Capital as a weapon

Extracted Attributes

• Key Industries

  AI Infrastructure, Physical Automation, Food Logistics, E-commerce

• Core Definition

  The offensive use of financial resources to capture market share, build moats, or exert geopolitical pressure.

• Alternative Analogy

  Capital as 'oxygen' (viewing funding as a survival necessity rather than an offensive tool)

• Business Proponents

  Travis Kalanick, Masayoshi Son, Sam Altman, Michael Dell

• Geopolitical Application

  Financial warfare, economic sanctions, and capital market chokepoints

Timeline

• The USAWC Press publishes 'Waging Financial War,' detailing how capital market liquidity can be used for systematic financial warfare. (Source: Waging Financial War - USAWC Press)

  2013-12-01

• Michael Pettis publishes an analysis on why China cannot easily weaponize its U.S. Treasury bonds. (Source: Financial geopolitics and hybrid conflict)

  2020-05-29

• Following the invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and EU deploy capital market sanctions as a chokepoint against the Russian economy. (Source: The United States Has Overused Its Sanctions Weapon - Jacobin)

  2022-02-24

• Travis Kalanick and Michael Dell discuss the competitive advantage of using capital as a weapon during a live event in Austin, Texas. (Source: Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas)

  2024-05-20

Phalanx CIWS

The Phalanx CIWS (SEE-wiz) is an automated gun-based close-in weapon system to defend military watercraft automatically against incoming threats such as aircraft, missiles, and small boats. It was designed and manufactured by the General Dynamics Corporation, Pomona Division, later a part of Raytheon. Consisting of a radar-guided 20 mm (0.8 in) Vulcan cannon mounted on a swiveling base, the Phalanx has been used by the United States Navy and the naval forces of 15 other countries. The U.S. Navy deploys it on every class of surface combat ship, except the Zumwalt-class destroyer and San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. Other users include the British Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the U.S. Coast Guard. A land variant, the LPWS (Land Phalanx Weapon System), part of the Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) system, was developed. It was deployed to counter rocket, artillery and mortar attacks during the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.S. Navy also fields the SeaRAM system, which pairs the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile with sensors based on the Phalanx.

Web Search Results

• How to treat capital as a weapon, not oxygen | Rob Go posted on the ...

  There are two different analogies that are often used by venture capitalists and founders to talk about the role of capital. One is oxygen — companies need capital like the human body needs oxygen to survive and thrive. The other is a weapon — capital can be offensively used to help a business capture market share, strengthen competitive moats, and win. From a fundraising standpoint, I find that founders have more success when they treat capital as a weapon, not as oxygen. If capital is like oxygen, the conversation focuses on what might go wrong. Will your numbers and assumptions hold up? Will new risks blow up your model or the quality of your service? What unforeseen challenges might make you miss your numbers and run out of money sooner, requiring more oxygen down the road? If capital [...] and later raised from a position of strength. I've also worked with companies that raised early and used that capital to capture a market position their competitors couldn't match. The most successful ones understand their business model and match their capital strategy accordingly. #Bootstrapping #StartupFunding #FounderChoice #B2BStrategy #VentureCapital [...] for a mutually beneficial partnership. #VentureCapital #BusinessNegotiation #EntrepreneurialJourney

