Presentation long abstract

Industrial-scale bitcoin mining first took root in upstate New York in the late 2010s. As the sector grew and bitcoin’s valuation reached all-time highs, capitalists rushed to retrofit old factories, warehouses and power plants throughout the state. This put new pressures on the electrical grid, leading to community backlash and environmental activism. Some municipal and state governments placed moratoriums on the industry’s expansion. What does this mean for ordinary people and the environments in which they live and work? This paper examines the populist political ecologies of bitcoin mining in upstate New York. Bitcoin mines are layered on top of previous sites of extraction, often located in rural and suburban areas on the periphery where workers have not reaped the benefits of globalization. An economic right populism, promising resurgence through jobs and investment, has resonated in these communities. The proliferation of high-performance computing centres is one example of this populism crystallizing in the physical environment (Atkins 2022; Bosworth 2022). This also has repercussions for the climate movement, and there is an emergent left populism rejecting bitcoin in favour of a green transition. Both factions struggle to influence municipal, state and federal governments to implement their agenda. This paper draws on semistructured interviews with workers, business executives, state officials and community activists carried out from September 2024 – December 2025. Based on qualitative data derived from this fieldwork, I will demonstrate how this extractive industry is reshaping the economic landscape of upstate New York.

Presentation short abstract

State and corporate interest in AI has precipitated a resource rush to manufacture advanced semiconductors. I argue that the scramble to access and control semiconductor manufacturing is profoundly reshaping socio-material ecologies and forging new geopolitical alignments.

Presentation long abstract

The rapid rise of state and corporate interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has precipitated a global resource rush to manufacture advanced semiconductors, constituting a 'new frontier' for extraction that is reshaping geopolitical dynamics and socio-material ecologies. This rush is driven by states pursuing technological sovereignty, scrambling supply chains, and encouraging "onshoring" to control the entire semiconductor value chain, from raw materials to finished AI systems. Using a geopolitical ecology of technology lens, I argue that the scramble to access and control semiconductor manufacturing is profoundly reshaping socio-material ecologies and forging new geopolitical alignments. The socio-material dimensions of this industry extend from the mining of raw materials and the massive energy/water demands of data centers to the under-explored site of the fabrication plants ("fabs"). Fabs demand immense energy, ultra-pure water, and highly specialized labor, making them crucial, yet contested, sites of extraction for the political ecologies of data. Existing geopolitical ecology work often focuses on militarization. This paper expands the framing to include the AI-driven semiconductor rush, which is propelled by securitization and sovereignty discourses, echoing 20th-century arms races. The geopolitical tensions are stark, as the US and China call for embargoes, forcing hosting states—particularly in Southeast Asia—to balance competing interests. By tracing socio-material flows of global semiconductor manufacturing, this analysis sharpens our understanding of the power dynamics among state and non-state actors in this era of expanding AI, contributing to the dialogue on the intertwined stories of finance, land, and money at the heart of digital extraction.

Presentation short abstract

This case study in Thailand will offer analysis of the opportunities and costs of crypto’s rise in the region, including impacts for the environment and for “good”. It will contribute to debates on digital natures and the ‘hidden’ ways in which they are shaping our material lives.

Presentation long abstract

Dramatic increases in cryptocurrency’s adoption have engendered a myriad of impacts and opportunities. A growing body of research exists about the implications and unevenness of crypto’s rise, including the massive amount of resources on which it relies for its circulation, and the impacts locations from which those resources are extracted. In Southeast Asia, however, there is limited research critically assessing the opportunities and implications of crypto’s adoption. Here, cryptocurrency’s rise has been dramatic but uneven with tensions emerging among those who have adopted it. It is clear that crypto is extractive since it requires massive amounts of resources for its mining and relies on shadow labour to power it. Yet, cryptocurrencies like Tether and Ethereum also offer an alternative for social movement actors to do “good” in an increasingly authoritarian region, enabling them to bypass authoritarian governments’ financial controls to enact goals of social and environmental justice and to deliver aid to those in need. Adopters include non-governmental and aid organizations as well as Myanmar’s shadow government. This presentation will offer preliminary analysis of the opportunities and costs of crypto’s rise, including the implications for the environment and for “good”, through a grounded case study in Thailand and the Thai-Myanmar border mapping where, how and to what extent crypto is being used by a range of actors. At a broader level, this presentation will contribute to debates on digital natures, the rise of new technologies and the ‘hidden’ ways in which they are shaping our material lives.

Presentation short abstract

In Southeast Asia, the proliferation of the blue economy enables the expansion of novel crop insurance schemes and agri-technologies that make seaweed farmers investable entities by individualizing decision-making, disrupting production relationships, and constructing new frontiers of extraction.

