Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state
This article explores how the volumetric characteristics of cloud computing can create new expressions of territoriality, which in turn can reveal new axes of vulnerability and threat. Whilst recent work in political geography has sought to “locate” the cloud through analyses of data centre geograph...
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sg-smu-ink.cis_research-12142024-11-01T07:01:00Z Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state WOODS, Orlando BUNNELL, Tim KONG, Lily This article explores how the volumetric characteristics of cloud computing can create new expressions of territoriality, which in turn can reveal new axes of vulnerability and threat. Whilst recent work in political geography has sought to “locate” the cloud through analyses of data centre geographies and data-driven processes of smart urbanism, we look beyond the material plane and consider the amorphous territorialities of voluminous data instead. As much as these data are acted on by the legal-regulatory mechanics of the state in a bid to territorialise them, so too do these data volumes serve to cloud, and thus obscure, territory. Processes of territorialising and clouding exist in a state of dialectical tension with each other, and reveal the volumetric vulnerabilities of cloud computing. We validate these theoretical claims through an analysis of in-depth interviews with senior stakeholders in Singapore's Smart Nation initiative. In Singapore, defending the city is equivalent to defending the nation, which causes the military to play an outsized role in securing the city-state. We consider how the attack surface of the city becomes a more voluminous construct with cloud computing, how strategies of geofencing attempt to secure the cloud, and how these processes reveal the increasingly militarised conjunctures of everyday life. Overall, these insights reveal a need for political geography to continually evolve its theoretical premises in line with the rapid digitalisation of the world. 2024-09-01T07:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/215 info:doi/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103211 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1214/viewcontent/TerritorialisingCloudorCloudingTerritory_sv.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection College of Integrative Studies eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Cloud computing Territory Data volumes Attack surfaces Datastructures Military Singapore Asian Studies Geography Urban Studies |
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Cloud computing Territory Data volumes Attack surfaces Datastructures Military Singapore Asian Studies Geography Urban Studies WOODS, Orlando BUNNELL, Tim KONG, Lily Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state |
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This article explores how the volumetric characteristics of cloud computing can create new expressions of territoriality, which in turn can reveal new axes of vulnerability and threat. Whilst recent work in political geography has sought to “locate” the cloud through analyses of data centre geographies and data-driven processes of smart urbanism, we look beyond the material plane and consider the amorphous territorialities of voluminous data instead. As much as these data are acted on by the legal-regulatory mechanics of the state in a bid to territorialise them, so too do these data volumes serve to cloud, and thus obscure, territory. Processes of territorialising and clouding exist in a state of dialectical tension with each other, and reveal the volumetric vulnerabilities of cloud computing. We validate these theoretical claims through an analysis of in-depth interviews with senior stakeholders in Singapore's Smart Nation initiative. In Singapore, defending the city is equivalent to defending the nation, which causes the military to play an outsized role in securing the city-state. We consider how the attack surface of the city becomes a more voluminous construct with cloud computing, how strategies of geofencing attempt to secure the cloud, and how these processes reveal the increasingly militarised conjunctures of everyday life. Overall, these insights reveal a need for political geography to continually evolve its theoretical premises in line with the rapid digitalisation of the world. |
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text |
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WOODS, Orlando BUNNELL, Tim KONG, Lily |
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WOODS, Orlando BUNNELL, Tim KONG, Lily |
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WOODS, Orlando |
title |
Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state |
title_short |
Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state |
title_full |
Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state |
title_fullStr |
Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state |
title_full_unstemmed |
Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore's smart city-state |
title_sort |
territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of singapore's smart city-state |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University |
publishDate |
2024 |
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https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/215 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1214/viewcontent/TerritorialisingCloudorCloudingTerritory_sv.pdf |
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