Exporting Autonomy, Importing Dependency: The Geopolitical Work of “Sovereign AI”

As governments around the world race to build “sovereign AI” systems, the term has emerged as a rhetorically powerful yet conceptually ambiguous expression of national ambition. While it evokes autonomy over artificial intelligence infrastructure, in practice it often masks deep dependencies on transnational firms—particularly U.S.-based companies like NVIDIA. This study critically examines how sovereignty is strategically sold and mobilized in global discourse, tracing the term’s diffusion through news media and analyzing how state and corporate actors invoke the language of autonomy while remaining embedded in U.S.-dominated infrastructural hierarchies. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and infrastructure studies, the paper shows how sovereignty operates not only as a policy goal but also as a symbolic strategy that reframes material reliance as empowerment. The analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset of all news articles containing the phrase “sovereign AI” in the Nexis Uni database as of April 19, 2025, providing a robust foundation for analyzing the discourse’s global diffusion and strategic use. Theoretically, the study contributes to debates on sociotechnical imaginaries, infrastructural asymmetry, and technonationalism by demonstrating how AI sovereignty narratives perform geopolitical work: legitimizing public investment, obscuring structural dependencies, and rebranding global inequality as innovation. In doing so, it urges scholars and policymakers to interrogate the political work that discourse performs in shaping AI futures—and to ask who benefits when sovereignty is claimed, and who bears the cost when it is not realized.