★ 06/12/2023
Control over information, money, and technology gives America overweening global influence, according to this penetrating exposé. Political scientists Farrell (The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Trust) and Newman (Protectors of Privacy) reveal how the U.S. exploits the international infrastructures used to make cellphone calls or wire funds to bully foreign countries and private companies. These infrastructures include fiber-optic cables carrying the world’s internet traffic, most of which physically crosses U.S. territory and is available to the National Security Agency; the international bank payments system SWIFT, which divulges information about global economic transactions to the U.S.; and American sanctions regulations that deprive the nation’s adversaries of markets and technology, as in 2022 when the U.S. forced the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC to deny advanced chips to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, thus forestalling a Chinese-built global empire of 5G internet networks. Writing in lucid, accessible prose, the authors trace the growth of America’s economic weapons and their modern deployments, which are sometimes subtle and devious and sometimes blunt and piratical. (In 2019, a State Department official threatened a sea captain piloting a tanker full of Iranian oil with personal sanctions if he didn’t change course.) The result is a fascinating and troubling look at the power plays enabled by a networked world. (Sept.)
09/01/2023
The coauthors of Of Privacy and Power, Farrell (international affairs, Johns Hopkins Univ.) and Newman (foreign service and government, Georgetown Univ.), coined the phrase "weaponized interdependence" before writing this book. Here they show how the United States wields unprecedented geopolitical power by barring its opponents from vital global networks of informational and financial exchange, which form part of the U.S. "underground empire." Nearly unilaterally, the United States can bar places (such as Iran) and businesses (such as Chinese telecom giant Huawei) from trading in U.S. dollars, using most banks or payment systems, buying raw materials, or selling on open markets, with ruinous effects. This book notes that the American empire emerged haphazardly as a result of technological innovations and rapid globalization in the wake of the Cold War. Lacking guardrails, strategic vision, or a multilateral approach, weaponization of global economic interdependence—through the means of escalating sanctions and export controls—risks rupturing the international order and destabilizing U.S. influence. The authors urge the U.S. to wield "the tools of empire" to tackle global problems, such as tax evasion, corruption, and climate change. VERDICT This groundbreaking survey is essential reading for policymakers, students, and practitioners of international politics, business, and economics.—Michael Rodriguez
2023-04-06
Two senior academics examine how the U.S. seeks to exert global power in the digital age.
Between them, Farrell, a professor at Johns Hopkins and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Newman, a professor at Georgetown, have a huge amount of expertise in foreign policy and international relations. In this collaboration, they adamantly assert that the U.S. is the supreme power in the world, dominating enemies and allies alike. The key is the effective control of critical elements of the world’s technological systems. Far from being a decentralized network, the information web depends on a relatively small number of “choke points,” most of them in American territory. Since 9/11, successive presidential administrations have used this situation as a tool for gathering intelligence and as a weapon for potentially cutting an adversary out of global communications. Connected to this is the domination of international capital flows, partly through economic weight and partly via forced compliance from banks and corporations. The authors have amassed a wealth of research material, but their overall argument is not entirely persuasive. After all, the idea of an empire—even an underground one—implies a high level of focused power, and anyone who examines U.S. foreign policy of the past two decades will quickly find failures as well as victories. Having power and using it effectively are very different things. Yes, pressure can be exerted through economic sanctions, but this does not mean guaranteed success. Russia still sits on a chunk of Ukraine; Iran has not collapsed; North Korea continues to make missiles; China continues to develop its surveillance state. As such, the global landscape is chaotic, adversarial, and unpredictable, as it has long been and will continue to be. Though the authors offer a number of intriguing ideas, the book is undermined by a persistent overstatement of its case.
Farrell and Newman are experts in their field, but this book will fail to convince many readers.
A Responsible Statecraft best foreign policy book of 2023
"A revelatory book."
—Paul Krugman, The New York Times
"The U.S. has made use of a novel, often mysterious set of tools for rewarding those who help it and punishing those who cross it. That set of tools is now a bit less mysterious, thanks to Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman. Their book Underground Empire reveals how the U.S. benefits from a set of institutions built up late last century as neutral means of streamlining global markets."
—Christopher Caldwell, The New York Times
“Farrell and Newman’s book is like an MRI or CT scan of recent world history, giving us a new and startling image of the global body politic, as clear as an X-ray. Cognitive mapping takes on a new aspect with their analysis, as they shift from the technological to the historical, showing both how this new nervous system of world power came to be, and how it could be put to better use than it is now. Given the intertwined complexities of our very dangerous polycrisis, we need their insights.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future
“Underground Empire is an astonishing explanation of how power really works. From fiber optic cables to the financial system, Farrell and Newman show how the networks that knit us together are also powerful coercive tools, providing a subtle and revelatory account of how the United States learned to weaponize its dominance of the world order’s plumbing. A riveting read, essential for understanding how economic and technological power is wielded today.”
—Chris Miller, author of Chip War
“An eye-opening journey into the hidden networks that power the high-tech world, where all roads lead not to Silicon Valley but to suburban Washington DC, bankers and spies matter as much as tech entrepreneurs, and an industry built by the Cold War has become a geopolitical battleground once again. A truly important book to explain—and move beyond—our tumultuous times.”
—Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code
“The sharpest and most striking analysis I’ve seen in years of the state the world’s in, cunningly disguised as a user-friendly business book.”
—Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill
“Underground Empire tells a riveting story about the deep forces that have shaped our present moment. The book is a portrait not of a single protagonist or event, but rather a system that shapes much of the world today: a web of dollars and data that has, half accidentally, given the United States a new kind of geopolitical control over both its enemies and allies. It is history written in its most powerful form: a view of the recent past that gives us a new lens to better discern our future.”
—Steven Johnson, author of How We Got to Now
If you want to understand where the world economy has been and where it may be headed, you need to read this book.
—Dani Rodrik, author of The Globalization Paradox
"Like an iceberg, most of the power and almost all the mechanisms of economic coercion are below the surface, in the very infrastructure that undergirds international commerce. . . . Underground Empire should rightly stimulate much discussion."
—Wesley K. Clark, The Washington Monthly
"This revelatory book explains how Washington came to command such awesome power and the many ways it deploys this authority... by highlighting how the nature of global power has changed, the book makes an enormous contribution to the way analysts think about influence."
—Paul Krugman, Foreign Affairs
"The publication of Underground Empire could not be more timely. Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman offer an important corrective to a dominant narrative in US foreign policy circles that positions the US and other Western governments as innocent by-standers, caught off-guard by their main rivals."
—Times Literary Supplement
"Farrell and Newman set out a compelling thesis, defend it well, and tell a fascinating tale. And when they finish, they leave you with a way to make sense of things that seem senseless and terrible. This may not make those things less terrible, but at least they're comprehensible."
—Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother
"Farrell and Newman write fluidly and grippingly. . . . As the book jumps from nondescript Northern Virginia office parks housing America’s intelligence establishment, to the boardrooms of mid-20th-century New York banks, to sanctions-dodging tankers traversing the Indian Ocean, it’s not hard to detect the influence of techno-thriller writers such as Neal Stephenson."
—The Washington Post
"Farrell and Newman describe the rise over the past 50 years of what they call America’s 'network imperialism.' In an era where markets were supposedly becoming ever-more disembedded from states, the authors show that the opposite was the case.... The vision one leaves their book with is one of great-power conflict where, as usual, those at the bottom of the world’s hierarchy of wealth continue to suffer the most, with no refuge in sight."
—Quinn Slobodian, The New Statesman
"Captivating. . . . A gripping account."
—Financial Times
