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.
-
New article: How economics and security shape global reach of US and Chinese clouds
A new article titled “Weaponised interdependence in a bipolar world: how economic forces and security interests shape the global reach of US and Chinese cloud data centres” by Vili Lehdonvirta, Boxi Wu, and Zoe Hawkins has just been published by the Review of International Political Economy, a leading journal in the IPE field. Abstract United States…
-
Boxi Wu wins OII thesis prize
Boxi Wu, a member of the Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL) has won the Oxford Internet Institute’s 2024 MSc Thesis Prize for the MSc in Social Science of the Internet. The thesis prize recognises outstanding work and contributions to the field. Boxi’s thesis titled “Frictions in the Cloud: An Ethnographic Case Study of Local Data Centre Contestation…
-
Digital Economic Security Seminar – Spring 2025 Programme
Organisers/Hosts: Vili Lehdonvirta, Philipp Riederle Sessions: Tuesdays, 12pm–1pm (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. Spring/Trinity Term 2025 About the Oxford-Aalto Digital Economic Security Seminar Today’s economies are critically dependent…
-
What Meta’s plan to build the world’s longest undersea cable means for digital infrastructure and geopolitics
Meta recently announced project Waterworth, the company’s plan to build the world’s longest submarine cable system. In this blog post, OII’s Professor Vili Lehdonvirta and DPhil candidate Anniki Mikelsaar ask what geopolitical and economic significance this massive new infrastructure project may have. Key findings How big tech is rewiring the world When data moves between…
-
Where Chinese Or American Tech Is Used In Cloud Data Storage
Research from Vili Lehdonvirta, Boxi Wú and Zoe Hawkins at the University of Oxford and Finland’s Aalto University shows which countries are home to which kind of data centers.
-
Meta plans globe-spanning sub-sea internet cable
“Over the past decade there has been a shift in which these cables are increasingly laid by large technology companies,” Professor Vili Lehdonvirta of the Oxford Internet Institute told the BBC.
-
America v China: who controls Asia’s internet?
Of a panel of 12 Asian countries, seven have a majority of Chinese-run cloud clusters, according to a study by Vili Lehdonvirta and colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute.
-
Exclusive: New Research Finds Stark Global Divide in Ownership of Powerful AI Chips
A new paper shows that GPUs are highly concentrated in only 30 countries in the world, with the U.S. and China far out ahead. Much of the world lies in what the authors call “Compute Deserts:” areas where there are no GPUs for hire at all.