Network Session: Digital Sovereignty and Global Cooperation | IGF 2023 Networking Session #170

John Tshinseki

The issue of digital sovereignty versus digital cooperation in African countries is prominent, with African leaders often prioritising their own sovereignty over the benefits of digital cooperation. This mindset of protecting their sovereignty for power and control within their own countries tends to hinder progress and collaboration in the region.

One of the main arguments is that African leaders manipulate laws and regulations to suit their needs and maintain their hold on power. This often leads to a violation of human rights, as these rulers tweak laws and regulations to suppress opposition voices. This infringement on human rights is perceived as a means for leaders to maintain their grip on power.

Furthermore, existing laws such as the Cyber Crimes Act in Zambia or the Data Protection Act are designed in a way that grants more control to the ruling government. These laws often contain draconian clauses, which are excerpts from international documents like the General Data Protection Regulation. The intention behind these laws is to suppress opposition voices, undermining the principles of free speech and democracy.

The analysis indicates that the sentiment surrounding this issue is largely negative, as it highlights the detrimental effects of prioritising sovereignty over cooperation. The arguments put forth suggest that the tensions between digital sovereignty and global digital cooperation in Africa cannot be completely eradicated due to the sovereignty-focused mindset of the ruling leaders.

John, who holds this belief, suggests that global discussions and agendas have minimal impact on the local decisions made by African leaders. This further reinforces the notion that the tensions between digital sovereignty and global digital cooperation in Africa are deeply rooted in the mindset and priorities of the ruling leaders.

In conclusion, African leaders prioritise digital sovereignty over digital cooperation, hindering progress in the region. This is reflected in the manipulation of laws to suppress opposition voices and the violation of human rights. The analysis suggests that the tensions surrounding this issue cannot be completely resolved due to the sovereignty-focused mindset of the ruling leaders. It is evident that a shift in priorities and a stronger commitment to cooperation is needed to effectively address these challenges.

Audience

In the digital cooperation landscape, there is extensive discussion surrounding the tension between cooperation and sovereignty. Some argue for the possibility of cooperation between sovereign entities, and the European Union’s initiative to create data spaces exemplifies that cooperation and sovereignty can indeed coexist. The EU aims to foster cooperation while maintaining national sovereignty, particularly in the area of data. This approach suggests that a balance can be struck to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

However, the term “digital cooperation” is viewed by some as vague, encompassing complex international digital policy issues. It covers aspects such as digital trade, encryption, online privacy, data protection, online payments, and surveillance. Due to the complexity and diversity of these issues, there is an ongoing debate about whether the term adequately captures the nuances and challenges involved in digital cooperation.

The tension between cooperation and sovereignty also arises from the collision between a country’s desire for control and the need for collaboration. While nations seek to maintain control over digital policies and regulations, there is a growing recognition that collaboration is necessary to effectively address global challenges. This tension becomes particularly apparent in discussions about digital sovereignty and global cooperation, highlighting the struggle to strike a balance between national interests and the collective pursuit of common goals.

Furthermore, the current structure of global governance, including the United Nations, may not be efficiently equipped to handle digital cooperation issues. Some argue for a re-evaluation of the United Nations’ structure, proposing the renaming of the organization to the United People to better focus on the choices and needs of individuals. This viewpoint suggests that there is room for improvement in the global governance system, particularly in addressing the complexities of digital cooperation.

Moreover, there exists a notable rift between global and national level discussions on digital sovereignty and global cooperation. Global discussions may not align with the political landscape and requirements of individual countries. People may adopt a dual stance, expressing support for both cooperation and sovereignty, which can lead to conflicting perspectives between the global and national levels.

The tension between surveillance and privacy also varies depending on the context and perspective of different groups or nations. Within the “Five Eyes” group, comprised of five English-speaking countries with an intelligence-sharing alliance, no tension appears to exist regarding surveillance. However, tensions arise when considering surveillance practices outside of this group. The nature of the tension depends on one’s location or the political stance of the sovereign nation.

