The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that in the artificial-intelligence era and in the face of a hostile United States, there is a greater recognition in Canada and around the world that data and compute are now strategic and productive assets. Guest columnist Joshua Van Es writes that the idea that a foreign-controlled entity could "shut off the lights" on the digital systems that enable our country to function carries a little more bite in 2026 than it did even a few years ago. Canadian companies have been quick to capitalize on this new recognition, most recently with BCE's announcement of a $1.7-billion data centre in Saskatchewan earlier this week. This project and others similar to it have been lauded for enabling and expanding Canada's sovereign data capabilities. But sovereignty, in the case of data, is not measured by the location of a data centre, or even by the nationality of the company that owns it: It follows the jurisdictional exposure of the company that controls and operates that data centre. A 2018 U.S. court ruled that a software company with no U.S. offices or employees was subject to U.S. jurisdiction simply because it advertised to American customers and accepted their payments.