Presentation long abstract

Transnational blue economy discourse is operationalized via projects of financialization in particular marine spaces by new assemblages of coastal actors, investors, and government officials, reflecting a shift in development practices to an agenda driven by the private sector. Research exploring the implications of blue economy discourse for coastal livelihoods is limited and fails to consider sectors beyond fisheries and the specific financialization apparatuses involved. In Southeast Asia, the proliferation of the blue economy has enabled the expansion of index-based crop insurance and cloud-based agri-technologies. This is the case with the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance's (ORRAA) pilot program in marginalized seaweed farming communities in the Philippines. Through a multi-year ethnographic study in Philippine seaweed farming communities, I investigated the importance of local socio-natural and production relationships, such as how farmers learn and choose how to farm as well as collaboratively experiment with new strategies. I found that the novel insurance scheme and digital agri-technologies of ORRAA's program disrupt and reformulate these relationships by individualizing decision-making processes to encourage farmers to work more ‘smartly’ and become investable and insurable entities. Draped in apolitical terms of community empowerment, these new technologies and their data represent the continuation and deepening of capital penetration into these coastal spaces, producing new frontiers of extraction and commodification. Farmers' autonomy is at stake as they are drawn into new relationships with global markets and their experiential knowledge and interests are subordinated to those of blue economy developers seeking to (re)territorialize the seas.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation examines public knowledge about the environmental impacts of GenAI. Through qualitative research using creative methods, the presentation unpacks how 'new frontiers' of technology reproduce extractive socio-ecological relations and mask resource-intensive infrastructures of GenAI.

Presentation long abstract

In this time of rampant misinformation and disinformation, it can be difficult for members of the public to come to grips with the environmental toll of generative AI and associated technologies. Critical AI literacy is therefore an important contributor to public awareness of the impacts of generative AI on environments and ecosystems. Very little research has been published on what the public currently knows about the environmental impacts of these emergent technologies, and how this knowledge may be affecting their decisions about use of these applications. To help meet this gap, this presentation shares findings from qualitative research undertaken in mid-2025. The conceptual underpinnings of the study brings together elemental and more-than-human theory with critical studies of AI and data centres. The use of creative methods in the workshops helped to conceptualise the supply chains of GenAI including data centres, e-waste, water and energy usage, while offering space for futuring beyond extractive logics. By bridging the interrelated political ecologies of extraction, GenAI and the environment, our findings offer some suggestions of how to achieve better public awareness of these emergent technologies. This growing public awareness is central to understanding how “new frontiers” of technology reproduce extractive socio-ecological relations and mask resource-intensive infrastructures of GenAI.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation presents results from my PhD on the geopolitics of crypto-mining in post-Soviet states, focusing on Kyrgyzstan. It shows how political actors divert scarce hydroelectric power for digital mining, generating value, opacity, local tensions and regional geopolitical frictions.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation will summarize the main results of my PhD thesis about the geopolitics of cryptocurrencies mining in post-soviet countries (Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), focusing on the Kyrgyzstan’s case. Energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining has been developed on significant energy surpluses in Russia and Kazakhstan, through local networks of actors who have privatized, or “captured,” the electricity generation infrastructures inherited from the Soviet era after the fall of the USSR. While digital mining has emerged as an alternative and opaque activity, its industrial-scale development has led the Russian authorities to integrate crypto mining into a strategic discourse of circumventing sanctions and ensuring the resilience of the national economy in times of war, while the Kazakhstani authorities have heavily regulated the activity, which they accuse of exacerbating the energy crisis the country experienced in 2021/2022. In Kyrgyzstan, a country with much lower electricity capacity, cryptocurrencies mining farms have been connected to public power plants with the direct involvement of government’s members. In this former Soviet republic, nearly 90% of the country's electricity is produced by hydroelectric dams, whose water resources are dwindling due to climate change have to be shared with other countries downstream, causing significant geopolitical tensions. After several fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan between 2022 and 2024, completed with OSInt investigations, the geopolitical methodology allows to understand how local authorities’ members are using their political power to divert electricity, while the population suffers significant restrictions due to its scarcity, in order to allow a minority of actors to extract value by mining cryptocurrencies.

Presentation short abstract

We investigate the materiality of bitcoin mining farms that operate behind-the-meter and explain how their proponents extend the life of fossil fuel sites. We focus on research in Canada and Argentina and argue that mining, as a “technology of the future”, is reliant on energy of the past.