In conclusion, the tension between cooperation and sovereignty in the digital cooperation landscape is a complex and multi-faceted issue. While the European Union’s data spaces demonstrate that cooperation and sovereignty can coexist, there are differing opinions regarding the efficacy and comprehensiveness of the term “digital cooperation.” Additionally, the collision between a country’s desire for control and the need for collaboration adds another layer of complexity. The current global governance structures may not effectively handle digital cooperation issues, and there is a significant rift between global and national level discussions. The tension between surveillance and privacy also varies based on context and perspective. Overall, balancing cooperation and sovereignty requires careful consideration of diverse perspectives, locations, and the specific challenges posed by the digital landscape.

Jamal Shahin

Digital sovereignty has become a highly contested topic, particularly within the European context, and its usage has been steadily increasing since 2019. Various stakeholder groups have differing interpretations of digital sovereignty, highlighting the importance of understanding its implications for policy debates.

Engagement and conversation with the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) community play a crucial role in comprehending digital sovereignty. The IGF community has actively discussed this topic, signifying its significance in global discussions.

However, a significant distance often exists between national politics and global agendas in relation to digital cooperation and sovereignty. National leaders in developing nations tend to implement laws and regulations that enable them to maintain power and control, sometimes at the expense of infringing upon human rights. This divergence between national and global perspectives creates a complex landscape for effective digital governance.

To address this complexity, it is essential to break down the discussion on global cooperation versus digital sovereignty into different functional areas. The current broad question allows individuals to take either or both stances simultaneously. Suggestions have been made to create a list of policy fields where global cooperation or digital sovereignty might manifest, in order to provide a more focused analysis. Dividing the discussion based on different functional areas will facilitate more nuanced and productive debates.

Concerns have also been raised about the impact of different governance mechanisms on the digital sphere. There is a fear that these mechanisms may lead to fragmentation, thereby impeding the development of a cohesive digital environment. The importance of specific institutions, products, or policy fields in shaping digital cooperation and sovereignty has been emphasized.

Finally, when discussing digital sovereignty, it is crucial to consider the global, regional, national and subnational dimensions. Different groups hold diverse tensions and perspectives on surveillance and data sharing. Understanding these varied viewpoints is essential for developing effective digital governance strategies.

In conclusion, digital sovereignty has emerged as a contentious and complex issue, with various stakeholders offering diverse interpretations. Engaging with the IGF community and considering different dimensions, functional areas and viewpoints are pivotal in developing comprehensive and equitable policies for digital sovereignty and cooperation. This extended analysis provides deeper insights into the multifaceted nature of the topic.

Justine Miller

During the discussion, the speakers explored the contradiction between digital concepts, specifically digital contradiction and digital compatibility. They noted that while these concepts may seem to conflict on paper, they are not completely exclusive in the digital realm. This suggests that there is potential for overlap and coexistence.

To further understand the dynamics of power balancing within a country, the nature of the country itself was highlighted as a crucial factor. The distinction between a dictatorship and a non-dictatorship was emphasized as it plays a significant role in determining how power is distributed. It was noted that power distribution in a dictatorship may be more top-down, with a strong central authority controlling various aspects of society, including technology regulations. On the other hand, in a non-dictatorship, power distribution may involve more checks and balances to ensure a fair and just system.

The speakers suggested that in order to achieve an effective power balance, certain measures should be considered. One approach highlighted was the need to grant more power to civil societies and companies. By empowering these entities, there is the potential for a more decentralized and diversified distribution of power. Additionally, the regulation of tech companies was deemed as an influential factor in power distribution. This implies that through careful monitoring and control of technology companies, there is an opportunity to shape power dynamics in a way that aligns with societal goals and values.

It is important to note that while the speakers presented a neutral stance on these matters, they provided evidence and supporting facts to substantiate their claims. By acknowledging the complexities of the digital landscape and recognizing the role of different types of countries, the discussion sheds light on the potential avenues for achieving power balance in the digital age.