• [PDF] Waging Financial War - USAWC Press

  markets grow. With its high-speed, complex interconnectivity, and the volume of capital moving daily, warfare in the financial marketplace possesses the capability to operate separately from and at speeds far beyond economic, conventional, or irregular warfare. The United States possesses a discrete and immense capacity for financial warfare. As the provider and guarantor of the world’s reserve currency, the United States occupies a unique position in global finan - cial markets. The reach of US currency is global. The Federal Reserve estimated that 60 percent of total US currency in circulation, roughly $450 billion, is held outside the United States. 12 Accordingly, the United States is the preeminent market for raising as well as investing capital. By [...] 82 Parameters 43(4) W inter 2013-14 capacity, build capacity of adversary competitors, and ensure that ben - efits of association with the United States only flow to indigenous parties who actively share risk, comparable in intensity and duration, with the United States. To neglect the use of some US capabilities in execution of policy is to overuse, rely on, and risk other capabilities. If the intent of financial warfare is to extend the battlespace into the financial marketplace, then the operational question becomes how to do it? The answer is through macro and micro engagements or strikes across the three principal areas of finance initially targeting the interface between the adversary and the global marketplace. Capital Formation Strikes [...] Capital market liquidity, for example, is systematic aggregation of capital transactions which are the individual exchange of capital and financial assets between buyers and sellers at volume, rapidly, without loss of value, and among its forms, e.g., commodities, currencies, equity, debt, etc. Deconstructing or reversing the historic arc of capital market liquidity’s upward progress is a blueprint for systematically waging financial warfare utilizing capital liquidity strikes. The intent of capital market liquidity strikes, in aggregate, is to target markets and disrupt their drivers of upward efficiencies, speed, volume, and scale, to create a downward spiral of inefficiencies driving markets to a measurable policy

• [PDF] Financial geopolitics and hybrid conflict: Strategic competition in a ...

  60 E.g. Michael Pettis, ‘China Cannot Weaponize Its U.S. Treasury Bonds,’ CIEP Financial Markets Blog, 29 May 2020, https:/ /carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/79218. 61 Michael Howell, Capital Wars. The Rise of Global Liquidity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 7-8. [...] To sum up, geopolitics and geo-economics are hard to distinguish and often go hand in hand. This has implications for military and eco­ nomic policies. The issue of access to and con­ trol over strategic economic resources, or ‘eco­ nomic security’, is at the core of great-power relations. Having economic security depends greatly on capital markets and finance. In fact, due to the increased role of finance in the economy, and the key importance of economic resources to military-strategic power, who con­ trols finance may control world politics. Time and again throughout history, wars and political schemes were enabled or limited by the role of finance. Moreover, industrial dynamics and tech­ nological progress are similarly dependent upon capital markets for investments and transac­ [...] 58 ‘The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications.’ US Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelli­ gence Community, Testimony to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 12 February 2009. 59 The Pentagon hosted the two-day event on 17 and 18 March 2009 at the Warfare Analysis Laboratory in Ft. Meade, Laurel, Maryland. Among the participants were, among others, bankers from UBS; Steven Halli­ well, managing director of a hedge fund called River Capital Management; Paul Bracken; James Rickards. See Eamon Javers, ‘Pentagon preps for economic warfare,’ Politico, 9 April 2009, http:/ /www.politico.com/news/ stories/0409/21053.html.

• The United States Has Overused Its Sanctions Weapon - Jacobin

  In the end, these links turned out to be Putin’s weakness. Fossil fuels are the foundation of his war machine — in fact, today, they’re the basis of the entire Russian economy. Russian oil companies need access to international capital to be able to develop new projects and drill for oil in hard-to-reach places, which means deals with Western banks and technologically advanced Western fossil fuel companies. Other sectors of the Russian economy had also been borrowing in dollars, and the financial system was dependent upon raising money from international investors. [...] Rather than cutting off the Russian economy’s access to dollars, which could create a financial crisis, the United States designed sanctions that would prevent Russian institutions from accessing new dollars, limiting their ability to grow and therefore the growth of the Russian economy. As Fishman puts it, “The US would use Russia’s reliance on US capital markets as a chokepoint.” The European Union was initially hesitant, but when Russia blew a passenger airline out of the sky, the EU got on board with its own basket of sanctions mirroring those imposed by the United States. [...] In a new book, Chokepoints: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon of War, Edward Fishman describes how sanctions have been transformed over the past several decades. Fishman has worked in the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Treasury, where he spent several years in the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence team designing sanctions on states like Iran. Chokepoints is accordingly an insider’s account of how the United States developed an armory of powerful sanctions based on its control over the world’s financial system — and how the overuse of these tools ended up undermining their effectiveness, ultimately compromising US hegemony itself. # Targeting North Korea and Iran

• Economic Sanctions Explained: Types, Effects & Key Examples

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