As demand for digital sovereignty grows — driven by concerns about data privacy, regulatory compliance and geopolitical risk — a new kind of marketing sleight-of-hand has emerged. Originally, cloud washing referred to the marketing trick of branding legacy or non-cloud software as “cloud-based” to cash in on industry buzz. Today, the term has taken a more insidious turn.Now, vendors rebrand cloud services as “sovereign” or “multicloud,” even when their infrastructure, data routing, and management layers remain tightly coupled to the same hyperscaler ecosystems. It’s smoke and mirrors — and it risks undermining the very goals of data sovereignty, transparency and control.Sovereign Cloud: More Than a BuzzwordTrue digital sovereignty means:Data stays within national borders.Control rests with local operators.Infrastructure is not subject to foreign government access (for example, the U.S. CLOUD Act).But not all that glitters is sovereign. Some offerings masquerade behind regional branding or EU partnerships while still being operated, managed or backstopped by the same U.S. cloud behemoths.Spotting Cloud Washing in Sovereign SolutionsAsk yourself:Where does the data physically reside?Can the provider guarantee legal insulation from foreign jurisdictions?Is there true operational independence from U.S.-based control planes or APIs?If the answers are vague — or the architecture opaque — you’re probably looking at cloud washing.Sovereignty is not a logo, and trust can’t be marketed. If you’re being sold a “sovereign” cloud solution, ask who really owns the keys because the only cloud worth trusting is the one you can see through.True sovereignty starts with control and transparency, not clever marketing. Technologies should be designed to liberate organizations from vendor lock-in and hidden dependencies.Why This Matters NowSovereignty isn’t always about expanding to more clouds — it’s increasingly about knowing when to pull back. Many enterprises are rethinking their “cloud-first” strategies and choosing to repatriate critical workloads to infrastructure they directly control.The reasons are practical and pressing.Cost visibility: Hyperscaler pricing is complex and unpredictable, especially for data-intensive AI workloads where egress fees and overprovisioned services balloon budgets.Control: Repatriation empowers teams to enforce governance at the hardware level — no shared tenancy, no undisclosed service chains.Resilience: Local infrastructure isn’t just about compliance; it ensures continuity in the face of geopolitical disruptions or shifting commercial alliances.This isn’t a retreat from the cloud — it’s cloud maturity. Organizations are becoming more deliberate, keeping elasticity where it’s needed, but relocating sensitive or strategic data when trust and autonomy are non-negotiable.Regulation as Catalyst: The EU AI ActThe push for true sovereignty is accelerating as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act begins to reshape the digital landscape. Set to take effect in August 2025, the Act introduces strict obligations around transparency, traceability and documentation — particularly for high-risk AI systems and foundational models.These compliance requirements go beyond application logic — they extend to infrastructure:Where are the models trained and hosted?Who controls the underlying data and monitoring mechanisms?Can the provider demonstrate full legal and operational independence?If your cloud provider is subject to foreign surveillance laws, or if core services route through opaque global regions, your compliance posture may be at risk — regardless of the EU-friendly branding.The EU’s new Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI, introduced mid-2025, offers early guidance, but many organizations are skipping the guesswork and building atop truly sovereign platforms from the outset.Reclaiming ControlCloud washing doesn’t just blur marketing — it blurs responsibility. And in an era of expanding AI governance and renewed industrial policy, that ambiguity can become an existential risk.Reclaiming digital sovereignty means going beyond labels. It means scrutinizing infrastructure, resisting false equivalencies and building for resilience, not dependency.You don’t have to leave the cloud. But you should know exactly which one you’re in — and who holds the keys.The post Cloud Washing in the Age of AI: When ‘Sovereign’ Isn’t appeared first on The New Stack.