Telecommunications and American Empire
Dan Schiller · 2023
Abstract Telecommunications proved essential to US imperialism. While posts and telegraphs helped forge a territorial empire, during the twentieth century US leaders erected an informal empire built partly around successive iterations of an “American system of international communications.” US networking dominance was beset by capitalist rivals, however, while anti-imperialism throughout the Global South focused increasingly on communications inequalities. The Nixon administration reset US policy to counter these threats, both by cultivating new data networking technologies and challenging the state-centered telecommunications regime. Subsequently, national telecommunications systems were privatized worldwide, while data networks were implemented across borders. One network—the internet—overtook its competitors. While the US trumpeted its ascendancy as a human rights triumph, the global internet was managed by US-based organizations, dominated by US business users, and led by US tech companies. It was the most fully realized cross-border telecommunications system ever devised: a network fitted to a US empire of capital.