THE ENSHITTIFICATION OF AMERICAN POWER

First Google and Facebook, then the whole world.

- BY HENRY FARRELL AND ABRAHAM NEWMAN

FOR DECADES, ALLIES of the United States lived comfortably amid the sprawl of American hegemony. They constructed their financial institutions, communications systems, and national defense on top of infrastructure provided by the US.

But right about now—as these infrastructures start to mirror the platforms of American Big Tech in a particularly grotesque way—they’re probably wishing they hadn’t.

Back in 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy. Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try their platforms. But as users and advertisers get locked in by network effects, collective action problems, and high switching costs, the tactics change. The platform owners start squeezing users, then vendors, even as the platform fills with ever more low-quality slop.

People don’t usually think of military hardware, the dollar, and satellite constellations as platforms. But that’s what they are. When American allies buy advanced defense technologies such as F-35 fighter jets, they’re getting not just a plane but the associated suite of communications technologies, parts, and technical support. When businesses engage in global finance and trade, they regularly route their transactions through a platform called the dollar clearing system, administered by a handful of US-regulated institutions. And when nations need internet connectivity in hard-to-reach places, chances are they’ll rely on a constellation of satellites—Starlink—run by a single company with deep ties to the American state. As with Facebook and Amazon, American hegemony is sustained by network logic, which makes all these platforms difficult and expensive to break away from.