Geoeconomics Edge
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Master the new grammar of power

Geoeconomics Edge gives strategists, policymakers, and executives a rigorous, practitioner-built framework for the world where trade policy is foreign policy — and economic interdependence is a weapon. Work through real instruments, real chokepoints, and real scenario analysis, not theory alone.

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Geoeconomics Edge

The gap between the frameworks you were trained on and the world you're operating in is not a knowledge problem — it's a mental model problem, and that's exactly what we're here to fix.

Val (Valdas) Samonis

What you'll learn

What you'll be able to do

  • Diagnose the geoeconomic vulnerabilities of any trade-dependent nation using a structured chokepoint and supply-chain exposure framework.
  • Analyse how sanctions, investment screening, technology controls, and infrastructure financing are deployed as instruments of statecraft — and model their second-order effects.
  • Map the fragmentation of the multilateral trading system and apply a power-based — rather than rules-based — lens to interpreting WTO disputes, bilateral deals, and regional blocs.
  • Design a 'resilient interdependence' strategy for a mid-sized economy, balancing export dependence with targeted technological sovereignty in critical niches.
  • Evaluate the domestic policy conditions — industrial policy, R&D investment, democratic credibility — that determine a nation's leverage in geoeconomic negotiations.
  • Construct scenario analyses of US–China systemic rivalry and their cascading effects on allied and non-aligned mid-sized powers, including concrete strategic recommendations.

How it works

A school that adapts to you

This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.

We learn your level

A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.

Lessons adapt as you go

Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.

Your AI coach keeps you moving

Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.

The curriculum

What's inside your school

6 modules · 28 lessons

1

The Collapse of the Liberal Economic Order

Establishes why the post-Cold War separation of geopolitics from economics has ended and what replaced it.

  • 1.1The Liberal Consensus and Its Core AssumptionsIncluded
  • 1.2Three Pillars That FailedIncluded
  • 1.3The Return of Geoeconomics: Defining the New GrammarIncluded
  • 1.4From Rules-Based to Power-Based: How the Trading System FragmentedIncluded
  • 1.5Reading the New Landscape: A Practitioner's Diagnostic FrameworkIncluded
2

Instruments of Geoeconomic Power

Provides a rigorous anatomy of the tools states use to weaponize interdependence, with attention to deployment logic and second-order effects.

  • 2.1Sanctions Architecture: Design, Escalation, and EvasionIncluded
  • 2.2Investment Screening and the Securitization of Capital FlowsIncluded
  • 2.3Export Controls and Technology DenialIncluded
  • 2.4Infrastructure Financing as Geopolitical InstrumentIncluded
  • 2.5Modeling Second-Order Effects: Spillovers, Workarounds, and Unintended ConsequencesIncluded
3

The Asymmetric Vulnerabilities of Mid-Sized Powers

Applies geoeconomic theory specifically to the structural position of trade-dependent, mid-sized nations that cannot pursue autarky or unilateral coercion.

  • 3.1Anatomy of Asymmetric ExposureIncluded
  • 3.2Coercion Short of Sanctions: Gray-Zone Economic PressureIncluded
  • 3.3Supply-Chain Exposure Mapping: A Hands-On WorkshopIncluded
  • 3.4Canada as a Case Study in Mid-Sized Power GeoeconomicsIncluded
4

Chokepoint Technologies and Targeted Technological Sovereignty

Develops the strategy of achieving decisive advantage in selected technology niches while securing diversified access in all other critical domains.

  • 4.1What Makes a Technology a Chokepoint?Included
  • 4.2The Global Technology Map: Semiconductors, AI, Biotech, Critical Minerals, and QuantumIncluded
  • 4.3Niche Dominance Strategy: Selecting and Defending Your ChokepointsIncluded
  • 4.4Allied Technology Ecosystems: Trading Chokepoints for Secure AccessIncluded
  • 4.5Industrial Policy as Geoeconomic Tool: The CHIPS Act, IRA, and BeyondIncluded
5

Building the Domestic Fortress: Credibility, Institutions, and Leverage

Shows how a nation's internal policy environment — industrial strategy, democratic governance, R&D investment, and regulatory coherence — directly determines its geoeconomic leverage.

