Framework
1. Start: FCPI Index
The framework that measures when a platform becomes a strategic dependency. Read this first to understand how the analysis works.
Platforms, infrastructure, and power under stress
Indispensable Systems
Research on how digital platforms become indispensable, reshape sovereignty, and create new forms of control, dependency, and coercion.
What this research explains
Modern systems are no longer just tools.
They are becoming conditions of action.
- when platforms become infrastructure
- how dependency creates leverage
- why neutrality breaks under pressure
- how governance shifts from markets to sovereignty
Where to start
New to the site? Follow this path.
Research section
2. Then: Sovereignty Research
How platforms acquire governing power. Includes the Starlink case, UK maritime paper, and the indispensability and platform sovereignty frameworks.
Case library
3. Then: Case Library
Scored case studies applying the FCPI Index to real systems — from foundation models to satellite infrastructure.
Research areas
Sovereignty Research
Papers and framework notes on platform power, jurisdiction, strategic dependency, and public authority under digital conditions.
FCPI Index
Definitions, methodology, scoring logic, and comparative notes for identifying finality-bearing choke points.
Digital Crime Transformation
Research on how crime adapts to commercial infrastructure, how enforcement lags behind scale, and how illicit and strategic actors increasingly operate through the same systems.
Research
Papers, frameworks, and case notes as the research develops.
Featured Paper
Starlink vs Starshield: Platform Sovereignty and the Collapse of Neutral Infrastructure
What happens when a privately governed platform becomes indispensable inside a coercive system without transitioning to infrastructure-grade governance.
Sovereignty Research
What is Platform Sovereignty?
Platform sovereignty describes the condition in which a private platform acquires practical governing power over an essential function because exit becomes difficult, slow, or institutionally costly.
FCPI Index
What is the FCPI Index?
The FCPI Index is a framework for measuring when a platform, infrastructure layer, or service becomes a finality-bearing choke point with strategic consequences.
FCPI Index
Finality Choke Point Index (FCPI): Measuring Platform Power and Strategic Dependency
A comparative method for identifying when control over a platform, infrastructure layer, or service becomes control over completion — the point at which dependency becomes leverage.
Sovereignty Research
The Indispensability Threshold
The indispensability threshold is crossed when replacing or bypassing a system ceases to be a normal procurement choice and becomes a strategic disruption.
Sovereignty Research
Trust Architecture Lives at the Counter: Electronic Identification in Ukraine, 2021
Electronic identification is usually judged by the reliability of its digital credentials. A field experiment in Ukraine shows that a system's real reliability — and the sovereignty built on it — depends on how the prescribed procedure is actually performed by people on the ground.
Sovereignty Research
When the Whitelist Became the Attack Surface: Ukraine’s Starlink Access-Control Crisis, February–July 2026
Ukraine’s Starlink whitelist was designed to exclude unauthorised Russian terminals from the network; within six months, the central security problem had shifted towards controlling how hostile terminals entered the approved list itself.
Case library
Case
Scam Centres: Eastern Europe vs Southeast Asia
A structural comparison of two scam centre models — compound coercion in Southeast Asia and office coercion in Eastern Europe — through the FCPI framework.
Case
AI Models as Choke Points: OpenAI, Google, and the FCPI Analysis of Model Power
Analysis of foundation model providers as high-FCPI infrastructure layers, and how AI model dependency creates sovereignty, continuity, and control risks.
Case
Cloud Providers as Sovereignty Choke Points: AWS, Azure, and the FCPI Model
Analysis of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud as high-FCPI infrastructure layers, and how cloud dependency creates sovereignty and control risks.
A system does not become strategically important only because it is large. It becomes strategically important when others can no longer operate around it in time.