Digital Sovereignty or Digital Socialism?

Some of the issues around conflicting approaches to digital sovereignty can be understood by thinking about "digital socialism". For present purposes, socialism just means ownership by society of the means of production. We can understand "means of production" very generally. An example of digital socialism which some UK readers will remember is the manifesto commitment by the Labour party - which was then socialist! - in the 2019 General Election to nationalize part of BT - which provides the core exchange network - and create a government owned entity called "British Broadband" to provide guaranteed internet connectivity to all homes and businesses. That is a form of digital socialism.¹

So digital socialism need not mean that all digital "means of production" should be brought under social ownership - just those which are necessary to provide a minimum acceptable digital life in the society. Corbyn's Labour party appealed to the hard-to-deny truth about 21st century UK that a decent broadband connection is fundamental to a minimally acceptable standard of living and without it you cannot fully participate in society. Of course, you need some equipment - hardware and software - to use that connectivity, so one might argue that socializing internet access would also require society to own companies providing smartphones or laptops and associated core software including the OS. Which isn't a bad idea at all, as many citizens will find that their perfectly functional Windows 10 computers have been rendered insecure by a decision made in Seattle, requiring them to buy new ones.²

Now, much of the conversation about digital sovereignty by politicians and journalists does focus on ownership of digital means of production (from now on, just "platform"), but looks at it as a question of the nationality of the company that owns the platform. That is a big mistake, because nationality is - in general - mutable. It isn't easy for an ordinary citizen to change nationality, but it can be done, and the richer they are, the easier it becomes. The same is true for companies. E.g. Apple is a "US company" because its headquarters are in California, but that could change. If Apple thought a different US state was more favourable, it could move, and if it thought a different nation-state was more favourable, it could move. Moving would be expensive, but they could easily afford it. Companies of that scale can go beyond mere regulatory arbitrage and relocate their staff, their headquarters, their stock-market listing and - to a large extent - their tax liabilities. Apple is a US company by choice. The same could be said for Google Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.

Equally, a company which has UK or other "nationality" can be bought by a company with a different nationality. This recently happened with a Cloud provider in the Netherlands. Some states have some regulatory power to restrict such sales, but those powers are limited and often ineffective, since there can be a distinction between paper-owners and "persons with significant control".

So if we frame debates about digital sovereignty in terms of the nationality of the private (as in not socially owned) company that owns the platform, rather than the nature of the ownership, we miss the point. The only way to ensure a platform is within sovereign control is for it to be owned by that sovereign body. So the only effective route to digital sovereignty is digital socialism.

As noted above, digital socialism does not mean socializing all platforms, but it does mean socializing enough, and a full-stack, to be able to guarantee the minimum digital standard of life for all citizens. In the first instance, that means the well-functioning of government, so government services would need to be run on socially owned platforms. But it also means providing - as an option or at least a fallback - basic hardware and software, email,³ and cloud services, for all citizens. That would bring true digital sovereignty.

Update

It seems that the Luxembourg government just gets this! Having rolled out Matrix for all government employees, they are now rolling it out for citizens using the government ID verification system (LuxID). Watch presentation here