Weaponized Interdependence

Weaponized
Interdependence
How Global Economic Networks Shape
State Coercion

Henry Farrell and
Abraham L. Newman

In 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
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
critique. 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, Non. 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(cid:2) President Steps Down in Move to Win U.S. Sanctions Waiver,” Financial
Times, Juin 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, Non. 3 (Hiver 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, Non. 2 (Fall 2013), pp. 147–180, est ce que je.org/10.1162/
ISEC_a_00135; Charles L. Glaser, “How Oil Inºuences U.S. National Security: Reframing Energy
Sécurité,” International Security, Vol. 38, Non. 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, Non. 1 (May 2013), pp. 449–469, doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-072211-
143240.

International Security, Vol. 44, Non. 1 (Été 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.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC PAR 4.0) Licence.

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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. Encore, 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. Plutôt, that literature primarily looks to explain the
success or failure of direct sanctions (c'est à dire., 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. En outre, 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, Non. 4 (Décembre 1989), pp. 1245–1256, doi.org/10.2307/1961667; Brian M. Pollins, “Does
Trade Still Follow the Flag?” American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, Non. 2 (Juin 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, Non. 1 (Février 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, Non. 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, Non. 1 (Été 1998), pp. 50–65,
doi.org/10.2307/2539262; Daniel W. Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and Interna-
tional Relations (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 1999); Donne la vie. Baldwin, “The Sanctions
Debate and the Logic of Choice,” International Security, Vol. 24, Non. 3 (Hiver 2000), pp. 80–107,
doi.org/10.1162/016228899560248; Jonathan Kirshner, “Economic Sanctions: The State of the Art,»
Security Studies, Vol. 11, Non. 4 (Été 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, Non. 2 (Avril 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, Non. 4 (2001),
pp. 379–410, doi.org/10.1080/03050620108434972, which does consider secondary sanctions, comme
does the policy literature we discuss below.

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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, lequel
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 (Londres: 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, Non. 3 (Spring 2009),
pp. 789–822; and Daniel W. Drezner, “Targeted Sanctions in a World of Global Finance,” Interna-
tional Interactions, Vol. 41, Non. 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. Bien sûr, 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
Sécurité, Vol. 41, Non. 3 (Hiver 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, Non. 3 (Hiver 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, Non. 1 (Mars 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, Non. 3 (Hiver 2014/15), pp. 7–47, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00189. This liter-
ature, cependant, 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, Juillet 2000, pp. 378–382, doi.org/10.1038/35019019.
11. Kathryn Judge, “Intermediary Inºuence,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 82, Non. 2
(Spring 2015), pp. 573–642, https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol82/iss2/1.

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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) à
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,
Non. 1 (Fall 2002), pp. 1–92; Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Global Government Networks, Global
Information Agencies, and Disaggregated Democracy,” Michigan Journal of
International
Loi, Vol. 24, Non. 4 (Été 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
Monde (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, Non. 3 (Avril 1991), pp. 336–366,
doi.org/10.2307/2010398.
13. Albert-László Barabási and Réka Albert, “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks,” Sci-
ence, Octobre 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, Septembre 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, Non. 4 (Décembre 2009), pp. 661–703, doi.org/10.1137/070710111; Emilie M. Hafner-Burton,
Miles Kahler, and Alexander H. Montgomery, “Network Analysis for International Relations,»
Organisation internationale, Vol. 63, Non. 3 (Été 2009), pp. 559–592, doi.org/10.1017/
S0020818309090195; and Stacie E. Goddard, “Embedded Revisionism: Networks, Institutions, et
Challenges to World Order,” International Organization, Vol. 72, Non. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 763–797,
doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000206.

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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-
travaux. 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, et
great power competition. De plus, global ªnance and the internet are often
depicted as being at the vanguard of decentralized economic networks. Comme
tel, they offer an important test of our argument and a contrast to the more
common liberal perspective on global market interactions.

En même temps, 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, a
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-
travaux. 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, inclure-
ing dollar clearing and global supply chains. Voir, Par exemple, Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li,
“‘Huawei Freeze’ Chills Global Supply Chain,” Nikki Asian Review, Décembre 8, 2018, https://
asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/Huawei-freeze-chills-global-supply-chain.

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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, nous
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. Ici, 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. Enfin, 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. Suivant, 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
économies, densely and intimately interconnecting them in ways that are
difªcult to unravel.15 The ªnancial sector depends on international messaging
réseaux, 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, Non. 2 (Avril 2011), pp. 311–341,
doi.org/10.1017/S002081831100004X.

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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
pouvoir, showing how states that depended on imports from other states, et
had no ready substitutes, were vulnerable to outside pressure. Cependant, 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. Ainsi, Par exemple, 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
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
États. En outre, 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, Non. 1 (Février 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; et
Slaughter, The Chessboard and the Web.

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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, suggérer-
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-
travail, liberals such as Slaughter argue, power is “power with,” rather than
“power over.”21

Like these liberal accounts, our approach takes networks seriously. Comment-
jamais, it starts from different premises about their genesis and consequences.
D'abord, 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, lequel
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.

Deuxième, 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. Plutôt, 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. Voir, in particular, Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel H. Nexon, “The Dynamics of Global Power
Politique: A Framework for Analysis,” Journal of Global Security Studies, Vol. 1, Non. 1 (Février 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, Non. 2 (Avril 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, Non. 1
(Mars 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, Non. 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, Par exemple,
Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (New York: Cambridge
Presse universitaire, 1996). See also Susan K. Sell, “Ahead of Her Time? Susan Strange and Global
Governance,” in Randall Germain, éd., Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy:
Power, Contrôle, and Transformation (Londres: Routledge, 2016). For different accounts, see Philip G.

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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, ressources,
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, plus
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”) de
the network.

