Kevin Dominik Korte: IT Innovation Strategist, Board Member. Expert in identity management, AI and open-source solutions.
When most business leaders think of sanctions, trade restrictions or tariffs, they picture Coast Guard boats stopping merchant vessels filled with weapons. Seldom do we consider our tech exposure on the front lines of international politics. However, your technology supplier might meet every service-level agreement and still become unavailable to your business. All it takes is a government decision.
Consequently, executives should evaluate IT procurement through a geopolitical lens. When governments restrict semiconductor exports or regulate cross-border data flows, technology purchasing becomes inseparable from geopolitics. For business leaders, the response should be diversification, not a declaration of allegiance to one technology bloc. The objective is to preserve operational choices when political conditions change.
Consider a data center construction company buying optical transceivers for data centers from two vendors. Its procurement team may report supplier diversity. Yet both vendors could depend on the same optical chip manufacturer or critical material. Two contracts do not necessarily create two independent supply chains.
The same question belongs in software and cloud procurement: Can the business actually move, or does its alternative merely recreate the original dependency? Executives should therefore ask a different question. Instead of asking only whether a supplier is reliable, they should ask what would happen if that supplier were legally unable to deliver.
Washington: Security Controls With Commercial Consequences
The United States frames advanced semiconductor restrictions around national security, including concerns that commercial computing capabilities can support Chinese military and intelligence applications. The Congressional Research Service documents successive efforts to restrict China’s access to advanced chips and manufacturing technology.
These concerns deserve serious consideration. A business cannot responsibly treat sensitive technologies as ordinary commodities simply because unrestricted trade would make purchasing easier.
The restriction on semiconductors also highlights the intersection between hardware and software. The export restrictions directly address U.S. fears that China will use its technological power for military or surveillance purposes. Thus, to restrict AI software development, the U.S. restricted access to the needed hardware.
In the pure software realm, the back-and-forth about access restrictions to the latest AI models should make the political risk a priority. Outside of AI, the restriction on U.S. cloud service providers from providing services to the International Criminal Court highlights how political decisions can affect cloud-service dependencies.
However, security policies create commercial consequences beyond their intended targets. The ICC sanctions have pushed much of the developed world to seek alternatives to U.S. cloud services. Likewise, the export restrictions on AI chips have led to new designs and more effective models.
Most critically, the lesson learned was not that American suppliers are unsuitable. It is that technical roadmaps can depend on licensing decisions and diplomatic negotiations.
Diversify Dependencies, Not Just Vendor Names
The appropriate response is selective resilience rather than blanket duplication. Creating a redundancy for every business function would impose costs that many businesses cannot justify. Instead, executives should identify where interruption would create a significant business impact. Those dependencies deserve deeper scrutiny and funded alternatives.
For hardware, that scrutiny should extend beyond the immediate supplier. The semiconductor supply chain ranges from design tools via specialized materials to compliance testing. Independence at one stage does not establish independence across the chain.
For software, procurement should favor demonstrable portability. Require usable data exports, standardized open interfaces and practical transition support. The EU Data Act reinforces aspects of this approach, including open-interface and machine-readable export requirements for relevant services.
Open Source can provide a suitable alternative. Thus, instead of checking only for big names, evaluate options on the same operational basis. Ask whether another qualified team could maintain the system, whether documentation is sufficient and whether the organization possesses the skill or can procure it locally to assume greater responsibility.
Most importantly, test the exit. Move a representative workload, restore an independent backup and measure the time required. A second supplier becomes meaningful when the company can use it under pressure, not merely when procurement has reviewed a website or catalog entry.
Make Optionality An IT Procurement Strategy
Diversification is a comprehensive strategy. It should be treated as insurance with explicit costs, not as a procurement slogan. It must start in the board’s risk management strategy and flow down through management into operations. Document critical dependencies, affordable alternatives and recovery time alongside political risk.
Ultimately, the goal is not tech isolation with American, European or Chinese technological islands. It is a business that can work across markets without being blackmailable by one supplier, jurisdiction or political entity.
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