I argued in a paper for the Brookings Institution in 2010 that we lived in an “Age of Leverage” (and in Roll Call before that). Later, in my 2014 edited volume “Leveraging: A Political, Economic, and Societal Framework,” I argued along with eight contributors that leveraging was the dominant tool used by individuals, companies, nonprofits and countries to achieve their goals.

It is now 2025, and I have not changed my mind.

We are more inclined to hear that our age is characterized by a contest between authoritarian and democratic societies or that artificial intelligence and quantum computers are in the process of ushering in either a new stage of the Information Age or a new era in itself.

The problem with framing the world in terms of a political struggle is precisely that politics is too thin of a framework to understand the complex dynamics in the world today.

The problem with focusing on AI or quantum computers, or indeed with what some experts call Quantum AI, is that this framework is too driven by science and technology and ultimately too narrow. If it is not the Iron Age or the Industrial Age, then it is the Quantum AI Age.

The Leverage Lens, in contrast, is animated by a theme that cuts across rival political ideologies as well as science and technology. The Leveraging Framework adopted a multidisciplinary approach to illuminate major themes and tensions in politics, political economy, real estate, labor-management relations, U.S./China relations, family history, family policy and more.

Leveraging has three faces: bargaining leverage, resource leverage, and financial leverage. Each of these concepts is rooted in a basic concept from physics. Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician and scientist, said that if he had a pole that was long enough, a place to stand, and a fulcrum, then he could move the earth. Leverage involves getting a large output from a small input and a fulcrum.

Bargaining leverage is used not just in politics on Capitol Hill and the White House or in state politics, it is used regularly in business negotiations. Indeed, it is used daily across the world between couples and in family life. Although an old concept, it is fitting to recognize an explosion of bargaining leverage in our era because the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the traditional family have changed the structure of bargaining leverage itself.

As the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, ended their 45-year Cold War, the nature of political negotiations changed. The Soviet Union reverted back to Russia, which lost much of its bargaining advantage with its former satellite countries. The United States remains a superpower, but it too lost bargaining advantage as the structure of the contest with the communist countries changed.

Moreover, leveraging resources, ranging from IT resources to military resources to what the late Joseph Nye called “soft power” (including cultural resources), took on a more prominent role in national and global politics after the end of the Cold War.

The Internet and especially the World Wide Web, email and social media became massive leveraging technologies.

During this same time period, the structure of the traditional family also dissolved. This ultimately freed tens of millions of American women and children from a structure that was dominated by fathers, predominantly white fathers. Bargaining and resource leverage took on new dimensions in a great range of American families.

The upshot is that leveraging, including financial leveraging, became energized so extensively that it affected everything: politics, political economy, international relations, couple relationships and family life. Leveraging became the three laws of motion of social and political life.

Leveraging became king.

Look around today and you cannot help but see the central role played by all three kinds of leverage, including President Donald Trump’s use of all three kinds of leverage in his deal making, questions about whether the leverage that is central to our checks and balances system of government is being pressed to the limit, how the Fed and the bitcoin world is using various forms of financial leverage to maximize economic growth for the country or profits for industry or citizens.

We do live in an Age of Leverage. Even as Quantum AI is delving further and further into the subatomic level to create better smartphones and machines to diagnose and cure cancer, good old-fashioned leverage has permeated all aspects of human life and changed American society and global politics in countless ways.

Dave Anderson is editor of “Leveraging: A Political, Economic, and Societal Framework” and co-editor with Michael Cornfield of “The Civic Web: Online Politics and Democratic Values.” He has taught political philosophy at five colleges and universities.