Visualizing National Economic Security Risk through Network Power Flow

Transparency in supply chain and ownership

Abstract

Global supply chains and global ownership networks are complex structures. Raw materials are transformed into finished products through many companies in various countries and industries. Therefore, on these pathways it is not easy to manually find companies that are complicit in human rights violations, environmental destruction, or have geopolitical risks. In this study, we estimate the battery procurement pathway of Tesla, Inc. as a case study and identify the national economic security risks latent in the estimated procurement pathway as (1) traditional geopolitical risk, (2) networked geopolitical risk, and (3) hidden dominance geopolitical risks, which are classified into three categories. Each risk can be automatically identified from network analysis (Betweenness centrality, Network power index, and Network power flow) on publicly available inter-firm transaction and shareholder information.