Episode 397: Occupied Alaska: How America Could Lose Territory Without a Shot Fired
In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, host Dominic Bowen is joined by Dr. Holly Bell, economist, former professor and academic administrator at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and author of the geopolitical novel Occupied Alaska, to unpack how economic dependence on foreign capital can constrain a nation’s sovereignty just as effectively as military force.
Bell examines the real 2017 agreement that inspired her novel, a proposed $43 billion LNG pipeline deal between Alaska and a Chinese state-linked company that, by every economic analysis, could never turn a profit. She explains why economically irrational projects can still make strategic sense for a foreign state, how predatory lending terms create debt-trap dynamics already seen in Sri Lanka and Djibouti, and why the same playbook could realistically unfold within a U.S. state. The conversation also covers the accumulation risk of individually reasonable investments across energy, agriculture and finance, Alaska’s strategic value as a resource-rich territory bordering Russia, and the structural disadvantage democracies face when competing against states that plan in decades rather than election cycles.
This episode is relevant to anyone interested in economic security, critical infrastructure, foreign investment risk, geopolitics, or international risk.
The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.
Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders.
Episode Transcript
Dominic Bowen: Economic influence can be as strategically important as military power. Critical infrastructure always needs financing. Governments always need investment. Communities always need jobs. And companies, of course, need access to markets. Almost every individual decision involved can appear commercially rational.
But what happens when these decisions start to accumulate — when dependence on foreign capital, foreign technology, foreign infrastructure, or foreign markets begins to constrain the choices available to local communities and governments?
I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast, where we unpack the topics that really matter. That’s the premise behind the book Occupied Alaska, a geopolitical novel imagining an economically weakened Alaska that turns to China to finance its infrastructure in order to exploit its natural resources. In this book, what begins as an investment gradually becomes something much more consequential — and maybe even sinister.
Our guest today is Dr. Holly Bell. She’s an economist, a former professor, and an academic administrator at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and she’s the author of Occupied Alaska. Her work sits at the intersection of economics, international security, regulation, geopolitical risk, and now authorship.
Holly, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.
Holly Bell: Hi Dominic, it’s great to be here.
Dominic Bowen: Holly, I want to jump straight into it — your book is such a fun and interesting read. You wrote Occupied Alaska around the frightening proposition that a territory doesn’t necessarily have to be conquered militarily to lose control over its future. What risks were you trying to explore in this book? What did you want readers to think about, beyond just enjoying a good story?
Holly Bell: I was trying to get people to think about the second, third, and fourth order consequences of the economic decisions we make around allowing foreign investment — and when foreign investment turns into foreign occupation.
Dominic Bowen: That idea of foreign occupation is so interesting. We think, “who would be silly enough to let that happen?” But look at Australia — an island nation, traditionally very defendable because of its terrain. Yet any military deployment we send overseas usually leaves from Darwin. Who owns the Port of Darwin, you might ask, Holly?
Holly Bell: That would probably be the Chinese.
Dominic Bowen: Thank you — who else would own the port we use to send our military out, or bring it back? So this isn’t something completely imaginary. Going back to your book: in 2017, Alaska and a Chinese state-linked company signed an agreement around a proposed $43 billion LNG project. You watched that happening. What did you see, what concerned you, and what did people take for granted that they shouldn’t have?
Holly Bell: I actually worked very hard against that project when it was being proposed in Alaska. Every economic analysis of the project said it would never make money — which is exactly why the oil and gas companies already operating in Alaska hadn’t done it themselves. So you have to ask: why would China want to take on a project that couldn’t possibly turn a profit?
They pursued it under some genuinely predatory lending terms, which was going to create serious problems for Alaska’s ability to ever pay the money back. And if you can’t pay back $43 billion to China, then what happens?
Dominic Bowen: We’ve seen this in several countries — Sri Lanka is a classic example, as are many countries across the African continent. It’s often called a debt trap. Talk to us about how a U.S. state gets caught up in this.
Holly Bell: Economic development in Alaska has always been challenging. It’s a resource state that relies heavily on its resources, much like Sri Lanka or Djibouti — places that get taken advantage of in similar ways. So there’s a real desperation to improve the economy.
The deal was structured so that China would receive roughly 75% of the gas at cost, and would also collect the revenue, essentially paying themselves back. That would have left Alaska with 25% of the gas to sell on the open market to try to pay off a loan it could never realistically repay.
Look at Djibouti: they accepted major infrastructure loans from China to solve immediate economic problems, and over time their critical assets — ports, railways, logistics hubs — became increasingly wrapped up in China’s commercial interests. Then China developed a sustained security presence, including a military base, to protect those investments. I’ve essentially taken that scenario and placed it in Alaska.
Dominic Bowen: It’s easy to understand why governments want investment — they can’t keep accumulating debt, and they want jobs and infrastructure, which are genuinely good things we vote for. But where’s the line between a mutually beneficial foreign investment and something that tips into strategic dependence on a foreign state?
