Independent Research
Research at the intersection of foreign investment screening, critical supply chain analysis, and defense economics — built from primary-source government data and published across academic and policy outlets.
Research Programmes
Two interconnected research programmes — one in spatial econometrics applied to foreign investment screening, one in compound supply chain vulnerability analysis — drawing from the same primary-source government datasets and unified by the Mutual Threshold Saturation theoretical framework.
Spatial econometric analysis of whether foreign agricultural holdings attributed to adversarial-nation investors exhibit statistically significant clustering near U.S. military installations. Using USDA AFIDA primary data (2020–2024), Monte Carlo permutation testing against 71 CONUS installations, and multi-country comparative benchmarking. Central finding: Chinese holdings cluster at 3.4× enrichment (p<0.001) — nearly twice the allied-nation baseline of 1.8×. Nuclear-capable installations: 12.7× enrichment.
Compound vulnerability analysis identifying 1,637 single-source or single-system supply chain dependencies across seven critical sectors — pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, semiconductors, fertilizer, energy, telecommunications, and physical infrastructure. Introduces the Mutual Threshold Saturation (MTS) framework: every major economy holds enough cross-cutting leverage that catastrophic action is irrational, but incremental below-threshold coercion remains continuously available. Derived entirely from open-source government data across 18 primary sources.
A deterministic, reproducible, instrument-grade system for extracting ownership and governance relationships from SEC filings. SECMap processes 10-K, 20-F, SC 13D/G filings to map beneficial ownership chains, classify jurisdiction risk (adversarial, conduit, monitored, standard), detect state-actor affiliations (SOEs, sovereign wealth funds, shell companies), and produce risk-rated intelligence summaries. Production runs against Chinese-linked agricultural companies (Sinopec, Syngenta/ChemChina, Smithfield/WH Group, Borqs Technologies) identified 1,734 ownership edges, 399 adversarial-jurisdiction edges, and 57 state-affiliated entities — providing the empirical backbone for Article 2 of the PhD dissertation.
Publications
Academic articles, policy essays, and analytical commentary. Links updated as publications go live.
Academic Articles
Policy & Strategic Analysis
Research Papers
Additional Commentary
Code & Data
Source code, processed datasets, and methodology documentation. All analysis is reproducible from publicly available government data.
Permutation testing framework for spatial clustering analysis of USDA AFIDA foreign agricultural holdings data against military installation coordinates. Includes haversine distance matrix, enrichment ratio computation, and multi-country comparative benchmarking.
↓ Download robustness_checks.pyPython 3 · NumPy · Pandas · SciPy
88 enumerated single-source dependencies across 7 sectors with source attribution, tier classification, and methodology notes. The backbone dataset for the compound vulnerability analysis. Derived from 18 primary government sources.
↓ Download MTS_Dependency_Ledger_v2.csvCSV · 88 rows · 12 fields
Complete Monte Carlo results for 11 investor countries at four distance thresholds (10, 25, 50, 100 miles). Includes enrichment ratios, p-values, observed vs. expected counts, and significance classifications.
↓ Download multicountry_results.jsonJSON · 11 countries · 4 thresholds
Index of all primary-source government databases used across both research programmes: FDA DMF, USGS MCS, IEA Critical Minerals Data Explorer, EIA Monthly Energy Review, USDA FATUS, ASHP drug shortage database, Commerce/DHS ICT assessment, IWUB reports.
→ View source index18 primary sources documented
The fictional statistical methodology from Digital Harvest — validated against real USDA primary data. Monte Carlo permutation approach, enrichment ratio framework, and multi-country comparative benchmarking. Documentation of the creative-practice-to-empirical-validation pathway.
→ View methodology notesMethodology documentation
Publication-quality figures from the spatial analysis: distance distributions, Monte Carlo permutation test results, multi-country enrichment comparison charts. Available for academic citation with attribution.
→ View figure galleryPNG · Publication resolution
Deterministic, reproducible system for extracting ownership and governance relationships from SEC EDGAR filings. 22 source modules covering CIK discovery, SC 13D/G parsing, jurisdiction risk classification, state-actor affiliation detection, and risk-rated report generation. Full test suite with golden-file regression, reproducibility, and CLI smoke tests. Apache 2.0 licensed.
↓ Download SECMap.zipPython 3.10+ · 22 modules · Apache 2.0
Combined ownership graph from 8 target CIKs (Sinopec, Syngenta, Smithfield, Borqs, Church & Dwight, WisdomTree, Principal Funds). 1,734 edges, 381 unique entities, 399 adversarial-jurisdiction edges, 57 state-affiliated entities. 25 fields per edge including jurisdiction risk tier, state affiliation, and filing provenance.
↓ Download combined.csvCSV · 1,734 rows · 25 fields · Pipe-delimited
Per-entity ownership chain summaries with overall risk ratings, jurisdiction risk distribution, state-actor affiliation tables, AFIDA depth comparisons, and supply chain vulnerability alerts. Generated by SECMap Report Generator v2.0.
→ View reportsMarkdown · 7 entity reports
About
I am an independent researcher working at the intersection of spatial econometrics, supply chain vulnerability analysis, and national security economics. My research uses primary-source government data — USDA AFIDA filings, FDA Drug Master Files, USGS mineral surveys, IEA energy data, and Commerce Department trade statistics — to address questions that existing analytical institutions are structured to miss.
My military career began as a U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery officer during the Cold War, including service along the Fulda Gap. Two decades in defense systems engineering followed, building and analyzing complex technical systems for government and enterprise clients. This background informs both the questions I ask and the standards I apply: every claim must survive scrutiny from professionals who have lived in these environments.
The research on this site originated from an unusual pathway. While developing The Silent Conquest, a four-book geopolitical thriller series, I constructed intelligence-style analytical documents that required real methodology applied to real data. The fictional economist's spatial analysis framework produced significant results when validated against USDA primary data. The Mutual Threshold Saturation doctrine — conceived as a narrative device — proved to describe a measurable structural condition. The fiction generated the hypotheses; the research tests them. Both streams are represented here.
I hold an MBA and am preparing a PhD dissertation by published work in applied econometrics, with a focus on spatial analysis of foreign direct investment patterns as they relate to national security.
Education
Service & Experience
Previous Publications
Fiction