The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in 2014.
As I write this, a MacBook Air I’ve purchased from Apple’s online store is on a flight over the East China Sea towards my home on the other side of the globe.
As I await my new toy, fighter jets from Japan, South Korea, China and the United States track each other warily over the very same sea. Trade between our economies has not created true trust between our governments. Soldiers and political leaders now play a tense diplomatic and military game with weapons that are not toys. One reckless move could put an end to my laptop’s voyage, the gadget-driven consumerism it embodies and a generation’s worth of global economic growth.