This paper argues that compute sovereignty should be defined neither as total autarky nor as procurement theatre, but as the minimum viable domestic or rights-aligned capacity required to preserve continuity, lawful governance, and bargaining power over critical AI workloads. It introduces Cognitive Rent as a term for recurrent dependence on third-party cognitive infrastructure, and proposes a nine-domain Compute Sovereignty Audit. Drawing on current Canadian policy actions, U.S. export-control practice, Canadian privacy law, Quebec's private-sector privacy regime, OCAP, CARE, and current energy-system evidence, the paper integrates compute sovereignty with data sovereignty, siting governance, and energy-system readiness, and translates the audit into a procurement checklist and legislative asks. Sources current to 31 March 2026. Keywords: compute sovereignty, AI sovereignty, data sovereignty, Cognitive Rent, Minimum Viable Sovereign Compute, OCAP, CARE, Indigenous data governance, Canadian AI policy, export control, data centre policy, procurement.
Adeel Salman (Tue,) studied this question.