Barry Lynn studies the new ways global businesses organize their world-spanning manufacturing operations and how this affects international security, the interests of investors, and the development of middle-income nations. His recent article on the subject for Harper’s, “Unmade in America ,” was cited extensively by the U.S.-China Security Review Commission and by numerous publications. Until 2001, Mr. Lynn was executive editor of Global Business, a monthly magazine for executives at large multi-national companies. Earlier, he worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and Agence France Presse in South America and the Caribbean .

At New America, Mr. Lynn has completed and published the book End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation to glowing reviews from The Washington Post, USA Today, and Salon.com. His contention is that the stereotypical debate about whether globalization is good or bad misses the point. The real question we need to examine, according to Lynn , is whether we can rely on our radically new global industrial system to provide us with the food, medicine, and machinery we need through regular disasters such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes, or epidemics. The book traces the radical re-organization of the manufacturing sector between 1989 and 2000, as the assembly line evolved from a highly vertically-integrated and largely local operation into today’s widely dispersed global production networks.