Underground Empire

Deep beneath our feet, vast and sprawling, lies one of the most sophisticated empires the world has ever known. At first glance, it might not look like much - it is made up of fibre optic cables and obscure payment systems. But according to prominent political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, the United States 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 it to maintain global supremacy.Drawing on original reporting and ground-breaking research, Farrell and Newman explain how this underground empire has allowed the United States to eavesdrop on other countries and isolate its enemies. Now, efforts by countries such as China and Russia to untether themselves from this coercive US-led system are turning the global economy into a battle zone. Today's headlines about trade wars, sanctions, and controls on technology exports are merely tremors hinting at far greater seismic shifts beneath the surface, as we sleepwalk into a dangerous new struggle for empire.Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how power is wielded today, Underground Empire weaves together tales of economic conflict, shadowy surveillance and covert infrastructure projects to explain how the world order has been brought to the brink of chaos - and how we might find a way back from the edge.

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, 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, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman paint a persuasively alarming picture of just how American power has become entrenched deep in the plumbing of the world economy. Underground Empire is a passionate plea for restraint and reform in the face of a world burdened by all kinds of geopolitical dangers, 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, 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

Henry Farrell (Author) Henry Farrell is the SNF Agora Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Farrell has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Boston Review, Aeon, New Scientist, and The Nation.Abraham Newman (Author) Abraham L. Newman is a professor at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. He is a 2022-2023 Berlin Prize winner and his work has been published in leading outlets like The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Nature, Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, and Politico.