Book Launch: Underground Empire
Please join us for a discussion on Underground Empire with Authors Abraham Newman & Henry Ferrell
About the Book
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.
About the Authors
Henry Farrell is the SNF Agora Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, the 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, Editor-in-Chief of The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post, and co-founder of the popular academic blog, Crooked Timber. 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 Washington Monthly, The Boston Review, Aeon, New Scientist, and The Nation.
Abraham Newman received his BA in International Relations from Stanford University and his PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a professor in the School of Foreign Service and Government Departments at Georgetown University. His research focuses on the ways in which economic interdependence and globalization have transformed international politics. He is the co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Holt/Penguin 2023); Of Privacy and Power: the Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security (Princeton University Press 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 co-editor of How Revolutionary was the Digital Revolution: National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technologies (Stanford University Press: 2006). His work has appeared in a range of journals including Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Security, Nature, Science, and World Politics
This event is co-sponsored by the Mortara Center for International Studies & BMW Center for German & European Studies
Please RSVP on Eventbrite HERE!