🔴 Strategic Reflections for 2025-2026

Hello everyone,

It is a pleasure to welcome a great many new subscribers: several hundred people have joined us since the last newsletter.

This week, I am offering our paying subscribers a strategy note that follows my meeting with one of Amazon's senior legal executives, who was involved in creating the famous Cloud Act and who was giving a preview of AWS's "sovereign" cloud offering.

The lunch, organized by Sébastien Garnault, gave me the chance to talk with Anitha Ibrahim, a former U.S. prosecutor who is now Head of Privacy and Safety at Amazon, but also with Philippe Latombe, a member of the National Assembly, a senator who sits on the defense committee, and a researcher in the geopolitics of technology.

For me, it rounded out my thinking. I have decided to share with my paying subscribers a note I usually reserve for the people I advise.

One of the most important things to understand is that every player in France is working on limiting risk: ANSSI (France's national cybersecurity agency) on cyber risk, CNIL (the French data protection authority) on the handling of personal data, and other institutions on more specific risks.

But there is still geopolitical risk. In France, that risk rests in the hands of a single person: the President of the Republic.

For ten years, on questions of the geopolitics of technology, there has never been a clear doctrine. De facto, the ecosystem organizes itself and goes off in every direction.

When I talk about technology and uncertainty, it is because we are facing two questions with no real clarity.

• The first is what the United States is thinking, and how it intends to assert its technological dominance.
• The second is where the French president stands on the big technology platforms, and how far he is prepared to go to defend France's digital independence.

With Amazon entering the sovereignty game, the puzzle becomes even more complex. This note aims to shed light on what is sometimes described as the "desired end state."

Enjoy the read

Read the note 👇