The trust deficit. EU bargaining for access and control over cloud infrastructures
本文研究欧盟与美国云服务商之间的信任赤字，发现双方对主权的理解根本不同，技术无法单独解决信任问题，数据主权政策可与数字经济和网络安全兼容。
European Union (EU) governments rely on a handful of American cloud providers (hyperscalers) for critical state functions, which creates strategic dependencies. The EU data sovereignty agenda aims to manage such dependence, yet hyperscalers criticise it for excluding leading industry players from the EU market and slowing economic growth. In this paper, we argue that sovereignty policies in the cloud are the result of a trust deficit between European governments and American hyperscalers. The trust deficit consists of a continuous bargain by European governments for greater access and control over hyperscalers’ infrastructures. Hyperscalers, in turn, respond to such demands mainly through technology. But is their response sufficient to address the trust deficit? Drawing from technical documents and expert interviews, we find that states and hyperscalers have a fundamentally different understanding of sovereignty; that technology alone cannot address the trust deficit; and that data sovereignty policies in the cloud can be compatible with the digital economy and cybersecurity. Our study is a starting point for further research on the political economy of trust in the governance of digital technologies.