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Globalised networks such as finance, communications and supply chains evolve toward hub-and-spoke structures in which a few central nodes carry disproportionate traffic. A state with jurisdiction over those hubs can exploit them in two ways: a panopticon effect, using the hub to see flows among everyone else, and a chokepoint effect, cutting adversaries off from the network entirely.
The private actors who built global infrastructure centralised it to cut costs and exploit network effects, not to serve any state. That concentration in dollar clearing, SWIFT messaging and cloud services gave the US government leverage it had never planned for. Once officials recognised it, they repurposed plumbing built for commerce into instruments of power.
After 9/11, the US Treasury used administrative subpoenas to compel SWIFT, a Belgian cooperative whose data was mirrored on a US server, to hand over large volumes of financial messaging data for the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. SWIFT's own infrastructure choices put it within American legal reach. Its data became a covert intelligence feed that exposed global money flows, and European governments were outraged when it came to light.
Nearly all international dollar transactions settle through correspondent accounts at US banks. Threatening to cut a foreign bank off from dollar clearing therefore works as an existential penalty. The US can force non-American banks to enforce American sanctions against third countries such as Iran, turning private foreign institutions into deputised enforcers without any treaty or multilateral agreement.
The US applied export controls, including the foreign direct product rule, to bar any company using American chip-design software or manufacturing tools from supplying Huawei, even foreign foundries like TSMC. Because US-origin tools and IP sit at irreplaceable points in the semiconductor supply chain, one rule severed a leading Chinese firm from advanced chips worldwide. The episode showed that chokepoint coercion extends beyond finance to physical technology supply chains.
This coercive power is exercised mainly through obscure agencies, administrative rules and private intermediaries rather than through legislation or visible diplomacy. It therefore accumulates with little public debate or oversight. Each use also pushes rivals and allies to build alternative networks, so repeated weaponisation risks a self-reinforcing spiral that fragments the global economy and erodes the leverage itself.