Chasing digital sovereignty | Edit ShortsCars

By Aaron Mak

Presented by Alliance for a Better Future

Digital sovereignty is poised to become a more prominent issue in the U.K. under Prime Minister Andy Burnham's government. | Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Digital sovereignty has become a key topic in Europe as countries reevaluate their reliance on American and Chinese technology. The basic technical definition of “digital sovereignty” refers to a country’s ability to control critical parts of its tech infrastructure. DFD spoke with Mike Bracken — founder of the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service for modernizing the public sector and UK.gov who co-authored the forthcoming book “Digital Sovereignty: The Power to Decide” — about the U.K.’s approach to the issue. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

The definition of “digital sovereignty” has often been contested. How would you define it?

The power to decide. The term technological sovereignty has a long history. When you have people as different as Peter Thiel and Hermann Hauser agreeing on the definition of that as having essentially the ownership of three or four key layers of technology, there are only a small number of countries in the world — two or three — capable of having true technological sovereignty. Most countries are faced with a dilemma or opportunity around digital sovereignty, and that's the ability of where, and how, and when to choose interdependence, dependence and [owning] a certain stack.

Does developing digital sovereignty necessarily entail loosening ties with the U.S. and China's tech industries?

Depends who you are and where you're from. Developing digital sovereignty initially depends on an understanding of where you fit in, in terms of your capacity to act and the design of your services. Many politicians and regimes are surprised when they take office by their inability to do things quickly because of historic ties with software vendors, with hardware vendors, with entire stacks of technology — some of them coming from the U.S. But it's not really about where those companies originate. It's about what capacity a jurisdiction has to either move away from them or to introduce competition into a supply chain.

Has the Trump administration’s sometimes fraught relationship with European countries informed your conception of digital sovereignty?

It's not shaped my views, but some of the sharper moments in the last few years have clearly brought this to the attention of other countries. The [International Criminal Court] judges issue is clearly a culmination of a lot of issues going on between U.S. companies and different parts of the European legislative branch. There have been some instances of technological limitations, whether it be tariffs from the U.S. or legislation from Europe. I would say that is only a more recent set of possibly high-profile issues for a trend that's been going on for at least 20 years.

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One facet of digital sovereignty is the ability of nations to set their own tech regulations, which the Trump administration has arguably challenged in trade negotiations. How do you think other countries should respond?

There are a number of responses, and they're all valid depending on where you sit. One of Brazil’s responses has been to develop some of their own platforms, protocols and economic responses. The most visible of that would be Pix, which is a payment system that's very much caught the attention of the Trump administration.

There have been countries and jurisdictions that have taken more of an interdependence angle. If you look at something like MOSIP, an open source platform [digital] identity system developed around things like health platforms. We've seen some countries embed their own governance into it. Someone else uses it so you can learn from them, but at the same time [you] have some national sovereign ownership.

What do you make of Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s “buy British” initiative to prioritize domestic tech firms in government procurement? 

We have a new government, so any commentary is premature. What I would say about the government and the early noises — things like the scale-up investment fund for tech companies in the north of England — is that there is certainly an understanding that sovereignty is a national ambition rather than a London-based ambition.

The U.K., more so than most countries, has somewhat slavishly followed a globalized markets open procurement model for decades. We have ended up in a position with oligopolies and monopolies in key sectors that sometimes is a choice and entirely reasonable. More often, it’s just an outcome that hasn't been thought through and has resulted in unbalanced markets. That somewhat strategy-less series of tactical engagements has led to a set of outcomes in the U.K. which I don't think anyone designed. There has not been a grand plan about sovereignty one way or the other.

What do you make of digital sovereignty concerns about the U.K.’s purported dependence on Palantir?

Palantir, as a company, is not necessarily the problem. It is a symptom in the sense that the questions the U.K. and other countries need to be asking are: Do we want a single company in such a position of influence over a certain dataset or system? What's the nature of interoperability? Can that company at some point be replaced?

These are the questions that every country should be asking about every key crucial supplier to its infrastructure and to its services. They're the same questions that the U.K. should be asking about Palantir.

OpenAI has met with representatives of top power companies to discuss methods of securing the electrical grid, the artificial intelligence firm told POLITICO — conversations that occurred amid a continuing series of revelations about its own products’ role in a sprawling cyberattack.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman most recently discussed the prospect of partnering with utility companies to use his company’s AI for enhancing cyberdefenses through Daybreak, the company’s $1 billion cybersecurity initiative, during a Wednesday meeting in Colorado. Altman also discussed OpenAI’s plans to ensure its most advanced AI models cannot be misused to threaten grid security, the company told POLITICO.

OpenAI has been engaged in recurring talks with energy companies since the summer. The company hosted chief information security officers from a dozen major utility companies at its San Francisco headquarters in July to talk about grid resilience, and held another meeting with energy firms about deploying Daybreak last week.

Anthropic found evidence of foreign actors using its AI assistants for hacking, spreading propaganda and designing weapons, POLITICO’s John Sakellariadis reports.

In a report Anthropic released Thursday, the company documented evidence that Chinese security bureaus, spies linked to Russia, criminal hacking groups and Yemen-based arms manufacturers have misused Claude. The company uncovered incidents of users circumventing controls in countries where Claude should be blocked. Bad actors used fraudulent accounts and online services to gain unauthorized access to Anthropic’s models.

Anthropic said it has worked to disrupt the misuse it uncovered and enhance its guardrails for its Claude models Sonnet, Opus and Haiku. “We’re not trying to be hyperbolic here. We just want to present to the world: Here’s what the technology can actually be misused for today,” Jacob Klein, the head of threat research at Anthropic, said in an interview ahead of the report’s release.

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Spencer Cox on America’s political divide

In the latest episode of On the Road, Jonathan Martin sits down with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to discuss his new book, Off Ramp, the future of the Republican Party, immigration reform and what he says it will take to rebuild trust and community in American life.

Watch now.

• How exactly AI might wipe out humanity. 
• Gov. Gavin Newsom signs two AI safety and a slate of kids online safety bills.
• Conservatives attack former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. 
• OpenAI ends its $1 subscription deal for government agencies. 
• A hack led to more than 150 million driver’s licenses being stolen. 

Stay in touch with the whole team: Gabby Miller (gmiller@politico.com); Aaron Mak (amak@politico.com); Bob King (bking@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com); John Hewitt Jones (jhewittjones@politico.com).

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