The key to America’s global supremacy in the twenty-first century is not bombs or battalions. It is the things we can’t see: fiber-optic cables, semiconductor chips, and the dollar “clearing” system. Underground Empire by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman is a study of how the United States turned seemingly unremarkable digital infrastructure into powerful weapons which it has wielded to discipline allies and punish enemies.

By targeting “choke points” in the global economy, the United States can prevent rivals — most importantly China — from accessing technologies and resources that they depend upon. While this weaponization of US economic power has largely been successful so far, it is creating strong incentives for other countries to establish ways of operating in the global economy that bypass the United States.

Washington’s economic warfare is intended to shield US hegemony from rising threats in an era of relative decline. In the long run, however, it may be setting changes in motion that fatally undermine American dominance.