GEOGRAPHY AND CYBERSPACE. THE FORGOTTEN RELEVANCE OF TERRITORY FOR DIGITAL POWER
By stepping away from disembodied accounts of cyberspace, this study recasts the digital order as irreducibly spatial and materially grounded. While it is true that cyberspace is a great “destroyer” of distances and in some ways “leveler” of places, it is nevertheless impossible to think of it without considering its underlying base of physical networks still exposed to the constraint of location, the action of the atmospheric elements, the “centripetal force” of territoriality, and the control of actors exercising political power over the territory. It is precisely this materiality − and the nexus linking cyberspace, geography, and the territoriality of political power, including its digital expressions − that constitutes the core focus of this dissertation. Two research questions guide the inquiry. First, how do geographical factors condition the global distribution and topology of core infrastructures? Second, to what extent does the pursuit of cyber power translate into territorial strategies of governance by great powers? The design is mixed-methods. Chapter I offers a critical genealogy of cyberspace that dismantles the liberal, immaterial vision and identifies three phases from strategic genesis to securitized contestation. Focusing on the United States, it documents the move from market-driven to state-centered governance and argues for reintegrating spatial and geopolitical analysis to explain cyber power and digital sovereignty. Chapter II maps submarine fiber-optic cables, landing stations, and data centers. Through historical reconstruction, GIS-based spatial analysis, and graph metrics, it advances and tests four hypotheses: (1) cables disproportionately concentrate around maritime chokepoints; (2) the cable system is hierarchical, with a limited set of states anchoring connectivity and regional brokers linking clusters; (3) data centres are highly concentrated in advanced, digitally interconnected regions; and (4) siting reflects a balance between climatic advantages and energy stability, avoidance of multihazard areas, and proximity to large demand basins to compress latency. The empirical work integrates purpose-built datasets on cables, landing sites, and data-center locations with climate surfaces, multihazard exposure, and gridded population density. Chapter III shifts to agency through a comparative analysis of the United States and China. Reading doctrines, regulatory instruments, industrial policy, and outward infrastructure initiatives, it traces how states territorialize the cloud by localizing and protecting data, constraining extraterritorial leverage, subsidizing domestic ecosystems, projecting standards abroad, and financing external cables and facilities. The chapter advances the claim that cyber power hinges on positional centrality: the ability to occupy, build, and govern pivotal nodes and corridors that convert connectivity into political, economic, and security leverage. Findings are threefold. First, the submarine cable network is highly concentrated at classic maritime chokepoints and regional gateways; networks centrality metrics indicate that a small number of states function as system anchors, while others act as brokers linking clusters. Second, the global distribution of data centers is patterned rather than random: facilities agglomerate where cooler climates and reliable, affordable power coincide with proximity to dense demand and low-latency routes, while exposure to extreme hazards is frequently underweighted in siting decisions. Third, centrality operates less as an equalizer than as a power multiplier: actors located at or near the core are better positioned to regulate flows, surveil or interdict adversaries, and set technical and legal standards, whereas peripheral actors face structural dependence. The United States’ incumbency in infrastructures and platforms, and China’s efforts to construct parallel ecosystems, illustrate how spatial and territorial logics and network position reproduce hierarchy and intensify rivalry. The dissertation contributes directly to neo-classical geopolitical scholarship, showing that geography continues to shape even the ostensibly virtual domain of cyberspace. Using historical reconstruction, GIS mapping, and network metrics, it demonstrates how chokepoints, jurisdictional embedding, and path dependence generate durable, unequal topologies. Building on this foundation, it contributes to strategic studies by explaining how positional centrality at nodes and corridors yields bargaining power and coercive options; and to IR debates on great-power behavior by showing U.S.–China convergence on territorially anchored infrastructural strategies. From the findings of this work stems two clear policy recommendations. First state should prioritize infrastructural redundancy where topology concentrates risk by funding disjoint cable routes and inland backhauls, requiring dual landings, hardening critical crossings, and pre-arranging mutual-aid and repair access; especially since markets under-provide redundancy on marginal routes. Second, ensure that critical infrastructures can shift rapidly to an “islanded” territorial air-gapped posture when compromise is suspected − preserving core functions and containing propagation − through architectures that support fast, scoped disconnection and tested restoration procedures. Taken together, the dissertation reframes cyberspace as an infrastructural and territorial domain in which geographic position and material networks condition power, and reconstructs an image of it not as a borderless global common but rather as a polycentric, semi-sovereign patchwork. Cables and data centers cluster at chokepoints; central actors convert positional centrality into regulatory, economic, and coercive leverage; and great powers territorialize the “cloud” through localization, standards projection, and outward infrastructure finance. Prospectively, interconnection will persist through selective gateways shaped by territorial strategies and political blocs. Two non-exclusive pathways are likely to co-evolve: firstly, bloc consolidation around U.S.- and China-anchored ecosystems with managed, treaty-like interoperability. Secondly, layered substitution that adds incremental flexibility (e.g., low-Earth-orbit satellites constellations) without, however, eliminating completely geographical chokepoint vulnerabilities exposure. The policy recommendation is thus to optimize exposure: remain central enough to shape rules and reap scale, while embedding redundancy, and emergency authorities to absorb shocks and resist coercion. In the coming decade, performance will hinge on the capacity to keep systems interoperable in ordinary times while shielding critical functions in crises − without allowing emergency measures to ossify into permanent fragmentation.
geography, territoriality, cyberspace, submarine cable, data center, digital sovereignty, cyberpower., Settore GSPS-02/A - Scienza politica
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