The challenge of the cloud: between transnational capitalism and data sovereignty

ABSTRACT The rise of transnational cloud platforms poses challenges to cross-border data governance, an understudied area in mainstream global Internet governance studies. Another gap is a critical political economy approach that contributes to a more historical, contextual and dialectical understanding of policy frameworks and their enacting actors, the state. Filling these gaps, this article uses the cloud computing development in China as an example to unpack the geopolitics of the cloud and tensions in data governance models. It argues that the state, neither obsolete nor irrelevant, is the core architect of the varying approaches that reflect the changing dynamics in information geopolitics.