The Arctic Institute is pleased to announce that we are accepting abstracts for the 2027 Series on Arctic Strategic Stability in the Context of Dual-Use Infrastructure: Space, Compute and the Emerging Infrastructure of Strategic Competition
The Arctic’s strategic significance has long been understood through geography; its proximity to Russia and North America, its transpolar sea routes, its natural resources, and the military bases and assets positioned across it. A newer layer is now emerging alongside these. Satellite ground stations, hyperscale data centres, supercomputing facilities and fibre-optic networks are all taking shape in the region, drawn by its remoteness, low temperatures, abundant renewable energy and favourable orbital geometry. Individually, none of these developments is entirely new. What is new is their growing functional, physical and geographic entanglement, and the fact that civilian and military users increasingly rely on the same infrastructure.
This call for papers invites contributions that treat this emerging infrastructure as a question for Arctic strategic stability. The series starts from the premise that the region’s strategic significance rests not only on what it connects or contains, but increasingly on what it hosts. Data centres, ground stations, and fiberoptic networks should be understood as one interconnected system rather than as separate critical-infrastructure sectors. Yet their governance remains sectoral, and their dual-use character makes it increasingly difficult for states to distinguish civilian from military functions, to read the intentions behind a disruption, or to predict its consequences. Contributions need not assume that Arctic facilities are likely targets, or that disruption would automatically destabilise; the task is to examine the analytical problem and its policy implications. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary and policy-oriented submissions that combine strategic-stability scholarship with space and telecommunications policy, energy security, transport, and critical-infrastructure governance. Contributors can submit a commentary (a 700–800 word short opinion or analysis piece), an article (a 1,500–3,000 word analysis), or a multimedia contribution (we have published videos, audio, infographics, and poetry).
Key questions include but are not limited to:
If you are interested in contributing, please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words as well as a short paragraph about yourself to the series editor ([email protected]) by February 1, 2027, 23:59 EST. Abstracts received after the deadline will be considered, but will not be given priority.
You can read more about the Arctic Institute here at www.thearcticinstitute.org and specifically about submissions here. In addition to our web-based publications, we have a weekly newsletter of over 5,000 subscribers from 90+ countries and average hundreds of thousands of web-publication hits each month.