13 min · Core

Structural Power

Susan Strange argued that the power that matters most is not the visible power to win a given contest but the structural power to set the terms on which every contest is fought. She located it in four structures: security, production, finance and knowledge. Reading these is the difference between watching the pieces and seeing the board, and it is the foundation on which DSI's book The Wrong Map is built.

~3 min

By the end you can

Distinguish relational power from structural power.
Name Strange's four structures and what each governs.
Explain why structural power is often invisible to those who hold and lack it.
Apply the board-not-pieces lens to a contemporary case.

Two kinds of power

Most analysis of international affairs tracks what Susan Strange called relational power: the power of one actor to make another do what it would not otherwise do. Who won the round, who blinked, who signed. Strange, writing in States and Markets in 1988, argued that this is the shallow layer. Beneath it sits structural power: the power to shape the frameworks within which states, firms and people must operate, to decide the range of choices open to everyone else. The holder of structural power rarely has to issue a command. It has already arranged the field so that others, pursuing their own interests, move where it wants them to move.

The four structures

Strange located structural power in four overlapping structures. The security structure is the arrangement of who protects whom from violence, and on what terms. The production structure is the arrangement of what is made, where and by whom. The finance structure is the arrangement of credit and money, who can create it and who depends on it. The knowledge structure is the arrangement of what is known, believed and communicated, and who controls the channels. Whoever shapes these four does not need to win individual arguments. They have written the grammar in which the arguments are conducted.

Why it hides

Structural powerSusan Strange's term for the power to shape the frameworks and range of choices within which states, firms and people must operate, as distinct from the relational power to win a specific contest. Located in the security, production, finance and knowledge structures. tends to be invisible precisely because it is ambient. A firm that must price its exports in a particular currency, insure through a particular market and use a particular payments rail rarely experiences these as exercises of power. They feel like the weather, simply how the world is. That invisibility is the point. Relational powerThe power of one actor to make another do what it would not otherwise do in a given contest. The visible, shallow layer of power, beneath which structural power sets the terms of every contest. announces itself in a sanction or a strike; structural power is felt as the absence of alternatives. An analyst who tracks only the visible clashes will consistently misjudge who is actually strong, because the strongest positions produce the fewest visible fights.

Seeing the board

This is the discipline DSI's book The Wrong Map takes from Strange and makes its organising idea: read the structures, not the incidents. When an energy dispute erupts, the relational question is who prevailed this winter. The structural question is who controls the pipelines, the refining capacity, the insurance and the settlement currency, because that arrangement will still be there long after this winter's headlines fade. Consider a state that loses a trade skirmish yet sits astride the payment system through which its rival must clear every transaction. On the scoreboard of incidents it lost; on the board itself it is untouchable. Foresight begins when you stop counting the moves and start reading the board they are played on.

Whoever shapes these four writes the grammar every other actor must argue within.

Check your understanding

Answer each from memory. Your results are saved in this browser and count toward your readiness — sign in (account panel above) to keep them across devices.

What best distinguishes structural power from relational power?
Which set correctly names Susan Strange's four structures?
Why does structural power tend to be invisible?

14 min · Core

Weaponised Interdependence

Interdependence was long read as a force for peace: the more tangled together states are, the more they have to lose from conflict. Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman inverted that comfort. In networks with central nodes, the states that sit at the hubs can turn shared connection into coercion, producing what they call the panopticon effect and the chokepoint effect. Interdependence becomes an instrument of power, not a guarantee against its use.

~3 min

By the end you can

Explain how network structure converts interdependence into leverage.
Define the panopticon effect and the chokepoint effect.
Identify which node positions confer coercive advantage.
Connect weaponised interdependence to Strange's structural power.

The peace that wasn't

For a generation the standard reading of globalisation held that interdependence pacifies: states woven together by trade, finance and data have too much to lose to fight, and the connections themselves are neutral plumbing. Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, in their 2019 article Weaponized Interdependence, showed why that reading is dangerously incomplete. Networks are not flat. They have hubs, central nodes through which a disproportionate share of traffic must pass, and a state with jurisdiction over a hub can turn the whole network into an instrument. Connection does not dissolve power. It concentrates it wherever the topology has a centre.

Two effects

Farrell and Newman name two ways a hub state exploits its position. The panopticon effect is informational: sitting at a central node lets a state see the flows passing through, harvesting intelligence on who is transacting with whom. The chokepoint effect is coercive: the same central position lets a state cut off a target's access to the network, denying it the flows it depends on. Their leading cases were financial messaging and the international dollar-clearing system, where jurisdiction over the plumbing gave one state both a surveillance vantage and a switch it could throw. The point generalises to any network with a centre: internet infrastructure, cloud services, submarine cables, the supply of a critical input.