In our account, as in other structural accounts such as neorealism, réseau
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 (c'est à dire., 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, éd., The Anarchical Society at 40: Con-
temporary Challenges and Prospects (New York: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2017). On network power,
political theory, and international relations more generally, see David Singh Grewal, Réseau
Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization (New York: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 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, Par exemple, processes of contagion. See Duncan J. Watts,
“The ‘New’ Science of Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 30, Non. 1 (2004), pp. 243–270,
doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.30.020404.104342; et, for a useful overview, Mark Newman, Albert-
László Barabási, and Duncan J. Watts, éd., 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, éd., 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: L'université de Cambridge
Presse, 2015); and Brandon J. Kinne, “Defense Cooperation Agreements and the Emergence of a
Global Security Network,” International Organization, Vol. 72, Non. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 799–837,
doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000218.
26. Bien sûr, 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.

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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, le
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. Par conséquent, 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. Enfin, 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
réseau, 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, ils sont
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, Non. 1 (Février 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, Non. 2 (Février 2018), pp. 1–9, est ce que je.org/
10.1126/sciadv.aao3580.
28. See Herbert A. Simon, “On a Class of Skew Distribution Functions,” Biometrika, Vol. 42,
Nos. 3/4 (Décembre 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, Non. 5 (May 1999),
pp. 397–420, doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199905)20:5(cid:3)397::AID-SMJ35(cid:4)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, Non. 4 (Avril 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, Mars 1989, pp. 116–131, doi.org/10.2307/2234208; and Paul A. David,
“Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,” American Economic Review, Vol. 75, Non. 2 (May 1985),
pp. 332–337, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1805621.

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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, Non. 1 (Mars 2013), pp. 133–153, doi.org/10.1017/S1537592712003593; et
Oatley, A Political Economy of American Hegemony.
32. Réka Albert, Hawoong Jeong, and Albert-László Barabási, “Diameter of the World-Wide
Web,” Nature, Septembre 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,
Non. 10 (Octobre 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, Non. 2 (Juin 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, Non. 036115 (Mars 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, Non. 8 (Août 2011), pp. 1417–1454, est ce que je.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: UN
Network Analytical Approach,” Business and Politics, Vol. 17, Non. 3 (Octobre 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, Non. 21 (Octobre
2002), pp. 13382–13386, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.172501399.

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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.

Par exemple, Facebook’s business model is centered on monetizing individ-
uals’ social networks through targeted advertisement and other means. Il a
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
et, 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
monde, but are typically territorially concentrated in the advanced industrial
économies, 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, dans lequel
some economic intermediaries—nodes—are centrally located with high de-
gré, 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 (Juin 2018), pp. 960–979, https://
et
www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-ideological-roots-of-americas-market-power-problem;
Lina M. Khan, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” Yale Law Journal, Vol. 126, Non. 3 (Janvier 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: Presse de l'Université de Californie, 2016).

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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
réseaux. 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. Ainsi,
structures that were generated by market actors in pursuit of efªciency and
market power can be put to quite different purposes by states.

Ici, 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, alors, 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
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, Non. 4 (Décembre 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, Non. 3 (Été
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); et
Nikhil Kalyanpur and Abraham L. Newman, “Mobilizing Market Power: Jurisdictional Expansion
as Economic Statecraft,” International Organization, Vol. 73, Non. 1 (Hiver 2019), pp. 1–34, est ce que je.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-
atterrir, Economic Interdependence and War.

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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, ça devient
difªcult—or even effectively impossible—for other actors to avoid these hubs
while communicating.

This phenomenon existed in earlier periods of globalization as well. Comme
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. Nouveau
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,
Non. 1 (Janvier 2014), pp. 37–57, at p. 43, doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12094.
40. Ibid., p. 54.

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International Security 44:1 56

third parties (par exemple., other states or private actors). Because hubs offer extraordi-
nary efªciency beneªts, and because it is extremely difªcult to circumvent
eux, states that can control hubs have considerable coercive power, et
states or other actors that are denied access to hubs can suffer substantial con-
sequences. Encore, 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. D'abord, 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, le
network hubs of globalization are not scattered at random across the world.
Plutôt, 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.: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 2012).
42. Heidi J.S. Tworek, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–
1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 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, Non. 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: Loi, Politique, and U.S. Extra-
territoriality (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2016).

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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]
et, increasingly, Chine) enjoy the beneªts of weaponized interdependence,
although others may still be able to play a disruptive role.

Deuxième, 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;
alternativement, 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, Par exemple, 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. Dans un tel
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, Par exemple, 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, Non. 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, Non. 4 (Octobre 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, Non. 4
(Octobre 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, Non. 2 (Avril 2014), pp. 331–363, doi.org/10.1017/
S0043887114000057.

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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. États
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. Surtout, 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. En particulier, ces
narratives demonstrate how market actors created institutions and technolo-
gies to overcome the transaction costs associated with decentralized markets
et, 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

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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
y compris les banques, 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. Dans 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 (Londres: 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, Non. 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
Études, Vol. 50, Non. 2 (Mars 2012), pp. 214–230, doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2011.02219.x; et
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The New Politics of Interdependence: Cross-National
Layering in Trans-Atlantic Regulatory Disputes,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48, Non. 4
(Mars 2015), pp. 497–526, doi.org/10.1177/0010414014542330.

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International Security 44:1 60

500 ªrms with annual trafªc of approximately 3,000 messages. Par 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 (le
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-
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, Octobre 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 (Londres: 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,
Université Johns Hopkins, Washington, D.C., Mars 8, 2000.

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Weaponized Interdependence 61

Chiffre 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. Dans
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-
travaux,” IEEE Transactions on Communications Systems, Vol. 12, Non. 1 (Mars 1964), pp. 1–9, est ce que je.org/
10.1109/TCOM.1964.1088883.
54. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “First Nation in Cyberspace,” Time, Décembre 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,
Non. 3 (May/June 1996), p. 18.
56. Albert, Jeong, and Barabási, “Diameter of the World-Wide Web.”

