The Weekly Planet #11. On Compute Sovereignty

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly central to economic innovation and national security, control over computing resources is emerging as a new pillar of geopolitical power . Compute sovereignty describe a nation’s (or any other sovereign’s) ability to maintain autonomous control over the computing infrastructure – data centers, cloud platforms, and semiconductor chips – that underpins modern AI. In a world where a few tech corporations and countries command most of the world’s AI computing power, many governments are asking how they can secure their “fair share” of compute and avoid dependency on foreign powers. This essay explores the core ideas behind compute sovereignty, why it matters, and how different regions are pursuing it, drawing on recent research and policy developments.

What Is Compute Sovereignty?

The concept of compute sovereignty can be understood on three levels, as defined by recent Oxford University research . First is the physical location of computing resources: how much AI computing infrastructure (such as cloud data centers and supercomputers) a country has within its own borders. Second is the ownership and control of that infrastructure: whether the companies operating those data centers are domestically owned or foreign-owned. Third is the supply of core technology, especially the high-end chips and accelerators that power AI computations – essentially, the nationality or origin of the semiconductor vendors providing the hardware . A country achieves the highest degree of compute sovereignty when AI data centers are not only located on its soil but are run by domestic firms using domestically produced chips, thus minimizing reliance on outsiders at every level .

In practice, very few nations meet all these criteria today. Most countries exhibit partial sovereignty on one or two levels but not all. For example, a nation might host foreign-owned cloud data centers on its territory, which ensures local access to compute but still leaves ultimate control in the hands of an external corporation. “Hosting foreign-owned data centers on European soil thus undermines what is now called AI compute sovereignty,” notes one analysis, pointing out that even with local servers, foreign corporate control can conflict with local laws and autonomy. Similarly, even domestic cloud providers remain dependent on foreign chipmakers if they must import nearly all their advanced GPUs and processors.

The notion of compute sovereignty has risen to prominence alongside longstanding ideas of digital sovereignty and data sovereignty. While data sovereignty focuses on controlling data storage and flows under national laws, compute sovereignty emphasizes control over the means of processing and computing that data, especially the large-scale computation required for AI . In essence, it extends the sovereignty debate from the realm of information into the realm of infrastructure. As AI is increasingly seen as critical infrastructure, ensuring sovereign control over the compute backbone of AI is viewed by many governments as a strategic imperative.

The Global AI Compute Divide

One reason compute sovereignty has become urgent is the highly uneven global distribution of AI computing power. Research shows that AI infrastructure – particularly data centers equipped with AI accelerators – is heavily concentrated in just a handful of countries . A recent census of cloud-based AI compute found 225 major cloud data center “regions” worldwide, but only 132 of these have AI-specific hardware (GPUs or other accelerators for machine learning). Strikingly, these 132 AI-capable centers spanned only 33 countries . In other words, most nations have no significant AI data centers at all. Entire continents like Africa and South America are nearly absent from the AI map – in those regions, only South Africa and Brazil respectively host any notable public AI cloud infrastructure . The vast majority of AI compute capacity resides in North America, East Asia, and a few parts of Europe and the Middle East .

To quantify the imbalance, consider that among the 132 identified AI data center hubs, 26 were located in the United States, 22 in China, and 27 spread across European Union countries. A small number also exist in tech-savvy economies like the UK and Japan, and a few in Gulf states (which have been investing in AI infrastructure). But beyond roughly 30-40 countries, the rest of the world lags far behind. This emerging “Global AI Divide” mirrors and potentially amplifies existing economic divides: nations without AI compute might miss out on AI-driven growth and innovation, and their talented engineers may migrate to places with better resources . “Developing countries [are] missing out on any benefits of AI while also suffering a brain drain,” warned the Oxford researchers who mapped this compute gap .

Such disparity has geopolitical implications. It raises the prospect of a “compute North vs. compute South” scenario, where advanced economies monopolize AI capabilities and less-resourced nations become dependent clients. Vili Lehdonvirta, one of the study’s authors, drew an analogy to the oil era: “Oil-producing countries have had an oversized influence on international affairs; in an AI-powered near future, countries producing compute could have something similar since they control access to a critical resource,” he told the New York Times . In short, just as petroleum drove 20th-century geopolitics, computing power is shaping up to be a strategic resource of the 21st century.

Notably, the current dominance in AI compute is not only a matter of geography but also corporate concentration. The majority of those 225 cloud regions belong to a few tech giants – primarily American firms (like Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft), Chinese tech companies (Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei), and a handful of others . According to the Oxford study, roughly 70% of global cloud capacity is provided by nine leading cloud providers . This means that beyond the question of which country hosts compute, there is the question of who owns the compute. If your nation’s AI infrastructure is mostly run by foreign mega-corporations, can you truly consider it sovereign?

Why Compute Sovereignty Matters

The drive for compute sovereignty stems from multiple motives. National security and strategic autonomy are prime among them. AI capabilities are increasingly seen as intertwined with military and defense power (for intelligence analysis, autonomous systems, cyber-defense, etc.) and economic competitiveness (powering domestic tech industries). No nation wants to be in a position where it must rely on a rival or an unpredictable foreign entity for critical computing power. This fear has only grown after recent events in geopolitics and technology. For example, U.S. export controls on advanced chips have abruptly cut off China’s access to top-tier AI hardware, and conversely, the U.S. and Europe worry that too much of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing is concentrated in East Asia (particularly Taiwan) which is vulnerable to geopolitical risk . Such developments have underscored that access to hardware can be weaponized or disrupted, prompting countries to seek more self-reliance.

