Weaponized Interdependence: Global Economic Networks & State Coercion (PDF)

Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion Henry Farrell, Abraham L. Newman International Security, Volume 44, Number 1, Summer 2019, pp. 42-79 (Article) Published by The MIT Press For additional information about this article htt...

Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion Henry Farrell, Abraham L. Newman International Security, Volume 44, Number 1, Summer 2019, pp. 42-79 (Article) Published by The MIT Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/730804 [132.229.92.100] Project MUSE (2024-10-27 16:19 GMT) Leiden University / LUMC  Weaponized Interdependence Weaponized Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman Interdependence How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion I n 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 re- imposing sanctions. Most notably, many of these penalties apply not to U.S. ªrms, but to foreign ªrms that may have no presence in the United States. The sanctions are consequential in large part because of U.S. importance to the global ªnancial network.1 This unilateral action led to protest among the United States’ European allies: France’s ªnance minister, Bruno Le Maire, tartly noted that the United States was not the “economic policeman of the planet.”2 The reimposition of sanctions on Iran is just one recent example of how the United States is using global economic networks to achieve its strategic aims.3 While security scholars have long recognized the crucial importance of energy markets in shaping geostrategic outcomes,4 ªnancial and information markets Henry Farrell is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. Abraham L. Newman is Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Government Department at Georgetown University. The authors are grateful to Miles Evers, Llewellyn Hughes, Woojeong Jang, Erik Jones, Miles [132.229.92.100] Project MUSE (2024-10-27 16:19 GMT) Leiden University / LUMC Kahler, Nikhil Kalyanpur, Matthias Matthijs, Kathleen McNamara, Daniel Nexon, Gideon Rose, Mark Schwartz, and William Winecoff, as well as the anonymous reviewers for comments and criticism. Charles Glaser provided especially detailed and helpful comments on an early draft. Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2018 annual convention of the Interna- tional Studies Association and at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Research Seminar in Politics and Political Economy on April 17, 2018. The authors are also grateful to the participants and audiences at both events for feedback. 1. The legal principles through which exposure is determined are complex. For a useful introduc- tion, see Serena B. Wille, “Anti-Money-Laundering and OFAC Sanctions Issues,” CFA Institute Conference Proceedings Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2011), pp. 59–64, doi.org/10.2469/cp.v29.n3.2. 2. Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, Michael Peel, and Tobias Buck, “EU to Seek Exemptions from New U.S. Sanctions on Iran,” Financial Times, May 9, 2018. 3. Henry Foy, “EN⫹ President Steps Down in Move to Win U.S. Sanctions Waiver,” Financial Times, June 4, 2018. 4. Llewelyn Hughes and Austin Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon? Security Implications of Changes in the Structure of the International Oil Market,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Winter 2014/ 15), pp. 152–189, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00188; Jeff D. Colgan, “Fueling the Fire: Pathways from Oil to War,” International Security, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Fall 2013), pp. 147–180, doi.org/10.1162/ ISEC_a_00135; Charles L. Glaser, “How Oil Inºuences U.S. National Security: Reframing Energy Security,” International Security, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Fall 2013), pp. 112–146, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a _00137; and Llewelyn Hughes and Phillip Y. Lipscy, “The Politics of Energy,” Annual Review of Po- litical Science, Vol. 16, No. 1 (May 2013), pp. 449–469, doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-072211- 143240. International Security, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Summer 2019), pp. 42–79, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00351 © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 42  Weaponized Interdependence 43 are rapidly coming to play similarly important roles. In Rosa Brooks’s evoca- tive description, globalization has created a world in which everything be- came war.5 Flows of ªnance, information, and physical goods across borders create both new risks for states and new tools to alternatively exploit or miti- gate those risks. The result, as Thomas Wright describes it, is a world where unprecedented levels of interdependence are combined with continued jock- eying for power, so that states that are unwilling to engage in direct conºict may still employ all measures short of war.6 Global economic networks have security consequences, because they in- crease interdependence between states that were previously relatively autono- mous. Yet, existing theory provides few guideposts as to how states may leverage network structures as a coercive tool and under what circumstances. It has focused instead on trade relations between dyadic pairs and the vulnera- bilities generated by those interactions.7 Similarly, work on economic sanctions has yet to fully grasp the consequences of economic networks and how they are being weaponized. Rather, that literature primarily looks to explain the success or failure of direct sanctions (i.e., sanctions that involve states denying outside access to their own markets individually or as an alliance).8 Power and vulnerability are characterized as the consequences of aggregate market size or bilateral interdependencies. In addition, accounts that examine more dif- 5. Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Penta- gon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017). 6. Thomas J. Wright, All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Fu- ture of American Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2017). 7. Joanne Gowa, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and Free Trade,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 4 (December 1989), pp. 1245–1256, doi.org/10.2307/1961667; Brian M. Pollins, “Does Trade Still Follow the Flag?” American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 2 (June 1989), pp. 465– 480, doi.org/10.2307/1962400; John R. Oneal et al., “The Liberal Peace: Interdependence, Democ- racy, and International Conºict, 1950–85,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 33, No. 1 (February 1996), pp. 11–28, doi.org/10.1177/0022343396033001002; and Dale C. Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014). 8. Robert A. Pape, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997), pp. 90–136, doi.org/10.2307/2539368; Kimberly Ann Elliott, “The Sanctions Glass: Half Full or Completely Empty?” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 50–65, doi.org/10.2307/2539262; Daniel W. Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and Interna- tional Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David A. Baldwin, “The Sanctions Debate and the Logic of Choice,” International Security, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Winter 2000), pp. 80–107, doi.org/10.1162/016228899560248; Jonathan Kirshner, “Economic Sanctions: The State of the Art,” Security Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Summer 2002), pp. 160–179, doi.org/10.1080/714005348; Fiona McGillivray and Allan C. Stam, “Political Institutions, Coercive Diplomacy, and the Duration of Economic Sanctions,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 48, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 154–172, doi.org/10.1177/0022002703262858; and Daniel W. Drezner, “Outside the Box: Explaining Sanc- tions in Pursuit of Foreign Economic Goals,” International Interactions, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2001), pp. 379–410, doi.org/10.1080/03050620108434972, which does consider secondary sanctions, as does the policy literature we discuss below.  International Security 44:1 44 fuse or secondary sanctions have focused more on comparative effectiveness than on theory building.9 In this article, we develop a different understanding of state power, which highlights the structural aspects of interdependence. Speciªcally, we show how the topography of the economic networks of interdependence intersects with domestic institutions and norms to shape coercive authority. Our account places networks such as ªnancial communications, supply chains, and the in- ternet, which have been largely neglected by international relations scholars, at the heart of a compelling new understanding of globalization and power.10 Globalization has transformed the liberal order, by moving the action away from multilateral interstate negotiations and toward networks of private ac- tors.11 This transformation has had crucial consequences for where state power is located in international politics, and how it is exercised. We contrast our argument with standard liberal accounts of complex inter- dependence. The initial liberal account of interdependence paid some atten- 9. See Peter D. Feaver and Eric B. Lorber, Coercive Diplomacy and the New Financial Levers: Evalu- ating the Intended and Unintended Consequences of Financial Sanctions (London: Legatum Institute, 2010); Orde F. Kittrie, “New Sanctions for a New Century: Treasury’s Innovative Use of Financial Sanctions,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring 2009), pp. 789–822; and Daniel W. Drezner, “Targeted Sanctions in a World of Global Finance,” Interna- tional Interactions, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2015), pp. 755–764, doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2015.1041297. Sec- ondary sanctions coexist with other tools to control international ªnancial ºows. For a useful recent overview, see Miles Kahler et al., Global Governance to Combat Illicit Financial Flows: Measure- ment, Evaluation, Innovation (Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations, 2018). 