  • 5.1Why Domestic Credibility Is a Geoeconomic AssetIncluded
  • 5.2Industrial Policy Design for Geoeconomic ResilienceIncluded
  • 5.3Talent, Data, and Critical Infrastructure as Security PerimetersIncluded
  • 5.4Democratic Backsliding as Strategic LiabilityIncluded
6

Resilient Interdependence: Strategy Design and Scenario Analysis

Integrates all prior modules into actionable strategy: designing resilient interdependence for a mid-sized power and stress-testing it against realistic US–China rivalry scenarios.

  • 6.1The Resilient Interdependence Framework: Principles and ArchitectureIncluded
  • 6.2Navigating the US–China Systemic Rivalry: Positions, Pressures, and PivotsIncluded
  • 6.3Scenario Analysis Workshop: Cascading Effects on Allied and Non-Aligned PowersIncluded
  • 6.4Applying a Power-Based Lens to WTO Disputes, Blocs, and Bilateral DealsIncluded
  • 6.5Capstone: Strategic Recommendation for a Mid-Sized EconomyIncluded

Who it's for

Is this you?

Government policy analyst

Needs a power-based diagnostic framework to replace the rules-based assumptions that no longer describe the trade disputes landing on their desk.

Senior trade lawyer

Wants to understand the geoeconomic logic driving the investment-screening cases and export-control mandates reshaping their practice.

IR or political economy grad student

Needs a rigorous, applied framework to supplement academic theory and produce analysis that speaks credibly to practitioners.

Executive in an export-dependent industry

Needs to anticipate how sanctions architecture, technology controls, and supply-chain coercion will reshape their firm's strategic environment before competitors do.

Mid-sized-country strategist

Tasked with designing a resilient interdependence strategy for a nation caught between great-power competition and export dependence — and looking for a framework equal to that challenge.

Defense & security analyst

Tracks the intersection of economic statecraft and national security and needs structured fluency in chokepoint technologies, investment screening, and gray-zone coercion.

Questions

Frequently asked

Your teacher

A note from your teacher

Val (Valdas) Samonis

Val (Valdas) Samonis

If you're reading this, you're probably already aware that the frameworks you were trained on — the ones built around WTO rules, comparative-advantage logic, and the assumption of a basically stable multilateral order — are no longer sufficient. You can feel it in the work: in the briefings that don't quite capture what's actually driving a trade dispute, in the strategic recommendations that treat economic coercion as an aberration rather than a design choice, in the gap between the policy vocabulary you have and the policy environment you're operating in.

That gap is what Geoeconomics Edge was built to close.

I designed this curriculum for the professionals I most respect: the ones who are intellectually serious, who want rigorous frameworks rather than talking points, and who are operating in environments where the cost of a wrong analysis is real. The program doesn't simplify the world to make it more comfortable. It gives you the conceptual architecture to engage its full complexity — and then make better decisions inside it.

What you'll find here is a structured, sequential build. We start with the collapse of the liberal consensus, not because it's history but because understanding exactly how it failed tells you precisely what the new power-based logic replaced and why. We move through every major instrument of geoeconomic statecraft — sanctions, investment screening, export controls, infrastructure financing — with careful attention to second-order effects, because a tool you can't model past its first-order impact is a tool you'll misuse. We work through the specific strategic predicament of mid-sized powers in detail, because that is where the most consequential and underanalyzed decisions are being made right now.

I want to be direct about what this is not. It is not a survey of the geoeconomics literature. It is not a set of slides you can skim before a meeting. It is a practitioner's operating manual, written at the level of density and precision that the subject demands — and that you, I'd wager, have been looking for. The case studies are real, the frameworks are diagnostic, and the capstone asks you to do the hardest thing in strategy: synthesize analysis into a concrete recommendation under genuine uncertainty.

If you are ready to upgrade your mental model of how power actually works in the global economy — and to have the tools to act on that understanding — this is where that work begins. I look forward to working through it with you.

Val (Valdas) Samonis

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  • 6 modules, 28 lessons
  • AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
  • Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
  • Your own AI learning coach
  • Learn on any device, at your pace
  • Full access for as long as you're subscribed