Weaponized interdependence in a bipolar world: How economic forces and security interests shape the global reach of U.S. and Chinese cloud data centres

Abstract

U.S. and Chinese technology companies dominate digital networks. What explains the extent to which third countries attach to U.S. versus Chinese network hubs? The answer matters, because both governments have demonstrated the ability to “weaponize” their hubs to advance their security interests. We synthesize 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 U.S. 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 weaponized interdependence framework which predicted the rise of alternative hubs but lacked a model of bipolar network topology.

Keywords: technological dependence, weaponized interdependence, cloud computing, Big Tech, digital infrastructure, tech war, digital sovereignty, data sovereignty