Today’s economies are critically dependent on transnational digital infrastructures and platforms. The Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL) maps these infrastructures, assesses countries’ and sectors’ dependence on them, and explains how they are shaped by economic and political forces. Our work informs policy making and business strategy and advances academic debates in international political economy, cybersecurity, and related fields.
Our flagship project GEOCLOUD: The Geopolitics of Cloud Computing tracks the global and sectoral reach of U.S. and Chinese cloud computing infrastructures. In other work we chart the geographic distribution and ownership of compute clusters that power AI services. We believe that transformations in digital infrastructures have far-reaching consequences, because in a digitized society computational power translates to political power.
DIESL is the name of Professor Vili Lehdonvirta’s joint research group at the Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland, and the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK. It was established in 2024 with funding from the European Research Council and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation.
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Digital Economic Security Seminar – Fall 2026
Organisers/Hosts: Vili Lehdonvirta, Kaarlo Liukkonen Sessions: Tuesdays, 1–2pm (UK time), during Oxford term time, via Zoom Participation: Open to researchers and students from any university or research institution. Please apply here if you would like to join the seminar sessions. Michaelmas Term 2026 Presentation titles: tba About the Digital Economic Security Seminar Today’s economies are…
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DIESL member Otto Kässi at APSA 2026 in Boston, USA
DIESL member Otto Kässi presented the paper “Unplugging from Weaponised Networks: Regulations’ Impacts on Data center Buildout” at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Boston, held on 3–6 September 2026. The paper, co-authored with Kunhan Li and Vili Lehdonvirta, was presented in the session ‘Next Steps in Network Approaches to International Relations’. The…
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DIESL at Aalto’s Designs for a Cooler Planet: Mapping Data Centre Capacity
Data centres in the EU now consume as much electricity each year as 80% of Finland’s total demand — yet most of the profits flow straight back out, into the pockets of foreign tech giants. In Aalto University’s Designs for a Cooler Planet exhibition, doctoral researcher Kaarlo Liukkonen from DIESL asks: is Europe building digital…
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Philipp Riederle wins award for research on digital platform interoperability
The “Jovana Karanović Impact Award” recognises research that combines scholarly excellence with societal relevance. Philipp’s research provides the first empirical evidence on a leading proposal for digital platform regulation. How can regulators restore user choice on dominant social media platforms? Interoperability is a leading policy proposal, particularly under the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act. Yet,…
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UAE views Trump as key partner in push to become AI powerhouse
The UAE needs American chips, professor Lehdonvirta said, while for the U.S., stepping back would mean potentially ceding ground to China.
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Why data centers are moving beyond Europe’s biggest hubs
Professor Vili Lehdonvirta commented on why data centers are moving to Nordics on CNBC documentary.
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‘It means missile defence on datacentres’: drone strikes raise doubts over Gulf as AI superpower
“If that’s the case then from now on we might perhaps see operators of prominent datacentres like AWS [Amazon Web Services] investing in air defence, similar to how shipping operators armed up against pirates,” Lehdonvirta said.
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Amazon says drones damaged three facilities in UAE and Bahrain
Vili Lehdonvirta, professor of technology policy at Aalto University, told BBC News it appeared to be the first time such cloud infrastructure had been “knocked down by military action”