Julius Krein

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Jacob Dreyer |Julius Krein

Late last October, we were in the basement of an obscure academic building in Berlin’s southwestern suburb of Dahlem, a group of twenty or thirty people assembled to hear Wang Hui talk about nationalism; my friends at the Berggruen Institute Europe had organized a residency in Venice and Berlin for him, to engage with European thought before the Trump victory that everybody saw coming.

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Joel Dodge |Julius Krein

The Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA) is one of America’s oldest and most important industrial policy laws, reemerging in recent years as a vital tool for addressing urgent national crises. Yet for decades, the DPA was rarely used outside of the Department of Defense, and was hardly the subject of major policy debates or headline news. That changed over the last five years, as both presidents Trump and Biden increasingly came to rely on the law for a number of emergent needs.

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Philip Pilkington |Julius Krein

Today’s consumer capitalist societies present us with a paradox: We are told year in and year out that living standards are rising, but many people—especially younger people—can feel their quality of life decline as time goes on. This feeling is palpable and can be seen in the hardest of the quality of life indices, such as the suicide rate and the rates of drug addiction and overdose.

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Ashwin Lalendran |Brent Parton |Julius Krein

Call it reindustrialization, reshoring, or rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. Whatever the name, the objective is the same, and it is increasingly a national priority. Leaders across the ideological spectrum are backing the movement with diverse but interrelated aims in mind: strengthening supply chains, outcompeting China, reviving blue-collar jobs, and accelerating advanced technology at home. This is not just another Washington fad.

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Kenneth Flamm |William B. Bonvillian |Julius Krein

In the previous issue of American Affairs, we argued that the demise of leading-edge chip manufacturing in the United States has created an acute defense industrial base crisis with major geopolitical implications. Recently departed Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has characterized the former U.S. chip manufacturing champion’s problems as resulting from a fundamental qualitative shift in the economics of leading-edge chip manufacturing for which Intel—and U.S. national security interests—were unprepared.