Slate News Slate Money: America’s Boring Superweapon
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Dec 30, 2023 Henry Farrell, author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy, discusses the shift from guns to SWIFT codes in American hegemony. Topics include semiconductors, SWIFT network, Binance, EU-US relations, Facebook's currency, and the future of global infrastructure.
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US Superweapon: From Guns to SWIFT
- The US shifted its global dominance strategy from military power to economic and informational control.
- The SWIFT financial messaging system became a core tool for US economic coercion post-9/11.
Limits of SWIFT Sanctions
- Sanctions like cutting Russia off from SWIFT slow but don't cripple adversaries.
- Economic coercion acts like sand in the gears, degrading over time rather than causing immediate collapse.
Binance as US Surveillance Entry
- The US used regulatory settlements like the Binance deal to gain crypto market insight.
- Centralized exchanges become surveillance points, extending US power into crypto.