In October 2013, German media was abuzz with sensational reports detailing the infamous “NSA Affair.” These revelations stemmed from classified files leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA analyst turned whistleblower. The documents exposed the covert surveillance activities conducted by the United States intelligence agency on German soil. Among the most alarming claims was that the top floor of the US Embassy in Berlin in Pariser Platz overlooking the Reichstag and Brandenburger Tor housed sophisticated equipment that eavesdropped on the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s calls.
The uproar caused by these disclosures reverberated throughout the European Union. The incident underscored the vulnerability of national communications to foreign surveillance and ignited widespread debate over digital security and independence. This debate was further expressed at the Re: publica conference in 2022, where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphatically stated, “We must strengthen our digital sovereignty.” His remarks echoed the concerns voiced two years earlier by French President Emmanuel Macron, who insisted, “What we now need in every sector, for every innovation, are European solutions and European sovereignty.”
With the explosion of broadband internet, social media companies, and their seamless communications, data, and intelligence possibilities, “Digital Sovereignty” has become a high-value political phrase. Though the words permeate discussions in national security policy meetings and among internet activists and digital evangelists, they are often invoked ambiguously and inconsistently, diminishing their true scope and meaning.
The ongoing debates regarding digital sovereignty can be distilled into a few fundamental questions: What necessitates digital sovereignty? By what means can digital sovereignty be achieved? Who is supposed to become digitally sovereign? Finally, is it possible for any nation or bloc to achieve total digital sovereignty?
The digital technology bundle consists of three main layers. The first is the communications infrastructure—hardware and products like fibre cables, towers, sensors, smartphones, and a data centre. The second is the software layer, including code, applications, and algorithms. The third is the data layer, covering information generation, processing, use, and essential practices such as security, data flow, and standards and protocols necessary for disseminating, storing, managing, and analysing data. Each technology layer is associated with distinct value and service chain activities, including R&D, manufacturing, commercialisation, operations, and the last-mile end-user ecosystems.
A central question in the debate on digital sovereignty is whether achieving true digital sovereignty requires self-sufficiency across all three layers and throughout the entire value chain—both inbound and outbound. Will such complexity and scale enable genuine digital independence in the modern world? For example, Europe has no adequate natural resources of rare earth materials required for producing semiconductors and microchips. The EU has to depend on foreign suppliers through imports. Similarly, US tech giants dominate cloud computing technologies and solutions, which are exported to Europe and other parts of the world.
The semiconductor and microchip industry exemplifies the complex and globally interconnected nature of modern technology supply chains. Accomplishing digital sovereignty in toto within this physical layer is economically infeasible due to the widespread dispersion of resources and manufacturing processes across global locations.
Microchips serve as the nerve centre of the modern microelectronic advancements, powering a diverse array of highly sophisticated devices and precision systems. These range from smartphones, computers, and televisions to connected cars, industrial robots, biomedical equipment, and cutting-edge military weaponry.
Globalisation and internationalisation of production have shaped the semiconductor industry, creating a specialised value chain based on the principle of comparative advantage. Silicon Valley firms like AMD, Qualcomm, and Broadcom focus on high-value design and software, while manufacturing is mainly done by large semiconductor foundries such as TSMC, which produces high-performance logic and memory chips. This global distribution of core competencies and production highlights the inherent challenges in pursuing digital independence.
The early days of social media companies conjured up unprecedented optimism as democratic and decentralised digital platforms enabled seamless connectivity between individuals and communities worldwide. But their explosive growth in the last few decades, capitalising on “network effects”, has transformed them into cash-rich tech behemoths, wielding considerable political clout and lobbying power. In the relentless pursuit of profits, the spirit of connection was lost, reducing these platforms into a transnational “Economy of Algorithms” that has radically redefined and shaped people’s lives, businesses, perceptions and influenced future.
