Ms Cynthia Mehboob
Biography:
Cynthia Mehboob is a PhD Scholar based at the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. Her research interrogates the international security politics of submarine cables in the Indo-Pacific region.
Abstract:
This paper challenges the human-centric frameworks that drive the “regularised practices of exchange among discrete political units that ‘recognise’ each other to be independent” (Lawson, 2016), in the information age by introducing the concept of hyperobjects into discussions of global order. Hyperobjects are vast infrastructures like subsea data and power cables. Drawing on Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology and Timothy Morton’s hyperobject framework, this paper argues that these infrastructures are not passive enablers of connectivity but active forces that complicate governance and disrupt systemic hierarchies. Hyperobjects traverse exclusive economic zones and high seas, existing simultaneously in liminal and non-liminal spaces, making them neither fully governable nor entirely resistant to governance. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the ownership of subsea cables by the corporate actors who own them, such as Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon, who rely on these cables to control and profit from global information flows. However, the operations of these actors, known as hyperscalers, expose a paradox: they consolidate power over critical systems while remaining vulnerable to material contingencies and regulatory constraints. Governments seeking to temper hyperscalers’ power face resistance not only from corporate actors but also from the ecological demands and opacity of hyperobjects. This paper interrogates this paradox to highlight the role of materiality in the information age and to highlight the implications of neglecting the role of non-human actors in considering the drivers of global (dis)order, particularly in the context of transnational infrastructures like subsea cables.