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Tatiana Dias is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.

In a country split into two opposing poles this election, one thing seems to unite Brazil's five leading presidential candidates, from left to right: they all claim to defend sovereignty. What that actually means, however, varies dramatically – and shows how elastic the concept has become, bending to fit whoever is doing the talking.

The shadow of the United States looms especially large over this election. 

, 50% of Brazilians considered foreign interference in the election possible; of those, 32% viewed that possibility negatively, while 18% saw no problem with it. Defending Brazilian sovereignty, then, has become electoral currency.

The incumbent President Lula, of the Worker’s Party (PT) is the frontrunner, and treats sovereignty as the central organizing axis of 

, promising investment in defense, state intelligence, and border protection. On foreign policy, he speaks of a multilateralist approach centered on Latin America and on maintaining independence, "without any kind of strategic subordination."

Lula’s plan casts Brazil as a leader in "building international governance for digital technologies and artificial intelligence, grounded in digital sovereignty, data protection, scientific cooperation, the transfer of strategic technologies, and democratic regulation of digital platforms and AI."

In his current administration, Lula has in fact introduced 

 the Marco Civil da Internet (Brazil's internet bill of rights), 

. But there has also been a marked gap between rhetoric and practice, with the administration relying heavily on Big Tech infrastructure in procurements for a 

Lula's platform also calls for sovereign computing infrastructure operated by Brazilian institutions, and for data center and AI infrastructure expansions "accompanied by mandatory socio-environmental safeguards." That promise, too, collides with reality: 

his government pushed generous data center

 tax incentives over the past years — first as an executive decree that lapsed, then as a bill 

The government celebrated this ReData law as a 

 noting that 60% of Brazil's data is currently stored abroad. At the same time, civil society groups, academics, and affected communities 

criticized the government for insufficient consultation

 and weak socio-environmental safeguards.

Flávio Bolsonaro's sovereignty “not as ideology”

The far right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and Lula's main rival, also wants to attract data centers — a point of agreement, as it happens, across the leading candidates' platforms.

, Bolsonaro invokes the word "sovereignty" too, but "with professionalism, not as ideology," he emphasises, defining "sovereignty" as "a nation's capacity to govern itself, make its own laws, and look after its own territory." It is "exercised in practice, through concrete action — not by repeating the word 'sovereignty' at every turn," the document states.

Bolsonaro's proposal calls for technology to modernize the state and become the economy's "productivity engine," using Brazil's own resources — clean energy and critical minerals — to get there. "We will not just be consumers of technology: we will also be its developers and producers," the plan reads.

The rhetoric, however, is at odds with reality. Flávio Bolsonaro's proposals align closely with US interests: they include what he calls a sweeping cut to "censorship" — a mass repeal of toughened platform accountability measures — paired with a lighter-touch, "pro-innovation" regulatory approach. In 

a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech

 in Texas in March, Bolsonaro declared that Brazil is "the solution for the United States to break its dependence on China for critical minerals, especially rare earths."

Beyond policy alignment, Flávio Bolsonaro has shown open deference to Donald Trump; he reportedly 

 team at the disposal of the US government if elected, according to a letter sent to the candidate by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in June.

In May, Flávio Bolsonaro had traveled to the US to meet with Trump, Rubio, and J.D. Vance, after which the US 

 a photo captioned: "It was very nice having Flávio Bolsonaro in the Oval Office of the White House — A smart young man who loves his Country, Brazil, very much! President DONALD J. TRUMP".

 reacted by blaming Flávio for the punishment, but Rubio 

 of pinning it on Lula instead: "His economic policies are bad for Americans and bad for Brazilians. For the past year, Lula has put his own ego ahead of making a deal for the welfare of the Brazilian people, and these tariffs are the price for that."

In 2025, the US Trade Representative accused Brazil of unfair practices against American companies, citing digital commerce — particularly PIX, the public instant-payment system that has been displacing credit card use — and platform regulation. The investigation request 

“secret orders directing U.S. social media Companies” and a change in the platform liability regime decided by Brazil's Supreme Court (STF) in 2025.