The Internet was engendered by collaborative open-source software and open standards. Several digital products, such as the Apple II—the precursor to the hugely successful Macintosh computers—were supplanted with pre-programmed devices using proprietary code, such as the Apple iPhone.
The digital universe of products has been ruefully reduced to “Walled Gardens.” Over time, social media apps on smartphones have regressed into techno-feudalism, where complex engagement algorithms designed to maximise user attention have engendered an “Attention Economy.”
Social media companies such as Facebook deprioritise posts with outgoing links and facilitate the formation of “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles” through psychographic segmentation and grouping individuals and communities with shared worldviews, political affiliations, and social interests. This segmentation intensifies the homogeneity of user experiences and interactions. The more time users spend on a platform, the more these companies add to their capital stock, highlighting the underlying economic incentives that drive platform design and content curation.
The digital sovereignty of users—pertinent to free speech and deliberation—is thwarted by pushing content that appeals to emotion rather than reason. This strategy significantly restricts the ability of users to engage in open, diverse, and critical exchanges of ideas.
Such design choices by social media companies foster an environment where hate speech and xenophobia are not only permitted but, at times, amplified. Additionally, the triad of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (MDM) is allowed to proliferate, effectively trapping users within the confines of the platform’s ecosystem. As a result, users become veritable prisoners to these digital spaces, their exposure and perspectives carefully curated and manipulated.
The consequences of these practices are far-reaching. The prevalence of mindless “doomscrolling”—the compulsive consumption of harmful, sensational content—has become a common byproduct. Moreover, curated posts and algorithm-driven feeds lead to the creation and spread of spiteful user-generated content. This process is further exacerbated by the phenomenon of “Selective Exposure Bias,” wherein users are routinely presented with content that confirms their existing beliefs while limiting exposure to diverse viewpoints.
The intellectually limiting “Confirmation Bias” runs amok on social media. By limiting the diversity of content and the opportunity for eclectic worldviews, users are inadvertently drawn into a vicious web of propaganda and deceit, thus weakening their intellect and diminishing their critical faculties over time.
Individual digital sovereignty is increasingly threatened by digital platforms’ extensive collection of psychographic data—including demographics, interests, consumer behaviours, and personality traits—which are subjected to sophisticated analysis and enrichment processes, transforming them into “smart data.” This data is subsequently used for highly targeted, programmatic and look-alike advertising. Facebook feeds have become dominated by ads, mostly overshadowing posts from friends and followers.
The constant surveillance to which users are exposed forms the backbone of what Harvard economist Shoshana Zuboff describes as “Surveillance Capitalism.” Under this paradigm, platforms do more than secure lucrative advertising contracts; they leverage user data for manipulation far beyond commercial objectives.
The consequences are profound, as such surveillance practices can influence political outcomes, thereby directly threatening the integrity of democratic systems and impeding the functioning of democratic polity. The 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal offers a classic case, where the British political consulting firm harvested 50 million Facebook profiles—to aid Trump’s victory in his presidential race—in one of the most flagrant breaches of individual data security.
The clamour to reclaim digital sovereignty, especially in the code and data layer, has intensified as US tech companies apply American laws to foreign jurisdictions to counter local regulations. In February 2025, Trump Media & Technology Group and Rumble sued Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexander de Moraes after he suspended two social media accounts accused of spreading disinformation. The main suspect, Allan dos Santos, fled to the US, where extradition requests were denied, citing First Amendment protections of free speech and expression.
In their lawsuit, Trump Media and Rumble characterised the Brazilian Supreme Court’s directive as censorship rather than legitimate legal oversight. They condemned its action as a territorial outreach in violation of US laws. When similar, tighter regulations on social media were enacted in Brazil, especially the 2020 “Fake News Bill,” to curb the proliferation of disinformation and propaganda, it faced strong opposition from Google, Meta, X and Telegram. They resorted to aggressive anti-bill propaganda, even displaying alerts on their platforms exhorting users to reject the bill intended for national safety and preserving national sovereignty.
