Algorithmic Knowledge and International Politics

Algorithmic knowledge is shaping our world. It offers the promise to automate complex tasks and garner new insights. Algorithmic knowledge informs how various actors understand and perform the international across different domains such as global finance, cultural consumption, mass-surveillance, warfare, or humanitarian action. This chapter discusses diverse forms in which algorithms produce knowledge, showing that these are highly political dimensions of the nexus between knowledge and international relations. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies, this chapters suggests approaching algorithmic knowledge as a composite practice rather than the mere output of complex calculations. Foregrounding how algorithmic knowledge is expected to function, we argue, allows us to understand world politics differently, and to see core International Relations (IR) concerns such as agency, among others, in a new light. Further research is required to come to terms with the ways in which algorithmic knowledge creates new and reinforces existing lines of inequality.