Governing AI in Viet Nam: Centralised digital sovereignty and controlled interdependence

In debates on digital sovereignty, states seek to build the technological and regulatory capacity to govern dependence on foreign digital infrastructures. AI complicates this ambition because its development relies on globally concentrated chips, cloud services, foundation models, capital and technical expertise. This article examines how Viet Nam seeks to build domestic AI capability while remaining integrated into global technology markets. Drawing on qualitative document analysis of Viet Nam’s legal and policy instruments, together with records of foreign AI and infrastructure partnerships, the article conceptualises Viet Nam’s approach as developmental digital sovereignty through controlled interdependence. Viet Nam combines risk-based AI regulation, national AI and data infrastructure, public support for domestic innovation and strategic coordination of technology development with continued foreign investment, research partnerships and technology cooperation. The analysis identifies a non-exclusionary variant of centralised digital sovereignty in which state coordination over infrastructure, data and regulation coexists with continuing foreign participation. It finds stronger evidence of policy aspiration and regulatory access than of material leverage over critical chips, cloud infrastructure or models. However, this strategy remains politically ambiguous. The institutions intended to strengthen domestic compute, data and research capacity also centralise regulatory authority, expand executive discretion and provide limited publicly visible mechanisms for independent oversight. The article argues that developmental digital sovereignty should be assessed through both its capacity to reshape external technological dependence and the accountability conditions governing the domestic exercise of technological power.