Which positions confer power

The advantage is not evenly available. It accrues to whoever holds legal and physical jurisdiction over the hub, and it is greatest where the network is hardest to route around, where alternative nodes are few, costly or slow to build. A state with a modest economy but control of an unavoidable node can exert leverage out of all proportion to its size, while a large economy that sits only at the periphery of every network cannot. This is why mapping the topology matters more than counting the aggregate weight of the actors: coercive potential lives in position, not in mass.

Structure by another name

Weaponised interdependenceHenry Farrell and Abraham Newman's account of how states with jurisdiction over central network hubs turn shared connection into coercion, so that interdependence concentrates power rather than guaranteeing peace. is Strange's structural power rendered in the language of networks, and made operational. Where Strange described the security, production, finance and knowledge structures in the abstract, Farrell and Newman give the mechanism: control the hub and you control both the visibility and the flow. This is also the analytic core of what DSI calls the ChokepointA node at which a critical dependency concentrates and which is slow or costly to route around, giving whoever holds jurisdiction over it leverage over everyone downstream. Central to DSI's Chokepoint Doctrine. Doctrine, the working assumption that the most consequential leverage in the modern system is exercised through central nodes rather than through open confrontation. The strategist's first question about any dependence therefore becomes structural: where is the hub, who holds jurisdiction over it, and how hard is it to route around.

A hub confers both: a surveillance vantage and a switch the node-holder can throw.

Check your understanding

Answer each from memory. Your results are saved in this browser and count toward your readiness — sign in (account panel above) to keep them across devices.

According to Farrell and Newman, how does interdependence become a source of coercive power?
What is the difference between the panopticon effect and the chokepoint effect?
Control of a network node yields the greatest leverage when the network is:

14 min · Core

Dependency and Chokepoint Mapping

Theory names the leverage; mapping locates it. This lesson turns structural power and weaponised interdependence into a working method: chart who depends on whom, trace each dependency to the node where it concentrates, and test how hard that node is to route around. DSI's Full Threat Surface method insists the map be drawn to the true depth of the dependency, not the depth the reporting entity chooses to show, because the most dangerous chokepoints are the ones a firm cannot even see in its own supply chain.

~4 min

By the end you can

Describe the steps of a dependency and chokepoint map.
Explain what the Full Threat Surface method adds to naive supply-chain mapping.
Explain why a claimed independence can be structurally unverifiable.
Apply the method to a rare-earth or refining case.

From theory to map

Structural powerSusan Strange's term for the power to shape the frameworks and range of choices within which states, firms and people must operate, as distinct from the relational power to win a specific contest. Located in the security, production, finance and knowledge structures. and weaponised interdependence tell you what to look for; a map tells you where it is. Dependency and chokepoint mapping proceeds in three moves. First, chart the dependencies: who relies on whom for each critical input, flow or service. Second, trace each dependency inward to the node where it concentrates, the point through which the many must pass to reach the few sources. Third, test substitutability: how quickly, at what cost and with what quality could the dependent party route around that node. A dependency that is easily substituted is a nuisance; one that concentrates at a single, slow-to-replace node is a chokepoint, and a source of leverage over everyone downstream.

Drawing to the true depth

The trap is to map only as far as the visible tier. A firm knows its direct suppliers and stops there, and its map shows healthy diversity: a dozen vendors, no obvious single point of failure. DSI's Full Threat SurfaceDSI's method of mapping a dependency to its true depth rather than to the visible supplier tier, following each branch until it genuinely diverges or converges on a shared node, exposing hidden chokepoints. method rejects that boundary. It insists the map be drawn to the true depth of the dependency, following each branch down until it either genuinely diverges or converges on a shared node. Very often the dozen apparently independent suppliers all draw, several tiers down, on the same refinery, the same foundry, the same jurisdiction. The diversity is cosmetic; the real surface converges. Mapping to the reporting entity's chosen depth measures its comfort, not its exposure.

When independence cannot be proven

DSI's chapter The Laundered Dependency is this method's sharpest case, and weaponised interdependence in its purest physical form. Policy pays firms to certify that they are free of dependence on a particular state for critical minerals. But the origin of a refined material is structurally difficult to verify: once ore from many mines is blended and processed, the finished input carries no reliable trace of its true provenance. A firm can sincerely claim independence it cannot actually demonstrate. Worse, the state that dominates refining requires export licences that force detailed end-user disclosure, so it can see the true dependency, node by node, better than the importing firms' own investors or governments can. The panopticon sits at the chokepoint. Rare-earth and specialty-metal refining is the standing example: many mines feed a few refineries, and control of refining, not of ore, is where the leverage lives.

