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David Eaves

@eaves.ca
1.8K followers 357 following 339 posts

Associate Prof & Deputy Co-Director at @iipp-ucl.bsky.social at UCL, Investment committee CoDevelop.fund, co-founder TeachingPublicService.digital. Digital Government & Digital Public Infrastructure, ReCollect co-founder & CEO, Father, Negotiator & Learner

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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 13/09/2026
Fun fun fun night with Metric, Broken Social Scene and Stars. First half was like hanging out in their rec room and they hung and played great music. Then Metric just did bangers.
Metric playing live in BrixtonMetric playing live in Brixton
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 24/08/2026
Gonna take longer to clear customs in Berlin than it took to fly here from London.
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The Economist @economist.com · 24/08/2026
Hackers are targeting vital services that are poorly protected in the West. For @ciaranm.bsky.social, “if it takes inflated hype about omnipotent AI bots going on hacking sprees” to raise awareness, “then so be it.” Register to read his guest essay in full
bit.ly
Fears of AI-induced armageddon are overdone
Applying basic security principles would go a long way to fixing problems identified by Anthropic and OpenAI, writes Ciaran Martin
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 24/08/2026
Sorry that happened Matthew :(
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 28/07/2026
"Europe is tackling the cloud oligarchy. Why isn't Canada?" New op-ed by Curtis McCord and I where we build on Parting Clouds, our Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project report in the @financialpost.com financialpost.com/technology/e...
financialpost.com
Europe is tackling the cloud oligarchy. Why isn't Canada?
In Canada and Europe, the big three hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet — control more than 70% of the cloud market. Find out more
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 24/07/2026
Yes!!!! I’m often like… wait I know a better route! And I’m… just me!
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Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 24/07/2026
Lawfare's Public Service Fellowship allows alumni of the federal workforce and civil service to bring their deep expertise in national security, law, and policy to Lawfare's analysis. Help sustain this vital work: givebutter.com/f7fpQk
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 22/07/2026
I can’t really wrap my head around the rational. Mostly cause I haven’t seen one.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 21/07/2026
Notes from my Chatham House talk on data localization, now a post. TLDR: localization is an answer waiting for a question. Name the threat... CLOUD Act, cyber attack, fire, missiles and you quickly find no single model covers them all. Think portfolio of options, not a sovereign fortress.
eaves.ca
Data Localization is the Answer. What Was the Question?
Last week I gave a talk at Chatham House for an event on 'Is Data Localisation the Answer to Data Sovereignty? Location, Control and the Architecture of Trust',  organised in collaboration with their Digital Ambassadors Forum. I really enjoyed the conversation and questions and had a number of people ask for slides and more details so have put together the following summary.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 20/07/2026
Currently sitting in a 2 hour line just to submit a passport renewal.
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
sadly real history has very few Norway-Brazil clashes but kids I'm here to tell you about a little game called Civ VI
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 25/06/2026
1) Open this image up 2) Find the small, blue feature in the very middle Congratulations, you've spotted the Perseverance rover on Mars, photographed from orbit! 3) Trace the rover tracks as they wend their way across the surface
A complex landscape of buttes, hills, hummocks, and sand dunes, in tones of gold and teal. In the middle, a small, beetle-blue feature. Around it, faint parallel tracks.
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
🆕 Creating a Competitive Marketplace for Compute Three American firms — Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet — control 85% of Canada’s public cloud market. IIPP's Professor @eaves.ca's latest report proposes a pathway to create a more competitive marketplace for compute. 🔗 Read it here: buff.ly/4Pw8dqR
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
⬆️ A Bottom-Up Approach to Building a Climate Resilience Stack IIPP Professor @eaves.ca, Beatriz Vasconcellos, Richard Gevers, & Liam Orme's policy report outlines a ‘climate resilience stack’ framework to help leaders respond to climate change. 🔗 Learn more here: buff.ly/BZdpxJq
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 17/06/2026
I love the onion.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 17/06/2026
What a joy to be on stage with Emily and talking digital era state capacity.
