>>11239474Instead of liberating governments and businesses, globalization entangled them. As digital networks, financial flows, and supply chains stretched across the globe, states—especially the United States—started treating them as webs in which to trap one another. Today, the U.S. National Security Agency lurks at the heart of the Internet, listening in on all kinds of communications. The U.S. Department of the Treasury uses the international financial system to punish rogue states and errant financial institutions. In service of its trade war with China, Washington has tied down massive firms and entire national economies by targeting vulnerable points in global supply chains. Other countries are in on the game, too: Japan has used its control over key industrial chemicals to hold South Korea’s electronics industry for ransom, and Beijing might eventually be able to infiltrate the world’s 5G communications system through its access to the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. The world’s powers are enmeshed in financial, trade, and information networks that they do not fully understand, raising the risk of blunders that could set off dangerous conflicts.
In this landscape, blunders could set off escalatory spirals, and mutual suspicion could engender hostility. By targeting a firm with an unexpectedly crucial role in a broader industrial network, for instance, a government could mistakenly generate widespread economic damage—and trigger retaliation from other states in turn. As global networks grow thanks to developments such as the so-called Internet of Things, such dangers will grow, as well.
