No 3 (2026)

In the context of the deepening strategic rivalry between the United States and China, the current stage of global technological development poses new challenges to leading economies in the field of innovation policy. The key strategic initiatives of the Republican administration are aimed at achieving technological sovereignty to a large extent through a policy of protectionism, which may result in potential risks to the global innovation ecosystem. The key problem is the contradiction between the short-term benefits of protecting the domestic market and the long-term consequences of technological isolationism. The analysis of the tools and priorities of the U.S. innovation policy at the present stage, the assessment of its economic and technological consequences for global scientific and technical cooperation in the context of protectionism contributes to understanding the future trajectories of technological leadership and the formation of adaptive strategies to take into account fundamental transformations in ensuring national technological sovereignty.

The gig economy represents a dynamically evolving sector of the U.S. labor market, mediated by digital platforms that offer short-term, flexible, and often unstable forms of employment. Over the past decades, it has become an important structural element of the American economy, encompassing millions of workers in logistics, freelancing, care services, education, and digital content production. Drawing on U.S. primary sources, the study analyzes the scale of gig employment, its internal heterogeneity, and its stratification by age, gender, race, and education. It also examines key risks, including income volatility, lack of social protection, algorithmic management, and the uncertain legal status of gig workers. The analysis identifies a diversity of employment models – from highly algorithmized to relatively autonomous ones. Increasingly, gig work represents not a form of entrepreneurship but rather a mode of "subordinated autonomy" characterized by a high degree of dependence on digital platforms. The expansion of the gig sector is accompanied by rising social inequality and institutional uncertainty. Despite attempts at regulation at the state level, the legal status of gig workers remains contested. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for a differentiated regulatory framework capable of accounting for platform typologies, employment profiles, and the digital nature of labor.

The article clarifies the meanings of the terms "repatriation", "deportation", "removal", "expulsion", "return" and "self-deportation". It identifies the origins of mass deportations in the U.S. It draws historical parallels between the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries and under the second Trump administration. It identifies key similarities and differences. The article establishes that the measures taken by the current head of the White House have been used by other American presidents. At the same time, there are fundamental differences between the policies of D. Trump and his predecessors. In addition, the article finds that during periods of mass deportations, most illegal immigrants left on their own rather than being deported.

This paper analyzes the current issues of the second and third "island chains" in the US Indo-Pacific strategy in the context of growing rivalry with China. Specifically, it examines the origins of this construct and its practical purpose, the role of these spaces in the US geopolitical imagination, the fundamental principles of power projection, and the shifting approaches in response to China's growing influence in Oceania. Based on the idea that island geopolitics is a struggle for access to air and maritime space, and applying the concept of "assemblage" – the construction of infrastructure for the practical and discursive appropriation of territory as "walls" for specific states – the author examines the reasons why the US has begun to cede control of Pacific maritime spaces, as well as the range of countermeasures that the Trump and Biden administrations are undertaking to regain this position. It is hypothesized that the US's weakening interest in the second and third "island chains" in favor of the first is a consequence of the established geopolitical culture and "military approach," which made it impossible to respond to China's flexible approach, which combines other instruments. Consequently, the US side is seeking to once again reformat the "topological space" in its own image by implementing the "Guam Cluster" policy – a program for developing remote Pacific territories through infrastructure development aimed at defending Taiwan. The author concludes that over the past decade, the US has begun a policy of rebalancing its priorities from the first "island chain" in favor of the second and third, which include American national territory. However, these actions are being undertaken within the context of outdated approaches, calling into question their long-term effectiveness.

Over the past twenty years, China has made a breakthrough in scientific and technological development and deep modernization of the technological base. Now PRC is leading in the development and implementation of many critical advanced and emerging technologies. The United States and China are entering a new stage of the "technology race", the result will determine their competitiveness in promising markets for high-tech products.

The works of the famous American diplomat, historian of international relations, specialist on Russia and the Soviet Union, a man considered one of the architects of the Cold War and the main ideologist of the containment of the USSR, George Frost Kennan (1904– 2005) deserve the close attention of the Russian expert community and everyone interested in the history of Russian-American relations of the XX century. For unknown reasons, over the thirty years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, many basic works by American authors shedding light on the attitude of the American establishment, and more broadly, the entire Anglo-Saxon world to Russia have not been published in Russian. An important event in filling this annoying gap was the translation into Russian and the publication in 2024 of two G.F. Kennan's fundamental works on Soviet-American relations of 1917–1918, "Russia Leaves the War" and "The Decision to Intervene", in fact, represent a single study of the history of the birth of the Soviet state in the complex context of the dramatic events of the World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917.