Holly Bell: Part of it is vulnerability. The places that get taken advantage of tend to have natural resources critical to their own economic development. Once loans can’t be repaid, the offer becomes: in exchange, we’ll take this territory and build factories, or mine the rare earths that Alaska also has. Once a country is in control because no one can pay the loan back, that leads to political and economic control over the area — something we don’t usually imagine happening in the United States, but it could.
Dominic Bowen: As a strategic advisor working with companies across Europe and North America, key risk indicators are something I spend a lot of time on. Beyond the usual KPIs, what should governments, the public sector, or advocacy groups be monitoring — market concentration, ability to withdraw capital, ownership percentages, financing structures, technology sharing?
Holly Bell: All of those, plus a clear definition of what critical infrastructure a state or country wants to retain control of.
Around the same time in 2017, China wasn’t only pursuing energy resources in Alaska — they were also trying to purchase the Chicago Stock Exchange, another issue I worked on personally. Their intent was to let Chinese companies list on a US exchange they controlled, giving them influence over listing rules within the framework of US regulation. At the same time, we saw a wave of Chinese purchases of US agricultural land, including an attempt to build a corn milling operation to process and export corn back to China.
So the bigger risk picture is: they were targeting energy, food, and finance simultaneously. You can’t look at these as individual decisions — you have to look at what other critical infrastructure is being targeted at the same time.
Dominic Bowen: That’s a great example — agricultural land, corn milling, a stock exchange, energy infrastructure — and the risk that comes from accumulation. In your book, a pipeline deal by itself might be reasonable. A port investment might be reasonable. Telecommunications infrastructure might be a bit riskier but still reasonable on its own. But put them all together, and any rational person starts to feel uneasy. How should governments and regulators assess that cumulative risk, rather than judging each deal individually?
Holly Bell: How do you take over territory without ever firing a shot? Little by little, then all at once.
These are small decisions happening in places like Alaska that most people aren’t paying attention to. We need better regulatory controls around foreign investment, particularly involving critical infrastructure. The US has improved on this since 2017 — the Chicago Stock Exchange deal actually cleared CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. The only thing standing between that deal happening and not happening was the Securities and Exchange Commission, which — fortunately, with some influence — decided not to approve it.
We need stopgaps before deals reach that point, and we need to evaluate them holistically rather than in isolation, because that’s exactly how influence is built: little by little, then all at once. And by the time you notice, you’ve lost control.
Dominic Bowen: That’s a great way of putting it. You’ve also touched on what counts as critical infrastructure — most of us think in physical terms: ports, pipelines, telecom towers, energy facilities. But there are other vulnerabilities too, like our financial systems — who finances the assets, who holds the debt. We talk a lot about the AI bubble, but there’s also a real credit risk bubble, and we saw the devastation the 2008 financial crisis caused globally. How critical is our financial and debt exposure right now, especially with US Treasuries fluctuating as we record this?
Holly Bell: US debt is far too high right now, and that in itself is a risk. We also need to avoid over-integrating with other countries’ financial systems — being too heavily invested in, say, Chinese stocks, can be just as problematic.
On critical infrastructure and debt specifically: the Alaska gas line project is still alive. They ultimately didn’t go the China route, but they’ve hired a company called Glenfarn to develop the pipeline and pull together buyers and financiers. Right now, Glenfarn is pushing the Alaska legislature to make tax and policy decisions on a project whose true cost nobody knows — they’re still citing the old $43 billion figure from ten years ago, and they haven’t been transparent about who’s financing the deal or who the investors are.
We need to force these development companies to disclose their investors and customers before infrastructure and tax policy decisions get made. We need far more transparency about who ultimately holds the debt and what the impact of that will be.
Dominic Bowen: We saw a version of this dynamic with US intervention regarding Japan’s currency and its large holdings of US Treasuries. China, I believe, is the third-largest holder of US Treasuries. It would be unreasonable to assume every Chinese investment is malign. What evidence distinguishes a good-faith commercial decision from one linked to a strategic objective?
Holly Bell: It depends on the industry and what’s actually being targeted — particularly anything with potential military sensitivity: ports, railways, logistics hubs, all of which can carry national security implications.
The “Polar Silk Road” — the Arctic shipping route now opening as ice melts — is another example. China has already committed to using that route, which raises real strategic questions: what are the defense implications of a given investment? Is a research station actually just a research station, or does it have surveillance or military capability? Some agricultural land purchases in the US happened to be strategically located near military bases. These considerations extend beyond physical infrastructure to intellectual property too — how much sensitive information or IP transfer is happening through these investments, and is that good for national security?
Dominic Bowen: It’s a very relevant point, and this isn’t confined to fiction. Many listeners will know the story from Sweden, where churches have significant legal protection and freedom from government or police interference — understandably so. But over the past decade there’s been a disproportionate rise in Russian Orthodox churches appearing near air force bases, security installations, and sites of sensitive government research — often equipped with a striking number of satellite dishes. Sweden’s government is now trying to work out a fair way to address that without undermining religious freedom.
You also mentioned the Polar Silk Road, which we’ve covered on this podcast before. Your book is set in Alaska, which makes the Arctic especially relevant, and we’re seeing growing interest — from Europe and comments from the US president about Greenland. What makes Alaska so strategically valuable, and maybe indispensable, to the United States?
