Sovereign Cloud and Sovereign AI, Explained
From Cache Me If You Can by Center for Strategic and International Studies
February 4, 2026 · 10 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of sovereign cloud and AI, featuring insights from experts on the challenges and tradeoffs in digital sovereignty.
In this special Cache Me If You Can episode, we bring you a CSIS event featuring Matt Pearl, Director of the Strategic Technologies Program, in conversation with Bill Whyman, Senior Advisor with CSIS Strategic Technologies and author of the new CSIS paper Sovereign Cloud–Sovereign AI Conundrum: Policy Actions to Achieve Prosperity and Security. The discussion explores the global push for sovereign cloud and sovereign AI, as well as the difficult tradeoffs governments face as they seek greater control over data, compute, and cloud infrastructure. Matt and Bill break down what cloud computing is, why digital sovereignty has surged to the top of the policy agenda, and where sovereign approaches risk undermining innovation, competitiveness, and economic growth through higher costs, scalability limits, and fragmentation. Read Bill’s paper: https://www.csis.org/analysis/sovereign-cloud-sovereign-ai-conundrum-policy-actions-achieve-prosperity-and-security
People in this episode
Host: Matt Pearl
Guest: Bill Whyman
Topics covered
- sovereign cloud
- sovereign AI
- digital sovereignty
- data control
- cloud infrastructure
- policy tradeoffs
Keywords
- sovereign cloud
- sovereign AI
- digital sovereignty
- data control
- cloud computing
- policy actions
- innovation
- economic growth
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Books & works: Sovereign Cloud–Sovereign AI Conundrum: Policy Actions to Achieve Prosperity and Security
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