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地下帝國：美國如何武器化世界經濟
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
作者：亨利·法雷爾、亞伯拉罕·紐曼，2023 年 9 月 12 日
一項深入研究的調查揭示了美國如何像蜘蛛一樣處於國際監視和控製網絡的中心，並以光纖電纜和模糊的支付係統等全球網絡的形式編織該網絡
美國安全國家在 9/11 事件後首次開始將這些渠道武器化，當時它們似乎是打擊恐怖主義的必需品，但現在它們已成為理所當然的事情。 AT&T 和花旗集團等跨國公司建立樞紐，它們用來賺錢，但政府也可以將其部署為咽喉要道。 今天有關貿易戰、製裁和技術爭端的頭條新聞隻是暗示著表麵之下更大的地震變化。
華盛頓緩慢但堅定地把世界經濟最重要的路徑變成了統治外國企業和國家的工具，無論它們是競爭對手還是盟友，從而使美國能夠維持全球霸主地位。 在這個過程中，我們夢遊般地進入了一場新的帝國鬥爭。 亨利·法雷爾和亞伯拉罕·紐曼利用真實的故事、領域定義的發現和原創報道，展示了冷戰後經濟中最普通的方麵如何成為詭計和脅迫的領域，以及我們必須采取哪些措施來確保這種新武器 種族不會失控。
地下帝國：美國如何武器化世界經濟
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781250840554
亨利·法雷爾和亞伯拉罕·紐曼。
根據這篇深刻的揭露，對信息、金錢和技術的控製賦予了美國傲慢的全球影響力。 政治學家法雷爾（《武器化信任的使用和濫用》）和紐曼（《隱私保護者》）揭示了美國如何利用用於撥打手機或電匯資金的國際基礎設施來欺淩外國和私營公司。 這些基礎設施包括承載全球互聯網流量的光纖電纜，其中大部分實際上跨越美國領土，可供國家安全局使用； 國際銀行支付係統 SWIFT，向美國泄露全球經濟交易信息； 美國的製裁法規剝奪了該國對手的市場和技術，例如2022年，美國迫使台灣半導體製造商台積電拒絕向中國電信巨頭華為提供先進芯片，從而阻止了中國建立的5G互聯網網絡全球帝國。 作者以清晰易懂的散文寫作，追溯了美國經濟武器的增長及其現代部署，這些武器有時是微妙和狡猾的，有時是生硬和盜版的。 （2019 年，一名國務院官員威脅一名駕駛滿載伊朗石油的油輪的船長，如果他不改變航向，將受到個人製裁。）其結果是對網絡世界所引發的權力遊戲的令人著迷且令人不安的審視。 （九月）
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
https://www.amazon.ca/Underground-Empire-America-Weaponized-Economy/dp/1250840554
By Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman， Sept. 12 2023
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.
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World’s Economy
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman.
評論：美國對全球經濟的意外控製
https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2023-10/review-americas-accidental-control-global-economy?
