Digital Suverænitet: Fra begreb til strategisk ramme

Digital sovereignty is multidimensional and requires priority

In a time of geopolitical instability and rapid AI development, control over digital infrastructure and data has become critical. While there is broad agreement on the need for action at the national, Nordic, and EU levels, a shared language around digital sovereignty is still lacking. This lack of alignment leads either to inaction or to narrow technical solutions without strategic direction. The core argument of the brief is that digital sovereignty is a multidimensional concept, involving both principled positions and pragmatic choices. Reducing it to technical solutions risks overlooking the values and trade-offs that determine who controls and benefits from these systems. Conversely, focusing solely on values leads to abstract principles without practical implementation or real impact. Digital sovereignty is rarely about choosing between full self-sufficiency and total dependence. Rather, it is about balancing often competing demands for openness, security, competitiveness, growth, values, and rights in a world where capabilities are unevenly distributed. This means that it is necessary to define who or what is to be protected or promoted, within the domains of security, economic growth, or citizens’ rights, and to recognize that choices in one domain may strengthen or undermine another. The brief focuses on AI as the area where digital sovereignty is most acutely at stake, but the concepts apply more broadly to digital infrastructure and data. It provides decision-makers with tools to navigate these dilemmas by presenting:

§  A conceptual framework for identifying who or what should be digitally sovereign.

§  An overview of how digital sovereignty is prioritized around the world.

§  An understanding that sovereignty can be exercised through three control regimes: ownership, expertise, or regulation – but that none of these are sufficient on their own.

The central implication of the brief is that digital sovereignty requires an integrated strategy that combines ownership, expertise, and regulation, while managing the interdependencies and trade-offs between security, economic growth, and citizens’ rights through clear objectives. Without this holistic approach, there is a risk of ineffective regulation, unusable infrastructure, or a lack of capacity to develop, maintain, and apply solutions in practice, potentially undermining security, growth, or rights.

This research brief presents an overview of our current knowledge about political bias in large language models (LLMs) and how this can affect and influence citizens when they turn to chatbots for voting advice, focusing hereby on Danish elections. We test various LLMs on their political ideology, their knowledge about the Danish party systems and whether they favour certain parties over others when recommending who to vote for based on provided voter profiles. We show that LLMs on policy issues align with centrist parties (Moderaterne, Radikale Venstre, Alternativet, Socialdemokratiet), and that LLMs based on candidate responses disproportionallyr ecommend specific parties (Moderaterne, Liberal Alliance, Dansk Folkeparti, and Enhedslisten). The purpose of this brief is to raise awareness that chatbots should not be considered a reliable source for voting advice in light of the Danish parliamentary election in March 2026, the first national election in Denmark after the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Based on a survey by the Digital Democracy Centre, in particular young voters might have turned to chatbots when making their decision on who to vote for. We argue that this might be problematic with respect to information quality, democratic participation, and digital critical thinking.