Platform Wars

Established in 2024

University of Antwerp

Belgium

Platform Wars

The digital platforms of tech giants like Alphabet-Google, Microsoft, and Amazon play a central role in recent societal transformations worldwide, impacting various aspects of our daily lives, social relations, business transactions, and government decisions. These companies, along with a rapidly growing defense tech sector centered around firms like Palantir Technologies, Anduril Industries, and Helsing AI, are also increasingly shaping how modern wars are 'thought', fought, and experienced. Our project introduces the concept of platform wars to analyze how platform companies and their software drive new ways of thinking about and organizing political violence. By focusing on the digital platform and its techno-economic logics, narrative foundations, and regulatory challenges, we examine how these emerging corporate-military networks create new and shared understandings of, practices related to, and regulations governing political violence. Covering various aspects of platform wars -from markets to data violence to regulation - and drawing on insights from fields such as Science and Technology Studies, critical security studies, critical legal studies, and critical political economy, the project offers innovative conceptual insights. It provides rich empirical evidence on the interactions between corporate and military actors and how they influence new technologies and practices of warfare.

↳ Our Domains

Unpacking the role of digital platforms in modern warfare.

Data violence

Data violence, or algorithmic violence, encompasses the nature and consequences of so-called mechanically enabled objective solutions designed to maintain (in)security infrastructure in modern data-driven societies. Conceptually, it highlights how the visions, values, and logics embedded in data, computing systems, and algorithmic frameworks enable, support, justify, and legitimize certain forms of violence, while also making some lives more visible, legible, and expendable than others. Data violence acts as an anticipatory and legitimizing rationale, being co-constitutive of the socio-technical frameworks of a large data economy. Its byproducts, like predictive targeting, as modes of knowledge and governance, prompt critical scholarly investigation to question how data infrastructures reproduce and justify regimes of surveillance, control, and inequality with ethical, epistemological, and political consequences. Our project explores how systems and platforms that enact these practices - often developed by, or in partnership with, private corporations - shape the conditions under which life-and-death decisions are made in modern warfare.

Platforms

Digital platforms are more than just software tools or neutral mediators of online activities and market places. From beginning to end, they actively shape how we communicate, what we consume, and what we think and talk about. Increasingly, the sociotechnical and political-economic logics behind this all-encompassing influence of digital platforms also extend into the military, reshaping private-military relations and, more broadly, modern warfare. Our project, therefore, explores how digital platforms and the companies that develop them shape military decision-making by organizing large amounts of data, standardizing strategic categories, and coordinating actors and commands. From cloud infrastructure to battlefield software, digital platforms transform entire domains through data integration and analysis, directly influencing what is considered a threat, who is targeted, and what is deemed a justified strike.

Markets

The global market for military technologies has been rapidly advancing in recent years. In the US, Big Tech and specialized defense firms like Palantir or Anduril are securing military contracts, private investment capital, and political influence at an impressive pace; in Europe, venture capital firms continue to increase their investments in defense tech startups year after year; and in China, under the ‘military-civil fusion’ doctrine, tech markets are increasingly merging with geopolitical and military ambitions. Consequently, the specific market mechanisms, corporate business models, and aggressive product marketing are playing an ever-increasing role in shaping how military technology is developed and deployed worldwide. Our project aims to understand the political-economic dynamics behind this trend and identify continuities and unique features in today’s defense markets and private-military relations.

Regulation

Regulation is often viewed as a legal matter - rules documented and enforced by governments. Current efforts to regulate new technologies and AI in warfare focus on ensuring their deployment aligns with existing international humanitarian law, often highlighting human oversight, transparency, and accountability. In fields like Science and Technology Studies, however, regulation is seen as something that occurs through system design, data management, and routine practices. To ‘regulate’ military technologies in this perspective means intervening in everyday practices and design choices that influence how these systems operate, what assumptions are embedded, and how these silently govern the use of these technologies. Our project explores both forms of regulation and examines how their interaction redefines what is considered lawful or legitimate in war.

↳ Our Team

Marijn Hoijtink

Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Antwerp

Marijn Hoijtink is Associate Professor in International Relations at the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp. Previously she was Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Her research and teaching focuses on military technology, militarism and the changing character of warfare. In her current research project, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), she examines military applications of artificial intelligence (AI), with a particular interest in how these technologies shape the way in which warfare is thought, fought and lived.

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Jasper van der Kist

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Antwerp

Jasper van der Kist is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. He completed his PhD at the University of Manchester. His research examines the impact of epistemological and technological developments on international protection and the conduct of war. It is situated at the nexus of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Critical Security, Migration and Border Studies. His work has been published in International Political Sociology, Citizenship Studies, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

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Fer Avar

PhD Researcher, University of Antwerp

Fer Avar is a PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp. She holds an MA in International Relations from Central European University, and an Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts and Sciences BA in Social Sciences from University College Roosevelt (Utrecht University). Her research focuses on non-Western innovation and technology hubs, mapping the global corporate-defense value chain and analyzing its implications for the international political order. Her theoretical work is situated at the nexus of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Critical Security Studies (CSS), and Political Anthropology.

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Martine Jaarsma

PhD researcher, University of Antwerp

Martine Jaarsma is a PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp. She holds a master degree in Conflict Studies and Human Rights as well as a master in Public International Law, both from Utrecht University. In her interdisciplinary research she will examine the impact that the daily practices related to the design and use of algorithmic technologies for aerial targeting have on the meaningful application of key principles of International Humantiarian Law.

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Laszlo Steinwärder

PhD Researcher, University of Antwerp

Laszlo Steinwärder holds a master's degree in Conflict Studies and Human Rights from Utrecht University. Before joining the PLATFORM WARS project, he worked as a Research Associate in Economic Geography at the University of Hamburg, where he explored the role of multinational corporations in uneven economic development. Building on his interests and previous experience, Laszlo's work in the project will explore the evolution of the military-platform complex and the political-economic dimension of an increasingly algorithmic warfare.

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About

↳ Our Domains

Data violence

Platforms

Markets

Regulation

↳ Our Team

↳ Milestones

Op-Ed: Platforms on the Frontline - The Rise of the Platform Model in Defense Tech

Reflections on our 'Platforms on the Frontline' workshop

PLATFORM WARS is growing

New FWO research project