General

As the world stumbles head on into deglobalization we predict national sovereign clouds will replace international access to data. That is good news for in-country corporations and for security companies in specific fields. It may not be so good for large multinational tech firms and people living in authoritarian countries. It may also mean the end of the World Wide Web.

Sovereign clouds used to be referred as proprietary clouds to keep intellectual property (IP) secure. National sovereign clouds today are used to control access to citizens private data. For big tech, multiple governments require organizations to comply with data protection laws requiring specific data residency and management practices. National sovereign clouds facilitate that within the country but create significant complexity for multinational operations. Even within a specific politico-economic bloc like the EU, there are different regulations within the bloc for data security.

In a recent blog post, Cory Doctorow summed up the current business climate caused by geopolitical shifts, "There's finally political space to stop worrying about tariffs and reconsider anti-circumvention laws, to create disenshittification nations that stage raids on the most valuable lines of business of the most profitable companies in world history – Big Tech."