Essays

Science Needs Sovereigns (Palladium Magazine)

How Ukraine Prepared Itself for Total War (The National Interest)

The Great Eurasian Economic Realignment (City Journal)

Putin’s Bet (City Journal)

Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought (Palladium Magazine)

The End of Industrial Society (Palladium Magazine)

Knowledge Production and Intellectual Legitimacy

How Ideas Are Communicated

Intellectual Authority

Intellectual Legitimacy

Why I’m Writing A Book

How Deng Xiaoping Solved China’s Trade Problem—and What America Can Learn from Him (The National Interest, Issue 170, Nov/Dec 2020)

The Centralized Internet Is Inevitable (Palladium Magazine)

Heal Thyself (City Journal)

Reform Is Driven by Rising Elites (Palladium Magazine)

Why Civilizations Collapse (The Side View)

How Late Zhou China Reverse-Engineered a Civilization (Palladium Magazine)

How to Find the Frontiers of Knowledge

China’s Rise and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping (Asia Times)

How Social Engineering Drives Technology (Palladium Magazine)

Cities and the Balance of Power (City Journal)

Annoyance or Armageddon? (The American Mind)

The Youtube Revolution in Knowledge Transfer

Intellectual Dark Matter (The Long Now Foundation)

Why America Prefers a Weak and Peaceful Europe (The National Interest)

Honors Fuel Achievement

Eight Books to Read

What Botswana Can Teach Us About Political Stability (Palladium Magazine)

Great Founder Theory

How Roman Emperors Handled the Succession Problem

The Succession Problem

The Risk of an American Civil War Is Remote

How to Use Bureaucracies

Functional Institutions Are the Exception

Empire Theory, Part II: Power Dynamics

Empire Theory, Part I: Competitive Landscape

Institutional Failure As Surprise

Competition for Power

Borrowed versus Owned Power

Live versus Dead Players

On the Loss and Preservation of Knowledge

Social Technology

On Building Theories of History

How Elon Musk Is Making Engineers Cool Again

Interviews and Talks

On the State of the Art With Laibach (Palladium Magazine)

Slavoj Žižek: Coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, and revolution (Big Think)

Samo Burja: Great Founders Build Civilization (Palladium Magazine)

Samo Burja: How Civilizations Collapse (1517 Fund)

Papers

Burja, Samo. Great Founder Theory. August 2018.

Burja, Samo, and Zachary Lerangis. The Scientists, The Statesmen, And The Bomb: A Case Study In Decision-Making Around The Development Of Powerful Technologies. With Bismarck Analysis. October 2018.

Landau-Taylor, Ben, and Oberon Dixon-Luinenberg. Machine Tools: A Case Study In Advanced Manufacturing. With Bismarck Analysis. February 2020.