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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, lequel
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; ils
also support peer linkages between the different global networks that allow
the internet to function. Encore une fois, 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. politique gouvernementale. Le
United States believed that, to the greatest extent possible, data governance
should involve the free ºow of content across borders (except, bien sûr,

57. Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (Nouveau
York: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2006); Ronald Deibert et al., éd., Access Denied: The Practice and
Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge, Mass.: AVEC Presse, 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
Démocratie,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, Non. 4 (Octobre 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, Février 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, Août 2012), est ce que je.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., éd., Networking, 2004: Networking
Technologies, Services, and Protocols; Performance of Computer and Communication Networks; Mobile and
Wireless Communications (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2004), pp. 284–295.

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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, un
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

Plutôt, 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. Surtout, cependant, 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, Septembre 21, 2000.
62. maison Blanche, “A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce” (Washington, D.C.: Blanc
Maison, 1997).
63. Milton L. Mueller, Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (Cambridge,
Mass.: AVEC Presse 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.

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International Security 44:1 64

themselves, would rely on their users to provide the content for them. Ils
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-
tion. 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, aussi, 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, et
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. Par conséquent, 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. Voir, more generally, Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control
Money and Information (Cambridge, Mass.: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 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, Non. 5 (Juin 2012), pp. 720–738,
doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.659199; and Tusikov, Chokepoints.

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Weaponized Interdependence 65

providers have emerged as central hubs.69 One estimate, Par exemple, suggests
que 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, dans-
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
Union européenne) 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. En particulier, 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, Juin 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, Septembre 14, 2016, https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/14/70-percent-
worlds-web-trafªc-ºows-loudoun-county.

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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.
À ce 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
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
information that
could unlock important clues to the next plot or allow an entire support net-
work to be exposed and disrupted.”75

links,

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, Non. 6 (Novembre 2010), pp. 617–637, est ce que je.org/
10.1057/ip.2010.32; and Anne L. Clunan, “The Fight against Terrorist Financing,” Political Science
Trimestriel, Vol. 121, Non. 4 (Hiver 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
of International Law, Vol. 23, Non. 2 (Spring 2017), pp. 441–475.
74. Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, “Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror,” New
York Times, Juin 23, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html.
75. Juan C. Zarate, Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare (Londres:
Hachette, 2013), p. 50.

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Weaponized Interdependence 67

The SWIFT data became the Rosetta stone for U.S. counterterrorism opera-
tion, as it shed light on the complex networks of terrorist ªnancing.76 The
government used the data as a key forensic tool to identify terrorist opera-
tion, co-conspirators, and planning. This effort became so central to U.S.
and European counterterrorism operations that when it was challenged by
European actors worried about civil liberties, the U.S. government employed
top ofªcials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the
Treasury Timothy Geithner to defend and demand the continuation of the pro-
gram.77 As one EU foreign minister concluded, “They pulled out all the moral
and political stops.”78 After a joint review of the program, the European
Commission argued: “The Commission is of the view that the TFTP remains
an important and efªcient instrument contributing to the ªght against terror-
ism and its ªnancing in the United States, the EU and elsewhere.”79 Despite
initial public protests, the dominant coalition in EU politics quietly approved
of the U.S. use of SWIFT to create a ªnancial data panopticon, so long as the
United States was prepared to share the proceeds.80

U.S. and EU efforts to weaponize SWIFT were not limited to the panopticon
effect. As Joanna Caytas notes, “The most vulnerable element of ªnancial
infrastructure is its payments system, both at a national (macro) level and on
an institutional (micro) plane.”81 Caytas furthermore argues that “disconnec-
tion from SWIFT access is, by any standard, the ªnancial market equivalent of
crossing the nuclear threshold, due to the vital importance of the embargoed
services and near-complete lack of alternatives with comparable efªciency.”82

As an example of the power of chokepoints, U.S. and European policy-
makers used SWIFT to reinforce the sanctions regime against Iran. A group of
prominent U.S. policymakers, led by Ambassadors Richard Holbrook and
Dennis Ross, started a private campaign, known as United Against Nuclear
Iran (UANI) in the 2000s, to ratchet up pressure on the Iranian regime. Le
group targeted SWIFT as complicit in assisting the Iranian regime and contrib-

76. Lichtblau and Risen, “Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror.”
77. For a detailed discussion, see Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, Of Privacy and Power:
The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2019).
78. Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, “EU to Allow U.S. Access to Bank Transaction Data,” Spiegel On-
line, Novembre 27, 2009, https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spying-on-terrorist-cash-
ºows-eu-to-allow-us-access-to-bank-transaction-data-a-663846.html.
79. European Commission, Joint Review Report of the Implementation of the Agreement between the Eu-
ropean Union and the United States of America on the Processing and Transfer of Financial Messaging
Data from the European Union to the United States for the Purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Pro-
gram (Brussels: European Commission, 2017), p. 7.
80. Farrell and Newman, “The New Politics of Interdependence.”
81. Caytas, “Weaponizing Finance,” p. 449.
82. Ibid., p. 451.

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International Security 44:1 68

uting to its economic health.83 As per SWIFT’s 2010 annual report, some nine-
teen Iranian banks as well as another twenty-ªve institutions relied on the
messaging system.84 In January 2012, UANI sent a letter to SWIFT arguing that
“the global SWIFT system is used by Iran to ªnance its nuclear weapons pro-
gram, to ªnance terrorist activities and to provide the ªnancial support neces-
sary to brutally repress its own people.”85

This campaign had consequences in both the United States and Europe. Sur
Février 2, 2012, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee adopted language that
would have allowed the U.S. government to sanction SWIFT if it continued to
allow Iranian ªnancial institutions to use the SWIFT system, pushing the ad-
ministration to adopt a more proactive stance.86 The EU followed up on this
threat in March, motivated by U.S. pressure and its own worries about Iran’s
nuclear program, and passed regulations that prohibited ªnancial messaging
services (par exemple., SWIFT) from providing services to targeted institutions.87

The combination of EU and U.S. sanctions required SWIFT to cut Iranian
banks out of its system. Dans 2012, the EU’s Council banned the provision of
ªnancial messaging services to Iran.88 As Lazaro Campos, a former chief exec-
utive ofªcer of SWIFT, concluded: “This EU decision forces SWIFT to take ac-
tion. Disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and unprecedented step for
SWIFT. It is a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify
ªnancial sanctions against Iran.”89

