"The corporate supply chain has a history in the military and colonial supply line...It is not only striking but diagnostic that old enemies of empire "indians" and "pirates" are among the groups that pose the biggest threats to the "security of supply today"
"The conflation of a survivalist politics of circulation in nature & trade has troubling implications; it naturalizes trade flows, casting disruption as a threat to life, buttressing efforts to cast [indigenous blockades, labor actions] as matters of security subject to [force]."
"Arguably the most underinvestigated revolution of the twentieth century, the revolution in logistics was not the upheaval of one country or political system but a revolution in the calculation and organization of economic space."
"While it was during WWI that [oil] began to reshape the nature of warfare, livestock continued to play a definitive role, & fodder remained a...logistical problem. The greatest volume of material shipped...from the UK to France was not munitions but...oats & hay for horses."
"Geo-economics entails new forms of describing...that treat spatial relations w/ the same top-down...visual preoccupations of geopolitics but that are also characterized by a different non-state identification w/ the...deregulatory dynamics of today's transnationalized economies.
"Perhaps most striking [is] the reorganization [of] national security to fit the form & function of transnatl. logistics space. Rather than territorial borders at the edge of natl. space guaranteeing sovereignty, a new cartography of security aims to protect global circulation."
Really interesting account of Canada's Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative, which sought/seeks to invest in logistical infrastructure to reorient the Canadian/North American economy to better engage with the Asia-Pacific Rim
"One 2008 Asian mission took the APGCI Executive Council to Dubai, which Gow described as “like Disneyland. It was very interesting—very interesting.” Dubai Ports is also a member of the APGCI.
"Dubai [is] an entity that, when they do things, they think of everything...And they don’t just develop a port. They develop a system. Its infrastructure, & ports, & its free trade zones, & its accommodation, and its transportation of people, and its energy..."
"Dubai may well be a “Disneyland” for capital, w/ its radical social order where workers & citizens are separate classes...w/ a labor force that is 90% noncitizen, Dubai ensures a “love it or leave it” approach for professionals & pitiful conditions of work & wages for the rest."
"The use of labor disruptions as “attacks” on the supply chain follows directly from positing global trade as vital to natl. security...A legal act asserting workplace democracy, when viewed through this lens, is not just like an attack—it is an attack on the integrity of flows."
"The Container Security Initiative, a program defined and administered by American authorities, posts Customs and Border Patrol agents in dozens of foreign ports to inspect U.S.-bound cargo." As of 6/2022, MENA ports in the CSI included Haifa, Aqaba, Ashdod, Dubai, & Salalah