National Data Centre Push Reinforces U.S. AI Lead

Governments are pouring money into “sovereign compute” to keep sensitive data and artificial-intelligence workloads within national borders. Yet physical location alone does not confer control: operators manage cloud control planes, allocate computing capacity and remain subject to laws in their home jurisdictions. The dominance of U.S. hyperscalers therefore allows Washington to influence overseas AI infrastructure through corporate jurisdiction as well as semiconductor export controls.

A Financial Times analysis published on Sept. 2, 2026 highlighted research first released on July 30, 2025 covering 775 non-U.S. data-centre projects across 123 countries, representing $360 billion of investment. U.S. companies, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, operated only 18% of projects by number but controlled 48% when weighted by investment value, a proxy for computing capacity. Their overseas facilities may also remain exposed to U.S. authority under the CLOUD Act.