Winners of the Inaugural Andrew W. Marshall Paper Prizes

Treston Wheat

Treston Wheat is a red team analyst with Milestone Technologies focusing on threat actor/tactics, techniques, and procedures research; wargaming; and alternative analysis. Previously, he worked as a strategic cybersecurity analyst and geopolitical risk analyst for AS Solution embedded in a major tech company. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) with a dissertation on Augustinian just war theory and drone warfare, and during that time taught classes on American government, the presidency, and political cinema. He also received his B.A. in Political Science and History from UTK and his M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University.

Follow on Twitter
Follow on LinkedIn

“‘A State in Disguise of a Merchant”: Balance of Power and Multinational Corporations in the Reconfiguration of Asia, 2045

Read the Paper

When corporations were created four centuries ago, they fundamentally altered the relationship between the market and the state while also shifting geopolitical power. Technology corporations are currently creating a similar revolution in the contemporary age. As the world moves from industrial and post-industrial economies to digital ones, technology companies now touch practically every area of modern life. Politically and geopolitically, they are also changing how nation-states interact with each other and achieve their strategic objectives. Technology corporations now play a central role in a state’s relative power, and over the next two decades they will impact the balance of power in Asia. A country’s relative balance of power will now be intimately connected to native technology companies, as they will become quintessential to economic growth, defense of infrastructure and businesses, participate in investigations and attributions of cyber events, and even engage in offensive cyber operations. This paper looks at those different areas, explores where the trends are going, and crafts a scenario of the role technology corporations will play in the balance of power in Asia in 2045.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the author’s employer, clients, or affiliates.

Linda Zhang

Linda Zhang is a Junior Professional Officer at the United Nations. Previously, she was a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute, where she researched issues related to the Chinese economy, demographics, and U.S.-China relations. She was a Liu Xiaobo Fellow with the Congressional Executive Commission on China and a special assistant at the U.S.-China Strong Foundation. She holds an M.A. in Strategic Studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Certificate in Chinese studies from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, and a B.A. from Boston University.

The U.S.-China Competition for Talent

The competition for human talent is overlooked and understudied in the field of U.S.-China relations. As we evaluate the reconfiguration of the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific in 2045, the human talent available to each country is critical to an accurate estimate of each country’s relative strength. The military, technological, and economic strength of a country are only as effective as the human talent behind it. This study examines Chinese students in the United States and its implications for the reconfiguration in human talent between the United States and China using survey data gathered from Chinese students and publicly available demographic and immigration data. The study finds that the competition for talent remains asymmetric and that the United States has enduring advantages in this competition. However, China is taking a more strategic and deliberate approach to this competition than the United States.

The views expressed are personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.

Listed alphabetically by paper title.

Ari Tolany, Beyond Bloc Politics: Anti-Colonialism and Changing Alliance Structures around the Indian Ocean Region

Seraya Amirthalingam, Melissa Deehring, The Growing Security Importance of Patrilineal Kinship Groups and the Subordination of Women in Central Asia’s “New Great Game:” Implications for the United States

Hugh Harsono, James Kratovil, How the Digital Yuan Will Change Financial Interactions in Asia

Yuji Maeda, Luke Schumacher, Joshua Shapiro, How the “Unbreakable” U.S.-Japan Alliance Broke: A Postmortem

Sodbileg Chuluunbaatar, Tuvshinzaya Gantulga, Lessons from Mongolia’s Policy Toward China: 3,000 Years of Successful Deterrence

Haruka Noishiki, The Making of Maps: The Psychology of Cartography in the Strategic Representation of Territorial Disputes in East Asia

Yelena Biberman, Jared Schwartz, One Asia, Two Systems

Kailas Menon, South Asian Competition Under Climate Change

Jared McKinney, James Platte, Steady Magnetic Pull Then Punctuated Change: The Geopolitical Configuration of Asia in 2045