Sovereign AI
Also known as: CST
A policy term for how far a country controls the AI it relies on. In advice the UK government published on 19 October 2026, the Council for Science and Technology (CST) defines AI sovereignty as "having sufficient agency across the AI value chain to deliver the UK's chosen outcomes, capture economic and public value for the UK, and maintain resilience under duress". It is not a call to build everything at home: the Council says the UK must "decide which technologies to develop ourselves and which to securely access from other countries", and recommends mapping the AI ecosystem, "including computing power, data, skills, models, governance and public adoption", to establish "where dependence is acceptable". Without that, it warns, "the UK risks becoming a high-value AI customer, rather than a country able to shape the technology and its usage." For businesses, sovereignty shows up in procurement questions: where data is processed, who controls the infrastructure, and whether a critical AI service could be withdrawn.