Holly Bell: Its location is inherently strategic — the new Arctic shipping routes will run right through it. But this exposes security gaps we haven’t fully addressed: much of Alaska’s defense posture is still oriented around Cold War-era thinking, not newer threats like the Polar Silk Road, which will require a stronger naval presence, icebreakers, and strategic assets we haven’t historically maintained there.
Alaska is also resource-abundant — beyond oil and gas, it holds roughly 57 of the 60 rare earth elements the US currently sources from China. About 80-plus percent of Alaska’s land is federally controlled, which makes it difficult for private companies to access and extract those resources, and even where permission exists, there’s often no supporting infrastructure — roads, access points, and so on need to be built from scratch. There are active efforts underway to mine more graphite, for instance.
Alaska is also just 2.4 miles from Russia at its closest point, which creates its own vulnerabilities around shipping route defense. Fishing rights are another issue — Chinese and Russian vessels sometimes cross into Alaskan waters and overfish. There’s food, resources, and strategic value all wrapped up in one place.
Dominic Bowen: Thanks for explaining that. For listeners who prefer video, the International Risk Podcast is also on YouTube — please subscribe and share if you enjoy the content; it helps us keep bringing on great guests.
Let’s assume a country has become economically dependent on another state. How does that dependence translate into political influence? What are the actual mechanisms by which economic leverage becomes strategic leverage?
Holly Bell: A lot of it comes down to political influence gained through campaign financing — who gets elected, who ends up making decisions. It can also shape land use regulation and other policy areas. Once a country becomes heavily dependent on another, that influence follows naturally.
In the book, there’s a character — an economic development advisor — who’s constantly suggesting new opportunities backed by outside money. Over time, the economy starts moving in a direction shaped by foreign interests rather than what’s actually best for local prosperity and security. That kind of political influence builds gradually once a foreign actor becomes the dominant economic force in a region.
Dominic Bowen: That’s exactly right. And it points to an inherent tension for democracies — businesses optimize investment for returns, but politicians operate on election cycles, wanting visible results within two to four years, while infrastructure investment often plays out over 50 or 60 years.
Melbourne is a good counterexample — arguably the world’s most livable city, designed around 170 years ago with a long-term vision that still holds up today. But that’s rare, and notably, Australia wasn’t a democracy at the time that planning happened. Many of the geopolitical competitors of the US, UK, and Europe aren’t democracies either, and they’re often thinking in decades. Does this create a structural disadvantage for democratic societies? And if so, how should democracies manage these risks when competing against states that don’t share democracy’s weaknesses and do plan across decades rather than election cycles?
Holly Bell: This is one of the great challenges of democracy. Go back to that original 2017 deal: when President Trump entered his first term, he wasn’t hawkish on China or Russia at all. He believed he could make economic deals with these countries, better integrate them into a free-market, democratic-style economy, and control outcomes through negotiation. Part of why he was interested in signing that Alaska deal was visibility — being seen as a dealmaker.
Over time, seeing how those deals actually played out — the gas pipeline, the agricultural land purchases, the attempted Chicago Stock Exchange acquisition — pushed him toward the more hawkish stance on China we associate with him today, which wasn’t there at the outset.
Meanwhile, China and others are actively trying to influence politicians in return. Right now there are reports of China attempting to influence US data center development — trying to keep the US from building its own capacity so China can remain the hub controlling that data. Control of data translates directly into political influence.
All of this shapes politics over time, and it’s a risk inherent to both democracy and capitalism. One of capitalism’s core risks is that investment has to remain open — you can’t easily say “you can invest, but not like that” without undermining the system itself. It gets genuinely tangled and difficult to navigate.
Dominic Bowen: Absolutely — free markets are what make the system work, and directing them too heavily starts to resemble a command economy, which we know doesn’t work either. Your book is deliberately speculative, but looking at the real world in 2026, what do you see today that people should be taking seriously as risk?
Holly Bell: Control over data is one of the biggest under-examined risks right now — who controls it and who has access.
These infrastructure development issues are also still very much alive — the Alaska gas line project is ongoing, and the question of who Alaska will ultimately owe money to if it’s completed remains open. I don’t think the underlying risk factors have shifted much, because these dynamics are still actively playing out.
We’re also seeing renewed military conflicts reshaping alliances — who’s supplying weapons to whom, changes to military spending patterns, and efforts in Europe to build greater self-defense capacity and reduce reliance on the US. All of these shifts, and how the associated money moves, are risk factors worth watching closely.
Dominic Bowen: Thank you very much for explaining all of that, Holly, and for joining us on the International Risk Podcast today.
Holly Bell: Thank you for having me — it was great fun.
Dominic Bowen: That was a great conversation with Dr. Holly Bell, economist, former professor, and author of Occupied Alaska. I really appreciated her perspective on economic development, strategic leverage, and the national security risks that governments and the corporate sector need to be paying attention to. I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the International Risk Podcast. Thanks for listening — we’ll speak again soon.
