OXFORD TECHNOLOGY AND SECURITY NEXUS
Topic: Cloud Empires’ Physical Footprint: Trade and Security Politics Shaping Global Data Infrastructure
Prof. Vili Lehdonvirta and Boxi Wu (Oxford Internet Institute)
US-China technological rivalry presents dilemmas for third countries. Cloud computing infrastructure has become an acute front in this rivalry because of the infrastructural power that it affords over increasingly cloud-based economies, and because it is a control point in AI governance. We ask what factors explain a third country’s “cloud infrastructure alignment”—the degree to which the country’s local cloud computing infrastructure belongs to U.S. versus Chinese providers. Based on literature, we sketch three different answers: international trade, digital imperialism, and third-country strategic choice. In the first quantitative study on the topic, we test propositions derived from these views using original data on global hyperscale cloud infrastructure combined with trade statistics and security variables. We find that cloud infrastructure alignment is positively associated with other imports from the U.S. or China, negatively associated with interstate disputes, and only weakly associated with security cooperation ties. The findings suggest that commercial interests and third-country strategic choice may be more influential in shaping cloud infrastructure than any imperialist expansion or containment by the superpowers. We conclude that researchers should direct more attention to the role of third-country agency in technology geopolitics, and to the role of tech firms as autonomous geopolitical actors.
Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He leads a research group examining the politics and socio-economic implications of digital technologies. Lehdonvirta holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Turku (2009) and a MSc from the Helsinki University of Technology (2005).
Boxi Wu works in Google DeepMind’s Responsible AI team, focusing on the ethical and societal implications of frontier AI models across both LLMs and multimodal models. They advise teams on ethical risks and mitigations, and lead internal ethics & safety governance fora, alongside their part-time studies in the MSc in Social Science at the OII. Their research interests focus on the social and political impacts of AI, focusing on the materiality of AI infrastructure and implications for AI ethics and governance, working with Professor Vili Lehdonvirta to map global AI infrastructure.
Attendance to all sessions is open to graduate students and members of the academic or policy communities. Group attendance may be limited; it is encouraged for all interested participants to contact Elisabeth (elisabeth.siegel@politics.ox.ac.uk) in advance to secure their place and receive the preparatory materials.
