Today, John Cochrane asks whether energy markets are witnessing a replay of 1979; Patrick McLaughlin shares his appreciation for the Freedom Frequency Substack while pointing readers to his recent column there on regulation reform; and Jacquelyn Schneider analyzes the challenges that sophisticated cyber warfare operations pose for nuclear stability in the world today.
Freedom Frequency
In this week’s Grumpy Economist Weekly Rant, Senior Fellow John Cochrane begins with an unsettling comparison: Today’s inflation picture looks strikingly similar to the one the United States faced in the late 1970s. With prices still elevated and renewed instability in the Middle East, an obvious question follows: Is the country headed toward another round of stagflation? Cochrane uses that parallel to show what has changed since the seventies. The US economy is less energy-dependent, America’s position in global oil markets has shifted from net importer to supplier, and the consequences of disruption no longer fall in the same way they once did. According to Cochrane, the result is a more complex picture than the comparison to 1979 first suggests. This short video offers a reminder that today’s geopolitical shocks expose risks not only to American energy policy but also to global energy markets. Watch here.
In a post at his Third Order Substack, Research Fellow Patrick McLaughlin encourages his readers to check out the Hoover Institution’s Freedom Frequency Substack and to read a recent piece of his published there. At Freedom Frequency, McLaughlin says, “You’ll see stuff ranging from insights about inflation and fiscal profligacy to distillation of the works of Adam Smith to discussions of authoritarian regimes and their human toll. And links to the GoodFellows podcast, which I thoroughly enjoy.” McLaughlin’s recent Freedom Frequency column, Capturing the Administrative State, Word by Word, argues that in regulatory reform efforts at both the state and federal level, the “most important milestone for any measurement project is adoption—when institutions start treating it as a legitimate input, not a curiosity.” In McLaughlin’s words, “Give it a read, and while you’re there, maybe subscribe too.” Read more here.
Cyber Security and Defense Policy
In a new article for the Texas National Security Review, Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider says that despite years of warnings about the potential impact of cyber warfare and espionage operations on nuclear command and control systems, “our understandings of when and why cyber operations create nuclear instability are rife with contradictory suppositions.” Schneider argues that “highly centralized information-processing or command nodes, which increase a network’s efficiency, can create incentives for deliberate nuclear escalation.” She further argues that “cyberattacks that exploit trust in data to degrade decision-making are the most dangerous for escalation risk.” Schneider concludes that while the future of cyber operations does raise important questions around nuclear escalation dynamics, “cyber operations will likely not have the Armageddon effects on nuclear stability that many fear.” Read more here.
War in Iran
In recent media appearances, Senior Fellows Victor Davis Hanson, Michael McFaul, and H.R. McMaster offered their thoughts on the ongoing US and Israeli war against the revolutionary regime in Iran. At The Daily Signal, Hanson says that by all traditional methodology and criteria, Iran is now inert—its naval and air forces are eviscerated, missile defenses are offline, and its army has been rendered largely useless. Michael McFaul speaks on Substack with journalist Chris Matthews about what we do and don’t know about the war and America’s stated objectives. And on CBS, H.R. McMaster breaks down the current state of affairs around the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump walked back threats to bomb Iran's power plants. You can find additional analysis of the war by Hoover fellows by viewing the web version of the Hoover Daily Report on Hoover.org. View the web version of the HDR here.
Economic History
On Thursday, March 12, Senior Fellow Ross Levine joined Sandra Peart, a University of Richmond professor in leadership studies, for a conversation hosted by the Princeton University Bendheim Center for Finance’s Markus Academy webinar series. Levine and Peart discussed the legacy of Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to mark the 250th anniversary of its publication. Peart and Levine considered the conceptions of human nature put forward in Smith’s work; the roles of ambition, status, and faction in Smith’s economic and moral thought; and why Smith’s conception of liberty led him to oppose slavery and empire building. Watch the webinar here.
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