Underground empire: how America weaponized the world economy

The book opens with a parallel between ancient Rome and contemporary United States that perfectly summarizes the authors' message. Rome positioned itself at the heart of a commercial and security network through the construction and military control of physical infrastructures, such as aqueducts, roads and ports, which interconnected and thus made governable all territories of the empire. American power, too, in Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman's view, rests on the control of infrastructures that constitute an underground, but effective, empire. In Underground empire, Farrell and Newman narrate how, since the end of the Cold War, the US has built global economic, financial and technological networks that place the country at the centre of all major flows and has then exploited this centrality for geopolitical purposes.