Routes of Power: Global Competition for Strategic Infrastructure
Virtual Briefing Series
Thursday, May 8th, 2025 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
Recent comments from President Trump targeting Canada, Greenland, and Panama have drawn renewed attention to a deeper global trend: the scramble for control over critical infrastructure. From the Panama Canal to Arctic shipping routes and mineral-rich territories, nations are positioning themselves to command the arteries of commerce and security. Infrastructure—whether canals, ports, or rare earth corridors—is increasingly about power, leverage, and access to the future economy than simply logistics. What does the infrastructure chessboard look like through the lens of geopolitics and how is it shifting? What are Washington’s aims and how might other countries react? As nations compete to secure these pathways and resources, the question isn’t just about who controls them, but how infrastructure control is remaking geopolitics.
Join us on Thursday, May 8th, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM ET for a discussion with Dr. Mary Bridges, an infrastructure expert and Ernest May Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School; Jonathan E. Hillman, Senior Fellow of Geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Dr. Evan Ellis, research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College. This conversation will provide key insights into the global competition for strategic infrastructure control.
THIS SESSION IS OPEN TO EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD
SPEAKERS:
Dr. Mary Bridges
Dr. Mary Bridges is a historian of the twentieth-century United States. Her research investigates the linkages between US foreign relations and business history. Her book Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower (Princeton University Press, September 2024), argues that US multinational banks provided a crucial infrastructure of both global capitalism and US empire in the early twentieth century. The project explores the changing credit practices of overseas bankers, as US banks navigated new ways to profit from trade finance and their relationship to the US government.
She is currently a research fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University’s International Security Studies program and at Johns Hopkins SAIS. She holds a PhD in history from Vanderbilt, an MA from Yale in international relations, and a BA from Harvard in history and science. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a business reporter and editor.
Dr. Evan Ellis
Dr. Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region. Dr. Ellis has published over 550 works, including five books: the 2009 book China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, the 2013 book The Strategic Dimension of Chinese Engagement with Latin America, the 2014 book, China on the Ground in Latin America, the 2018 book, Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the 2022 book, China Engages Latin America: Distorting Development and Democracy?
Dr. Ellis previously served as on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff (S/P) with responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean (WHA), as well as International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) issues. In his academic capacity, Dr. Ellis presented his work in a broad range of business and government forums in 27 countries. He has given testimony on Latin America security issues to the US Congress on various occasions, has discussed his work regarding China and other external actors in Latin America on a broad range of radio and television programs, and is cited regularly in the print media in both the US and Latin America for his work in this area. Dr. Ellis has also been awarded the Order of Military Merit José María Córdova by the Colombian government for his scholarship on security issues in the region conducts research on global internet and media distribution, communications infrastructures ranging from data centers to undersea cables, and media’s environmental and elemental dimensions. Starosielski is author or co-editor of over thirty articles and five books on media, infrastructure, and environments, including: The Undersea Network(link is external) (2015), Media Hot and Cold(link is external) (2021), Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure(link is external) (2015), Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment(link is external) (2016), Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media(link is external) (2021), as well as co-editor of the “Elements(link is external)” book series at Duke University Press.
Jonathan E. Hillman
Jonathan E. Hillman is senior fellow for geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His expertise spans economic and security issues, including investment, trade, infrastructure, and technology. He is the author of The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future and The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century.
Hillman has served as a senior advisor to three U.S. cabinet officials. From 2023 to 2024, he advised the secretary of commerce on finance, infrastructure, and trade issues. From 2022 to 2023, he served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff as the lead member covering economics and co-lead for technology. From 2014 to 2016, he directed the research and writing process at the office of the U.S. trade representative for reports, speeches, and other materials explaining U.S. trade and investment policy.
From 2016 to 2022, Hillman was a senior fellow and director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has also worked as a researcher at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, at the Council on Foreign Relations for then president emeritus Leslie H. Gelb, and in Kyrgyzstan as a Fulbright Scholar. Hillman is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a presidential scholar, and Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received the Garrison Prize for best thesis in international relations.
THIS SESSION IS OPEN TO EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD
Image credit: Wikipedia Commons
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