We often champion local ownership and sustainable solutions in digital development. But when it comes to digital sovereignty, we need to take a careful look at what we’re really advocating for – and what we might be sacrificing in the process.
Digital sovereignty has become a rallying cry across the globe. From India’s ambitious India Stack to the European Union’s push for tech independence, governments and regional bodies are increasingly seeking control over their digital destinies. On the surface, this seems like a natural evolution: why shouldn’t nations have autonomy over their digital infrastructure, data, and technological future?
The appeal is clear. Currently, a handful of American tech giants dominate virtually every layer of our digital world – from the semiconductors powering our devices to the cloud services storing our data, and from the operating systems we depend on to the applications we use daily.
This concentration of power raises legitimate concerns about privacy, innovation, and economic security. When a few companies control the digital infrastructure that powers modern society, they effectively hold the keys to our digital future.
Challenges of Digital Sovereignty
However, as digital development practitioners, we must look beyond the appealing rhetoric of sovereignty and examine the real-world implications of these policies. For example, Sean McDonald’s research reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of digital sovereignty. The very word “sovereignty” – whether defined as “supreme authority” or “self-governance” – becomes problematic when applied to digital systems.
In the modern world, achieving sovereignty paradoxically requires recognition from other sovereigns, creating a web of mutual dependencies that somewhat undermines the concept itself.
This becomes particularly evident in humanitarian contexts, where organizations must navigate multiple, competing claims of jurisdiction over data and digital operations. For instance, refugee and migration crises often create situations where humanitarian organizations must balance individual rights with state claims of sovereign authority over data. Collection of biometric data from Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh highlights these complexities.
The implementation of digital sovereignty takes various forms, each with its own challenges:
- Infrastructural Sovereignty: Nations claim control over digital infrastructure within their borders. Yet, this traditional approach to territorial jurisdiction increasingly depends on extra-national resources, such as foreign-owned data centers.
- Data Residency and Localization: Countries attempt to exert control through the physical location of data. While this appears straightforward, it raises questions about data use rights and cross-border data flows.
- Data Sovereignty: The assertion that data about a jurisdiction or its people should be controlled by that sovereign power, regardless of where the data physically resides. This creates complicated overlapping claims to authority.
- Self-Sovereignty: The concept of individual agency in digital systems, which, like national sovereignty, faces the paradox of requiring external recognition and enforcement to be meaningful.
Real-world examples expose the contradictions inherent in digital sovereignty claims. Russia, for instance, promotes its ability to maintain an independent domestic internet while simultaneously relying on Huawei for significant portions of its mobile and 5G infrastructure. This illustrates how claims of digital sovereignty often mask complex international dependencies.
Downsides of Digital Sovereignty
Russia and China also offer models of digital sovereignty we may find distasteful. Both countries have achieved significant digital independence, successfully nurturing domestic alternatives to Western tech platforms. VKontakte and TikTok demonstrate that it’s possible to build competitive local alternatives to Silicon Valley’s offerings. But at what cost?
These success stories come with heavy trade-offs: extensive state control, systematic censorship, and significant restrictions on individual rights. While these might be extreme examples, they illustrate a crucial point: digital sovereignty often walks hand in hand with digital authoritarianism.
Even in democratic contexts, the pursuit of digital sovereignty raises complex challenges. The European Union’s vision of a “EuroStack” – built on principles of openness, interoperability, transparency, and privacy – sounds ideal in theory. But can such a system realistically compete with the massive scale and network effects of established tech giants? More importantly, should it try to?
The question becomes even more pressing when we consider the potential for digital nationalism. State-controlled digital infrastructure, no matter how well-intentioned initially, can become a powerful tool for surveillance and control in the wrong hands. Imagine biometric identification systems being controlled by populist or authoritarian leaders. The risks aren’t theoretical – we’ve already seen examples of digital infrastructure being weaponized against vulnerable populations.
Misguided Ideals of AI Sovereignty
The growing push for “sovereign AI” plays into the digital sovereignty conversation through governmental artificial intelligence policy. While framed in the language of national autonomy and technological independence, sovereign AI policies paradoxically threaten to consolidate power in the hands of large technology corporations while leaving developing nations even further behind.
Sovereign AI sounds suspiciously like AI nationalism with more palatable terminology. Nations are racing to develop independent AI capabilities, citing concerns about data privacy, cultural preservation, and strategic autonomy. However, this framing is aspirational at best. True AI sovereignty is virtually impossible for most nations to achieve, given the massive requirements for training data, computing power, and technical talent.
The push for sovereign AI systems mainly benefits major technology corporations who have massive proprietary datasets, extensive computing infrastructure, and concentrated pools of AI talent. Nations mandating sovereign AI development must partner with these corporations, as they’re the only entities capable of delivering the required capabilities at scale.
This dynamic is particularly stark for Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). While many of these nations aspire to develop sovereign AI capabilities, they face insurmountable barriers. The computing infrastructure alone required for training large language models costs millions of dollars.
What emerges is a new form of digital colonialism, wrapped in the language of sovereignty. Nations pursuing sovereign AI will increasingly find themselves dependent on a small number of global technology corporations who will effectively become the new sovereigns, controlling the critical infrastructure of the AI age while operating across national boundaries.
Digital Resilience and Rights-Based Governance
For those of us working in digital development, these considerations should give us pause. Our projects often involve strengthening digital infrastructure in emerging economies. Are we inadvertently creating systems that could be misused? How do we balance the legitimate desire for digital autonomy with the need to protect human rights and foster innovation?
Perhaps we need to reframe the conversation. Instead of focusing on sovereignty in its traditional sense, we should advocate for digital resilience and rights-based governance. This means:
- Building interoperable systems that can work across borders while maintaining local control
- Developing strong governance frameworks that protect individual rights and prevent misuse
- Investing in digital literacy and citizen empowerment rather than just infrastructure
- Creating regional collaboration mechanisms that prevent digital balkanization while protecting local interests
The path forward likely lies in finding a middle ground. We can promote local ownership and control without fully decoupling from global digital ecosystems. This might mean focusing on specific critical infrastructure while maintaining international integration in other areas. It could involve developing strong data protection frameworks while keeping systems open and interoperable.
Our Role in Digital Sovereignty Discussions
For us, this means being more thoughtful about how we design and implement solutions. We need to ask difficult questions about the long-term implications of our work.
- Who really benefits from the systems we’re building?
- What safeguards need to be in place?
- How can we ensure that digital sovereignty doesn’t become a euphemism for digital control?
Our role is to help shape digital sovereignty implementation in ways that promote development while protecting rights and fostering innovation. This requires moving beyond simplistic narratives of technological independence toward a more nuanced understanding of digital governance in a connected world.
The future of digital development depends on getting this balance right. As we continue to build digital infrastructure across the globe, let’s ensure we’re creating systems that empower rather than control, that connect rather than isolate, and that protect rather than surveil.
