09/23/2026
Sovereignty is a claim, not a thing.
That idea, from the late Canadian political scientist Peter Russell, was one of the most useful our VP and Partner Gordon Ross found in a year of reading about digital sovereignty. Not a thing you have or don't have, but a claim made by people, one that succeeds or fails depending on whether it is effective and whether others accept it as legitimate.
It turned an abstract debate into answerable questions. What is being claimed? Over what? Against which threat? By what means? And what does that leave exposed?
That last question feels to Gord like it is often unanswered. Most discussion stops at the solution level: domestic suppliers, sovereign clouds, data residency requirements. It always costs something somewhere else.
In our latest article (which sits at 5800 words and is likely a 25 to 30 minute read, you are forewarned), Gord shares what the last year’s worth of reading taught him about digital sovereignty, and what he hopes is a simple way to write down what any given digital sovereignty claim is really buying.
Read the full article: https://bit.ly/4y8WAia