10. Of course, there is a burgeoning scholarship on cybersecurity, which is relevant to the internet. See Sarah E. Kreps and Jacquelyn Schneider, “Escalation Firebreaks in the Cyber, Conventional, and Nuclear Domains: Moving beyond Effects-Based Logics,” Cornell University and U.S. Naval War College, 2018; Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace,” International Security, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Winter 2016/17), pp. 44–71, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00266; Rebecca Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance? Conceptions, Causes, and Assessment,” In- ternational Security, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Winter 2016/17), pp. 72–109, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00267; Henry Farrell and Charles L. Glaser, “The Role of Effects, Saliencies, and Norms in U.S. Cyberwar Doctrine,” Journal of Cybersecurity, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2017), pp. 7–17, doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/ tyw015; and Jon R. Lindsay, “The Impact of China on Cybersecurity: Fiction and Friction,” Interna- tional Security, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Winter 2014/15), pp. 7–47, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00189. This liter- ature, however, largely fails to address the network characteristics of the internet, focusing instead on variation in traditional metrics such as the offense-defense balance, the ability to deter or com- pel, and the treatment of the network characteristics of the internet either as a constant or a straightforward determinant of state-level vulnerability or strength (so that technologically ad- vanced states such as the United States will have a different set of strengths and vulnerabilities than states that rely less on technology). An earlier proto-literature on “netwar” examines how leaderless networks are becoming more important in world politics, but is primarily descriptive in nature. See John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, The Advent of Netwar (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1996). There is a technical literature that discusses networks, but it tends not to dis- cuss the strategic aspects we focus on below. For an important exception, see Réka Albert, Hawoong Jeong, and Albert-László Barabási, “Error and Attack Tolerance of Complex Networks,” Nature, July 2000, pp. 378–382, doi.org/10.1038/35019019. 11. Kathryn Judge, “Intermediary Inºuence,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Spring 2015), pp. 573–642, https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol82/iss2/1.  Weaponized Interdependence 45 tion to power, but emphasized bilateral relationships. Subsequent liberal accounts have tended either to avoid the question of power, focusing on mu- tual cooperative gains, to suggest that apparently lopsided global networks obscure more fundamental patterns of mutual dependence, or to posit a net- worked global order in which liberal states such as the United States can exer- cise “power with” (the power to work together constructively with allies) to achieve liberal objectives.12 Our alternative account makes a starkly different assumption, providing a structural explanation of interdependence in which network topography gen- erates enduring power imbalances among states. Here we draw on sociologi- cal and computational research on large-scale networks, which demonstrates the tendency of complex systems to produce asymmetric network structures, in which some nodes are “hubs,” and are far more connected than others.13 Asymmetric network structures create the potential for “weaponized inter- dependence,” in which some states are able to leverage interdependent rela- tions to coerce others. Speciªcally, states with political authority over the central nodes in the international networked structures through which money, goods, and information travel are uniquely positioned to impose costs on oth- ers. If they have appropriate domestic institutions, they can weaponize net- works to gather information or choke off economic and information ºows, discover and exploit vulnerabilities, compel policy change, and deter un- wanted actions. We identify and explain variation in two strategies through 12. See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., Power and Interdependence, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2012); Kal Raustiala, “The Architecture of International Cooperation: Transgovern- mental Networks and the Future of International Law,” Virginia Journal of International Law, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Fall 2002), pp. 1–92; Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Global Government Networks, Global Information Agencies, and Disaggregated Democracy,” Michigan Journal of International Law, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Summer 2003), pp. 1044–1075, https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol24/ iss4/7; Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2017). The classic critique of liberalism’s empha- sis on mutual gains from cooperation is Stephen D. Krasner, “Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier,” World Politics, Vol. 43, No. 3 (April 1991), pp. 336–366, doi.org/10.2307/2010398. 13. Albert-László Barabási and Réka Albert, “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks,” Sci- ence, October 1999, pp. 509–512, doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5439.509; M.E.J. Newman and Juyong Park, “Why Social Networks Are Different from Other Types of Networks,” Physical Re- view E, September 2003, pp. 1–8, doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.036122; Aaron Clauset, Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, and M.E.J. Newman, “Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data,” SIAM Review, Vol. 51, No. 4 (December 2009), pp. 661–703, doi.org/10.1137/070710111; Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Miles Kahler, and Alexander H. Montgomery, “Network Analysis for International Relations,” International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 559–592, doi.org/10.1017/ S0020818309090195; and Stacie E. Goddard, “Embedded Revisionism: Networks, Institutions, and Challenges to World Order,” International Organization, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 763–797, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000206.  International Security 44:1 46 which states can gain powerful advantages from weaponizing interdepen- dence; they respectively rely on the panopticon and chokepoint effects of net- works. In the former, advantaged states use their network position to extract informational advantages vis-à-vis adversaries, whereas in the latter, they can cut adversaries off from network ºows. To test the plausibility of our argument, we present detailed analytic nar- ratives of two substantive areas: ªnancial messaging and internet communica- tions.14 We selected these areas as they are signiªcant to a range of critical security issues including rogue-state nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and great power competition. Moreover, global ªnance and the internet are often depicted as being at the vanguard of decentralized economic networks. As such, they offer an important test of our argument and a contrast to the more common liberal perspective on global market interactions. At the same time, ªnancial messaging and internet communications see im- portant variation in the level and kind of control that they offer to inºuential states. In the former, the United States, in combination with its allies, has sufªcient jurisdictional grasp and appropriate domestic institutions to oblige hub actors to provide it with information and to cut off other actors and states. In internet communications, the United States solely has appropriate jurisdic- tional grasp and appropriate institutions to oblige hub actors to provide it with information, but does not have domestic institutions that would allow it to de- mand that other states be cut out of the network. This would lead us to expect that in the case of ªnancial messaging, the United States and its allies will be able to exercise both the panopticon and chokepoint effects—so long as they agree. In contrast, in internet communications, the United States will be able to exercise the panopticon effect even without the consent of its allies, but it will not be able to exercise the chokepoint effect. This variation allows us to dem- onstrate the limits of these network strategies and also show that they are not simply coterminous with United States market size or military power. Empirically, the cases draw on extensive readings of the primary and second- ary literature as well as interviews with key policymakers. Our argument has signiªcant implications for scholars interested in thinking about the future of conºict in a world of global economic and information net- works. For those steeped in the liberal tradition, we demonstrate that institu- tions designed to generate market efªciencies and reduce transaction costs can 14. Anecdotal evidence suggests similar processes are at work in a number of other areas, includ- ing dollar clearing and global supply chains. See, for example, Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, “‘Huawei Freeze’ Chills Global Supply Chain,” Nikki Asian Review, December 8, 2018, https:// asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/Huawei-freeze-chills-global-supply-chain.  