Governments throughout main economies are accelerating a shift away from U.S. expertise companies, reframing video conferencing and electronic mail programs, amongst others, as essential nationwide infrastructure amid rising safety, information sovereignty and geopolitical dangers.
On Tuesday, France stated it would exchange American platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Groups with its home video-conferencing device Visio throughout all government departments by 2027, citing safety issues and a broader technique to scale back reliance on international software program distributors.
India, in the meantime, is upgrading its legacy government electronic mail system to a safe, cloud-based and scalable platform by way of Zoho to implement stringent safety requirements, together with end-to-end encryption.
Different international locations taking comparable steps embrace the Netherlands, which has accredited motions urging the government to scale back reliance on U.S. software program companies, together with by creating cloud companies underneath Dutch management, and Germany, which is selling European-built options that guarantee safety, efficiency and full information sovereignty underneath European requirements.
Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein state cut ties with Microsoft, with civil servants, judges and police transferring away from instruments such as Groups, Phrase, Excel and Outlook, citing the necessity for digital sovereignty and lowered reliance on U.S. tech giants.
“Safe communication has crossed the edge from productiveness device to essential nationwide infrastructure. Governments now design digital programs assuming long-term surveillance, supply-chain infiltration, and nation-state adversaries as baseline threats. Publish-pandemic, video conferencing carries cupboard choices, defence coordination, and diplomatic negotiations,” stated Sudiptaa Paul Choudhury, CMO, QNu Labs.
Geopolitics is the accelerant, making dangers unattainable to disregard. At its core, governments demand certainty over the place information resides, who controls encryption keys, and which authorized programs govern entry.
Alongside video conferencing platforms, amongst others, are more and more embedding AI-driven capabilities such as visible, speech, and behavioural analytics. They’re processing much more delicate information than earlier generations of communication instruments. This shift has prompted governments worldwide to re-evaluate problems with information privateness, processing management, and AI governance, in response to Akash Karnik, International COO, 1Point1 Options.
Governments are more and more factoring in the place information resides, how it’s processed and who finally controls AI fashions alongside conventional compliance necessities.
“From an information governance perspective, the first dangers stem from restricted visibility and management over how delicate video, audio, and metadata are saved, processed, or used to coach AI fashions outdoors nationwide jurisdictions. Cross-border information flows complicate compliance with native information safety legal guidelines, audit necessities, and enforcement mechanisms, whereas additionally elevating issues round third-party entry, secondary information use, mannequin reuse and long-term retention. When information storage or AI mannequin coaching takes place past nationwide borders, jurisdictional authority and enforceability weaken, making accountability tougher to ascertain,” he stated, including that for governments, this erosion of management straight impacts belief and transparency when adopting AI-enabled communication platforms at scale.
Indigenous platforms differ from negotiating with international distributors, permitting governments to outline and implement their very own belief boundaries. International locations personal the safety structure, management cryptographic key lifecycles, conduct unfettered system audits and combine with nationwide id and safety frameworks.
As a sovereign expertise export market emerges, nations with superior indigenous platforms will provide equally positioned international locations searching for alternate options to US-China tech dominance.
This wave is already evident, with international locations like Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea and the UAE creating sovereign communication infrastructure. This may solely speed up as a result of information sovereignty is shifting from a coverage aspiration to a technical procurement requirement.
Three forces are accelerating the shift: compressed quantum menace timelines, with cryptographically related quantum computer systems now seen as 1–5 years away; regulatory normalisation, as frameworks such as Europe’s GDPR, France’s digital sovereignty mandates and India’s Digital Private Information Safety (DPDP) Act make information sovereignty non-optional; and demonstrated viability, with France’s Visio rollout exhibiting indigenous platforms can function at scale.
Karnik highlighted that domestically constructed platforms can scale to fulfill enterprise and government necessities, notably when designed with safety, compliance, and information localisation on the core. To develop into globally aggressive, indigenous platforms should mix a trust-led basis with strong engineering, interoperability, and ecosystem partnerships, enabling cross-market enlargement whereas retaining management over information and AI fashions.
“Government environments prioritise assurance, auditability, and resilience over client collaboration options. Indigenous platforms leapfrog international counterparts due to safety sophistication. Zoom and Groups retrofit safety onto commercial-first architectures; purpose-built sovereign platforms architect security-first. France, Singapore, and India have deployed quantum-safe networks; The EU and Singapore have arrange testbeds to welcome world quantum-tech gamers to combine their choices, guaranteeing better flexibility with the appropriate portion of management. India’s DRDO collaborations are already deploying video conferencing with quantum key distribution – a expertise that no US industrial platform gives as a result of their menace mannequin doesn’t demand it. Indigenous doesn’t imply inferior; it means optimised for precise government menace fashions, not shareholder quarterly targets,” Choudhury stated.
Revealed on January 30, 2026
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