Framework
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.
Section
Sovereignty Research
Papers and framework notes on platform power, jurisdiction, strategic dependency, and the changing relationship between public authority and private infrastructure.
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Frameworks
Framework
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.
Framework
Jurisdictional Cover and Epistemic Cover
Two mechanisms that stabilise coercive infrastructure by making it physically unreachable and analytically invisible — and what the FCPI framework reveals about both.
Papers
Paper
Platform Neutrality Is a Temporary Illusion
A platform can look neutral while it is still optional. Once dependence deepens, neutrality gives way to governance.
Paper
Why Civil Control of Dual-Use Connectivity Will Fail in UK Waters
This paper examines why civil registration and whitelisting regimes cannot contain adversarial use of commercial LEO connectivity once that connectivity becomes indispensable for unmanned maritime operations — and why the UK is approaching the same threshold seen in Ukraine.
Paper
When Consumer Connectivity Becomes a Maritime Weapon
Civil governance models still treat satellite connectivity as a consumer product. Ukraine's experience shows why that fails — and why the UK is on the same trajectory.
Paper
Unmanned Maritime Systems and LEO Connectivity: A Timeline to the UK Threshold
A chronological case study tracing how expendable unmanned craft, commercial LEO connectivity and governance responses evolved from early innovation to the point at which the United Kingdom must decide whether to act.
Paper
Starlink in Ukraine: From Emergency Connectivity to Governance Crisis
A chronological case study tracing how Starlink crossed the indispensability threshold in Ukraine — from emergency activation in February 2022 to governance fragmentation and institutional separation by 2025.
Paper
Starlink vs Starshield: Platform Sovereignty and the Collapse of Neutral Infrastructure
Analysis of how Starlink became mission-critical infrastructure in Ukraine, why neutrality collapses under coercive dependency, and how Starshield represents institutional separation.
Paper
When Neutral Platforms Become War Infrastructure
Most commentary on Starlink in Ukraine treats the story as a drama about personality or corporate politics. The deeper issue is structural: a privately governed platform became indispensable inside a coercive system but was still governed as a platform. Once that happened, neutrality stopped being stable.