Our Program

Platform companies such as Alphabet-Google, Meta en Amazon are central to recent transformations affecting our social relations, business transactions and governmental decisions. These same companies are also increasingly affecting how our wars are 'thought', fought and lived. However, their exact role within warfare remains poorly understood. This project introduces the novel concept of "platform wars" to theorize how platform companies propel new ways of thinking about and organizing political violence. Through the conceptualization of platform wars, we investigate how these emerging corporate-military networks produce new and shared ways of (i)thinking about, (ii) practicing, and (iii) regulating political violence. The Platform Wars project produces innovative conceptual knowledge, but it also delivers rich empirical knowledge on the social interactions between corporate and military actors, and how these shape new technologies and practices of war fighting. This knowledge is highly relevant from a political and ethical-legal perspective and crucial in order to intervene in the future regulation of these technologies and their use in armed conflict.