《地下帝國》認為，由於美國安裝了世界金融體係的管道，它必須表現出克製——尼爾·希林寫道，這是不可能的。
作者：Neil Shearing 副研究員，2023 年 9 月 29 日
給尼爾發郵件
地下帝國：美國如何武器化世界經濟
亨利·法雷爾和亞伯拉罕·紐曼，艾倫·萊恩，25英鎊
烏克蘭戰爭在多個戰線上進行。 其中一個在前線，雙方似乎都已陷入僵局，血腥的僵局迫在眉睫。 另一個問題深藏在連接全球經濟的技術和金融網絡的地下深處。 在這方麵，美國的支持意味著天平壓倒性地向有利於烏克蘭的方向傾斜。
--- 作者認為，美國並沒有尋求建立一個它可以控製的全球體係
兩位美國學者亨利·法雷爾和亞伯拉罕·紐曼在一本重要的新書中講述了美國如何主宰連接世界的金融和技術網絡以及這些網絡如何被武器化的故事。 閱讀他們的書有幾個原因：它易於理解、引人入勝且簡潔得令人耳目一新。 但最重要的是，它們觸及了權力在全球化經濟中如何真正發揮作用的核心。
法雷爾和紐曼論點的核心是，美國的影響力源於其對全球經濟管道的控製，即本書標題中的“地下帝國”。 這部分是財務方麵的，部分是技術方麵的。 外匯市場上幾乎 90% 的交易都是以美元進行的。 與此同時，美國的技術霸主地位意味著國家之間的通信流往往通過美國境內的基礎設施進行。
法雷爾和紐曼認為，美國並沒有有意尋求建立一個它可以控製的全球體係，這在我看來是正確的。 相反，美國恰好是 20 世紀 90 年代和 2000 年代的世界主導經濟體，當時全球化和技術的結合推動了貿易、資本和信息的跨境流動的爆炸式增長。 盡管如此，華盛頓的政策製定者正在越來越多地利用這一立場。
——有人認為，美國金融霸權的時代已經結束。 有幾個理由對此表示懷疑
俄羅斯對烏克蘭戰爭的反應就說明了這一點。 在美國對俄羅斯采取的所有措施中，最痛苦的是對其銀行的製裁。 這些限製了美國銀行與俄羅斯銀行乃至俄羅斯公司進行交易的能力。 由於所有美元結算都會在某種程度上觸及美國金融體係，這使得俄羅斯公司更難以美元進行交易。 鑒於美元在全球經濟體係中的主導地位，這對他們來說是一個問題。
作為回應，美國的對手越來越多地提倡使用本國貨幣來結算跨境交易。 最重要的是中國推動擴大人民幣在雙邊貿易中的使用。 這些努力導致一些評論家認為美國金融霸權的時代已經結束。 但正如我為查塔姆研究所所寫的那樣，有幾個理由對此表示懷疑。
一是任何取代美元的貨幣都需要具有類似的屬性：它必須得到強大而穩定的機構的支持，並由運營開放資本賬戶的央行發行。 這將阻止人民幣的使用規模足以與美元相抗衡。
但另一個問題是，書中概述的強大網絡效應將使其他貨幣難以取代美元。 因此，雖然越來越多的對華雙邊貿易將以人民幣結算，但絕大多數跨境交易將繼續以美元結算 — — 而美國將繼續為全球金融體係提供管道。 同樣，很難想象一個美國不在促進大多數通信流動方麵發揮重要作用的世界。
---美國可以部署其帝國來建立一個聯邦，其中權力和合法性相互加強，作者：亨利·法雷爾和亞伯拉罕·紐曼
這是什麽意思呢？ 法雷爾和紐曼認為，隨著中國和俄羅斯尋求擺脫美國主導的體係的束縛，世界將變得更加脫節和日益敵對。 因此，他們認為美國政策製定者必須後退一步，用他們的話說，認識到“權力越大，責任越大”。 他們寫道，“美國可以部署其帝國來建立一個聯邦，在這個聯邦中，權力和合法性相互加強。”
但目前尚不清楚這在實踐中意味著什麽，除了值得稱讚的多邊主義和美國以更積極的方式利用其影響力（例如打擊全球逃稅）。
更根本的是，我認為這誤讀了形勢。 盡管美國政策製定者可能並沒有打算建立一個他們可以施加這種控製的全球體係，但運氣和環境結合起來給他們帶來這種控製的事實在華盛頓並不是不受歡迎的。
圖片 — 2009 年，雅加達的一位反債務活動家。在 20 世紀 90 年代和 2000 年代的全球化和科技繁榮時期，美國有幸成為世界主導經濟體。 照片：Bay Ismoyo/法新社/蓋蒂圖片社。
美國的國際角色
20世紀90年代和2000年代的全球化時代已經被扔進了曆史的垃圾箱。 全球經濟非但沒有一體化，反而分裂成兩個陣營——一個與美國結盟，另一個與中國結盟，其中包括俄羅斯，還包括非洲和拉丁美洲的大部分地區。
在這個新世界中，美元的主導地位已成為巨大權力和影響力的源泉，華盛頓的政策製定者將發現越來越難以抵製其利用。
Review: America's accidental control of the global economy
'Underground Empire' argues that because America installed the plumbing of the world's financial system, it must show restraint – that is unlikely, writes Neil Shearing.
