SUERF Policy Note 416: Chips & Tokens at the Fault Lines

Abstract

The United States and China have each built the capacity to inflict serious economic damage on each other, and neither has used it in full. This brief argues that the resulting mutual vulnerability, the Cold War logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) now constrains both sides and prevents further decoupling. The brief maps this contest across two stacks: the real economy stack of computing, semiconductors and rare earths (economic MAD, or EMAD) and the financial stack of dollar dominance and digital finance (financial MAD, or FMAD). Implications for corporate leaders, markets and policy makers are also discussed.

Read the full policy note on the SUERF website.