Weaponized Interdependence 47 be deployed for coercive ends. Focal points of cooperation have become sites of control. For those researchers interested in conºict studies and power, we show the critical role that economic relations play in coercion. Rather than re- hashing more conventional debates on trade and conºict, we underscore how relatively new forms of economic interaction—ªnancial and information ºows—shape strategic opportunities, stressing in particular how the topogra- phy of global networks structures coercion. Here, we use basic insights from network theory to rethink structural power, linking the literatures on economic and security relations to show how coercive economic power can stem from structural characteristics of the global economy. Finally, the article begins to map the deep empirical connections between economic networks—for ex- ample, ªnancial messaging, dollar clearing, global supply chains, and inter- net communication—and a series of pressing real-world issues—including counterterrorism, cybersecurity, rogue states, and great power competition. We begin by explaining how global networks play a structural role in the world economy. Next, we describe how these networks, together with domes- tic institutions and norms, shape the strategic options available to states, focus- ing on what we describe as the panopticon and chokepoint effects. We provide detailed parallel histories of how networks in ªnancial communication and in- ternet communication developed and were weaponized by the United States. We conclude by considering the policy implications of clashes between coun- tries such as the United States that have weaponized interdependence and other states looking to counter these inºuences. Statecraft and Structure: The Role of Global Networks As globalization has advanced, it has fostered new networks of exchange— whether economic, informational, or physical—that have remade domestic economies, densely and intimately interconnecting them in ways that are difªcult to unravel.15 The ªnancial sector depends on international messaging networks, which have become the key means through which domestic banks and ªnancial institutions arrange transfers and communicate with each other. Informational networks such as the internet are notoriously internationalized: a single web page can stitch together content and advertisements from myriad independent servers, perhaps located in different countries. Physical manufac- 15. Recent scholarship in international political economy has begun to focus more explicitly on the relationship between structure and statecraft. For a network-based critique of state-level reductionism similar to ours, see Thomas Oatley, “The Reductionist Gamble: Open Economy Poli- tics in the Global Economy,” International Organization, Vol. 65, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 311–341, doi.org/10.1017/S002081831100004X.  International Security 44:1 48 ture depends on vast tangled supply chains that extend globally, greatly com- plicating trade wars, since high tariffs on importers are likely to damage the interests of domestic suppliers. Such networks have typically been depicted by liberals as a form of “com- plex interdependence,” a fragmented polity in which “there were multiple actors (rather than just states), multiple issues that were not necessarily hierar- chically ordered, and force and the threat of force were not valuable tools of policy.”16 Such arguments allowed some space for the exercise of bilateral power, showing how states that depended on imports from other states, and had no ready substitutes, were vulnerable to outside pressure. However, lib- eral scholars stressed the power resources of actors rather than structural fac- tors, in particular the dispersion of power across such networks, and often emphasized how interdependence generated reciprocal rather than one-sided vulnerabilities. As globalization has progressed, liberals have continued to argue that global networks result in reciprocal dependence, which tends to make coercive strate- gies less effective. Thus, for example, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye describe globalization as involving the development of “networks of interdependence.” Although they accept that, as a “ªrst approximation,” the United States ap- pears to be a hub in these networks, they also argue that it would be a “mis- take to envisage contemporary networks of globalism simply in terms of a hub [132.229.92.100] Project MUSE (2024-10-27 16:19 GMT) Leiden University / LUMC and spokes of an American empire that creates dependency for smaller coun- tries.”17 Instead, Keohane and Nye suggest that there are multiple different possible hubs, reducing the dominance of great powers such as the United States. Furthermore, they argue that asymmetries are likely to diminish over time as “structural holes” are ªlled in.18 More recently, Nye has argued that “entanglement” between states’ economic and information systems can have important pacifying beneªts for cybersecurity: precisely because states are interdependent, they are less liable to launch attacks that may damage themselves as well as their adversaries.19 Other liberal scholars, such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, claim that globaliza- tion creates decentralized networks that generate new opportunities for coop- erative diplomacy.20 Slaughter’s guiding metaphor for globalization is a web 16. Robert O. Keohane, “The Old IPE and the New,” Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 1 (February 2009), pp. 34–46, at pp. 36–37, doi.org/10.1080/09692290802524059. 17. Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, p. 253. 18. Ibid. 19. Nye, “Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace.” 20. Raustiala, “The Architecture of International Cooperation”; Slaughter, A New World Order; and Slaughter, The Chessboard and the Web.  Weaponized Interdependence 49 connecting a network of points rather than a “chessboard.” An arbitrarily large number of paths may connect two or several of these points together, suggest- ing that globalization is best understood as a nonhierarchical network in which the new arts of diplomacy consist in identifying the right relationships among the multitudes of possibilities to accomplish a given task. In such a net- work, liberals such as Slaughter argue, power is “power with,” rather than “power over.”21 Like these liberal accounts, our approach takes networks seriously. How- ever, it starts from different premises about their genesis and consequences. First, we argue that networks are structures in the sociological sense of the term, which is to say that they shape what actors can or cannot do. An impor- tant body of emerging scholarship in international political economy, which we dub the “new structuralism,” looks to understand the consequences of globally emergent phenomena for states and other actors.22 In the longer term, such networks may change, but in the short to medium term, they are self- reinforcing and resistant to efforts to disrupt them. Second, network structures can have important consequences for the distri- bution of power. In contradistinction to liberal claims, they do not produce a ºat or fragmented world of diffuse power relations and ready cooperation, nor do they tend to become less asymmetric over time. Instead, they result in a speciªc, tangible, and enduring conªguration of power imbalance. Key global economic networks—like many other complex phenomena—tend to gener- ate ever more asymmetric topologies in which exchange becomes central- ized, ºowing through a few speciªc intermediaries.23 Contrary to Keohane and Nye’s predictions, key global economic networks have converged toward “hub and spoke” systems, with important consequences for power relations.24 21. Slaughter, The Chessboard and the Web, p. 163. 22. See, in particular, Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel H. Nexon, “The Dynamics of Global Power Politics: A Framework for Analysis,” Journal of Global Security Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (February 2016), pp. 4–18, doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogv007; Mark Blyth and Matthias Matthijs, “Black Swans, Lame Ducks, and the Mystery of IPE’s Missing Macroeconomy,” Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 24, No. 2 (April 2017), pp. 203–231, doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2017.1308417; Seva Gunitsky, “Complexity and Theories of Change in International Politics,” International Theory, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 2013), pp. 35–63, doi.org/10.1017/S1752971913000110; and Thomas Oatley, “Toward a Po- litical Economy of Complex Interdependence,” European Journal of International Relations, forth- coming, doi.org/10.1177/1354066119846553. 23. John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansell, “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400– 1434,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 98, No. 6 (May 1993), pp. 1259–1319, doi.org/10.1086/ 230190; and Judge, “Intermediary Inºuence.” 24. Our argument builds on Susan Strange’s notion of “structural power.” See, for example, Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also Susan K. Sell, “Ahead of Her Time? Susan Strange and Global Governance,” in Randall Germain, ed., Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy: Power, Control, and Transformation (London: Routledge, 2016). For different accounts, see Philip G.  