A private tech company remotely shut down a major oil refinery just to follow foreign rules, totally ignoring the local courts.
March 26, 2026
Original Paper
<p><span>The Sovereign Imperative</span></p>
SSRN · 6340858
The Takeaway
It reveals the existence of 'corporate kill switches' where companies like Microsoft can paralyze a nation's energy infrastructure based on foreign regulatory decisions. This challenges the assumption that national sovereignty controls critical infrastructure in the digital age.
From the abstract
India stands at a strategic paradox. With a GDP approaching $4 trillion, the world's fastest-growing major developer community (21.9 million GitHub accounts, surpassing the United States in opensource contributions), and a celebrated Digital India ecosystem, the nation projects an image of sovereign technological prowess. Beneath that surface, however, lies a systemic and dangerous dependency on foreign-controlled infrastructure across every critical layer of the digital stack. The threat is no