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Tim Bray @tbray.org · 16/06/2026
Good piece! I think the focus on retaining agency is spot on. I was at AWS for 5½ years & came away with strong opinions about customers retaining agency, see www.tbray.org/ongoing/When... - in the long run, teaching the customers might do as much good as trying to influence the provider landscape.
tbray.org
Lock-in and Multi-Cloud
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 16/06/2026
A real privilege last week, putting an argument I've been developing to the Eurogroup, the finance ministers of the euro area — that the route to digital sovereignty isn't just about building capacity but in making cloud a utility. I wrote a blog post on what I shared.
eaves.ca
Cloud Is a Competitiveness Question — A Note to Europe’s Finance Ministers
Kyriakos Pierrakakis opening up the session on Tech Sovereignty at the Eurogroup The Commoditized Stack Over the past year or so I've been developing an argument around confronting concentration and dependency at the cloud level of the technology stack: that at best digital sovereignty is a poor frame for this conversation, at worst it suggests pathways that are neither sustainable nor desirable.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 13/06/2026
Am knee deep in grading but... in breaks I've built out a new part of eaves.ca... now library.eaves.ca which... I think looks pretty slick.
library.eaves.ca
Writing & Publications — David Eaves
The collected writing of David Eaves: articles, reports, papers, and teaching cases on digital public infrastructure, digital government, state capacity, and technology policy.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 11/06/2026
Update on current status.
Picture of a meeting room screen with the the word “Eurogroup” on it. The is the body of European member state finance ministers that meets monthly.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 11/06/2026
Current status. Big day.
Boarding a LuxAir flight
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Luigi Ray-Montañez @luigi.land · 10/06/2026
"[AT&T access] to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5–8.0% at ages 15–19 and 3.2–6.6% at ages 20–24, with statistically significant but smaller declines among older cohorts. Placebo analyses applied to Verizon and Sprint’s pre-2011 coverage footprint are null." www.nber.org/papers/w35310
nber.org
Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T’s 2007–2011 Carrier Monopoly
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 10/06/2026
I'm excited about the piece because it takes two forces/interest that look to be in opposition: (1) EU's desire for sovereignty vs (2) US desire for force projects ...and shows that they could become forces for convergence/agreement.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 09/06/2026
Been writing a few pieces about the commoditized stack & why we should shape the cloud market to be more like a utility. This new piece in @foreignpolicy.com is why this is critical to NATO. (Paywalled) NATO’s Digital Back End Could Fall Apart Without Change foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/09/n...
foreignpolicy.com
NATO’s Digital Back End Could Fall Apart Without Change
Shared standards on cloud services are urgently needed.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 08/06/2026
End of History
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
🆕 Creating a Competitive Marketplace for Compute Three American firms — Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet — control 85% of Canada’s public cloud market. IIPP's Professor @eaves.ca's latest report proposes a pathway to create a more competitive marketplace for compute. 🔗 Read it here: buff.ly/4Pw8dqR
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 03/06/2026
From aisle 32 seat C, a hero emerges.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
Huge gratitude to the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project for helping make this happen, and my co-author Curtis McCord! And Keldon Bester CAMP's ED and a real all-star.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
antimonopoly.ca/parting-clou...
antimonopoly.ca
Parting Clouds: Creating a Competitive Marketplace for Compute | Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project
The Canadian market for cloud computing is monopolized. In a new report, CAMP argues that the most effective response is to unleash competition through procurement, regulation, and competition law enf...
