Which three levels of digital sovereignty can be distinguished, and what does each one mean?

• State: autonomy and security of the national infrastructure.
• Companies: economic autonomy and competition against foreign tech providers.
• Individuals: the citizen's ability to act and decide consciously and independently.

* State, companies and individuals, with the tension between state and individual *

Classically, sovereignty means a state's independence from other states (external sovereignty) and its supreme authority over all powers within its territory (internal sovereignty). Claims to digital sovereignty can be sorted by whose digital self-determination they are about.

1. State autonomy and infrastructure security. This has been the core of the debate since the Snowden revelations (2013). The fear is a re-territorialisation of the internet: fragmentation into national segments, with heavy economic and political costs from digital and geographic isolation.
2. Economic autonomy and competition. The national economy's independence from foreign (mostly US, increasingly Chinese) providers. Unlike level 1, it is usually part of a wider industrial strategy. Example: a retailer on Amazon or an app developer on Apple loses its distribution channels, its direct customer contact and its customer data, and has to pay high fees.
3. Individuals. The autonomy of citizens as employees, consumers and users (empowerment, self-determination). This level breaks with the state-centred view: sovereignty is not authority over a territory but the individual's capacity to act and decide consciously, deliberately and independently.

Tip: state, economy, individual: the same three actors as in the "who regulates whom" question.

Go deeper:

• Pohle & Thiel (2020): Digital sovereignty, Internet Policy Review — open-access paper behind the three-level distinction.
• Wikipedia: Splinternet — what a re-territorialised, fragmented internet looks like.