The course aims to introduce students to geoeconomic and high-tech competition among blocs, countries and firms, and how it is shaped by the interrelationship between politics, markets, and technology. The class is divided in two parts. In the first part, students will learn about how countries try to take advantage of existing bottlenecks, chokepoints, features, opportunities, and vulnerabilities in the global economy, supply chains, and communications, among others, to pursue economic, political or technological goals, and, at the same time, how they try to minimize their existing sources of dependence and weakness. In the second part, students will learn some of the specific challenges and features of different industries that are critical for the world economy as well as for international security, such as rare earths, energy, weapon systems, semiconductors, and software; as well as the difficulties, dilemmas and risks of these indusstries that managers, policy-makers and officials in international and multilateral organizations have to anticipate, identify, address and deal with.
