The State as a Cloud Client: Political Risk and Digital Dependence

Democratic states risk becoming tenants in their own digital infrastructure; cloud dependence trades sovereignty for convenience, trust for tenancy.

The Sovereignty Paradox

For most of modern history, governments have defined sovereignty by their ability to control borders, currencies, and armies. However, in the digital age, sovereignty is increasingly measured by data flows, algorithmic decisions, and ownership of infrastructure. The unsettling reality facing democratic nations is this: many are not digital sovereigns at all; they are clients of foreign-owned cloud providers.

This represents a profound historical shift. Never before have democratic states voluntarily ceded control over the basic infrastructure of governance to foreign entities. Yet across the developed world, public institutions have quietly outsourced core systems, from healthcare databases to taxation platforms, to hyperscale providers headquartered in Washington State, California, or Hangzhou.

The rationale is predictable: efficiency, scalability, cost savings. Yet hidden beneath the procurement paperwork is a structural transformation that would have been unthi…