chadkoh

Governments have begun to view AI compute infrastructures, including advanced AI chips, as a geostrategic resource. This is partly because “compute governance” is believed to be emerging as an important tool for governing AI systems. In this governance model, states that host AI compute capacity within their territorial jurisdictions are likely to be better placed to impose their rules on AI systems than states that do not. In this study, we provide the first attempt at mapping the global geography of public cloud GPU compute, one particularly important category of AI compute infrastructure. Using a census of hyperscale cloud providers’ cloud regions, we observe that the world is divided into “Compute North” countries that host AI compute relevant for AI development (ie. training), “Compute South” countries whose AI compute is more relevant for AI deployment (ie. running inferencing), and “Compute Desert” countries that host no public cloud AI compute at all. We generate potential explanations for the results using expert interviews, discuss the implications to AI governance and technology geopolitics, and consider possible future trajectories.

Policymakers face increased pressure to regulate digital markets to balance competition, privacy, and innovation. While traditional policy literature views regulation as a technical problem requiring specific interventions, there is significant debate about the appropriate solutions. This analysis synthesizes both technocratic and political perspectives, proposing a framework to predict effective regulatory remedies by examining common market structures.

Examining how U.S. regulation of media infrastructure over the past century—spanning broadband, digital platforms, and data centers—has eroded civil liberties and democratic principles, this book interweaves historical and interdisciplinary perspectives to elucidate how policies from an analog era continue to shape today’s digital governance. The work fosters a comprehensive understanding of the policy challenges faced and inspires potential restorative actions to realign infrastructure regulation with public interest and equity.

This talk analyzes how the US, China, and the EU shape the global digital order. The speaker examines different regulatory models: US market-driven, Chinese state-driven, and EU rights-driven approaches. The discussion highlighted shifts in tech regulation, including AI governance, geopolitical impacts, and the rise of digital sovereignty. Despite challenges, the talk emphasized the importance of democratic governance over critical tech policy decisions.

Abstract

Reinforced by the technological decoupling and the related battle for technological supremacy between the United States and China, telecommunication technology has become increasingly politicised. As the functioning of global telecommunication technology relies on interoperability and compatibility, government and private actors have strong incentives to shape the underlying standards in their economic and political interests. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and its Members play a central role in setting these standards for future telecommunication technology. Despite the ITU's importance in this field, relatively little is known about the organisation's work on standardisation and the actors behind it. This Policy Insight introduces a new data set on the involvement of over 800 government and private actors and their almost 50,000 contributions to ITU standardisation processes between 2000 and 2022. A descriptive analysis of the data set illustrates that particularly Chinese actors—Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom—have been actively driving the ITU's standardisation processes in the areas of transport, access and home but also future networks and cloud. The data set introduced here is envisaged as a source which allows researchers to study the reasons and implications for certain actors' involvement in the international standardisation of telecommunication and digitalisation.

The Green Web Foundation tackles "How power consolidation of digital infrastructures threatens our democracies-and what we can do about it"

some proposals for the Global Digital Compact (GDC) can be read to mandate more centralized governance. If the final document contains such language, we believe it will be detrimental to not only the Internet and the Web, but also to the world’s economies and societies.

Panelists from the Atlantic Council give a bit of a primer on Internet Governance history, how things changed with the Snowden revelations, the recent push for multilateralism, and how China sees the Global Digital Compact as a way to gain more leverage. (Also some discussion of the Digital Silk Road initiative)

Panelists from the Atlantic Council give a bit of a primer on Internet Governance history, how things changed with the Snowden revelations, the recent push for multilateralism, and how China sees the Global Digital Compact as a way to gain more leverage. (Also some discussion of the Digital Silk Road initiative)

Delineating a robust investment matrix in the AI start-up ecosystem from 1907 to 2024, this paper highlights key financiers like Sequoia Capital and Softbank. Dominant sectors receiving support include Biotechnology, Cloud Computing, and Generative AI, with a noticeable trend toward Web3 and NLP technologies. The network map emphasizes the dynamic interplay between established venture groups, accelerators, and government-backed entities, underscoring their vital role in nurturing innovation within this high-growth industry.

This document examines the potential of collective internet frameworks, contrasting the privatized model with past initiatives like Cybersyn, and explores their implications for current socio-technical architectures. The author critiques the naturalization of individualized internet interaction, advocating for alternative, socially-driven network topologies and practices that prioritize collective empowerment over market determinism.

how vital it is to expand our discipline’s focus beyond technological minutia and see the wider background affected by our work. In this regard, the lenses of economics, sociology, political science, and other social sciences are necessary. In particular, power as an analytic category is especially valuable for understanding the relationship between computing and the rest of society.

This paper then presented an expanded categorization of academic computing that legitimates both internal critique and a broader concern for the public interest as constitutive aspects of academic computing.

This would mean breaking from our almost single-minded focus within computing education on how to improve student learning of the technical aspects of computing (especially first-year programming), and instead recognize that encouraging a critical stance towards their discipline is just as important.

The paper ends with some Judith Butler quotes. Let the Butlerian Jihad commence!