Discover our new report dedicated to strategic autonomy, entitled “Mastering Dependencies – The Real Lever of Digital Sovereignty.”

In a context of growing geopolitical tensions and increasingly strong technological and material dependencies, this report continues the Human Technology Foundation’s work on strategic autonomy.

This report proposes an operational approach to digital sovereignty. It draws on contributions, hearings, and discussions conducted with numerous experts from the fields of cloud computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, public policy, and the business world.

“Dependency is inevitable. When endured, it weakens. When managed through informed trade-offs, it becomes a lever.”

This report is divided into three sections:

1. Disruption scenarios

The report starts from a simple observation: continuity of access to infrastructures, digital services, data, or computing capabilities can no longer be taken for granted.

It highlights five plausible fictional scenarios — geopolitical, economic, technical, or related to the artificial intelligence value chain — in order to demonstrate how they impact decision-making criteria.

2. What do we want to control?

Faced with the multiplication of dependencies, the challenge is not to control everything, but to identify what truly needs to remain under control.

This section proposes a framework to qualify dependencies and compare different control configurations according to risks, costs, and continuity requirements.

3. Making trade-offs in practice: use cases and configurations

The third section applies this logic to several concrete use cases (sensitive data, collaborative tools, artificial intelligence, and connectivity) to illustrate how trade-offs translate into operational configurations.

It highlights the compromises associated with each choice and proposes a method for structuring decision-making.

The report therefore aims to shed light on the concrete trade-offs organizations face in an environment where every decision involves tensions between objectives that are often difficult to reconcile: resilience and cost, performance and reversibility, control and simplicity.

There is no universally optimal architecture, only configurations that are more or less suited to a given level of risk, economic constraints, and continuity requirements.

We invite you to explore this report through the lens of your own realities, in order to question your organization’s dependencies and the compromises it is willing to accept.

Access the full report and our digital dependency management tool

‍