We present the Armenian translation of the article by Jacob Helberg, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and author of the Pax Silica initiative. Considering that large "factories" for artificial intelligence (AI) are being built in Armenia using American technologies and equipment, it is crucial to familiarize ourselves with the approaches of the United States presented in this article.
Jacob Helberg
Today, there are few phrases that flatter governments' self-esteem as much as "digital sovereignty." It carries the melody of independence, the dignity of self-governance, and the promise that a country holds its fate in its own hands. Many countries pin their hopes on the UN, which becomes a major advocate of this idea. With the help of a global digital agreement and the resources and mechanisms created around it, the UN seeks to create a world where every country has what the Secretary-General's reports call the "absolute minimum" of artificial intelligence: its own computers, its own data, and its own models created and owned by those countries. The goal of the multi-billion dollar fund proposed by the secretariat is to facilitate the creation of all this. And more countries, convinced that independence requires replication, are developing national strategies in the field of AI, each determined to create a new system within its borders that already exists.
The idea is alluring. Alluring, but backward and ineffective. Silicon Valley leaders can accumulate power based on an illusion that traditional industry leaders still resist: competition for existing products and methods that, without promoting prosperity, often hinders growth and leads to stagnation. A company that copies existing products and follows traditional methods enters an oversaturated market and finds its profits reaching zero, as hundreds of competitors sell the same thing. Meanwhile, a company that truly creates something new has no competitors at all and therefore makes a profit. Only innovators create new wealth for society.
Now apply this illusion to countries. Imagine a conference where forty governments take turns proclaiming sovereign "clouds"—sovereign models, their national leadership-partnership. They then applaud each other's independence. Then they return home and invest billions in companies created to do exactly what 39 other companies are already doing in their markets. They will not achieve the so-called "digital sovereignty" but mediocrity: a whole planet of low-quality clones, each of which will heroically repeat what was achieved last year while real progress will continue without them.
Photo: REUTERS
While others are reconstructing the present, American companies are building the future. They will not defend yesterday's platform; they will create and implement tomorrow's: products that do not yet exist, which no committee in Geneva has had the chance to subsidize, which will define the next decade before the clones finish cloning the last decade.
And since they are at the forefront, they will maintain what gives them that position: high profits, a rapid increase in asset value, and a dominant position in the global economy. This is not American "luck." This is unassailable mathematics.
It is this difference that sovereignty advocates ignore, and this is the main reason for what is happening. A country has digital sovereignty not because it can replicate yesterday's achievements; half the world can do that. A country has digital sovereignty if it can invest in creating the future. Let's call this innovative sovereignty: the power that allows not to replicate what already exists but to create what does not yet exist. An innovator measures their strength by their ability to invent something new, creating something that no one else can invent. For one, a decade ends in a museum. For another, the future belongs.
America learned this lesson quite quickly. When the world transitioned to 5G, the United States did not have a national leader who could create the radio stations and base stations that are the foundation of the network. This could have led to a crisis in the area of digital sovereignty and for local equipment manufacturers who would have to start from scratch. But that did not happen. Instead, American companies bought equipment from trusted partners and applied their talent in other areas: cloud technologies, software, and AI, which now govern the world. America did not win the battle for the future by creating an antenna. The US won by creating everything necessary for those antennas.
This is the logic of Pax Silica. We did not build it as some fortress. We built it as a coalition, as united opportunities—a means by which trusting countries can find the best technologies, wherever they may be, and combine their strengths. The idea is simple and clear: reliable partners, using their strengths, achieve what no single, isolated country could achieve alone. One partner has computational power, another has mineral resources, a third has talents in some other field, and a fourth has capital, and the result is a multiplication effect.
Photo: REUTERS
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently expressed a thought that digital sovereignty advocates should pay attention to: the leading model has never been the goal; the goal is a leading ecosystem built in such a way that its value spreads to others—every company, industry, and country—rather than being concentrated in the hands of one lucky individual with a microchip. Large platforms have always returned more than they kept to themselves. They create more wealth around them than they accumulate inside. A country will not have digital sovereignty if it remains faithful to a model that will become outdated within a year. It will achieve digital sovereignty if it manages a cycle that makes its own experience an advantage.
Proponents of digital sovereignty believe they are arming their countries for the future. In reality, they are leading perfectly calibrated and well-funded countries into the past. Digital sovereignty has never been a wall or a copy of something. It has always been new boundaries, and in the age of intelligence, only those countries will have digital sovereignty that have the courage to continue expanding their capabilities, striving for new boundaries and exploring uncharted territories.
