CWP alum Eyck Freymann on NPR's 'All Things Considered'

FENG: The Iranian military occasionally broadcasts threats like this one, trying to deter any captain who wants to chance passing through that narrow channel. And as a result, fuel and fertilizer prices have skyrocketed. A good chunk of the global economy is being affected by that choke point, dispelling any notion that cargo vessels are free to navigate through international waters peacefully. But if that's the case, what does that mean for other waterways that are critical to global trade? Eyck Freymann is a Hoover fellow at Stanford University, and he's been thinking and writing about this question a lot, most recently in a piece for Foreign Affairs. Welcome, Eyck.

Modern economic chokepoints in war and the impact on geopolitics

May 3, 20265:22 PM ET - Heard on All Things Considered - By Henry Larson, Emily Feng, Tinbete Ermyas

Eyck Freymann is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University, where he directs the Allied Coordination Working Group. He is also a Non-Resident Research Fellow at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, the Institute of Geoeconomics in Tokyo, and the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.

Dr. Freymann works on strategies to preserve peace and protect U.S. interests and values in an era of systemic competition with China. He is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China (Oxford, 2026), The Arsenal of Democracy: Technology, Industry, and Deterrence in an Age of Hard Choices (Hoover, 2025), and One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard, 2021). His scholarly work has appeared in The China Quarterly and is forthcoming in International Security. 

Dr. Freymann comments on bipartisan national security issues in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, War on the Rocks, The Wire China, and The Atlantic, among other venues. 

Before Hoover, Dr. Freymann held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Columbia. He holds a doctorate from Oxford, masters degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, and a bachelors from Harvard, all in history and China studies.

Photo Credit: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/03/nx-s1-5804691/modern-economic-chokepoints-in-war-and-the-impact-on-geopolitics