Jacob Helberg from Stanford University's Center on Geopolitics and Technology introduces POWER PLAYS listeners to the global tech-fueled struggle between the U.S.-led democracies and China-led autocracies that is redefining international politics. The stakes of this "Gray War", as Helberg terms it in his new book THE WIRES OF WAR, are high and time is running out for America to address and win this war. If China reaches a point of self-sufficiency and what Helberg describes in the show as "escape velocity", it will be too late for the U.S. to prevent China from achieving its political vision of a more autocratic world safe for the Chinese Communist Party.