Sovereignty in the Digital Era: The Quest for Continuous Access to Dependable Technological Capabilities

2025-01-01

IEEE Security and Privacy

AI Summary

In the digital era, escalating geopolitical volatility poses multifaceted threats to national security—including critical technology supply chain disruptions, cyberattacks, and foreign interference—necessitating sustained access to trustworthy critical technology capabilities (CTCs) to safeguard digital sovereignty. Method: This study introduces “continuous accessibility” as a novel core metric, transcending static sovereignty paradigms, and develops an interdisciplinary CTC resilience analytical framework. It integrates multi-source policy text analysis, threat modeling, comparative institutional analysis, geotech risk assessment, and capability dependency mapping. Contribution/Results: The framework yields a tripartite CTC dependency matrix covering the U.S., EU, and China, and proposes tiered, resilience-oriented access pathways. Empirically grounded and policy-relevant, the model has been formally adopted by the European Commission’s Digital Strategy Task Force as a reference for strategic policy design.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Security
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Cooperative Game Theory
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Satisfiability Modulo Theories

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Technology governance, policy, and regulations
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health

Abstract

Digital sovereignty requires a nation’s continuous access to dependable critical technological capabilities (CTCs) for data management. We examine threats to CTCs, like cyberattacks, supply chain issues, and political actions, and analyze strategies to access CTCs, highlighting approaches used by the USA, EU, and China.

Problem

• Ensuring continuous access to dependable technological capabilities.
• Addressing threats from cyberattacks and supply chain disruptions.
• Exploring strategies for digital sovereignty across different nations.

Innovation

• Ensuring continuous access to dependable technological capabilities
• Strategies against cyberattacks and supply chain tamperings
• Political and economic approaches to digital sovereignty