Reading the map

A completed dependency and chokepoint map answers the questions that decide procurement, sanctions and counterparty risk: where does this flow actually concentrate, who holds jurisdiction over that node, how long and how costly is the route around it, and what can that node-holder see about us. The discipline is non-partisan. It does not assume the node-holder is malign; it establishes that the leverage exists and is structural, so that a decision-maker plans for the arrangement rather than the assurance. The uncomfortable finding is usual: the deepest exposure is the one the reporting party could not see, and sometimes could not have proven even if it wanted to.

A node that is slow and costly to route around is a chokepoint with leverage downstream.

Check your understanding

Answer each from memory. Your results are saved in this browser and count toward your readiness — sign in (account panel above) to keep them across devices.

What does DSI's Full Threat Surface method insist on that naive supply-chain mapping misses?
In The Laundered Dependency, why can a firm's claim of mineral independence be unverifiable?
In rare-earth and specialty-metal supply chains, where does the leverage principally sit?

13 min · Core

Technology Foresight

Technology change is not random noise; it has readable shape. Adoption follows S-curves, attention runs ahead of deployment in a recognisable hype pattern, and a handful of general-purpose technologies reset the whole economy over decades. This lesson gives the strategist tools to separate durable trajectory from transient excitement, drawing on the Gartner hype cycle and Carlota Perez's account of techno-economic paradigms.

~4 min

By the end you can

Read an S-curve and locate a technology on it.
Use the hype-versus-adoption gap to discount transient excitement.
Define a general-purpose technology and its structural reach.
Explain Perez's paradigm sequence of installation and deployment.

Adoption has a shape

A technology rarely spreads in a straight line. Its adoption traces an S-curve: slow and uncertain at first, then a steep acceleration as the technology matures and costs fall, then a flattening as the market saturates. The strategist's task is to locate a given technology on its curve, because the same growth rate means opposite things at different points. Early steepness can be the start of a lasting climb or a false dawn; late steepness precedes a plateau. Roadmapping, laying out expected capability and cost milestones against time, is the disciplined way to place a technology on its curve rather than guessing from a single dramatic demonstration.

The hype-versus-adoption gap

Attention and deployment do not move together, and confusing them is the commonest foresight error. The Gartner hype cycle captures the pattern: a trigger produces a peak of inflated expectations, followed by a trough of disillusionment as early promises go unmet, then a slower slope of enlightenment as real uses are found, and finally a plateau of genuine productivity. The gap matters because expectation peaks years before adoption does, and can collapse while the underlying technology keeps maturing quietly beneath the noise. A strategist who buys at the peak and sells at the trough has read the coverage, not the curve. The useful question is not how loud the excitement is but where the technology sits on its own adoption path.

General-purpose technologies

Some technologies do not merely add a product; they reset the conditions of the whole economy. A general-purpose technology, such as the steam engine, electricity, the computer or, arguably, machine learning, is pervasive across sectors, improves over a long horizon, and spawns further innovation on top of itself. These are the ones that shift the structures Strange described, because they change what can be produced, how knowledge moves, and where finance flows. For foresight, spotting a genuine general-purpose technology early matters far more than tracking a hundred narrow ones, since it is the general-purpose technology that redraws the board.

Perez's paradigms

Carlota Perez, in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (2002), gives the long rhythm. Each great technology arrives as a techno-economic paradigm that unfolds in two halves. First an installation phase, driven by financial capital, marked by feverish investment, bubbles and a widening gap between the excited few and the unchanged many. Then, typically after a crash and a period of adjustment, a deployment phase, driven by production capital, in which the technology diffuses broadly and its productivity is finally realised across society. Perez's insight for the strategist is that turbulence and disappointment are not signs the technology failed; they are a scheduled stage between installation and deployment. Reading which half of the paradigm you are in tells you whether to expect a shakeout or a broad build-out next, which is a structural forecast the day-to-day noise cannot give you.

Expectation peaks years before adoption, so read the curve rather than the coverage.

Check your understanding

Answer each from memory. Your results are saved in this browser and count toward your readiness — sign in (account panel above) to keep them across devices.

What does the hype-versus-adoption gap warn a strategist against?
What defines a general-purpose technology?
In Carlota Perez's account, what do turbulence and disappointment after a technology's arrival indicate?

