Journal article
Weaponised interdependence in a bipolar world: how economic forces and security interests shape the global reach of US and Chinese cloud data centres
- Abstract:
- United States (US) and Chinese technology companies dominate digital networks. What explains the extent to which third countries attach to US versus Chinese network hubs? The answer matters, because both governments have demonstrated the ability to ‘weaponise’ their hubs to advance their security interests. We synthesise three hypothetical explanations for third countries’ network hub attachment from previous qualitative literature: (1) Network hub attachment is a product of economic forces; (2) network hub attachment is determined by rivaling great powers coaxing and coercing third countries to attach to their hubs over their rival’s; and (3) network hub attachment results from third-country governments’ strategic policy choices. In the first quantitative study on the topic, we assess these explanations with original data on the global geography of US and Chinese -owned hyperscale cloud infrastructures. Based on the findings, we argue that third countries or ‘spoke states’ enjoy agency in bipolar networks which they did not have in unipolar networks, and that their strategic interests in combination with economic forces shape the topology of geographically distributed bipolar networks more so than great-power rivalry. Our model contributes to the weaponised interdependence framework which predicted the rise of alternative hubs but lacked a model of bipolar network topology.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.7MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/09692290.2025.2489077
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor & Francis
- Journal:
- Review of International Political Economy More from this journal
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 1442–1467
- Publication date:
- 2025-04-21
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-02-26
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1466-4526
- ISSN:
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0969-2290
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2120449
- Local pid:
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pubs:2120449
- Source identifiers:
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W4409647502
- Deposit date:
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2026-05-18
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Lehdonvirta et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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