International Security 44:1 50 Networks can be described more formally. Network theory starts from the basis that networks involve two elements: the “nodes,” each representing a speciªc actor or location within the network; and the “ties” (sometimes called edges), or connections between nodes, which channel information, resources, or other forms of inºuence. In simple representations, these ties are assumed to carry resources or inºuence in both directions. The “degree” of a node is the number of ties that connect it to other nodes; the higher the degree, the more connections it enjoys. Empirically, these nodes may be speciªc physical entities such as the computers that run internet exchanges or institutions such as a particular bank. The pattern of nodes and links between them is the topogra- phy (or what international relations scholars might call the “structure”) of the network. In our account, as in other structural accounts such as neorealism, network structures are the consequence of the accumulated actions of myriad actors, which aggregate to produce structures that inºuence their behavior. Spe- ciªcally, the market-focused strategies of business actors lead, inadvertently or otherwise, to highly centralized global networks of communication, exchange, and physical production. Asymmetric growth means that globalization—like other networked forms of human activity25—generates networks with stark in- equality of inºuence.26 The distribution of degree (i.e., of links across nodes) Cerny, Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2010); and Louis W. Pauly, “The Anarchical Society and a Global Political Economy,” in Hidemi Suganami, Madeline Carr, and Adam Humphreys, eds., The Anarchical Society at 40: Con- temporary Challenges and Prospects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). On network power, political theory, and international relations more generally, see David Singh Grewal, Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 25. Newman and Park, “Why Social Networks Are Different from Other Types of Networks.” An important literature in statistical physics and related disciplines studies the topology of large-scale networks and how topology shapes, for example, processes of contagion. See Duncan J. Watts, “The ‘New’ Science of Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2004), pp. 243–270, doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.30.020404.104342; and, for a useful overview, Mark Newman, Albert- László Barabási, and Duncan J. Watts, eds., The Structure and Dynamics of Networks (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011). This literature has been underused by political scientists. For re- cent exceptions, see Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery, “Network Analysis for International Relations”; Goddard, “Embedded Revisionism”; Miles Kahler, ed., Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009); Thomas Oatley, A Political Economy of American Hegemony: Buildups, Booms, and Busts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Brandon J. Kinne, “Defense Cooperation Agreements and the Emergence of a Global Security Network,” International Organization, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 799–837, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000218. 26. Of course, some forms of international exchange are not networks in this sense—market trans- fers of commodities with a signiªcant number of suppliers and no need for network infrastructure are unlikely to be subject to the dynamics we discuss here. We return to this point in the conclusion.  Weaponized Interdependence 51 may approximate to a power law, or a log normal distribution, or a stretched exponential depending on particulars.27 For the purposes of our argument, the exact statistical classiªcation of the distributions is irrelevant; what is impor- tant is that social networks tend to be highly unequal. Such inequalities may arise in a number of plausible ways. Simple models of preferential attachment suggest that as networks grow, new nodes are slightly more likely to attach to nodes that already have many ties than to nodes that have fewer such ties. As a result, sharply unequal distributions are likely to emerge over time.28 Network effects, in which the value of a service to its users increases as a function of the number of users already using it, may lead actors to converge on networks that already have many participants, while efªciency concerns lead the network providers to create hub-and-spoke systems of communication. Finally, innovation research suggests that there are impor- tant learning-by-doing effects, in which central nodes in networks have ac- cess to more information and relationships than do other members of the network, causing others to link to them preferentially to maintain access to learning processes.29 These mechanisms and others may generate strong rich-get-richer effects over the short to medium term, in which certain nodes in the network become more central in the network than others. The networks they generate are struc- tural in the precise yet limited sense that, after they have emerged, they are highly resistant to the efforts of individual economic actors to change them; once networks become established, individual actors will experience lock-in effects.30 Furthermore, under reasonable models of network growth, these to- 27. See Clauset, Shalizi, and Newman, “Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data.” For applica- tions to security, see Aaron Clauset, Maxwell Young, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “On the Fre- quency of Severe Terrorist Events,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 51, No. 1 (February 2007), pp. 58–88, doi.org/10.1177/0022002706296157; and Aaron Clauset, “Trends and Fluctuations in the Severity of Interstate Wars,” Science Advances, Vol. 4, No. 2 (February 2018), pp. 1–9, doi.org/ 10.1126/sciadv.aao3580. 28. See Herbert A. Simon, “On a Class of Skew Distribution Functions,” Biometrika, Vol. 42, Nos. 3/4 (December 1955), pp. 425–440, doi.org/10.2307/2333389; and Barabási and Albert, “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks.” 29. Ranjay Gulati, “Network Location and Learning: The Inºuence of Network Resources and Firm Capabilities on Alliance Formation,” Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 20, No. 5 (May 1999), pp. 397–420, doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199905)20:5⬍397::AID-SMJ35⬎3.0.CO;2-K; and Ste- phen P. Borgatti and Rob Cross, “A Relational View of Information Seeking and Learning in Social Networks,” Management Science, Vol. 49, No. 4 (April 2003), pp. 432–445, doi.org/10.1287/ mnsc.49.4.432.14428. 30. W. Brian Arthur, “Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Events,” Economic Journal, March 1989, pp. 116–131, doi.org/10.2307/2234208; and Paul A. David, “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,” American Economic Review, Vol. 75, No. 2 (May 1985), pp. 332–337, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1805621.  International Security 44:1 52 pologies are self-reinforcing; as the pattern starts to become established, new nodes become overwhelmingly likely to reinforce rather than to undermine the existing unequal pattern of distribution. Nor are these just abstract theoretical claims. They appear to describe many global economic networks.31 Even when global networks largely came into be- ing through entirely decentralized processes, they have come to display high skewness in the distribution of degree.32 More plainly put, some nodes in these networks are far better connected than others. Studies of trade and banking show that the United States and the United Kingdom are exceptionally highly connected nodes in global ªnancial networks.33 It is increasingly difªcult to map the network relations of the internet for technical reasons, yet there is good reason to believe that the internet displays a similar skew toward nodes in advanced industrial democracies such as the United States and (to a lesser extent) the United Kingdom.34 This activity is often driven by an economic logic. In a networked world, businesses frequently operate in a context where there are increasing returns to scale, network effects, or some combination thereof. These effects push mar- kets toward winner-take-all equilibria in which only one or a few busi- nesses have the lion’s share of relationships with end users and, hence, proªts and power. Even where networks are run by nonproªt actors, there are strong imperatives toward network structures in which most or even nearly all market actors work through a speciªc organization, allowing them to take ad- vantage of the lower transaction costs associated with centralized communica- tions architectures. 31. Thomas Oatley et al., “The Political Economy of Global Finance: A Network Model,” Perspec- tives on Politics, Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2013), pp. 133–153, doi.org/10.1017/S1537592712003593; and Oatley, A Political Economy of American Hegemony. 32. Réka Albert, Hawoong Jeong, and Albert-László Barabási, “Diameter of the World-Wide Web,” Nature, September 1999, pp. 130–131, doi.org/10.1038/43601; Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston, “The Network of Global Corporate Control,” PloS One, Vol. 6, No. 10 (October 2011), e25995, pp. 1–6, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025995; and Camelia Miniou and Javier A. Reyes, “A Network Analysis of Global Banking: 1978–2010,” Journal of Finan- cial Stability, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 2013), pp. 168–184, doi.org/10.1016/j.jfs.2013.03.001. 33. On trade, see Giorgio Fagiolo, Javier Reyes, and Stefano Schiavo, “World-Trade Web: Topolog- ical Properties, Dynamics, and Evolution,” Physical Review E, Vol. 79, No. 036115 (March 2009), pp. 1–19, doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.036115; and Luca De Benedictis and Lucia Tajoli, “The World Trade Network,” World Economy, Vol. 34, No. 8 (August 2011), pp. 1417–1454, doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-9701.2011.01360.x. On ªnance, see Oatley et al., “The Political Economy of Global Finance”; and William Kindred Winecoff, “Structural Power and the Global Financial Crisis: A Network Analytical Approach,” Business and Politics, Vol. 17, No. 3 (October 2015), pp. 495–525, doi.org/10.1515/bap-2014-0050. 34. Soon-Hyung Yook, Hawoong Jeong, and Albert-László Barabási, “Modeling the Internet’s Large-Scale Topology,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 99, No. 21 (October 2002), pp. 13382–13386, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.172501399.  