Act IV — Who is in charge now

The international arena has many actors that can influence digital infrastructures. But opinions differ on what the important ones are, or even what the relevant ones are, as we will see. But the international arena matters, because by the nature of scaling, very few digital infrastructures are influenced by a single national actor only. A word of clarification: I am using the word international here to mean all nations in the world, and their interrelations. In US vernacular, the word international appears to mean all nations, except the US. Instead, the word global is used to mean all nations, including the US. An example implication of this is that a US company would only consider ISO standards to be relevant to them if they also have operations outside the US. ...

Achieving some form of digital autonomy or sovereignty is a wicked problem, too large to handle in one go. Let’s start therefore with the main actors, and what is at stake for them. We can then talk about how digital autonomy allows these actors to collaborate and compete, and therefore impacts the risks they see. Elsewhere, I write about international actors, and this story builds on that. All actors (e.g. governments, companies) perceive IT risk in their own way. Generally though, they include the standard IT risks (confidentiality, integrity, and availability). Beyond that, there is the risk of failing to capture the value of new technology, and failure to exercise governance and control over relevant other actors. ...