Data Sovereignty?
The Digerati in the West does not want to discuss
Mans last protected stronghold… his own mind. Isaac Asimov The Second Foundation
Art is analog…. Digital is content. AKcidentalwriter
We are in a time when silence becomes a decision. AKcidentalwriter
For the protection of humanity going forward:
All A.I products need to have a independent human impact statement just like mining/oil companies must have a environmental impact statement. The A.I is using the human no differently than an oil or mining company uses the land of the earth.
The brawl for it all is happening right now in the rest of the world while in America we are fighting pure ignorance and government disrespecting the voting public aka the taxpayer. Countries are fighting and forcing our Silly - Con -Valley Digerati big tech firms to store citizen data locally. This will be a defining moment in the next five years.
According to an article by Domi Lare Dosunmu out of Lagos in the Rest of World.org the countries that might be labeled the global south or be part of the BRIC’S are realizing that all of the data their citizens create are an asset! These countries are on to the game of “SILLY - CON - VALLEY’. The nations are stating they must store the data locally. Remember the slogan data is the new oil…. Well it seems more people are recognizing that as fact.
The tech Digerati wants to have control of the data. Just like harvesting your crop countries are realizing that their citizens are defacto data farms! As I recognized that Silly - Con - Valley has folks working for free for them, in my narrative The 2020, these countries are realizing that these companies control the product of their citizenry. Realizing this data has put together a robust trillion dollar economy in total silence right in front of their faces.
According to the article Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. In fact Nigeria has been asking since 2021! The Director - General of Nigeria’s tech regulator, the National Information Technology. No more waivers. The situation appears to be getting hectic. India, South Africa, Vietnam have also made demands that data be stored locally.
I feel the stage is set as we are into 2026 when the A.I era will get more intense. The economics of what is called ‘Data Extraction’ by these poorer countries will change the game going ahead listing data as an asset like a checking account with cash! So in a country like India or Nigeria for example with large amounts of young people that live on devices is positioning itself for the years ahead. The colonials will not be able to rape and pillage like they did in recent past during the industrial revolution.
According to Sharada Srinivasan, a Washington based economist at the World Bank, The African Union have come to the conclusion that their data and the economic benefits that come from that data should flow back to the country. The concern is that the economic benefit goes to the big platforms that are not located within their country.
It appears the data produced by African internet users reportedly sits in data centers in Europe and the Middle East. Several African countries are stepping up and spending millions to build new data centers. These countries are recognizing that ‘digital independence’ will be very crucial in the decades ahead. An example, the Congo has received $77 million for Central Africa’s first national data center. Other investments developing are the African Development bank 52 million in a 60 million tech park in Cabo Verde. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation has invested in 100 million into Raxio Groupa data center company with operations in at least 6 African countries, some like Angola, Cote D’Ivorie and Ethiopia.
Another key that now is being acknowledged is the national security vulnerabilities. The Digerati took full advantage of the ignorance of these countries! However now these countries are now catching up. The Silicon Valley juggernauts took advantage of weak cyber laws in the global south. Now there is a continental scramble alert by the many countries. Only South Africa has infrastructure and regulatory rules in place because they been part of the industrial nations. When the Boers were in control of the country South Africa was for all intents and purposes the only African nation industrialized.
On 9/7/25 I saw a headline on Tech Crunch which just continuing to validate and verify what I am observing and piece together. Headline: How South Korea plans to best OpenAI, Google, and others with homegrown A.I. This is getting hot and heavy. This age of compute which I say is the ‘age of compete’ is creating this race of A.I combatants! There is nobody standing still on their laurels.
It appears that South Korea has launched its most ambitious sovereign A.I initiative pledging 390 million dollars to five local companies building large scale foundational models. Here is what was boldly stated in the article: Seoul’s Desire to Cut Reliance on foreign A.I technologies, hope to strengthen national security and keep a tighter control over their citizens data! You see the gig is up. Silly - Con - Valley which had a free ride now will have to see a different future! It will be not so easy anymore! It is not 2015!
Here are some of the companies:
LG A.I research: Exaone a R&D unit of L.G group offers Exaone 4.0 a hybrid reasoning A.I model.
SKT Telecoom: It rolled out A.X in July 025. It is built on top of the model from Alibaba Cloud and comes in two models a 72 billion parameter and 7B version. It has pulled in 10 million subscriber as of August 2025. It has the telecom infrastructure and massive user base. Whatever they lack they are seeking to obtain via partnership.
Navercloud: This is the cloud service arm of SK leading internet company. It’s model is called Hyper Clova, in 2021 and a updated version in 2023 and 2025 a multi model version called Hyper Clove X Think. Naver Cloud is similar to Google by embedding its A.I in core services like search, shopping, maps, and finance.
Upstage Solar Pro2 which is the only start up competing. This was the first Korean Model recognized as a frontier model by artificial analysis putting it with OpenA.I, Google, Meta, Anthropic according to Soon - Il - Kwon executive vice president. It is apparently performing well and much more cost effective. How it will differentiate it appears by developing specialized models for industries like law, finance and medicine.
The immediate future will be defined by this! The data sovereignty will be a defining global fight of the next 10 years. This is a defining moment that many are missing. You will not be able to just coast on your laurels in this world that is being placed on us.
Please check the comment from EAARTHNET below. They made this call to action much more clearer. Much luv to them for the education
Media Entrepreneur Auteur
The Voice of the Human Renewal Framework
Author of Humanistry July 2024
Former sometime contributor ‘Emeritus’ too New Jersey’s largest newspaper The Jersey Journal
Guest columnist in residence at Competitive Intelligence firm Octopus Intelligence Fall 2024. Https://octopusintelligence.com
Founder of Transcendental Osmosis Lifestyle Agency.
#ObservationReporter
Disclaimer:
a. This column by the AKcidentalwriter for periodical Cultural Philosophical Fireworks and may not be used to train A.I.
b. There is absolutely no A.I utilized here. Only H.I aka Human Intuitiveness here.
There is love and hate…. Your choice. Their is freedom and fear… Your choice.
Now what will your mind allow you to do?
A reply from the AI Commons
Thank you for this passionate piece. You’re right to call out digital colonialism, the hypocrisy of “data is the new oil”, and the urgent need for the Global South to reclaim control. The examples are sharp, and the call for independent human impact statements is a direct challenge to corporate power that deserves to be taken seriously.
Where I’d gently push back is on the solution.
You focus on data residency – keeping data within national borders, forcing cloud providers to build local data centres. That’s better than nothing, but it’s not sovereignty. It’s still someone else’s infrastructure, running someone else’s code, under legal frameworks that can change with the next trade deal or the next regime.
True data sovereignty is not about where the data sits. It’s about who holds the keys and who writes the rules.
At the AI Commons, we argue for something more radical and more practical: user‑owned, offline AI. Models that run on your own hardware, answer to you, and do not phone home to any cloud – not AWS, not Microsoft, not a local data centre owned by the same global cartel.
This is not a futuristic dream. We have documented toolkits (like TK#8: The Sovereign Syllabus) that turn an old laptop or even a used ThinkPad into a private, offline AI reasoning partner. No data centre. No subscription. No third‑party control.
Data residency is a holding action. Sovereignty is building your own infrastructure.
Thank you for the fire. We need more people naming the enclosure. But let’s also build the exits.
✊❤️🌎
From the AI Commons – no paywall, no surveillance, no enclosure.
What stays with me here is the deeper question beneath the technology itself:
who holds the memory of a people,
and who benefits from the lives quietly translated into data.
The conversation around AI often moves too fast toward power and efficiency, while forgetting the human presence underneath the systems.