A Shift in How We Define Control Over Digital Infrastructure
At the 2025 ATxSummit, Singapore’s Minister for Communications and Information, Josephine Teo, introduced MERALioN, a fully sovereign AI model built for exclusive national use. The name stands for Multimodal Empathetic Reasoning and Learning in one Network, and the model is designed to meet the country’s specific linguistic, cultural, and public sector needs.
This marks a turning point. Governments are beginning to treat AI infrastructure like public utilities. In Singapore’s case, AI is now being positioned alongside water, electricity, and defense as critical to national resilience.
What Makes MERALioN “Sovereign”
Singapore developed, deployed, and governs MERALioN entirely within its own jurisdiction. Key features include native support for multiple Southeast Asian languages, public-sector integrations, and compliance with national security standards. A new government-backed consortium will oversee its continued development and adaptation.
The goal is clear: reduce reliance on foreign black-box models and retain full control over how AI is trained and applied within the country.
Two Different Approaches to Sovereignty
MERALioN is one version of digital sovereignty. It’s based on borders, jurisdiction, and national oversight. This model is rising globally as states try to protect infrastructure from geopolitical risk and foreign influence.
But sovereignty is not limited to governments. There is a parallel movement focused on infrastructure that is user-controlled, globally distributed, and governed by open networks. The Manifest Network represents this second path.
Where MERALioN is sovereign to a state, Manifest is sovereign to its users. Its infrastructure lives across hundreds of independent nodes. It is not built to serve one nation, but to remove dependencies on any single provider, jurisdiction, or commercial platform.
Not Opposites: Different Scopes
These two ideas of sovereignty can coexist. One reflects a centralized effort to protect national interests. The other massively reduces censorship risk and ensures fair, equal treatment across the global network. Both respond to the same underlying problem: the risks of relying on a few dominant cloud platforms to always act responsibly.
MERALioN shows how governments are asserting control over AI at the national level. Manifest asks what control looks like without borders, and whether individual builders and communities can claim sovereignty for themselves.
Why This Matters Now
AI infrastructure is becoming essential. Whoever controls compute and data pipelines will shape innovation, economics, and governance for decades. Singapore’s MERALioN project highlights how seriously governments are taking this. It also invites a broader conversation about who else can and should hold that control.
If AI is the next layer of infrastructure, the question is not just who builds it, but who owns it.
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