 Trump has set for lifting the tariffs are a series of political interference attempts — including a requirement that Brazil not restrict the participation of "political dissidents" in the elections — and economic ones, including tariff reductions and demands related to rare earths, deforestation, and digital trade, among others.

The US shadow over this election was visible in plain sight on September 7, Brazil's Independence Day, when Flávio Bolsonaro's supporters took to the streets in his support 

 — while chanting for US "intervention."

The election that exposed sovereignty's many meanings

The other three top-polling candidates — Augusto Cury, Ronaldo Caiado, and Renan Santos — also diverge in how they interpret sovereignty. All three sit on the political right, with very different backgrounds.

Augusto Cury is a self-help author and political newcomer who surprised observers by polling near 10%, campaigning on a message of "capitalist mind, social heart." Ronaldo Caiado is a seasoned conservative politician, the former governor of Goiás, an agribusiness champion and tech enthusiast who passed AI and rare-earth legislation in his state, 

and shortly after signed an exclusivity agreement with the US

. Renan Santos is the founder of Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL), the youthful right-wing movement that gained prominence during former president Dilma Rousseff's impeachment in 2016, and is now trying to out-flank Bolsonaro on the right with proposals 

 on El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian style of governance.

All three explicitly invoke digital sovereignty, but their approaches diverge sharply. Cury 

 cybersecurity investment and protection of strategic data, alongside domestic rare-earth processing, with a focus on building national technical capacity. Caiado has a 

 that would reserve computing capacity to boost national productivity and development. And Santos uses the word "sovereignty" 

, especially around nuclear capability and rare earths, with one wrinkle: that rhetoric coexists with a strategy built mainly on foreign capital, through deals with the EU and the US, in opposition of what he calls the "serious geopolitical problem" of the concentration of rare-earth refinement in China.

Cury and Caiado both propose regulating social media, but differ on implementation: Cury calls for greater platform accountability without committing to specifics, while Caiado's approach builds new rules on top of the existing Marco Civil da Internet framework rather than replacing it. Renan Santos, by contrast, opposes any regulation and defends freedom of expression with no legal mediation whatsoever. Caiado and Santos both have data center proposals, and all three favor market-friendly rare-earth and AI policies centered on "innovation" and tax incentives.

On the left of the spectrum, among the smaller parties, "sovereignty" is an even more common refrain — but as an outright rejection of foreign capital. Hertz Dias's 

platform for the The United Socialist Workers' Party (PSTU

) carries the subtitle "For a Sovereign and Socialist Brazil." Samara, of the socialist Unidade Popular party, also 

 of her foreign-policy plank specifically to "sovereignty," promising to end Brazil's "submission" to the United States, China, and "imperialist countries" — and, specifically, to block the handover of Brazil's rare earths to foreign interests.

The symbolic political value of sovereignty

Brazil's election shows how the term's elasticity lets it hold multiple, even contradictory, meanings across the political spectrum under the same umbrella. The word entered the Brazilian political mainstream around Trump's second term, according to Luca Belli, Professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas Rio de Janeiro Law School, and Director of its Centre for Technology and Society.

"As I see it, this is the moment when everyone should start to grasp the enormous geopolitical risks. Democracy and the economy depend on who's in the White House. And that's a very risky bet to make," says Belli, author of the book 

Soberania Digital e Inteligência Artificial: Rumo à Autonomia Tecnológica

 (Digital Sovereignty and Artificial Intelligence: Toward Technological Autonomy).

 to the Lula administration's Ministry of Technology and Innovation, defines digital sovereignty as the capacity to understand how a technology works, develop alternatives to it, and regulate it effectively according to one's own values – with self-determination and control over the technologies involved. "The ability to understand, to develop, to regulate – that's the guardian knot of sovereignty."

