U.S. State Department: "South Korean AI Sovereignty Cannot Exclude U.S. Companies"

A U.S. State Department official pointed out that South Korea's concept of 'AI sovereignty' should not exclude or discriminate against U.S. companies. He argued that AI sovereignty should mean verifiable control, not physical ownership.

Russ Heddl, Senior Official in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, conveyed this stance at a recent seminar in Washington, explaining that many countries tend to interpret AI sovereignty as meaning they must own and manage all core AI elements—chips, data, models, and operational infrastructure—solely within their own borders. Heddl noted that AI development in South Korea has encountered barriers such as demands for physical separation of government servers and data localization policies.

He suggested that South Korea could leverage the benefits of AI by transitioning to modernized regulations that allow for logical server separation and cross-border data flows, emphasizing that digital sovereignty should mean verifiable control rather than physical possession. He specifically stated that appeals to digital sovereignty designed to exclude or discriminate against U.S. companies are unacceptable to the United States.

Heddl argued that it is in South Korea's best interest for its companies to collaborate with U.S. firms to rapidly adopt the best technology stacks, alongside their own technological development. He added that these discussions are a priority outlined in a joint U.S.-South Korea fact sheet released last November. Russ Heddl, Senior Official in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, spoke at a seminar hosted by the U.S. think tank Asia Policy Research Institute (NBR) in Washington D.C. on the 23rd (local time). He asserted that AI sovereignty should involve securing appropriate control systems, rather than solely owning the entire AI framework domestically.