The race for digital autonomy is redefining how nations secure power, resilience and influence. Unsplash

For decades, the unspoken global economic agreement shaped how the world worked: physical resources were bounded by borders, while the digital world remained largely borderless. We shipped crude oil across oceans in tankers, but let data travel freely through fibre optic cables, largely unmonitored, unregulated and assumed to be neutral. That era is ending.

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Just as nations once scrambled to secure oil reserves to ensure their energy independence, governments today are racing to secure what is known as “sovereign technology.” From Brussels to Riyadh, and New Delhi to Abuja, the realization is settling in: if you don’t control your digital infrastructure, you don’t control your future.

We are witnessing a fundamental change in geopolitics. Information is no longer a by-product of internet use; it is a strategic national resource. And for the multinational corporations long accustomed to a frictionless global internet, the rules of the game are about to change radically.

The world mandate of autonomy

The anxiety behind this movement stems from a shared recognition that dependence on foreign technology stacks, mostly American or Chinese,........

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