The internet is not only a place for sharing and interconnection, it is also a site of conflict, competition, and geopolitics. This course takes the students deep into the importance of security and protection to the digital infrastructures that support all internet traffic, especially the subsea cables and data centers that form the network’s backbone. While there have been many courses on cybersecurity, this class is the first to focus on the security of hard infrastructure, issues of regulating digital infrastructure, and pathways to ensuring internet resilience. It will zoom into the security features of facilities, and zoom out to global geopolitical struggles. Across all components of this physical architecture, students will learn the strengths and vulnerabilities of contemporary internet infrastructure, and learn strategies for ensuring its protection. Central questions of this course include: Whose responsibility is it to protect the internet’s physical layer? How is this architecture affected by governments and national interest? What would make a truly resilient internet infrastructure?
This multi-disciplinary course will be rigorous, but requires no previous training in digital infrastructure or technology. As is true across the Berkeley Center for New Media’s digital infrastructure curriculum, the impact and significance of artificial intelligence, sustainability, and energy will be critical topics. In this course, students will learn how AI’s infrastructure and sustainable development face geopolitical challenges, including: resistance to the construction of AI-data centers and energy-intensive hyperscale data centers; laying subsea cables between nations in conflict; and the impact of climate change on the internet.
MODULE 01: What is a Secure Digital Infrastructure?
MODULE 02: Securing the Facility: Protection of Data Centers and Cable Landing Stations
MODULE 03: Securing the Route: Cable Protection Fundamentals
MODULE 04: Geopolitics of Digital Infrastructures: National Security, Data Sovereignty, and International Politics
MODULE 05: Environmental Risk: From Community Contestation to Climate Change
MODULE 06: What is a Resilient System?
Online Format:
All lecture and discussion content will be scheduled synchronously so that students will have the opportunity to ask questions, contribute ideas, and hear from guest lecturers. It will also be recorded and made available for any student that needs to take the course asynchronously.
Taught by Joseph B. Keller
Joseph B. Keller is a neuroscientist-turned global technology policy researcher and lecturer. His research interests explore emerging technologies and their governance implications for security, geopolitics, and the environment, including a focus on subsea cable security challenges and the environmental impacts of AI research and development.
Previously, Keller was a visiting fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. At the American Psychological Association, he was a senior director of congressional and federal relations, managing a broad advocacy portfolio. Prior to the association, he served as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. National Science Foundation with AAAS, facilitating international grant-making programs related to advanced computing. He has also worked as an executive search consultant in the civic sector.
Keller holds degrees from UMBC, Boston University, and a doctorate in cognitive science from MIT. Currently, he serves as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University, a Nonresident Fellow with the Brookings Institution's AI and Emerging Technology Initiative, and was an AI Fellow with the Horizon Institute for Public Service.