The „Tech War“ project continues apace. While we are busy coding policy documents (first Chinese, now American), we have compiled our theoretical approach, our research design and some initial results for a conference paper that we will present at the 2023 Swiss Network of International Studies Biennial Conference and the Open Conference of the IR Section of the German Association for Political Science next week. Here’s our conclusions so far. The three „technopoles“ (China, the US, the EU) attach a great importance to AI and their own R&D capabilities. This is evidenced not just by a multitude of statements but…
Schlagwort: Conflict Research
Back in February, we began work on the „Narratives of the Tech War“ project – we being Kai Oppermann and Jakob Landwehr-Matlé of the Technical University of Chemnitz as well as myself. Funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research, we conduct a pilot study into how narratives of technological leadership in Artificial Intelligence influence and are influenced by great-power relations. We compare policy narratives in China, the US, and the EU to see how these actors construct their narratives, how these narratives shape policy, and how actors react to each other’s narratives. Creating the codebook Narrative research is closely…
Last November I participated in the DVPW „Zeitenwende“ conference. As expected, the focus was less on understanding the Russian invasion of Ukraine but rather what this invasion meant for German IR. Anyway, I contributed a short paper on how to analyze the war through a spatial lens – download here and a blogpost here. The DVPW has also put up a recording of the panel „The (New) Materialities of War“ – which also featured some really interesting presentations besides mine – on Youtube.
In February 2023, US forces shot down a total of four flying objects over North America in quick succession. Since much is unclear so far, here are the known facts (as of 20 Feb 2023) first: # Altitude Date Crash site Aftermath 1 18,000m 4 Feb 2023 US territorial waters off North Carolina Debris was salvaged 2 12,000m 10 Feb 2023 US territorial waters off the North coast of Alaska Arctic conditions preclude salvage 3 12,000m 11 Feb 2023 Yukon Territory, Canada Crash site in mountainous terrain, debris not found 4 6,000m 12 Feb 2023 Lake Huron, Canada Crash site…
I’m pleased to announce the start of a new research project. Following up on our successful project on digital sovereignty narratives in Germany, Kai Oppermann and I want to extend this line of inquiry. Our initial project was mainly concerned with reconstructing how actors speak of digital sovereignty. We now move to a part of the question why they do it, focusing on the idea that there is some kind of international „tech war“ or innovation race going on. We are very grateful to the German Foundation for Peace Research for funding a one-year pilot project which we will use to collect…
There is the fundamental problem in space of what should count as arms at all. Due to the physical conditions in orbit, where every object moves with enormous kinetic energy, almost all space technology is considered inherently dual-use. This has always complicated arms control discussions, so that in recent years there have been increasing attempts to talk less about weapons and more about certain types of behaviour that are considered threatening (e.g. unannounced approaches), for example in the Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities put forward by the EU in 2008. Arms control discussions have been deadlocked for a…
On Monday (19 December 2022), I will give a talk at the University of Marburg’s Center for Conflict Studies as part of its Winter Colloquium series. It’s a hybrid event, so if you want to sign up, make sure to register! I will, of course, make the trip to beautiful Marburg to see the new buildings that the Faculty now inhabits. The topic is „Practicing Territory and Community in Digital Spaces“. This brings together several long-standing interests of mine: territory as practice as well as the spatiality of the digital. But, this being a conflict research institute, I will mainly…
I was at a training conference for Bundeswehr officers today. The overall topic was the future of NATO but my own talk was focused on civil wars and their implications for the international community. That meant I was revisiting a topic that I used to work on quite a bit up until about a decade ago. And, given how much the world has changed since then, it felt a little anachronistic. It’s still a relevant topic but the international agenda has clearly shifted away from it. The Rise of Internationalized Intrastate Conflicts Anyway, the occasion prompted me to look at…