Bessent's Wager and Why the World is Calling America's Bluff | Henry Farrell

**Demetri Kofinas** (0:00)
What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Henry Farrell, a political scientist, the originator alongside his co-author Abraham Newman of the concept of weaponized interdependence, and the co-author of Underground Empire, How America Weaponized the World Economy. By the end of today's conversation, you will have a much deeper understanding of not only how America built its empire, including the financial, military, and technological infrastructure undergirding its power, but how that scaffolding is buckling under the weight of a compounding series of domestic and foreign policy errors that have eroded the political consensus that made this empire possible and the consequences of its collapse for the global economy and the world over which Washington has presided uncontested for most of the last 35 years. Henry and I devote the first hour of our conversation to examining two recent and very important events. The first being Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech announcing the breakdown in the latest trade negotiations between the United States and Canada wherein he claimed his country was under attack by the United States, and the second being US. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's Financial Times op-ed declaring an economic D-Day which reads more like a veiled threat aimed at America's allies than a defense of the world Washington sought to liberate in 1944
We explore the implications of these two announcements, how they fit into a pattern of behavior by an administration that seems intent on converting the once liberal, rules-based international order into a more overt and darker form of American imperial power, why that process is failing, and what that failure means for the global economy, international security, and the lives of billions of people.
The episode's second hour builds on these insights through a comprehensive exploration of the hidden infrastructure that underwrites US hegemony, the financial messaging systems, dollar clearing networks, and the internet surveillance architecture that quietly became instruments of American coercion. We trace how this Underground Empire was slowly built and eventually adopted by much of the rest of the world, when it began to become weaponized against America's enemies, and eventually against its own allies and partners, and why that weaponization has led to a deterioration of American power, and where we see uncontroverted evidence of its depreciation and decline. We examine how a world once held together by an establishment of lies and hypocrisies is quickly giving way to one organized around clans, cartels, and naked self-interest. The role being played by technologies like AI and social media in facilitating the breakdown and refashioning of traditional political coalitions, and the deeper sources of Western insecurity, specifically the risk of a new kind of world war that may soon arrive on our shores embedded in our systems of communication and control. And where Henry still finds grounds for optimism in what is otherwise a frightening new world. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to send an e-mail to info at hiddenforces.io, and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. With that, please enjoy this incredibly timely, wide-ranging and deeply insightful conversation with my guest, Henry Farrell.
Henry Farrell, welcome to Hidden Forces.

**Henry Farrell** (4:17)
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.

**Demetri Kofinas** (4:19)
It's my pleasure to have you here. I feel very fortunate that we scheduled this ahead of time.
I didn't have any foresight into Mark Carney's speech, the breakdown in trade negotiations, or Scott Bessent's economic D-Day news piece in the Financial Times, but it's going to converge perfectly with what today's conversation is supposed to be about. Before we get into that, as well as your book Underground Empire, which is what inspired today's conversation, Henry, tell me a little bit about you. What got you started in political science? What's your background?

**Henry Farrell** (4:53)
I'm from Ireland originally. I was interested in political science and economics. I was not quite smart enough at math to be a good economist, but I was always very interested in the politics of the economy. That is, not thinking about the economy as a place in which you see all of these optimizing decisions happening and markets producing their wonderful things, which they do produce, but the politics that goes along with that, the ways in which actors try to use fair means and foul to gain position, to gain advantage, and to really shape the economy and shape markets in ways that suit their own particular self interests, even if they do not suit the self interests of others. So that is the kind of place that I think that Abe Newman, my colleague and I have been playing in for the last couple of decades.