Unravelling Structural Domination in Cloud Computing

Recent republicanism-inspired literature has highlighted multiple ways in which contemporary digital infrastructure leads to new forms of social domination (e.g., Srnicek, 2016; Zuboff, 2019; Hoeksema, 2023; Aytac, 2024). So far, most analyses have looked primarily at social media platforms. Still, a growing body of literature is turning to the even more pervasive reliance on cloud computing (Lehdonvirta, 2022; Varoufakis, 2023). Cloud computing creates new forms of domination of its own as it requires users discharging control as they entrust their data to the cloud and they become dependent on the cloud computing services for further access to and use of them. Crucially, not only individual users but states are also increasingly migrating public services to the cloud (Kotliar & Gekker, 2024), raising important questions about the transformations of the social contract (Lyon, 2025). Against this background, this paper has a dual objective. First, it seeks to document the forms of domination of US based cloud providers in the EU. We distinguish between agential, structural and infrastructural forms of domination, and we try to identify the extent to which these forms of domination are inherent in the nature of cloud computing or contingent on specific features of the present property regime and ownership relations. Secondly, we analyse conceptions of alternative cloud regimes in the EU to determine whether and to what extent they would remove relations of domination: an EU-based cloud regime, a non-monopolistic cloud regime, a publicly owned cloud regime, reinforced data-ownership rights, a federated cloud, and the non-cloud. Unpacking current forms of cloud domination as well as the forms of domination involved in proposed alternatives, the paper suggests a portfolio of measures to reduce structural domination in the digital domain which can also be leveraged one by one.