Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

Praise for Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize

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

"As noted by the scholars Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman in their recent book Underground Empire, the United States sits at the center of a vast informational plumbing system, built almost haphazardly over decades, that allows the global economy to function... But as great-power tensions have increased, so has the number of sectors caught in the fray of what Farrell and Newman call “weaponized interdependence.”
—Jami Miscik, Peter Orszag, and Theodore Bunzel, 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