By Neil Shearing Associate Fellow,
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Allen Lane, £25
The war in Ukraine is being fought on several fronts. One is on the frontline, where both sides appear to have dug in and a bloody stalemate looms. Another lies deep underground in the tangle of technological and financial networks that connect the global economy. On this front, United States backing means the scales are tilted overwhelmingly in Ukraine’s favour.
--- The authors argue that America did not seek to create a global system that it could control
The story of how the US came to dominate the financial and technological networks that connect the world – and how they are now being weaponized – is told in an important new book by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, two US academics. There are several reasons to read their book: it is accessible, it is engaging and it is refreshingly concise. But most of all, they get to the heart of how power really works in a globalized economy.
The core of Farell and Newman’s argument is that US influence stems from its control over the plumbing for the global economy, the ‘underground empire’ of the book’s title. This is part financial and part technological. Almost 90 per cent of transactions in the foreign exchange market take place in dollars. At the same time, American tech supremacy means that communication flows between countries tend to be routed through infrastructure that sits on US soil.
Farrell and Newman argue, correctly in my view, that America did not intentionally seek to create a global system that it could control. Rather, it just happened that the US was the world’s dominant economy in the 1990s and 2000s when globalization and technology combined to fuel an explosion in cross-border flows of trade, capital and information. Nonetheless, it is a position that is being increasingly exploited by policymakers in Washington.
--- Some argue that the days of US financial hegemony are over. There are several reasons to doubt this
The response to Russia’s war in Ukraine illustrates this point. Of all the measures imposed by the US on Russia, the most painful have been the sanctions on its banks. These have restricted the ability of US banks to transact with Russian banks, and by extension Russian companies. And since all US dollar settlements touch the US financial system at some point, this has made it much harder for Russian companies to deal in dollars. That’s a problem for them given the dominance of the dollar in the global economic system.
In response, adversaries of the US are increasingly promoting the use of their own currencies to settle cross-border transactions. The most important has been China’s push to expand the use of renminbi in bilateral trade. These efforts have led some commentators to argue that the days of US financial hegemony are over. But as I have written for Chatham House, there are several reasons to doubt this.
One is that any currency that replaces the dollar would need to share similar attributes: it would have to be backed by strong and stable institutions, and be issued by a central bank that operated an open capital account. This will prevent the use of the renminbi on a scale sufficient to rival the dollar.
But another is that the strong network effects outlined in the book will make it hard for other currencies to dislodge the dollar. Accordingly, while a growing share of bilateral trade with China will be settled in renminbi, the vast majority of cross-border transactions will continue to be settled in dollars – and the US will continue to provide the plumbing for the global financial system. Similarly, it is difficult to envisage a world in which the US does not play a major role in facilitating most communication flows.
--- America could deploy its empire to build a commonwealth, in which power and legitimacy reinforce each other, By Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
What does all this mean? Farrell and Newman argue that as China and Russia seek to untether themselves from the US-dominated system, the world will become more disconnected and increasingly hostile. Accordingly, they argue that US policymakers must step back and, in their words, recognize that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. ‘The United States could deploy its empire to build a commonwealth, in which power and legitimacy reinforce each other,’ they write.
But it is not clear what this amounts to in practice, other than a laudable pitch for multilateralism and for America to use its influence in more positive ways, such as tackling global tax evasion.
More fundamentally, I think this misreads the situation. While US policymakers may not have set out to create a global system over which they exert such control, the fact that luck and circumstance combined to give it to them has not been unwelcome in Washington.
The era of globalization that defined the 1990s and 2000s has been consigned to history’s dustbin. Rather than integrating, the global economy is now fracturing into two blocs – one that aligns with the US and another that aligns with China, which includes Russia but also large parts of Africa and Latin America.
In this new world, the dominance of the dollar has become the source of huge power and influence that policymakers in Washington will find increasingly difficult to resist exploiting.
