ABSTRACT: This work describes how capital terrorists and/or adversarial nations could use Western capital markets to injure Western economies and limit international power projections. Specifically, we analyse a particular vulnerability of international capital markets, the market for sovereign debt, which is the market for the government debt of individual sovereign states. We describe how this market can be attacked by capital terrorists through the intentional manipulation of the process by which bonds are rated according to their riskiness. We contend that bond ratings (and the rating process) can be weaponised for terrorism where international capital markets are used in illegal, unethical, and criminal ways to destabilise a national government.
KEYWORDS: capital terrorism, bond ratings, economic crisis, US power projections