The Iranian regime felt the consequences, as its major ªnancial institutions,
including its central bank, found themselves locked out from the international

83. United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), “SWIFT Campaign” (Washington, D.C.: UANI, 2012),
https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/index.php/swift.
84. SWIFT, Annual Review, 2010: Common Challenges, Unique Solutions (Brussels: SWIFT, 2010).
85. Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, letter re: SWIFT and Iran to Yawar Shah (Washington, D.C.:
UANI, Janvier 30, 2012), https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/sites/default/ªles/IBR%20
Correspondence/UANI_Letter_to_SWIFT_013012.pdf; and Jay Solomon and Adam Entous,
“Banking Hub Adds to Pressure on Iran,” Wall Street Journal, Février 4, 2012, https://www.wsj
.com/articles/SB10001424052970203889904577201330206741436.
86. Jay Solomon, The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Mid-
dle East (New York: Random House, 2016).
87. “U.S. Presses EU to Close SWIFT Network to Iran,” Agence France-Presse, Février 16, 2012;
and Samuel Rubenfeld, “SWIFT to Comply with EU Ban on Blacklisted Entities,” Corruption Cur-
rents blog, Wall Street Journal, Mars 15, 2018, https://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/2012/
03/15/swift-to-comply-with-eu-ban-on-blacklisted-entities.
88. Aaron Arnold, “The True Costs of Financial Sanctions,” Survival, Vol. 58, Non. 3 (June/July
2016), pp. 77–100; and “Iran Cut Off from Global Financial System,” Associated Press, Mars 15,
2012.
89. UANI, “UANI Issues Statement following SWIFT’s Announcement to Discontinue Services to
EU-Sanctioned Iranian Financial Institutions,” press release (Washington, D.C.: UANI, Mars 15,
2012), https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/press-releases/uani-issues-statement-following-
swift%E2%80%99s-announcement-discontinue-services-eu-sanction.

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Weaponized Interdependence 69

payment system. As explained by an EU ofªcial at the time, “It is a very
efªcient measure . . . It can seriously cripple the banking sector in Iran.”90

Unwinding the SWIFT measures became a key bargaining point in the nego-
tiations over Iran’s nuclear program.91 During the negotiations with the
United Nations Security Council’s ªve permanent members, plus Germany,
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, made it clear that lifting the SWIFT ban
was a top priority. “The deal will be made or broken,” he said during an inter-
view in July 2015, “[depending] on whether the United States wants to lift the
sanctions or keep them.”92 Accordingly, lifting of the SWIFT measures was a
key part of the eventual Iran deal.

Notably, the SWIFT measures were a result of joint pressure from both of the
jurisdictions to which it was substantially exposed. Had the United States not
imposed pressure, it is unlikely that the European Union would have been
able to act on its own; as Caytas notes, the EU’s fragmented internal decision-
making structures and lack of supple institutions undermines its ability to
weaponize ªnance.93 Equally, the United States might have had difªculties in
acting unilaterally in the face of concerted EU opposition, given SWIFT’s pri-
mary location in Europe.

Dans 2018, the politics of the SWIFT chokepoint became more complex. As the
United States backed out of the Iran deal, it threatened to reimpose SWIFT re-
strictions on Iran, while the EU resisted the re-weaponization of SWIFT.94
SWIFT responded to the threat of U.S. sanctions by delisting key Iranian insti-
tutions, while publicly maintaining that it was doing so to maintain the stabil-
ity of the overall ªnancial system. U.S. pressure has led European politicians
such as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to begin discussing whether the
EU needs to start building its own international ªnancial payment channels,
providing it with an alternative hub that is less vulnerable to U.S. pressure.95 It
is unclear whether the EU is capable of building the necessary institutions to

90. Rick Gladstone and Stephen Castle, “Global Network Expels as Many as 30 of Iran’s Banks in
Move to Isolate Its Economy,” New York Times, Mars 15, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/
03/16/world/middleeast/crucial-communication-network-expelling-iranian-banks.html.
91. Zarate, Treasury’s War.
92. Arnold, “The True Costs of Financial Sanctions,” p. 85.
93. Caytas, “Weaponizing Finance.”
94. Sam Fleming, Philip Stafford, and Jim Brunsden, “U.S. and EU Head for Showdown over
Shutting Iran Off from Finance,” Financial Times, May 17, 2018; and Richard Goldberg and Mark
Dubowitz, “To Help Iran, Angela Merkel Tries to Pull a Fast One with SWIFT,” Wall Street Journal,
Juin 20, 2018.
95. Heiko Maas, “Wir lassen nicht zu, dass die USA uber unsere kopfe hinweg handeln” (We will
not be sidelined by the USA), Handelsblatt, Août 28, 2018, https://www.handelsblatt.com/
meinung/gastbeitraege/gastkommentar-wir-lassen-nicht-zu-dass-die-usa-ueber-unsere-koepfe-
hinweg-handeln/22933006.html.

