The functionality of today’s society is dependent on large amounts of digital data. The prevailing view in the West has therefore been that public data should be open and freely available to promote transparency, innovation, and scientific progress. However, recent geopolitical developments have shifted political priorities, raising concerns about national security and civil preparedness. Particularly in the EU, decision-makers are increasingly determined to augment strategic autonomy and digital governance as a way of achieving digital sovereignty.

Simultaneously, they push for more open data in an effort to boost European digital innovation. However, whereas open data can support societal development and economic growth, indiscriminate openness and transparency may endanger national security. By sharing open data, states risk providing adversaries with sensitive information required to reach their goals.

Digital transformation, open data and geopolitics

During the past decades, society has undergone an unprecedented shift in economic and social relations driven by the digital transformation. Today, digital resources and services play a central role in society. Economic transactions, social interactions, and public services are increasingly taking place in the digital
sphere, while digitisation continues to extend into new areas of everyday life. For both private and public organisations, the digital transformation provides benefits such as more efficient management and operation as well as improved competitiveness.

A key driver of the digital transformation is the ability to collect, communicate, and analyse large amounts of data. Since the end of the Cold War, Western countries have aimed to increase the amount of open data. Behind this ambition is the realisation that there are several benefits of open data. Scientific research is often dependent on the availability of large amounts of open data, and the development of new products and services also benefits from open data. Open data is commonly claimed to be a key resource for technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Simultaneously, in the past decade, the world has become increasingly dominated by geopolitical competition among great military and economic powers, a trend also influencing open data. It is now considered a strategic resource used for, among other things, intelligence gathering and technology development. Open data is used by current AI models for training and may also be essential for
future technologies, such as the anticipated and potentially revolutionary artificial general intelligence (AGI). Whoever wins the AI race is expected to occupy a dominant military, political, and economic position globally.

From a national security perspective, perhaps the largest potential short-term risk is that AI can be used to extract sensitive information from open data. For example, it is already possible to use AI to identify retouched areas in aerial images, and thereby, through reverse deduction, identify locations of importance to national defence. Other potential antagonistic uses of AI include the production of fake data presented as true open data.

Another technology with potential geopolitical implications that can benefit from the availability of open data is the development of unmanned systems. Open geospatial data can enhance the performance of autonomous platforms, including self-driving vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones. In a military context, such data may enable UAVs to navigate in complex environments, such as forests or urban areas, making them more difficult to detect and counter. Given their relatively low cost, similar systems could also be used against civilian targets in grey-zone scenarios or in terrorist attacks. For example, an adversary could use open data to coordinate large numbers of
UAVs navigating autonomously through cities to target polling stations during democratic elections.

The development of open data has forced states, particularly in Europe, to reconsider their priorities. From a policy perspective, the European Union (EU) emphasises the importance of data in the digital economy and has taken action to increase its availability and use. With the introduction of the Open Data Directive in 2019, the EU encourages publication of publicly funded data as open data, that is, data in open formats that can be used, re-used, and shared freely by anyone for any purpose, with the explicit aim of promoting digital innovation and a data-driven economy in Europe. In addition, it highlights open data as a means of strengthening democracy, improving transparency, and enabling scientific breakthroughs.

Overall, geopolitical and technological developments present us with a dilemma between openness and protection. Sharing data freely and openly does benefit European businesses and research, but it can also provide adversaries with useful and sensitive information as well as competitive advantages. This dilemma has gained little attention in public debate, particularly at the national level. Emerging research, however, points to linkages between open data and national security concerns, an issue explored further in this chapter.

Public organisations and open data

Public organisations are central actors in this dilemma. They need to balance the political and economic demands for publishing open data against national security. The EU Open Data Directive focuses on public organisations’ legal obligations to share data openly and freely. Simultaneously, these public organisations need to consider national security. The Swedish Open Data Act states that public data should only be released as open data as long as it does not pose risks to national security.

However, it is unknown how to estimate such risks when publishing open data. Both identification and assessment of risks are particularly difficult due to the general lack of documented experiences, examples, and guidelines. Knowledge about adversaries’ use of data is usually restricted to national intelligence agencies, which are generally unwilling to share such information.

