For 88 days in the Iran War, Iran did not simply restrict the internet; it pushed an entire society of 96 million into digital darkness. Digital businesses collapsed, dissents froze, and the flow of civil-public data was banned. It created an invisible wall that the Western adversaries couldn’t break. This explains that, in this new age of digital sovereignty, the most mass-disruptive weapon may not be a missile but a switch.

When international access partially returned, the damage was already done. The blackout has exposed what state sovereignty may look like in the digital age, and the internet is no longer a free public domain. It is infrastructure, battlefields, marketplaces, intelligence, and political weapons all at once. Whoever controls the network controls the citizen’s voice, the state’s security, and the terms of power itself.

For three decades, the world was told that the internet would flatten authority, empower citizens, and weaken dictators. A digital world under one umbrella will unite everyone. That story has changed. In its place stands ‘Splinternet’ a fractured digital order divided between the US and China’s political models, rival technological ecosystems, and spheres of influence in data systems. 

The West offers a market-led internet dominated by corporations like Google, Meta, and X, while China offers a state-led internet dominated by the government. Neither model secures individual privacy. One sells the citizen to corporations. The other monitors citizens’ activities like Orwellian Big Brother.

The Western Model: Sovereignty splits with corporations

The Western-led model preaches openness and free markets. In reality, it has built private empires over public life. Companies like Google, Meta, and X constantly shape public opinion and thoughts, and store public data for commercial usage. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google host the cloud infrastructure on which states and businesses depend. These are not ordinary companies anymore; they have access to critical intelligence and data. And now AI companies like Palantir use this data for surveillance, intelligence, monitoring, and on battlefields.

The Ukraine war exposed this with brutal clarity. Starlink became essential to battlefield communication, drone coordination, and military connectivity. That means a private company, controlled by one billionaire, acquired strategic leverage over a sovereign state at war. This isn’t just innovation; it's acting more like a sovereign entity than the state itself. That's how the Western-led digital model splits sovereignty with corporations.

The problem is not simply that Big Tech is powerful. The problem is that states now depend on firms whose interests do not necessarily align with national security, democratic accountability, or public welfare. Even recent US military operations in Iran and Venezuela were simulated by Anthropic AI, showing that States’ most sovereign and critical activities are now dependent on private companies.

The recent ban of TikTok shows how US policymakers perceive TikTok as a ‘threat’ by foreign companies, a double standard for market capitalism. Washington’s anxiety is about a Chinese-owned platform influencing the information flow of millions of Americans. If data is power, then a foreign-controlled algorithm inside domestic society isn’t entertainment. It is strategic penetration, which the Western world won’t allow. But that doesn’t mean Western states have complete sovereignty in the digital world; rather, it is shared with Western corporations. And this is a sovereignty-weakening model.

The Chinese Model: A Paradoxical Sovereignty Problem

China refused to let foreign or even domestic private corporations become the operating system of Chinese society. Instead, it built digital sovereignty through state-led censorship, data control, mass surveillance, and the Great Firewall. The Great Firewall blocks access to foreign websites, slows down cross-border traffic, and heavily censors information to prevent content deemed politically sensitive or threatening to the CCP. An estimated 700 million surveillance cameras are currently active to monitor civilian lifestyles and habits, track dissidents, prevent unrest, and suppress political opinions. Although the CCP says these cameras are only to strengthen public safety and security; it does not guarantee that they won’t be used for political suppression and digital surveillance.

From a state-security perspective, this is a sovereignty-strengthening model. It protects the regime from external information flows or disinformation, keeps critical data under national control, strengthens digital sovereignty, and ensures the government controls the digital sphere before platforms can interfere in politics. But it strengthens state sovereignty at the expense of citizens’ privacy. Mass monitoring and surveillance left no room for individual privacy or freedom. Moreover, when any political unrest or dissatisfaction takes place on digital platforms, the regime uses “50 Cent Party”, a dedicated state-led public commentators and content creators, to create disinformation and division among mass people. If the government uses digital tools to monitor, control, and surveil the masses, then sovereignty actually protects them from which enemy? Or did the state inherently become its citizens’ own enemy by this model?

Exporting the Chinese Model 

China’s model has become attractive to governments that are more authoritarian, with less accountability and democratic rights. During unrest and conflict, Iran has repeatedly restricted internet access, blocked communication channels and pushed citizens toward a controlled national information flow. Recent reporting and digital-rights research have found Iran’s surveillance architectures from Chinese technologies, specifically HikVision and Tiandy security cameras, which are banned in the US. These cameras facilitate facial recognition, detecting protesters, and storing mass-level public data. The Chinese model is mostly popular in Africa, where military dictators rule the government. At least 40 African states use the Chinese model of internet via ZTE and Huawei companies. Even the African Union is run by the Chinese internet system. They use it simply because it's cheap, widely available, and has no moral or ethical obligations of whether these tools need to uphold Western democratic values and ethics. This makes it easier not only for authoritarian regimes but also for militant groups. North Korea also has a Great Firewall, but it's limited to local capacity. Russia has its own internet system, but these aren’t influential like the Chinese exports to 40 African countries or Western companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon.

The Western model allows too much public and sensitive data to private corporations. This creates dependency of states on the corporations. While the Chinese model controls too much of private life, the state. One produces corporate overlords. The other produces mass surveillance for the sake of state sovereignty.

States need control over critical infrastructure, data, and intelligence, but at the same time, they need a delicate balance between citizens’ private lives and state affairs. Which has been blurred by these two giant digital models. Citizens need protection from foreign manipulation. But sovereignty without rights is only control. Security without accountability is only fear mongering. 

Digital governance must serve the public, not merely the corporation or the regime. Now the central question remains; in this digital domain, will sovereignty serve people or the state, or whoever owns the server?

(The author is Founder and Executive Director, Project Upokul and serves as the Senior Foreign Policy Analyst at Youth Policy Forum - YPF. Sadik holds an M.S.S. and B.S.S. from the Department of International Relations at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at rajinsadik110@gmail.com. )