2025-06-16 –, Kesselhaus
This talk shows that digital sovereignty is prone to open the door to a nationalist agenda which favours the power concentration that led to Big Tech, and it easily slips into alt-right narratives that put colonising space over the needs of most our planet's population
With the new ruling coalition of Trump, Musk and Big Tech, European digital sovereignty seems to be the widely accepted solution to break free from US companies that are used to threaten European governments. The EU is reviving industrial policy and is willing to invest a lot of money into digital sovereignty - but which problems exactly should it address, and what should be part of the solution? This talk shows that digital sovereignty is prone to open the door to a nationalist agenda which favours the power concentration that led to Big Tech, and it easily slips into alt-right narratives that put colonising space over the needs of most our planet's population. After an overview of current approaches to digital sovereignty and the role of open-source within those, I will discuss what is needed to reclaim digital sovereignty to defend and strengthen democratic practice both in and through technologies.
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Aline is an applied economist with a special interest in the data economy, competition policy and platform regulation. She currently works as the Tech Economy Lead at the anti-monopoly organisation Rebalance Now and has co-founded the digital policy collective Structural Integrity. She has been involved in digital and data policy for various years, at Wikimedia Germany, the think tank interface and an economic consultancy, among others.