Elements of economic warfare:

• IP theft
  • cyber-enabled
  • via planted employees
  • via company partnerships
  • via researchers (e.g. undisclosed affiliations of visitors, or domestic researchers failing to disclose arrangements funded by China)
• Trade sanctions
• Strategic asset acquisitions (e.g. ports)
• Strategic sector supply monopolies (e.g. medicines or defence; DJI near-monopoly on drones)
• Disruption of individual firm functioning (e.g. cyber/malware attacks)
• Disruption of information flows or supply chains needed for society-wide economic functioning (e.g. attack on stock market)

Government ability to impose trading controls on private firms may be limited - there will be powerful commercial interests lobbying for approaches that maximise their private profits, rather than overall public good. The British found this in pursuing an economic warfare strategy in early WWI:

Brits-Krieg: The Strategy of Economic Warfare

What does an economic warfare OODA loop look like?

What does 'Fighter Command' for economic warfare look like?

e.g. assessing vulnerabilities, finding new markets to pivot to when attacked

On trade sanctions, Alex Turnbull offers a good model for thinking about responses to China's blockages on Australian exports:

• For most exports, including barley and many metals, there are plenty of other markets for Aus exports, so Chinese restrictions have limited real impact.

  Australian barley finds a new home in Mexico after China ban

• For iron ore, China is by far the largest importer and Aus is by far the largest exporter, so we are largely stuck with each other. It isn't feasible for China to restrict imports since they have limited alternatives, despite politics.

• For coal, China is an important importer and there aren't good alternative export markets for Aus, but China has been steadily decreasing their reliance on imports anyway, in favour of building up domestic supply. Coal is dying and we need to phase it out; at worst politics with China accelerates this trend, it doesn't create it.

• For some other products, such as wine and seafood, Chinese restrictions can have a significant impact but these are relatively smaller industries, so the response should be around Aus using its other resources to soften the blow, e.g. providing export promotion support to these industries to find alternate markets.