In conclusion, the speakers highlighted the contradiction between digital concepts and emphasized that they do not have to be mutually exclusive. The nature of a country, such as whether it is a dictatorship or not, plays a crucial role in power balancing. Furthermore, empowering civil societies and companies, alongside regulating tech companies, can be instrumental in shaping power distribution. This comprehensive analysis offers valuable insights into the complex dynamics of power and technology in today’s digital world.

Sophie Hoogenboom

Sophie Hoogenboom, a Ph.D. student, is conducting an in-depth research on digital sovereignty. Her aim is to understand the various dimensions and implications of this topic. Sophie’s research has revealed that there is no universally defined understanding of digital sovereignty. Different individuals have varying interpretations and ideas about its importance. This finding challenges the assumption of a shared perception of digital sovereignty.

Sophie’s research on digital sovereignty is not limited to academic research but also has implications for sustainable development, particularly related to SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). This highlights the relevance and significance of understanding and addressing digital sovereignty issues within the broader context of fostering sustainable development.

In her research and panel discussions, Sophie has encountered diverse definitions and viewpoints on digital sovereignty. This suggests that digital sovereignty is a complex concept influenced by individual factors such as cultural background, educational level, and professional experience. The various interpretations highlight the need for comprehensive dialogue and collaboration to establish a shared understanding of digital sovereignty.

In conclusion, Sophie Hoogenboom’s research sheds light on the diverse perceptions and lack of a universal definition of digital sovereignty. Her findings emphasize the need for further exploration and collective effort to address this multidimensional issue. By acknowledging and addressing these variations in understanding, we can work towards a more comprehensive and inclusive approach to digital sovereignty.

Jamal Shahin:
Hello, everybody. Thanks for coming to this session. We are here to discuss digital sovereignty and global cooperation. I hope you can see. No, you can’t see my screen. No, no, no, my PowerPoint. There we go. Okay. Thanks a lot. All right. So I have a couple of slides here. They’re done using Mentimeter, and we’ve done that to enable people who prefer to remain silent for the first few minutes of a session to actually get engaged and then get stimulated into participating. And also, it allows us to interact with the people online in a non, in a, well, hopefully an inclusive way. So we have about 55 minutes to network. The topic that Sophie and myself decided to actually want to network about is this tension that we see between the emergent discourse, particularly in, well, but maybe I should introduce myself. We should introduce ourselves. So yeah. So my name is Jamal Shaheen. I’m your on-site moderator for today. I am working at a couple of different universities in Belgium and Amsterdam. The VUB, which is the Free University of Brussels and the University of Amsterdam, and I’m also connected to the United Nations University in Bruges, which holds the Center for Comparative Regional Integration Studies. My research field is digital sovereignty, and I come from this looking specifically at the European perspective, right, on digital sovereignty, and we’re moving from that towards a more global perspective. Sophie.

Sophie Hoogenboom:
Hello everyone. My name is Sophie Hoogenboom. I am a PhD student and my topic is digital sovereignty, so we’re at the right spot. Today we would like to make a, we were thinking about this session and we thought it would be much more interesting if we would talk with each other about what digital sovereignty means for you or how you interpret it, because what we keep finding in almost every research and panel that we do is the varying definitions and also varying ideas about the importance of it. So that’s why I would like to ask you to join us on Mentimeter, because then we can, for those who don’t or are not aware, you can just go to mentimeter.com. You don’t have to log in and you can insert the code. We’d be very appreciative.

