Virtual Territories: War and the State in a Digital Age

FAIN: DOI-299560-24

Claremont McKenna College (Claremont, CA 91711-5929)
Jordan Branch (Project Director: October 2023 to present)

Research and writing of a scholarly monograph on the intersections of information technology, warfare, and state sovereignty with a focus on war planning, drone warfare, and digital mapping. 

This project explores how digital technologies of warfare are reshaping the sovereign state. Historically, states emerged out of institutional changes driven in large part by military competition. Today, however, the technologies of war—more than war itself—are driving state transformation. The resulting book will apply humanistic and social-science methods to examine three intersections between information technology, warfare, and statehood today: planning wars in the virtual domain of cybersecurity, fighting wars remotely through drones, and negotiating resolutions to conflicts through digital mapping. All three cases reveal how representations— conceptual, linguistic, and visual—are an important but largely overlooked element in the political consequences of technological change. Key representations are reshaping how territorial borders function, how new forms of interstate violence are deployed, and how states seek to govern new domains such as the internet.