About

Value Added is a newsletter about the political economy of innovation. I’ve written an introductory post explaining the context of this newsletter and the approach it will take. You can expect a regional focus on the U.S. and China, along with broad coverage of topics such as industrial policy, green manufacturing, cloud computing, and technology’s role in the new productivist era.

The goal of this newsletter is to share what I’m reading and working on in a more digestible format. Partly, this is for myself—to summarize, synthesize, and explore new research ideas. But hopefully, it will also be useful for others who are interested in these topics.

A little about me: I’m JS Tan, a PhD student in the International Development Group at MIT DUSP. In the past, I’ve written on topics such as bullshit tech work, Big Tech’s collaboration with Big Oil, and industrial relations in China’s tech sector for venues like Dissent Magazine, Foreign Policy, The Baffler, The Guardian Opinion, Logic(s), and Jacobin. My work is archived here.