地下帝國：美國如何武器化世界經濟
1.全球化並不是我們想象的那樣。
幾十年來，有一個關於全球化如何運作的流行故事。 托馬斯·弗裏德曼的書《世界是平的》可能很容易識別這一點。 這是全球化去中心化的形象，公司和企業處於領先地位。 在這個世界上，國家已經被削弱、被推到一邊，而公司則建立了遍布世界的網絡來開展商業、賺錢和增加財富。
然而，公司和公司去中心化網絡的想法實際上隻是一個神話。 在全球經濟的許多核心領域，隻有少數公司占據主導地位，無論是蘋果公司生產的 iPhone、台灣半導體製造商台積電生產的 iPhone 芯片，還是通過這些公司進行的金融交易 電話，通常僅通過全球經濟中的幾家銀行進行。 這些核心公司造成了我們認為的全球經濟瓶頸。 他們集中市場是為了主宰市場並獲取租金。 現在，各國政府正在意識到這一點。
2. 各國政府，最重要的是美國政府，正在了解這種全球化結構，並利用它來進行鬥爭。
在過去的幾十年裏，從9/11恐怖襲擊開始，美國政府開始思考如何管理一個全球市場對他們不利的世界，恐怖分子利用這些全球市場來襲擊他們的祖國。 許多不同的機構並沒有依賴現有的計劃，而是爭先恐後地理解這場危機，並引入新的工具來解決這些問題。
在國家安全局、財政部等機構中，他們發現了全球經濟中可以利用的地圖、係統和結構。 最重要的是，他們可以利用這些地圖來揭示我們的敵人是如何運作的，監視他們並了解他們的內部運作。 然後他們就可以瞄準他們。 它們常常被阻止或排除在全球經濟之外。
“他們可以利用這些地圖來揭示我們的敵人是如何運作的，監視他們並了解他們的內部運作。”
這項努力的重要標誌之一是比利時的 Swift 組織。 它基本上就像銀行的後台郵局，銀行之間相互共享有關正在進行哪些交易及其原因的信息。 美國政府開始利用全球金融體係的這一中心點，首先了解恐怖分子在做什麽，然後了解伊朗或朝鮮等對手在做什麽。 然後它開始將這些國家排除在這個體係之外。 這隻是各國政府利用這些咽喉要道觀察敵人或試圖扼殺敵人的努力的開始。
3. 全球經濟已成為戰場，企業需要做好準備。
以前，當企業考慮政治風險時，他們的解決方案是去一個遙遠的國家，擔心他們的投資可能被政府拿走，或者被國有化。 因此，此前，企業主要擔心的是東道國政府。
現在，企業麵臨著一種新型的政治風險和新的擔憂，而這正是它們參與全球市場的渠道。 製造係統遍布各國的生產網絡造成了新形式的政治風險，我們在新冠危機期間看到了如此突出的風險。
而且，他們使用的係統或網絡已經成為這種政治風險的渠道，無論是信息技術還是金融架構。 德意誌銀行、台積電或蘋果等公司越來越成為步兵。 政府呼籲他們采取行動並進行戰鬥。 因此，現在企業必須麵對一個問題：他們在這個新世界中做什麽，以及他們在這樣做時如何保護自己的商業模式？
4. 各國對全球經濟基礎設施的使用並不是一個重大的總體計劃，而是偶然發生的。
為什麽這很重要？ 原因是這是出於危機反應，是對 9/11 的反應。 隨著政府麵臨新的危機、伊朗或朝鮮等國家的核威脅，以及俄羅斯對烏克蘭的入侵，它的規模不斷擴大。
“這些新經濟武器的升級有可能破壞全球經濟以及我們所知的全球化。”
在這些關鍵時刻，政府抓住了這些新工具並以此為基礎，但沒有時間真正考慮後果。 那麽使用這些工具意味著什麽呢？ 這對我們的對手意味著什麽？ 這對我們的朋友意味著什麽，對全球經濟意味著什麽？ 我們認為可能的天花板已經成為新的地板。 這些新經濟武器的升級有可能破壞全球經濟以及我們所知的全球化。 我們擔心的是，正如升級戰略一樣，我們可能會看到全球化的分裂，許多國家可能會後退。 這些國家可能會更多地審視自己，可能不再參與為全球社區帶來如此多財富和繁榮的全球市場。
5. 除非我們創造一種能夠維持穩定的新語言，否則全球化本身可能麵臨風險。
當核武器出現時，它們並沒有附帶規則手冊。 人們不知道如何負責任地使用它們或確保它們不會導致意外後果。 為此，學者和政策製定者聚集在一起，開發了一種新的語言和係統，以防止使用此類大規模殺傷性武器。 像相互確保毀滅（MAD）這樣的東西必須被發明。 它現在是核時代運作方式的基石。
但一開始，人們並不知道規則手冊是什麽。 我們現在正處於類似的時刻，我們需要一套新的指導方針、護欄和工具來了解何時應該使用這些工具以及使用它們的風險是什麽。 最重要的是，我們需要向政策製定者提供這些想法，以便他們能夠以負責任的方式使用製裁、出口管製、投資審查和其他經濟武器來保障我們的安全。
這些經濟武器還可以用來讓世界變得更美好、更安全。 我們注意到的領域之一是氣候變化。 你可以想象一下，利用製裁等一些工具來促進我們未來的可持續發展的地球，讓我們所有人都能在未來生活和繁榮。
