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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Vili Lehdonvirta’s 2026 keynote talks on technological sovereignty
Head of DIESL Vili Lehdonvirta has had a busy few months speaking at international conferences, with talks delivered and more lined up on the geography of cloud, AI and digital sovereignty. Below is a selection of his engagements, both recent and upcoming. ACM MobiSys 2026, Cambridge (21-25 June)Vili Lehdonvirta opened proceedings with a keynote titled…
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DIESL at SASE 2026 Conference in Bordeaux
DIESL members Vili Lehdonvirta, Kaarlo Liukkonen, Kunhan Li, Stefka Schmid, and Markus Holmgren recently participated in the annual conference of The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), held this year in Bordeaux. The event brought together scholars of socioeconomics and political economy and also paid special attention to digital economies in a post globalisation…
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DIESL Annual Seminar 2026 — Oxford
The Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL) held its Annual Seminar on 14–15 April 2026 at the Oxford Internet Institute, in Oxford, UK. The two-day event brought together DIESL researchers from Oxford, Aalto, and partner universities, featuring presentations on the political geography of data, digital dependence in public sector digital infrastructure, the politics of digital sovereignty,…
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Digital Economic Security Seminar – Spring 2026
Organisers/Hosts: Vili Lehdonvirta, Philipp Riederle 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. Trinity Term 2026 About the Oxford–Aalto Digital Economic Security Seminar Today’s economies are critically dependent…
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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”
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The US turns back to nuclear power
Vili Lehdonvirta, professor of technology policy at Aalto University, Finland, points out that ‘from a military perspective, tech giants and their data centres support governments by storing and using AI to process vast amounts of information