deciding whether to go with Asian technology, US technology, European technology. I think there’ s a lot at stake, and the cybersecurity space is very much also defining how to handle some of the threats. Some of the challenges for Africa are not only a threat against organisation, but to some extent, a threat against overall development and job creation. There are differences, and the degree of sophistication, resources and addressing it is different. Fundamentally the sovereign discussion is gaining momentum.

How has digital sovereignty demands changed in the last few years?

It’ s on steroids now. I’ ve been working in this space for a number of years and have been having conversations with political leaders for a long time, and in my career, I have not experienced such a rapid change in the psychology among political leaders as we’ ve seen in the last one and a half years. The traditionally most transatlanticoriented political leaders or countries are in many ways the most sceptical, critical, concerned when it comes to dependency on non-European technology, so it’ s a completely different situation driven by legitimate concerns.

I mentioned the ICC case; Greenland has been a big thing, and what happened on Friday [ June 12 ] with the US export restriction decision will add momentum to that discussion. Everybody knows more or less what they want, but it’ s very difficult to put on a piece of paper that these are the demands that we now have and you better comply, or you’ re out of business. That’ s why we are trying to lean in a little bit and see if we can help define what sovereignty is in reality, and then have those requirements and demands come back to us.

I think that humble approach to sovereignty is necessary if you want to keep your commercial opportunities moving.

How will AI affect digital sovereignty?

There is an answer to that prior to Mythos and GPT-5.5 cyber, and there’ s an answer afterwards, and you could almost also say that there was an answer after Friday and before [ when the US government suspended access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals ]. In one of my presentations there is a slide that shows the most valuable companies in the world, and then we have another slide where we show the most valuable AI

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