That's why, in his view, it's unsustainable when candidates invoke the word "sovereignty" while advocating alignment with one pole or another. Sustainability, for him, depends on the capacity to remain independent while building autonomous capability. That doesn't mean cutting ties, but avoiding unilateral alignment, avoiding becoming a digital colony — and recognizing the production chains that sit behind these technologies. "AI systems depend on enabling inputs — minerals, connectivity. If you don't have that systemic view, what the other candidates call digital sovereignty is useless."

Researchers Rafael Grohmann and Alexandre Costa Barbosa have shown that "digital sovereignty" is not a fixed or universally agreed-upon concept. "Instead, it functions as a contested field of meaning, a site where multiple actors with conflicting agendas seek to define the terms of technological governance, whether data, platforms, artificial intelligence or other technologies," they wrote in 

Grohmann and Costa Barbosa demonstrate how the term "sovereignty" has been co-opted by Big Tech companies selling "sovereignty as a service." "By reframing sovereignty as a service, these companies disembed the notion of sovereignty from its historical associations with collective self-determination, the role of the state and local development,” they write. “In its place, they offer branded frameworks of 'control,' 'compliance,' and 'resilience,' distributed through proprietary infrastructures."

The paper argues that "sovereignty-as-a-service" is a "form of discursive capture in which platform companies define the conditions under which others, whether individuals, corporations, or even governments, can be deemed 'sovereign,' depending on their resources and infrastructural capacities. Rather than sovereignty being exercised over platforms, it is now granted by them, through tools and services that reproduce dependence on their infrastructures."

"The term, in that specific case, is an example of how sovereignty has become a key term – and not just within the world of policymakers, but especially in the current context of geopolitical dispute”, says Grohmann, an assistant professor of Critical Platform Studies at the University of Toronto. “The concept of sovereignty has become something plastic, that depends on who's speaking and in what context they're speaking."

Grohmann explains that the word sovereignty, which emerged in the context of nation-states, takes on different meanings depending on the context. In countries with a history of Nazism or fascism, there's resistance to the concept among progressives because it carries undertones of nationalism; in Latin America, there's popular sovereignty related to social movements for food, ecological, indigenous and territorial sovereignty.

"This shows that even before all this current back-and-forth, the notion was already being contested in terms of meaning. What's happening now is that it's completely fraying,” says Grohmann. “It's become an important currency because it's framed positively in political communication — nobody's going to call themselves anti-sovereign.”

In Brazilian politics, this election is marked by the same phenomenon. Across the spectrum, candidates are reframing openness to foreign capital, submission, deregulation, and outside influence in the very same language — as if Brazil could be sovereign enough to actually choose for itself.

Europe has settled the question of whether it has a dependency problem when it comes to its digital infrastructure. The European Commission's 

, published in June, and the European Parliament's 

 on European technological sovereignty and digital infrastructure identify the same vulnerabilities: cloud and storage services, communication platforms, identity, and payments. The November 2025 Franco-German 

 in Berlin produced intergovernmental pledges of European preference.

The question, then, is not the scope of the dependency problem or whether Europe should address it. New instruments like the 

 have been launched and are now being implemented, with lip service to funding and/or building sovereign digital infrastructures. While such efforts are commendable, and some Member States are doing their own work, activity is notably absent in one area: Digital Public Infrastructure, or DPI. While DPI activity is happening in the EU and its Member States, policy recognition has been slow to emerge, and the bloc has not organized those capabilities into a coherent approach in support of European digital sovereignty.

I argue that the European debate around digital dependency and how to operationalize digital sovereignty in practice is lacking; not in focus, but by omission. Rather than primarily focusing on what it can regulate and mitigate, Europe should also focus on what it can build and deliver. In this regard, I believe European engagement on DPI will be vital for securing the EU’s digital sovereignty agenda in the years ahead.

The test that European digital sovereignty currently fails

While multi-Member State initiatives and the prospect of more European Commission funding are promising, the scope of new instruments remains under-defined and evolving, with implementation expected to be slow (and possibly quite bureaucratic). What remains unsettled is what Europe actually intends to build and what it can actually operate itself, or across its Member States.