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International Security 44:1 70

challenge the United States, given both internal political battles and external
U.S. pressure against individual EU member states.96

The weaponization of SWIFT runs counter to the expectations of liberal ac-
counts of globalization. It demonstrates how globalized networks can indeed
be used to exercise “power over,” both by gathering enormous amounts of
data that can then be employed for security purposes and by systematically
excluding states from participation in the world ªnancial system. Exactly be-
cause the SWIFT organization was a crucial hub in global economic exchange,
it allowed those states that had jurisdictional sway over it to employ the pan-
opticon and chokepoint effects, just as our framework expects. En outre,
the topology and existence of the global ªnancial network provided the United
États (and the EU) with extraordinary strategic resources. Without this net-
work structure, both powers would not have been able to access data (par exemple., sur
strategically important ªnancial ºows between third countries). In a counter-
factual world, where the United States and the EU could have unilaterally de-
nied access only to their own markets, or invoked bilateral dependencies to
squeeze their adversaries, their efforts would have been far less effective, être-
cause adversary states could readily have turned to other ªnancial partners.

the national security agency, prism, and counterterrorism

The United States enjoyed similar—and arguably even greater—dominance
over information networks and e-commerce ªrms, thanks to asymmetric net-
work structures. It was far less eager to deploy the chokepoint effect, cependant.
This reºected a strategic calculation of beneªts; the United States believed that
a general diffusion of communication technology and the global dominance of
U.S. e-commerce ªrms was in its interests. It also reºected domestic institu-
tional constraints. The United States had effectively precommitted to keeping
e-commerce free from government control, except for truly compelling prob-
lems such as child pornography. This commitment meant that it had relatively
few tools to oblige technology companies to do its bidding, and even where it
did have such means, its commitment to openness imposed difªcult trade-offs.
Ainsi, Par exemple, the U.S. sanctions regime applied to technology companies
as well as other commercial actors, but the United States created speciªc (if du-
biously beneªcial) carve-outs (speciªc exceptions to the sanctions) intended to
allow technology companies to support openness in Iran and other regimes
subject to U.S. sanctions.97

96. Adam Tooze and Christian Odendahl, Can the Euro Rival the Dollar? (Londres: Center for Euro-
pean Reform, 2018).
97. See Danielle Kehl, “U.S. Government Clariªes Tech Authorizations under Iranian Sanctions,»

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Weaponized Interdependence 71

The United States, under the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack
Obama administrations, saw the spread of internet openness as linked to the
spread of democracy, and strategically beneªcial for the United States, aussi
as reºecting U.S. values.98 In a much remarked upon speech, Secretary of State
Clinton depicted the internet as a “network that magniªes the power and po-
tential of all others,” warning of the risks of censorship and celebrating
the “freedom to connect” to “the internet, to websites, or to each other.”99 If the
United States was to convince other states to refrain from controlling the in-
ternet, it also had to restrain itself, and moreover needed to ensure that the
internet was not seen by other countries as a tool of direct U.S. inºuence. Ainsi,
the United States largely refrained from putting overt pressure on e-commerce
ªrms to help it achieve speciªc political outcomes. In one exceptional instance,
a U.S. ofªcial asked Twitter ofªcials to delay a temporary technical shutdown
in the middle of the 2009 protests in Iran, in the belief that Twitter was playing
an important part in helping organize the protests.100 The action was contro-
versial and was not publicly repeated. The United States also saw substantial
commercial advantage in an open internet, warning that if states lapsed
into “digital protectionism,” then “global scalability—and thus the fate of
American digital entrepreneurialism—will falter.”101

Enfin, the U.S. government sought to protect ICANN from a series of rear-
guard actions in the United Nations and other forums. When it appeared in
2005 that the EU might align itself with non-democratic countries to move
authority over domain names to a more conventional international organ-
ization, the United States pushed back forcefully.102 Renewed pressure in
2012 combined with the Snowden revelations (the release of documents by

Open Technology Institute blog, New America, Février 12, 2014, https://www.newamerica.org/
oti/blog/us-government-clariªes-tech-authorizations-under-iranian-sanctions.
98. Rebecca MacKinnon, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom (Nouveau
York: Basic Books, 2012); Daniel R. McCarthy, “Open Networks and the Open Door: American For-
eign Policy and the Narration of the Internet,” Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 7, Non. 1 (Janvier 2011),
pp. 89–111, doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2010.00124.x; and Ryan David Kiggins, “Open for Expan-
sion: U.S. Policy and the Purpose for the Internet in the Post–Cold War Era,” International Studies
Perspectives, Vol. 16, Non. 1 (Février 2015), pp. 86–105, doi.org/10.1111/insp.12032.
99. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on Internet Freedom,” speech given at the Newseum,
Washington, D.C., Janvier 21, 2010, https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/
2010/01/135519.htm.
100. Mark Landler and Brian Stelter, “Washington Taps into a Potent New Force in Diplo-
macy,” New York Times, Juin 16, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/
17media.html?_r(cid:5)1&scp(cid:5)2&sq(cid:5)Twitter&st(cid:5)cse.
101. Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Robert Holleyman, “The Trans-Paciªc Partnership and
the Digital Economy,” remarks at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Mars 30, 2016,
https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-ofªces/press-ofªce/speechestranscripts/2016/march/Remarks-
Deputy-USTR-Holleyman-Commonwealth-Club-TPP-Digital-Economy.
102. Segal, The Hacked World Order.

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International Security 44:1 72

Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency [NSA] contractor, dans
2013) to put the United States in a more awkward position: it ªnally accepted
that ICANN needed to be separated from the U.S. government, and did so in
the closing days of the Obama administration.103

Even while the United States declined to use chokepoints and promoted
the cause of an open internet, it took enormous advantage of the panopticon
effect. The concentration of network hubs and e-commerce ªrms within the
United States offered extraordinary beneªts for information gathering,
which the United States was swift to take advantage of, especially after the
Septembre 11 attacks. After the attacks, the U.S. government quickly moved to
leverage this advantage through the STELLARWIND program, which caused
internal consternation within the Bush administration, and was eventually
found by the Ofªce of Legal Counsel to be illegal. It was soon replaced, comment-
jamais, by a variety of other programs designed to take advantage of the United
States’ unparalleled location at the heart of global networks of information ex-
changement. In the blunt description of a former NSA director, Michael Hayden:
“This is a home game for us. Are we not going to take advantage that so much
of it goes through Redmond, Washington? Why would we not turn the most
powerful telecommunications and computing management structure on the
planet to our use?”104 Redmond, Washington is the home city of Microsoft, mais
Hayden was likely referring more generally to the U.S. technology sector.

In some cases, the U.S. government was able to conduct surveillance
through undisclosed direct relations with technology companies. Michael
Hirsch describes how technology companies were worried about being seen as
“instruments of government” but were willing to recognize that they needed
to cooperate with the government on key issues.105 Under the PRISM pro-
gram, the U.S. government had substantial legal authority to compel the
production of records and information regarding non-U.S. individuals from
technology companies.

