Command of Commerce

The most current and most directly relevant of the three. Vagle and Brooks re-measure the US-China economic balance and argue the American lead is larger than commonly appreciated, on two grounds: that the firms actually driving global commerce, especially in high-technology sectors, are overwhelmingly based in the US and allied countries, and that China’s economic capacity is systematically overstated because Beijing manipulates its data and because China’s economy is structured too differently to compare cleanly with other large economies.

Context: Oxford University Press, April 2025, 296 pages. The subtitle is the thesis.

Why it’s on the list: This is the best-argued version of the case that the China panic is mispriced, published recently enough to account for the last few years. The measurement argument (that the standard statistics are the problem) is the part worth reading closely, because it is the same claim Michael Beckley made in Unrivaled and it is either right or it isn’t.

Where I saw it: Assigned on a 2026 university syllabus for a course on U.S. security policy in the 21st century, alongside America Abroad and Restraint. The same syllabus assigns it in two separate weeks, and pairs it with Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi’s “Underestimating China,” which argues the reverse.

Connections

• Chip War — Chris Miller’s account of semiconductor concentration is the hardest case against a clean American-advantage story, and the natural companion read.
• The Anduril Thesis (Book) — the industrial-capacity numbers there (shipbuilding, drones, magnets, machine shops) are the specific counter-evidence this book has to answer.
• America Abroad — same lead author, the security-posture half of the same argument.
• Restraint — the case for pulling back, assigned against it.
• China · Semiconductors · Manufacturing