Sovereignty Is the Wrong Word. Here Is the Right One.

His argument: stop calling it digital sovereignty. Canada is not a superpower. It does not control the global digital order and is not going to. Framing the goal as sovereignty sets up a target nobody can hit and distracts from the practical work of actually reducing dependency.

He is right.

Sovereignty implies ultimate authority. It sounds excellent in a policy document. It sounds considerably less excellent at 2am when a foreign government has issued a compelled data request to the parent company of your very sovereign cloud provider and nobody is legally permitted to tell you about it.

The word Miedema prefers is autonomy. The capacity to make meaningful choices within your digital stack. The ability to change course when conditions change. Not domination. Not isolation. Just the practical freedom to operate without being entirely at the mercy of dependencies you did not notice accumulating.

That is a better frame. It is also a harder one.

Because sovereignty, for all its problems, at least sounds like something you either have or you do not. Autonomy is a spectrum. Every procurement decision, every contract renewal, every architectural choice either builds it or quietly erodes it. Which means there is no certificate for it. No compliance checkbox. No tasteful flag on the architecture diagram that lets everyone go home feeling patriotic.

Miedema adds resilience — the ability to absorb shocks and keep operating when the environment turns hostile. Not because you control everything. Because you designed for the possibility that you might control less than you thought.

Most organizations have not done this exercise. They have accumulated dependencies the way people accumulate subscriptions — one reasonable decision at a time, until one day you look at the bill and realize you are paying for six things you cannot live without and could not replace on short notice.

This is where the philosophy has to become architecture.

Autonomy is not a mindset. It is a set of decisions about how data is stored, who holds the keys, whether any single provider can see the complete picture, and what happens to your operations if that provider receives a legal order from a government that is not yours.

Good intentions are not load-bearing.

Miedema is right that sovereignty in the absolute sense is a myth. Full independence does not exist in an interconnected system. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with policies that sound bold and architectures that change nothing.

But autonomy without engineering is just a better-worded aspiration.

The word is right and that is why we built the thing...

Not Digital Sovereignty, but Autonomy and Resilience – John Miedema

Originally published by Ross Norrie, founder of SkyeConnex, on LinkedIn.

Published March 16, 2026 · More from the SkyeConnex blog