Jamal Shahin:
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Sophie. Right, so if this works, I can move. We also have Justine, who is moderating the session from Bruges, which is where UNU-CHRIS is based. So hi, Justine, and thanks very much for being here in the morning. She says hello on the chat. Okay, yeah, so it’s menti.com and then you use the code 47036161. Okay, 47036161. Okay, everybody in? Good. This is just like the warm-up activity, right? We’re going to put you into, well, we’re going to put you into a big circle in a minute and we’ll have a conversation about the different questions we’re raising. So, at the end of 2021, Mike. We always have to ask this in Washington, D.C. I know you’re broadcasting this, but is there any attempt to make this a Chatham house rule or to block out everything everyone says? I’m afraid it’s not possible because it’s live-streamed, right? So, no, I will be careful. Yeah, and it’s a good point. Okay, and I did actually just give your name out. Makes it a bit difficult. Okay, yeah, this is being live-streamed. This is being recorded, I believe. Yes, so this is being recorded as well. So, however, we can turn the mics off at a certain moment and delete the chat. So, just we will capture the Mentimeter and we will use it for the reporting for the IGF. Okay, so just to get into a bit of the context, digital sovereignty has been a term that’s been used, well, for 20 years in certain areas and it’s becoming more popular in the way it’s used in recent years, particularly since around 2019 in the European context, at least, where we’re seeing use of the term in a very different way to the way it’s maybe used before. We’re seeing that this term has a lot of different angles to it and a lot of different components to it and we started off this research journey by actually trying to understand what was digital sovereignty. So, in 2021, at the end of 2021 and 2022, we launched a process to actually bring people together to actually try and help us get a broader understanding of what digital sovereignty means. So, we organized some webinars where we engaged with, on the one hand, the technical community or representatives, not the entire technical community, representatives from the technical community, representatives from civil society, and representatives from the business side of things. We then organized another series of exercises where we talked to different national policy makers to try and get a broader understanding and all we found was, in fact, that there’s a lot of different definitions, there’s a lot of non-coherence in the way that people are choosing to apply this term to their policies in the digital sphere. So, what we actually felt was really necessary is actually then to go from trying to define digital sovereignty to actually try and understand how and why different stakeholders use this term, right, and to try and unpack that. And as people who work at the university, this was the one thing that we wanted to try and get through. Once you understand how and why people use the term sovereignty in cyberspace, we can then understand what the implications are for the concrete policy debates. And we’ve been doing some of this research over time, we’ve been trying to understand how this actually comes together, and today what we wanted to do was actually reach out to the IGF community because we hadn’t done that part yet, right, and we see that within the IGF this has, I mean, last year it was also a topic, this year it’s very much a topic and it’s been appearing in many different panel sessions and we wanted to get the voices from the community in this space, right. We’re going to start off, I mean, we have input into this session as well, but we wanted to make it a conversation and not give you a lecture. If you want that, you can come to Brussels and you can do my program on this. This is just for Mentimeter people. Where are you right now? Ah, the code. The code is 47… Ah, do I need to repeat the code for Mentimeter? Hey, yeah, open your devices. Oh, you can’t really see it on the screen here, so you need to open your device, go to menti.com, and once you’re at menti.com, the code you need is 4703… I’m looking at Berna. 47036161. Okay, good. So, there’s the first question. Oh, who’s in Amsterdam? That’s great. We have quite a few responses already. Basically, all over. I’ll move to the next slide, because otherwise we’ll fall asleep. A previous exercise looked at different groups or different stakeholders and their expectations in digital sovereignty, and so we thought it might be interesting to see what kind of classifications you give yourselves. Classifications you give yourselves. You can put other… And… We didn’t forget. We wanted that kind of conversation. I will not tweet that one. Okay. Okay, excellent. So, there’s a lot of people in civil… Now, I don’t know, because you were talking to me before when we were talking about visions of digital sovereignty, and you were also saying that there’s this kind of vision towards what Mike had alluded to earlier on, self-sovereignty and the community sovereignty, right, which emerges quite a lot in the civil society field, right? Do you have a question for the next question? What question? Yeah. Yeah, so we’ll get to that later. So, you want to explain the process? I’ll shut up for a minute.

Sophie Hoogenboom:
All right. I’m taking over for now. So, what we are planning to do is we want to create groups of four. I think right now a few people have joined, so we could make a few groups of four. The idea is that we made two questions that we would like for you to discuss among each other, and then afterwards we will bring all the discussions together. That’s, I think, the practicalities.

