Bentley Allan
@bentleyallan.bsky.social
Professor at Johns Hopkins University: climate, energy, industrial policy, geopolitics. Hats: Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab ⚡️// Carnegie Endowment 🌐 // Transition Accelerator 🇨🇦
Yet another international economic meeting derailed by U.S. insistence that market/non-market is a useful and meaningful distinction. We are entering a new economic order that needs new principles that dispense with this dichotomy and recognize that all states act strategically.
Delighted to at APSA in Boston, with the opportunity to comment on Peter Katzenstein's new book, Entanglements in World Politics. Some of my comments attached.
Yet another international economic meeting derailed by U.S. insistence that market/non-market is a useful and meaningful distinction. We are entering a new economic order that needs new principles that dispense with this dichotomy and recognize that all states act strategically.
Also, whatever Chinese tech was begged, borrowed or stolen to make it, in love, war and transformative industrial policy, if you succeed ... it’s fine.
This confusion is due to the prevalent but mistaken use of primacy, dominance and hegemony interchangeably. Hegemony also means being willing to provide collective goods that benefit not just the hegemon but also the states it seeks to lead. Not sure China is any more willing than the US to do so.
Bentley Allan@bentleyallan.bsky.social · 2w agoHegemony is not just based on power. It is leadership and leaders need followers.
Hegemony is not just based on power. It is leadership and leaders need followers.
Colby wants a Goldilocks level of uncertainty about the US defense commitment: enough that they will spend more on defense but not so much that they will make plans without us. Hard to do when foreign policy is set by the whims of an impulsive leader via social media post.
Simon Lester@simonlester.com · last mo.Colby panicking a bit here about foreign governments shifting weapons purchases away from US industry. www.war.gov/News/Speeche...
American factory construction continued declining in official data released today as CHIPS Act projects finish, IRA projects get cancelled, and tariffs weigh on nearly all industries Total US factory construction is down 30% from its 2024 highs and 20% over the last year alone
A characteristically sharp read from @himself.bsky.social that picks up on my argument on AI hyperregulation and traces how national security tools have become instruments of domestic political control. You cannot build sweeping discretionary powers abroad and then be surprised when they come home.
Henry Farrell@himself.bsky.social · 3mo ago"the Amodei and Biden administration position that you could have your cake and eat it too, depended on a semi-explicit consensus on what US national security was, and how sweeping powers with ambiguous constraints could or could not be used to pursue it. That consensus has now shattered"
The problem for European carmakers is as much that they prefaced future growth and profits on sales in the Chinese market which are rapidly evaporating: "cheaper, domestically produced electric vehicles have been gaining share at the expense of the premium cars" that BMW and Porsche specialize in.
A fun one from research for my book project, CLIMATE GEOPOLITICS. Lighthizer arguing that protectionism is the authentic tradition of Republicans in 2008. For Lighthizer, conservatives from Hamilton to Lincoln and Reagan embraced a pragmatism that led them to reject free trade dogma.
How to tell you’re getting beat by someone with more strategic flexibility than you
They did not choose this strategy, but they got it done! COYG!!!
Bentley Allan@bentleyallan.bsky.social · 6mo agoIf I was Arsenal I would just win all the remaining games.
Love Saka’s mirror neuron hop to match Kai’s climb. One-nil to the Arsenal!
Javier Blas sounding like me these days, "The bigger question is for tomorrow: If the country [china] can reduce imports so drastically without, apparently, having to take extreme measures, what does that say about the future of oil consumption there? Nothing positive for the bulls, certainly." 🙂
China's Invisible Hand Is Rebalancing the Oil Market
Facing an unprecedented shortage, the oil market is pulling every available lever to rebalance supply and demand. Some are well known: bypassing the Strait of Hormuz using pipelines, releasing emergen...
bloomberg.com
The combination of far too many peer review requests & an explosion of frankly mediocre papers in my field of EU industrial policy/geopolitics = hard agree. The academic publishing model is broken. One upstream answer: make hiring/tenure/promotion REALLY & EXPLICITLY about quality not quantity. 👇
This skeet will self destruct@pardoguerra.bsky.social · 4mo agoSome quick thought on what this means for the way we communicate science: time to kill the peer reviewed article? pardoguerra.org/2026/05/09/i...
Unless they’re tracking Chinese clean tech export data - which I think only Ember does consistently? - all the energy scenarios models etc are just plain wrong.
On the importance of manufacturing, beyond its direct gdp and employment impact…
Todd Tucker@toddntucker.com · 4mo agoNEW from me and Oskar Dye-Furstenberg for @rooseveltinstitute.org: Against Manufacturing Doomerism: Why and How Making Stuff Matters. In which we give you over 50 pages of charts and graphs showing why manufacturing still matters. 🧵with some highlights! rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...
Excited to be heading to Oxford this week to attend this public event and the associated workshop on industrial policy. You can register for the online event here: www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/events/indus.... Give me a shout if you’re in Oxford and want to get together.
Writing a paper and just really feel like I am nailing the prose. Is my writing getting better as I get older, or does anything actually written by a human just sound better than AI syntax?
We need to see FIDs, but Trump’s attacks on Canada may have formally ended the Biden & earlier era of 🇨🇦 allegiance to the North American business model of ICE SUVs and trucks, with a fast transition towards the global trend to Chinese based transnational EV makers.
Bentley Allan@bentleyallan.bsky.social · 6mo agoOne of those things that just would not be happening without Trump. Biden had closed ranks on China, but with chaos in the WH, countries like Canada look to hedge.