要收聽合著者 Abraham Newman 朗讀的音頻版本，請立即下載 Next Big Idea 應用程序：
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy
1. Globalization is not what we thought it was.
For several decades there was a popular story about how globalization worked. It’s probably easily recognizable by Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat. It’s an image of globalization being decentralized, with companies and firms in the lead. In this world, states have been neutered, pushed to the sides, and companies have built world-spanning networks to conduct commerce, make money, and grow wealth.
The idea of decentralized network of firms and companies, however, is really just a myth. In many of the core areas of the global economy, just a few companies dominate, whether it’s your iPhone being produced by Apple, the chip on that iPhone made by TSMC, a semiconductor maker in Taiwan, or the financial transactions that you make over that phone, which are often made through just a few banks in the global economy. These core companies have created what we think of as choke points in the global economy. They’ve centralized markets in order to dominate them and to extract rents. Now, governments are waking up to that.
2. Governments, most importantly the United States government, are understanding this globalized structure and they’re using that to fight their battles.
Over the last several decades, starting with the terrorist attacks in 9/11, the U.S. government started to think about how they could manage a world where global markets had been turned against them, where terrorists had used these global markets to attack their homeland. Rather than relying on an existing plan, a bunch of different agencies scrambled to make sense of this crisis and bring in new tools to solve these problems.
In agencies like the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department, and others, they discovered maps, systems, and structures in the global economy that they could use to their advantage. Most importantly, they could use these maps to uncover how our enemies were working, to surveil them and understand their inner workings. They could then target them. Often, they were blocked or excluded from the global economy.
“They could use these maps to uncover how our enemies were working, to surveil them and understand their inner workings.”
One of the critical symbols of this effort was the organization Swift in Belgium. It’s basically like a back-office post office for banks, where banks share information with each other about which transactions are being conducted and why. The U.S. government started to use this central point in the global financial system to understand first what terrorists were doing, then what adversaries like Iran or North Korea were doing. It then started to cut these countries out of this system. This was just the beginning of an effort by governments to either use these choke points to observe their enemies or to try to strangle them.
3. The global economy has become a battlefield and firms need to prepare.
Formerly, when companies thought about political risk, their solution was to go to a country far away, fearing that their investment might get taken by the government, or nationalized. So previously, firms’ main worry was their host government.
Now there’s a new type of political risk, a new concern that firms face, which are the very channels they use to engage in global markets. Production networks spreading out manufacturing system across countries has created new forms of political risk, ones that we saw so prominently during the COVID crisis.
Moreover, the systems or networks that they use have become the channels of this political risk, whether it’s information technology or financial architectures. Firms like Deutsche Bank, TSMC, or Apple are increasingly the foot soldiers. They are being called upon by governments in order to act and to fight their battles. So now companies have to face a question: What do they do in this new world and how do they protect their business model as they do it?
4. The use of these infrastructures of the global economy by states wasn’t a big overarching orchestrated plan, but really came about by accident.
Why is that important? The reason is that this came out of a crisis response, a response to 9/11. It then grew as the government faced new crises, nuclear threats by countries like Iran or North Korea, and then the invasion by Russia of Ukraine.
“The ratcheting up of these new economic weapons has the potential to undermine the global economy, and globalization as we know it.”