Most of the current debate concerns what to stop depending on: which vendors to exclude, which data to localize, which procurement conditions to attach. That is 

, the form of sovereignty EU instruments deliver most readily, and which is at the heart of the vision of digital sovereignty pushed by the Tech Sovereignty Package. It is not the same as the capacity to build, operate, maintain and replace foundational systems.

Whether structural exposure reduction is sufficient turns on one practical question: Could the EU change or replace a given component without rebuilding what sits on top of it? A European provider that is as difficult and expensive to leave as the one it replaced may relocate rather than remove it. Building the capability to deliver means retaining the ability to (for example) move data or exit a contract, and the EU can begin doing this almost immediately, with identity, payments, and data exchange as a starting point.

. The EU has established common rules, technical specifications, and an open-source reference implementation, while member states are responsible for providing wallets. More than 

 across 26 member states, as well as Norway, Iceland and Ukraine, are participating in the large-scale pilots. The wallet ultimately operates within a broader technology stack that includes devices, operating systems and other components that European institutions do not fully control. The pattern will recur wherever European infrastructure sits on components the EU neither maintains nor governs.

The ability for the EU to not just set the rules for its digital infrastructure but to ensure the bloc and its Member States can build and maintain it is vital. Enabling that ability through the capabilities of the state is what we call the 

. That capability centers on the technologies, institutions, and practices necessary to actually operationalize, build, and maintain digital infrastructure with higher degrees of public control. DPI is the most developed body of practice globally for supplying it.

Why Digital Public Infrastructure for Europe?

DPI is a globally recognized approach to building public digital services with society-wide applications — critical digital capabilities at the foundation of digital infrastructure and enabling public service delivery. As described by its most ardent practitioners, DPI represents foundational, society-wide digital systems, principally digital identity, instant payment rails, and trusted data exchange, built on open standards and shared across public and private users.

The G20 reached the first multilateral governmental consensus on DPI under 

 treats it as a driver of inclusive digital transformation, and the World Bank has built dedicated programs around it. DPI language now appears in the core digital strategies of dozens of countries across Africa and Latin America, and regional bodies have adopted it as an organizing concept for cooperation.

While it is focused on three core capabilities, the paradigm and way of thinking might be vital in unlocking an “

ecosystemic approach to digital policy and digital sovereignty

”, linking the digital infrastructure and public services delivery logics in a way that supports European digital policy goals. While DPI is not the only solution for building capability, when deployed well, it can and should be an important part of the recipe for operationalizing European digital sovereignty. The time is right for European policymakers to consider what DPI could bring to the bloc.

In terms of policy recognition, the EU is somewhat thinly represented in the DPI space, and where it appears, it does so as a funder and occasional convener rather than as a builder. Part of the reason is categorical: the bloc treats DPI principally as a development concept, relevant to partner countries rather than to itself. The 

Directorate-General for International Partnerships

 (DG INTPA) does substantial bilateral work that is rarely cited in multilateral fora, while the 

Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology

 (EEAS), which hold the policy and diplomatic mandates, have not defined a DPI position at all. Even with DG INTPA, their voice is less heard in international convenings around the topic, including at the UN and the 

The story of what is actually happening in Europe tells a different story than the vocabulary and framing might suggest. Many Member States possess workable DPI implementations and have been more visible in beginning to connect this work to the global community of practice around DPI and Digital Public Goods (DPGs). 

 provides a unified authentication layer across French public services for tens of millions of users. The 

 campaign, as well as hosting its upcoming Annual Members Summit in Paris in November. Italy runs 

, the Public Digital Identity System for identity and its 

 for payments at the scale of one of the EU's largest populations. Estonia's 

 has been implemented in 40 countries globally, and Denmark's 

 made digital-by-default the norm for dealings between citizens and the state. Denmark requires digital self-service in a number of government services, subject to exemptions and alternatives. Some connective tissue exists, too. For example, 

 supplies a governance architecture for mutual recognition of national identity schemes, with large-scale pilots involving more than 550 companies and public authorities.