Jamal Shahin:
And then the first question. So, we do it question by question, right? And since there are quite a few of you online, we’ll also organize an online room. Is it possible to organize breakout rooms online? Um, well, it says there must be about 10 people online, so maybe two breakout rooms, please. Amsterdam? Berlin? There’s only six online? Okay, then just make one breakout room. I think that would be fine. But you don’t need a breakout room, then they can just use the room. Justine will moderate online. Okay. Anyway, right now you can see the question in front of you. The first question. We’ll put you in a group, and Sophie and myself will join in the groups, right? And we want you to address this question. One, two, three. What? One, two, three, four. There’s four at the back. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Yeah, just do that side and that side. There you go. Like that. Is that okay? I don’t know. So, I do think we should come back because we have another question which will allow you to continue. But whilst I wait, I don’t know how it went in your group over there or online, Justine, but in my group, we determined to rewrite the question. And Mike is actually now sending me a list which I will put on Mentimeter. But maybe we go around the other groups. I don’t know. Should we start online with Justine? Yeah, maybe first of all, I’ll pass a microphone to group one. This group, the right wing group, to actually hear what happened. Do you want to report back or would one of you like to? Well, I can first start because the start of our discussion was, I think, very interesting. And I would love for them to say it because otherwise I’m repeating their own words while they’re here. But in the beginning, we immediately had the tension present in our group. So, the first person who spoke said, yes, there is a tension or maybe it’s not even compatible. And then someone else was saying, no, that’s actually not. But actually, I think it’s much better if they say it themselves. Don’t you think? That’s what I think. OK, OK, OK. Would you like?

Sophie Hoogenboom:
At least mention your name.

Audience:
Yeah, Alexandre Savnin, Zafri University. So, I was the first person who was saying that there is a tension because from my understanding of cooperation and sovereignty, cooperation is what happens between equal parties somehow. And sovereignty means that there is a sovereign who’s sovereign over something. It might be a state over its citizens. In some hierarchy, it might be citizen over its state or it might be corporation over state or over citizens. And there is another opinion. Yes, so. Yes. So, in response, I said we should differentiate between the relationship between the sovereign and the citizen and the relationship among sovereigns in an international platform. And then I said sovereigns define the actors in the cooperation environment. And so, yes, there is a tension, but it is not something that would stop cooperation from being realized. It’s just defining who the actors are. And then there is a tension. And then you have the platform to cooperate. But in a platform like IGF, you have other actors in addition to the sovereigns, which is the society, private sector. And so, the discussion went on from there. I think to you. So, without wanting to give you a word-for-word replay of what we discussed in our session, my proposition was that they do not have to be in tension necessarily, as illustrated by the idea of the data spaces that the European Union is trying to create, where you’re trying to foster cooperation while maintaining sovereignty. Also, as opposed to a platform model where data, for example, is centralized and pooled, you can still try to create cooperation while protecting sovereignty.

Jamal Shahin:
And whilst you’re doing that, thank you, John, we’re going to make you a co-host so you can speak. Would somebody from our group like to raise some of the issues that we discussed? I’ve put you, I’ve made your thing into a Mentimeter. Thank you very much. Yeah,

Audience:
it’s going to be the world’s most complicated Mentimeter question. We picked on our moderator and said, how in the heck can we answer a question that is so vague when it’s digital cooperation? That could mean anything about anything. And so we made it more complicated by listing 13 really tough digital policy issues, international digital policy issues. And then we went back and asked the question and said, okay, for digital trade, is there attention? For encryption, is there attention? For online privacy or data protection? For online payments? For surveillance? You’ll see the whole list. But we would welcome two or three more or five more suggestions. We went down this list and we did not see any places where there’s a lack of tension. I agree with, I do a lot of work on data spaces and data flows, and I pray every night that somebody will make a data space that works so we can show that this is a solution to these problems. But for our entire list, we haven’t found anyone where there isn’t some collision between the country’s desire to control and this need to get some kind of collaboration, cooperation, consistency. Until we have global government or until we have no government and everybody’s self-sovereign, this is my proposal. Rename the United Nations the United People and let us all focus on giving us all the choice we want. Sorry, I’ll end my campaign now.

