Replication Data for: Digital Interdependence and Power Politics

This paper presents the first empirical analysis demonstrating how international security influences global data flows. Firms exchange data traffic to achieve fast, stable, and affordable access to digital infrastructure, driving digital interdependence. While international security shapes economic interdependence, the mechanisms linking the two - sanctions, tariffs, boycotts, and contracts - create little risk for internet interconnection, which is commonly exempted from sanction and tariff regimes, not directly consumed by the public, and not enabled through traditional contracts. I theorize that international conflict generates cybersecurity externalities as state and non-state actors directly weaponize digital interdependence. Firms and their networks sit directly in the path of future conflicts. Leveraging network topographical measurements from computer engineering, I test whether conflict expectations increase states' mutual reliance to move data. I find robust evidence that power politics shapes digital interdependence and use additional analyses to argue that externalities, rather than state preferences, drive this process.

本文首次开展实证分析，揭示国际安全对全球数据流的影响机制。企业通过交换数据流量，以实现对数字基础设施（digital infrastructure）的快速、稳定且低成本接入，进而推动数字相互依存格局的形成。尽管国际安全塑造了经济相互依存关系，但连接二者的核心机制——制裁、关税、抵制与合约——却几乎不会对互联网互联（internet interconnection）构成风险：互联网互联通常豁免于制裁与关税体系，并非直接面向公众的消费品，且其实现并不依托传统合约。本文提出理论框架认为，当国家与非国家行为体直接将数字相互依存关系武器化时，国际冲突会催生网络安全外部性（cybersecurity externalities）。企业及其网络将直接置身于未来冲突的影响范围之内。本文借助计算机工程领域的网络拓扑测量方法，检验冲突预期是否会提升国家间的数据流动相互依赖程度。本文得到稳健的实证证据，表明强权政治塑造了数字相互依存格局，并通过补充分析进一步论证：驱动这一进程的是外部性效应，而非国家自身的偏好。