At these key moments, government grabbed for these new tools and built upon them, but there hasn’t been the time to really think about the consequences. So what does it mean to use these tools? What does it mean for our adversaries? What will it mean for our friends and what might it mean for the global economy? The ceiling of what we thought was possible has become the new floor. The ratcheting up of these new economic weapons has the potential to undermine the global economy, and globalization as we know it. Our concern is that, as in a strategy of escalation, we could see a fragmentation in globalization and many countries might pull back. These countries might look more into themselves and may no longer engage in the global markets that have brought so much wealth and prosperity to communities across the globe.
5. Globalization itself could be put at risk unless we create a new language that will maintain stability.
When nuclear weapons came on the scene, they didn’t come with a rule book. People didn’t know how to use them responsibly or to make sure that they wouldn’t lead to unanticipated consequences. To do that, scholars and policymakers got together and developed a new language and systems to prevent these kinds of weapons of mass destruction from being used. Things like mutually assured destruction (MAD) had to be invented. It’s now a cornerstone of how the nuclear age works.
But at the beginning, people didn’t know what the rule book was. We are now at a similar moment, when we need a new set of guidelines, guardrails, tools to understand when these tools should be used and what the risks are of using them. Most importantly, we need to give policymakers these ideas so that they can use sanctions, export controls, investment screening, and other economic weapons in a responsible way that guarantees our safety.
These economic weapons can also be used to make the world a better and safer place. One of the areas that we note is in the case of climate change. You could imagine turning some of these tools like sanctions in order to promote our future sustainable planet, one in which we can all live and prosper in the future.
To listen to the audio version read by co-author Abraham Newman, download the Next Big Idea App today:
亨利·法雷爾教授
Henry Farrell 是約翰·霍普金斯大學高級國際研究學院 SNF Agora 研究所教授、曾擔任喬治華盛頓大學和多倫多大學的教授、伍德羅·威爾遜國際學者中心的研究員以及德國波恩馬克斯·普朗克項目組的高級研究員。研究主題包括民主、互聯網政治以及國際和比較政治經濟學。 著有《信任的政治經濟學：利益、機構和企業間合作》 2009 ，《隱私與權力：跨大西洋的自由與安全之戰》 2019，還撰寫或合著了 34 篇學術文章，以及多部書籍章節和大量非學術出版物。 他是外交關係委員會的成員。
亞伯拉罕·紐曼教授
Abraham L. Newman 是喬治城大學埃德蒙·A·沃爾什外交學院政府學和埃德蒙·A·沃爾什外交學院教授。 他是莫塔拉國際研究中心主任。 他的研究重點是全球化產生的政治，是《隱私與權力：跨大西洋自由與安全鬥爭》2019，《自願中斷：國際軟法、金融和權力》2018，《隱私保護者：全球經濟中的個人數據監管》2008 ，《數字革命如何革命性》2006。 作品發表在一係列期刊《比較政治研究》、《國際組織》、《國際安全》、《科學》和《世界政治》。
Professor Henry Farrell
Henry Farrell is SNF Agora Institute Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and Editor in Chief of the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. He has previously been a professor at George Washington University and the University of Toronto, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and a senior research fellow at the Max-Planck Project Group in Bonn, Germany. He works on a variety of topics, including democracy, the politics of the Internet and international and comparative political economy. His first book, The Political Economy of Trust: Interests, Institutions and Inter-Firm Cooperation, was published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. His second (with Abraham Newman) Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security, was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press, and has been awarded the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize and the ISA-ICOMM Best Book Award. In addition he has authored or co-authored 34 academic articles, as well as several book chapters and numerous non-academic publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Abraham Newman
Abraham L. Newman is professor of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies. His research focuses on the politics generated by globalization and is the co-author Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security (Princeton University Press 2019), which was the winner of the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize, the 2020 International Studies Association ICOMM Best Book Award, and one of Foreign Affairs’ Best Books of 2019, co-author of Voluntary Disruptions: International Soft Law, Finance and Power (Oxford University Press 2018), author of Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Data in the Global Economy (Cornell University Press 2008) and the co-editor of How Revolutionary was the Digital Revolution (Stanford University Press 2006). His work has appeared in a range of journals including Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Security, Science, and World Politics.
Review
"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
"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