The European Union has established a comprehensive legal framework to safeguard its citizens’ digital sovereignty through robust data protection and platform regulation measures. The Data Governance Act (DGA) of 2022 and the Data Act of 2024 form the core of the EU’s recent initiatives to regulate data collection, sharing, and use. These laws are complemented by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enacted in 2018, which grants EU citizens enhanced protection and greater control over their personal data. Through these statutes, the EU ensures that individuals retain sovereignty over their digital information. It sets strict requirements for accessing, processing, and transferring data within and beyond EU borders.
To regulate major digital platforms and promote fair competition, the EU introduced the Digital Services Act(DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) at the code layer. The DSA increases transparency in algorithms and algorithmic decision-making and implements stronger rules for content moderation to protect users from disinformation and illegal activities. The DMA prevents proprietary platforms like Google and Apple from prioritising their products over competitors.’
Meta and other tech giants have vehemently opposed the implementation of DSA under the dubious advocacy campaign of “more speech.” Notably, research conducted in 2021 revealed that the big tech industry has spent more than $97 million lobbying the EU to thwart inimical legislation, with Google, Facebook, and Microsoft leading the fray.
Similar lobbying initiatives have been orchestrated in the Central and Latin American countries of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia to block regulations, defer antitrust laws, and dilute content moderation policies by invoking the ideals of digital freedom. This professing of digital freedom is mere sanctimony, considering the overwhelming evidence that these platforms amplify hate speech, bigotry, and political manipulation.
One of the most significant developments in the global digital landscape is the phenomenon of Chinese exceptionalism. Unlike much of the world, China has established full ownership and control over its entire technology stack, which remains dependent on and exposed to Western—mainly American—technologies, apps, and platforms. This encompasses various components, including hardware, digital infrastructure, applications, and platforms.
This self-sufficiency has allowed China to construct a highly fortified “walled garden” around its digital environment. China has achieved significant digital sovereignty by relying exclusively on homegrown substitutes for Western technologies. However, its adverse effect has been a transformation into a total surveillance state. A resounding success of this model is the widespread adoption of WeChat, which stands as the largest ‘superapp’ in the world— integrating communications, messaging, payments and other services—by strategically leveraging the network effects of a giant market of 1.4 billion. Through the ambitious “Digital Silk Road” initiative, China exports its full-service digital infrastructure to Africa, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East, rivalling Western competitors.
Condoning the propagation of hate speech, bigotry, racism and vitriol in social media runs the risk of fragmentation—often referred to as the “Balkanization”—of communities whose entrenched loyalties and shared grievances can develop allegiances that grow stronger than the ties to the nations of their citizenship. Such subcultures in social media draw parallels to Roman subjects’ loyalty to Christianity, surpassing their fidelity to the empire itself.
The sectarian rifts within countries are exacerbated by closeted “digital tribes” without recourse to divergent views and cosmopolitan ethos. It merits observation and analysis that quantum technological advancements in the last few decades are commensurate with rising populism and illiberalism, growing authoritarianism and democratic decline. And, unsurprisingly, the twenty-first-century world resembles the divisive and fissiparous social media.
Social media and tech leviathans have begun encroaching upon nations’ sovereignty under the guise of ‘promoting freedom’ and individual self-determination. This persistent intrusion warrants a new strategic direction for governments to prioritise digital sovereignty as a fundamental aspect of national sovereignty.
The world has entered into a new phase of socioeconomic system of “AI-Cracy.” It is an evolution from traditional oligarchies towards a regime where tech-billionaires armed with algorithms and technological dependence operate as extraterritorial forces wielding more power than elected sovereign governments to shape public opinion, influence policy, and sabotage elections.
The future race for political, military, and economic dominance will increasingly be dictated not by land, air, water, and outer space but by digital spaces. It is the new battleground for coveted geo-strategic supremacy.
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