Jamal Shahin:
I would vote for you, Mike. Thank you, and I’ll vote for you. Before we go to the topics that you’d raised, Mike, I think we want to go to the online discussions. And John, Justine first. Justine, would you like to summarize a bit the discussion that happened and then we’ll pass over to John.

Justine Miller:
Yes, thank you very much. I’ll try my best because this is not my field, so I hope I’m not mince-construing any of the interesting comments that my colleagues made. So I think the main point was that, yes, on paper, these two concepts can definitely be contradicting each other, but that in a digital sense, they’re not fully exclusive. And then we immediately switched to the idea that it really depends on the countries we’re looking at. So we switched back to nation level rather than a United People type of solution. And then we were saying that depending on whether your country is a dictatorship or not, you might have to give more power to civil societies, companies, but then it would also depend on how you regulate those tech companies. So there we also approached a lot of different topics there. But perhaps then John can jump in and add a bit more to what I’m seeing here.

Sophie Hoogenboom:
All right, thank you so much, Justine. I would like to now give the floor to John, who expressed in a chat that he wanted to share his thoughts. John, are you there?

John Tshinseki:
Yes, yes, I’m here. Thank you. Digital sovereignty, I think we had a nice chat in our session. And digital sovereignty, I think it’s more predominant in African countries than digital cooperation in that African countries know the global communities, I think the European countries and the U.S. and others think of North America and Europe. When you talk about human rights and all those other topics they discuss when they meet at the United Nations and Commonwealth and all those other platforms they meet, they mostly, I think, look at embracing those discussions and implement them for the benefits of the people on the ground. And I think when we talk about in African countries, African countries, our leaders, mostly they are more for clinging on to power. And that definitely will mean infringement on human rights and many other things that I think are going to make them stay in power as long as they want. And even a lot of times they twerk around the laws and regulations to change things around along the way to suit their own needs and to champion the agenda to stay in power. So when you talk about sovereignty, sovereignty, I think it’s something that they really want to so very much protect so that they have power and control over the boundaries of the country they are ruling and give the laws according to how they want. And I think I mentioned in our breakout session that most of the laws that we have, for instance, the Cyber Crimes Act in Zambia, the Data Protection Act in Zambia, it’s an excerpt from the General Data Protection Regulation, I think, given international documents, which I think where they pick a few other things, items, and bring them and localize them in Zambia here, and still pick a few other corners, you know, draconian kind of clauses, which then will make them to have more control and regulate how, you know, how the people in the country should behave and conduct themselves. And most of the time, it’s more on a designed concept to suppress the voices of the opposition and the human rights defenders and other dissidents out there who may be aiming at pushing an agenda to try and question governments’ misgivings and all that. So that’s a problem that we have. So the tension cannot completely be eradicated or gotten rid of, you know, for as long as our leaders, they still just come back from the UN, from AU, and still sit around in their own boardrooms, cabinet meetings, and make decisions which are far away from the global discussion and agenda of the global community. So that’s, I think, something that is disheartening somehow, in a way. So that still extends, I think, to a lot of things that we discussed, I think, in our breakfast session with my team, where Justin was the moderator. And that is why the issue of digital cooperation and digital, you know, digital sovereignty is still going to be born of contention because of the sovereignty of the countries. And that is my addition to this.

