When Digital Public Infrastructure Becomes an AI Governance Dependency

A national digital identity programme is launched to provide every citizen with a unified authentication credential. The system integrates with tax filing, healthcare access, social benefits, and business registration. The architecture is praised as a model of digital public infrastructure. Five years later, the government announces that AI-assisted eligibility determination will be layered onto the identity platform. The announcement triggers no sovereignty review because the identity platform is domestic. The AI layer, however, runs on a foreign cloud, evaluates eligibility using a foreign model, and stores transaction data under foreign jurisdictional terms. The identity is sovereign. The governance is not.