I remember reading 1984, shaking my head laughing and thinking “that will never happen”. I also remember watching the movie ‘Idiocracy’ and laughing about how far-fetched that concept was. Never thought I would be wrong about both, but here we are.
Digital Sovereignty is a concept that parties must have
sovereignty over their own digital data and local physical and jurisdictional
control to ward off Black Swan events.
This can be applied on an individual basis or toward nation states — the bottom
line being that digital sovereignty involves consideration of how data, and by
its extension digital assets are treated.
Question: How many people here have read, or actually read the Terms and
Conditions when using any smart phone, or accepting the End User Licensing
Agreement (EULA)/ Terms of Service(s) (TOS) for your digital devices/ services?
Answer: Not all do that. Possibly none. I can
guarantee you that if you were to take the time to go through the EULA or TOS
and understood the implications and impact to you in layman terms, you would
not touch the devices or use the digital services (example: free services such
as Gmail, Outlook, etc.) ever again.
Digital sovereignty is an epochal
struggle not only of all against all, but also of anyone allied with anyone,
with variable alliances changing according to interests and opportunities. The
most visible clash is between companies and states, and it is asymmetric.
On one hand, companies design, produce, sell, and maintain the digital spheres
of our very lives – at an individual as well as corporate level.
On the other hand, nation states have the power to regulate these very digital
spaces.
It is in context of this very same asymmetric equation that nation states
sometimes use their domestic companies for political ends. The US Government and ByteDance saga is just one example amongst many.
The ask for Digital Sovereignty also raises more questions
- 1. Are Cloud data location and
jurisdiction policies and the tech to make it happen so too hard?
Answer - No. It is all about having the upper hand in contracting. - Foreign litigants,
governments and their agencies have a much easier time getting access to your
data, or access to it if the control mechanism is within their jurisdiction.
- The 2018 CLOUD Act passed by the US Government changes the game totally.
Have you considered the impact of this legislation to you as an individual or
as an organization?
- Cloud contracts are on terms unfavorable to customers/ users, and silent
on key issues.
Answer - CONTRACTS: A particular Global Tech limits their liability towards you (consumer or Enterprise) to US$ 10,000 only in case of a data breach or such. In light of Solarwinds and FireEye software supply chain compromises, this is going to be untenable going forward.
- Risk Management, Corporate Governance for outsourced Tech dependencies
and Cyber Insurance liabilities are passed on to you, and not owned up by the
Service Providers themselves.
-
What can you do if you don’t have Digital Sovereignty over the Digital
Space? What are the potential risks?
Answer - The unilateral actions by Facebook, Twitter and another US
based CSP against a sitting US president should be a sign that Big Tech is too
powerful and capable of interfering in the functioning of democratic and
sovereign institutions, above and beyond the norms of diplomacy, negotiation
and global/ international business and free trade constructs.
As such, Big Tech cannot claim to be a publisher as well as an arbiter of
speech when it suits them. Facebook unilaterally
shutting down access to news services in Australia is another example of the
power concentration Big-Tech exerts when left unchecked, and when a sovereign
country has no alternative options in case they need to disconnect and fall
back within their own tech ecosystem.
Technology and Geopolitics
We should be actively working toward building a resilient, sovereign, home grown Tech Stack, while ensuring we are not beholden to the whims and fancies of big tech based on the 3 Pillars of Digital Sovereignty.
Politics, of course, plays an important role in all these contexts. Our aspirations for ‘digital sovereignty’ should reflect the extent to which we feel we are getting unwittingly caught in the US-China technology competition.
The pursuit of greater technological independence will be an interesting litmus test for the geo-political ambitions of our aspirational goals.