Weaponized Interdependence 53 Once established, these centralized network structures are hard for outsiders to challenge, not least because they have focal power; challengers not only have to demonstrate that they have a better approach, but need to coordinate a signiªcant number of actors to defect from the existing model or organization and converge toward a different one. For example, Facebook’s business model is centered on monetizing individ- uals’ social networks through targeted advertisement and other means. It has resisted challengers with ostensibly better or less privacy-invasive products, because it is relatively costly for an individual, or even a medium-sized group, to move to a different service unless they know that everyone else is doing the same thing. Google similarly leverages the beneªts of search and ad- vertising data.35 Large international ªnancial institutions such as Citibank, security settlement systems such as Euroclear, consumer credit payment sys- tems such as Visa/Mastercard, ªnancial clearing houses such as the Clearing House Interbank Payments System, and ªnancial messaging services such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) have become crucial intermediaries in global ªnancial networks, acting as middlemen across an enormous number and variety of speciªc transactions. All these actors play key roles in their various architectures, coordinating and brokering numerous speciªc relationships, beneªting from efªciencies of scale and, in some cases, from the unique access to information that their brokerage position supplies.36 Notably, the most central nodes are not randomly distributed across the world, but are typically territorially concentrated in the advanced industrial economies, and the United States in particular. This distribution reºects a com- bination of the rich-get-richer effects common in network analysis and the par- ticular timing of the most recent wave of globalization, which coincided with United States and Western domination of relevant innovation cycles. In short, globalization has generated a new set of structural forces. Economic actors’ myriad activities create self-reinforcing network topologies, in which some economic intermediaries—nodes—are centrally located with high de- gree, and most other nodes are dependent on them. Once these topologies become established, it is difªcult for economic actors to change or substan- tially displace them. 35. On power relations in the platform economy, see Lina M. Khan, “The Ideological Roots of America’s Market Power Problem,” Yale Law Journal Forum, Vol. 27 (June 2018), pp. 960–979, https:// www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-ideological-roots-of-americas-market-power-problem; and Lina M. Khan, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” Yale Law Journal, Vol. 126, No. 3 (January 2017), pp. 710–805, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox. 36. Judge, “Intermediary Inºuence”; and Natasha Tusikov, Chokepoints: Global Private Regulation on the Internet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).  International Security 44:1 54 New Forms of Network Power: Panopticons and Chokepoints The asymmetric networks that make up much of the structure of a globalized world were not constructed as tools of statecraft. They typically reºect the in- centives of businesses to create monopolies or semi-monopolies, increasing returns to scale in certain markets, rich-get-richer mechanisms of network at- tachment, and the efªciencies available to more centralized communications networks. By building centralized networks, market actors inadvertently pro- vide states, which are concerned with political as well as economic consider- ations, with the necessary levers to extend their inºuence across borders. Thus, structures that were generated by market actors in pursuit of efªciency and market power can be put to quite different purposes by states. Here, we differentiate our account of power from two related but distinct sources of power that may result from economic interdependence. The ªrst is market power. Although often underspeciªed, research on market power em- phasizes the aggregate economic potential (measured in a variety of different ways ranging from the domestic consumer-base to aggregate gross domestic product) of a country. States with large economic markets can leverage market access for strategic ends. National economic capabilities, then, produce power resources.37 The second source of power, which dates back to the pioneering work of Keohane and Nye and has been most thoroughly examined in the [132.229.92.100] Project MUSE (2024-10-27 16:19 GMT) Leiden University / LUMC case of trade, involves bilateral dependence. States that rely on a particular good from another state and lack a substitute supplier may be sensitive to shocks or manipulation.38 Market size and bilateral economic interactions are important, but they are far from exhaustive of the structural transformations wreaked by globaliza- tion. Global economic networks have distinct consequences that go far beyond states’ unilateral decisions either to allow or deny market access, or to impose bilateral pressure. They allow some states to weaponize interdependence on the level of the network itself. Speciªcally, they enable two forms of weaponi- 37. George E. Shambaugh IV, “Dominance, Dependence, and Political Power: Tethering Technol- ogy in the 1980s and Today,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (December 1996), pp. 559–588, doi.org/10.2307/2600891; Beth A. Simmons, “The International Politics of Harmoni- zation: The Case of Capital Market Regulation,” International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Summer 2001), pp. 589–620, doi.org/10.1162/00208180152507560; Daniel W. Drezner, All Politics Is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Nikhil Kalyanpur and Abraham L. Newman, “Mobilizing Market Power: Jurisdictional Expansion as Economic Statecraft,” International Organization, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Winter 2019), pp. 1–34, doi.org/ 10.1017/S0020818318000334. 38. Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence; Gowa, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and Free Trade”; Pollins, “Does Trade Still Follow the Flag?”; Oneal et al., “The Liberal Peace”; and Cope- land, Economic Interdependence and War.  Weaponized Interdependence 55 zation. The ªrst weaponizes the ability to glean critical knowledge from infor- mation ºows, which we label the “panopticon effect.” Jeremy Bentham’s conception of the Panopticon was precisely an architectural arrangement in which one or a few central actors could readily observe the activities of others. States that have physical access to or jurisdiction over hub nodes can use this inºuence to obtain information passing through the hubs. Because hubs are crucial intermediaries in decentralized communications structures, it becomes difªcult—or even effectively impossible—for other actors to avoid these hubs while communicating. This phenomenon existed in earlier periods of globalization as well. As Harold James describes it, “In the ªrst era of globalization, expanding trade, capital and labour ºows all tied economies together in what appeared to be an increasing and probably irreversible network,” centered on the “commercial infrastructure provided by Britain,” and in particular the ªnancial infrastruc- ture of the City of London.39 As James notes, “The fact that Britain was the hub of trade, ªnance and insurance gave its military planners, and its political- decision makers, a unique insight into how and where global ºows of strategic goods went, and how those ºows might be interrupted.”40 As technology has developed, the ability of states to glean information about the activities of their adversaries (or third parties on whom their adver- saries depend) has correspondingly become more sophisticated. The reliance of ªnancial institutions on readily searchable archives of records converts bank branches and internet terminals into valuable sources of information. New technologies such as cell phones become active sensors. Under the panopticon effect, states’ direct surveillance abilities may be radically outstripped by their capacity to tap into the information-gathering and information-generating ac- tivities of networks of private actors. Such information offers privileged states a key window into the activity of adversaries, partly compensating for the weak information environment that is otherwise characteristic of global politics. States with access to the panopti- con effect have an informational advantage in understanding adversaries’ in- tentions and tactics. This information offers those states with access to the hub a strategic advantage in their effort to counter the speciªc moves of their tar- gets, conduct negotiations, or create political frames. The second channel works through what we label the “chokepoint effect,” and involves privileged states’ capacity to limit or penalize use of hubs by 39. Harold James, “Cosmos, Chaos: Finance, Power, and Conºict,” International Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 1 (January 2014), pp. 37–57, at p. 43, doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12094. 40. Ibid., p. 54.  International Security 44:1 56 third parties (e.g., other states or private actors). Because hubs offer extraordi- nary efªciency beneªts, and because it is extremely difªcult to circumvent them, states that can control hubs have considerable coercive power, and states or other actors that are denied access to hubs can suffer substantial con- sequences. Again, there is some historical precedent for this phenomenon. Nicholas Lambert describes how the United Kingdom enjoyed a near monop- oly over the communications infrastructure associated with international trade in the period before World War I, and developed extensive plans to use this monopoly to disrupt the economies of its adversaries, weaponizing the global trading system.41 As Heidi Tworek argues, Germany responded to the UK stranglehold on submarine communication cables by trying to develop new wireless technologies.42 States may use a range of tools to achieve chokepoint effects, including those described in the existing literature on how statecraft, credibility, the ability to involve allies, and other such factors shape the relative success or failure of ex- traterritorial coercive policies.43 In some cases, states have sole jurisdiction over the key hub or hubs, which offers them the legal authority to regulate issues of market use. In others, the hubs may be scattered across two or more jurisdictions, obliging states to work together to exploit the beneªts of coer- cion. Our account emphasizes the crucial importance of the economic network structures within which all of these coercive efforts take place. Where there are one or a few hubs, it becomes far easier for actors in control of these nodes to block or hamper access to the entire network. We explain variation in state strategies as a function of the structural topog- raphy of the network combined with domestic institutions and norms of the states attempting to make use of the network structures. First, only those states that have physical or legal jurisdiction over hub nodes will be able to exploit the beneªts of weaponized interdependence. As we have already noted, the network hubs of globalization are not scattered at random across the world. Instead, they are disproportionally located in the advanced industrial coun- tries, in particular the United States, which has led technological and market 41. Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). 42. Heidi J.S. Tworek, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900– 1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019). 43. Sarah C. Kaczmarek and Abraham L. Newman, “The Long Arm of the Law: Extraterritoriality and the National Implementation of Foreign Bribery Legislation,” International Organization, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Fall 2011), pp. 745–770, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818311000270; Kal Raustiala, Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? The Evolution of Territoriality in American Law (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2011); and Tonya L. Putnam, Courts without Borders: Law, Politics, and U.S. Extra- territoriality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).  Weaponized Interdependence 57 innovation in the most recent round of economic globalization. This geo- graphic skew effectively means that only the United States and a couple of other key states and statelike entities (most notably, the European Union [EU] and, increasingly, China) enjoy the beneªts of weaponized interdependence, although others may still be able to play a disruptive role. Second, there will be variation across the national institutional structures associated with different issue areas. If states are to exploit hubs, they require appropriate legal and regulatory institutions. Depending on domestic conªg- urations of power and state-society relations, they may lack coercive capacity; alternatively, they may be able to prosecute strategies based only on panopti- con effects and not on chokepoints, or vice versa. The literature on regulatory capacity, for example, demonstrates that the United States is not uniformly po- sitioned to control market access.44 In some areas, it has weak or decentralized regulatory institutions, or would face powerful domestic pushback. In such cases, states may ªnd themselves structurally positioned to shape hub behav- ior but lack the institutional resources to exploit either or both the panopticon or chokepoint effects. In other domains, national laws and norms constrain states from engaging in certain kinds of weaponization. Privacy laws in the EU, for example, limit the amount of data that may be collected or stored by commercial internet pro- viders.45 These institutions, which were adopted just as decentralized market processes generated new commercial networks of data exchange, mean that it is more difªcult for European governments to directly exploit panopticon ef- fects. As history demonstrates, domestic institutions may change in response to new perceived external threats, but they may also be sticky, because domes- tic actors may fear that the new capacities will be turned against them as well as foreign adversaries.46 Domestic institutions are usually themselves the 44. David Bach and Abraham L. Newman, “The European Regulatory State and Global Public Policy: Micro-Institutions, Macro-Inºuence,” Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 14, No. 6 (Sep- tember 2007), pp. 827–846, doi.org/10.1080/13501760701497659; Elliot Posner, “Making Rules for Global Finance: Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation at the Turn of the Millennium,” International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 4 (October 2009), pp. 665–699, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818309990130; Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011); and Kalyanpur and Newman, “Mobilizing Mar- ket Power.” 45. Abraham L. Newman, Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Information in the Global Econ- omy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008). 46. Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, “Making Global Markets: Historical Institution- alism in International Political Economy,” Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 17, No. 4 (October 2010), pp. 609–638, doi.org/10.1080/09692291003723672; and Henry Farrell and Abra- ham L. Newman, “Domestic Institutions beyond the Nation-State: Charting the New Interdepen- dence Approach,” World Politics, Vol. 66, No. 2 (April 2014), pp. 331–363, doi.org/10.1017/ S0043887114000057.  International Security 44:1 58 product of intense internal political battles, so that they cannot costlessly be transformed to confront new international challenges. The central expectation of our argument is that states’ variable ability to em- ploy these forms of coercion will depend on the combination of the structure of the underlying network and the domestic institutions of the states attempt- ing to use them. States that have jurisdictional control over network hubs and enjoy sufªcient institutional capacity will be able to deploy both panopti- con and chokepoint effects. Variation in domestic institutions in terms of ca- pacity and key norms may limit their ability to use these coercive tools even when they have territorial or jurisdictional claims over hubs. Where control over key hubs is spread across a small number of states, these states may need to coordinate with one another to exploit weaponized interdependence. States that lack access to, or control over, network hubs will not be able to exert such forms of coercion. In the succeeding sections, we provide a plausibility probe for our argu- ment. We present two analytic narratives covering different core policy do- mains of globalization—ªnancial and international data ºows. In each domain, we demonstrate how a similar structural logic developed, as highly asymmetric networks emerged, in which a few hubs played a key role. In con- trast to liberal approaches, we show how states—most particularly, the United States—were able to take advantage of these network structures, to exploit panopticon effects or chokepoint effects. Importantly, our cases offer variation in the ability of the United States to deploy these strategies, distinguishing our argument from more conventional market power or bilateral vulnerabil- ity accounts. The Rise of Network Inequality Although globalization is often characterized as involving complexity and fragmentation, this section demonstrates how strong systematic inequalities have emerged in two issue areas—ªnance and information. In particular, these narratives demonstrate how market actors created institutions and technolo- gies to overcome the transaction costs associated with decentralized markets and, in doing so, generated potential sites of control. global ªnance and swift’s centrality To manage billions of daily transactions and trades, global ªnance relies on a much smaller set of backroom arrangements to facilitate capital ºows— so-called payment systems. Businesses and banks depend on these payment systems to move funds from one entity to another. A key component of the  Weaponized Interdependence 59 payment system is reliable and secure communication between ªnancial insti- tutions regarding the multitude of transactions that occur globally on any given day. Since the 1970s, interbank communication has been provided by SWIFT.47 For much of the post–World War II period, only a few transnational banks en- gaged in cross-border transactions. Those that did had to rely on the public telegram and telex systems, which were operated by national telecommunica- tions providers. These systems proved both slow and insecure. These inef- ªciencies led ªnancial actors to create a number of competing platforms for interbank communication in the 1970s. Most notably, the First National City Bank of New York (FNCB later renamed Citibank) developed a proprietary system known as Machine Readable Telegraphic Input (MARTI), which the company hoped to disseminate and proªt from. This system gave a big push to European banks and U.S. competitors of FNCB, which worried about what might happen if they became dependent on MARTI. The result was that a small group of European and U.S. banks cooper- ated in building a messaging system that could replace the public providers and speed up the payment process. SWIFT opened its doors in 1973 and sent its ªrst message in 1977. The main objective of the organization was to create a system for transfer- ring payment instructions between entities engaged in a ªnancial transaction including banks, settlement institutions, and even central banks. SWIFT plays a critical role in authorizing transactions, authenticating parties, and recording exchanges. It is a cooperative run by representatives from the ªnancial in- stitutions involved. SWIFT’s headquarters were established near Brussels, Belgium, to sidestep the emerging rivalry between New York and London as the hubs of global banking. For much of the 1970s, it was unclear if SWIFT would succeed. The organization had to develop a new secure messaging sys- tem that could efªciently transfer tremendous amounts of data and beat competitors such as MARTI. In 1977, it was used in 22 countries by roughly 47. Our history of SWIFT draws from Susan V. Scott and Markos Zachariadis, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT): Cooperative Governance for Network Innova- tion, Standards, and Community (London: Routledge, 2014). SWIFT is remarkably understudied by international security scholars, considering its empirical importance to sanctions. For a key excep- tion, see Erik Jones and Andrew Whitworth, “The Unintended Consequences of European Sanc- tions on Russia,” Survival, Vol. 56, No. 5 (October/November 2014), pp. 21–30, doi.org/10.1080/ 00396338.2014.962797. For discussions of SWIFT in the EU-U.S. relationship, see Marieke de Goede, “The SWIFT Affair and the Global Politics of European Security,” Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2 (March 2012), pp. 214–230, doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2011.02219.x; and Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The New Politics of Interdependence: Cross-National Layering in Trans-Atlantic Regulatory Disputes,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48, No. 4 (March 2015), pp. 497–526, doi.org/10.1177/0010414014542330.  