(Roughly) Daily

Technological sovereignty is a nation’s ability to create, control, and own (or reliably source from reliable alllies) the technologies, infrastructure, and data essential to national security and economic growth.

Concerns with technological sovereignty date back to at least the 17th century (when, for instance, European mercantilist states banned the export of textile machinery to protect domestic monopolies and maintain a favorable balance of trade). They characterized much of the 20th century (as nations built up indigenous defense industries to ensure military independence).

In our 21st century, the one-two punch of the Trump tariffs and his attack on Iran (and the effective closure of the Straights of Hormuz), with the supply chain disruptions attendant on them, have raised the issue of technological sovereignty anew– and with a vengence. In our interconnected, interdependent– thus vulernable to disruption– world, China and the U.S. are in the lead; but experts project slow advance in national tech sovereignty over the next several years.

But this time around, Francesco Crespi and his co-authors argue, the Big Tech corporate monopolies/oligopolies in both China and the U.S. have emerged as even more important players (than their historical analogues have been). Their increasing dominance of private R&D, the increasing centrality of privately-controlled digital technology, their resultant control over knowledge, infrastructures, and key technologies such as telecoms, cloud computing, and AI. have made them central to nation’s futures, even as the Big Tech players (as corporations) have different imperatives.

Crespi, et al. unpack this state of play and propose a typology of technological sovereignty that takes into account the degree of technological dependence on Big Tech, the nature of the relationship between states and digital companies, and, consequently, a nation’s capacity to align the activities of these companies with its own strategic objectives. They summarize:

This paper has examined TS at a historical moment in which the control of critical technologies, infrastructures and knowledge is increasingly concentrated in a limited number of digital corporations. Its starting point was a conceptual tension in the existing debate. TS is commonly defined as the capacity of a state, or a federation of states, to access and provide critical technologies without incurring one-sided structural dependence (Edleret al., 2023). Yet this definition implicitly assumes that sovereignty is ultimately held and exercised by public authorities. The argument developed in the present paper is that this assumption has become increasingly problematic. In core domains such as cloud computing, AI, data infrastructures, satellite systems and digital services for defence, the effective control of technological capabilities is often exercised by private corporations whose interests, strategies and governance mechanisms only partly overlap with public objectives.

The empirical evidence discussed in the paper points to three connected transformations. First, the long-term retreat of public research and the expansion of intellectual property regimes have shifted the centre of gravity of innovation systems towards large private actors. The rise of ICT and platform-based business models has reinforced this tendency by allowing a small group of firms to accumulate data, proprietary knowledge, network advantages and infrastructural assets on a global scale. Second, the hierarchy of corporate R&D has changed substantially since the early 2000s. Digital firms, especially from the United States and China, now occupy the leading positions among global R&D spenders and dominate strategic technological areas such as AI, cloud and software ecosystems. Third, this concentration is infrastructural as much as technological. The control of data centres, cloud availability zones, platforms, operating systems and search engines gives Big Tech firms a systemic role in the functioning of economies, public administrations and security apparatuses (Coveri et al., 2025).

As a result, this concentration of techno-economic power modifies the relationship between the state and private capital. Public authorities no longer simply procure technologies from firms operating in competitive markets. In many cases, they depend on proprietary ecosystems that set standards, store data, provide computing capacity, update software and mediate access to essential digital functions. This produces a form of structural lock-in that is particularly severe in dual-use and security domains. The state can retain formal authority while losing part of the operational capacity required to exercise it. Under these conditions, TS cannot be evaluated only by measuring the presence of advanced technologies within a territory; it must also be assessed by asking who owns, controls and governs the infrastructures and knowledge through which those technologies are produced and deployed.

The analysis of the military-digital complex further strengthens this conclusion (Guarascio and Pianta, 2025). The digitalisation of warfare has made the capabilities of Big Tech increasingly indispensable for military and intelligence activities. Cloud infrastructures, AI systems, cyber-defence tools, satellite connectivity and battlefield data services have become essential components of contemporary security systems. At the same time, public procurement, defence contracts and battlefield experimentation reinforce the technological and market position of these firms. Hence, the resulting relationship is one of mutual dependence, but it is not necessarily symmetrical. Governments need access to digital infrastructures and capabilities that they often do not control internally, while Big Tech firms use military and security demand to consolidate their technological advantages, expand proprietary ecosystems and increase their bargaining power vis-a-vis public authorities. This gives concrete substance to the notion of privatised TS (Abels, 2026).

Building on this analytical and empirical framework, the paper proposes a typology for interpreting the notion of TS according to these structural transformations. In particular, it distinguishes between strong and weak technological sovereignty and between private-driven, public-driven and public-private-driven governance arrangements. This distinction matters because the same technological capability may have different economic and political implications depending on the distribution of control across states, domestic firms, foreign firms and hybrid institutional arrangements.

They conclude:

Taken together, these findings suggest that TS should not be assessed only by asking whether a country possesses advanced technologies. It should also be assessed by examining how control is distributed and governed across the state, domestic firms, foreign firms and hybrid governance arrangements. The broader implication is that private-driven TS is not neutral from a welfare standpoint. It may increase innovation speed and geopolitical capacity, but it can also redirect technological change towards rent extraction, militarisation and proprietary lock-in. On the opposite, public-driven technological sovereignty can better preserve public-good objectives, but public institutions should possess adequate technical, financial and organisational capabilities, while public-private technological sovereignty can work when public conditionality is strong; otherwise, it may degenerate into the socialisation of risk and the privatisation of control. A welfare-oriented strategy for TS should therefore prioritise public and collective control over essential technological infrastructures, strengthen public R&D and procurement capabilities, impose interoperability and open- standard requirements, and ensure that critical data, patents and infrastructures generated with public support remain accessible for public purposes.

The central policy question, therefore, is not simply how to become technologically sovereign, but how to prevent the pursuit of sovereignty from becoming a vehicle for the privatisation of the very capabilities on which welfare, democracy and long-term development depend. Technological sovereignty can strengthen resilience, strategic autonomy and collective welfare only if it is embedded in institutions capable of governing technological change in the public interest. Without such institutions, the language of sovereignty may legitimise new forms of dependency: dependence on domestic monopolies in some countries, dependence on foreign platforms in others, or dependence on public-private arrangements in which public authorities finance
strategic projects while private actors retain control over their future trajectories. A research and policy agenda on TS should therefore place ownership, governance and accountability at the centre of the analysis, alongside capabilities and geopolitical positioning.

Eminently worth reading in full: “Technological Sovereignty, Big Tech, and the Military-Digital Complex” via @ssrn.bsky.social. (Full PDF here.)

See also: “Technology sovereignty as an emerging frame for innovation policy. Defining rationales, ends and means” and “Reconciling open science with technological sovereignty“

And for a look at one of the moving parts of the puzzle, one that underlines the importance of Crespi’s closing suggestions: “Elon Musk and SpaceX’s Futurist Coup.”

(Image above: source)

* J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

###

As we develop deftly, we might might send connected birthday greetings to a man who was instrumental in the development the promise/threat of Big Tech as today we know it: Mark Weiser; he was born on this date in 1952. A comouter scientist and CTO of  Xerox PARC, he is is widely considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing, a term he coined in 1988, when he described a future in which personal computers would be replaced with tiny computers embedded in everyday “smart” devices and their connection via a network.

source