Jamal Shahin:
Thanks very much, John. Really interesting to hear about this distance, I think, that you mentioned between what happens at the national level and what happens at the global level in these discussions, and how, on one hand, we can have very nice global discussions, and on the other hand, people have to come back and deal with the politics of their country, and understand that there are certain things that need to be done that are maybe not aligned with those areas. So, in our group as well, I think we discussed things like that this question needs to be broken down into different functional areas. So this question makes no sense, in fact, when you ask it like this, because it pleases everybody at every moment, right? Everybody can either claim that they’re a sovereigntist or a cooperationalist, or they can even say both at the same time in a very George Orwellian kind of manner. And so what Mike had proposed was a list of policy fields in which global cooperation or digital sovereignty actually takes about, and if this works, you will see. I didn’t know how to do this, Mike. I apologize if this is a this is a slider. Okay, good. So I was going to say, and I was thinking about asking you to identify where are the areas that we could actually tell the UN Secretary General, okay, this should be in your report on effective multilateralism, and this should be in your report on the Global Digital Compact. Hopefully you can all see the Mentimeter. There is a second page. So we had a prolific note-taker in our group, so we had a second page where we would like to… You have a question? Sure, I’m going to pass you the mic.

Audience:
So listening to you and Mike, very interesting, but actually, well, if you start looking on this question, and well, you are the UN General Secretary in the context, there is another dimension of this between, for example, between, well, inside Five Eyes, there is no tension about surveillance. And when you step outside, there will be tension. Something like this, yeah. So if we are talking about UN context, there are different groups of something inside which may be tension to other groups, inside which may be no tension, but there is a tension to other groups. So it’s not clearly how to answer this question. It strongly depends on, well, your location or your political opinion of your sovereign in the meaning of the country to this thing. So, okay, let’s now sit and break up groups and start classifying group of sovereigns. I’m joking, for sure.

Jamal Shahin:
You’ve touched on a really interesting point there, which will be covered tomorrow at 8.30 in the morning, if you’re willing to come along, looking at the regional dimensions of digital sovereignty, right, or the regional dimensions of cooperation in this sphere. Because I think one of the things is that there are things that we can work on in global cooperation terms, and there are other things which do by their nature fit very much more into a regional or a specific political type of grouping. However, that’s one of the concerns that if we go too much down those routes, we end up, and I don’t want to use this word, fragmentation, we end up in a number of different types of scenarios where different governance mechanisms are used to interact with the digital media, the digital space that we inhabit. Okay, I think you’re right that there are global, regional, national, and even then subnational, we’ve been talking about those in our group as well. I think everybody has filled in, no, almost everybody has filled in the sheet. Yeah, why is it that there are some people, please don’t mess up my system. That’s good, that’s good. There’s an ethical nature to this research, and you just ruined it for us. I’m going to move to the next group of topics, and then I believe that’s all of them. I hope I copy-pasted correctly. Mike, maybe you could just say, when you talk about government data policy, you’re talking about publicly available data. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Government data policy between different governments. Why? What governments are sharing data sharing is also just a question of do you make your data available? The data flow across borders is different because that’s also corporate data, personal data for Facebook users, TikTok, and all of that. Yeah. And these are one of these areas where when you’re looking at these concepts of digital sovereignty or digital cooperation, you really need to go down into the specific institutions or the specific products or the specific policy fields that we’re working at. And I think that that’s been echoed very clearly here in this discussion. Yeah, I think that’s the point that our colleague was trying to make, that the fact that we have our own belief system or our own understanding of what political institutions can do for us and how they work also make us think about the way we think about cooperation or about sovereignty. And so that’s why I prefaced my insight with I’ve looked at the European field in digital sovereignty a lot. We talked about that, and I said, no, Sophie, let’s not do that. So well done, Sophie. Yeah, no, very clear. It’s now, we had the second question, but I’m sure that in three minutes, given that it took us 45 minutes to unpack the first question and go through it, I think we’ve done enough for today. We will share this. If you wish, you can drop us a business card if you have one, or you can come and get a business card. Do you have business cards? All right. You can come and get one of my… I’ve already got hers. Yeah. Okay. You can come and get a business card. Drop me or Sophie, well, drop me an email because my email is on my business card, and then we’ll send you around the PDF of this Mentimeter, and we’ll continue networking, because that’s the point of this exercise. Thanks very much. Thanks very much, Justine. Thanks very much to everybody online as well. It was very kind of your participation.