The constraint in Europe is therefore not the absence of DPI. It is that no one treats these systems as a single class of infrastructure worthy of investment and maintenance, let alone a critical component of Europe’s proposed digital sovereignty agenda. Because they are not read that way, these important systems are not funded for maintenance, not governed in common, and not connected as much as they could. Each was built by a single state with unified authority over standards, procurement, and delivery. Reproducing that coherence across twenty-seven Member States is a coordination problem nobody currently owns.

Whatever one thinks about the DPI paradigm, these capabilities are vital for the functioning of the modern state in the digital era. Failing to participate actively in a global community of practice around DPI means missed opportunities for sharing and learning that might be critical for Europe as it builds its own vision of digital sovereignty within and between countries across the bloc.

 were built incrementally, tested in public, and organized around politically legible problem statements. The 

 delivers over 100 government services and has outpaced many Member States on adoption. European delivery teams are largely not in the rooms where those lessons are exchanged, because Europe sends funders and policy officials rather than implementers. The result is a partnership offer of money and finished frameworks, when the DPI conversation asks for co-development.

A more reciprocal Brussels Partnership would start by making the EU's own implementations visible, then bring them into multilateral fora as contributions rather than exports.

What would this look like inside of Europe? Moving on DPI does not require a European DPI strategy, an EU-wide definition, or a new legislative cycle. The instruments are already in hand. The 

 provides governance mechanisms that could connect national systems without replacing them. The 

revision of the Public Procurement Directives

 has already begun to permit open standards as evaluation criteria, and Commission guidance could treat procurement of digital infrastructure explicitly as industrial policy. The 

, once it materializes, will be a vehicle for investment in foundational systems. The Digital Commons EDIC, which brings France, Germany and other Member States together to build and maintain shared infrastructure, is the most concrete near-term mechanism available.

The Tech Sovereignty Package also proposes a European Digital Public Infrastructure Steward Organization within the 

. It is worth having if it takes on the type of work nobody is currently doing: keeping a register of the DPI capabilities Member States run, resourcing and connecting what exists rather than only funding new development, and acting as a single point of contact across DG CNECT, DG INTPA, the EEAS and national agencies. Without a budget and a delivery mandate, it will add another coordination layer to a landscape that already has several.

Some simple next steps are available. Member States that haven’t already can register their implementations on the DPI Map and their digital public goods in the Digital Public Goods Alliance registry. This requires no new funding and addresses the visibility gap directly. In the medium-term, the 

 cycle, the 2027 high-level review of the 

implementation of the Global Europe Instrument

 provide opportunities to connect domestic European work with international DPI cooperation.

The choice for Europe is not between regulating and building. It is between continuing to set rules for infrastructure that others operate, and acquiring the capacity to operate infrastructure whose rules Europe sets and can change. DPI does not single-handedly solve that problem, but it is a step in that direction, and it helps build the institutional muscle the bloc so clearly needs to realize digital sovereignty at scale.

Lord Tom Watson, former Labour deputy leader, speaks to the media on Wednesday January 22, 2025. (Press Association via AP Images)


Facing a growing storm of opposition to its role in England’s National Health Service (NHS), Palantir’s UK branch last week 

 a major new signing: Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the governing Labour party.

Lord Watson’s new position contrasts starkly with his public views a decade ago: in 2015, he brought a 

 against the UK Government over its plans to “spy on citizens.” Now, he’s taking up a role at the world’s most prominent spy-tech company.

Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir in the UK, said that Lord Watson “brings deep understanding of how AI is changing the ways the state can help people in Britain.” The 

 that Watson would be taking a leave of absence from the Lords and giving up his parliamentary pass while working for them. But it’s perhaps not hard to see what other attractions the background of Palantir’s new senior vice president held for the firm.

Lord Watson has a long history in the Labour party — serving as a parliamentarian for over 20 years, including time as a minister for defense and for digital affairs.

Palantir may be hoping that he can help them as they face a crunch moment: a ‘break clause’ in its contract with the NHS, which could allow the current Government to bring an early end to its £330m role in the health service’s Federated Data Platform (FDP).

