Invited by the Advanced Network Technology Department of CNIC, Prof. Kavé Salamatian from University of Savoie delivered a talk on August 23, 2019. 

Kavé Salamatian is a full professor of computer science at University of Savoie. His main areas of researches has been Internet measurement and modeling, network security, and networking information theory. He was previously reader at Lancaster University, UK and associate professor at University Pierre et Marie Curie. Kavé has graduated in 1998 from Paris SUD-Orsay university where he worked on joint source channel coding applied to multimedia transmission over Internet for his Phd. In a former life, he graduated with a MBA, and worked on market floor as a risk analyst and enjoyed being an urban traffic modeler for some years. He has been the recipient of visiting professor fellowship of CAS and CAS President’s International Fellowship Initiative. He is the authors of more than 150 papers.

Prof. Salamatian's talk focused on understanding cybergeography: visualizing how cyberspace and geopolitics interact. The interplay of cyber-physical infrastructures and how it is leveraged by governments and economic players is complex and yet has a strong influence on world power.  Although cyberspace is a virtual world, it is firmly rooted in physical network infrastructure. In this talk, the authors discuss how Internet infrastructure (e.g. the BGP protocol, routing policies, internet service providers) influences the distribution of power via the way that information is exchanged and flows through cyberspace. The talk also describes how the addition of new infrastructure artifacts can transform strategic thinking. During the past two decades, new actors have emerged that built their power (i.e., their ability to impact both the real world and cyberspace), by gathering diverse types of information, and by projecting their "cyber-power " to dispute to each others "cyber-territories ". The authors provide examples of this competition, including some from the areas of interest in the "Belts and Road Initiative", and shed some light on how this evolving interaction loop influences and shapes the contemporary world’s economics, politics and geography.