Global Axess 2024 - Mary Bridges: Making Markets, Building Infrastructure

As nations vie for control over the interconnected networks that underpin the functioning of modern societies, traditional state-centric geopolitical frameworks prove inadequate in capturing the intricacies of a world increasingly influenced by non-state actors such as corporations and standards bodies. Today's leaders must adapt their perspective to acknowledge the emergence of new powerbrokers, ranging from entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk to international payment systems, that are redefining the terms of international engagement and creating novel points of vulnerability. Furthermore, a comprehensive grasp of contemporary infrastructure politics necessitates understanding the historical and political forces that have given rise to both chokepoints threatening the international order and opportunities for shared wins in addressing challenges such as climate change and ethical standards for AI technology. Embracing these new realities is paramount for shaping the future global order.
Mary Bridges is a historian of the modern United States. Her research investigates the linkages between US foreign relations and business history. Her first book, Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower (Princeton, 2024), argues that US multinational banks provided a crucial infrastructure of both global capitalism and US empire in the early 20th century. The project explores the changing credit practices of overseas bankers, as US banks navigated new ways to profit from trade finance and their relationship to the US government. Her second book project, Empire by Infrastructure, will examine US infrastructure, building overseas as a means of expanding the nation’s global power. She is currently an Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow with Yale University's International Security Studies program. She holds a PhD in history from Vanderbilt, an MA from Yale in International Relations, and a BA from Harvard in history and science. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a business reporter and editor.
Justin Oliver Webb is a British journalist who has worked for the BBC since 1984. He is a former BBC North America Editor and the main co-presenter of BBC one's Breakfast News programme. Since August 2009, he has co-presented the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, and also regularly writes for the Radio Times.