Two centuries ago, a director of the East India Company described empire “like a sponge – drawing up all the good things from the banks of the Ganges and squeezing them down on the banks of the Thames.” It was an unusually honest description of how power flows through infrastructure. Control the system through which value moves, and power will follow.
It’s with this analogy in mind that I’ve written the foreword to a new report by Open Rights Group, titled “Tech Giants and Giant Slayers: The Case for Digital Sovereignty.”
The report addresses a simple but profound question: who controls the infrastructure modern societies now depend on?
Cloud computing, data systems, AI, and software platforms are no longer peripheral tools. They are the operating system of our economies and democracies. Yet the UK, like many countries, relies on a handful of global tech firms that answer not to democratic institutions, but to their shareholders – and sometimes to foreign governments.
The challenge that we face – of securing sovereignty, accountability, and economic resilience in this new landscape – isn’t technical, it’s political.
It concerns the shape of power in the 21st Century, and whether democratic institutions retain the capacity to exercise it. The East India Company director who described his enterprise as a sponge was at least honest about what he was doing. The question before us is whether, two hundred years later, we are equally clear-eyed about what is happening – and whether we retain the will to respond.
You can read my foreword and the report here: link