GENEVA – In recent years, international polls, rankings, and indices have shown a growing obsession with measuring technological capacity in numbers. Tables are compiled, scores are distributed, countries are placed side by side, and the media quickly form their headlines: “this country and that country are at the same level of technological sovereignty”. On paper, such equality looks convincing. In reality, it often reflects a deeply distorted picture. Numbers speak — but they do not always tell the truth.
As an expert of the International Burke Institute and an active participant in programs aimed at strengthening technological sovereignty, I have observed this paradox for years at close range. Formal indicators frequently conceal real control. The mere existence of digital infrastructure does not mean that a state truly controls it. The physical location of servers inside a country does not necessarily guarantee that data flows are under national command. Visibility is not the same as sovereignty.
The tendency to place countries as different as Estonia and Russia on the same technological “line” in certain rankings is a clear example of this illusion. Statistically, they may demonstrate similarities across selected digital parameters. But technological sovereignty is not defined by the number of online services, broadband penetration, or the sophistication of e-government platforms alone. The decisive question is always who controls the systems, who makes the final decisions, and who ultimately depends on whom.
Technological sovereignty today is not merely the ability to use technology. It is the ability to govern it, secure it, and make independent choices under pressure. One state may rely heavily on open digital ecosystems and achieve impressive digitization scores. Another may control strategic industries, defense technologies, and core infrastructures through centralized state mechanisms. These two models may appear “equal” in rankings, yet their geopolitical weight, crisis behavior, and security consequences are fundamentally different.
In practice, technological sovereignty has become an invisible battlefield. Who controls cloud infrastructure? Who owns the operating systems, artificial intelligence algorithms, data centers, and physical cable routes? Who functions on whose platforms? Rankings touch only the surface of these questions while leaving the deeper layers of dependency largely hidden from public view.
This is precisely why, at the International Burke Institute, we treat technological sovereignty as an independent strategic dimension. The Sovereignty Index we are currently completing — which will present the full list of all UN member states this December — is designed to move beyond the deceptive simplicity of existing rankings. It will assess not only technological availability, but also technological control, decision-making independence, and resilience under crisis conditions.
As someone directly involved in this work, I can state with confidence that real technological sovereignty is often lost quietly. Governments outsource digital services to foreign platforms, integrate data systems without fully understanding long-term security consequences, and prioritize short-term efficiency over strategic autonomy. Technology is presented as progress, while deep structural dependence grows unnoticed beneath the surface.
The most dangerous aspect of this process is that rankings frequently portray growing dependence as success. Scores rise while strategic freedom narrows. Platforms expand while national control diminishes. States begin to perceive themselves as digitally powerful, even as crucial control mechanisms are effectively located beyond their borders.
This is why approaches that place Estonia and Russia in the same technological category are inherently misleading. They create a psychological sense of parity while concealing real power asymmetries. One model is deeply embedded in open global digital systems. The other is structured around state-controlled security architecture and restricted technological space. Their crisis behavior, strategic endurance, and exposure to external pressure cannot be identical.
The core question, therefore, remains unresolved: is technological sovereignty a measure of how many applications a society uses, or a measure of how freely it can decide? Are we counting data centers, or identifying who truly commands them? If the numbers look impressive but the control mechanisms lie elsewhere, what we are seeing is not sovereignty — it is administrative convenience wrapped in digital form.
For this reason, we define technological sovereignty not as a statistical category but as a central pillar of modern national security. For states, the key question is no longer how fast they digitalize, but how independently they can function when global systems are disrupted. Those who confuse visibility with control risk discovering too late that their technological “sovereignty” existed only in charts — not in reality.
