Global infrastructures of trust: Cryptography and the emergence of non-sovereign authority structures in cyberspace

Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) are transnational institutions organized around a collectively recognized trust hierarchy. A product of the commercialization and de-militarization of digital cryptography, they play a critical role in protecting the security and integrity of online communications. This paper investigates the formation of PKIs from the 1990s to the present, showing how they diverged from the hierarchical structure of nation-state sovereignty. Despite early efforts by states to bring encryption technology into conformity with existing governmental power hierarchies, private actors supplanted state actors in the formation of PKIs. Understanding this divergence contributes to our understanding of how digitization has altered the global political economy and illuminates current debates over 'digital sovereignty' (or the lack thereof).