The need for countries to ensure digital sovereignty with control over infrastructure, data and systems is critical as the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race accelerates amid geopolitical instability, a new report has outlined.
The seventh edition of GlobalData’s AI Executive Briefing notes that such control, without influence from foreign entities, has become increasingly important due to the need to protect against extraterritorial laws that may compromise data sovereignty.
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“With the rapid development and adoption of AI, it has become even more crucial since sensitive data may need to be processed for training AI models,” it adds.
The report also stresses the needs to consider operational sovereignty, by which visibility and control over operations through trusted personnel and entities is maintained, and technical sovereignty, through which applications can be run without being overly dependent on foreign suppliers. It suggests that open-source applications can play a crucial role in the latter.
“The increased emphasis on digital sovereignty has created opportunities for domestic IT services providers and telecom operators that already have strong relationships with the public sector and major enterprises in their respective markets,” the report states.
Of the three pillars constituting digital sovereignty, data protection is detailed as the imposition and enforcement of local and regional compliance laws and protection against foreign surveillance and interference.
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By GlobalDataOperational sovereignty is said to constitute visibility of data residency, security and access controls; autonomous control of digital infrastructure; investment in local resources and talent; and interoperability between domestic digital services.
Technical sovereignty comprises the use of home-grown application software, the encouragement of open-source standards and technologies to reduce dependency on single vendors and investment in education and training programmes to foster domestic technical skills.
GlobalData’s briefing summarises: “AI and digital tools are supported by masses of data, which must be kept secure and out of reach of both individual bad actors and foreign intervention. Large investments in sovereign cloud infrastructure are being made to ensure that data is properly secured and managed by local data laws.”
