Campaigners urge UK to develop digital sovereignty technique
The Open Rights Group (ORG) is looking on the UK authorities to implement a digital sovereignty technique, arguing there’s a urgent want to cut back the nation’s dependence on technological infrastructure from US corporations that could be topic to international interference.
The digital rights campaigner warned that whereas varied digital infrastructures could also be technically safe, they may develop into “strategically fragile” in the event that they depend upon a small variety of foreign-controlled suppliers or proprietary techniques that can not be simply changed.
In addition they warned that widespread dependence on hyperscale cloud companies similar to Microsoft and Amazon Internet Companies (AWS) additionally poses dangers, as these entities are topic to legal guidelines that might be utilized by the US authorities to compel them to offer UK-stored information to American authorities, successfully bypassing native legal guidelines.
To alleviate the dangers related to this type of over-reliance on US-controlled infrastructure, ORG stated a digital sovereignty technique ought to be made a requirement within the UK’s forthcoming Cybersecurity and Resilience Invoice.
Such a technique ought to particularly contemplate whether or not companies can proceed if a provider withdraws; whether or not information entry will be restricted by international legislation; whether or not sanctions, commerce disputes or political strain might disrupt techniques; and whether or not the UK has significant alternate options if relationships with international states change.
“Simply as counting on one nation for the UK’s power wants can be dangerous and irresponsible, so is over-reliance on US corporations to provide the majority of our digital infrastructure,” stated James Baker, the platform energy programme supervisor at ORG.
“Now greater than ever, the UK must construct and defend sovereignty over its digital infrastructure, and never go away itself susceptible to the insurance policies and actions of international powers such because the US and China. Though the US is a historic ally, its assertion that it’s going to use onerous energy to attain its political, financial and army objectives ought to increase issues amongst parliamentarians within the UK. The Cybersecurity and Resilience Invoice is a chance to enhance the UK’s management over its infrastructure.”
ORG added that the technique also needs to prioritise using interoperable, open supply techniques, which might enhance the flexibility of UK corporations to bid for and keep authorities techniques.
A query of sovereignty
The decision for a digital sovereignty technique follows the US authorities’s unlawful abduction of Venezuelan president Niolás Maduro, and subsequent threats made by US president Donald Trump and different high-ranking US authorities officers that comparable unilateral army interventions might be staged in Cuba, Colombia and Greenland.
It additionally comes on the heels of controversial software program supplier Palantir touchdown a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in mid-December 2025 – awarded and not using a aggressive course of – which represents the biggest ever UK defence deal.
The contract will see Palantir present “information analytics capabilities supporting essential strategic, tactical and stay operational determination making throughout classifications” over the following three years, and has been criticised by a spread of actors from throughout the political spectrum for rising the UK’s reliance on US corporations on the expense of British counterparts.
ORG added that there have been a variety of examples in recent times of states utilizing digital infrastructure to wield political and army energy.
This consists of Microsoft blocking the e-mail account of the Worldwide Felony Court docket’s (ICC’s) chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, after Trump imposed sanctions on the establishment for issuing an arrest warrant towards Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Whereas Microsoft has denied this – claiming it remained involved with the ICC whereas “disconnecting Khan’s Outlook account – the ICC stopped utilizing Microsoft companies in October 2025 and switched to OpenDesk, an open supply European software program platform.
ORG additionally pointed to John Deere’s distant disabling of tractors stolen by Russian forces in Ukraine, saying it signifies that if political strain was dropped at bear on the agency, it might apply the kill swap to farm autos around the globe.
Because it stands, nevertheless, the UK authorities is trying to make the UK a synthetic intelligence superpower, with plans to quickly increase the nation’s sovereign compute capability and create AI progress zones to facilitate the constructing of recent datacentres, and big investments for the underlying cloud infrastructure coming from Microsoft, Google and AWS to this point.
Beforehand, senior Microsoft staff admitted to the French senate in June 2025 that the corporate can not assure the sovereignty of European information saved and processed in its companies, whereas revelations printed by Laptop Weekly present that UK public sector information hosted in Microsoft’s hyperscale cloud infrastructure might be processed in additional than 100 international locations.
