Forrester says tech sovereignty gains will stay modest

Forrester has published a forecast showing that global technology sovereignty will improve only marginally across 14 major economies by 2030, with China and the US well ahead of other countries.

The average technology sovereignty score across the countries assessed is expected to edge up from 39% to 40% over the period, suggesting that heavy spending on domestic AI, semiconductors, cloud systems and related infrastructure will not produce rapid gains for most nations.

Forrester defines technology sovereignty as a country's ability to develop, operate and secure critical technologies independently of foreign governments' influence. Its index measures nine areas: government AI investment, cloud sovereignty, technology workforce availability, AI model development, data centre capacity relative to technology spending, data centre autonomy, semiconductor production, software creation and rare earths processing.

China is forecast to remain the strongest performer, with an overall score above 82% through 2030. The US follows at 79%, leaving a sizeable gap between the two leaders and the rest of the field.

The figures point to an increasingly concentrated landscape in which only a small number of countries can claim strong control over the building blocks of modern digital systems. For midsized economies and most European countries, the findings suggest continued reliance on external suppliers or international alliances to fill gaps in chips, cloud, software and data infrastructure.

Regional split

Asia Pacific is one of the most uneven regions in the forecast. Alongside China's leading position, South Korea is expected to improve from 45% in 2025 to 47% in 2030, while Japan is set to rise from 43% to 46% and India from 32% to 35%. Australia is projected to remain unchanged at 29%.

North America also shows a clear divide. While the US remains among the strongest countries measured, Canada is expected to post only a small increase from 33% to 34%, and Mexico is forecast to stay at 20%, the lowest score among the 14 countries covered.

Europe's larger economies are expected to make modest gains without closing the gap with the leaders. Germany and Spain are both forecast to move from 34% to 36%, France from 33% to 35%, the UK from 30% to 32%, and Italy from 27% to 29%.

These scores reflect persistent dependence on foreign providers in several important areas. Semiconductors and software remain among the hardest sectors for countries to secure domestically because supply chains and market share are concentrated in relatively few hands.

Chip race

Semiconductor manufacturing is expected to show the strongest improvement over the forecast period. South Korea and the US are both projected to increase their chip production sovereignty scores from 45% in 2025 to 79% in 2030.

Japan is forecast to rise from 36% to 53%, China from 40% to 51%, and India from 0% to 13%. The increases point to the scale of public and private investment now being directed at domestic or allied chip production as governments seek to reduce exposure to supply disruptions and geopolitical pressure.

Even so, progress in one part of the technology stack does not translate into broad self-sufficiency. A country may expand local semiconductor output while remaining dependent on overseas cloud systems, software providers, data centre operators or AI model developers.

That helps explain why the average score across all 14 countries barely moves despite major investment plans. Sovereignty depends not on a single industry but on a chain of interlinked sectors, many of which are expensive, technically demanding and difficult to replicate at national level.

India's projected gains illustrate the point. Its overall score is forecast to climb from 32% to 35%, supported by investments in AI, cloud and chipmaking, but the country remains some distance behind the leading pair.

Australia's flat result also underlines the limits of spending alone. A score of 29% suggests that countries without strong positions in several strategic technology layers may struggle to improve quickly, even as political interest in digital independence grows.

Dario Maisto, Principal Analyst at Forrester, said the findings show how geopolitical pressures are reshaping national technology strategies. "Ongoing geopolitical volatility, AI competition, and semiconductor supply chain risks have put tech sovereignty firmly in the spotlight," Maisto said. "Today, tech sovereignty is concentrated in the hands of a few global leaders, creating an uneven competitive advantage for some countries. To compete in the AI era, nations must understand their strategic dependencies and build durable partnerships that safeguard their data, infrastructure, and long-term autonomy."