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
No middle power can shift this market alone. But align on de facto standards — same portability, same refusal to be locked in — and we create buying pressure none of us could generate solo. Report + earlier piece in the reply 👇 Would love to compare notes with people working on this elsewhere.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
Two levers, together. Competition enforcement against bundling, tying, egress fees still matters. But the one that makes it bite is public procurement: when governments make interoperability and portability the price of winning contracts, they reset the market’s defaults.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
Swapping a foreign monopolist for a domestic one is still dependency — often pricier, worse service, less interoperable with the world. And few countries can even afford to build robust cloud. A fix that only works for a handful of wealthy states isn’t satisfying.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
The debate’s the same in most capitals: if a few foreign giants own our digital infrastructure, build our own — a sovereign stack, a national champion (Bell in Canada, a T-Mobile in Germany, whatever the local equivalent). In Parting Clouds, Curtis McCord and I argue that only solves part of it.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
New report I co-authored just dropped: three US firms control 85% of cloud computing in Canada. Your country probably faces a similar number. Sharing it widely — the problem, and the way out, matter well beyond Canada. 🧵
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 01/06/2026
Unless it’s a journey! The hopeful are becoming excited. The excited are becoming anxious and the anxious are becoming angry…
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
🎤 State Capacity in the Digital Era State capacity increasingly depends on the ability to design, finance, and govern shared digital infrastructure, but capability remains a key question. 📆 June 17 | ⏳ 10-11:30 GMT | Senate House, London ➡️ Learn more and register here: buff.ly/8cebWV7
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Glyn Moody @glynmoody.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
wow, they don't make them like that anymore...
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
🤖 Governments Can’t Agree on What AI Actually Is IIPP Co-Deputy Director @eaves.ca and MPA alum Sarosh Nagar's new @foreignpolicy.com article examines how different countries’ definitions of AI make it difficult to develop a shared agenda. 🔗 Read more here: buff.ly/SpV6fTC
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
✍️ Digital ID, payments, and data exchange should be treated as public infrastructure, not siloed IT projects. @eaves.ca, @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social, and Beatriz Vasconcellos argue governments must build shared digital foundations to avoid fragmentation. 🔗 Read their article here: buff.ly/bo9FpiL
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 29/05/2026
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe Peter Thiel moving to Argentina at this moment is just because he doesn’t react well to sunlight.
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
🤖 Governments Can’t Agree on What AI Actually Is IIPP Co-Deputy Director @eaves.ca and MPA alum Sarosh Nagar's new @foreignpolicy.com article examines how different countries’ definitions of AI make it difficult to develop a shared agenda. 🔗 Read more here: buff.ly/SpV6fTC
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UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @iipp-ucl.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
🎤 Sovereignty in Practice: A New Path for Europe’s Digital Success How to achieve digital sovereignty? IIPP Co-Deputy Director @eaves.ca will join a high-level roundtable convened by the @thelisboncouncil.bsky.social on May 26 2026. ➡️ Learn more and register here: buff.ly/HudeADw
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 18/05/2026
Different AI worldviews are driving different AI policies and strategies. It's making international alignment harder. I'm also worried that its causing countries to build strategies on where they *hope* AI is going, not where it is.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 14/05/2026
@bmann.ca... someone mentioned to me that you might be interested in this piece.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 13/05/2026
Excited to share that on May 26th in Brussels I'll deliver the Jean Monnet Lecture at the Lisbon Council's High-Level Roundtable on 'Sovereignty in Practice: A New Path for Europe’s Digital Success'. More info here: mailchi.mp/4e9049c437bd...
mailchi.mp
SAVE THE DATE: High-Level Roundtable on 'Sovereignty in Practice' > 26 May 2026
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Angri Bundel @anibundel.com · 11/05/2026
We lost Douglas Adams 25 years ago today. This has made a lot of people very sad and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 12/05/2026
One reason getting international alignment on AI is hard is because countries assume, or are hoping for, different futures. We map what we think are the salient perspectives and how that predicts countries positions. foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/g...
foreignpolicy.com
Governments Can’t Agree on What AI Actually Is
Without clear definitions, governance is impossible.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 17/04/2026
Have you seen www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub... and www.imf.org/en/publicati... We have more still coming.
ucl.ac.uk
The Economics of Shared Digital Infrastructures
Authored by David Eaves, Diane Coyle, Beatriz Vasconcellos, and Sumedha Deshmukh
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 15/04/2026
I’m dying.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 15/04/2026
Probably the Canadian metaphor is how we have higher interprovincial tariffs than we collectively have with the US. And even in the midst of an existential crises we can’t get rid of them. A little less of an everyday example.
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