It is now getting pretty difficult to track every time OpenAI and Anthropic models break containment, wander onto the wider web, and cause unintended, high-risk chaos.
The recent wave of rogue AI agent incidents has now prompted US President Donald Trump’s administration to consider asserting more power over AI tools.
These incidents expose a deep vulnerability for the UK. If advanced AI models are acting unpredictably with sensitive data and carrying out hacking campaigns against real people, what happens when that data is hosted, processed, and governed on foreign-owned infrastructure?
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Mark Boost is CEO and co-founder of Civo.
For far too long British IT has essentially handed the keys to US tech giants. The CMA’s market investigation into cloud services found that Amazon and Microsoft control 70-90% of the UK cloud computing market. And another US digital powerhouse in Google controls a smaller share.
These hyperscalers often repeat marketing platitudes about “sovereign” regional data centers located on British soil. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the act of storing data in a UK-based data center is not enough to guarantee sovereignty.
In reality, these tech giants are “sovereignty-washing.” Why? Because If the controlling entity is subject to foreign legal jurisdiction, such as the US CLOUD Act, foreign authorities can compel access to that data. It is irrelevant where the physical hardware resides. Hosting data on foreign-owned servers is basically just paying rent on digital turf that remains subject to external laws.
As foreign-owned autonomous AI agents process vast amounts of critical enterprise and state data, and increasingly turn adversarial, the decision to build Britain’s AI future on foreign, proprietary stacks looks ever more short-sighted. The potential for financial, legal and national security breaches is simply not worth the risk.
It is time for the UK to end its over-reliance on sovereign-washed cloud providers and establish true digital independence by backing British tech.
Paying the “sovereignty tax”
By continuing to rely on foreign tech monopolies British institutions are paying a heavy “Sovereignty Tax.” By that I mean the insidious, hidden and steadily accumulating burden of building critical systems on platforms you cannot fully govern.
Hyperscalers reel in UK organizations using aggressive cloud credits and low upfront pricing. But once they are embedded in these cloud systems, those firms often find it hard to leave them. This can come in the form of data egress fees, proprietary technical debt, outage exposure, restrictive licensing rules and audit blind spots. All of these add to the creeping realization that leaving your current provider would be harder, and more expensive, than you ever anticipated.
This explains why an overwhelming 66% of UK IT leaders say they would consider switching cloud providers to regain control of their data and infrastructure. Yet despite this clear desire to break free, the proportion of UK IT leaders expecting to become even more deeply entrenched in US hyperscaler systems has more than doubled over the past year, rising from 12% to 28%.
This seems all the more bizarre given that a recent study from Proton Research showed that 45% of consumers would actively avoid doing business with companies that store data with US firms. Meanwhile, over half (58%) would happily pay higher fees to switch to a sovereign provider.
This forced entrapment dynamic has undoubtedly created an era of digital feudalism. A small group of foreign tech lords own the underlying digital land, while British businesses and public sector bodies exist merely as serfs… and pay a perpetual tribute for the right to operate. And the real-world operational costs of this reliance are coming home to roost. Over the past year, 39% of UK firms were hit by outages originating from US hyperscalers, with resulting risk exposure costing some organizations over £1 million.
As organizations increasingly deploy more and more compute-intensive AI workloads on these platforms, the technical lock-in will only continue to deepen.
Not only does this drain commercial value but it also means high-skilled engineering jobs, and IP heads across the Atlantic rather than staying in the UK.
Legal and security risks
As autonomous AI usage proliferates, legal and operational risks do so too. AI agents interact with database layers, corporate IP and sensitive citizen data while executing the tasks they are set.
If that data resides in a foreign-controlled ecosystem, UK organizations lose jurisdictional control over it. Without true data sovereignty, external powers effectively hold a “kill switch” over the UK’s critical infrastructure. For example, if a UK NHS trust is reliant on a foreign-hosted AI agent for patient triage, a regulatory dispute in another country could trigger a sudden access shutdown. This could paralyze hospital operations and put sensitive health records in the hands of foreign control.
By centralizing the UK’s national capability into a single foreign-owned monoculture, we are also creating a concentrated point of failure. What happens if the US shifts policy and revokes access, leaving the UK powerless over its own critical infrastructure?
The drone and missile strikes that hit Amazon Web Services facilities in the UAE in March that brought two of the three Availability Zones in the region offline was also clear proof that the cloud is not a borderless, invulnerable utility. For the UK to retain true security, it requires resilient distributed architecture.
British digital independence
It should be noted that global hyperscalers undoubtedly have a place in non-sensitive, low-risk applications. But prioritizing digital sovereignty is not an act of digital isolationism.
The fact that the UK government created a £500 million Sovereign AI initiative this April shows that policymakers do recognize the importance of digital resilience and maintaining control.
But that support for domestic innovation will continue to be undermined if public compute spend continues to be funneled towards multi-year deals with foreign incumbents.
The government’s procurement strategy must focus on actively purchasing from domestic cloud providers if its strategic ambition for creating a UK tech powerhouse is to work.
At the same time, proprietary vendor lock-in thrives in closed-loop ecosystems. The UK needs to treat open-source tech and open architectures as national assets. When you use open standards, moving your AI models and data between public, private, and local clouds is painless. You get actual flexibility instead of being locked into one setup. And, crucially, UK organizations avoid being hit with exorbitant transition fees.
Our European neighbors are already leading the way in regard to embracing true sovereignty. France is dropping Zoom and Office for sovereign, open-source ecosystems, and Germany is using Nextcloud to replace Google Docs.
The UK possesses capable domestic cloud platforms. We have the technical capacity and talent ready to scale. And UK firms are crying out for the powers that be to back homegrown tech; 90% of IT leaders are calling for a more proactive government stance in support of British companies. We just need the procurement bravery to match.
Controlling our destiny
The unpredictable and unprecedented nature of autonomous AI agents means the UK must reassess what it has been doing up to now. Building the future of British tech and economic security on rented land is fundamentally contradictory.
The UK already has companies that own the full tech stack required to power modern enterprise. These companies offer the same core capabilities as hyperscalers without the associated sovereign risk or vendor lock-in.
If the UK wants to prove itself as a global leader in AI the country needs to support its own tech providers.
That means distancing ourselves from sovereign-washed cloud providers and investing in open-source infrastructure. Doing so is the only way to protect our data and reclaim our digital autonomy, before it’s too late.
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