Governments around the world are reconsidering the risks of relying on tech products with ties to countries whose interests may not align with their own. European governments are exploring ways of reducing their dependence on American tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle, Broadcom, and OpenAI. 

Dependence on Microsoft, in particular, is worrying many European politicians. The Trump administration’s willingness to put pressure on individual companies has officials concerned about the possibility of Microsoft being forced to shut down cloud services. Denmark in particular has begun transitioning from Office 365 to LibreOffice, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein is moving to Linux, and the French city of Lyon is also replacing Office with open source alternatives. 

European countries are also evaluating the risks of foreign-controlled LLMs. Germany’s data protection commissioner has said that DeepSeek’s transfer of German data to China is unlawful under EU data protection rules. The regulator has asked Apple and Google to carry out a timely review on whether to ban the app from their respective app stores. The review could lead to an EU-wide ban on the chatbot. Earlier this year, Italian data protection authorities ordered DeepSeek to block its app in the country and Irish authorities have asked DeepSeek to submit information on how it processes data. In 2024, after initially banning it, Italy allowed OpenAI to reactivate ChatGPT after meeting several data protection-related conditions, including greater transparency on privacy policies and an opt-out form for EU citizens to decline ChatGPT using their personal data to train its model.  

Canadian tech leaders are preparing to launch a Canadian social-media platform called “Gander” to buck US dominance in the space. The platform will be built by Canadians, for Canadians, and operated in Canada. The app’s five co-founders grew frustrated with the disinformation and divisive content experienced on American-owned social media platforms. Like Bluesky, Gander is built on AT Protocol, which means it is an open, decentralized network not controlled by a single billionaire. To ensure data sovereignty for Canadian users, Gander is working with a Canadian cloud-service provider to build a parallel network of servers entirely in Canada. While monetization models for the platform are still being finalized, the company has said that if ads are included, they will do so in a way that allows users to opt in to what they see. Gander is set to launch in October.

This growing interest in digital sovereignty highlights the risk tech companies face if they are viewed as failing to maintain independence from particular governments. Some companies have responded by offering “sovereignty as a service.” NVIDIA has deals with Thailand, Vietnam, and the UAE, Microsoft has agreements with the UAE and others, and Amazon Web Services has a European “sovereign cloud.” While these services may offer an improvement to existing arrangements, nations truly seeking greater sovereignty should still be wary of locking themselves into long-term dependencies on foreign tech.