Sovereignty Without Soil
The Knights of Malta rule without land. So do Google, Meta, and Apple. What does it mean when power no longer needs territory to govern?
On Knights, Platforms, and the Question of Who Rules.
A Conversation About Power
I was talking with a friend the other day about power and not in the narrow political sense, but in its larger, ambient form: how it's structured, where it resides, and how it shifts. We were discussing Europe, and the European Union’s efforts to achieve something called digital sovereignty.
The term gets used often, but its meaning isn’t always clear. At heart, it’s about control: over data, infrastructure, platforms, and, increasingly, over the norms and values encoded into our digital lives.
The EU, with its regulations like the GDPR and the Digital Services Act, is trying to assert this control. But there's an obvious tension: the internet doesn’t respect borders, and most of its major operators aren’t European at all.
From Platforms to Sovereignty
I’d recently read a piece that argued, persuasively, that even if Europe wants digital sovereignty, the ecosystem it’s trying to shape is global. This isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s a structural one. You’re working within a system where the most influential players — Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon — aren't just companies. They resemble something closer to sovereigns.
That’s when my friend said it outright:
"These corporations are like sovereign entities. They don’t need land — they have users."
And that’s when it clicked for me. I remembered reading, some time ago, about the Order of Malta — a medieval military-religious order, once based on the island of Malta, but today headquartered in Rome, without territory. And yet… still sovereign.
A Sovereignty Without Land
I started looking into them again — the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as they are formally known. It’s one of those fragments of history that still glows faintly, like an ember that refuses to die out.
They lost their island, Malta, more than two centuries ago. First to Napoleon, then to the slow erosion of time and politics. Yet remarkably, the Order still exists. It has its own constitution, diplomatic corps, and Grand Master. It issues passports, coins, license plates. Over 100 states recognise it diplomatically. It even holds observer status at the United Nations.
Its headquarters are in Rome, but the buildings are extraterritorial — meaning Italian laws don’t apply there. Within those walls, it governs itself. Not unlike an embassy, but with no motherland behind it.
Its power isn’t military anymore. It's humanitarian. The Order runs hospitals, disaster relief missions, and medical aid across dozens of countries. Quiet, competent, and persistent.
And yet — and this is what stayed with me — it’s considered a sovereign subject of international law, even without a square metre of land.
A state without territory.
A sovereignty without soil.
That’s when the analogy took shape in my mind.
Platform Powers
When I turned back to the tech giants — Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon — the comparison didn’t feel strained. In fact, it felt almost inevitable.
They, too, operate without territory in the traditional sense. Their domains are digital, yet their influence is real. Their decisions affect elections, economies, speech, health, even the nature of memory. They don't need embassies because they are the infrastructure — for communication, commerce, identity.
They have internal rulebooks — Terms of Service — that apply more immediately to users than most national laws. They enforce them at scale, through automation and review boards, with appeals and penalties. Their reach often outpaces the state.
They issue credentials: logins, verifications, trusted status. They authenticate us. In some cases, they hold more information about an individual than that person’s own government. Their databases are, in a quiet way, registries of population.
And when it suits them, they negotiate with governments as equals — sometimes more than equals. They bypass legislatures through product design. They reshape civic life without debate. They offer services the state cannot or no longer does. And for many, they feel more present, more responsive, than any ministry.
This isn’t a corporate critique. It’s a structural recognition:
They act like sovereign powers Just not over land. Over flows. Over access. Over attention.
Their borders aren’t visible, but they are enforced. Their currency is not money alone, but identity, engagement, data, and code.
The Disorientation of Disconnection
You might ask: What does any of this really mean?
Try this. Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering that your Google account is gone. Irretrievably. No email, no contacts, no documents, no calendar. Or perhaps it’s your Meta account, the one that holds your identity in family groups, business pages, photos, birthdays, memories. Or Apple: your devices still work, but your account is locked: no cloud, no backup, no access.
Then imagine losing your passport.
Most of us would say the passport is worse. It’s your right to move, to return, to belong. But pause for a second. Losing access to your digital accounts doesn’t only disrupt; it disorients. You lose continuity. Connection. Proof of your past. Your ability to function, professionally, socially, even emotionally, is suddenly impaired.
That’s not just dependency. It’s jurisdiction.
What we’re sensing is that these platforms don’t just serve us. They bind us. We live under their rules, inside their systems. And though we don’t call it citizenship, we recognise the same patterns: rights, obligations, identities, exclusions.
That’s why the comparison with the Knights of Malta matters.
They show that sovereignty doesn’t always require soil.
And the platforms show that power doesn’t always require sovereignty.
At least not the kind we’ve historically known.
Rob Hoeijmakers
A Light Comparison with Serious Weight
So yes, it's a light comparison, the Knights of Malta and Google. One in robes, the other in hoodies. One founded in the Crusades, the other in a garage. But the resemblance isn’t a joke. It’s a signal.
In that conversation with my friend, something shifted. I had always understood, in a rational sense, that platforms wield enormous power. But this gave it contour, and a shape I could think with. It helped me see why some decisions feel political even when they’re just interface changes. Why I feel disoriented when an account is suspended, or why switching platforms sometimes feels like emigration.
It also helps me read the world I work in. To understand what’s at stake when we talk about digital infrastructure, or regulation, or platform design. And perhaps most importantly, it gives me a tool to think about the future.
Because we may not be heading toward a world of digital states, exactly.
But we are already living under powers that don’t rule territory, they rule conditions.
And it seems wise to name that, before we forget the difference.
Rob Hoeijmakers