NATO's battle for cloud sovereignty: Speed is existential

NATO is in an existential race to develop sovereign cloud-based technologies to underpin its mission, the alliance's Assistant Secretary General for Cyber and Digital Transformation told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) last week.

Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe said the Ukraine war has highlighted the impact of technology on the battlefield, from drones to AI for targeting. Likewise, it shows the need for a coherent, secure approach to data and similarly coherent and secure cloud platforms to store and process it.

"Modern conflict no longer rewards the side with the most data," Ellermann-Kingombe declared. "It rewards the side with the ability to connect it, understand it and act on it first."

This means that cloud adoption is more than just a technical issue for "specialists in white rooms." Rather, it is a strategic and operational imperative that underpins "the credibility of our collective defense."

"But if cloud is ...