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ZDNET's key takeaways
Countries around the world want to free themselves from American tech companies.
Open source is the key to gaining digital sovereignty.
The United States opposes digital sovereignty, but no one outside America agrees.
NEW YORK – At the United Nations Open Source Week, digital sovereignty moved from policy slogan to operational agenda. Ministers and technologists from Germany to Ireland to Morocco to Tanzania and many more besides laid out how open source, interoperability, and open AI are becoming conditions for national control over critical digital systems.
The new digital bottom line is that digital sovereignty is no longer about building isolated national tech stacks but about owning data and infrastructure and the ability to switch vendors and models without breaking essential services. They also agreed that the only way to get there is through open standards and open source.
Also: 98% of IT leaders want digital sovereignty: SUSE is operationalizing it for companies everywhere
Digital sovereignty is not just a European movement. Numerous Global South countries have also had enough of putting all their IT eggs into a Microsoft, Google, or Amazon Web Services basket.
Tanzania: 'From passive consumers to active creators'
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