Consider an organisation that depends on one cloud provider for storage, software and daily operations. A contract may preserve its formal choices while the practical cost of leaving makes those choices difficult to exercise.
THE DOCUMENTED EXAMPLE
The UK CMA’s 2025 cloud-services investigation identified technical and commercial barriers to switching providers. [1]
WHAT THIS DOES NOT ESTABLISH
A competition finding about UK cloud markets does not establish that states have lost their sovereignty.
THROUGH VERONOCRACY
Veronocracy asks what happens when the ability to act depends on infrastructure controlled by others. Sovereignty is not only about who signs a decision, but also about the conditions under which it can be implemented or changed.
Data centres belong to the physical world, cloud services organise information, and institutional choices depend on human judgment. Planet, Data and Mind meet here in a question of dependence and the possibility of alternatives.
How free is a choice that you cannot afford to change?