Essays on Digital Interdependence and Globalization

Abstract

This dissertation presents three papers on the interaction between international security and digital interdependence. The first two papers leverage networking engineering datasets to understand how individual digital networks route data through the internet. The structure of international data flows creates new hubs in the digital economy, determines where the internet is fast and stable, dictates digital interdependence, and shapes global surveillance capacity. In the first paper, I theorize that digital interdependence creates security externalities and test whether international security influences how networks route data between borders. First, I find that military alliances are associated with new data pathways between states. I then show how conflict shapes the internet's structure through a combination of statistical tests and a case study of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the second paper I address how weaponized interdependence affects digital globalization and openness. Similar to economic openness, private actors shape digital openness to agreeing to send data directly to networks in other states. First, I find that the Snowden leaks had a null effect on net digital openness. Then, using a matching design, I show how networks in U.S. and U.K.-rival states digitally retrenched after the Snowden leaks, becoming more dependent on domestic networks and less on international networks to carry data. I explain how retrenchment facilitates digital repression, precipitating digital deglobalization both directly and indirectly. In the third paper I argue digital interdependence creates incentives to cooperate through state-building with targeted developmental assistance. I examine how states develop cybersecurity strategy either by delegating cyber responsibilities to political and security bureaucracies, or by delegating security responsibilities to information technology bureaucracies. I collect a new corpus of cybersecurity strategies mapping bureaucratic ownership over national cybersecurity strategy. Through statistical analyses, I demonstrate how external policy assistance promotes diffusion, but only among information technology bureaucracies and organizations. I argue this is because cyber expertise has administrative aspects external bodies want to promote and coercive dimensions they do not. This dissertation deepens our understanding of digital globalization, cybersecurity, weaponized interdependence, and the impact of international security on global networks.