Sovereign AI or Trojan Horse? Why SAP and OpenAI Are Failing German Security

When I read the recent headlines, I almost had to laugh. Almost.

The news is out: We are finally getting "sovereign AI" for our German authorities. The promise? A digital revolution for the public sector. Goodbye fax machines, hello artificial intelligence. And who is championing this crusade for German digital sovereignty? SAP.

That sounds great on paper until you read the fine print. Who are they partnering with to deliver this sovereignty? Microsoft. And OpenAI.

Let that sink in for a moment. We are trying to build independence from non-European tech giants by partnering with the biggest non-European tech giants in existence.

Short on time? Here I explain the core risks of this partnership in 60 seconds:

The "Sovereign" Trojan Horse

Let’s be direct: You cannot build a sovereign house on someone else’s land.

SAP can wrap their cloud services in as many layers of German contract law and "local data residency" promises as they want. But if the engine under the hood—the Large Language Model (LLM) driving the intelligence—belongs to Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, it is not ours.

It is a black box. A very capable, very impressive black box, but a black box nonetheless.

By integrating OpenAI’s models into the heart of German administrative workflows, we aren't gaining sovereignty; we are deepening our dependency. We are inviting a Trojan horse into our critical infrastructure, disguised as a modernized workflow tool.

Building on a Political Volcano

As a founder deeply involved in cybersecurity and the sovereign solutions, I look at risk not just technically, but geopolitically.

We have seen how fast the wind changes in Washington. Relying on American technology providers for the backbone of our government’s operations is like building a skyscraper on a political volcano.

Today, the US administration is a partner. But what about tomorrow?

• What happens if trade relations sour?

• What happens if a new administration decides "America First" means "Europe Last"?

• What happens if they decide they need access to training data for national security reasons and simply flip a switch?

This isn't paranoia; it's risk management. If the US decides to cut off access, update their terms of service, or throttle compute availability, German authorities would be left paralyzed. We are handing the kill switch for our own digital transformation to a foreign power.

The CLOUD Act: The Backdoor is Built-In

For CISOs and IT Directors, this is the most critical point. The location of the server is irrelevant if the company operating it is US-owned.

The US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) allows US federal law enforcement to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data stored on servers, regardless of whether the data is stored within the US or on foreign soil (like in a Frankfurt data center).

This effectively bypasses the GDPR (DSGVO) protections we hold so dear.

If SAP is reselling Microsoft Azure OpenAI services, that data chain is vulnerable. A "sovereign cloud" that is legally subject to foreign subpoenas is a marketing gimmick, not a security strategy. True sovereignty means that no foreign court has jurisdiction over your data. Period.

The "No Alternatives" Lie

The most frustrating part of this narrative is the defeatism. You hear it in boardrooms everywhere: "Well, nobody is as good as GPT-4, so we have to use it."

That is nonsense.

We are not living in 2022 anymore. The gap has closed. We have incredible, high-performance models right here in Europe. Look at Mistral AI from France. Look at the groundbreaking research coming out of our own Fraunhofer Institute.

Furthermore, open-source models (like Llama 3 or Mixtral) have become so powerful that, for specific enterprise and government tasks, they often outperform the closed "black box" giants when properly fine-tuned.

Heck, from a pure security standpoint, you would be safer taking a high-performance Chinese open-source model, auditing the code, and running it on your own air-gapped local servers than trusting a live API connection to Redmond or San Francisco.

True Sovereignty Requires Courage

At Vective, we believe that convenience should never trump security—especially not at the state level.

Breaking free from the Microsoft/OpenAI dependency requires effort. It requires building infrastructure that we own. It requires utilizing open-source technology where we control the weights, the biases, and the data flow.

But isn't that what "sovereignty" actually means?

If we want a digital future that adheres to European values, privacy standards, and legal frameworks, we have to build it ourselves. We cannot rent it from Silicon Valley.

Take Control of Your Data

If you are an IT leader tired of the "black box" approach and worried about the hidden risks of the CLOUD Act, it’s time to look at real alternatives.

With SafeChats, we offer a ChatGPT alternative that is truly secure, compliant, and designed for enterprise needs without the geopolitical baggage. We focus on giving you the power of AI without handing over the keys to your kingdom.

Ready for real sovereignty? Book a demo with SafeChats today and let’s discuss how to deploy AI that actually belongs to you.