As Europe wakes up to its dependence on private tech from the U.S. and China, some countries are weighing whether building a digital embassy is better than relying on a private cloud service.
Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who says the principality has become a trusted digital partner, at a technolgoy summit in Lisbon in November 2024. | Horacio Villalobos/Corbis/Getty Images
“When we speak about digital sovereignty, we don’t need to send them to the States or to Asia, we can do it in Europe,” said Bettel. “It’s not against someone, it’s just in favor of sovereign Europe.”
The idea is also sparking the curiosity of countries that want to supercharge artificial intelligence development and data processing but don’t have the resources to do it in their own country.
Earlier this month, the World Economic Forum launched a global framework for bilateral agreements to establish such digital embassies. The framework touches on things like access rights, data disclosures, jurisdiction, privacy laws, dispute resolution and the interoperability of infrastructure.
As AI becomes increasingly important for economic competitiveness, national security and public services, computing and data storage demands are “accelerating beyond what many economies, particularly the emerging ones, can support domestically due to structural limits in land, energy and capital,” said Cathy Li, head of the WEF’s Centre for AI Excellence.
Bahrain, for example, has developed a specific digital embassy law that allows institutions to store data on servers in Bahrain but keep it subject to the laws of their home countries. Saudi Arabia is also pushing to become a global digital embassy hub for AI.
“We have finite energy on Earth, we have a finite infrastructure, and we believe that without some sort of shared access, the Earth would just not be able to support such large-scale infrastructure build-out,” said Li.