En outre, the U.S. government demanded the cooperation of telecommu-
nications companies in carrying out “upstream collection” of large amounts of
data from U.S. companies such as AT&T that help run the internet backbone.
In the description of Ryan Gallagher and Marcy Wheeler, “According to the

103. Edward Moyer, “U.S. Hands Internet Control to ICANN,” CNET, Octobre 1, 2016, https://
www.cnet.com/news/us-internet-control-ted-cruz-free-speech-russia-china-internet-corporation-
assigned-names-numbers. Ted Cruz and other Republicans claimed that the United States was
giving away the internet.
104. Quoted in Michael Hirsch, “How America’s Top Companies Created the Surveillance State,»
National Journal, Juillet 25, 2013, https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/628088/how-americas-top-
tech-companies-created-surveillance-state.
105. Ibid..

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Weaponized Interdependence 73

NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it ‘has access to informa-
tion that transits the nation,’ but also because it maintains unique relationships
with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relation-
ships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastruc-
ture and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed
by other companies.”106

The United States can copy data in bulk and mine it later for valuable infor-
mation, while superªcially complying with U.S. laws that distinguish between
the data of U.S. and non-U.S. citizens (“incidental collection” of data on U.S.
citizens is permissible).107 It has gathered data from internet exchange points
and from the cable landing stations where undersea cables reach dry land.
This data provided it with an alternative source of information to PRISM, et
gave it direct reach into the internal data of U.S. e-commerce ªrms without
their knowledge and consent, tapping, Par exemple, into the communication
ºows through which Google reconciled data in different countries.

The Snowden revelations provoked political uproar, in both the United
States and elsewhere. The result was a series of legal reforms that partly lim-
ited U.S. government access to the data of U.S. citizens, as well as policy
measures including a presidential policy directive intended to reassure allies
that the United States would not use their citizens’ information in unduly in-
vasive ways.

Other states certainly engaged in surveillance activities, including members
of the EU (European privacy law does not currently prevent external surveil-
lance for espionage, including European countries spying on each other,
although it does restrict the ability of states to retain data on their own citi-
zens). Cependant, they lacked the “home advantage” of network centrality that
Hayden described, and were correspondingly less able to gather useful infor-
mation, so that the United States’ European allies relied heavily on U.S. will-
ingness to share surveillance data for their own security.108

106. Ryan Gallagher and Henrik Moltke, “The Wiretap Rooms: The NSA’s Hidden Hubs in Eight
U.S. Cities,” Intercept, Juin 25, 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-
hubs. See also Marcy Wheeler, “Verizon Gets Out of the Upstream Surveillance Business,»
Emptywheel blog, May 6, 2017, https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/05/06/verizon-gets-out-of-
the-upstream-business.
107. For comprehensive descriptions of the various U.S. electronic surveillance programs, voir
Laura K. Donohue, The Future of Foreign Intelligence: Privacy and Surveillance in a Digital Age (Nouveau
York: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2016); and Jennifer Stisa Granick, American Spies: Modern Surveil-
lance, Why You Should Care, and What to Do about It (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2017).
Many of the legal interpretations that allow U.S. surveillance are still unknown, as are the details
of key programs.
108. Maik Baumgärtner et al., “Der unheimliche dienst” (The eerie agency), Der Spiegel, May 2,
2015, http://www .spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-134762481.html.

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International Security 44:1 74

summary

The internet has regularly been depicted, both in the scholarly literature and in
U.S. political debate, as a fundamentally liberal space characterized by open
exchange and cooperation. This rhetoric serves to conceal the power dynamics
that shape the relationship between the United States and online communica-
tions networks. For sure, the United States has not directly leveraged its domi-
nance to create chokepoints, both because it lacks the domestic institutional
capacity, and because several administrations have believed that its strategic
and business interests are better served by open networks than the overt use of
force majeure.109 Yet, the United States has also systematically exploited the
panopticon effect to great beneªt and has been able to do so even when its al-
lies have formally objected. This degree of information-gathering power
would be unthinkable either in a world where network forces did not tend to
lead to grossly asymmetric outcomes beneªting countries such as the United
States or where states were limited to employing the tools of national markets
and bilateral pressure.

Conclusion

There is a common trope in the literature on globalization that suggests that
greater economic exchange has fragmented and decentralized power relations.
Nous, in contrast, argue that these economic interactions generate new structural
conditions of power. Complex interdependence, like many other complex sys-
thèmes, may generate enduring power asymmetries.

This observation allows us to bring the literature on security, which has paid
deep and sustained attention to the systemic and structural aspects of power,
into direct debate with the literature on global markets, which has largely ne-
glected it.110 Theoretically, our account shows how the topography of networks
shapes power relations, generating systematic differences in the ability of
some states—and not others—to gather information and deny access to ad-
versaries. Empirically, we demonstrate how decentralized patterns of eco-
nomic exchange have led to centralized global networks such as SWIFT and
the internet. As we discuss further in unpublished research, similar patterns
prevail in other global networks such as the dollar clearing system and some
globalized supply chains. Bringing these ªndings together, our article provides
a historically detailed account of (1) how the new network structures that
shape power and statecraft have come into being and (2) how these structures

109. McCarthy, “Open Networks”; and Kiggins, “Open for Expansion.”
110. For a prescient exception, see Thomas Wright, “Sifting through Interdependence,” Washing-
ton Quarterly, Vol. 36, Non. 4 (Fall 2013), pp. 7–23, doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2013.861706.

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Weaponized Interdependence 75

have been used to weaponize interdependence by privileged actors (who pos-
sess both leverage over network hubs and the appropriate domestic institu-
tions that allow them to exercise this leverage).

