Loughborough Business School Professors Tom Jackson and Ian Hodgkinson, in collaboration with Bain & Company, have made key contributions to a new World Economic Forum (WEF) white paper: “AI Infrastructure in the Age of Sovereignty: Requirements, Strategies and a Trusted Framework for Digital Embassies”.
The professors first highlighted the significant role of data to AI governance across three building blocks—compute, network, and storage—back in their 2023 Public Money & Management publication and were able to bring these research insights to the development of this landmark World Economic Forum White Paper.
The new white paper addresses a central challenge in the AI era: how economies can make infrastructure choices that strengthen resilience and competitiveness while balancing international collaboration with domestic control.
The key to successful AI infrastructure rests on three interdependent data-centric building blocks, identified by the World Economic Forum and informed by Jackson and Hodgkinson’s research, each corresponding to a different state of data: compute (data in use), connectivity (data in motion) and data storage (data at rest). These building blocks must be developed in coordination, but doing so is far from straightforward.
The paper shows that AI infrastructure has moved to the centre of global debates on competitiveness. Once viewed as a technical enabler, it is now a strategic concern. Cumulative investment in AI-dedicated infrastructure exceeded $600 billion between 2010 and 2024 and is projected to surpass $400 billion annually by 2030.
The paper offers a practical decision-making compass on how economies can design sovereign AI infrastructure strategies by prioritising long-term resilience in their strategic choices.
Professor Tom Jackson said: “Digital embassies demonstrate that AI sovereignty is no longer simply about where infrastructure is physically located, but about how trusted control is maintained across storage, network and compute. By enabling shared yet sovereign infrastructure models, they also create opportunities to reduce unnecessary duplication of digital capacity, helping economies address both competitiveness and the growing environmental impact of AI infrastructure.”
Professor Ian Hodgkinson added: “We’re seeing an increasing emphasis on AI Sovereignty in public policies, and a mindset of ‘we’ll do it ourselves’. This is not possible for most economies, however, so to be successful, balancing international collaboration with domestic control becomes a critical strategic imperative for long-term AI resilience”.