I’m a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. Previously, I was a fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, and before that, I covered technology at Gavekal Dragonomics. For the better part of a decade, I’ve been trying to figure out China’s technology capabilities while I lived in Hong Kong, Beijing, and then Shanghai. I go on podcasts and have written for several magazines. This site features my personal essays. My book BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future will be published in August 2025 by W. W. Norton in the US and Penguin in the UK. I think of it as seven annual letters — six on China, one on the US. Breakneck is longlisted for the FT’s business book of the year 2025 and has been excerpted in the Atlantic. I live in Ann Arbor and Palo Alto. I grew up in Canada and have lived in Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Rochester, Freiburg im Breisgau, San Francisco, Kunming, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and New Haven. I’ve also worked at Flexport, Shopify, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I studied philosophy at the University of Rochester in New York. In an earlier life, I was a Royal Canadian Army Cadet in Ottawa. The “secure transport of light” is one of my favorite phrases. It refers to both to optic cables (which make modern communications possible) and semiconductors (which make modern electronics possible). We can thank Alexander Graham Bell for allowing us to speak from one side of the Atlantic ocean to the other, through coils of sunbeams under the seas. Isn’t that a wonderful image?
I’m a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. Previously, I was a fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, and before that, I covered technology at Gavekal Dragonomics. For the better part of a decade, I’ve been trying to figure out China’s technology capabilities while I lived in Hong Kong, Beijing, and then Shanghai. I go on podcasts and have written for several magazines. This site features my personal essays. My book BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future will be published in August 2025 by W. W. Norton in the US and Penguin in the UK. I think of it as seven annual letters — six on China, one on the US. Breakneck is longlisted for the FT’s business book of the year 2025 and has been excerpted in the Atlantic. I live in Ann Arbor and Palo Alto. I grew up in Canada and have lived in Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Rochester, Freiburg im Breisgau, San Francisco, Kunming, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and New Haven. I’ve also worked at Flexport, Shopify, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I studied philosophy at the University of Rochester in New York. In an earlier life, I was a Royal Canadian Army Cadet in Ottawa. The “secure transport of light” is one of my favorite phrases. It refers to both to optic cables (which make modern communications possible) and semiconductors (which make modern electronics possible). We can thank Alexander Graham Bell for allowing us to speak from one side of the Atlantic ocean to the other, through coils of sunbeams under the seas. Isn’t that a wonderful image?
In Episode 444 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dan Wang, author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, about his pioneering new framework that compares the U.S. and China not along ideological lines or modes of governance, but by state capacity and the propensity to build.
According to Dan Wang, China is an “engineering state,” focused on building big projects and diffusing technologies across its economy, while America is a “lawyerly society” that has become proficient at protecting what it has and obstructing progress in areas that are vital for its long-term prosperity. Kofinas and Wang compare each nation’s leadership—staffed by engineers and mega-project managers in China and litigators and regulators in America—against each other and against each country’s own history, and examine when and why the United States, in particular, went from being a country that excelled in constructing things to one more concerned with obstruction and safeguarding a comfortable way of life for the wealthiest and older segments of society.
The second hour is devoted to a discussion about the failures and unintended consequences of China’s engineering state, most notably the devastating human impact of its one-child and zero-COVID policies. They also explore the similarities between the American and Chinese people, the prospects for conflict between the two superpowers, and what policies the United States can implement to get back to building again—like reforming immigration, advancing clean energy development, permitting the buildout of more housing, and increasing funding for basic scientific research and development.
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I’m a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. Previously, I was a fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, and before that, I covered technology at Gavekal Dragonomics. For the better part of a decade, I’ve been trying to figure out China’s technology capabilities while I lived in Hong Kong, Beijing, and then Shanghai. I go on podcasts and have written for several magazines. This site features my personal essays.
My book BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future will be published in August 2025 by W. W. Norton in the US and Penguin in the UK. I think of it as seven annual letters — six on China, one on the US. Breakneck is longlisted for the FT’s business book of the year 2025 and has been excerpted in the Atlantic.
I live in Ann Arbor and Palo Alto. I grew up in Canada and have lived in Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Rochester, Freiburg im Breisgau, San Francisco, Kunming, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and New Haven. I’ve also worked at Flexport, Shopify, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I studied philosophy at the University of Rochester in New York. In an earlier life, I was a Royal Canadian Army Cadet in Ottawa. The “secure transport of light” is one of my favorite phrases. It refers to both to optic cables (which make modern communications possible) and semiconductors (which make modern electronics possible). We can thank Alexander Graham Bell for allowing us to speak from one side of the Atlantic ocean to the other, through coils of sunbeams under the seas. Isn’t that a wonderful image?
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