Our research has far-reaching implications for the study of international
affairs. Our argument brings scholars of economic interdependence and secu-
rity studies into closer dialogue with one another, generating important new
insights for both. D'une part, we press scholars of international political
economy to grapple with the fact that institutions, which may serve to drive
efªciency gains and reduce transaction costs, may also serve as sites of control.
On the other hand, we push scholars of international security to consider
how economic globalization creates its own set of international structures—
through global networks—and thus generates new forms of state power.111
Plus généralement, our ªndings further suggest that international relations schol-
ars need to pay far more attention to the practical workings of networks than
they do at present.

Our evidence from the cases of ªnancial and digital communication fur-
thermore offer important support for our theoretical claims. States need both
leverage over network hubs and appropriate institutions if they are to take ad-
vantage of the panopticon and chokepoint effects. States and jurisdictions that
have potential leverage over network hubs, but do not have the appropriate
institutions, cannot make good use of weaponized interdependence. Ainsi, le
EU has fragmented instruments of ªnancial regulation, which means that it
has not been able to exercise control over SWIFT, except when its member
states have agreed unanimously on formal sanctions under prodding from the
États-Unis. Lacking a regulator such as the Treasury Department’s Ofªce of
Foreign Assets Control, or legal instruments such as those that the United
States introduced after September 11, 2001, it has not been able to deploy mar-
ket control to inºuence non-EU banks in the same ways that the United States
a. Cependant, although we do not discuss it here, other research indicates that
the EU is perfectly capable of leveraging such control in domains where it has
both inºuence over key hubs and well-developed institutions (par exemple., in the area
of privacy).112

111. By examining such structures, scholars could speak better to other scholarship examining the
role of networks in international security. See Goddard, “Embedded Revisionism”; Alexander
Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, “‘The Empire Will Compensate You’: The Structural Dynamics of the
U.S. Overseas Basing Network,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 11, Non. 4 (Décembre 2013), pp. 1034–
1050, doi.org/10.1017/S1537592713002818; Daniel H. Nexon and Thomas Wright, “What’s at Stake
in the American Empire Debate,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 101, Non. 3 (May 2007),
pp. 253–271, doi.org/10.1017/S0003055407070220; and Yonatan Lupu and Brian Greenhill, “The
Networked Peace: Intergovernmental Organizations and International Conºict,” Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 54, Non. 6 (Novembre 2017), pp. 833–848, doi.org/10.1177/0022343317711242.
112. Farrell and Newman, Of Privacy and Power; and Kalyanpur and Newman, “Mobilizing Mar-
ket Power.”

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International Security 44:1 76

U.S. capacity to weaponize interdependence similarly depends on domestic
institutions as well as the topology of global networks. Ainsi, Par exemple, le
existing institutional capacity of the NSA and new laws introduced after
the September 11 attacks allowed the United States to deploy the panopticon
effect to enormous advantage, gathering vast quantities of strategic informa-
tion. Cependant, it lacked the appropriate institutions to oblige U.S. e-commerce
companies to regulate other businesses and individuals or cut them out of
the network, as it could use the U.S. correspondent banking system to regulate
global networks.

Our framework also suggests that there are broader limits to weaponized in-
terdependence. Not all markets rest directly on asymmetric networks. For ex-
ample,
international oil markets are sufªciently diversiªed that they are
relatively liquid, and thus present no single point of control.113 Where there
are no network asymmetries, it will be difªcult to weaponize interdependence.
De plus, not all sectors have been internationalized or rest heavily on net-
works of exchange. Enfin, states that are less well integrated into the interna-
tional economy are correspondingly less likely to be vulnerable to information
gathering, while their vulnerability to the threatened or actual use of choke-
points will depend on the degree of autarky they have achieved.

The world has entered into a new stage of network politics, in which other
states have begun to respond to such efforts. When interdependence is used by
privileged states for strategic ends, other states are likely to start considering
economic networks in strategic terms too. Targeted states—or states that fear
they will be targeted—may attempt to isolate themselves from networks, look
to turn network effects back on their more powerful adversaries, and even, et-
der some circumstances, reshape networks so as to minimize their vulnerabili-
ties or increase the vulnerabilities of others.114 Hence, the more that privileged
states look to take advantage of their privilege, the more that other states and
nonstate actors will take action that might potentially weaken or even under-
mine the interdependent features of the preexisting system.115 The ability of
states to resist weaponized interdependence will reºect, in part, their de-

113. Hughes and Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon?” There may be more complex strategic ques-
tions and knock-on consequences. See Caitlin Talmadge, “Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian
Threat to the Strait of Hormuz,” International Security, Vol. 33, Non. 1 (Été 2008), pp. 82–117,
doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.33.1.82.
114. Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Janus Face of the Liberal Information Order,” pa-
per presented at the IO@75 Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, September 7–8, 2018; and Henry
Farrell and Bruce Schneier, “Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy” (Cambridge, Mass.:
Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Université Harvard, Octobre 2018), https://
cyber.harvard.edu/story/2018-10/common-knowledge-attacks-democracy.
115. Commercial actors too may look to disentangle themselves when the costs of state control
start to exceed the beneªts of network economies.

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Weaponized Interdependence 77

gree of autonomy from those economic interests that hope to maintain the
beneªts of centralized exchanges even in the face of greater constraints on
state authority.

The United States and its allies ªnd themselves in a new and uncertain
monde, where rival powers and adversaries are seeking to insulate themselves
from global networks, and perhaps over the longer run to displace these net-
travaux. Our arguments do not provide precise predictions as to the strategies
that rivals and adversaries will deploy, although they do suggest how these
strategies will be shaped by rival states’ own national institutions and network
positions. They highlight the importance of enduring, but not immutable net-
work structures. States are locked into existing network structures only up to
that point where the costs of remaining in them are lower than the beneªts:
should this change, one may see transitions to new arrangements.