Risk assessments are essential for managing threats to national security. Public organisations, however, may struggle to translate such threats into concrete considerations when deciding whether to publish data openly. Should actions of an adversary influence government agencies’ decisions to release property data? Should municipalities planning to publish school data consider threats of terrorism? While most organisations are accustomed to conducting risk assessments, these typically focus on risks to their own operations rather than on the security of the state as a whole.

The following section presents four perspectives on how open data can pose a risk to national security. These four perspectives can guide public actors when performing risk assessments concerning open data.

Four perspectives to consider

There are at least four perspectives on how open data can lead to or increase risks to national security. Firstly, if open data provides adversaries with information that is useful for achieving their goals, it may pose a risk to national security. It can be, for instance, information about the location, function, capability or preparedness of certain facilities, organisations, units or persons of importance to national security. This includes, among other things, critical infrastructure for provision of energy, water, and food; national defence forces and law enforcement agencies; and political leaders, high-ranking officers, and key military personnel. Therefore, the usefulness and relevance of the information for achieving adversaries’ antagonistic goals influence the risks.

Secondly, the uniqueness of the data also influences the risk. If there are alternative sources of open data or information, the risks associated with national agencies publishing open data may be less severe if alternatives already exist. For instance, if there are services providing easily accessible satellite images of a certain location, official agencies releasing aerial images as open data may not increase risks to national security if the information is already publicly available. However, this is only true as long as there are no differences in, for example, resolution, accuracy, and informational content. Also, assessing differences between datasets is far from trivial; even small differences in data can expose new relevant, and potentially sensitive, information.

Thirdly, publication of open data may be detrimental for national security if adversaries save considerable resources, or if the risks they need to take to acquire the information are reduced substantially. In the absence of open data, the adversary may have to spend considerable resources or take substantial risks to be able to acquire the data needed. It can be assumed that a highly determined adversary with resources at their disposal will be able to acquire much of the desired data, even if it is not shared openly and freely. This can be accomplished through, for instance, cyberattacks, human intelligence, or the collection of new data with the help of various technological platforms. However, this usually forces the adversary to spend resources, such as money, time, and personnel, and risk being
detected and stopped by the targets’ security and intelligence agencies, or being
subjected to various forms of punishment or retaliation.

Fourthly, and perhaps most challenging to assess, is the possibility of gaining new information by combining data. Compilation of data and information, that is, the combination of several datasets or pieces of information, either over time or from different sources, is an especially incalculable and complex security issue. A certain dataset may seem harmless in isolation but could lead to the exposure of sensitive information when combined with other data or information. In other words, combining different data and pieces of information may allow the extraction of information that is not evident from the individual datasets or information sources. This risk will likely be exacerbated in the near future due to the proliferation of AI tools that simplify data compilation and combination of various sources of information.

In summary, organisations need considerable knowledge about, for instance, security-sensitive activities at the national level; what information can be assumed to be sensitive and, thus, worth protecting; and the strategic goals of adversaries to be able to fully consider the risks that open data poses to national security.

Final notes

To conclude, there are both opportunities and risks associated with open data, but whereas the opportunities are well-known, the awareness of the risks associated with open data is still low and needs to increase. Only by recognising the national security risks associated with open data, which may fluctuate and change with geopolitical trends, can society effectively deter and counter its exploitation
by adversaries.

Decision-makers also need to ensure that they do not restrict access to data more than necessary to guarantee national security. As one example, in a world increasingly influenced by disinformation and false claims, democratic societies need to ensure transparency and the dissemination of relevant information. In this context, AI and its future development are particularly relevant. AI tools will likely
further exacerbate the problem of disinformation, while they may also be used to detect and counteract it.

Open data is an essential tool for countering false claims and disinformation. Societies need to balance necessary restrictions on access to data, in order to limit the exposure of sensitive information, with open and free access to data in order to uphold fundamental rights in democracies.

This article is written by researchers Mathias Winterdahl, Åsa Davidsson, Eva Mittermaier and Ulf Söderman, as part of the report Strategic Outlook 11: Wide Awake in a World of Disorder. The report examines how geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological change are reshaping the international system and challenging established patterns of cooperation. It explores key security, economic, societal, military, and technological developments emerging in an era of strategic rivalry and systemic competition.