The Government has said this decision would need to be made by December this year, and ministers have so far been tight-lipped about their intentions. However, there is an undeniable groundswell of opposition to Palantir keeping its role, with concerns ranging from chair Peter Thiel’s open hostility to the NHS — he 

 it “makes people sick” — to the firm’s close alignment with United States President Donald Trump and support for his ICE paramilitaries — to the threat its growing role poses to UK ‘sovereignty.’ Two influential cross-party parliamentary committees have called for the NHS contract to end; and ministers have faced frequent questions and debates over the company’s role.

Palantir may also be hoping that Watson can fill the gap left by the recent downfall of another Labour Lord: Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel, counted Palantir among its key clients. Following his appointment as British Ambassador to the USA, Lord Mandelson 

 to hold a stake in Global Counsel, which continued to advise Palantir.

While there has never been public clarity around how this conflict of interest was managed, relations between Mandelson and Palantir appear to have remained cordial. The Ambassador 

 then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer on a visit to Palantir’s office during his first trip to Washington DC in 2025 — the second stop after the White House.

 that later that same year, Lord Mandelson emailed Starmer’s chief of staff offering to set up a meeting between the Prime Minister and Palantir founder and chairman Peter Thiel, describing him as a “celebrated techie”.

However, in unfortunate news for Palantir, Mandelson was last year 

 as Ambassador following revelations of his close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. This was followed in 2026 by 

 that he leaked sensitive internal government information to the convicted sex offender in 2009, and advised that his own government should be threatened over proposed taxes on bankers’ bonuses.

The question for Palantir now is whether Lord Watson can fill the hole left by Lord Mandelson as a well-connected former Labour minister.

It would be hard to argue that lobbying and political influence has not played an important role in Palantir’s impressive racking up of UK Government contracts in recent years.

 between Palantir cofounder and board chair Peter Thiel and then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which was not disclosed at the time, Palantir won its first NHS contract, agreeing to work for a token payment of £1 at the height of the pandemic.

The firm then worked to build out from this beach-head: new contracts, backed by further political engagement and a revolving door between Palantir and the civil service.

, Louis Mosley set out the company’s approach ‘in an email entitled “Buying our way in…!” sent in Sept. 2021, which outlined “hoovering up” small businesses serving the NHS to “take a lot of ground and take down a lot of political resistance.”’

The movement of government staff in and out of Palantir becomes almost too much to follow: directors and chairs at NHS trusts — the organizational units of the health service — are revealed to be paid Palantir advisors; the top civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Care is 

 a member of the Palantir-lead NHS consortium; former senior defense officials and ministers are 

 of an outgoing senior civil servant responsible for the Federated Data Platform, the NHS system being delivered by Palantir: “Given Palantir’s habit of lobbying civil servants and the revolving door from government, I wait to see where she will end up.”

So Lord Watson’s appointment seems to be very much the rule, not the exception. But it should be no less worrying for that. Palantir’s colossal resources allow it to fund a vast army of former insiders, fixers, and lobbyists. Even if the UK’s flimsy rules on lobbying are followed, this still has a corrosive effect on our democracy, and our ability to make an informed, balanced judgement on whether we want Thiel’s firm — with its openly-advertised goal of US technological dominance — to have a role at the heart of the UK state.

Perhaps one small ray of hope is this: if Palantir is so desperate to sub Lord Watson in for the now disgraced Lord Mandelson, is the company finally starting to feel that it can’t take its role in the UK’s health service for granted?

Maddie Freeman stands with her back turned to the side, in front of a billboard advertising her social media detox movement, with a deep blue sky in the background. The text on the billboard says "Get off your phone. Join our Free Tech Detox Movement. NoSoNovember.org".

$17 billion dollar teen social media settlement

 by Meta is more than historical. For me, it’s personal.

From a young age, I became hopelessly addicted to social media. I watched as my community became collateral damage in Meta’s ferocious quest to colonize our brains in the pursuit of profitability. I feel Meta is finally being held accountable for addicting an entire generation to its products, using misleading advertising and deliberately continuing to perpetuate addictive features that harm mental health.

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