I’m against these vulnerabilities as much as anyone, but if we want to move the world forward as a whole, nationalist protectionism cannot take us there. If every country wasted its resources building up its own fully independent industrial supply chain, and kept it fully modernized abreast of other nations, the average citizen’s standard of living would have a very low ceiling indeed. There’s a reason why corporate mergers happen.

If you want to see truly prosperous societies then you have to maximize peaceful international cooperation through shared democratic values. That takes educated citizenry with post-material values who will be invested in the stability and longevity of such an international system.

And they need to cooperate against authoritarian bad actors like Putin, who seek to divide and conquer.