By Javier Surasky
For
centuries, sovereignty was the invisible shield protecting the territorial
independence and governing power of States. Today, with data circulating at
unimaginable speeds and scales, and with decisions increasingly automated on
remote servers, that shield reveals ever-deeper cracks. Sovereignty has not
disappeared, nor will it as a key concept, but it seems to be changing its
skin: from physical maps to digital infrastructures, from independence to
interconnection, from human decisions to systems where humans and machines co-govern. What, then, is sovereignty in the digital era?
To answer
that question, we must travel back in time to the birth of the modern concept of sovereignty and the publication of Jean Bodin's Les Six Livres de la République in 1576. In his view, the sovereign possesses the absolute and
indivisible power to make decisions without external interference, since
sovereignty was a power above all others. This vision arose from the political
need at the end of the Middle Ages, when the kings of France defeated the
Empire, the Papacy, and the feudal lords, establishing a national State that,
in the words of Jorge Carpizo, had earned its place in the world on the
battlefield.
Bodin's
notion of sovereignty was consolidated in practice with the Peace of Westphalia
and the establishment of the principle of legal equality among States. Since
then, sovereignty has meant at least three things: territorial control,
exclusive authority, and international recognition.
However, the
idea of sovereignty was bound to the “civilizational” concepts defined by
European powers. Far from conflicting with colonialism, the sovereignty of
European States was part of the so-called "white man's burden,"
serving as a counterweight to their extractive practices.
Throughout
the 20th century, in an international society that had endured two world wars,
the traditional notion of sovereignty could not withstand the weight of a new
reality. Economic interdependence, the creation of the United Nations, the
adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and decolonization
processes became cracks in the sovereign shield the State had carried for
centuries. Thus emerged the idea of sovereignty conditioned by international
law and by growing interdependence among States.
The
European Union took that process further when its member States agreed to
transfer sovereign powers to supranational institutions. Sovereignty was no
longer a shield but a network of international rights and obligations, and
States could dispose of segments of their sovereign power by delegating them to
international organizations.
In our
time, the idea of relational sovereignty is also beginning to face tensions
imposed by a changing world. National territory, once the internal space for
exercising sovereignty, is eroding as the center of international relations.
Territory has not (yet) ceased to matter—events occur in some physical place,
and their consequences generally affect defined territorial spaces—but to
territorial space we must now add cyberspace, which by definition is
non-territorial.
Information,
now a strategic resource, grants control over discourse, meaning, and
decision-making. Data—the skeleton of that information—is becoming part of the
sovereignty equation, giving rise to the concept the
European Union calls digital sovereignty, while China
refers to it as national cyberspace security. Both concepts converge
on the same point: national control over technological infrastructure,
including data, as the new foundation of State sovereignty.
This
transition is not technical but political and highly symbolic. Borders once
drawn on maps have moved to the cloud; traditional customs posts have been
reinvented as digital firewalls, and international disputes manifest as
technological sanctions, software bans, and wars over access to super-powerful
chips. We are witnessing the rise of Leviathan 2.0.
Artificial
intelligence exacerbates the dilemmas of an outdated concept of sovereignty, exposing them starkly. Algorithms shape public policy, participate in the
allocation of public resources, and even go to war. In some countries, AI has
been integrated into the judicial function, and we are beginning to see signs
of its incorporation into legislative work. It now permeates core State
functions through programs created by transnational corporations that lack
legitimacy and accountability. Algorithms have become the backdrop of current
forms of governance, of global power struggles, and of the capacity to be
sovereign beyond the ideologically charged lines on international maps.
Sovereignty,
understood as the decision-making capacity, is being gradually transferred to
automated systems beyond the reach of State control and public scrutiny. As a result, power has shifted
from States to infrastructures, and whoever controls infrastructures controls
the future.
In
response, the United Nations and other multilateral bodies have sought to
understand and regulate the use of AI and data. In 2023, Secretary-General António
Guterres established the High-Level
Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. In August 2025, the
General Assembly adopted resolution
79/325, which sets out the “Mandate and modalities for the establishment
and functioning of the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial
Intelligence and the Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance.”
Both
initiatives are based on a recognition: the speed of technological change
surpasses the States’ capacity to regulate it. Yet when decision time arrives, the
State reasserts its centrality as the actor in international decision-making,
as demonstrated by the adoption of the Global
Digital Compact during the 2024 Summit of the Future. Political
sovereignty returns to its traditional garments and frees itself from the
recommendations of experts, as also occurs, for example, in the fight against
climate change.
Digital
multilateralism advances through a narrow path between two opposing forces: the
need for specialized knowledge and the persistence of a State-centered notion
of sovereignty that no longer matches today’s global order. This generates a
paradox: the same States that acknowledge their lack of technological
understanding reserve the right to decide on it. Meanwhile, in a world
increasingly dependent on algorithms, multilateralism tries to build itself
using the tools of a fading world order.
Today, the
question is not whether States are sovereign, but to what extent. Some authors, such as Stephen Krasner (“Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States”), suggest referring to “shared sovereignty” between humans and
machines or between governments and technology corporations. Others—Michael
Zürn (A Theory of Global Governance), Dani Rodrik (The Globalization
Paradox), and, much earlier, Susan Strange (The Retreat of the State)—argue
that we are witnessing irreversible erosion, where power fragments among actors
that do not adhere to classical mechanisms of legitimacy.
Together,
these authors suggest that sovereignty is no longer a binary condition (one
either has it or does not) but a continuum in which State power is dispersed
and shared among global and private actors, eroding its territorial basis
and democratic legitimacy.
This is not
to declare the “disappearance of the State,” but rather a transformation in the
idea of sovereignty that shapes and is shaped by the State. In digital matters,
States can legislate, but they cannot consistently enforce their laws when decision
centers lie outside their territories or within opaque, AI-managed systems.
Sovereignty
today depends less on geography than on control over data. It is expressed less
in laws than in protocols and standards. The face of power may look the same,
but its expression has changed—a digital replica of the original in
hyperrealist format.
The
challenge is not merely to build governance for the digital world but to adapt
our concepts and tools to do so effectively. We need more experts who can speak a language
accessible to all, and more social scientists who can analyze how the digital
sphere reshapes deeply rooted ideas within their disciplines.
It is time
to organize our knowledge, unlearn what confuses us, and create new spaces for
reflection and order—or else let the river run its course, even if its waters
threaten to overflow the banks that once contained them.