The puzzle
Trade volumes persist.
Supply chains span the globe.
Capital moves across borders.
Yet beneath this surface of continuity,
the architecture of interdependence
is being remade.
Core concept
What is a Stack?
A vertically integrated system that bundles raw materials, manufacturing, software, and data infrastructure into a singular, non-interoperable architecture.
Following Benjamin Bratton's The Stack (2015): sovereignty is no longer only territorial but architectural — layered systems of computation and governance that cut across borders and redefine who controls what.
This book traces how stacks emerged not from grand strategy,
but from corporate planning routines at the technological frontier.
The old world
The Ethereal Economy
The dominant image of successful capitalism carried an ethereal quality.
Physical assets were liabilities. Manufacturing was modular.
Suppliers were interchangeable. Interfaces made it all work.
Modular hierarchy
The OEM pyramid: legible interfaces, interchangeable suppliers, value captured at the top.
The collapse of modularity
The Physics Strike Back
EVs were supposed to be more modular than combustion engines.
Instead, the empirical evidence showed the opposite.
Battery chemistry cannot be optimized independently from thermal management,
which cannot be optimized independently from vehicle structure,
which cannot be optimized independently from software.
To beat the physics, firms had to beat the market —
internalizing coordination that arm's-length
transactions cannot provide.
Two responses
The Bifurcation
Architectural control (eliminate interfaces entirely) vs. Architectural interdependence (colonize the interface)
What this looks like
Two Worlds
Volkswagen Group
1,400+ entities · 40+ countries
BYD
~170 entities · China-centric
The macro-expansion
From Engineering to Statecraft
Firms solved control in a fragmented world.
States nationalized the solution.
🇺🇸 Conditional Access
Market-emergent stacks harnessed by the state
Architectural conditionality: reconfigure your infrastructure as the price of admission
G42 stripped $2B of Huawei equipment to access the American AI stack
🇨🇳 Outward Projection
State-incubated stacks projected abroad
Alignment through accumulated integration: workforce skills, tooling, software ecosystems
$200B+ manufacturing FDI since 2019 — exceeding the Marshall Plan
The concept
Stacked Interdependence
Not weaponized interdependence — exploiting existing network nodes.
Not decoupling — severing flows.
A configuration in which control over multiple layers of a vertically integrated production system forecloses the possibility of exit. Power derives not from controlling a single chokepoint, but from the depth of integration across the stack.
Key insight: The features designed for profit — lock-in, high switching costs, ecosystem dominance — serve equally well as templates for long-term geopolitical alignment.
The stakes
Localization ≠ Sovereignty
Resource states (Bolivia, DRC):
control extraction, but depend on CATL's downstream processing to realize value.
European hosts (Germany, Hungary):
have gigafactories — but depend on upstream materials beyond their regulatory reach.
Automakers (BMW, VW):
even cell-only contracts inherit hidden dependencies on proprietary software & raw materials.
Control at one layer does not translate into autonomy across the stack.
Where stacks collide
Europe: A Model in Crisis
The October 2024 EV tariff vote — a referendum on Europe's position in the emerging order.
France, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Baltics, Nordics
Less integrated into Chinese stacks
Germany, Hungary, Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia
Deep stack integration with Chinese architecture
Spain, Belgium, Austria, much of Central Europe
Hedging between stacks
This pattern is illegible through standard EU cleavages — not North/South, not creditor/debtor.
It becomes legible only through stack exposure.
It requires ripping out hardware, retraining engineers, and rebuilding systems at costs measured in billions of dollars and years of development time.
Where Cold War I offered entry through ideational conversion,
Cold War II forecloses exit through material integration.
luuk.schmitz@mpifg.de · Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies