The book that made me ask: how much power can a tiny piece of geography hold?

Why did I pick this book?

While reading A Little History of the World, I kept noticing geography hiding underneath history.

Mountains protected some civilisations and isolated others. Rivers created trade and cities. Oceans connected some countries while trapping others.

I wanted to know how much geography really matters, so I picked up Prisoners of Geography.

As the title hinted, I spent almost as much time looking at maps as reading the book — and slowly it stopped being about maps and started being about constraints.

What surprised me

Countries suddenly stopped looking like coloured shapes separated by borders.

I started seeing:

  • mountain ranges
  • warm-water ports
  • navigable rivers
  • deserts
  • energy supplies
  • shipping lanes
  • tiny strips of ocean connecting enormous economies

And once I saw them, political decisions that previously seemed arbitrary started making more sense.

Why Russia cares so much about access to warm-water ports. Why the United States’ geography gave it extraordinary advantages. Why Africa can hold immense natural wealth yet struggle to turn it into widespread prosperity.

Geography wasn’t explaining everything. But suddenly I could see the board on which everything else was being played.

The ideas that refused to leave my head

As usual, I filled my head with more questions than answers.

  • Why does Taiwan matter enormously to countries thousands of miles away?
  • Why did European-drawn borders leave such lasting consequences across Africa and the Middle East?
  • Why are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands strategically important?

And then I found the idea that fascinated me most:

Choke points.

The Strait of Malacca is tiny compared with the economies whose trade depends on it — yet disruption around that narrow passage could ripple across the world economy. The current tensions around the Strait of Hormuz are a live example.

The question that stayed with me

I began wondering whether power often sits not where something is largest, but where something is hardest to bypass.

So perhaps when trying to understand a system, I shouldn’t only ask what are its biggest components? I should also ask where are its choke points?

And then my engineering brain interfered. If geopolitical systems have choke points, don’t technological systems have them too?

AI systems depend on chips, compute, cloud, foundation models, data, energy and networks. Where could failure, scarcity or control over one small component constrain the entire system?

That question became an idea I want to explore further: strategic choke points in AI systems — a quality-engineering perspective. Not an answer. A transferable mental model.

What geography couldn’t explain

But something bothered me.

If geography is so powerful, why do countries with similar geographies sometimes develop completely differently — and why do some with terrible geography still thrive?

Japan particularly fascinated me. Limited natural resources. Mountainous terrain. Geographic isolation. And yet, within a short historical period, Japan deliberately studied the world’s strongest nations, imported knowledge, industrialised and became a major power.

That made me wonder: geography defines constraints — but what determines what societies do inside those constraints? Institutions? Culture? Economic incentives? Human ambition?

Geography had made my map much clearer. But now the map had another missing layer.

Why that led me to my next books

I wanted to understand economics and incentives, so I picked up Naked Economics. Then the physical resources beneath modern life pulled me toward Material World. Religion felt like yet another layer I was missing, so I started looking into World Religions.

And now another question is pulling at me: why do some countries build institutions that create prosperity while others don’t? Which is why Why Nations Fail is currently sitting beside me.

My reading list is no longer a list. It’s becoming a network of questions — and I think I prefer it that way.

One final thought

Prisoners of Geography taught me something much bigger than geography.

When I look at an event now, I increasingly want to ask: what invisible constraints existed before anyone made the visible decision?

Mountains constrain nations. Resources constrain economies. Shipping routes constrain trade. And perhaps chips, compute, data and infrastructure constrain AI.

But before understanding what people choose to do, perhaps we should first understand the board they were given to play on.

A few weeks ago my spare thoughts were about AGI replacing engineers. Today they are about why Russia has always wanted warm-water ports and how China’s demographics might shape its future.

Question unlocked: Where are the strategic choke points that quietly control much larger systems?

Next stops: Naked Economics • Material World • Why Nations Fail • World Religions • Chip War