Underground Empire

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

by Henry Farrell & Abraham Newman

"Captivating. . . . A gripping account."

― Financial Times

Selected Reviews

Description:

Arthur Ross Book Award, Council on Foreign Relations, Bronze Medal

Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize

Named a best book of the year by Foreign Affairs and Responsible Statecraft

A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems

America’s security state first started to weaponize these channels after 9/11, when they seemed like necessities to combat terrorism―but now they’re a matter of course. Multinational companies like AT&T and Citicorp build hubs, which they use to make money, but which the government can also deploy as choke points. Today’s headlines about trade wars, sanctions, and technology disputes are merely tremors hinting at far greater seismic shifts beneath the surface.

Slowly but surely, Washington has turned the most vital pathways of the world economy into tools of domination over foreign businesses and countries, whether they are rivals or allies, allowing the U.S. to maintain global supremacy. In the process, we have sleepwalked into a new struggle for empire. Using true stories, field-defining findings, and original reporting, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman show how the most ordinary aspects of the post–Cold War economy have become realms of subterfuge and coercion, and what we must do to ensure that this new arms race doesn’t spiral out of control.

"A revelatory book."

― Paul Krugman

The New York Times

Co-author Abraham Newman

Abraham L. Newman is a professor at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. Known for his research on the politics generated by globalization, he serves as a frequent commentator on international affairs, appearing on news programs ranging from Al Jazeera to Deutsche Welle and NPR. His work has been published in leading outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nature, Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, and Politico.

The Weaponized Interdependence Theory

A main area of interest for Henry Farrell, along with Abraham Newman, is the theory of Weaponized Interdependence, starting with an article providing a structural theory of how information and economic networks enable state coercion.

Henry is maintaining a separate Weaponized Interdependence website cataloging other articles related to the theory.

Additional Writing on Weaponized Interdependence by Henry Farrell

Public WritingReview

Review by Paul Krugman, “The American Way of Economic War”

December 6, 2023 featured Foreign Affairs pin

Suppose that a company in Peru wants to do business with a company in Malaysia. It should not be hard for the firms to make a deal. Sending money across national borders is generally straightforward, and so is the international transfer of large quantities of data. But there’s a catch: whether or not the companies realize it, their transactions of both financial information and data will almost certainly be indirect and will probably pass through ...

Academic ArticleEssay

Weak Links in Finance and Supply Chains are Easily Weaponized – with Abraham Newman

May 9, 2022 featured Nature pin

Russian sanctions highlight how network analysis is urgently needed to find and protect vulnerable parts of the global economy. When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, nobody expected that the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and other nations would isolate Russia from the global economy in retaliation. Instead of limited and largely symbolic sanctions, which were all Russia faced when it annexed Crimea and occupied eastern parts of Ukraine in ...

Chapter in an Edited Volume

Weaponized Interdependence and Networked Coercion: A Research Agenda – with Abraham Newman

March 2, 2021 Weaponized Interdependence with Abraham Newman

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “Weaponized Interdependence and Networked Coercion: A Research Agenda,” The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence, eds. Daniel Drezner, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (Brookings Institution 2021). In May 2018, Donald Trump announced that the United States was pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and reimposing sanctions. Most notably, many of these penalties apply not to U.S. firms, but to foreign firms that ...

Interview

“Panopticons and Chokepoints,” an interview with Richard Byrne

April 1, 2020 featured pin The Wilson Quarterly

A new view of international relations puts global networks – and how they can be weaponized – at its center. What’s the future of regulation in this new landscape? “The debate we see at the moment is never going to be about trade and open markets in the same kind of way anymore,” says Farrell. “Once the door has been opened to thinking about these things in terms of their consequences for security, different actors ...

Essay

Chained to Globalization – with Abraham Newman

December 10, 2019 Foreign Affairs Weaponized Interdependence with Abraham Newman

Why It’s Too Late to Decouple In 1999, the columnist Thomas Friedman pronounced the Cold War geopolitical system dead. The world, he wrote, had “gone from a system built around walls to a system increasingly built around networks.” As businesses chased efficiency and profits, maneuvering among great powers was falling away. An era of harmony was at hand, in which states’ main worries would be how to manage market forces rather than one another. Friedman was right ...

Interview

Interview with economist Tyler Cowen on Weaponized Interdependence, Big Tech, and Playing with Ideas

October 23, 2019 Big Tech Conversations with Tyler podcast featured

Whether it’s China’s influence over the NBA, the US ban of Huawei, or the EU courts asserting that countries can force Facebook to take down content globally, Henry Farrell has played a key role articulating how global economic networks can enable state coercion. Tyler and Henry discuss these issues and more, including what a big tech breakup would mean for security and privacy, why political economics suggests Facebook’s Oversight Board won’t work, what Italy might ...

Academic Article

Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion – with Abraham Newman

July 1, 2019 featured International Security 44 Weaponized Interdependence

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (2019), “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion,” International Security 44, 1:42-79. Reprinted in Daniel Drezner, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence, Brookings Institution 2021. Liberals claim that globalization has led to fragmentation and decentralized networks of power relations. This does not explain how states increasingly “weaponize interdependence” by leveraging global networks of informational and financial exchange for strategic advantage. The theoretical ...

Essay

Weaponized Interdependence – with Abraham Newman

June 20, 2019 International Security Weaponized Interdependence with Abraham Newman

In May 2018, the US Administration announced that it was pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, reimposing sanctions. Most notably, many penalties do not apply to US firms, but to foreign firms that may have no presence in the US; the sanctions are consequential in large part because ofUS importance to the global financial network.This unilateral action by the US led to protest among America’s European allies: France’s Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, for example, tartly noted that America was not the “economic policeman ...

Essay

Domestic Institutions beyond the Nation-State: Charting the New Interdependence Approach – with Abraham Newman

March 28, 2014 Cambridge University Press Weaponized Interdependence with Abraham Newman

What is the relationship between domestic and international politics in a world of economic interdependence? This article discusses and organizes an emerging body of scholarship, which the authors label the new interdependence approach, addressing how transnational interactions shape domestic institutions and global politics in a world of economic interdependence. This literature makes three important contributions. First, it examines how domestic institutions affect the ability of political actors to construct the rules and norms governing interdependent relations ...

Henry Farrell