Henry Farrell
@himself.bsky.social
34K followers 600 following 5.3K posts

Professor of democracy and international affairs. http://www.henryfarrell.net and newsletter at http://www.programmablemutter.com. Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Holt, Penguin). https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781250840554. .. more

Henry Farrell is an Irish-born political scientist at Johns Hopkins University. He previously taught at the University of Toronto and earned his PhD from Georgetown University. His research interests include trust and co-operation; e-commerce; the European Union; and institutional theory. He is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations. .. more

Political science 57%
Economics 15%
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himself.bsky.social
yes - that one. Not as good as In The Line of Fire, but quite satisfying.

himself.bsky.social
"The Package" is a very solid Cold War thriller if you have Amazon Prime and are looking for entertainment of an evening

Reposted by Henry Farrell

xanlopez.xyz
If you had to update @himself.bsky.social and @abenewman.bsky.social’s book, you could say that, as far as the federal government is concerned, that invisible boundary between the law bound USA and the rest of the world is now gone.
Although Smith did not explicitly say so, the biggest problem was the United States. Years before, NSA director Michael Hayden and his colleagues had inscribed an invisible boundary, separating the United States of America, where government was bound by laws and citizen rights, from a lawless outside world where the NSA could grab information it thought was in America's interests. Now, not just foreign terrorists but American multinationals found that they fell outside the zone of protection.
gdp1985.bsky.social
Over the past few years, Beijing has been mirroring the U.S. economic-security toolkit. China is developing its own architecture to manage risk, preserve chokepoints, and respond in kind. It's also learning from the United States.
fbermingham.bsky.social
A quiet bombshell in Europe’s tech world

The Dutch government seems to have effectively frozen operations of Nexperia, the Chinese-owned chipmaker, citing national security, according to corporate filing today - via @zichenwanghere
Dutch govt accused of freezing operations of Chinese semiconductor giant's chipmaker Nexperia
Wingtech, the Shanghai-listed parent, denounces what it essentially calls a boardroom coup involving the Dutch government and local executives
open.substack.com

Reposted by Jan W. Mueller

himself.bsky.social
My version of this is that Vought, Yarvin etc represent a kind of braindead right-Gramscianism, which leaves out all the interesting subtleties and treats civil society _only_ as a realm of indoctrination, where one ideological master-narrative can readily be substituted for another.
jamellebouie.net
a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.
jamellebouie.net
a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

himself.bsky.social
mine was Revelations 3:16 but nothing will top this

himself.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o... I'm unreasonably pleased that the end of this fantastic piece provides a NYT shortlist of opinion pieces on "reclaiming the constitution" that includes my own. There's something in the air that both pick up on.
Opinion | The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Henry Farrell

Reposted by Henry Farrell

kschake.bsky.social
The whole thread’s a great education about how China is using permission structures the US pioneered.
abenewman.bsky.social
4/China has learned from US playbook. It doesn’t just limit bilateral dependence but network dependence. any firm using Chinese machines (which is almost all) have to get licenses. It is a Chinese version of US foreign direct product rule in semiconductors.
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...
The Weaponized World Economy
When Washington announced a “framework deal” with China in June, it marked a silent shifting of gears in the global political economy. This was not the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s imagi...
www.foreignaffairs.com

himself.bsky.social
This was my impression of Naples a few weeks ago too. There is a lively, vibrant street culture in the days and evenings in a way that just doesn't happen in the bits of the US I know. Crowds of folks - young, middle aged and old, wandering and chatting in the evening.

himself.bsky.social
I can't recommend Patrick McKenzie's understanding of how banks see the world and what this means for how to get them to do things they ought do highly enough. Overview www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seei... and specifics of how to look like a Dangerous Professional www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/i...
Seeing like a Bank
The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.
www.bitsaboutmoney.com

Reposted by Henry Farrell

beijingpalmer.bsky.social
rare earths are an exercise in American inability to govern. the problem of Chinese dominance in the sector has been known for over a decade. there was a broad bipartisan consensus that it was a problem in DC, at least among anyone who knew even a little about it, and constant discussion of ...
filipecampante.bsky.social
It might be hard to convey to people outside economics just how seismic this is. The Trump effect has most certainly arrived to US academia.
florianscheuer.bsky.social
I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7
kjhealy.co
White House staff should just make and show him an AI-generated video where he wins, fly him to Duluth and tell him it’s Oslo, and dare the New York Times to say anything more than “Experts disagree about whether Mr Trump was awarded the Nobel Prize”.
florianscheuer.bsky.social
I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7
jael.bsky.social
SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news
Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says
It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.
heatmap.news

Reposted by Henry Farrell

himself.bsky.social
Your own great piece in Balkinization came out after mine was pretty well finalized, but has a lot of valuable information ( balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-... for those who haven't seen it yet)
Balkinization: The Art of Replacing the Law with the Deal
A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics
balkin.blogspot.com

Reposted by Henry Farrell

jpygold.bsky.social
This is the full story. Extortion is the point. It's designed to divide our institutions. There is only one way out. Refusing to splinter.

Great piece from @himself.bsky.social that lays it out so clearly.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Reposted by Graham Webster

himself.bsky.social
I am so much on Team Editor
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself
blipstress.bsky.social
An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself
blipstress.bsky.social
An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.

himself.bsky.social
this.
samrosenfeld.bsky.social
Henry's writing about about institutional actors more than the mass public, but the basic collective-action point relates to mass protests as well--a means of signaling the scope of opposition, unafraid and peaceful. Put me in mind of the No Kings day planned for 10/18, which can't come soon enough.
himself.bsky.social
"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Reposted by Henry Farrell

samrosenfeld.bsky.social
Henry's writing about about institutional actors more than the mass public, but the basic collective-action point relates to mass protests as well--a means of signaling the scope of opposition, unafraid and peaceful. Put me in mind of the No Kings day planned for 10/18, which can't come soon enough.
himself.bsky.social
"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Henry Farrell

volts.wtf
"Energy dominance," you say?

As of this year, *China is exporting more clean-energy technology than the US is exporting the dirty stuff*.

The future is green energy & China, not the US, is set to dominate it.
China Is Beating the US in the Battle for Energy Export Dominance
China’s exports of clean energy technology hit a record in August, with $20 billion shipped globally.
www.bloomberg.com

himself.bsky.social
The NYT piece today links to Susanne Lohmann's research on protest in Dresden, which discusses how the painfully normal effect helps legitimize dissidence www.jstor.org/stable/2950679 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...