Speakers
Description
Recent geopolitical tensions have placed digital sovereignty as a key buzzword in public and political debates, emphasising the dominance of US-based tech corporations across the digital market. In Denmark, the Minister of Digitalisation has taken several measures to ‘liberate’ the public sector from infrastructural dependencies and the economic consequences they entail. Meanwhile, corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google increasingly promote their services as tools for enhancing sovereignty (e.g., through offering national data storage, risk assessment tools, and so forth). Sovereignty is, in other words, a deeply political concept, characterised by distinct ambiguity and several (conflicting) interests.
In this talk, we provide an overview of the variety of ways different stakeholders use the concept of sovereignty to steer the political debate and ultimately consolidate existing and emerging forms of power. On this basis, we argue that a persistent focus on applications and services rather than the underlying infrastructures is hindering more fundamental discussions of the power structures that shape digital ecosystems. As an alternative perspective, we provide a series of examples from our research on global submarine data cables, emphasising the altered ownership structures and conditions around global internet routing. Through this, we open up for discussions of how to better connect the dots between the ongoing sovereignty debate and the technological and economic realities faced by industry professionals.
