The Chessboard

Geopolitics, technology, and the new rules of power

Chips, energy, talent, and trade — the moves nations make when technology becomes a geopolitical weapon.

Series 3 · 11 Episodes · Audience: Geopolitical analysts, policy advisors, defence strategists, technology executives

Episodes

• Ep. 1: The new map of industrial power — US subsidies, Chinese overcapacity, and Europe's bet on regulation. Three strategies for the same future — and only one of them is untested. (11 min read)
• Ep. 2: Chips, batteries, and the things you cannot buy — Europe's dependency on foreign supply chains for critical tech — and what happens when supply stops (24 min read)
• Ep. 3: AI sovereignty is not about building another ChatGPT — The real question is who controls the AI inside energy grids, water systems, hospitals, and defence. Foundation models are a distraction from the industrial AI question. (18 min read)
• Ep. 4: The energy equation nobody wants to solve honestly — European industrial electricity costs vs the US and China. The numbers, the subsidies, the nuclear question. Factories follow electrons. (15 min read)
• Ep. 5: When trade policy becomes industrial policy — Carbon borders, chip embargoes, procurement walls, and forced localisation. The regulations reshaping who can build what, where, and for whom. (17 min read)
• Ep. 6: Europe's defence awakening and the industrial base it needs — You cannot ramp up ammunition, ship, and satellite production without a manufacturing base. Defence spending is industrial policy. (16 min read)
• Ep. 7: The talent war Europe is losing quietly — Brain drain to the US, salary gaps with Big Tech, visa bureaucracy for non-EU talent. Europe produces excellent engineers and watches them leave. (14 min read)
• Ep. 8: Small countries, disproportionate strategies — Estonia, Israel, Switzerland, Portugal, Taiwan — five nations that punch far above their weight. How small states build outsized influence through precision, not scale. (16 min read)
• Ep. 9: The EU's next five years will define its next fifty — The 2024–2029 Commission faces digital regulation, industrial policy, defence, enlargement, and AI governance simultaneously. This is not a legislative cycle — it is a generational inflection point. (14 min read)
• Ep. 10: European public procurement: the system designed to be fair that ended up being slow — How procurement rules meant to ensure transparency systematically disadvantage speed, startups, and innovation. The structural barrier hiding in plain sight. (15 min read)
• Ep. 11: Closing: The Chessboard — Ten episodes on the geopolitics that will define European industry for a generation — and a note from the author (15 min read)