Foreign Relations & International Law

Lawfare Daily: A Trip Around the ‘Hidden Globe’ with Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

Tyler McBrien, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Jen Patja
Monday, October 21, 2024, 8:00 AM
What is the 'hidden globe?'

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The journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian begins her new book, “The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World,” in her hometown: Geneva, Switzerland. She writes, “I began this book about the world on a lifelong hunch: there was something strange about the place where I grew up…I am, and will always be, a part of this world apart—a place defined by a certain placelessness.” 

It turns out that Geneva is just one entrepôt of many on the hidden globe, which Abrahamian describes as a network of “spaces defined by surprising or unconventional jurisdiction—embassies, freeports, tax havens, container ships, Arctic archipelagoes, and tropical city-states,” which make up “the lifeblood of the global economy” and are “a defining part of our daily lives.” Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien explored these often far-flung places with Abrahamian, who described the origins of “extraterritorial domains” well beyond Geneva, in Mauritius, Dubai, Svalbard (Norway), Roatán (Honduras), Boten (Laos), and beyond—even in outer space.

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Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare. He previously worked as an editor with the Council on Foreign Relations and a Princeton in Africa Fellow with Equal Education in South Africa, and holds an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago.
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is an independent journalist who writes about the cracks in the nation-state system.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

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