Redefining Digital Sovereignty

Infrastructural Dependence, Epistemic Asymmetry, and Governance Challenges in the Age of Big Tech

Abstract

This article examines how digital sovereignty is being structurally reconfigured through the privatization of cybersecurity governance. As governments increasingly depend on transnational technology firms for core security functions such as threat detection and cloud infrastructure, they face new constraints in defining, overseeing, and enforcing public authority. The paper develops a framework of three structural dilemmas: infrastructural dependency, epistemic asymmetry, and governance capacity gaps, to analyze how state sovereignty is reshaped through socio-technical entanglements. Through comparative case studies of AWS Sovereign Cloud (European Union), Project Maven (United States), and LG CNS Smart Surveillance (Korea), it shows how critical decisions about risk, classification, and control are embedded in proprietary systems. Reconceptualizing sovereignty as governance capacity rather than exclusive control, the article contributes to emerging debates on algorithmic governance, platform power, and digital constitutionalism. It argues that reclaiming digital sovereignty requires institutional architectures that embed public oversight within the infrastructures and epistemologies of security.