Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade
Capital-intensive industries are taking their revenge on the service sector
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Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on x (opens in a new window) Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on facebook (opens in a new window) Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on linkedin (opens in a new window) Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on whatsapp (opens in a new window) Save Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on x (opens in a new window) Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on facebook (opens in a new window) Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on linkedin (opens in a new window) Why molecules matter in the age of the Halo trade on whatsapp (opens in a new window) Save Gillian Tett Published March 27 2026 Jump to comments section Print this page Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Global Economy myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. A quarter of a century ago Eamonn Fingleton, an Irish writer then based in Tokyo, wrote a polemic entitled In Praise of Hard Industries . This argued that governments and investors in the west were foolish to focus obsessively on intangible services such as tech and law — manufacturing mattered too. It was a countercultural message back then. But when the dotcom bubble burst, the argument won (a bit) more applause. And today his mantra once again packs an unexpectedly powerful punch. For as the Iran conflict grinds on, two lessons have become clear — even amid the fog of war and US President Donald Trump’s contradictory messages. First, the interconnections that stitched the world together in recent decades are no longer contributing to peace, as we used to think. Instead, rivals are weaponising vulnerabilities and dependencies, or “chokepoints”, to cite the writer Edward Fishman ’s popular coinage. China has done this with rare earth minerals , America with dollar finance . And now Iran is weaponising the Strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of all liquid national gas and a third of global seaborne ...
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