In a world of geopolitical tension, infrastructure vulnerabilities, rising cyber risk and increasingly concentrated global technology supply chains, that question has become even more critical. It goes to the heart of digital sovereignty, which is not only defined by where technology sits, but by who controls it and whether it can be relied upon when it matters most.
Amid global turbulence and the rise of AI, this creates a palpable tension. The instinct is often to build walls. But this fortress mentality is a strategic misstep. Walls can protect, but they also isolate nations and businesses from the global innovation required to remain resilient and competitive.
Global technology, local control
Today, “digital sovereignty” is not about isolation. It is not an “either-or” decision between local and global technology. Nor is it a binary choice between having complete control or accessing the best capabilities. Having true sovereignty means nobody can turn off your critical systems.
Sovereignty is an “and.” Organizations can use many services from other countries while ensuring critical capabilities are controlled locally. Rather than abandoning global technologies, governments and businesses must make choices that preserve autonomy where it matters most: in public services, regulated industries and strategic sectors.
Sovereign by design
This is already playing out in practice. In regions affected by conflict, companies are increasingly relocating data, rerouting networks and operating across more distributed environments. In these conditions, the biggest risk is not system downtime, but disconnection. Systems may remain operational, but nothing can reach them, meaning critical flows and business processes will break down.
Despite severe challenges, resilience, sovereignty and competitiveness are still achievable when organizations meet four critical conditions. The first is using open, hybrid technologies. Lock yourself into one cloud platform and you have a dependency; operate across multiple providers and you have options. Hybrid cloud platforms built on open standards mean companies can switch providers without starting from scratch. This strategy also allows enterprises to benefit from the scale of global platforms while hosting sensitive data in-country to comply with local laws. Hybrid holds data securely and resiliently across environments, from private to public and across borders when needed – helping organizations to maintain continuity during disruption.
The second is software that is sovereign by design. Organizations can now run AI under their own authority, within a defined jurisdiction, with auditable controls – regardless of geopolitical events. This is not a layer that can be taken away; it is a fully air-gapped environment that can operate independently of any global cloud platform when needed.
A third, crucial component of sovereignty is data access that is controlled by the customer, not the cloud provider. “Keep-your-own-key” encryption means providers physically cannot decrypt data without customer permission, under any circumstances.
The fourth pillar is capability investment versus technology consumption. Sovereignty is not about who builds the data centres. It’s about who has the engineers and researchers who can actually deploy the systems, adapt them, and make them work for local needs. Buy the hardware without the capability and you’ve simply imported an expensive black box.
This is not theoretical, our clients are already putting it into practice. In banking, BNP Paribas has built a flexible hybrid architecture that can move workloads between their own data centres and the cloud on demand, to comply with local regulations. Riyadh Air is developing an AI-ready structure that allows them to scale or switch systems without stalling innovation. In Asia-Pacific, companies such as Telkom Indonesia have built an open, interoperable sovereign platform on hybrid architecture to support local businesses. AI needs aligned to local data residency requirements.
Looking ahead
Sovereignty is not exclusive to AI and cloud. The need for resilience extends across every area of technology, from quantum computing and chips to satellites. As enterprises focus on deploying proven tools like AI and automation today, they must also build the research, security posture, and future‑ready infrastructure needed for what comes next, from quantum-safe networks to next-generation compute.
The importance of sovereignty has risen alongside technology’s growing role in national resilience. Governments and businesses face the opportunity of AI productivity gains worth trillions on one hand, and the challenge of maintaining control where it matters on the other. The false perception of sovereignty as a binary choice between progress and independence threatens both pursuits. Enterprises want the upside of global scale alongside the assurances of sovereignty and control. The reality is that with the right design choices, they can have both, ultimately building systems that are sovereign and resilient by design.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