International Security 44:1 60 500 ªrms with annual trafªc of approximately 3,000 messages. By 2016, it had become the dominant provider, serving more than 200 countries and some 11,000 ªnancial institutions and carrying more than 6.5 billion messages annu- ally. As Susan Scott and Markos Zachariadis note, “Founded to create efªcien- cies by replacing telegram and telex (or ‘wires’) for international payments, SWIFT now forms a core part of the ªnancial services infrastructure.”48 This network effect was an accidental rather than an intended outcome. Those in- volved in the original SWIFT project during the 1970s were focused on “creat- ing an entity, a closed society, to bind members together in an organizational form that would employ standards designed to create efªciencies on transac- tions between the member banks.”49 Eventually, the organization’s dominance over ªnancial messaging led to monopoly regulation by the Commission of the European Union. La Poste (the deregulated Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones of France) sought access to the SWIFT network as part of its banking operations, and SWIFT denied the request on the grounds that La Poste was not a traditional banking institution. The European Commission’s ruling in 1997 that SWIFT “holds a monopolistic position in the market for international payment message transfer” meant that it was a quasi utility and had to follow an open access model.50 As a result, even more ªnancial institutions began to use and become dependent on the SWIFT system. The more banks that used SWIFT, the more it created measur- [132.229.92.100] Project MUSE (2024-10-27 16:19 GMT) Leiden University / LUMC able network beneªts for its members, and the less likely member banks were to defect.51 By the turn of the millennium, nearly all major global ªnancial in- stitutions used the SWIFT system to process their transactions (see ªgure 1). the internet—all roads lead through northern virginia When the internet came to public prominence in the early 1990s, it initially seemed as though it might provide a technology that was innately resistant to centralization. Authorities and political actors, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, believed that it was effectively invulnerable to control.52 In contrast to 48. Scott and Zachariadis, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), p. 1. 49. Ibid., p. 107. 50. European Commission, “Following an Undertaking by S.W.I.F.T. to Change Its Membership Rules, the European Commission Suspends Its Action for Breach of Competition Rules,” press re- lease IP/97/870 (Brussels: European Commission, October 13, 1997), p. 2. 51. Susan V. Scott, John Van Reenen, and Markos Zachariadis, The Long-Term Effect of Digital Inno- vation on Bank Performance: An Empirical Study of SWIFT Adoption in Financial Services, CEP Discus- sion Paper No. 992 (London: Center for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2017), http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/83641. 52. William J. Clinton, remarks at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., March 8, 2000.  Weaponized Interdependence 61 Figure 1. Annual SWIFT Messages in Millions* 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 *SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. “centralized” networks such as the then-existing phone system, where differ- ent phones connected through a switchboard, the internet was conceived as a “distributed” network, where there was a multiplicity of ties between differ- ent nodes, and no node was innately more important than any other.53 The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol allowed servers to speedily identify blockages in the system and ªnd alternative routes for information. In such a system, government control seemed difªcult; as the prominent activist John Gilmore put it, the “Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.”54 This resistance to blockages led some online libertarians to fore- cast the withering of the state and a new age of human freedom.55 Contradicting these heady prognoses, the underlying architecture of the internet became increasingly centralized over time.56 Some hubs and intercon- 53. On the theory of distributed networks, see Paul Baran, “On Distributed Communications Net- works,” IEEE Transactions on Communications Systems, Vol. 12, No. 1 (March 1964), pp. 1–9, doi.org/ 10.1109/TCOM.1964.1088883. 54. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “First Nation in Cyberspace,” Time, December 6, 1993, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979768,00.html. 55. John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Humanist, Vol. 56, No. 3 (May/June 1996), p. 18. 56. Albert, Jeong, and Barabási, “Diameter of the World-Wide Web.”  International Security 44:1 62 nections between these hubs became far more important than others. States in- creasingly were able to impose controls on trafªc entering and leaving their country, while censoring or controlling many ordinary uses of the internet.57 The most important infrastructural elements of the internet are the ªber optic cables that provide service between the continents. These cables are far more efªcient than competing channels such as satellite or legacy telephone wires. They are also geographically ªxed. Ninety-seven percent of intercontinental internet trafªc travels across roughly 300 cables.58 The importance of these cen- tral communication nodes became painfully clear in 2008, when a ship’s an- chor severed two such cables (FLAG Europe Asia and SEA-ME-WE-4) off the cost of Egypt and shut down much of the internet in the Middle East and South Asia. The recurrence of such problems has led to concerns about vulner- ability to sabotage.59 The increasing complexity and size of the modern internet threatens to slow connection speeds. In response, internet exchange points have emerged, which facilitate communication across service providers and infrastructure back- bones.60 These internet exchanges are often located in major cities and channel the majority of domestic internet trafªc in the United States and Europe; they also support peer linkages between the different global networks that allow the internet to function. Once again, this means that a substantial amount of trafªc travels through a few key nodes. Network economies have similarly led to a centralization of the e-commerce economy, as both network effects and new kinds of increasing returns to scale cemented the global dominance of a small number of e-commerce com- panies. This dominance is in part thanks to U.S. government policy. The United States believed that, to the greatest extent possible, data governance should involve the free ºow of content across borders (except, of course, 57. Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Ronald Deibert et al., eds., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008); Adam Segal, The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017); and Joshua A. Tucker et al., “From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 4 (October 2017), pp. 46–59, doi.org/10.1353/ jod.2017.0064. 58. Asia-Paciªc Economic Cooperation Secretariat, Economic Impact of Submarine Cable Disruptions (Singapore: APEC Policy Support Unit, February 2013). 59. Ibid. 60. See Patrick S. Ryan and Jason Gerson, “A Primer on Internet Exchange Points for Policymakers and Non-Engineers” (Rochester, N.Y.: Social Science Research Network, August 2012), doi.org/ 10.2139/ssrn.2128103; Kuai Xu et al., “On Properties of Internet Exchange Points and Their Impact on AS Topology and Relationship,” in Nikolas Mitrou et al., eds., Networking, 2004: Networking Technologies, Services, and Protocols; Performance of Computer and Communication Networks; Mobile and Wireless Communications (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2004), pp. 284–295.  Weaponized Interdependence 63 where this interfered with the intellectual property or other vital interests of U.S. corporations). It should furthermore be based primarily on self- regulation, looking to business cooperation and market structures to regulate their business relations with consumers.61 This emphasis on self-regulation and individual choice gave private ªrms a great deal of freedom to set their own rules. In the 1990s, Clinton administra- tion ofªcials, led by Ira Magaziner, crafted a “Framework for Global Electronic Commerce” that was intended to shape the emerging international debate so as to push back against government regulation and, instead, favor self- regulatory approaches.62 The U.S. government scotched plans by Jon Postel, an early technological leader in internet communications, to set up a global insti- tution to regulate the internet with the help of the Internet Society and the UN’s International Telecommunications Union, threatening him with criminal sanctions if he did not back down.63 Instead, it handed authority over domain names to a private nonproªt cor- poration under California law, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which would work with for-proªt entities to manage the technical aspects of coordination.64 ICANN’s ultimate authority stemmed from a contract with the Department of Commerce, which provided the U.S. government with a controversial implicit veto. Importantly, however, ICANN was designed according to a “stakeholder” model, under which private actors would take the lead in shaping its deliberations. The U.S. veto was primarily intended as a backstop against other states or international organizations wresting ICANN away from the private sector, rather than a calibrated tool for institutional interference. Self-regulation and individual choice were also the organizing principles for U.S. domestic regulations. These principles were laid out in legislation includ- ing, most importantly, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protected e-commerce ªrms from “intermediary liability” for content put up by others.65 This section was intended for a speciªc and relatively nar- row purpose—to provide businesses with safe harbor against legal actions aimed at content posted by users. It ended up inadvertently supporting a new business model, in which e-commerce ªrms, rather than providing content 61. Henry Farrell interview with Ira Magaziner, New York City, New York, September 21, 2000. 