Presentation long abstract

The demand for energy to power artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency mining and cloud services continues to increase exponentially. Governments and businesses focus on the security imperative of promoting these technologies as part of the economy of the future. In particular, Bitcoin mining has become increasingly onerous in terms of energy inputs required for its proof-of-work protocol. In this context, mining operators working front-of-meter (connected to the grid) have become deft at promoting the adaptability of its operations to help reduce the vulnerability of energy systems. Large mining farms are in addition promoting behind-the-meter operations (those that use energy produced on site for their operations instead of energy mediated through the grid), as a way to reduce climate harms by for example using flare emissions from oil sites. In this paper, we investigate the discourses and materiality of bitcoin mining farms that operate behind-the-meter and explain how their proponents extend the life of fossil fuel sites, in part as a “sustainable” path to mining. We focus on incipient primary research in Canada and Argentina and chart the connections of these operations in global north and global south contexts. The paper argues that cryptocurrency production, as a “technology of the future” is, despite its promotion as a tool for energy transition, reliant on and further locks in energy infrastructure of the present and past.

Presentation short abstract

This paper examines the role of digital outdoor recreation technologies in reshaping dynamics of property, access, and enclosure in rural America.

Presentation long abstract

The extension of digital technologies into rural landscapes warrants a rethinking of classic agrarian questions around property, access, and enclosure. This paper examines emerging Property Technologies (PropTech) that facilitate the sale of outdoor recreation opportunities, such as hunting, hiking, birdwatching, and camping, on private lands in the United States. These platforms mediate digitized connections between landowners and outdoor recreators, reframing long-standing socio-ecological relations as commodified transactions. Where wildlife in the U.S. is held in the public trust and access to private lands has historically relied on interpersonal relations of trust and reciprocity, PropTech introduces a “new” way of doing old things, embedding these practices within digital infrastructures and market logics. Focusing on hunting platforms as a key example, I explore the claims these technologies make, and how they are embraced or resisted on the ground. In doing so, I argue that PropTech disentangles wildlife-based recreation from its broader ecological and social contexts, enabling new forms of enclosure and extractivism. These technologies offer a critical lens to understand how digital infrastructures reconfigure property, commodification, and socio-ecological relations in rural landscapes.

Presentation short abstract

Planetary datafication generates an ‘infrastructural overload,’ as data centers remake infrastructural networks at a planetary scale, with infrastructures serving infrastructures rather than residents.

Presentation long abstract

This paper develops the notion of ‘infrastructural overload’ to better theorize how datafication—the collection, processing, storage and circulation of data across nearly all pillars of contemporary society—has become a new frontier in the expansion of planetary metabolisms that depend on escalating forms of resource extraction. The notion of ‘infrastructural overload’ brings attention to how data centers, as the material backbones of datafication, are emerging as critical new, often domineering, consumers of other infrastructural networks. It showcases a shift in how infrastructures relate to each other, and to the people they are supposed to serve, with critical infrastructures such as water and electricity increasingly primarily serving the needs of data infrastructures irrespective of the consequences for residents in surrounding areas. On the one hand, data centers can literally ‘overload’ existing grids due to their extractive demands. On the other hand, they ‘overload’ environments with the construction of new critical infrastructures that unevenly remake landscapes to fit their operational needs. Such ‘infrastructural overload’ is happening at a planetary scale, with data centers proliferating across all regions of the world giving rise to a new planetary datafication with unprecedented extractive dynamics that prioritize infrastructures for infrastructures with little regard for adjacent lives. Data centers are thus not only a new frontier for resource extraction, but a driver of fundamental changes in planetary flows of energy and materials.

Presentation short abstract

This paper examines the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu’s initiative to preserve statehood in the face of the effects of global warming by becoming a "digital nation". Based on ethnographic engagement in Tuvalu, it asks what sovereignty "on the cloud" may look like for Tuvaluans.

Presentation long abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on digital sovereignty in the context of the ecological crisis, drawing on ethnographic research in Tuvalu, a low-lying island nation in the Pacific. Reaching a maximum height of 4.5 meters above sea level, the archipelago is at risk of becoming entirely uninhabitable – which would make the country the first to physically lose its entire territory. In this scenario, Tuvalu’s government has launched an initiative designed to make it the “world’s first digital nation” with the goal of retaining state sovereignty in the absence of land. Technically, the initiative pivots around three components: the digitization of state bureaucracy, the uploading of a virtual rendering of the archipelago online, and the creation of a “Digital Ark” with digitized items of Tuvaluan culture and traditions. Analytically, however, Tuvalu’s project can be understood as a strategy to anchor the fate of the country’s institutional status to the interests of a wide range of state and non-state actors, including conventional regional geopolitical players – such as Australia, Taiwan, and Japan – and tech corporations – so far, Google and Starlink. Additionally, central to Tuvalu’s endeavor is the attempt to retain control over its 750,000 km² Exclusive Economic Zone, decoupling it from the continued existence of physical territory. Reflecting on the political economy of Tuvalu’s sovereignty, the paper focuses on the territorialization of the ocean entailed by Tuvalu’s project to deterritorialize statehood.