The Hidden Globe

The colours on the globe, neatly dividing the earth’s landmass into countries - France red, the UK warm orange, the US mustard yellow, China a deep magenta— depict the world that most of us know. It is a world of sovereign nations, each exercising authority over the citizens, companies, and organizations within its borders. For wealthy individuals and powerful corporations, however, nations today are neither constrained by borders nor sovereign within them, but porous and pockmarked with special zones beyond the law and above the power of electorates. And for refugees fleeing war and famine, there are more and more places carved out to fall between the cracks of nations, locations where they can be kept in legal limbo indefinitely. In THE HIDDEN GLOBE, Atossa Abrahamian reveals this parallel world of nearly 6,000 economic free zones, tax havens, and secret holding facilities, from the Kazhakh tundra to Staten Island to asteroids, mapping a hidden geography that increasingly explains the dynamics of global power - why some nations rise or flounder, where corporations flourish or spectacularly collapse, and how some places become launching pads for innovations or laboratories for ideals to be tested. On this fast-paced, character-driven road trip, we visit the hidden corners of global capital - from anarchic Somali shipping ports to Switzerland’s Crypto Valley, where Facebook’s currency Libra is registered - to answer key questions about the geopolitical and economic forces remaking our world. Why are so many island nations and micro-states tax havens. How are management consultants redrawing the globe, and who benefits. Where does wealth hide and who helps to hide it. What happens when you run a country like a business. And what sort of new and extra-national places are being devised to quarantine the world’s refugee population.