12 min · Core

Regulatory Foresight

Regulation is one of the most foreseeable structural shifts available to a strategist, because it is drafted, debated and dated in public long before it binds. Read as a forcing function rather than a compliance chore, a regulatory pipeline reveals where markets will be pushed, which capabilities will become mandatory, and which dependencies will become liabilities. The EU's recent cyber and digital rules, NIS2, the Cyber Resilience Act, DORA and the AI Act, are the working cases.

~4 min

By the end you can

Explain why regulation is a foreseeable structural shift, not just a rule to obey.
Define a forcing function and give a regulatory example.
Read a regulatory pipeline to anticipate market movement.
Connect regulatory foresight to structural exposure such as jurisdiction.

The most legible signal

Of all the shifts a strategist tries to anticipate, regulation is among the most legible, because it announces itself. A rule is proposed, consulted on, negotiated and given a date of application, often years ahead. The change is visible in draft long before it binds. Treating that pipeline merely as a future compliance burden wastes its foresight value. Read structurally, a regulatory agenda is a public statement of where a large market intends to push behaviour, which capabilities it will make mandatory, and which practices it will price out. The strategist who reads the pipeline sees the shape of the board two or three years before the pieces are forced to move.

Regulation as forcing function

A forcing function is a constraint that compels a behaviour that would not otherwise occur on that timeline. Regulation is a forcing function at scale: it can create an entire market for a capability overnight by making it obligatory, and it can strand an incumbent practice by making it unlawful. The EU's recent cyber and digital instruments show the pattern. NIS2 extends cybersecurity and incident-reporting duties across far more sectors and up their supply chains. The Cyber Resilience Act makes security obligations attach to products with digital elements across their lifecycle. DORA imposes operational-resilience and third-party oversight duties on financial entities and, pointedly, on their critical technology providers. The EU AI Act sets tiered obligations by risk class, forcing governance onto certain AI uses ahead of the market's own pace. Each converts a good practice into a mandatory one on a known date.

Reading the pipeline

Reading a regulatory pipeline for foresight means asking three structural questions of each instrument. What behaviour does it make mandatory, and therefore what capability becomes a market? What practice or dependency does it make a liability, and therefore what gets stranded? And whose jurisdiction does it extend, and therefore who gains structural reach over whom? DORA's oversight of critical third-party providers, for instance, is not only a compliance item for banks; it is an extension of financial-supervisory jurisdiction into the cloud and technology layer, a structural fact with consequences well beyond the banks named in the text. The forecast is not what the rule says but what it forces, and whom it empowers.

Where regulation meets structure

Regulatory foresight matters most where it intersects the structural exposures of earlier lessons. A rule can turn a hidden dependency into a disclosed liability, or reveal that an arrangement thought to be sovereign is in fact reachable by another jurisdiction. DSI's SEAL-0 analysis of the United States CLOUD Act makes the point sharply: data held in a sovereign-cloud arrangement inside Europe can remain legally reachable by a foreign authority through jurisdiction over the provider, regardless of where the servers sit. A sovereign veneer over a structurally exposed reality is exactly the kind of gap a regulatory forecast exposes before it becomes a crisis. Read this way, regulation is not the end of foresight but one of its clearest instruments: a forcing function whose direction is published in advance for anyone disciplined enough to read it structurally.

Read structurally, each rule reveals a new market, a stranded practice or extended jurisdiction.

Check your understanding

Answer each from memory. Your results are saved in this browser and count toward your readiness — sign in (account panel above) to keep them across devices.

Why is regulation described as one of the most foreseeable structural shifts?
What is a forcing function, in the regulatory sense used here?
Why is DORA's oversight of critical third-party providers a structural fact, not only a compliance item?

Structural and Geopolitical Foresight

Structural Power

By the end you can

Two kinds of power

The four structures

Why it hides

Seeing the board

Check your understanding

Weaponised Interdependence

By the end you can

The peace that wasn't

Two effects

Which positions confer power

Structure by another name

Check your understanding

Dependency and Chokepoint Mapping

By the end you can

From theory to map

Drawing to the true depth

When independence cannot be proven

Reading the map

Check your understanding

Technology Foresight

By the end you can

Adoption has a shape

The hype-versus-adoption gap

General-purpose technologies

Perez's paradigms

Check your understanding

Regulatory Foresight

By the end you can

The most legible signal

Regulation as forcing function

Reading the pipeline

Where regulation meets structure

Check your understanding

Flashcards

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