Ainsi, Par exemple, the initial U.S. decision to exclude the Chinese ªrm ZTE
from global supply chains appears to have precipitated a major reconsidera-
tion by the Chinese government of China’s reliance on foreign chip manufac-
turers and of the need for China to create its own domestic manufacturing
capacities to mitigate its economic vulnerabilities.116 This policy reorientation
surely involves efforts to mitigate bilateral asymmetric vulnerabilities of the
kind emphasized in traditional liberal accounts. Cependant, it may also require
the reconªguration of entire networks of interlocking supply chains with
global consequences. Similar concerns led to initial U.S. suspicion of Huawei
and ZTE and to fears that their telecommunications equipment may have
built-in vulnerabilities that assist Chinese surveillance. As interdependence
becomes increasingly weaponized, global supply chains may unravel.

Western threats to weaponize SWIFT against Russia in the wake of the
Ukraine crisis produced similar responses.117 Then Prime Minister Dimitry
Medvedev threatened that “our economic reaction and generally any other re-
action will be without limits,” while the chief executive of VTB, a major
Russian bank, said it would mean that “the countries are on the verge of war,
or they are deªnitely in a cold war.”118 In a major foreign policy speech,

116. Jones and Whitworth, “The Unintended Consequences of European Sanctions on Russia”;
and Edward White, “China Seeks Semiconductor Security in Wake of ZTE Ban,” Financial Times,
Juin 18, 2018.
117. Gideon Rachman, “The Swift Way to Get Putin to Scale Back His Ambitions,” Financial Times,
May 12, 2014; “Too Smart by Half? Effective Sanctions Have Always Been Hard to Craft,” Econo-
mist, Septembre 6, 2014, https://www.economist.com/brieªng/2014/09/06/too-smart-by-half;
and “The Pros and Cons of a SWIFT Response,” Economist, Novembre 20, 2014, https://www
.economist.com/international/2014/11/20/the-pros-and-cons-of-a-swift-response.
118. “Russia to Respond to Possible Disconnection from SWIFT,” TASS, Janvier 27, 2015, http://
tass.com/russia/773628; and Gillian Tett and Jack Farchy, “Russian Banker Warns West over
SWIFT,” Financial Times, Janvier 23, 2015.

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International Security 44:1 78

President Vladimir Putin warned that “politically motivated sanctions have
only strengthened the trend towards seeking to bolster economic and ªnancial
sovereignty and countries’ or their regional groups’ desire to ªnd ways of pro-
tecting themselves from the risks of outside pressure. We already see that more
and more countries are looking for ways to become less dependent on the dol-
lar and are setting up alternative ªnancial and payments systems and reserve
currencies. I think that our American friends are quite simply cutting the
branch they are sitting on.”119

This may help explain Russia’s apparent reported interest in creating a
blockchain-based payment system for the Eurasian Economic Union and other
states interested in signing up.120 Blockchain systems are designed to use
“proof of work” or “proof of stake” and provable guarantees (systems based
on mathematically secure theorems) to avoid any need for central authority
(and hence any possibility of that authority being leveraged for political or
other purposes).121 In this way, a blockchain ledger for ªnancial transactions
could mute chokepoint strategies. That said, blockchain systems impose their
propre, sometimes quite unattractive risks and restrictions for state authorities.
Piecemeal worries over adversaries and resulting actions may erode global
networks over the long term. More rapid change may occur if U.S. actions lead
allies to seriously reconsider their exposure to global networks that they rely
on far more heavily than China and Russia, but have not to this point seen as a
threat vector. As Daniel Drezner has argued, the most plausible path to such
a transition would involve the defection of U.S. allies, if they decided that the
United States was abusing weaponized interdependence in ways that con-
ºicted with their core interests.122 Our account helps explain why this is so: it
is the United States’ West European allies that are most likely to have control
or potential control over key nodes in global networks, or to be credibly able to
set up their own alternatives.

European states have been willing to accept U.S. extraterritorial pressure be-
cause of their “shared democratic values and indeed economic interests.”123

119. Vladimir Putin, speech to meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Octobre 24,
2014, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46860.
120. “Bank of Russia Suggests FinTech’s Ethereum Blockchain as Single System for EAEU,” TASS,
Avril 3, 2018, http://tass.com/economy/997474.
121. For a tolerably accessible overview of the underlying technical issues, see Arvind Narayanan
et coll., Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 2016). Popular accounts tend to underestimate the vulnerabilities of
blockchain technologies.
122. Daniel W. Drezner, “Could Walking Away from the Iran Deal Threaten the Dollar?” Washing-
ton Post, Août 12, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/12/
could-walking-away-from-the-iran-deal-threaten-the-dollar.
123. Authors’ translation of Karen Berger (rapporteur), Rapport d’Information Déposé en application

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Weaponized Interdependence 79

Actuellement, they beneªt more than they suffer from the U.S. exercise of network
hegemony. Cependant, this acquiescence “implies that [the equilibrium of trans-
atlantic relations] should not be disturbed by the abuse of that which certain
people perceive as a form of imperium in the domain of law.”124 Policymakers
in Europe have started to explore ªnancing options that are isolated from the
U.S. ªnancial system. While the practical effect of these speciªc initiatives may
be limited in the short term, they put in motion a potential decoupling. Ce
sanitization process may possibly fall victim to inªghting within and among
allies, but might also generate its own internal self-reinforcing dynamics.125
If the war of words between Europe and the United States over secondary
sanctions devolves into clashing standards and competing ªnancial instru-
ments, the United States may face the slow erosion of its ability to weaponize
key economic networks, constraining its ability to project power globally.

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de l’article 145 du Règlement par la Commission des Affaires Étrangeres et la Commission des Finances, dans
Conclusion des Travaux d’une Mission d’Information Constituée le 3 février 2016 sur l’Extraterritorialité
de la Législation Américaine (Information report deposted pursuant to Article 145 of the Rules by the
Foreign Affairs Commission and the Finance Committee in concluding the work of the Informa-
tion Commission set up on February 3, 2016) (Paris: French General Assembly, Octobre 5, 2016),
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/rap-info/i4082.asp.
124. Ibid..
125. Robin Emmott, “EU Considers Iran Central Bank Transfers to Beat U.S. Sanctions,” Reuters,
May 18, 2018.
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