Programme

In an era of geopolitical fragmentation, ecological crisis, and technological acceleration, world politics is being fundamentally redefined. Power is exercised not only by states, international organizations, or legal agreements, but through the large-scale infrastructures that quietly organize everyday life – satellites, data platforms, algorithms, and sensor networks – that operate across borders and often beyond public oversight. This lecture argues that the contemporary turbulence in world politics cannot be understood without examining how these infrastructures reorganize authority, vulnerability, and control. Drawing on examples from smart agriculture, satellite communications, and recent conflicts, the talk indicates how systems originally developed for connectivity, efficiency, or environmental management have become central to ongoing geopolitical struggles. These infrastructures embed political decisions in technical standards, redistribute power between states and private corporations, and create new dependencies that can be exploited in moments of crisis. By situating these dynamics within debates on digital sovereignty, environmental politics, and global governance, this lecture invites a rethinking of world politics not simply as competition between states, but as a struggle over and between the material and digital architectures that mediate life on a planetary scale.