To Spy on the World: The Infrastructure of Intelligence and America’s Rise to Power

Book in progress
Under advance contract with Princeton University Press

The emperor was coming to Washington. In the summer of 1963, the Kennedy White House was busy preparing for a visit from Haile Selassie, emperor and national hero of Ethiopia. Advisors to President Kennedy noted that the emperor was “very vain” and would be “particularly flattered if you take him aside for private sessions.” But what would Kennedy choose to discuss with Selassie behind closed doors? An obscure topic was the top priority, according to materials prepared for the president we can now read. “Most important to the United States,” wrote one staffer in a memo to Kennedy, was to remember that the U.S. was “in a bargaining situation … for highly classified new intelligence facilities for monitoring Soviet space communications.” Kennedy was reminded that, to help secure permission to use Ethiopian land for surveillance, the United States should offer to supply “two squadrons” of F-86 Sabre jets and fund a large dam on the Blue Nile River. In the end, Washington got what it wanted from Ethiopia. As one declassified history summarizes, the “Stonehouse” facility on Ethiopian land became “the premiere U.S. facility specifically designed and used for collection of telemetry from Soviet lunar and other ‘deep space’ probes” and “played a critical role in our understanding of the Soviet deep space and circumlunar programs.”

To Spy on the World introduces the concept of “intelligence infrastructure” and argues it plays an overlooked but critical role in international politics. Intelligence infrastructure refers to the physical sites and installations which are the logistical backbone for modern technology-based surveillance. The book tells the story of America’s massive investment in a globe-straddling network of foreign locations for its intelligence infrastructure during the Cold War. To Spy on the World uses new archival material to identify dozens of previously unknown U.S. surveillance sites in places as diverse as Greenland, Iran, the Seychelles, and South Africa. Beyond describing this intelligence architecture, the book traces its profound influence on American geopolitical priorities, relationships, and goals. Yet the book is not just a story about the past. I also describe how today’s emerging technology is forcing states to adapt by building new infrastructure and vying for infrastructure access in new places. A chapter on China argues for the centrality of intelligence infrastructure to its rise and U.S.-China geopolitical competition. To Spy on the World develops a bold thesis about a largely overlooked and hidden foundation of power in international politics. For non-academic readers, the book describes the technology, surprising locations, and unsavory backroom deals which enabled America’s global surveillance empire – and which any new global rival, such as China, will need to undertake.

I am writing a first draft of the book while on research leave in 2024.