Compute sovereignty is also linked to economic opportunity and innovation capacity. The ability to locally train and deploy cutting-edge AI models is increasingly seen as essential for domestic industries to thrive. If all the largest AI models can only be trained on infrastructure in Silicon Valley or Beijing, then startups, universities, and even governments elsewhere must effectively “rent” compute from those hubs – often at high cost and under constraints.

Another major rationale is legal and regulatory sovereignty. Countries (and regions like the EU) have their own laws on data privacy, cybersecurity, and digital services. If their critical data and AI systems run on foreign infrastructure, there is a risk that foreign jurisdictions could assert authority. A case in point is the U.S. CLOUD Act of 2018, which allows the U.S. government to demand data from U.S.-based cloud providers even if the data is stored in a foreign country.

Finally, ethical and societal values drive some sovereignty efforts. The European Union, for example, often emphasizes that its approach to technology is based on “trust”, “human-centric” values, and regulatory oversight . By having its own AI infrastructure and not simply importing whatever Big Tech offers, Europe hopes to enforce higher standards on privacy, transparency, and safety in AI systems. In this sense, compute sovereignty is not just about owning hardware; it’s about shaping the rules and norms that will govern AI.

Challenges and Trade-offs

While the desire for compute sovereignty is understandable, achieving it is neither easy nor without downsides. One challenge is sheer cost and complexity. Building state-of-the-art data centers or chip fabs requires enormous capital and expertise. The skills and supply chains involved in advanced semiconductors, for instance, are so specialized that no single country can currently do everything end-to-end. Even the U.S. and China rely on critical inputs from others (Dutch lithography machines, Japanese chemicals, etc.). This has led to talk of alliances among like-minded countries to collectively ensure chip supply – e.g., the U.S., EU, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea coordinating on semiconductor ecosystems so as to be less dependent on China. The EU’s Chips Act explicitly acknowledges that neither the U.S. nor EU can achieve self-sufficiency alone, hence calls for transatlantic and Japanese collaboration . Thus, paradoxically, pursuing sovereignty might involve more international cooperation with trusted partners, at least in the short term, even as it seeks to reduce dependency on others.

Another trade-off is economic efficiency vs. redundancy. From a purely market standpoint, centralizing computing in a few global hubs (as happened with cloud computing) is very efficient – it lowers costs through scale and maximizes utilization. Trying to replicate infrastructure in every country could lead to fragmentation and higher costs for everyone, if done without coordination. Some critics argue that not every country needs its own AI supercomputer; instead, equitable access could be provided through cloud services if governance issues are resolved. However, the counter-argument from the sovereignty side is that trust and control outweigh raw efficiency. Recent experience with supply chain disruptions (like during the COVID-19 pandemic) taught governments that some redundancy is worth the resilience it provides. Policymakers are therefore willing to accept some inefficiency or expense in exchange for assured access to critical compute resources . For example, Europe’s plan to fund multiple AI megacenters is partly about ensuring capacity even if it’s not profit-maximizing in the short run. Similarly, smaller nations might band together to support a regional facility that none could justify alone in a purely commercial calculus.

Finally, there is the question: does compute sovereignty guarantee success in AI? Having infrastructure is one thing; effectively using it is another. Countries must also invest in human capital – the researchers, engineers, and ecosystem to leverage that compute. Otherwise, one risks building gleaming “AI islands” that remain underutilized.

Less powerful countries fear being forced to choose sides (U.S. cloud or Chinese cloud, for instance), further entrenching a bipolar tech order . Thus, while pursuing sovereignty, many call for parallel efforts in international governance – for example, proposals to treat certain AI resources as a global commons or to establish treaties on compute use in AI (analogous to arms control agreements). Those ideas are nascent, but they indicate that some form of global coordination may eventually be needed to prevent an AI compute arms race that could be dangerous or destabilizing.

Conclusion

Compute sovereignty has rapidly evolved from a wonky policy buzzword into a core concern of governments navigating the AI revolution. At its heart is a recognition that the ability to generate and deploy advanced AI is tied to control over physical computing power – and that this control is distributed unevenly, with potential consequences for global equity and security. Nations and regions are responding in kind: investing in chips and data centers, crafting regulations to favor local control, and rethinking alliances and supply chains to secure their access to the “new oil” of AI compute.

In all likelihood, compute sovereignty will become as important to national strategy as energy security or military capacity in the coming years . We are already seeing the early moves of this new geopolitics of AI: subsidy races for chip plants, jockeying to host AI hubs, and diplomacy revolving around tech supply chains. Whether this leads to a more multipolar and democratized AI landscape, or simply a bipolar one dominated by a couple of superpowers, depends on the choices being made now. What is clear is that countries no longer view compute as an abstract commodity – they view it as strategic infrastructure, one that they aspire to govern with sovereignty, lest they find themselves at the mercy of those who do.