62. White House, “A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce” (Washington, D.C.: White House, 1997). 63. Milton L. Mueller, Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2009). 64. Ibid. 65. Jack M. Balkin, “The Future of Free Expression in a Digital Age,” Pepperdine Law Review, Vol. 36 (2008), pp. 427–444.  International Security 44:1 64 themselves, would rely on their users to provide the content for them. They could then make their proªts by acting as an intermediary between those us- ers, analyzing their behavior, and offering targeted advertising services to their actual customers, people who wanted to sell products to the users leav- ing data trails behind them. Section 230, together with network effects, led to the rapid domination of a small number of e-commerce and online ªrms. Companies such as Facebook and YouTube (owned by Google and then by Alphabet) were able to use the lack of intermediary liability to rapidly scale up, allowing enormous numbers of users to share content, without any need for companies to edit or inspect that content, except when they were informed of intellectual property viola- tions. The result was a business model based on algorithms rather than em- ployees.66 Google could similarly take advantage of the lack of intermediary liability, while expanding into new services. It reaped the beneªts of a feed- back loop in which its users passively provided data, which could be catego- rized using machine learning techniques both to sell space to advertisers and to further improve Google services. Amazon, too, swiftly branched out, selling not only physical products, but cloud services, and acting as an intermediary across a wide variety of markets. All these ªrms built themselves effective near monopolies. Facebook—once it had become established—was more or less impossible for competitors to dis- place, because its users had little incentive to migrate to a new system, and Facebook could buy and integrate potential new competitors long before they could become real threats. Google’s data dominance provided the company with a nearly impregnable position, while Amazon’s relentless growth into new marketplaces provided it with irresistible economies of scale.67 Although China has excluded these companies and developed domestic competitors, it has done so only by leveraging state power in ways that are far harder for small states and liberal democracies. As a result, a huge fraction of global data trafªc is channeled through the servers of a handful of companies, which sit in the United States. Key aspects of the domain name system are run by ICANN, which provided some privileged actors with levers for achieving political outcomes.68 As ever more online services move to cloud architectures, which store customer data and processing power in online data centers, cloud 66. See, more generally, Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015). 67. Khan, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” 68. See Laura DeNardis, “Hidden Levers of Internet Control: An Infrastructure-Based Theory of Internet Governance,” Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 15, No. 5 (June 2012), pp. 720–738, doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.659199; and Tusikov, Chokepoints.  Weaponized Interdependence 65 providers have emerged as central hubs.69 One estimate, for example, suggests that 70 percent of global web trafªc goes through Amazon Web Services in Northern Virginia (which had become established as a hub location decades earlier thanks to America Online).70 Transcontinental ªber optic cables, in- ternet exchanges, monopoly service providers and geographically concen- trated data centers have all helped build a grossly asymmetric network, in which communications, rather than being broadly distributed, travel through key hubs, which are differentially concentrated in the United States, and channel the most global data exchanges. Weaponizing the Hubs With the rise of these central hubs across ªnancial messaging and online communication, states (in particular, the United States and members of the European Union) began to understand that they could exploit network proper- ties to weaponize interdependence. In what follows, we use case evidence to demonstrate the two forms of network power—panopticon and chokepoint effects—and explain variation in their use. In particular, the case of ªnancial messaging underscores the importance of institutional capacity and differ- ences between the United States and Europe in their ability to employ these strategies. The case of the internet underscores how domestic institutions and norms constrain the behavior of the United States even when it has physical and legal jurisdiction over key hubs. swift, counterterrorism, and nonproliferation SWIFT demonstrates how both the panopticon and chokepoint effects can work in global networks. Because SWIFT is central to the international pay- ment system, it provides data about most global ªnancial transactions and al- lows these transactions to take place. For the last twenty-ªve years, key states—most importantly, the United States—have gradually transformed the repository into a surveillance asset and ªnancial sector dependence into a tool of asymmetric interdependence. Although the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were a crucial moment in global surveillance politics, governments began considering SWIFT’s poten- tial much earlier. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a core global gover- 69. Bruce Schneier, “Censorship in the Age of Large Cloud Providers,” Lawfare blog, June 7, 2018, https://lawfareblog.com/censorship-age-large-cloud-providers. 70. Benjamin Freed, “70 Percent of the World’s Web Trafªc Flows through Loudoun County,” Washingtonian, September 14, 2016, https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/14/70-percent- worlds-web-trafªc-ºows-loudoun-county.  International Security 44:1 66 nance body focused on anti-money laundering, approached SWIFT in 1992.71 FATF hoped to gain access to SWIFT records so as to track down illicit activity. At this point, SWIFT realized the peril of the economic efªciencies that it itself had created. As Lenny Schrank, a former chief ofªcer of SWIFT, later reºected, “This was when we ªrst began to think the unthinkable: that maybe we have some data that authorities would want, that SWIFT data would be revealed... and what to do about it... no one thought about terrorism at that time.”72 SWIFT refused the request, claiming that it could not provide information to public authorities and that such requests had to be directed to banks and other ªnancial institutions engaged in the transaction. The organization claimed that SWIFT was a communications carrier much like a telephone operator rather than a data processor and thus should be immune to government monitoring. SWIFT resisted government pressure for much of the 1990s, but succumbed after the September 11 attacks.73 In the wake of the attacks, the U.S. Treasury began to examine ways to use the global ªnancial system to curtail terrorist ªnancing, targeting the terrorist money supply, and concluded that it could lawfully issue enforceable subpoenas against SWIFT to compel it to provide ªnancial data. The Treasury initiative became known as the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and targeted SWIFT as a key source of data. It was especially hard for SWIFT to resist Treasury demands, because the organiza- tion maintained a mirror data center containing its records in Virginia. In the [132.229.92.100] Project MUSE (2024-10-27 16:19 GMT) Leiden University / LUMC years that followed, SWIFT secretly served as a global eye for the U.S. ªght against terrorism, with the Treasury using the SWIFT system to monitor and investigate illicit activity.74 As Juan Zarate, a former Treasury Department ofªcial, explained: “Access to SWIFT data would give the U.S. government a method of uncovering never-before-seen ªnancial links, information that could unlock important clues to the next plot or allow an entire support net- work to be exposed and disrupted.”75 71. On FATF, see Julia Morse, “Blacklists, Market Enforcement, and the Global Regime to Combat Terrorist Financing,” International Organization, forthcoming; Eleni Tsingou, “Global Financial Governance and the Developing Anti-Money Laundering Regime: What Lessons for International Political Economy?” International Politics, Vol. 47, No. 6 (November 2010), pp. 617–637, doi.org/ 10.1057/ip.2010.32; and Anne L. Clunan, “The Fight against Terrorist Financing,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 121, No. 4 (Winter 2006/07), pp. 569–596, doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2006.tb00582.x. 72. Scott and Zachariadis, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), p. 128. 73. For an excellent overview of both SWIFT and the dollar clearing system, see Joanna Diane Caytas, “Weaponizing Finance: U.S. and European Options, Tools, and Policies,” Columbia Journal