Part IV - The reform agenda for recovered sovereignty
11 - Digital, data and informational sovereignty
The digital sphere is not one sector among others: it is the invisible infrastructure on which all other sovereignties now rest. Controlling energy without controlling the networks that manage it, controlling borders without controlling the systems that monitor them, deciding sovereignly without controlling the tools that process and transmit information: this is sovereignty by halves. Digital dependence is the modern form of vassalage.
France today depends massively on American platforms and technologies - GAFAM - for its communications, data storage, work tools, and part of its state infrastructures. This dependence is not neutral: it exposes the data of citizens, businesses, and the State to foreign jurisdictions, to extraterritorial laws such as the American Cloud Act, and to decisions made outside any national democratic control. A State that hosts its sovereign data on servers subject to a foreign jurisdiction is not sovereign: it is a tenant.
Critical infrastructures
Networks, servers, datacenters, and critical links are placed under French control. Public and sensitive data - fiscal, health, industrial, military - remain strictly under national supervision, stored, processed, and accessible according to French security standards without exception. These infrastructures are redundant and distributed to ensure maximum resilience against outages, sabotage, or targeted attacks. The Planning Commission ensures strategic planning and coherence between civilian, military, and industrial needs.
Open-source is here a strategic tool: not an ideological choice. Audited software, locally controllable, not subject to foreign publishers, constitutes the base of a sovereign digital infrastructure. The State progressively migrates toward these solutions, starting with the most sensitive systems.
L’intelligence artificielle souveraine
France does not immediately need a model rivaling the best American or Chinese systems: it needs at least one sovereign model, developed and hosted in France, capable of functioning independently of any foreign provider. This model is developed as a priority for defense and critical infrastructures, then for industrial applications, then for less sensitive civilian uses. Sovereign computing capacity - chips, servers, processing centers - is planned by the Planning Commission in coordination with national industrial sectors. An AI whose training data, servers, and algorithms are under foreign control is not a sovereign tool: it is a dependence dressed up as modernity.
Cybersecurity
Cyberspace is a battlefield. Attacks against digital infrastructures, industrial networks, health systems, or governmental platforms can paralyze the State without a single soldier crossing a border. France possesses a fully sovereign cyber-capacity: defensive, offensive if necessary, capable of detecting, disrupting, and neutralizing adversarial systems. This capacity is integrated into military doctrine, depends on no technology or provider subject to a foreign power, and is subject to regular simulations of extreme scenarios by the Planning Commission - major outage, coordinated cyberattack, embargo on critical components. One does not discover one's vulnerabilities in a crisis situation.
Foreign platforms and the sovereignty of public debate
TikTok, X, Meta and their equivalents are not neutral spaces. They are influence infrastructures whose moderation algorithms apply foreign norms, according to opaque criteria, on content that shapes French public debate. This reality calls for a proportionate sovereign response: not prohibition, not censorship, but independent oversight and real sanctions.
A dedicated commission of the reformed Senate permanently monitors platforms operating on the national territory. Its method is statistical and quantitative: it documents content, measures exposure imbalances, and detects proven factual manipulations. It does not ask platforms to hand over their algorithms: it observes their effects from the outside and draws enforceable conclusions from them. If manipulations are documented, sanctions apply, from fines to prohibition from operating on the national territory.
The prohibition on publishing electoral polls in the six months preceding the first round applies to foreign platforms exactly as to national media. The sovereignty of the vote does not depend on the distribution channel. A platform that publishes, relays, or allows an electoral poll to circulate during the prohibited period is sanctioned: a fine proportional to the turnover generated on French territory, then technical blocking ordered by the reformed Senate on national network operators in the event of recidivism. The chain of responsibility is complete: the commissioner, the polling institute, and the distributing platform are jointly sanctionable according to the same rules as for national media.
La liberté politique comme finalité
A State incapable of protecting its data, controlling its infrastructures, and ensuring the independence of its computer systems becomes mechanically dependent on the powers that control them. This is not a technical question: it is a fundamental political question. Digital sovereignty is not one workstream among others: it is the condition of all the others.