frameworks fail to acknowledge. Entrenched a devastating critique of the decoupling and derisking strategies, demonstrating through rigorous empirical analysis how blanket restrictions and broad economic warfare fundamentally misunderstand modern commercial operations. Critically, Entrenched moves beyond narratives that vilify China as a hegemonic "other," instead engaging with it as a formidable strategic competitor, requiring sophisticated response strategies. The book makes a compelling theoretical and empirical case for strategic engagement as the optimal approach for navigating emerging bipolarity, challenging zero-sum paradigms, while providing frameworks for competition that preserve democratic values.

CFIUS IN THE 21st CENTURY: THE GUARDIAN OF THE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION

My current book project, CFIUS in the 21st Century: The Guardian of the Technology Revolution, examines the American and the Chinese conceptualizations of national security, and their implications on how each nation defines their grand strategies vis-à-vis one another. The book theorizes on the Chinese model of economic statecraft as grand strategy, with a specific focus on how the state instrumentalizes commercial actors and foreign direct investment (FDI), in the strategic competition on foundational and critical and emerging technologies. The book traces the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ (CFIUS) history, situating its role and impact within the USG’s interagency process, and diagnosing how this powerful body has accommodated emerging geopolitical threats. The book makes the case for the need to reform and reimagine CFIUS’ role in relation to both research and development and foreign direct investment flows from key competitors, informed by case studies covering critical and emerging technology transactions in biotech, telecom, computing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things.

AL-HOGRA: AN ANTHOLOGY

A very important project, that’s very close to my heart, and which has too often been interrupted, disrupted, and hindered by fear, and more traditional professional pursuits. ​This book introduces western academia to the concept of lhogra. It defines and illustrates the concept and its evolution through a poignant anthology.

Artwork designed by Elly Rostoum.
Inspired by Jose Guadalupe Posada's "La Calavera Catrina," circa 1910.

BULL DRAGON: STATE CONTROL AND THE INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF THE CHINESE FIRM

BULL DRAGON addresses a fundamental gap in our understanding of twenty-first-century economic statecraft, by pioneering the systematic analysis of Chinese commercial entities as instruments of state power. Evolved from my doctoral research, BULL DRAGON employs a multidisciplinary framework that integrates machine learning, discourse analysis, and process tracing to map the ownership and incorporation structures of Chinese firms across strategic sectors and jurisdictions. While conventional analysis focuses on state-owned enterprises, BULL DRAGON reveals that the primary mechanisms of state control operate through opaque ownership networks that obscure Beijing's influence over ostensibly private actors. Through comprehensive firm incorporation mapping, I demonstrate how enterprises appearing "American" systematically trace to Chinese controlled entities, revealing sophisticated mechanisms through which the state instrumentalizes commercial actors. BULL DRAGON represents the first comprehensive analysis to center firms rather than states as the unit of analysis in studying economic statecraft, fundamentally challenging traditional state-centric approaches to understanding investment and state power. BULL DRAGON reveals how power and institutional frameworks intertwine to enable authoritarian states to project influence through commercial networks in ways that democratic systems struggle to map or counter.